Reunion - Chapter Five

Reunion

By Simon Stanford

Chapter 5

Fire

They gathered the firewood they had found into one place and had a few scraps of paper and centre of some old dried bamboo that Stuart reckoned would make good kindling.

“Ok Mougal lend us your specs and I’ll get this baby started”, said Ian Prince confidently.

“Err..I don’t think that will work” replied Mougal somewhat hesitantly.

“Come on, look don’t be precious about, it. You’ll get them back.”

“It’s not that it really won’t work, it’s the physics”

“What? It worked in that book, Lord of the Rings” Gareth Laney chimed in , in support of Prince.

“Flies,” corrected Stephan.

“What about ‘em” said Laney, brushing his had in front of his face even though he didn’t feel any flies bothering him at the time.

“Lord of the Flies. That’s what the book is called where they use Piggy’s glasses to light the fire” Stephen explained patiently.

“Well there you are then.”

“It’s a mistake in the book. Mougal like Piggy is shortsighted. That means the lenses in his glasses are concave not convex, they won’t focus the sunlight into a beam to set the kindling on fire. You need a magnifying glass or some reading glasses”.

Prince and Laney harumphed in unison and one was heard to mutter something along the lines of “never liked the stupid book anyway”.

“What about you, Wilts you had glasses for everything didn’t you?”

“Laser eye surgery” he said.

“Subby?” asked Prince more in hope than expectation.

“Contacts”, he responded.

“OK we’ll have to do it the old fashioned way with sticks and that.”

There was a general discussion on how and what this entailed including someone unable to resist making cracks about rubbing two boy scouts together. In the end they settled for a broad flat piece of soft drift wood they could make a shallow depression in and a hard thin dowel like stick that were able to rub to a reasonable point on one of the rougher rocks that edged the tidal pool nearer the beach.

Prince was first to try to rotate the dowel in the depression and apply pressure at the same time to increase the friction. It was a lot harder that it looked and several times the dowel slipped before any trace of smoke.

Laney took over and started to get more of a rhythm and maybe generate a little more heat but he too got exasperated and gave up. Rourke was next to try his luck whilst they all gathered round to offer encouragement. His broad hands seemed to be able to stand more pressure and he started to generate the faint whisp of smoke but just as the group held its breath, hopeful the kindling would catch a drop of sweat fell from Rourke’s brow and extinguished any nascent ember. There was a collective groan from the group.

“Ah that’s progress though,” said Rourke optimistically as he reset the rig for another go.

“This is doing my head in,” said Paul Speke, “I need a fag”.

“Yeah me too” sait Peter Speke, predictably.

Rourke set to his task again with added vigour and the group closed in to watch again and shield the equipment from any slight breezes that would thwart their attempt. A couple of minutes later a few trails of pale smoke drifted across the group.

“Oh do you have to do that so close,” said Romney White looking up at the two Speke twins, “passive smoking is a real problem in workplace you know.”

Prince looked over at the twins who were both puffing away on cigarettes.
“Just a minute how did you light those?”

“With my lighter”, said Paul Speke holding forth a cheap yellow plastic gas lighter.

“You fucking idiot! What do you think we’ve been trying to do here for the last half an hour”.

“Oh”, said Peter, “we didn’t think that was allowed. Sort of cheating like”

“Allowed? Allowed! This isn’t a gameshow or some competition to get a fucking boy scout badge.”

“Calm down, Prince,” said Subbu trying to soothe the situation, “one lighter wouldn’t necessarily last that long anyway. It’s good to have a fall back method.”

“Nah it’s ok I got 10 for 20 euros at duty free,” offered Paul Speke,“bargain. They were in my hand luggage”

“Yeah me too” said Peter.

Subbu looked sheepish, at a loss for words.

Within two minutes the group had a large fire going on the outskirts of their encampment.

“That’s the camp fire sorted for heat and cooking”, Stephan Court declared, “we need to think about a signal fire as well. Up on the promontory, something that’ll make good black smoke if we need to alert a passing ship or plane.

*

The Speke twins were despatched to take a mix of firewood up the steep cliff side path partly by way of punishment for being “so fucking stupid” about the lighters. The payload they took included some of the damper logs and moss that would hopefully make good smoke if and when the time came. They were instructed to leave a couple of their lighters somewhere dry by the stacked signal fire so it could always be lit at a moment’s notice.

