Mission Dragon, page 8
They looked at him sullenly, but first Jian, then Ju-Long nodded and agreed.
“Right.”
“And if you two put a little extra fire in place, we can cook the ray I caught. See you in a few minutes.”
Beck hurried back into the undergrowth.
Despite his best intentions, even he couldn’t quite put the frustration of the boat out of his mind. No doubt it had a decent radar and radio, so it relied on electronics to pick up any signs of distress, rather than keeping a proper lookout with actual human eyeballs. Which was not something a proper professional sailor would do, but that was how it went–
He stopped, and stared into the distance, not seeing anything except the image in his mind, clear as day.
“Radar!” he exclaimed out loud. “Duh! Beck Granger is an idiot!”
Okay, so now he had something else to do. And he would do it, once they had eaten the ray.
Except that when he got back to the beach, the ray had gone.
He had left it, well and truly dead, on the platform. There was no way it had come back to life and flapped its way back to the sea. And the really telling piece of forensic evidence was the severed barb, still lying there on the platform. The dragons weren’t stupid. They had bitten off the bit they couldn’t eat, before stealing the rest.
At least it proved the anti-dragon device and the net had been a sensible idea. The dragons could have got up onto the platform last night, if they had wanted to. In fact, they were big enough to do pretty well what they liked.
He stared into the jungle, looking for the culprit. No reptilian eyes looked back at him.
“Yeah, well, you’re not going to win every time,” he called with a defiance he didn’t feel, “because…” He had to wrack his brains to think of a reason. “There’s plenty more food on this island and ultimately we’re smarter than you.”
He would go fishing again, and then he would put his other bright idea into action. They would get off this island. Beck promised himself this. They were fighters and they would win and survive, despite the setbacks.
But first, he had to catch breakfast. Again. The tide would be too far out by now to use the inlet, but he already knew where he would go this time.
Chapter 21
He had spotted the pool the day before, and he had thought of fishing there for breakfast the first time round. But the tide had been so far in that the waves were breaking over the edge, and there would have been a real danger of being bashed against the rocks.
Now the tide was heading out again and the pool stood on its own, with water that was still and clear. He stood on the edge and let his eyes run over the bumps and crevices of the rocky bottom. Clusters of weed clung to the edges, sheltering small colonies of barnacles, mussels and limpets. All of them edible, he thought with satisfaction. But then his eyes settled on the prize. In the very middle of the pool was a large boulder, sitting all on its own, almost like it had been put there as an ornament by an island designer. It was curved so there was shelter beneath it for various forms of sea life. If there was anything more substantial than mussels in the pool, that was there they would be.
He wouldn’t know without getting up close and peering through the water. And he had just the thing with him.
“So - what are you going to do with that?” Jian had asked, as he and Ju-Long watched Beck cut one of the damaged bottles in half the previous evening.
“This,” Beck had said, “is my Cunning Seeing Device…”
He had cut a patch off the sheet of transparent plastic that lay in the pile of gathered flotsam, and put the cut-off upper half of the bottle on top of it. Then he had gathered the sides of the loose plastic up around it, tying a loop of net rope around the bottle’s neck to hold it all in place.
He was holding it now, together with the sling he had cut for himself out of the plastic netting when he swam out to Dolphin, to carry whatever he caught. He slid himself gently into the pool, and lightly kicked himself over to the middle of the water with the Cunning Seeing Device in one hand. He hovered over the central boulder and put the flat end of the Device into the water so that he could peer through the open top of the bottle. He was rewarded with a view of the bottom of the pool, as clear as day. It was the next best thing to having a mask or goggles.
And there they were, nestled under the curve of the boulder. The prize for this pool –clumps of rough-edged grey-brown wedges. Oysters, two or three metres down.
The same laws of physics that applied in diving down to Dolphin still applied here: the deeper he went, the more the air in his lungs would be squished and so the less his body would have to take its oxygen from. So, once again he breathed in and out, slowly, deeply, purging the carbon dioxide out of his system. When he felt ready, he left the Cunning Seeing Device floating on the surface and poised himself above the oyster rock. Then he bent double in the water, driving his head and shoulders down and flipping his legs up into the air. With a powerful sweep of his arms he pulled himself down, sliding vertically through the water, navigating by feel and instinct.
His hands brushed against the top of the rock and he felt his way down to where he had seen the oysters. He held onto the rock so that the buoyancy of his air-filled lungs didn’t float him back to the surface.
He could feel the oysters, their shells clumped together in tight-packed colonies. The ones to go for were the outliers – the ones in smaller groups, or even sitting on their own. Oyster shells could be razor sharp and they could anchor themselves very firmly to rocks. The bigger the cluster, the greater the chances of slicing his fingers to bits as he tried to pry them loose.
He had to hold each one and rock it back and forth, twisting and turning to break the bond. He could feel them reluctantly peeling off the rock. Each one went into the sling until it was full, and then he kicked his way up to the surface through a cloud of bubbles. He tipped the oysters out onto the rocks, looking around carefully for any marauding dragons that might want a free meal of shellfish, then swam back to the middle of the pool for a second round.
