Frazer and Amazon turned to see Matahi leaning into the storm. Then Matahi saw the handcuffs and the almost unconscious Bluey.

‘These people are animals,’ he said.

‘Why will we die?’ asked Amazon, her voice shrill with terror. ‘It’s only a storm …’

‘Not any storm, the tropical cyclone, a typhoon. It will send waves right over the island. Waves that will reach halfway up this tree. All of the ground of the island will be underwater.’

Amazon and Frazer stared at each other, their mouths open.

‘How long?’ said Frazer, when he’d recovered from the shock.

‘Minutes.’

‘Can you cut this tree down, so Bluey can at least get to the higher ground?’

‘Not in time. If I had known … I was hiding from the men with guns. I was going to return in the night. But there is a way. Your friend must climb into the tree. We will help.’

‘We?’

‘Yes, me, you –’

‘And Oti!’ said Oti, suddenly appearing beside Matahi.

Oti went first, climbing up the tree as easily as a squirrel. The technique looked very simple. He hooked his hands round the tree, put one foot flat against the trunk and simply walked up.

Frazer and Amazon did their best to revive Bluey, but he was groggy with fatigue and illness. Matahi slid him up the trunk, and then propped him on his shoulders. Oti from above, and Frazer and Amazon from below, held him tightly there while Matahi climbed up, to begin the process again. In a way it helped that Bluey’s hands were bound around the palm tree trunk – it held him fast in those moments when no one else had a good grip.

Amazon was afraid of heights, but she was also, strangely, a brilliant tree climber. She tried to follow Matahi up the palm, but she could not grip the trunk.

‘Use your belt,’ said Matahi, from above. ‘Put it round the tree, and then use your feet, like Oti.’

Amazon didn’t quite get it at first. But then she looped her belt round the trunk, slid it up until it was level with her waist, then started to walk up the tree, moving the belt with her. She wasn’t sure if she was actually much use, but between the three of them, they managed to pull and push Bluey up into the relative safety of the network of branches at the top.

It was exhausting and dangerous work. The wind was growing stronger by the second, and the mix of blown spray and driving rain was blinding, deafening and painful. Now it was not only the tops of the trees that were being tossed around: the whole trunk was bending, almost like grass in a stiff English breeze.

‘We will stay with your friend here,’ Matahi yelled above the growing tempest. ‘But there is not enough room for all of us. You and Frazer must climb that tree. Tie yourself on with your belts. Do not let go of the tree whatever happens.’

Amazon shinned down the curving trunk of the coconut palm and explained to Frazer what they must do. The tree Matahi had directed them to was taller and straighter than the one they had wrestled Bluey into, so it was a tougher climb. The trick with the belts helped, however, and in ten minutes they were both clinging to the thick palm fronds at the top of the tree, like very strange coconuts indeed.