The twins undertook this task with little complaint and the accusations of stupidity had not affect on them at all , it was something they had heard all their lives and they were inured to it now. This was helped by the fact that they ran a successful car sales business between them that meant they were both worth close to a million pounds each. You can get inured to a lot of things with a million quid in the bank they had found.

Romney White ticked off another item from his Maslow list on one of his scraps of paper.

“Fire, food, water, shelter,” he recited. “Excellent now we can move up the pyramid and address our safety and belonging needs”.

“Well there is one more thing we need to think about,” said Stuart Walker, “when it comes to those physical needs?.”

“Oh I think I have covered everything off, “ said Romney White looking over his scraps of paper.

“Well unlike the bears, we can’t just shit in the woods. We need to make…arrangements.”

“Oh.”

“Ha, “ chuckled Prince, “what does your Maslow say about that?”

“Well ok yes of course we need to have that covered too. I’m sure Maslow included that in the general ambit of physical needs.”

“So what do you reckon we need to do, Walker?”

“Well for now, since we are hopefully only here for a day or two I think a shallowish hole in the ground in the right place will do and just cover your err business with a couple of shovelfuls of earth each time. That should be ok. If we are here for longer then we should consider…”

“Right we could do with some decent digging tools somehow, “ Prince interrupted Walker so as not to have to give any consideration to having to stay on the island more than a day or two.

He was convinced rescue was on its way and he didn’t want anything to take that thought away from him.

They looked through the items they had so far rescued from the wreck of the plane and the trail of hold luggage scattered in its wake. The best they could come up with was the extendible handle of a flight case that still had the material of the body of the case stretched between them. As long as the sand or soil they would be digging wasn’t too hard then it would probably do.

So Walker and Rourke set off to find a suitable spot to dig their first latrine and after a little searching found an area on the edge of the jungle far enough but not too far away from the camp and crucially it appeared to be downwind, for now at least, there was also a little privacy provided on one edge by a screen of tall grasses. The soil was a mix of soft earth and sand so it didn’t take them long to dig out whole a couple of feet deep. Pleased with the efforts they returned to the group and brought them over to see their efforts and so that everyone would know where the facilities were. They left the shovel by the spoil heap of what they had dug out.

“One final touch, “ said Prince , he placed a couple of copies of the in flight magazine from the crash on the ground beside the pile of earth.

“Reading material?” asked Walker.

“I was thinking of something a bit more practical than that, and probably the best thing for that mag.”

“Ah yes. Good point. Cleanliness is important.”

By now the sun had risen high in the sky and the group judged therefore it must be around noon. The smoke from the crash site was starting to thin and disperse though a considerable plume still rose up. The group returned to the campsite as they were now calling the area where they had build their temporary shelters and spent the next few hours keeping out of the heat of the sun and just chatting amongst themselves.

*

By late afternoon they could see the sun lowering towards the horizon out of the sea, though the light was still strong and there was not a cloud in the sky. The smoke from the crash site was all but gone now and it was suggested they should go take a look see if it anything could be salvaged from it, though in truth it was more a matter of curiosity to see what remained of their mode of transport to this island “paradise”.

They rounded the corner of the cove and saw the full devastation of what the fire had done. The structure of the plane was almost completely consumed by the blaze. All that remained were the charred metal ribs of the fuselage and wings, making it look like the skeleton of some huge pre-historic bird exposed by tidal erosion after tens of millions of years. They could still feel some heat radiating off the structure and it seemed fairly apparent that there would be little if anything of any use that remained intact after the inferno that had engulfed the plane. The metal struts that had survived might be useful for a more permanent shelter perhaps but again no-one in the group wanted to acknowledge they were going to be here that long.

“Well now that this is out, we need to make sure we have that signal fire ready,” said Stephan, “why don’t we…..” Before he could finish Ian Prince interrupted him.

“Ok teams of two up on the promontory to keep a look out and be ready to light the signal fire. Spekeys 1&2 you can go first and take some water up there with you.”

“Right you are Princey,” said the Speke Brother in unison and they set off at a gentle jog. Stephan quietly fumed at Prince taking over once again but he didn’t say anything about it for now.

“OK well why don’t the rest of us look further in to the wake of the crash and see if we can gather more stuff. There’s still a good 2 or 3 hours of daylight I reckon and loads of stuff must be scattered further in.” Without further comment or organisation the group split into three seemingly natural groups. Prince took Laney, Benedict and Rourke off in one direction, Stephan went Nalesh Mougal and Subbu Esacam in another. This left a default group behind of Stuart Walker, Romney White and Leonard Wiltshire. Without exchanging any words between them they set off in a third direction deeper into the undergrowth by the side of the scar in the landscape the crashing plane had left.

