Gold of the Gods (8 page)

CHAPTER TEN

Beck let the raft drift. Bruised and
exhausted after their battle with the shark,
the crew slept as the
Bella Señora
sailed on
into the night. In what seemed like the
blink of an eye, the sun slipped around the
Earth and was rising once more in front of
them. The colour of the sea began to
change. From black, it changed to purple.
From purple to red, and from red to pink.

Beck was calculating their position. The
wind and the current were taking the raft at
a steady pace towards the rising sun. 'Sun
rises east, so we sail east,' muttered the
exhausted skipper, as if trying to convince
himself of what his brain was telling him.
They had been at sea now for two nights
and a day. At an average of four or five knots
per hour, Beck estimated they must have
sailed around 150 miles.

Flocks of birds were visible in the far
distance and cumulus clouds were popping
into the sky like blobs of cotton wool. Beck
peered up at them, deep in thought. A tinge
of green stained the flat white base of the
clouds. 'Reflection from the jungle,' he said
at last. 'And those birds are pelicans. Which
means we can't be far from—'

'Land!' shouted Marco, jumping to his
feet and pointing excitedly. Christina was
awake in an instant, shaking the sleep from
her tired limbs and peering into the haze in
the direction in which Marco was pointing.
The outline of the highest mountain peaks
could just be seen on the horizon, patches of
snow glistening in the morning sun. A smile
broke over Marco's face. 'The famous Sierra
Nevada mountains of Colombia. Lost City,
here we come!'

But Beck was already looking back out to
sea, an expression of concern on his face.
Clouds like banks of layered snow were
massing on the horizon. 'Bad news, guys.
Looks like nimbostratus clouds. We could
be in for a bad storm later in the day. Our
only hope is to reach land before it breaks.'

Beck was grappling under his shirt. A
buckle dropped down as he dragged a
plastic map case onto his lap. 'I bet Gonzalo
could have done with one of these,' he said,
spreading it out on the deck. Inside was the
conquistador's map. 'Never leave home without
a waterproof map case. That's my motto.'

'It looks more like the map of a rabbit
warren than a map of a Lost City,' said
Christina as the twins peered over Beck's
shoulder at the intricate mosaic of lines
scrawled in faded, black ink.

'I've been thinking about it again,' said
Beck. 'I think it's in three parts. Three
different sections of the journey.' He looked
up at the mountains, where the jagged outline
of the highest peaks was etched against
the deep blue of the morning sky.

Suddenly, with a shout, Marco grabbed
the map case from Beck's grasp and held it
up to the sky. A thick wavy line had been
drawn across the top of the parchment.
Lines ran off it down the page, with here
and there a cross and some words in an
ancient Spanish script. Marco held it up to
his eyes so that the light shone through the
parchment. He squinted at it, moving it
slowly from side to side. Finally he held
it still.

'Look,' he said, the excitement rising in
his voice. 'This must have been Gonzalo's
view of the mountains when the ships
landed. He's got every little ravine and peak.
The outline of the mountains is almost
exactly the same as the line on the map. You
can see it through the parchment. They're
an almost perfect match.'

Under a notch in the high mountains, a
straggling line led down to a large cross.
Next to it, in bold capitals, were the
words:

AQUI. 8 DIC. AÑO DE. NUESTRO SEÑOR MDXXII

'
Here. December the eighth. The Year of
Our Lord fifteen twenty-one
,' whispered
Marco. 'This must be where the
conquistadors landed. It fits completely.
The lines running down from the mountains
must be rivers. The other lines must be
paths through the jungle. It's all beginning
to make sense.'

Euphoria gripped the crew as land drew
closer. But as the sun passed overhead and
the afternoon wore on, the wind began to
blow more strongly. Brooding storm clouds
were massing above them. Almost black
towards their base, they were stacked
hundreds of metres into the sky. At its top,
one of the clouds had flattened out like an
anvil in a blacksmith's forge.

'Q nims,' said Beck. 'Cumulonimbus
clouds. Bad sign. I was hoping we would
have landed before the storm broke but no
such luck. We could do with some fresh
water but that little lot could drown a city.'

Christina was grim faced. 'I don't need a
survival expert to tell me that, Beck. Those
clouds look like they could sink the
Titanic
,
not just the
Bella Señora
.'

The breeze was now blowing fiercely
towards the land. The sea was surging
beneath them, lifting the raft and dropping
it again in the troughs between the waves.
Beck could see strips of white sand where
the beach was sandwiched between the
green of the jungle and the blue of the sea.
All along its length, the line was broken by
the dark gashes of rocky headlands.

He gazed anxiously up at the sky. If the
storm had come just a few hours later, they
could have chosen their landing spot at
leisure. But with the strength of the wind
and the current, steering with the tiller was
becoming almost impossible. As the shore
came closer, Beck winced. His worst fears
were being realized. The raft was being
blown straight towards a headland between
two bays. Stretching out towards them was
the telltale white froth of a line of surf
where a sandbank had built up beyond the
headland, and the waves split in two like
the traffic on a motorway intersection.

