The baobab had run aground in a patch of mangroves. Beyond them, a coconut palm rose high into the rain-filled sky, and behind that stood a few straggly gumtrees. Mangroves only grow in tidal water and coconuts aren’t inland trees, which means we’d been swept nearly all the way to the coast. We must have been close to the river mouth. That explained the waves that had pummelled us at the height of the cyclone. Perhaps the tide had been in at that stage and now it was retreating. Behind me, out in the open water, the current looked strong. I could see logs and leafy branches and other unidentifiable debris being carried past by the flood. I wondered if Nathan McDonald was out there somewhere.
I piggybacked Nissa down the ladder of roots and jumped with her into the water. It came up to my chest. Nissa was used to being wet now and hardly seemed bothered. She clung trustingly to me like a baby koala to its mother as I worked my way, half swimming, half climbing, from one mangrove to the next, all the way to dry land.
It wasn’t dry, of course, but after our terrifying ordeal, anything that wasn’t underwater looked pretty inviting. I waded through the ankle-deep sludge and collapsed on a patch of damp pebbly ground, Nissa beside me.
‘We made it!’ I gasped, letting the fat cool raindrops splatter my face. ‘Nissa, we’re on our way home.’
It proved to be another rash prediction.
Ten minutes later, when I recovered sufficiently to get up and explore, I made a grim discovery. We were on an island.
It wasn’t a big island. Standing on a soft sandy mound at the island’s highest point, I estimated it was no more than forty metres long by fifteen metres wide. Just a narrow spit of land in a sea of swiftly moving water. Floodwater, not seawater, but I knew the sea was not far away. Straining to see through the teeming rain, I made out a hazy stretch of riverbank in the distance. The tops of several trees poked above the floodwater between it and the island. They grew almost in a line. If the current hadn’t been so strong, it might have been possible to swim from one tree to the next all the way to shore. It was something to keep in mind for when the floodwaters receded. Provided a search party didn’t find us first. In the meantime, there was nothing to do but wait.
Nissa pulled impatiently on my hand. ‘Tam take Nitta home now?’
She must have thought I was Superman. I crouched next to her. ‘The river’s too high, Niss. We’ll have to wait a while.’
Tears welled in her eyes. She wrapped her arms around my neck. ‘Want Mummy,’ she murmured.
‘I know,’ I said, lifting her. ‘Let’s go and find some shelter until this rain stops.’
Apart from the mangroves which ringed its shores – and which were mostly underwater anyway – there were only four trees on the island: the coconut palm and three skinny gumtrees. None offered shelter from the incessant rain. I turned a full circle on the mound. At the far end of the island was a low thicket. It wasn’t big, but possibly we could crawl inside it and escape the worst of the weather. I carried Nissa down to investigate. As we drew near, I thought I heard a rustling noise; but there was no wind, so it might have been my imagination. Then I heard it again. I stopped.
The thicket was denser than I’d first thought. Growing along the base of a metre-high rock shelf, it was a tangle of bushes and palm fronds and what looked like driftwood, all stitched together with some kind of a leafy vine. The rock shelf projected slightly over the heavy foliage; it was impossible to see into the dark space beneath.
‘Hullo?’ I said, feeling foolish. If anything was in there it would be an animal of some kind. Or more likely a bird. What kind of animal would live on a tiny island like this?
Don’t even think crocodile! I told myself.
Raindrops pattered around us. There was no other sound. I strained my eyes into the thicket. Probably nothing was in there. I was exhausted and my imagination was playing tricks on me.
One of the palm fronds wobbled. So did my heart.
‘Tam …?’ said Nissa.
‘Shhh,’ I whispered.
I lifted her from my right hip to my left. A bone lay half buried in the sand next to my foot. It was huge. It must have been the leg bone from a buffalo. Giving no thought to how the buffalo came to be there, or how it died, I stooped and dragged the heavy bone out of the wet sand. Then I took a deep breath and pitched it into the thicket.
Nothing much happened. There was the swish of the bone passing through the outer layer of leaves, followed by a soft thud as it hit something solid, then the only sound was the patter of raindrops. Slowly, I let out my breath. False alarm. There was nothing in there.
A twig snapped.
A vine twanged.
Uh-oh! I thought, and took half a step backwards. But it was too late to turn. Too late to run.
A large dark shape exploded out of the thicket like a train out of a tunnel. All I was able to focus on as the creature charged was its pink slimy snout, its small narrow eyes and its yellowed, razor-sharp tusks. A wild boar!
I managed to leap out of the way. Almost. As it hurtled past, the huge boar struck me a glancing blow with its bristly flank, pitching me to the ground. Nissa landed on top of me. Terrified, expecting another attack, I rolled onto my knees and launched Nissa up onto the rock shelf. Then I scrambled up after her, all in the same movement. Only then did I look around. Halfway down the island the boar was still running. It seemed as intent on escaping from us as I was from it.
Nissa was crying. The palms of both her hands had been grazed on the rock when I pushed her up.
‘Bad Tam!’ she spluttered.
I was bad? I had just saved her from what was possibly the biggest, meanest, ugliest wild boar in the entire outback, and this was all the thanks I received?
Still, the poor kid had been through a lot in the past few hours. She was plucky, all right. One at a time, I raised her pudgy little hands to my lips and softly kissed their scraped palms.
‘All better,’ I said.
I was relieved when Nissa rewarded me with a small quivering smile.