A couple of hours later they all returned to the campsite again and laid out their finds on the beach once more. It was to a large extent more of the same, that is is to say mostly broken suitcases, toiletries and clothes but the Prince was particularly pleased with the stewardess trolley they had found more or less intact half buried in the sand. Rourke and Laney carried it between them and as they dumped it down on the sand the catch holding it shut gave way and the door fell open to reveal it’s bounty. There were a lot broken bottles in the bottom but half a dozen or so miniature bottles and cans of mixers like orange juice and ginger ale were intact as were the ubiquitous tiny packets of peanuts. There were one a couple of tray meals like the ones they had eaten on the flight but these were badly mushed up by their impromptu landing. The metal trays with the little compartments that held the food could be useful though.

“That lot’ll come in handy,” said Prince with an element of pride in his voice.

“Yeah it will, “ agreed Leonard Wiltshire, “we found something useful too and interesting, but it was too big to bring back.”

“Yeah what was that?”

“Oil drums, a couple of them.”

“Oil drums?” questioned Stephan, “were we carrying oil in the hold? No wonder the plane went up like it did.”

“No these are old ones, very old. But still intact it seems. Largely anyway.”

“So how old are they?”

“World war II we reckon,” said Walker.

“World war II, really?”

“Yeah there is Japanese writing on the sides and I dunno they look kind of military.”

“How close did the Japanese get to the Philippines, “ asked Mougal intrigued,

“I’m not sure,” replied Wiltshire, “put it the other way, how far might we be from the Philippines to be on a former Japanese occupied island?” before that sobering thought could sink in Gareth Laney interjected.

“How do you know it’s unoccupied, assuming this is an island of course.” He still wouldn’t let the idea got of being on a remote part of some larger mainland.

“Well if there is a lone Japanese sniper here who doesn’t know the war is over then he’d be in his late eighties at the youngest,” said Stephan.

“Yeah we’d see zimmer frame marks in the jungle,” said Subbu chuckling.

“OK I’m just saying that’s all. Maybe they had a base here with a whole bunch of stuff that could still be of use.”

“So you found some oil drums , what about them?” said Prince slightly annoyed that recovery of the stewardess trolley was being over shadowed by these putative second world war artefacts.

“Well they are half filled with sand and soil and buried. We didn’t think it was worth the effort in digging them out. We just made a note of where they are in case we decide they are going to prove useful.”

“Right, ok. Well perhaps we should work on sorting out the stuff we have actually recovered.”

“Absolutely, “ Wiltshire and Walker agreed whilst White, of course, made a note of it.

“Actually,” said Stephan who had been holding back from telling the group everything that he and his fellow geeks had found so as to have maximum impact, “ we did find something else that could prove very useful”.

He reached behind his back and picked up off the floor a charred, metal case about 12 inches square on top and 3 inches deep. It’s top was buckled with the heat and the hinges were now largely ceremonial as the main catch on the lid was twisted up at angle to render it useless.

“We found this just at the edge of the crash zone. It must have been thrown clear of the main crash but was still close enough to feel the heat of the fire, as you can see.” Stephan laid the box down on the sand in front of them.

“Amazingly however, inside these were still intact,” he lifted the buckled lid against a cacophony of complaint from the hinges. In side were two long red metal tubes with strings dangling from end.

“Distress flares?” said Walker, the first to work out that they were, “no way! Excellent.”

“Yeah we reckon they were packed in foam and that took the brunt of the heat and melted leaving these relatively unscathed.” Prince was feeling thoroughly upstaged now.

“We should keep them up by the signal fire, “ suggested Mougal and this was met with nods and mutterings of agreement from the group as a whole though Prince gave his assent to the idea through gritted teeth.

All in all it had been a successful days scavenging and with the group still confident of imminent rescue, given all they had gone through so far, morale was pretty high.

*

That evening the group dined on a simple meal of peanuts and some of the the more palatable looking fruit they had found. Even though no one could identify the plum like fruit they’d discovered they were fairly sure by the smell and look that they were safe to eat as long as they weren’t so ripe as to cause upset stomachs. It was a meagre meal really but enough to sustain them. They sat around on the sand in front of their shelters and watched the sun sink slowly behind the horizon.

