THE FIRST PLANE was a jet, big and solid, with nearly four hundred passengers and more crew than Alex could count.

‘Alex Rover!’ exclaimed the flight attendant. ‘The world-famous adventure writer?’

‘I guess so,’ said Alex.

‘Come and meet the pilot – he’ll be so excited!’

‘You,’ Alex told herself, ‘are a weak-kneed, spineless jellyfish.’

‘Pardon?’

‘I’d love to,’ said Alex, and followed her into the cockpit.

‘Alex Rover!’ said the pilot, blushing red as a stop light. ‘I always wondered – I mean … Would you like to fly the plane?’

‘No thanks!’

‘Not exciting enough for you?’ and he showed her interesting things about the jet’s instrument panel and engines.

All Alex could think about was what a very long way down the ground was; then the ground turned to ocean, and that didn’t make her feel happier at all.

They landed after the sun had set, and when Alex found the little plane that would take her to the island nearest to Nim’s, the pilot said they couldn’t leave until morning.

‘I can’t land on that island in the dark,’ he said. ‘I’m not a daredevil like you!’

‘I’m not a daredevil,’ Alex wanted to say. ‘I just need to get to Nim’s island right away.’

In the hotel room the feeling was stronger. She felt like a tiger in a cage, trying to burst free.

Instead, she checked her email.

From: jack.rusoe@explorer.net

To: aka@incognito.net

Date: Sunday 11 April, 18:28

Dear Alex

I can’t believe you’re really coming! How will you get here and how long will it take?

I forgot to give you my phone number before. It’s 022 446 579.

I’ve never talked to anyone before except Jack but I guess it works the same way.

From Nim

From: aka@incognito.net

To: jack.rusoe@explorer.net

Date: Sunday 11 April, 22:00

Dear Nim

Curses, curses! I can’t go any farther tonight, and now it’s too late to phone!

I’m flying to Sunshine Island at dawn, to meet a boat from the adventure-cruise company Troppo Tourists; they’ve been as friendly as a salesman with a sick car to sell – and have offered to take me right to your island, though I haven’t told them yet where it is.

Nim, it’s been so much fun writing to you – no matter what happens, I’m glad I tried to come and meet you.

See you tomorrow!

Love, Alex

NIM WOKE UP when it was still dark, excited as Christmas. She switched on the lamp and checked the email.

ALEX HIT THE alarm clock, and it went on ringing. She reached for her phone.

‘They’re the Bad Guys!’ a girl’s voice shouted.

‘Who?’ said Alex. ‘What?’

And then she realised. ‘The Troppo Tourists?’

‘They chased the whale when my mother died. Now they want to bring people to stare at us and bother the animals – and Jack hates them. You can’t bring them here!’

‘No,’ said Alex. ‘I think we need to fix them once and for all.’

‘How?’

‘I’ve got four hours – I’ll think of something.’

The strangest thing, Nim thought when she hung up, was that it hadn’t felt strange talking to Alex.

BY THE TIME the sun was properly up, Alex had showered, dressed, eaten a hotel breakfast and was waiting at the airport, but she still hadn’t thought of how to get to Nim’s island and keep it secret from the Troppo Tourists.

‘Any daredevil plans?’ the pilot joked as he started the engine. ‘Going to parachute out halfway for your next book?’

‘That’s not a bad idea,’ Alex muttered. ‘I couldn’t be more scared jumping out of a plane that staying in.’

The pilot went as pale as Alex’s knuckles. ‘But there’s no land between here and where we’re going!’

Alex studied the map and decided he was right: Nim’s island was too far away for a detour in this little plane. Besides, she still had to meet the Troppo Tourists – the real bad guys, the reason that Nim didn’t have a mother. If Alex didn’t turn up, they might go on looking for Nim’s island.

This time they might find it.

Alex’s fear disappeared, as suddenly and completely as if it had fallen out of the plane without a parachute.

Instead she was angry. For the first time she knew exactly how her Hero felt when he was fighting the Bad Guys: ‘And,’ she muttered, ‘I’m going to win!’

The pilot was still worried that she was going to jump out the window. ‘We’re nearly there,’ he said. ‘The airport’s just past the sailing school – you can see the little boats now.’

Alex stared out and tried not to notice that her stomach was diving faster than the plane. That’s interesting, she thought. I can feel angry and sick at the same time!

‘Do they give lessons?’ she asked, because if she was talking she mightn’t throw up.

‘Give lessons, sell boats … Is your next book about sailing?’

‘Partly,’ said Alex. She couldn’t talk very well because a sneaky little fear had crept back and she was holding her breath to help the plane land.

TWO HOURS LATER she was wetter than she’d ever been and knew more than she’d ever wanted to about the way small sail-boats flip upside down and how it feels to be the person flipping off them. But she also knew how to get back on and push the boat right-side up, and how to pull the sails and steer.

And she was the owner of a small blue sail-boat.

‘Not bad for a beginner,’ the sailing-school owner said, pocketing her money. ‘But don’t go too far from the shore!’

Alex tried to smile.

‘Funny,’ the woman continued, ‘you’ve got the same name as the adventure writer. But I don’t reckon he’d need sailing lessons!’

‘Neither do I, now!’ Alex told herself. ‘I’m ready to go!’ And she tried to believe it.

She loaded her suitcase into the little boat and sailed out of the sailing-school cove, around the corner to the pink-and-purple Troppo Tourists ship.

