Strike of the Shark

by Bear Grylls

  ‘He’s getting a bearing, Mum,’ James said impatiently. ‘You point the hour hand at the sun, and north is halfway between the hour hand and twelve.’

  That was exactly what Beck was doing, and he was pleased to find that James already knew this lesson.

  ‘So that way’s north.’ He pointed his hand with a chopping motion. ‘Which means’ – he took another look at the birds – ‘we need to row south-southwest.’

  CHAPTER 21

  The sea became even rougher as they rowed. The peaks of the waves now broke into small splashes of white water before falling down again. It was not the kind of sea on which Beck wanted to be adrift in a lifeboat.

  The sun had risen further and its light spread further to the west. The day was warming, to the point where Beck knew they would have to think about putting the cover up before much longer. Then another wave carried the lifeboat up a little bit higher, and James called: ‘There’s an island!’

  Beck and the captain had their backs to it because they were rowing. Beck squinted over his shoulder and caught a glimpse the next time the sea lifted the boat up. The island was a dark smudge between sea and sky.

  They got a better view as they drew nearer. It wasn’t large – no more than a kilometre long, as far as he could see. There was no high ground on it – no hills, no cliffs – and as they approached, they realized that it was surrounded by a strip of dirty sand. Above this was a small forest of scrubby palm trees and bushes. The waves broke against the shore with a ferocious roar, dissolving into plumes of white spray and foam.

  ‘There’s rocks or a reef around it,’ said Farrell. ‘Those waves wouldn’t break like that on their own. We need to find the right way in . . .’

  Abby was on the tiller. James, in the bow, strained his eyes to spot a likely landing place. They had to row three quarters of the way around the island before they found a spot the captain was happy with. The waves still broke there, but it seemed to Beck that they were smoother, running cleanly up the beach. The boat should be able to run up with them and then touch down gently on the sand. But it would still be a rough ride in.

  ‘Everyone, get a lifejacket on,’ Farrell ordered. ‘Miss Blake, fit one onto Steven. Just in case we all get tipped in.’

  There was a bustle of activity for a minute or two while everyone did as they were told. Abby took twice as long as she needed to with Steven. Her face was set and her lips pursed as she tried not to touch the blood that still matted his hair. Eventually Beck got down to help her.

  Farrell waited until everyone was ready.

  ‘James, the moment we hit the sand, I want you out and holding onto the boat, OK? Drag us as far up the beach as you can. We’ll be right behind you.’

  ‘Sure!’ James nodded and bared his teeth in a grin. He actually looked like he might be enjoying this. Beck had found out before that even the most hardened loners could thrive as part of a team – especially if they were on a survival mission. If everyone played to their strengths, and was encouraged and supported, then the whole team’s morale could be incredible despite the danger.

  James stood poised in the bow. Abby aimed the boat dead on to the shore, and Farrell and Beck heaved together. The boat surged ahead, riding the wave towards the island like a professional surfer.

  Suddenly James was shouting and pointing ahead. ‘I think there’s a rock . . .’

  Beck looked over his shoulder and just caught a glimpse of it. It had been hidden by the surf; it wasn’t big enough to be seen from a distance – just a lump sticking out of the sea – but it would do some real damage and it was dead ahead of them.

  Farrell had seen it as well, but too late. He was just opening his mouth to shout an instruction to Abby to steer away when they hit it.

  James was flung over the bow into the water as the boat stopped dead. There was a crunch and the sound of splintering fibreglass. Water gushed into it through a crack that was well over a metre long.

  The boat lurched, and was now sideways on to the island and the breaking waves. A wall of water rose above it and tipped the small boat so steeply that Beck was plunged into the sea after James.

  CHAPTER 22

  Bubbles and water surged around Beck and he felt himself being thrown onto the sand. He pushed his feet down and fought his way upright. He broke the surface, gasping for breath, eyes stinging from the salt, just in time to see the boat poised to topple on top of him. Abby and Farrell were clinging on for dear life. Steven’s still form was being flung about like a rag doll.