“Wait for the sizzle, “ said Walker when the bottom of the fading yellow disk was less than a finger width above the see and visibly descending rapidly.

“Sizzle?” asked Mougal

‘Yeah when the sun hits the water it sizzles like a fried egg,”

“Well no of course it doesn’t. It doesn’t actually….”

“Oh Mougal where is the romance in your soul. I know what the sunset is, but just watch and wait.”

So the group watched in quiet admiration at this almost childish wonder as the sun touched the horizon and the rapidly descended below it. It was a beautiful sight, not even the practically minded Mougal could deny that. With the sun below the horizon it rapidly got very dark as the last glow from beyond the waves dimmed completely. They stoked the fire in front of them mostly for light but also for a little warmth as the evening took on a comparative chill compared to the blazing heat they had felt most of the day.

It wasn’t long before the group had all retired to their shelters, it had after all been quite a tiring day. It’s not everyday you take survive a plane crash on a desert(ed) island, find the body of your erstwhile pilot half embedded in the beach and have to get food, water and shelter to survive the night before rescue came.

*

Stephan was woken early the next morning by the play of bright sunlight through the criss cross gaps in the woven palm fronds of his bivouac roof. Initially he had that “where am I?’ moment. Then the stark realisation of where he was hit him . He saw the green fronds above him. His hands felt the sand underneath his arms. It wasn’t just a bad dream it was true. All the events of the crash came back to him and his stomach did a little back flip. He heard voices and getting on his hands and knees he crawled out of his shelter. Other members of the group were either similarly emerging or else standing in twos and threes discussing the situation. He looked to his left and saw Subbu coming out of his shelter. They exchanged looks and Subbu gave a sigh and a long slow nod.

“It’s true then, we really are here.”

“‘Fraid so “ said Stephan straightening up and feeling a few points of stiffness in his back from sleeping on the beach.

“OK, Team. Can we all gather round please? Morning briefing.” It was the voice of Romney Marsh as though he was calling a normal business meeting.

For the want of any other instructions the group gathered wound where Romney stood on an upturned log. Not that he really needed to being a full three or four inches taller than the next tallest in the group, former second row Roger Benedict and nearly a foot taller than the diminutive, stockily built Gareth Laney.

“Right well there’s a lot to get through this morning and we still have the big issue of sorting out roles and responsibilities. Especially in relation to senior management.”

“Can we get breakfast first ?” asked Stuart Walker.

“And a wash maybe and change clothes,” added Sean Rourke before farting loudly, “and other…necessities.”

“Erm yes ok lets take a half hour time out to sort things out.” The group dispersed, some went back to their shelters to retrieve some clothes from what they had recovered from their exploration of the crash site the day before. Not everyone had yet recovered the clothes from their stricken luggage and so had to make do with a swim in the sea to freshen up and put back on the same clothes as they had been wearing from the day before.

Breakfast was much the same as dinner from the night before , peanuts and fruit not totally filling but enough to fend off any hunger pangs for a while and of course the group was largely sure they would all be rescued any moment now so it wasn’t really too much of an issue.

They reconvened around Romney White standing on his platform after about forty minutes or so.

“Right now ,where were we. Ah yes senior management,”

“I think we should concentrate on making sure the signal fire is ready to be lit and getting some more varied food,” said Ian Prince.

“Well we could look at fishing maybe,” suggested Laney.

“I think we need to finish searching the crash site there’s a lot of potentially still useful stuff out there,” said Stephan.

“Gentlemen, please,” said White raising his voice slightly to be heard above the general discussion that had broken out. “Please address your remarks through the chair.”

“What chair?” said Paul Speke.

“It’s a log not a chair,” Pete Speke confirmed.

“What? Oh well it’s really just a…well never mind, please address your remarks through the…log then.”

Prince stepped forward and gently pushed White to one side, “May I?” he said and then without waiting for reply he stepped up and addressed the group.

“Laney, Benedict you go check on the signal fire. Make sure it’s ready to go, see if it needs any more stuff to make good smoke.” The two set off up the slope towards the steep terraces that ran along the cliff edge up to promontory.

“Rourke, Spekes 1 and 2 you come with me to check out the fishing opportunities.” Prince stepped down off the log and made to move down the beach to the incoming tide.

“What about the rest of us?” said Stephan Court.

“What oh well, you can. You can stay here and tidy the camp up, lay a new fire or something.”

“Really? Is that it ? We stay at home while the big strong men go off to provide.”