‘Ahoy there!’ she shouted, jumping onto the wharf and standing up as tall and brave as she could.

The captain came running down the gangplank. ‘You’re Alex Rover? But you’re … what a delightful surprise!’

‘Are you going to write a book about us?’ asked one of the crew.

‘Maybe,’ said Alex.

‘We’ll have to make a good impression,’ the captain smiled, trying to suck his stomach in behind his Troppo T-shirt.

‘I’m sure you will,’ said Alex. ‘Do you mind if I bring my little boat?’

‘You there!’ the captain shouted at two of the crew. ‘Hoist this boat up on deck.’

‘Now,’ he went on, rubbing his hands excitedly, ‘can you tell us where this island is?’

Alex pointed to a spot on the chart, a little way east of Nim’s island.

‘We’d love to hear more about it,’ the captain said, and started the motor.

The crew gathered round as Alex began.

Alex was a storyteller. She spent her life telling stories on paper, and she made people laugh and cry and hold their breath, but she had never told a story as important as this.

She spoke quietly, and the crew huddled nearer, caught in the net of her words.

‘Long, long ago, when the world was young, a volcano began to grow, deep under the sea. It grew slowly, day by day and year by year, pulling lava from the heart of the earth – rolling, boiling, melting rock, hotter than fire, hot as the sun.

‘Then, one bright summer day – a day just like today, a day just like a million other bright summer days – the mountain under the sea exploded.’

She hissed the word out, her hands and eyes opening wide. The crew shivered.

‘With a roar that shook the earth, a storm came: thunder crashed and lightning flashed; winds howled, and waves towered. From the heart of the volcano, melted rock and boiling lava poured up and out, higher and higher. And when it had finished and the boiling rock had cooled to stone, the tiny underwater mountain had grown to a full-grown island with its head poking out from the sea.

‘Now, some islands,’ Alex went on, as the Troppo Tourists sat silent and still around her, ‘become peaceful once they’ve been born from the sea. But this island didn’t. This island stayed hot and angry.

‘Its volcano still shoots fire; boiling lava still tumbles down its slopes and the stench of hell floats in its mists. Its rocks are black and sharp and its cliffs are steep.’

‘No golden sand?’ the captain asked hopefully.

‘A little,’ Alex admitted. ‘But in front of the sands, curved from the rocks at one end to the cliffs at the other, is a maze of rocky reef – a treacherous, sword-sharp, boat-ripping reef.’

The crew shivered.

‘Lions of the sea,’ Alex continued, ‘live on the rocks: the smartest sea lions you will ever meet, the fiercest and bravest in all the world, ready to fight to protect their home.

‘And if a boat could pass the sea lions, and find its way through the sword-sharp maze, and not choke in the rotten-egg gas or fry in the boiling lava, when it reached the beach it would meet the dragons.’

‘Dragons?’ squeaked a crew member.

‘Small dragons – but so many they could cover the sand, and, like the sea lions, they will fight bravely to save their island.’

She hurried on before anyone could ask how.

‘There are birds, too, birds who are big and strong and tough enough to live on a mountain that shoots fire and choking gas. Birds who are so quick and agile that they can swoop down and snatch the hairs right out of a person’s head.’

The captain twitched his hat nervously around his ears. ‘Why do you want to go to such a terrible place?’

‘It sounds even worse than that island last week,’ one of the crew said. ‘I’m not going there!’

‘You don’t need to,’ Alex said. ‘You’re going to lower my little boat and I’ll sail the rest of the way.’

‘But why?’ the captain repeated.

‘To see if that’s how my Hero escapes from the Bad Guys,’ Alex lied, because she knew that if they saw the island, they might forget her story.

The captain giggled. ‘That makes us sound like the bad guys!’

‘It depends,’ said Alex, and began the second part of her story, because it wasn’t enough to make them frightened, and now she wanted to make them feel so bad that they would never, ever bother Nim and Jack again.

‘My Hero is a sad, lonely man who once lived happily with a Lady Hero and their baby, helping the world with research and science. But one day, while the Lady Hero was deep under the sea studying a whale, a noisy boat came to spy on them. My Hero begged that noisy boat to go away, to be quiet, to stay away from the frightened whale – but they laughed, were louder, and chased that whale so that it swam right to the bottom of the sea – and the Lady Hero was never seen again.’

She whispered the last words. One of the crew sniffed, and one blew his nose and the others wiped their eyes.

‘Are they bad guys?’ Alex asked. ‘You’ll have to decide. Because that’s not the end of the story.

‘Now my Heroes live on this fiery, dangerous island, far away from good people and bad. But what if the noisy boat came back, with people to trample their lonely home; to fight their sea lion and dragon friends, and destroy the science they’re giving the world?’

Tears dripped onto Troppo shirts; there were gulps and sobs and soggy noses. ‘That would be a terrible ending!’ said the crew. ‘You can’t end a story like that!’ And they sobbed some more.

Alex looked at the captain.

The captain didn’t care about Nim and Jack; but he was afraid of sea lions and dragons and boat-ripping reefs. And he was very, very afraid of being in Alex’s book, because people wouldn’t pay lots of money to go on Troppo Tourist tours if they knew the captain was a Bad Guy.

His eyes were sharp and cold as a shark’s, but he tried to smile. ‘A story should have a happy ending,’ he said. ‘Your Heroes can stay alone on their island, and the tourists can find somewhere else to explore.’