Dr. Franklin's Island Read Online Free Page B

Savers
adults to organize us, and the cabin crew, and the pilot—
    Were we the only ones left alive?
    “There could still be a tourist village,” said Arnie. “We don’t even know that this is an island. We could be five miles from a road, or something, on the coast of Ecuador.”
    Miranda sighed. “That waterfall was pretty spectacular, wasn’t it?”
    “So?”
    “I didn’t see any sign of people having been there. Did you? Not a scrap of litter. No path. There was
nothing.
There’s nothing on this beach, either. No footprints, no tire marks, no fishing nets, no huts. I don’t think there’s any tourist village, Arnie. I don’t think there’s a road. I think we’re alone, and our only hope is to stay near the wreck.”
    “Semi says there was a hijack,” said Arnie. “I think she’s right. There was a hijack, and the plane blew up before the rafts could get away. I don’t know how much fuel a charter jet that size carries. I don’t know how far off course we could be. But if we’re not where we should be, and nobody had a chance to send a radio message before we ditched, chances are that’s all she wrote. We’re finished if we can’t save ourselves. How are your Search and Rescue people going to find us, if they don’t know where to start looking?”
    It was the same argument as before, but they weren’t quarreling now. They were simply telling each other the bad news.
    “Let’s go to sleep,” I suggested. “Things’ll look better in the morning, when we’re rested.”
    We were cold, we tried to sleep. The night passed.

chapter three
    On the second morning, we thought we heard a plane. We scrambled out from under the overhang and ran about looking at the sky. There wasn’t a sign of anything moving, except for a few seabirds over the outer reef, but we were full of hope. We tipped out the rucksacks, and found a magnifying glass; we rushed about collecting dry leaves. Miranda used the magnifying glass as a burning glass, and got a twist of dry tinder alight. I hopped and limped along the shore picking up sticks; Arnie went crashing around under the trees. In an hour or so we had a fire going, and we were throwing green stuff on to make it smoke. Miranda waved a white nylon
Planet
Savers
jacket that had been in Sophie Merrit’s rucksack. Arnie ran up and down screaming “Help! Help!” and waving his arms. The plane (if it had been a plane, and not our imagination) didn’t come back. The empty sea and sky looked at us blankly, as if we were mad.
    Miranda said, “Maybe they’ve seen us, and they can’t let us know yet.”
    “If there was a plane, you’d think the people in the life rafts would have sent up a flare,” said Arnie.
    “Maybe they’re saving their flares,” I said. “For when it’s dark.”
    We kept the fire going all day, but it was incredibly hard work. My knee had swollen up and I couldn’t walk much. Arnie and Miranda had to do most of the fuel gathering, I did the tending. I felt guilty, but if there’d been three of us bringing in fuel, we couldn’t have gathered enough to last through the night. We had to let it go out.
    We didn’t hear any more plane noises, not even imaginary ones.
    On the third day we found the machete. We were patrolling the high-tide line, me limping along with a charred branch for a crutch, looking for more driftwood but not finding any. Miranda and I were collecting scraps of brightly colored nylon fishing net. Arnie was kicking along a very rusty soft drink can, and saying that these man-made things meant there
must
be people nearby. Miranda told him the sea carries things for thousands of miles. Human rubbish gets
everywhere,
it doesn’t mean a thing.
    Then Arnie’s can hit something that rang like metal. He gave a yell of delight, pounced on something half buried in the sand, and suddenly he was waving what looked like a pirate’s cutlass in the air.
    “You see!” he shouted. “You see! Don’t tell me this floated over from