Chapter 20

The boat was about a kilometre away. It was what Uncle Al would have called a gin palace – three or four decks, sleek and streamlined, white and glittery. The regular throb of its diesel engines came drifting across the water as it cruised slowly by, pitching gently through the waves, probably doing just a fraction of the speed it could make if they let the engines rip.

The signal fire was in full flow, black smoke belching up from the pile of burning flip-flops.

Jian was slumped against a rock, still shouting, in a voice growing hoarser and weaker. He was clutching his injured wrist to his chest and his face was pale. Beck immediately diagnosed what had happened – he somehow managed to light the fire even with his injured hand and he was in agony now.

Jian stopped shouting when he saw Beck and Ju-Long burst from the undergrowth, and just gave a tired nod towards the boat. Ju-Long ran to the very edge of the point and began to jump, waving her arms and shouting in a mixture of Chinese and English.

“Hello! Help! Over here!”

Beck took a moment to check Jian was okay. The older boy’s face was sweaty and sheet white, but he reacted to the question on Beck’s own face before Beck could say anything.

“I will be all right. Help Ju-Long.”

Ju-Long was doing fine, Beck thought. Instead, he ran to the tripod. The fire on the platform was starting to slump down. He found a stick to poke the burning brands back into shape, and to shift the black, molten masses that were the flip-flops back onto the flames. The stink of burning foam was revolting but the black smoke was everything he had hoped for.

Then he hurried back to the undergrowth, and pulled a couple of branches that were thick with leaves off a nearby bush. He dragged them both to the end of the point and tossed one to Ju-Long.

“Here.” He heaved his own branch above his head and waved it from side to side.

“Come on!” he shouted, with all the force his lungs and throat could manage. “Over here! Come on!”

Surely, with the smoke, and the shouting, and the branches – surely they would get the boat’s attention now?

Ju-Long redoubled her efforts. Even Jian came to stand alongside them, still half bent over and holding his arm, adding what voice he could to their efforts.

But the boat continued past the island without changing course. Beck could see no one on deck. Probably all enjoying a lie-in in their air conditioned cabins, he thought bitterly. He could see even more of the boat’s stern now – it was definitely drawing away from them.

He gave the signal fire a final poke, which sent up a last burst of smoke. The embers continued to smoulder but there was no more of the thick black stuff that he had been counting on to attract attention.

He let his branch drop.

Ju-Long had shouted herself hoarse. Her voice died away but she kept waving, until even she had to let it go.

“They didn’t see us,” she said bitterly.

Beck shot a final look at the boat as it disappeared into the haze. Maybe they did see us, he thought. Maybe they sent off a radio message to the coastguard and they’ll be here in a helicopter any time soon…

But he had to admit he couldn’t make himself believe it. The boat hadn’t even wiggled a little – they hadn’t even wanted to come in closer to have a look at the three people on shore. They just hadn’t been looking.

Or maybe the people on the boat had seen them, but they thought that letting off black smoke and waving branches at passing vessels was something the locals on these islands did for fun.

There was no point in obsessing about it. What was done, was done.

“Okay,” he said heavily. “We’ll rebuild the fire and we’ll give it another go with the next boat. At least we know boats do come by. Sorry we don’t have any more flip-flops, but we’ll use extra foliage or some of the packing foam for smoke and that should be almost the same. And meanwhile, I got us some breakfast. You two wait here – I’ll go and get it and we can eat it together. Right?”

They looked at him sullenly, but first Jian, then Ju-Long nodded and agreed.

“Right.”

“And if you two put a little extra fire in place, we can cook the ray I caught. See you in a few minutes.”

Beck hurried back into the undergrowth.

Despite his best intentions, even he couldn’t quite put the frustration of the boat out of his mind. No doubt it had a decent radar and radio, so it relied on electronics to pick up any signs of distress, rather than keeping a proper lookout with actual human eyeballs. Which was not something a proper professional sailor would do, but that was how it went–

He stopped, and stared into the distance, not seeing anything except the image in his mind, clear as day.

“Radar!” he exclaimed out loud. “Duh! Beck Granger is an idiot!”

Okay, so now he had something else to do. And he would do it, once they had eaten the ray.

Except that when he got back to the beach, the ray had gone.

He had left it, well and truly dead, on the platform. There was no way it had come back to life and flapped its way back to the sea. And the really telling piece of forensic evidence was the severed barb, still lying there on the platform. The dragons weren’t stupid. They had bitten off the bit they couldn’t eat, before stealing the rest.

At least it proved the anti-dragon device and the net had been a sensible idea. The dragons could have got up onto the platform last night, if they had wanted to. In fact, they were big enough to do pretty well what they liked.

He stared into the jungle, looking for the culprit. No reptilian eyes looked back at him.

“Yeah, well, you’re not going to win every time,” he called with a defiance he didn’t feel, “because…” He had to wrack his brains to think of a reason. “There’s plenty more food on this island and ultimately we’re smarter than you.”

He would go fishing again, and then he would put his other bright idea into action. They would get off this island. Beck promised himself this. They were fighters and they would win and survive, despite the setbacks.

But first, he had to catch breakfast. Again. The tide would be too far out by now to use the inlet, but he already knew where he would go this time.