  But slowly the boat fell back the other way, righting itself and half full of water. Beck rushed forward to grab hold of one of the life ropes, and heaved on it.

  ‘Come on!’ he shouted over his shoulder. James came splashing forward to help him. Maybe things hadn’t quite gone to plan, but they still needed to get the boat up onto the beach. Farrell leaped out and joined them. Between them they heaved, muscles straining, and dragged the boat as far as they could.

  It still floated, just, so that every time a wave came in they were able to drag it a bit further. But it was gradually sinking because of the crack in the hull, and rose a little less with each wave. Finally it was as far up the beach as they could get it. The waves reached the stern but not the bow. And now water ran out of the crack rather than in.

  Abby waited expectantly, obviously assuming that someone would help her out onto the beach.

  Instead Farrell clambered in and heaved Steven up in his arms. ‘Boys, I’m going to pass him to you . . .’

  Abby pursed her lips but stepped daintily down on her own.

  James and Beck were considerably less dainty as they took Steven’s weight. The collar of his lifejacket supported his head as they staggered up the beach and laid him down on the sand. Beck knelt to check that the bandage was still secure.

  Meanwhile Farrell rummaged in the boat and passed Abby the first-aid box and the emergency flares. He took the rations box and water himself and jumped down onto the sand.

  The drama must have given them all an energy rush; now that they were safe on dry land, Beck suddenly realized how tired he was. Everyone looked ready to drop on the sand, there and then.

  ‘Not yet.’ Beck was firm. ‘Further up the beach – look, there.’

  There were about twenty metres of beach between the sea and the trees. The sand was smooth and damp for about half of that. At the top edge of the damp bit was a line of dead seaweed and bits of wood. These collected at the high-water mark – the point where the sea reached when the tide was at its highest.

  At the edge of the trees, a large boulder stuck out of the sand. It was above the tide mark, and sand was piled slightly higher on one side than the other. This meant that Beck could see which side faced the wind and which side would provide shelter. They could rest there.

  They made a sad, bedraggled group as they trudged up the beach. Two adults and two boys, carrying an unconscious man between them, all of them soaking wet. At last they reached the shelter of the boulder, where they laid Steven down and dropped to the ground themselves. Huddled together, hugging their knees for warmth, they watched the sun come up properly.

  We can’t sit here for ever, Beck told himself, but I’ll give it five minutes, just to rest and get our bearings . . .

  ‘When will someone come looking for us?’ he asked.

  Farrell shook his head. ‘They’ll miss our regular check-in, so pretty soon they’ll realize something’s wrong. They’ll launch an air-sea search . . . in the area where we were supposed to be. They’ll follow the course we should have taken all the way from Miami. But we were so far off course . . .’ He let his voice trail away.

  ‘Will they find the wreck of the ship?’ James asked.

  ‘No hope. That beauty has sunk to the bottom without trace. And God only knows how deep that water is. That lifeboat there, and us, may be all that’s left for anyone to find . . .’ The captain’s eyes lingered on the stranded boat, though he didn’t seem to be looking at it.
Beck wondered if their thoughts were heading in the same direction. Now that the drama of the shipwreck was over, now that they were on solid ground, they could spare the time to ask the question: What the heck happened?

  Beck finally said what he had known from the start: ‘Someone sank the ship deliberately, and they didn’t care that we were still on it. The crew just left us. Why?’ He looked from Farrell’s face to Abby’s – not expecting them to know the answer, just to emphasize that he meant it. The captain’s features were sunken and hollow, like a close friend had just died. Abby just looked weary.

  ‘I have no idea,’ said Farrell quietly.

  And that was all the answer he was going to get for now, Beck thought. Maybe they would never know.

  What he did know was that they were stranded with no means of escape, no way of communicating with the mainland, and no supplies apart from a first-aid box, half a packet of biscuits and a half-empty bag of water.

