Tracks of the Tiger Read online

  Maintaining a positive spirit is a vital part of survival. It doesn’t matter how sheltered you are, how much food or water you can find for yourself, if you don’t also have the will to keep going, you are already dead. With Peter hurt and in this mood, Beck honestly wasn’t sure where to go from here.

  ‘You’re thinking about what to do, aren’t you?’ Peter asked.

  ‘Kind of.’

  ‘So what are the options?’

  Beck sighed. ‘Option one – I carry you. Piggy-back.’

  Peter forced a smile. ‘That would be fun. What’s the heaviest weight you’ve carried long distance?’

  ‘Much less than you,’ Beck admitted.

  ‘So what’s option two?’

  ‘Well, I’ve built a couple of rafts before. Maybe I could do that now. We could paddle along the coast instead.’ Beck looked up and down the beach. ‘That’s if we could get the wood. But even if we did, I don’t know what the currents are like. We could get swept out to sea.’

  ‘Beck,’ Peter said patiently, and Beck could hear the pain hidden in his voice, ‘there’s only one way you’re going to cover a decent amount of ground, and that’s if you leave me here.’

  Beck hadn’t even considered that option. ‘No. We stick together. That’s imperative. We got into this together and we will get out of it together.’

  ‘This beach can’t go on for ever!’ Peter responded. ‘And we’ve already covered a lot of ground yesterday. I bet that in one day, two maximum, you’d find someone. Then you could come back. Meanwhile you leave me with food and water and . . . Well, I’ll manage.’

  ‘We don’t have two days’ worth of food and water to leave with you. The only way is to pick it up as we go.’

  ‘Well, leave me with what we’ve got.’

  ‘I am not leaving you! OK. I’ll carry you. That’s decided.’

  ‘You’ll collapse in half a day!’

  ‘Half a day’s better than nothing—’

  Beck held his tongue. He did not want to get into an argument. That could split them apart just as much as leaving Peter on his own.

  Everything Peter said made sense, but Beck was still resolved that they would stay together. Whatever the outcome.

  He hugged his knees and scowled out to sea so that he didn’t have to look at his friend. And that was how he saw the fishing boat, moving slowly along the horizon.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Peter saw it at the same time.

  ‘A boat! Beck, that’s a boat!’

  Beck thought quickly. The boat was still a long way off. They could shout but they wouldn’t be heard.

  He looked at the remains of last night’s fire. It was a charred pile of ashes and fragments. They hadn’t yet got round to making a new one.

  ‘We need to make a signal fire, and quick!’

  They scrambled to gather together more wood and leaves.

  ‘Everything,’ Beck said. ‘Everything we’ve got – seat stuffing, the lot!’

  It took a couple of minutes to pile everything together, but the boat hadn’t moved much. It wasn’t going fast. Beck tried to work out which way the crew were likely to be looking. Presumably their attention would be on their nets. They wouldn’t be looking at the land.

  He handed Peter the fire steel. ‘Get it going and pile on everything you can think of.’

  Then he picked up the largest, longest branch that he could find and began to wave it unevenly and erratically back and forth, desperately trying to catch the fishermen’s attention. Behind him he could hear the scraping of the fire steel and Peter’s frantic muttering.

  ‘OK, it’s going . . .’

  Once again the sun-baked wood caught light very quickly. The air above the pile shimmered with the heat. In fact it burned too well. It had a crisp, clear flame and that was exactly what Beck didn’t want.

  ‘It’s not smoking! We need smoke!’

  The edge of the swamp was only a short distance away. The day before, Beck had hoped he would never have to go near it again. Now he ran back to the edge and plunged without thinking into its reeking waters. Clutching the glass knife, he waded over to the nearest clump of reeds and sawed at their bases. The first reed toppled over into the water. He left it floating there and turned his attention to the second, then to the third. In his mind’s eye the fishing boat had suddenly sprouted hydrofoils, or a powerful engine, and even now it was zooming away from the shore, leaving the boys behind . . .

  He pulled the cut reeds together in a sodden armful and waded back to the beach. Back at the camp he broke the reeds over his knee, one by one, and dropped them on the fire.

