Chapter 30

The bush rustled again. Beck had the feeling of being watched by careful, suspicious eyes.

“No,” he said thoughtfully, “these aren’t dragons.”

He had known what it was when he saw the soil marks by the edge of the pool, pressed into the soft, damp mud. And the breeze carried a distinctly mammalian, farmyard smell towards him. He couldn’t have identified the animal from the smell alone, but the marks were the giveaway. Each one was a pair of indentations, side by side as if he had pressed his first two fingers into the ground, over and over again. He tapped them to show what he meant.

“These are pig footprints. There are wild pigs on this island. They must come here to drink.”

And he would bet it was pigs that had created the animal track along the ridge. They must use it as their personal highway along the island – high ground, looking down on both sides, with a good view of any predators. But there couldn’t be any predators on this island, because if there were on an island this size, there wouldn’t be any pigs at all. Which meant the pigs were the top life form – or had been, until the three of them had arrived.

“As far as I know,” Ju-Long said thoughtfully, “pigs are not endangered.”

“Not generally.” He grinned, and looked at the bushes that hid the pig. They moved again, but only because the pig was sniffing around and moving away.

He ran in his head through what they needed to do, and the time it would take. It was mid-afternoon. Could they squeeze everything into the last four hours of daylight?

Yes, he decided, they could. They would.

“We’ll bring everything up here for our camp to be near the water.” There might be mosquitoes, he thought, but that was inevitable anywhere on the island, and it was better than sandflies. “Then we’ll build another signal fire down on the beach – there’s nowhere clear up here we can use for a signal point, so the beach is the next best thing. And then, we can see what we can do to help us survive a little longer!”

*

The tree was three metres tall and it stood next to the pig trail. Its trunk was just right and Beck could get both his hands around it. It wasn’t so thick that he couldn’t pull it down to the ground, and it wasn’t so thin that it just snapped if he tried.

And when he did, and let go, it sprang back up into the air to stand upright again.

Perfect.

Catching a pig, even on an island this size, would be a big challenge. He was the only one of the three of them with any hunting experience, and even if the island wasn’t exactly big, it was big enough.

So, the pigs had to be trapped. And thanks to the trail, he knew where a trap could be set.

Ju-Long had cut a length of rope with a slip knot at one end. She fed the other end of the rope back through the knot’s loop, and now the rope was a noose. A pig that blundered into it would pull the rope through the knot and make it tighter.

But there was always the chance it could just pull itself free again. To make extra sure it stayed caught, it had to be lifted off the ground – and that was where the tree came in.

Beck cut a notch in the stem of a sapling that grew next to the trail. He tied a loop in one end of a piece of rope, and tied the other end of the rope around the tree. Then he heaved the tree down with both hands, straining as he fought the tree’s desire to return upright, and hooked the loop into the notch. The rope stretched taut, but it held and the tree stayed bent over.

It needed to be tested. He stood back a safe distance and gave the rope an experimental prod with a length of wood. It slid out of the notch and the tree whipped itself smartly upright, yanking the wood out of his hand.

Okay, he decided, that would do.

He pulled the tree back down again and fastened it again with the rope back in the notch. Then he tied the free end of the snare to the tree a little higher up, laid the loop gently down on the ground, and covered it up with a scattering of leaves. The pig would come blundering through and knock the tree free without realising it was standing in the snare. The tree would whip itself upright. The snare would close around the pig, or at least one of its legs, and lift it up.

That was the theory.

He had to be absolutely sure, of course, that the pig would stand in that precise spot. That was what Ju-Long was doing now. He went to help her.

For a distance of ten metres on either side of the snare, and up to a height of about one metre, Ju-Long was lashing the branches of the undergrowth together. Some she tied with net rope, some she just twined together. From a distance it looked untouched, but any animal that tried to run through it, expecting to push the branches apart, wouldn’t be able to. Animals took the path of least resistance unless they had a good reason not to. Ju-Long and Beck would build a barrier like this on either side of the trail, angled towards the snare, and the pig would find itself funnelled towards the trap. The killing zone.

The barriers were in place; the trap was set. Beck checked his watch. They had about an hour of daylight left. Getting across from the last island, then exploring this one, and then setting the trap, had taken up a good chunk of day. If they were going to do this today, they needed to act now. Not that it would be the end of the world if they waited until tomorrow, but roast pork tonight would be good.

“Ready?” he asked. Ju-Long nodded. He checked his watch. “Be in position in five minutes, then go for it.”

“Five minutes.” Ju-Long set the alarm on her own watch. “Understood.” She turned to go.

“Wait, hang on a moment!” Beck called. She looked back, and he handed her a thick, sturdy stick. She flashed him a smile of understanding and took it, then carried on her way. The whole point of what they were about to do was to spook a pig to run into the trap – but spooked animals can turn nasty on whoever is spooking them. Even domesticated farm pigs could get aggressive if they were angry, and this would be a wild animal, not domesticated at all. It would have teeth and, if it was a male, it would have tusks – sharp ones, too, every bit as dangerous as a dragon’s bite.

She would need protection.

Beck didn’t have a stick – he had a spear. They had brought the triple-pointed spear with them from the old island, but this island wasn’t suitable for diving in rock pools, so he had modified it. First he had cut a slot in one end and wrapped rope tight around it to stop the slot from splitting the shaft further down. Then he had opened his knife’s sharp cutting blade up and wedged the handle into the slot, tying more rope to hold it firmly in place. The blade pointed outwards, and with the point on the end, it would be a lethal weapon.

He picked the spear up and turned to head in the other direction, picking his way through the undergrowth down his side of the ridge. By the time he and Ju-Long reached the beach they would be on opposite sides of the island.

Beck emerged onto the sand and quickly turned right, hurrying along until he estimated he was about half way to the island’s end. Ju-Long should be in a similar position on her side. He checked his watch again. There was a minute to go.

He turned to face the jungle and drew in some slow breaths. In many places around the world, indigenous people would ask permission or blessing of the spirits for a hunt. And so he sent out a prayer to the forest of the island.

Lord, thank you for providing us with this food. Help us to make a clean kill. Beck paused. “Amen!”

And the silence gave the trees time to settle down and for quiet to return.

Thirty seconds. He took a grip on the spear. Twenty seconds. Ten… Time. The hunt was on.