“Well those are your words but yeah something like that.”

Stephan stepped up on to the log purely for effect and to somehow legitimise his position.

“Subbu, Mougal and Leonard, I think we should go back over the crash site again. It should be much cooler now and see what we can salvage and maybe look at those oil drums Wiltshire found.”

“Oil drums, “ Prince said, “what’s the point in that…”

“Look why don’t you and your boys go play at being fishermen and we’ll…”

“You cheeky bastard,” Prince looked up straight into the gaze of Stephan.

The tensions were mounting again before Romney White stepped between them and diffused the situation by boring them all with a five minute talk about team bonding and the need for an “open plenary session of the group to air the issues” until they were glad to just get away from him and once again the two groups went about their separate tasks.

Once again the potential conflict had been headed off by simply avoiding to deal with the issue head on. Prince and the Rugger Buggers went off to explore the fishing opportunities though without at line and hook it was going to be tricky. They had fashioned some simple nets from bits and pieces of clothing and the seemingly ubiquitous flight case telescopic handles that seemed to have come detached from the luggage of anyone who had them.

The extra reach provided by the telescopic handles came in handy for fishing nets but all they were really good for were catching small fish. Like small boys netting for sticklebacks and tiddlers to keep in a jam jar. Unlikely to make much of a meal unless they caught dozens to be able to make some version of whitebait. As it was even this was unlikely as in a couple of hours of patient watching and trawling through the shallows they only caught a half dozen or so small red and gold round bodied fish. They would do for bait Paul Speke suggested.

He and his brother were quite keen fishermen back home but that was with a line and rod and certainly they needed a line and hook to have chance of catching anything of decent edible size that would be in the deeper waters off the shore. Prince said they would have to make that a priority, some means of making a line and hooks.

*

Meanwhile the geeks went back to the crash site. The blackened metal struts of the fuselage and wings were cool enough to approach and even handle though some still felt quite warm to the touch. It was a testament to the ferocity of the fire that almost everything left in the plane aside from these major structural elements was completely destroyed, there were odd lumps of molten metal mixed in with what could have been the remnants of seat foam and other blobs that could have been overhead lockers, it was like some surrealist Salvador Dali painting taken to the very extreme.

After a few minutes looking over the wreckage, aside from the metalwork there was nothing worth salvaging.

The group looked over the wake of the crash one more time to see what of the hold luggage could be recovered but now they were down to the more inaccessible items either high up in rather flimsy looking trees or deeper into the more impenetrable parts of the forest / jungle. They could glimpse through gaps in the dark, green foliage the bright patches of colour from someone’s Hawaiian shirt or Y Fronts deeper within the plant life but it wasn’t worth the effort of recovering them.

“So where are these oil drums then,” said Stephan Court after a while.

“Err, let me get my bearings, “ Leonard Wiltshire looked back to the main crash site and then headed off to one side of the track made by the path of the plane as it had come in to land. The other three followed behind in single file. After a couple of hundred metres of relatively easy going Wiltshire stopped and pointed off to the side of the track.

“They are down that slope, you can just make out the edges from here but if you go down closer you can get a proper look at them. It’s not that steep.”

The group edged down the slope and sure enough there were two large round steel oil drums half embedded in the soft soil of the jungle floor.

The outsides of the drums were covered with a thick mixture grime and general detritus but on each an area had been cleaned off, about a hand’s breath wide and underneath interspersed with the occasional recognisable arabic based western numeral were the Kanji and Hiragana characters of the Japanese script.

“Makes most sense for it to be Japanese,” said Mougal, “this island was probably occupied during the war and it does look like Japanese rather than anything else, that mix of scripts. But I’m no expert of course.”

“So I wonder what was in them? I mean we say oil drums but they could have been anything I suppose. Cooking oil even,” said Subbu.

“You’d fry a few bags of chips with that lot,” said Stephan.

“Well, it’s not that important what was in them. They could be more use to us now empty as they are. They seem fairly intact just half buried in the soil.” Wiltshire braced his leg again the rim of one of the drums and gave it a firm push but it didn’t budge.

“It’ll take a lot of effort to get them out, we’ll need some help and a good reason to expend the effort,” said Stephan heading back up the slope to the edge of the main track they had followed to get here. He held out his hand to help Mougal up the last few steps as the group re-assembled at the top of the slope.

“Well I thought they were worthy of note, “ said Leonard, “ for future reference…should we have need,” he continued in a rather thoughtful tone.