‘Jem! Look!’
Tyler, Zac and Ella caught up with them and stopped, eyes wide. Almost hidden by the tangled scrub was a small wooden hut. Its rough-sawn timber slabs were mottled with rot and lichen and its roof had half-fallen in. Clearly no one had lived there for a very long time. The door was closed, and Jem put a hand on it and pushed gingerly. It fell in with a crash that made everyone jump and look around nervously, as if expecting an irate owner to accuse them of vandalism. He looked at the others.
‘You first,’ whispered Maddy, looking a bit scared.
Jem stepped through the doorway, and peered into the gloom inside. There were a few broken bits of furniture, and some rubbish on the floor. It looked completely abandoned.
‘Wow,’ said Maddy, peering in after him, ‘so people really did live here. How old d’you reckon it is?’
Ella followed Jem inside. ‘It’s difficult to say. It could be fifty years or more, depending how long the timber lasts in this climate.’ She gazed around the room. ‘It looks like anything useful was removed though. That’s a good sign. It might mean we’ll find much more recent evidence.’
They left the hut, and kept walking. Jem led the way. There was no actual path to follow, but his feet seemed to have a mind of their own. He wasn’t at all surprised when he climbed around a large fallen tree, and found himself in the middle of what was once a small village square. The ground had been flattened and paved with large smooth stones, still quite visible through a covering of grass and bushes and the odd sapling that was growing between the stones. Around the edges of the square were several small buildings. Four of them were huts similar to the last one, except in better condition. The remaining buildings looked like storerooms or sheds.
Three of the huts were empty, their roofs falling into the rooms below. The fourth hut was also in a dilapidated state, but when Ella pushed open its front door the light through the holes in the roof shone down onto furniture and household items. Blackened pots hung off hooks on the back wall. A well-made wooden table stood in the middle of the room, thick with dust and debris but quite intact. Shelves around the walls held stacks of crockery, serving bowls and bottles. Another shelf held a row of mouldy, decaying books, and an old bird’s nest. At one end of the hut was a bed, made up with sheets and blankets, but it was clear that no one had slept in it for a very long time. The windows were shuttered, so apart from dust, leaves and the occasional bird, not much else had found its way inside. A mouldering rug lay on the uneven stone floor.
‘Do you think someone still lives here?’ said Tyler in a loud whisper.
‘I don’t think so, it’s too derelict,’ said Ella, gazing around the room. ‘It’s interesting that there’s furniture in here, but none of the other houses had any.’
They stepped back outside into the fresh air, and inspected the storerooms next. One storeroom was lined with shelves, mostly empty, although there were several stacks of crockery and other kitchen utensils. Some large tin washtubs stood on the floor in a tidy stack. The other storeroom held furniture – beds, tables, chairs, cupboards, lengths of timber, all kinds of things.
‘It looks like this was Harvey Norman’s, ay!’ said Tyler. ‘They musta done their shopping here!’
‘I think perhaps that someone has taken these things from the empty houses we saw, maybe when the occupants had died, to store them for future use,’ said Ella, and they moved on to the sheds. The first turned out to be a workshop with tools and a rickety-looking wheelbarrow, and at the back was a forge with a pair of bellows, the leather rotted almost completely away. A heavy anvil and hammer stood to one side. The next shed was a carpenter’s workshop. One wall provided hanging space for dozens of rusty old tools – hand saws, hammers, augers, pinch bars and so on. A hessian bag had rotted and split, spilling rusted nails across the rough wooden workbench, but otherwise everything was neat and tidy, apart from a thick layer of dust and leaves.
The last building was different. Unlike the others, it had a stone path leading to its front door. It consisted of a single room, without any sign of a kitchen, or any shelving. It had wooden benches around the four walls, and a shuttered window on each wall.
‘I think this was a gathering place – a church if you like,’ said Ella, gazing around. ‘Quakers didn’t go in for churches as such – they didn’t have priests or ministers – but they had meeting houses where they held regular gatherings. This would’ve been a meeting house, I’m sure of it.’