  ‘Eeuw!’ Peter choked with disgust and waved his hand in front of his face. The reeds had soaked up the filth of the swamp and now they were releasing it into the air. But they were also sending up billows of thick smoke, a signal that surely even the world’s most short-sighted fisherman couldn’t miss.

  Could he?

  Beck couldn’t make out details through the glare of sun on sea. Was the boat a little nearer? It was a typical fishing boat that you would see all along this coast – long, thin and slender, with a pointed bow and a sun shelter at the stern.

  Were the crew looking towards him?

  ‘Come on! We really need to catch their attention! Can you stand up and help me?’

  ‘I’ll damn well try,’ said Peter, staggering to his feet.

  His good foot was flat on the ground and the other just balanced on the tips of his toes. He stooped, a little crooked, and his face winced in pain.

  ‘Hold your arms up in a Y-shape – like you’re dancing “YMCA” but you’ve forgotten the last three letters.’

  Peter obliged. ‘What’s that do?’

  ‘It’s the international signal for distress. It means, Come and help me!’

  Peter kept his arms up and turned towards the boat. ‘I didn’t know that. I hope they read the same book you did.’

  Beck picked up the branch he had been waving earlier and held it to the fire. The end caught quickly and the fire spread to the leaves. He waved it from side to side again – now a burning brand.

  And then he saw that the boat was turning towards them.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  ‘Twenty miles,’ Peter said, waking Beck from his slumber.

  Miles and miles of beach were chugging slowly past. Beck had been fighting to keep his eyes open but everything was against him. The soft throb of the engine. The rocking of the boat. Above all, the fact that they were safe. He didn’t have to keep his eyes open for poisonous insects or a source of water. He didn’t have to plan ahead for their next meal or where they were going to spend the night . . . His body had firmly informed his mind, which had been fully keyed up for the last three days, that it was OK to shut down, right now, thank you.

  And so it took a moment to realize Peter was saying anything.

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘Twenty miles of beach, I think they’re saying.’ Peter sat next to Beck, in the shade of the boat’s roof. His hurt leg was stretched out in front of him. He gave a nod to the boat’s crew of three. They were grinning, friendly Malay men, all wearing hats like lampshades to keep the sun off. One of them was at the rudder; the other two were in the bow repairing a net. Precise movements of their hands made order out of a random, tangled mass of rope.

  ‘They speak Portuguese, which is sort of like Spanish, and I sort of speak Spanish, so we can sort of communicate. And I think they’re saying the beach goes on for twenty miles.’

  Beck whistled softly to himself. This entire stretch of coast was a thin bar of sand between the swamp and the sea. Sometimes the swamp broke through the barrier and came all the way to the sea. It would have meant that even if the boys had walked this far, they would have had to get through yet more swamp on their own.

  ‘We would have made it,’ Beck said quietly. He cocked an eye at Peter. ‘Even if I had been carrying you.’

  ‘Yeah, I know,’ Peter said agreeably.
‘But aren’t you glad you didn’t have to?’

  ‘I remember my dad telling me about keeping going. He used to say, He who sticks it out is he who wins. It always sounded so clunky, but it always made me smile and think of him. And the weird thing is that he was right, Pete.’

  Peter patted Beck’s shoulder. It was at times like these that he knew Beck still missed his dad a lot.

  ‘You know, Pete, I feel my parents are around me the most when I am struggling the most.’

  Peter replied gently, ‘That’s because the rest of the time you’re too busy living. And that’s how it should be, buddy. They are always with you and I reckon they are pretty proud of you at the moment too.’

  ‘Thanks, Pete,’ Beck replied. ‘Well, together we just kept putting one foot in front of the other, didn’t we?’

  Peter pulled a face. ‘I’m not sure I could even do that – but only because, you know, one foot is basically a giant pin cushion at the moment.’

  The fishermen were used to urchins. It went with the job. They had done a good job of washing and bandaging Peter’s hurt foot – no more peeing by anyone, he was glad to see – and they had even managed to get a couple of spines out. Peter pointed out that still left a couple of hundred spines in. This was an exaggeration, but he certainly wouldn’t be walking anywhere for a while.

  Beck grinned. ‘Well, you could,’ he said.