  Beck gave the lifeboat another glance. Later, he thought, they could turn it upside down and use it as a shelter. Protection from the sun during the day, warmth at night. He assumed they would be there at night.

  And from what Farrell was saying, they could be here for quite some time.

  That reminded him. Hadn’t there been a tropical storm brewing nearby? It had been to the southeast when he saw it on the radar the previous day. And it had had hurricane warning flags attached to it.

  He looked in that direction now and could make out an ominous gathering of dark clouds on the distant horizon. The clouds rose high into the air, shaped like a giant’s anvil. Cumulonimbus. Beck recognized those instantly and he knew what they meant.

  A storm. And a big one. It was some way off, which was some relief.

  For now.

  This island was no more than three or four metres above the water, at its highest point, unless you climbed a tree.

  Beck knew that if a hurricane struck here, it would not be a nice place to be. Not at all nice.

  ‘But look on the bright side!’ Abby piped up suddenly, her mood changing so quickly that Beck looked round in surprise. ‘We’ve got survival expert Beck Granger with us!’ she continued. ‘He’ll save us, right? So, Beck, go on, tell us what to do!’

  CHAPTER 23

  ‘OK,’ Beck said half an hour later, ‘here goes . . .’

  They had collected all the leaves and pieces of wood they could carry, and piled them on a flat rocky ledge at the top of the beach. The centre of the island was thick with undergrowth, so Beck had made everyone burrow right into the bushes and scrub for the deadest, driest items they could find. Stuff that would burn very nicely.

  They were going to make two fires – both would act as signal fires: the first would be all prepped and ready to be lit if they spotted a plane or passing ship by day; and the other fire would be to light now, to keep them visible by day but also through the night. At night, especially, it would act as a bright beacon shining out through the darkness.

  At the core of both fires was a pile of dry leaves and twigs. The outer layers were made of thicker and thicker bits of wood. Some were already the right length; some had had to be snapped and broken down. The core, the kindling, would catch first. The bigger pieces would keep the fires going.

  On the big signal fire, which would remain unlit until needed, they would lay big green palm branches that, in turn, would produce large amounts of smoke when they burned.

  That was the important part.

  Smoke is more visible by day than flame.

  The ledge was flat, and a boulder sheltered it from the prevailing wind. Beck wanted to be able to sit around their night fire while also sheltered by the wind. Nor did he want it to burn too fast in the breeze.

  Beck knelt down by the pile.

  ‘I don’t suppose you’ve got matches?’ Abby asked.

  He felt his bare throat again. The thought of his missing fire steel made him bite his lip. He saw James look questioningly at him – he’d obviously remembered the steel too.

  ‘No,’ he said shortly, ‘I haven’t.’

  He was going to have to use an alternative method, and he knew it would give his hands blisters.

  Well, you will have to live with that, Beck Granger, he told himself. Consider it a lesson learned. Never leave your fire steel behind again.

  ‘Mum, he’s probably going to make a fire drill,’ James explained. ‘He’ll spin it with a bow—’

  ‘Um, well almost,’ Beck interrupted quietly. ‘Right idea, but . . .’

  A drill and bow would have been Plan B, since Beck didn’t have his fire steel. The last time he had made a fire with the drill-and-bow method had been with Peter when they were in the Sahara. The bow was a curved piece of wood with a string joining both ends. The drill was a short, pointed length of wood. You twined the string around the drill and moved the bow back and forth, making it spin. You used a small block of wood in one hand to press down on the spinning drill. This creates friction at the drill’s base; and friction means heat, smoke and eventually a small ember.

  But he was going to have to resort to Plan C.

  ‘You need string to make a bow,’ he said, ‘and we don’t have any. So I’m using my hands . . .’

  Beck picked his way through the sticks and twigs until he found what he wanted.

  First, he found his drill. It was as long and straight as he could find. It looked like the kind of thing you would kill vampires with – two foot long and not much thicker than a pen. And with a blunt point. He wished he had a knife to smooth off the shaft of the stick a bit more, but it would have to do. The rougher it was, the worse the blisters would be. Beck knew that.

