The Secret of the Lonely Isles

by Joanne Van Os

  Ella unfolded some pages, and she and the Professor bent over them, talking quietly while the others left the sofa and wandered around the room. It was fascinating. Professor Penhall had obviously travelled a lot in his life. There were curiosities from all over the world, and everything looked very old. Jem checked out a row of carved ivory statues while Maddy, Tyler and Zac examined some bones in the glass cabinet. Jem moved on to a tray of strangely shaped rocks, realising after a while that they were fossils. As he stared at them, he wondered what the Professor had meant when he told Ella she was too close to the investigation, that it was personal, not professional.

  He was yanked out of his thoughts when the old man sat back in his chair, slapped his knee and said, ‘I’ve just remembered something. About ten years ago I was travelling in Indonesia, and I came across a lovely carved box in an old shop in Lombok. It had some papers inside it, quite old but well preserved. Sandalwood keeps the bugs away. They didn’t look to be anything very important, but I wanted the box. I bought it, papers and all, and had a look at them when I got back, but I left Australia again almost immediately and I was away for some time. I seem to recall that it had something to do with the Gryphon. Can’t have been too convincing or I might’ve sent it to you then, although you’d just left on your boat.’

  He got up awkwardly from his armchair, and looked about the room, frowning. He took a few steps in one direction, and then in another. He looked puzzled and then irritated.

  ‘Damned if I can remember what I’ve done with it. I know I put it somewhere safe. The house was broken into a while back, so I put certain items in safe places. Trouble is, most of the time I can’t remember the places.’

  ‘Oh dear! Was anything stolen, Professor?’

  ‘No, nothing I noticed, anyway. Probably just kids looking for loose change for those noisy games they play in the shopping centre.’ He shuffled over to one of the cabinets and began opening doors and drawers. After a few minutes of fruitless searching, with Ella helping, he tugged at his moustache and shook his head. ‘It’s no use, there’re too many things in here. It probably wasn’t useful anyway.’ He gazed around at the cluttered room and shrugged. ‘I should just give it all to the museum and be done with it. But I can’t bear the thought of that old fox Cromarty getting his hands on my collections!’

  ‘Is Dr Cromarty still at the museum? I thought he’d retired long ago,’ and Ella and the Professor fell to chatting about old colleagues. It seemed to Jem that the box had been forgotten. For a fleeting moment his spirits lifted. Maybe we won’t have to go sailing after all, if Ella can’t find enough evidence …

  Maddy had moved on to the globe of the world, and was studying its painted surface. It was very old, and very large, about a metre in diameter, and was cradled in a heavy carved wooden frame. She was turning it around, sliding her hands across its surface, when suddenly she let out a cry. A section of the top half of the globe had suddenly sprung open.

  ‘Ah, clever girl!’ said Professor Penhall happily. ‘That’s right. I buried a few things in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. How could I have forgotten that, eh?’ He hurried over, reached inside, and drew out an intricately carved wooden box, which he handed to Ella. She carried it over to a desk nearby, pushed a stack of papers to one side, and opened it.

  Jem craned his neck to see what it was. She carefully lifted out several yellowed, stained pieces of heavy paper. In spite of his misgivings about a sailing expedition, Jem suddenly felt excited, and the hairs stood up on the back of his neck. Ella studied them closely for a few minutes. The slow heavy tick-tocking of the grandfather clock was the only sound in the room. Finally she sat back, and looked at Professor Penhall, her eyes shining.

  ‘They’re bills of sale, and lists of provisions bought for the Gryphon in Timor! This is real proof that they landed there, and that they came so close to Australia. May I make some copies please, Professor?’

  ‘You keep them, Ella. I’m too old to go chasing wild geese any more. You never know, there might be something to the story after all.’

  ‘Professor, this is very generous of you. Are you sure you want to give them away?’

  ‘Of course I’m sure,’ he said gruffly. ‘Just give me proper acknowledgement when you write your paper, eh? Take the box too. I don’t think it’s especially valuable, and I have far too much – what did this young fella call it – stuff here as it is.’