They went back outside, and stood in the middle of the little square looking around at the buildings.
‘So where is everybody?’ asked Maddy. ‘It looks like people were here not that long ago, and there’s all that stuff in the huts. What happened?’
Ella shook her head. ‘It’s hard to say. Perhaps they all left – maybe a ship came past and they all got on board and went home again. But then I’m sure I’d have found some record of that, some newspaper article certainly. These people were obviously here a long time. Their rescue would have been big news back in England.’
‘Yeah – they’d all be Robinson Crusoes!’ said Tyler.
‘Do you reckon they died?’ asked Zac.
‘Yes, I think so,’ said Ella. ‘But I don’t believe they ate each other.’
‘I was only joking!’ protested Tyler quickly. ‘I didn’t mean that, really.’
‘I know,’ she smiled, ‘but it’s a fair comment. People do such things when they’re desperate to stay alive. Look around you. Does this look like a desperate situation? Neat houses, carefully stacked storerooms, tools all in their right places. No, I don’t think things went terribly wrong here. I think it’s more likely that they just slowly died, of sickness, or accidents, and finally old age.’
Jem shivered in spite of the hot sun. He had a sudden flashback of the dark-haired boy on the cliff top, and wondered if he was the last person left alive here, to die all alone.
They found the remains of a cobbled path leading down a short distance to a shallow creek nearby. Several large flat rocks lay along its edge, and Jem had a vision of women doing their washing here, and laughing with each other. The water was clear and sweet, and reminded Jem of the spring back home. As he stepped out onto one of the flat stones, he startled a small group of reddish-brown birds which squawked and flapped as they darted into the undergrowth on the other side of the creek.
‘Did you see that!’ said Jem excitedly. ‘Chooks! They were chooks!’
‘They musta gone wild and survived in the bush,’ said Zac. ‘No dingoes here then, that’s for sure.’
Across the creek they could see a pair of small buildings. One was the same as the huts in the little square, but in better condition. The other was smaller and looked more like a toolshed. The remains of what might have been a chicken run sagged at the back of them.
‘A chook pen!’ said Jem. ‘Those birds really were chooks then. The people musta brought them from the ship before it sank. Well at least they would’ve had chickens and eggs to eat.’
They pushed through the undergrowth to the front door, and stood there hesitating, till at last Ella put her hand out and lifted the latch.
The door swung in with a long loud creak that made Jem’s hair stand on end, and he couldn’t help glancing around to see if someone had heard the noise and was rushing up to yell at them. The roof had no holes, so it was dim inside, and Ella forced open the shutters on the two windows, flooding the room with light. There was a table in the middle of the room, with six chairs around it. On one wall stood a wooden dresser made of hand-sawn timber and stacked with blue and white china plates, bowls, cups and saucers. Several jugs were lined up on the top shelf. A large enamel teapot had pride of place in the middle. Further back on the far side was a bed made up with sheets and pillows, and a patchwork quilt. At the back wall was a workbench for preparing food. Cooking pots and pans hung on hooks against the wall, and several large knives lay on a wooden board to one side. Here, a door opened to an outside kitche
n, which was basically a fireplace made of blackened stones with an iron tripod over it for suspending cooking pots. A large pile of firewood was neatly stacked to one side.
It all looked as if someone had tidied up ready for visitors, except they’d forgotten to dust for a while. Everything was thick with the pale grey stuff, years of it. Cobwebs hung in strands from the rafters, and webbed the legs of the chairs.
They went outside and looked across at the last building left to inspect. It was quite a lot smaller than the little house, and only had one window and one door, both of which were closed. The roof was intact.
As Zac and Tyler headed towards it, Jem had a sudden wave of apprehension, and called out sharply, ‘No! Don’t go there!’
Ella cried out to them at the exact same time, an unmistakable warning in her voice that pulled both Zac and Tyler up short.
‘What?’ said Tyler, looking quizzically at them, and then glancing nervously at the ground. ‘What is it, a snake?’