It took two more goes to get a pile that he thought was large enough for breakfast. He was feeling really tired from the exertion, so he decided to call it a day. But he gave the bottom of the pool a last scan with the Cunning Seeing Device.
“Oh, yes!” he breathed.
A lobster the size of his forearm was picking its way across the floor of the pool. A spiny lobster, not the type with claws, which would have made him think twice about having a go. Its segmented body was the colour of burnt orange and it seemed to dance almost daintily across the rocky floor on its eight spindly legs, feeling its way with two massive antennae.
Beck summoned up all the strength he could muster. He left the oysters on the side of the pool and went through his breathing exercises one more time, tracking the lobster’s movement as he did it. Then he dived. He pulled himself down to the pool’s bottom, swooped the lobster up in his hands, holding onto the back of lobster’s shell by its head, and headed back to the surface, all in one movement. He broke the surface with a triumphant whoop!
The dangerous part was the tail, which flapped vigorously, but holding it behind the head, Beck was safe. He gave it a whack with a small rock and the lobster stopped moving.
He took the prize up to the signal point personally, to make sure no dragons could get at it. And while Ju-Long and Jian cooked the oysters and lobster on a fire, he got on with his bright idea.
Chapter 22
The tide was a little higher this time, when Beck swam back out to Dolphin. That just made Beck’s job easier. He wasn’t diving down this time – he was closer to his target.
He still had to shin a couple of metres up the mast to the crosstrees, sticking out horizontally on either side. Attached to one arm of the crosstrees was Dolphin’s radar reflector.
It was made of three metal squares, all intersecting and at right angles to each other, so that it would have fit inside a cube the size of a basketball. And it was dead easy to operate – you didn’t have to do anything. The flat metal surfaces, all facing different directions at different angles, gave any radar signals something good and firm to bounce back off.
If they had had this with them on the signal point, maybe that cruiser would have noticed them after all. Even if they didn’t keep a human lookout, someone might have noticed the unusually bright signal bouncing back at them.
It took a minute to unscrew the reflector from the shackle that fastened it to the yacht, and then reattach it to a rope that was tied at the other end to the floating life buoy. It would be bad news to drop it now and watch it sink to join the rest of Dolphin. He started the swim back to the island, kicking his way with the life buoy looped under his arms and the reflector in both hands.
But the other topic of thought as he kicked his way back to the island was those wretched dragons. He wasn’t an expert on reptile thought patterns, but so far they hadn’t shown much fear of the three humans, and they seemed to be getting used to thinking of the humans as a handy food source. That was bad. If they had the same outlook as many animals then their sense of expectation could change to a feeling of entitlement. Like those seagulls infesting British coastal towns, which have come to expect that humans would feed them and can turn aggressive if they don’t.
The basic anti-dragon device wouldn’t be enough if they got more insistent, and they didn’t want to have to live on the platform permanently. There might be enough net to surround an area of the beach – but he wanted to use the net for other things. No, the friends would have to think about building some kind of stockade – a permanent fence that the dragons couldn’t get through. It would have to be really sturdy – even if it was moderately strong, the dragons would be heavy enough to get through it if they threw their weight against it.
Problem was, Beck didn’t know exactly what the dragons could do. They could probably swim, so if they built the stockade around the camp, they would have to include all directions, even the sea. Alternatively, they could shift their camp to an easily defended bit of land, like the signal point, which could only be approached from one direction. But then – well, even if they blocked off the land approach, could the dragons climb the point’s sheer sides? Beck wouldn’t be surprised – they seemed hardcore enough. Everything you expected, they did something different.
Back on the island, he hurried up to the signal point. A breakfast of oysters and cooked lobster was calling his name.
“Woah!”
He emerged from the undergrowth and found himself staring at two very hostile-looking friends – heavy sticks in their hands, poised and ready to attack, waiting the other side of the plastic net that Ju-Long had set up as a barrier across the neck of land joining point and island.
“Only me?” he added with a hopeful smile. Between them they managed to crack a smile in return, and relax.
“We thought you were a dragon,” Jian admitted.
“Well, I am as hungry as a dragon – that’s for sure.”
As Ju-Long set about cooking the lobster over the fire, Beck showed them the radar reflector and described his ideas about building a decent dragon defence.
“A stockade?” Jian asked.
“Or something like it. Something stronger than this.”
Beck paced by the net. It was bright orange, and tough, so it might deter dragons if they weren’t too determined. Problem was, it wouldn’t stop them if they worked out that hey, it was only plastic.
The radar reflector now hung from a tree, the rebuilt signal fire was ready to go, the lobster was cooking nicely in its shell – all was well. For the moment. It was never too late to adapt your plans. And frankly, moving camp up here might be the best course.
Beck looked thoughtfully at the ground beneath his feet. It was the narrowest part of the signal point, only a couple of metres across, but building a fence that was long enough to cover that distance, and high and strong enough to deter dragons, would still take a lot of wood.