  Jem stared at the box. It didn’t look big enough to be very important. He reached out a finger to touch it but a movement at the window distracted him. There was a face – he was sure of it – a face at the window, half-hidden by the foliage. He opened his mouth to say something, but just as he did so, the leaves moved, and a sudden shaft of sunlight blinded him momentarily. When he blinked his eyes clear again, the face had vanished, melted into the leaves and the shadows playing across the louvres. If it was ever there at all.

  Ella was looking at him curiously. ‘What is it, Jem?’

  ‘I thought I saw something at the window, but it’s gone. I think I just imagined it.’ Clara bustled in with a tray of hot rolls and a pile of fried chicken wings. Zac and Tyler’s eyes lit up.

  ‘See what I mean?’ said Professor Penhall, his moustache twitching. ‘She thinks everyone will die of starvation if she doesn’t feed them. Go on, get into it!’

  Getting the Freya ready to sail took all of the allotted two days. Finding clothes, hats, reef sandals, and helping Ella with the food shopping kept them flat out. It took many trips to the yacht, balancing bags of groceries and supplies in the little rubber dinghy and transferring them awkwardly into the boat.

  ‘Do you think there’ll be enough food?’ said Tyler as they carried boxes into the galley. ‘I mean, we’re gunna be away for two weeks. That fridge is really tiny!’

  Jem grinned at him. ‘Sure there will. Look at all these beans!’ he said, opening a cupboard door.

  Tyler groaned. It was stacked with tins of every kind of bean imaginable. ‘Not beans! I hate beans!’

  ‘You mean we found something you don’t eat?’ said Maddy, climbing down the stairs with another bag of groceries. ‘They’re the emergency wind supply. When the wind stops, we feed you beans, Ty.’ She looked around in distaste. ‘There’s not exactly a lot of space, is there?’

  Yet it was surprising just how much could be crammed into a small yacht. Every cupboard, every nook and cranny, was used to its best advantage. Most of the dry food, like rice, flour, pasta, lentils, biscuits and spices went into poky cupboards. Narrow racks kept bottles of cooking oil, sauces and vinegar from falling over. Apples, pears, oranges and lemons, and a whole cabbage, were loaded loosely into woven baskets on a deep shelf. Potatoes and onions were hung up in a string hammock above the sink where the air circulated through them, and they could be checked daily for signs of rot. To Jem’s surprise, several dozen eggs went into a cupboard.

  ‘Won’t they go bad out of the fridge?’ he asked Ella.

  ‘Not these ones. I bought them yesterday from a local chicken farm, and they’ve never been in the fridge. That way they’ll keep for weeks.’

  Their clothes were stowed into small cupboards in the forward cabin, which had four narrow bunks, two on either side, one above the other, in a vee shape. There was only enough room for one person at a time to stand up.

  ‘What are these for?’ asked Zac, fingering a net that was tucked under each mattress.

  ‘To keep you from falling out of bed in a rough sea.’ Ella appeared behind them with an armload of sheets. ‘They’re attached to your bunk, and if you need them, you pull the net out, and hook it here, and here …’ She demonstrated it for them.

  ‘Hey, cool!’ said Tyler. ‘A safety net for when you dream you’re flying!’

  ‘I really hope we don’t need them,’ muttered Jem.

  Ella then showed them her cabin, which was at the back of the boat. It was bigger than the forward cabin, but crammed with bags of gear. ‘Spare sails and stuff, things
that I normally stow in the forward cabin. They’ll be fine here while you’re on board,’ she smiled.

  Jem waited his turn while the others climbed up the ladder into the cockpit. Ella was looking for something inside the navigation table, and it occurred to Jem that he hadn’t seen a computer yet.

  ‘Ella, where do you plug your computer in?’

  ‘My computer?’ she asked, shuffling things around. ‘You mean my laptop?’

  ‘Yeah, you know, for navigating and stuff.’

  She found what she wanted, and closed the lid. ‘Oh, my laptop’s just for emails and writing. I don’t use a computer for navigating, Jem. I navigate with paper charts, compass and sextant, the old way. Never did get used to the computer programs – I’m too old, I think.’

