Alice and Fergus were drenched in seconds. Alice, struggling against the howling wind, dragging a green-faced Fergus, tried not to gag when he was sick again and his vomit splattered her arm.
The trees around the campsite were bent almost horizontal in the wind. Jesse, in full waterproof gear, was staggering toward the tent with his arms full of stones to make up for the missing tent pegs.
“Where have you been?” he shouted at the others. “Help me!”
Fergus crumpled to his knees. Alice tried to pull him up. He moaned and curled up in a ball in the wet sand. Jesse dropped his stones and ran toward them.
“Get up!” Alice shouted at Fergus (she may have kicked him a little). “GET UP!”
“What happened?” cried Jesse.
“I think he’s got food poisoning!”
“What? But he hasn’t eaten anything!”
“Just help me, Jesse!”
Together, Alice and Jesse hauled Fergus off the ground, then turned toward the tent . . .
“Oh no,” said Jesse. “Oh no, oh no, oh no . . .”
The tent was gone.
The weight of their three rucksacks had prevented it from flying very far. But a strong squall had inflated the fabric like a sail, dragged it across the campsite, and flung it in a sodden heap against the wall.
Jesse let go of Fergus and ran. Alice, after a moment’s hesitation, went after him. Fergus, left alone, doubled over and retched.
“How bad is it?” shouted Alice.
“Bad!”
The tent was wedged into the wall, the guy ropes tangled around the rungs of the gate. Alice and Jesse tugged and pulled, picked at knots with frozen fingers. Part of the fabric had caught on a rusty rung. As Jesse struggled to wrestle it off, another squall slapped it across his face. Even in the gale, they heard the sound of fabric ripping.
They had to face the truth.
No one was ever going to sleep in it again.
They were alone, far from home, on an island, in a storm, with water running down their necks, through their clothes, and into their boots. Nobody knew where they were, and they were scared.
For a few seconds, which felt much longer, nobody said anything. Then Fergus sneezed, and Jesse shook himself and hauled the rucksacks from the folds of the ruined tent.
“We’ll have to go back to the village,” Jesse said. “We’ll ask for help at the pub.”
It was the end, and they all knew it. No pub landlord would take in three lost, drenched children without asking questions. The adventure was over before it had really begun, the Challenge was lost, Barney would not be met on his island. Of the three, Alice felt the regret the keenest, but all their hearts were breaking.
Wearily, silently, the runaways turned back along the road. Jesse shouldered his own rucksack and Fergus’s. Alice carried hers. Between them, they supported Fergus. They stopped at the entrance of the campsite to put the tent in the trash. It wouldn’t fit. Jesse swore.
“Just leave it,” said Alice.
“And have it blow into the sea and get eaten by some poor whale, or strangle a dolphin?” asked Jesse savagely. “I don’t think so.”
A jag of lightning tore open the sky. A rumble of thunder responded. There was a shriek, and a terrible splintering sound. A shadow rushed toward them.
A hundred meters ahead, a tree thumped across the road, exactly where they would have been if they had not stopped.
For a few moments, again, nobody said a word. Then, shaking, Jesse said, “We’ll have to walk around it.”
“No!” Alice put out a hand to hold him back. “The rain! Remember when we got stuck on the orienteering exercise? Look at the ground! The track’s almost a river. Those are marshes around us, Jesse, we’ll sink!”
“WELL, WHAT, THEN?” Jesse yelled.
Another flash of lightning. For a few seconds, the silhouette of the house they had passed earlier appeared, darkly lit against the sky.
“There!” Alice shouted, and half ran, half stumbled toward it.