Zac stood stock still, staring at the ground to see where the danger lay.
Jem opened and closed his mouth a couple of times, and just looked at Ella. She glanced at him, as if to say, yes, we both know what’s in there …
‘Don’t go inside, boys,’ she said grimly. ‘I have a bad feeling about this one. Let me look first, okay?’
They stood back, and watched as Ella carefully opened the door, and stepped through. After a few moments she re-emerged, blinking in the sunlight after the dimness of the little hut. She took a few deep breaths, exhaling as if to clear stale air from her lungs.
‘Well, it’s as I thought; there’s a dead person in there.’
Maddy gasped and put her hand to her mouth, and Zac and Tyler looked scared. Jem waited.
‘Perhaps not so much a person now as a skeleton, mostly. I’m no expert but I’d say he died an awfully long time ago. There’s a bed in there, and it looked like he just died in his sleep, comfortable as you please. He was old – his hair’s completely white.’ She closed the door firmly behind her. ‘We’ll just leave him be, eh?’
They went back inside the house. The air was a little less musty since they had opened the door and windows. Ella looked around at the room. ‘If this was where the last survivor lived, then it’s where we’ll find any information, if there’s any to find. I’m thinking of a journal, or a box of papers perhaps? Have a look around, but do be careful not to damage anything, won’t you?’
They wandered around the room, searching everywhere. Finally, Maddy gave a shout.
‘I think I’ve found something! Look!’ and she held up a pressed metal box, about the size of a telephone directory. It was heavy. Ella placed it on the table and carefully prised open the lid. Inside was a cloth-bound book.
‘Bingo!’ she said softly. ‘Brush this dust off the table, and pull up a chair. We’ve got some reading to do.’
For the next two hours, Ella read out passages from the journal of the Quaker settlers. It listed the names of the twenty would-be colonists, and their ages, and the names of the crew. And at the end, there it was: Jack Tremayne, native of Cornwall, age fifteen years. Jem felt a shiver run up and down his spine when he saw the name.
The Quakers, the journal told them in faint spidery writing, had elected to leave England because war was coming, and they were against all forms of violence. They believed there might be conscription of able-bodied men into the armed services, and so this group had decided to leave and begin a colony somewhere out of the way of the turbulent world, and set up a new home for others to follow. They were being financed by Montgomery Fox, the man to whom Robert Perceval had addressed his letter.
They managed to get all the way to the Lonely Isles, only to come to grief at the end of their journey. A sudden squall had driven them onto the rocks near the western entrance to the Hole in the Wall, in spite of the old map they had obtained. The ship held together long enough for them to launch its little cutter and ferry all the passengers and supplies, and as much as they could salvage of the ship itself, in several trips. They found their way into the hidden cove, and chose a spot to live while they waited to be rescued. Every day someone was on watch on the cliff top, looking out to sea for a passing ship, but no ship ever came.
‘Oh, listen to this next bit – this is what we need to know!’ said Ella.
The deadly whirlpool in the strait blocks safe entry from the west. However at neap tides, it disappears and it is safe to sail through it. We were very fortunate that there was a neap tide the day the Gryphon struck the western reef. However, because the entrance to our cove is past the whirlpool, it is possible to avoid the deadly water and use the eastern entrance. Captain Nancarrow has taken the cutter out to assess our position, and examine the rest of the island. He reports that on neap tides the current through the strait is not so strong and permits passage against the flow. It is necessary to row close to the southern side of the strait out of the main current, and stay on this course for three hundred yards or more to avoid the reef outside.
She looked up at them. ‘We certainly needed to know that to get out of here safely!’
After a year, the crew had mutinied. There was a terrible fight in which Captain Nancarrow was killed. The mutineers stole the cutter and the captain’s map and, with two of the young Quaker men, left the island to try and get to the mainland. They were never heard from again.