  ‘But – but Zac’s brother said boats got their directions from computers and satellites and there wasn’t anywhere in the world you could be and not find out where you were. Don’t you have a GPS?’

  ‘No – I thought about it. But I can always work out where I am. Just takes a bit more attention to detail, but it works.’

  If Jem felt uncomfortable before, now he felt positively panic-stricken. He’d felt slightly reassured by what Ricky had said, but what Ella was talking about sounded like driving a car with the windows blacked out.

  That night after dinner back at the Isherwood House, Ella went over her plans for the voyage. Neenie was at the table with them, a cup of tea in front of her. Carol was going to look after her while they were away. She was chatting happily to Ella but Jem was sure Neenie didn’t understand they were leaving the next day. Tyler and Zac were doing the dishes, and Maddy had gone off to make yet another phone call to Aleisha.

  ‘I’ll show you where we are going,’ said Ella in her faint Cornish accent. Jem had decided he liked the way she spoke. It was different from everyone else, kind of homely and comfortable. She unrolled a chart, and leaned over it.

  ‘See, we’re here. We sail out the harbour, past the Vernon Islands, and along the coast to the east. This is Port Essington. We’ll have a break there for a day or so, and visit Victoria Settlement. There are some very old ruins there, the site of one of the first European attempts at settlement in northern Australia about one hundred and seventy years ago. It’s a place I love, and I think you’ll like it too.’

  To Jem’s eyes there seemed to be an awful lot of reefs and shallow ground marked on the chart. It also seemed to him that if you were searching for a ship that had sunk, then it stood to reason that you might also find the thing that caused it to sink. He tried not to think about that. Ella was talking about the search.

  ‘… and we still don’t have a clear idea of where the Gryphon may have gone down. The letters I found in London mention a destination somewhere near what could be the Wessell Islands, over here to the east, or they might mean islands further to the north. It’s a pity the sponsors of the voyage didn’t write clearer instructions. Apparently their agent on board knew where he was going but they didn’t want the authorities to know, so they were very secretive about it. In fact this letter says the captain could only open his orders once they had passed into the Indian Ocean. It was too late then for the ship to turn around, I imagine.’

  ‘Why were they so sneaky about it?’ said Maddy, coming back into the kitchen. ‘Were they spying or something?’

  ‘No, quite the opposite. They were Quakers, and Quakers are very peace-loving people. There was talk of war in Europe – World War I started in 1914 – and they wanted to leave and form their own society somewhere else, away from governments and wars and regulations. They asked for a land grant in Australia but were refused, so they decided to do it secretly. They thought no one would find them on the north coast. I suppose it looked terribly isolated and remote from England.’

  They stared at the chart in silence for a few moments, and then Zac said happily, ‘I got somethin’ that’ll tell us exactly where we are!’ and he pulled a small object a little like a mobile phone from his pocket. ‘My brother Ricky gave it to me. It’s a GPS. Says if we leave it turned on we’ll always know exactly where we are, and he’ll know where to find us if we get into trouble!’

  Ella looked at it. ‘That’s good, Zac. I suppose I should get one,’ she said, ‘but the batteries would be a headache, always needing new ones. I’ll stick to my paper charts and sextant – I know how they work!’

  ‘Ricky said this one’s got extra long-life batteries, enough for our trip. But he gave me some spares just in case.’

  A muffled ringtone sounded, and Ella searched in her bag for her phone.

  ‘Yes, this is Ella. Hello Clara –’ She listened intently for a few moments, her face clouding with worry. ‘Please tell the Professor I’ll stop by later this evening.’ She closed the phone, and put it back in her bag.

  ‘Professor Penhall’s house has been broken into. I’ll have to go and see him.’

  ‘Is he all right?’ asked Jem.

  ‘He’s fine. He just discovered it this afternoon, and he’s upset, that’s all. They think it probably happened a few days ago – after we were there. Nothing seems to be missing, so it may just have been children looking for money again, like before.’

  They arrived at the beach a good hour before sunrise. Jem crouched in the dinghy as Ella headed out to the Freya. He climbed awkwardly up into the yacht, and sat in the cockpit next to Maddy, pulling his jacket around him against the coolness of the early morning breeze.