  He then got his base plate by using a stick to pry a slab of bark off a tree. It was about the size of a tea plate.

  The pile of kindling on the rock next to the piled-up wood was like a small bird’s nest, a mini mound of dried leaves and twigs. He put the base plate down next to it and knelt beside it.

  ‘James, I need you to help me with this.’

  James knelt down opposite him and Beck held the plate firm against the ground with one foot. Beck spat into his palms, then held them flat together with the drill between them, the tip pressed into the plate. Then, with a slow, smooth, easy motion, he began to move his hands. Back and forth, starting from the top of the spindle and slowly working his way down to the bottom.

  ‘Your turn, James,’ Beck said urgently. ‘We take it in turns, alternately, so the spindle is continually spinning. OK?’

  The drill spun fast with each movement, and the boys worked the drill, keeping it spinning. All the time it was building up friction and heat at its base.

  ‘It’s going to take a while . . .’ Beck warned.

  ‘Here, let me help too,’ Farrell said suddenly. He crouched down next to Beck and James to join the rota. ‘My hands are bigger and tougher – together we can do this.’

  And so Beck let him join in. James soon got tired, and instead helped to hold the base plate in position, and Beck and Farrell kept working the spindle.

  The captain could make the drill spin twice as fast as Beck could. Back and forth, back and forth . . .

  ‘Keep it pressed into the plate,’ Beck spluttered between breaths. Both he and Farrell were sweating hard.

  Farrell just grunted and kept going.

  ‘There’s smoke!’ James cried at last. Beck didn’t know how long they had been going, but James was right. There it was – the tiniest wisp of smoke at the drill’s tip.

  ‘Keep going,’ Beck said grimly. More and more smoke accumulated, and a very faint smell of burning wood reached his nostrils.

  Beck and the captain kept at it until the tip was almost obscured by a small cloud of smoke hanging in the air around it. The top layer of the base plate around the tip had turned into a very fine layer of scorched wood dust that glowed with heat.

  ‘And stop,’ Beck whispered.

  Farrell broke off immediately with a sigh of relief, cradling
his hands under his arms.

  Beck very gently tipped the dust into the bird’s nest of tinder that he had prepared earlier. The dust glowed a dull red and started to fade. Beck pursed his lips and gently blew onto it. The red glow came back, wavered, went dark, came back again. This time it stayed. And then it started to spread, moving from the powder and into the tinder.

  The fresh smell of burning wood grew stronger, and thin tendrils of smoke started to drift up into the air.

  Beck gently pushed the small pile across the rocky ledge and into the base of the main fire. He kept blowing at it until suddenly the flames burst out of the small tinder bundle. The fire had caught.

  The others gathered around gratefully. The sun and the wind had helped dry them off after their rough landing, but there was a clinging chill inside each of them that needed a good fire.

  Beck waited a couple of minutes for the fire to spread through the pile. Then he gathered a handful of younger, less dry leaves and dumped them on top. Immediately grey smoke began to billow from the fire, mingled with the flames. Before long, he thought, it should be visible for miles.

  ‘That should attract attention, right?’ James was almost glowing with pride. Beck understood. He had experienced those feelings many times before. He knew that his fire would help them survive – and in some way James had made that happen.

  ‘You bet, buddy,’ Beck agreed. He couldn’t argue. It would certainly attract attention – if there was anyone about to see it.

  But with a hurricane on its way, would anyone still be around?

  CHAPTER 24

  ‘So, next,’ Beck said, ‘we look for water.’

  ‘Or how about some food?’ Abby asked. ‘You can catch us that fish and we can cook it on our lovely fire.’

  Beck shook his head. They could survive for days, even weeks, without food after they’d eaten the ration biscuits from the lifeboat. Lack of water could finish them off in a fraction of that time.

  ‘Water,’ he and James said together. They looked at each other in surprise. Beck tipped his head to indicate that James should go ahead.