The rest of the colonists moved further into the island, where the soil was better, and built houses and gardens. Ella leafed through the journal, reading aloud bits about the building, the paving of the square and the paths, the great day of inaugurating the Meeting House. Several babies were born, several people died. The carefully managed food stores they had rescued from the Gryphon had disappeared completely by 1918, but the gardens were producing some food, and the coconut plantation thrived. The goats that had been brought from the ship had lived for a few years, but as the billy goat had drowned in the shipwreck, there were no kids being born, and eventually the milking goats dried up, and one by one they were eaten before they became too old. The chickens survived for a lot longer. They foraged in the bush for food, and provided eggs and meat for several more years, but gradually they went wild and were seldom seen.
By 1930 many of the colonists had died, leaving just eight people existing on a diet of fish, coconuts, a few poor vegetables and the occasional seabirds’ eggs which Jack collected on the cliff tops. One entry told a sad story:
Thomas Penhaligon, stone cutter, died this day, the 17th of March 1931. We buried him next to his wife Elizabeth, and their child Isabel. We shall not be able to record our brothers’ names henceforth, except in wood. Tomorrow we shall remove the possessions from his house to the storerooms, for his family in England to claim when they come here. There remain seven of us now, Albert and Ann Hathaway, their son James, Harold Cluny, his son Desmond, young Jack Tremayne, and myself, Robert Perceval. We continue in health and strength with God’s will.
The entries became sparser, listing over the years the eventual deaths of Ann and Albert Hathaway and Desmond Cluny. The vegetable gardens were all but gone, being plagued by insect attacks. Ella stopped reading aloud at this point, and stared hard at the book, her eyes filling with tears.
‘Oh – it’s about Jack …’ and she continued to read.
28th of March 1940
Harold, James and I buried young Jack today, beneath the pretty tree at the western end of the cemetery. It has been very wet, and he slipped while climbing down from the cliffs searching for eggs, and never regained consciousness. His death is a sad blow, for we relied heavily on his abilities to keep us in food. All that are left of our little colony are the three of us remaining.
The journal went on for a few more pages, the entries becoming less and less legible, and then:
We moved Jack Tremayne’s belongings into the storeroom today, and found a letter among them which I have placed in the back of this journal, should anyone ever find it. It is addressed t
o his brother Jeremiah Tremayne, of Penryn, Cornwall.
Ella turned to the back, and there was a yellowed envelope tucked in between the cover and the last page. She glanced up at the others, who all seemed to be holding their breaths.
‘Well, as we’re Jack’s nearest relatives, I think that gives us the right to open this letter.’ She lifted the flap, and extracted several sheets of closely written paper. It was dated several years after the shipwreck, and detailed the mutiny of the crew, the murder of Captain Nancarrow, and the difficulties they were facing. But it went on:
Jem, I do not think I shall ever leave this island. As time passes I fear no ship will ever come, or we should have seen one by now. But there is something I will leave for you, in case by some lucky chance, this letter is ever discovered and passed on to its rightful owner.
When the crew mutinied, they demanded the captain give them the treasure he was carrying for Mr Fox. Before we left Plymouth, old Mr Fox gave the captain a large sum of money and instructed him to pay it to a man in Cochin, India. He had arranged to purchase a valuable artefact there, a statue of one of their infernal heathen gods, for all I can tell, but it was worth a lot to Fox, who collects such trinkets. I believe it is made of gold, or so the captain told me.
The night before he was killed, he came to me, and asked me to hide it for him, as he was afraid the other crew would try to take it from him by force. They’d been grumbling and plotting for days, and we all knew they would try to steal the ship’s cutter and leave. So I took the statue that night to the cliff top, where I sit most days and stare across the water to the west, wishing for home. I put it inside a cleft just below the top, where there is a twisted tree and a rock that looks like your old black dog Toby.
I know in my heart there is little chance of you ever getting this letter, but it comforts me to write to you. I miss you all more than I can ever say, and I wish I could make my peace with Father, and beg his forgiveness for causing so much pain by my leaving.
The Secret of the Lonely Isles Page 10