  ‘Now,’ said Ella, once she’d raised the dinghy up and fastened it to the davits at the back of the boat, ‘I’m going to start the engine, and I need someone to cast off the mooring line from this buoy. The tide’s almost at the turn, and it’ll carry us right out of the harbour once we’re underway.’

  The diesel engine coughed into life and began to throb below decks, and they unhooked the mooring lines. The Freya slowly began to move. Jem could feel the vibration of the engine right through the hull of the boat. Ella stood at the helm, navigating the way into the channel that led to the open sea. The lights of the city rolled slowly past them. Jem, Tyler, Zac and Maddy sat in the cockpit, not speaking, just staring out at the black water sliding by. Jem tried not to look at it, and fixed his attention on the few remaining stars overhead.

  They stayed like this for quite a while, churning through the calm water as the sky gradually lightened in the east. Jem glanced around at the others. Maddy was slouched in the corner of the cockpit, feet up on the side, arms folded across her middle, looking like she didn’t much care where she was. Tyler just looked cheerful as usual, if a little sleepy after the early start, as did Zac.

  The sun cleared the horizon. ‘Who feels like some breakfast?’ Ella stretched, and looked enquiringly at them. Tyler and Zac agreed enthusiastically, Maddy shrugged. Jem didn’t feel like eating anything. As Ella disappeared below to the galley, Jem sat up with a start.

  ‘Hey! Who’s driving the boat?’

  Ella poked her head up through the hatch. ‘It’s on autopilot, Jem. Freya’s steering herself.’

  ‘But what’s stopping us from running into something?’

  ‘I’ve plotted a course and set the autopilot. We’ll stay on this compass heading for an hour or so.’ She went below again. Jem sat back, not feeling very reassured. He was definitely not looking forward to the next two weeks. Maddy looked at him and snorted disdainfully.

  Ella passed plates and cutlery up to them, and explained to Tyler how to unfold the little table in front of the helm. They were sitting around it now eating soft scrambled eggs, fried tomatoes and crisp bacon. There was also a plate of buttered toast and mugs of fresh tea.

  ‘I didn’t know you could cook like this on a boat!’ said Tyler, very impressed, as he attacked his plate. Jem realised he was hungry, in spite of feeling so nervous. Maddy slumped back against the seat, eating like she didn’t care whether it was eggs and bacon or fried frogs’ brains.

  The wind had picked up, and as soon as breakfast was cleared
away, Ella hoisted the mainsail, and turned off the engine. The sudden rushing in of silence was strange, and scary. A twist of fear slewed around in Jem’s belly – at least an engine meant they’d get where they were going. The big triangular sail flapped and billowed, and the yacht leaned slightly and rolled gently from side to side. They began to move again, gradually picking up speed.

  Tyler looked at the speed indicator, and said, ‘Hey, we’re going as fast as we were when the motor was going!’

  Ella nodded. ‘We’ll let out the genoa now, and then you’ll see how fast she can go!’

  She released a rope and began winding one of the bright silver winches at the side of the cockpit, and slowly another sail at the front of the boat began to swell and take shape. Freya leaned over further and sliced through the clear blue water even faster than before. Jem gripped the side of the cockpit tightly and tried not to shut his eyes. He was terrified.

  ‘Woohoo! This is great!’ shouted Tyler, holding on and grinning his head off. Zac was just as happy. Even Maddy looked a little less bored. Only Jem stayed frozen in the cockpit, holding on tight and bracing his feet against the opposite seat to stop sliding off.

  The wind stayed with them for the rest of the day. Every so often Ella would go below to the chart table and plot their course, and come back up and adjust the autopilot. Occasionally she trimmed the sails, either winding one in, or hoisting another, and each time she explained to them what she was doing and why. Tyler and Zac helped her set up a couple of mackerel lures, towed well behind the boat, and they sat behind the cockpit for ages watching for a strike. A pod of dolphins cruised by, and surfaced beside them riding the bow wave. Jem looked over the side, and met the smiling eye of a big grey dolphin as it rolled on its side to have a better look. Maddy, enthusiastic about something for the first time, grabbed frantically for her camera, and took photos of them curving through the water.