Further in, on either side of the headland,
giant rollers thundered onto the beaches. 'It
won't be long now,' shouted Beck above the
roar of the wind. 'I'll do what I can to keep
the raft in the hollows between the waves. If
we start surfing on the crests, we'll be
thrown straight onto the rocks.'

As Beck shouted instructions, Christina
and Marco did what they could to steady
the raft. Ringo had abandoned his perch on
the mast, his screeches blown away on the
wind as he circled above them. But now a
huge wave was raising them up and the
twins felt themselves being lifted skywards,
as if a giant hand were hurling them towards
the sandbank.

When it came, the impact shook the raft
with a terrifying shudder. A corner had hit
the sea bed, and as the next wave picked
them up once more, the raft spun round,
flinging the twins into the raging surf. For a
split second Beck could see them flailing
desperately in the tossing waves and he
heard a squawk from Ringo, far above.
Then he lost sight of them as another huge
wave crashed over the deck, throwing him
against the mast. His legs felt like jelly as he
fought desperately to cling on against the
suck of the undertow.

But the water was getting deeper again
now and the waves more regular. The raft
had been lifted off the sandbank and was
hurtling towards the beach. As the mountain
of water around Beck grew taller, the
back of the raft was being sucked upwards
by a following wave.

Realizing the danger at the last moment,
Beck threw himself clear as the wave hurled
the raft up the beach. Pitched forward in
the seething foam, he felt his body smash
against the hard sand before the drag of the
undertow locked around his legs and began
pulling him out to sea once more. In a fleeting
moment he could see Marco being
tossed around in the surf before a second
wave came crashing down, pummelling him
into the sand. Breaking free of the waves, he
gasped for air and struggled to stand as
the suck of the surf dragged his legs from
under him.

Marco was beside him, tumbling over
and over like a rag doll in the merciless surf.
Throwing out a hand, Beck grabbed the
boy's shirt just as another huge wave lifted
them up and threw them up the beach. And
now at last they were free of the waves as
they staggered forward and collapsed
exhausted on the sand.

'We've done it! We're alive!' Beck was
picking up handfuls of sodden sand in
relief. But a look of horror had crossed
Marco's face. His cheeks were ashen and his
eyes staring.

'Christina . . .' he whispered quietly.
'Christina.' His voice rose to a crescendo as
he jumped to his feet and began racing
along the beach, scanning the waves.
'Christina!' he screamed. 'Christina!'

Beck was behind him now, his eyes
desperately scanning the line of the beach
and the raging surf in front of them.

But the third member of the crew of the
Bella Señora
was nowhere to be seen.

Christina was gone.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Beck shook the sleep from his exhausted
body. He'd collapsed under a palm tree, his
limbs leaden and bruised. Not far off, he
could hear Marco groaning and turning
restlessly. After a fruitless hunt for
Christina, their shouts drowned out by the
roar of the surf, the boys had reluctantly
abandoned the search until first light.

After they landed, Marco had been
hysterical, running blindly back and forth
along the beach, screaming Christina's
name. Realizing the danger of sapping their
remaining energy, Beck had eventually
calmed the boy down and convinced him
that Christina had probably been washed
ashore further up the coast. 'We're still alive,
so there's no reason why she won't be,' he
had reasoned, trying desperately to keep
Marco's spirits up. He wished Ringo were
around, but there had been no sign of the
parakeet since the raft had started to pitch
in the surf. At least they still had the
machete, safe in its sheath around his waist.

Now the sun was rising over the headland
into a deep blue sky. The tattered remnants
of the previous night's storm clouds were
strung out along the horizon like rags on a
washing line. Scattered along the white sand
of the beach lay the wreckage of the
Bella
Señora
. The broken mast and the balsa logs
rolled listlessly in the waves. The sail,
battered and torn, had been tossed onto the
beach like a sodden rag.

Beck shook his head. Something was
flashing across his closed eyelids like a
doctor's bright torch. He tossed his head
irritably, as if flicking hair out of his eyes,
and groaned. The beginnings of a headache
for sure. One that would get far worse as
the sun rose higher in the sky. He
swallowed. He could already feel the dryness
in his throat and the day had hardly
begun.

But then the flash came again. And again.

Shielding his eyes with his hand, he
peered out across the beach towards the
headland, where it stuck out from the bay
like a crooked finger. Something very odd
was happening. Marco was awake and
skipping down the beach, dodging from
side to side as if playing a game of touch
rugby. The beam of light was dancing over
his body as he chased it along the beach
towards the headland.

But now the beam was still again and had
settled into a pattern. The flashes came in
bursts of three: short, long, and then short
again. Beck recognized it at once. Morse
code. SOS. The international distress signal.
The lost crew member of the
Bella Señora
was signalling to them from the cliff on the
headland.

'I just did as you told me, Beck,' said
Christina when the three teenagers were
reunited later that morning. Marco was
beside himself with joy and Christina wiped
tears of relief from her eyes. 'All I remember
was a huge wave picking me up and
dragging me into the sea. I didn't fight it but
just went with the current. I must have been
dragged into the next bay. Then, suddenly,
there was sand under my feet and I was
thrown up onto the beach.