  ‘Or crawl.’

  ‘And you would, Pete, knowing you.’ Beck grinned. He loved Peter’s blind determination.

  And like Peter, the boat kept going for another three hours, all the way back to port.

  ‘Port’ was a town by the beach. There was no kind of harbour, just dozens more fishing boats pulled up on the sand. The beach was black with nets spread out to dry, and the smell of fish was everywhere.

  Beck and one of the fishermen made a cradle with their arms and carried Peter up to where the local police chief was waiting for them. The fishermen had radioed ahead. This man spoke English.

  ‘Peter Grey and Beck Granger? You come this way.’

  He led them to the police station, which was a wood and bamboo house under the trees at the edge of the beach. There was no glass in the windows – you just closed the shutters if you wanted to keep the wind out – and a wide veranda gave a good view of the beach. The chief could sit there with a drink and the radio on, and survey his realm. Beck gathered this wasn’t a high-crime area. It was a typical building for an area that was used to typhoons or tsunamis. Brick buildings fell down and hurt people and cost a lot of money to rebuild. Wooden ones like this could be put straight back up.

  The chief sat them down on the veranda and told one of his men to bring soft drinks.

  ‘There is all-points alert out for you! They find jeep? Burned out. Whole area burned out – you make right choice to move on. But no burned boy bodies. Everyone say, they get eat by tigers? But’ – he nodded at Peter – ‘his father say, no, no, Beck Granger look after them both!’ The man laughed heartily. ‘And Beck Granger here! Beck Granger pretty good!’

  ‘Peter pretty good too,’ Beck replied.

  ‘Can I talk to my mum and dad?’ Peter asked eagerly. ‘Have you got a phone?’

  ‘Of course we have phone. Not primitive.’ The chief pushed himself to his feet. ‘I bring. You have much tell! Much danger in jungle. Tigers, snakes, crocodiles . . .’

  ‘Loggers . . .’ Beck added seriously, and the chief’s friendly face grew suddenly very stern.

  ‘Loggers? No logging here! This national park!’

  ‘They were logging,’ Beck insisted. ‘We saw them.’

  Peter patted his daysack. ‘Got it on camera too.’

  The chief bit his lip thoughtfully, then disappeared inside. When he came back, he was carrying a phone and a laptop.

  ‘I tell you,’ he insisted with a grin when he saw the boys’ look of surprise, ‘not primitive!’

  The laptop had a card reader installed in its side. It took just a few minutes to put in the card from Peter’s camera, download the pictures and send them off to the regional headquarters.

  Peter wasted no more time and called his parents. They were relieved and delighted to hear from him, although his mum was so tearful it took a while to talk any sense. Then they wanted to speak to Beck, but they couldn’t because he had already taken the opportunity to be first into the shower.

  ‘It will leave a scar.’

  The doctor had arrived by the time Beck re-emerged, fresh and scrubbed clean. He probed the cut on Beck’s arm with long, gentle fingers. His English was a little better than the chief’s.

  ‘I would have put a stitch in it when it happened,’ he said. ‘Too late now. You looked after it well.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  The doctor wrapped Beck’s arm up in a proper surgical bandage and turned to Peter. ‘And now you, young man, with your foot?’

  Peter had to sit way back in his chair with his leg stuck out while the doctor examined him.

  ‘Nice dress, by the way,’ Peter commented to Beck. The chief’s wife had taken Beck’s clothes – to wash or maybe just burn after three days in the jungle. She had loaned him a T-shirt and a sarong – a large tube of cloth that wrapped around his waist. It was printed with bright red checks.

  ‘She’s got one for you too in a minute,’ Beck said as he sat down. ‘How’s it feel?’

  ‘Still hurts.’

  ‘I can give you something for the pain,’ the doctor said, ‘but some of those spines went deep. They won’t dissolve quickly on their own.’

  ‘Are you going to have to operate to get them out?’ Peter didn’t look as if he was looking forward to the idea.

  ‘Operate? No. We have other methods.’ The doctor stood up and crossed over to the table where he had put his bag.

  Beck grinned and Peter’s face fell.

  ‘Oh, no. What? Please tell me it doesn’t involve peeing . . .’

