‘Hey, Beck!’ Peter called. ‘Why did the tide go out?’
They weren’t talking much. Walking was hot and thirsty work.
The sea breeze gave the illusion of fresh air, until you realized that your sweat wasn’t actually evaporating. They had their sleeves rolled down and shirts done up to protect their skin against the sun. If it weren’t for their hats, then their brains would have been frying long ago. Beck was glad they hadn’t reached the beach until after midday, when the sun would have been at its highest and hottest.
‘I don’t know,’ Beck answered. ‘Why did the tide go out?’
‘Because the sea weed!’ Peter sniggered and Beck rolled his eyes.
‘Yeah. Will you carry me, then?’
They kept walking in silence for a while. They stuck as much as possible to the sand that lay below the high-water mark. It was moist and firmer than the dry, loose stuff above. Better for walking on. The line was marked out with dead wood and weed and the occasional piece of manmade rubbish. It was all baked dry by the sun, so they would have no difficulty finding fuel for a fire that night.
Beck carefully studied every bit of flotsam that they came to in case there was something useful. A grimy length of rope, embedded with bits of weed. An old crate, which he could break up for firewood. An empty two-litre plastic bottle that had once held a fizzy drink.
‘Might come in handy,’ he said, and put it in his pack.
When the afternoon rain came, they stood out in the open under the heaving sky. It was good to be able to wash, and to fill their bottles with fresh rainwater.
But the rain didn’t last long. Then it was back to more walking.
‘OK, why does the sea roar?’ Beck asked eventually.
‘Don’t know . . .’
‘So would you if you had crabs on your bottom!’
Peter snorted. ‘How long were you thinking that one up?’
‘About an hour.’
‘My legs really ache. And this is me talking, not a four-year-old.’
‘I know.’
Beck felt it too. The slight slope of the beach meant that their right legs were taking shorter steps than their left, and that made their hips ache. There wasn’t much that could be done about it.
A good excuse to rest soon came along. Beck’s eyes lit up at what he saw ahead on the beach.
‘Fancy a break?’ he asked.
The sand between the sea and the high-water mark was dotted with green specks. They were whelk shells – spirals like ice-cream cones the size of a clenched fist. Some of them moved, scuttling along on some journey that only made sense to the inhabitant.
Beck stood over the nearest one and quickly picked it up. Six spindly legs stuck out from beneath the shell, but their owner pulled them in the moment it realized someone had got it.
‘Shellfish?’ Peter asked.
Beck passed it to Peter, who turned it in his hands as he studied it. It was just possible to make out a brownish-purple crustacean lurking in the depths. ‘Hermit crabs. They don’t own these shells, they just borrow them. And tonight we’re going to eat them.’
Peter’s stomach rumbled at the thought. It seemed a very long time since they’d eaten the fish from the pool in the jungle.
He helped Beck gather up every crab they could find. They put them in their packs, zipped them shut and carried on walking.
The end of the day came as quickly as it had in the jungle. Out in the open, they could actually appreciate it. They were on the east coast of Sumatra and the sun sank down in the west, on the other side of the island. Red light scattered across the jungle and the beach, and their shadows stretched down to the sea like those of giants. The sky to the west was streaked with bands of orange and purple. To the east the dark came rushing in at them off the sea.
It only took a few minutes. The colour leached out of their vision and left only black and white and shades of grey. Night time scarcely made a difference to visibility because the moon was up – almost full in a cloudless sky. The boys could still see each other quite clearly and they kept on walking without a break.
And then, very faintly, the wind carried the whisper of a roar.