Of course, they had quite a bit of wood down on the beach, in the form of the platform. Which meant that the platform would have to be dismantled. And the water bank was down there…
“Too many options, and I’m hungry,” he muttered. He went to join them and sit by the fire. “Thing is,” he said as he sat down, “we don’t know how long we’re going to be here, and they’re losing their fear of us, if they ever had any. We don’t even know how many there are, but…”
“At least four,” Ju-Long said slowly, looking past them.
Beck looked round.
Four dragons had emerged from the bushes and they stood where he had just been, at the neck of the signal point. The smell of cooking lobster must have lured them out.
Each one was the length of an adult human and about the same weight, with teeth and claws and jaws that could inflict serious damage. Chew through flesh, quite probably crunch a bone.
Two of them hissed at the humans and then, with the friends’ escape route blocked, the four of them started to walk forwards. They trampled the plastic net without even noticing it, and kept coming.
Chapter 23
“No!” Beck shouted. “Back away!”
The way their bodies hung from their leg sockets gave the dragons a swagger, like gunslingers strolling down the street, knowing that they were boss and no one could do anything about it.
He had stood up to wild animals in the past. Often the trick was to make yourself look and sound big and scary, and then hope they decide it’s not worth the trouble and go away.
So he raised his arms and lunged at them, yelling, “Aarrgh!”
Reptile brains don’t work the same way as mammalian ones. They weren’t scared. The nearest dragon stopped and looked at him. It gave another hiss, and a snap of its jaws. Beck quickly jumped back out of range.
Ju-Long had picked up the piece of wood that Jian had chosen for defence while he stood watch. She banged it hard against the ground in front of one of the dragons and shouted at it. This one also stopped to think about what to do, while the others kept moving.
She lifted it up, and its head flashed forward. Its jaws seized on the wood, and held it firm. She tugged on it with both hands but, try as she might, she couldn’t pull it free.
Endangered species or not, enough was enough. With another shout, Beck loosed a kick at the nearest dragon to him. His foot thudded into its muscular side. It merely turned its head and looked at him. Beck tried again, and then a third time. The dragon snapped at his foot – a reminder that said, look, I’ve got a bite that could kill you and you haven’t.
It was the slowest fight Beck had ever been in. The dragons didn’t pounce and jump like a predatory mammal would have. If the friends had somewhere to run to, the dragons could have run after them. But, cornered like this, the dragons seemed to think they had all the time in the world. They were fast when they lunged and snapped, but otherwise they never broke out of a slow stroll. And they just kept coming.
Jian pulled a piece of wood that burned at one end from the fire – about the one thing he could do single handed – and waved it in the face of the dragon nearest to him. For the first time, one of the dragons looked thoughtful. It had probably never seen fire before, but it must have sensed the heat of the flame and realised it could be hurt. It stopped, and it didn’t bite at the wood. A couple of times it made an effort to nip the waving brand, but every time it sensed the fire and stopped. Boy and dragon were at an impasse.
“Okay! Fire!” Beck shouted. He pulled a piece of his own from the pile. It seemed weird to be fighting dragons with fire, but hey, if that was what it took…
But there were only three of them, and four dragons. Even if they each stopped one of the creatures, there was always one more to press forward. Ju-Long had a burning brand of her own, and she thrust it in the face of the fourth dragon that was trying to bypass her. But immediately the third dragon took a couple of steps forward.
Slowly, but surely, the four dragons were advancing down the point, pressing the four friends backwards. They were almost level with the fire and the thing they were after – the cooking lobster. Beck almost snatched it away from the fire, but then realised that would only lure them further. As long as it was cooking over the flames, it was safe – the dragons wouldn’t make a grab for it.
The dragons seemed to have realised it too. They gathered by the fire and looked at it longingly. Their tongues flickered in and out, almost too fast for the eye to see, as they sampled the smell of cooking shellfish in the air and felt the heat of the flames on their faces. The two lines, humans and dragons, seemed to have come to a halt.
“Keep watching,” Beck said. “Don’t move back. If they can’t get the lobster…”
“They might decide to try one of us,” Ju-Long agreed.
None of them put their bits of wood down or took their eyes off the lizards.
And there things might have stayed, until perhaps the fire burnt out and the way was clear for one of the dragons to grab the lobster. But the dragon at the end of the line grew impatient, and lashed its tail. The tip caught one of the legs of the signal tripod and the whole structure spun around. It wobbled, tilting on just two legs, as if it couldn’t decide to go with gravity or not.
After half a second that felt like a year, it slowly topped back onto its third leg. Beck almost breathed a sigh of relief. But the tripod’s momentum made it tilt over onto another pair of legs. The dragon that had lashed its tail, maybe surprised itself, snapped at him and thumped at it with its tail again, just as it was its most precarious on two legs only. Unbalanced, the whole structure toppled over the edge of the point.
“No!” Beck bellowed. He heard the sound of wood falling against the rocks below. “You stupid…”
Then Ju-Long cried out in alarm, “Jian!”