  ‘It’s a little more physical than that.’ Beck looked very grave. ‘The traditional way is to get a piece of wood . . .’

  ‘Yes . . . ?’

  ‘. . . and they bash the foot with it. Hard. To break up the spines. That way the body can absorb them quicker.’

  ‘What?’ Peter went pale. ‘You’re kidding!

  The doctor was fiddling with something in his bag. He didn’t turn round. ‘Your friend is absolutely right. A very effective traditional method. The only way of getting the spines out . . .’

  Peter groaned and let his head fall back. ‘This adventure just gets worse and worse.’

  ‘. . . until modern times.’ The doctor turned round; he was holding a small syringe. ‘Nowadays a simple injection to dissolve the spines has the same effect. It will sting a little, but it’s better than being hit with a piece of wood.’

  Peter glared at Beck, who felt his straight face crumpling into a big grin. And then Peter started to smile himself, until finally a laugh burst out of him, joining in with Beck and the doctor.

  ‘You know, that’s the first time ever I’ve been glad I don’t have to rely on you!’

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  ‘Look familiar?’

  Peter was still limping a little but he was determined to keep his foot exercised. The doctor had said that this would speed up the process of dissolving the spines. He hobbled over to where Beck, Mr and Mrs Grey and Hannah were having lunch. They sat beneath a large sunshade at the side of the pool on the last day of their holiday.

  Peter was holding a copy of the English-language Jakarta Post. He laid it down in front of Beck. ‘I got it in the lobby . . .’

  The main picture on the front page showed armed police surrounding a battered truck. The driver and passengers were climbing from the cab with their hands on their heads. Beck then noticed another picture inset into the main one. It showed the same truck in the middle of a large cleared area of jungle.

  ‘It’s your photo!’ he exclaimed. ‘They used the picture you took to arrest the loggers!’r />
  Peter smiled proudly. His parents scrambled to have a look. Mr Grey read out:

  ‘Acting on information received from a pair of English tourists—’

  ‘Tourists?’ Beck exclaimed with mock indignation. ‘Rugged adventurers, more like!’

  ‘—armed units of the National Police apprehended a gang of illegal logging criminals on Thursday afternoon. Photographs taken by the tourists helped the police to identify the criminals’ vehicle and the registered address of the owner. Faces in the photographs were also matched against police records of suspected criminals. The gang was apprehended when their truck was surrounded and all the miscreants are in custody. Well done!’ A proud smile stretched across Mr Grey’s face. ‘You not only survived, you also helped the police catch the bad guys.’

  Beck shrugged. ‘There were just a few of them. The whole illegal logging industry is way bigger. We didn’t make much difference really.’

  ‘Don’t do yourself down,’ Mrs Grey scolded. ‘No one expects you to save the world on your own, Beck. But if everyone does just a bit – and you guys here have done way beyond that already – the world gets saved in the process. Right?’

  The boys looked at each other and grinned.

  They had spent a night with the police chief in the fishing village, then a jeep had come from Medan to collect them. Back at the hotel it had been hugs, tears and kisses from Peter’s mum, while his dad tried to clear a path through the lobby. Beck had the impression he might have been in the doghouse for letting the boys stay behind in the jungle in the first place. But all seemed forgotten and the reunion was emotional and joyous.

  Peter had grinned down at Hannah in her baby chair. ‘You didn’t even notice I’d gone, did you?’

  Hannah had stared up at her brother as if it was the first time she’d ever seen a human. Then she abruptly lost interest and went back to trying to put her toe in her mouth.

  But now that everyone was safe and the drama was over, there was no reason why they couldn’t get on with actually enjoying the holiday. They had a fortnight booked, so they were going to use it. And use it they did. Beck finally got what he had been looking forward to on the first day – a regular family holiday. A bit of sightseeing. A bit of scuba diving. A bit of windsurfing. They bathed in hot springs where the steaming water was warmed by volcanic action. They sunbathed and splashed about in the hotel pool. But above all, they ate and drank until they were fit to burst. Cool, fresh water had never tasted so good, Peter kept repeating, and every day Beck put extra croissants in his pockets at breakfast for later. ‘Just in case!’ he said with a smile.