'I couldn't see the raft anywhere and I just
prayed you'd been taken into the other bay,'
Christina went on. 'When it got light, I
climbed out along the headland and saw the
wreck of the raft, and I guessed you must be
nearby. Then I remembered my mirror. I'd
forgotten I had it on me. I keep it in a little
vanity bag in my trouser pocket for real
emergencies like parties. I couldn't believe my
luck when I found it was still in one piece.'

By now, the sea was flat and calm. In the
shallows of the bay it had turned the colour
of lime juice, a few gentle ripples throwing
shadows on the sandy floor like clouds on a
summer's day. 'It looks just like one of
Mum's holiday brochures,' Christina
commented. 'But somehow I don't feel like
I'm on holiday. Paradise isn't really paradise
when you've just been shipwrecked.' She
looked around, and then asked, 'Hey,
where's Ringo? Have you seen him? Surely
he must have reached land OK?'

The others shook their heads and Beck
tried to reassure her that the parakeet would
turn up soon.

The reality of their situation began to
dawn on him. 'We need to get sorted fast,'
he told the twins. 'Otherwise we'll end up
fried and starved and we can forget about
seeing Uncle Al and your dad ever again.'

Christina pointed back along the headland
towards where the jungle started to
climb towards the mountains. Massive
boulders, smooth and circular like giant
cannonballs, had tumbled down from the
cliffs onto the beach, as if a race of giants
had been playing marbles along the
seashore. 'There are some caves up there,
left behind by the boulders,' she said. 'I
slept in one earlier.'

'Perfect,' replied Beck. 'If we make camp
in one of those, it should keep us warm and
dry tonight, especially if it rains again. It'll
save having to build a shelter until we get
further into the jungle. But we need to
make a fire and find some water. There'll be
no shortage of seafood round here.' He
pointed towards the rocks further along the
headland. 'After all, we never got a chance
to use these . . .'

Beck felt in the pocket of his trousers and
drew out a small, soggy piece of rag, a tiny
remnant of what had once been the proud
sail of the
Bella Señora
. He opened it carefully
and held up a couple of objects that
dangled from his fingers like a pair of
upside-down question marks. The
sharpened points of Christina's earrings
glinted in the sunlight.

'But first we need to get some water
inside us. Fast.' He ran his hand over the
wrinkled grey bark of a tree that arched up
through the undergrowth towards the sky
like the trunk of an elephant.

'Coconuts,' he said. 'God's gift to the
shipwrecked sailor. They're stuffed full of
good stuff – vitamins and minerals and all
that. You just have to be careful to drink
from the unripe ones. If you drink too
much from the ripe ones, they'll give you
the runs and you'll end up more dehydrated
than you started. But it's OK to eat the meat
from both.'

Clasping the tree in his cupped hands,
Beck wrapped his legs around the trunk so
that his thighs were gripping it like a
monkey. Then, in short, sharp movements,
he hauled himself up with his hands, the
trunk held in a vice-like grip between his
legs.

'I learned this trick from a sloth monkey
in Borneo,' he shouted down to the twins.
'They move a bit slower but it's a great way
to climb a tree. Tough on the nuts though.'

Marco sniggered and shot a sideways
glance at his sister. Christina raised her eyes
to the heavens and pretended she hadn't
heard.

'Tough on the coconuts, dumbo,' Beck
clarified. 'Mind out below.' Five huge
coconuts thudded onto the ground next to
the twins as Beck quickly slithered back
down to join them. He hacked through the
tough husk of one with the blade of the
machete. After quenching their thirst with
the cool milk, they cut open another and
then another before munching on the soft
milky flesh inside, which Beck had already
chopped into bite-sized chunks.

The afternoon was drawing on by the
time they went in search of shelter for
the night. As Christina had promised, a
series of holes like shallow caves had been
left high in the cliffs where boulders had
dropped down onto the beach.

'We need to build a fire,' said Beck. 'But
first we need some tinder and kindling to
get it going. Chrissy, can you find some
tinder? Ferns, grasses, even dried-out
fungus, that sort of thing. It's got to be
paper-dry so you can scrunch it up in your
hand. Look in the cracks between the
branches.'

He turned to Marco. 'Marco, you find
some kindling. Sticks or small branches that
can be broken up. Look for dead branches
that aren't on the ground but hanging in the
trees if you can. After all that rain, most of
the wood on the ground will be damp from
sitting in pools of water. I'll find some
bigger bits of wood for the main fuel once it
gets going.'

An hour later they met up again back in
the cave. Along with some dead grasses,
Christina was crushing a dried-out bracket
of fungus she had broken off from the base
of a palm tree. Beck set to work preparing
the fire just outside the entrance to the cave.

'We're in luck. This would have been a
whole lot harder yesterday during the
storm.' He cleared away the debris and
made a circle with some nearby rocks. Then
he set out the tinder, kindling and fuel in
neat piles so that everything was within easy
reach.

'I think you've forgotten something,' said
Christina as Beck stood back to admire his
handiwork. 'We don't have any matches.'

'No, but I do have this.' He fished out a
bootlace that was hanging around his neck
and held up two metallic objects. Christina
examined them curiously. One was a short
metal rod; the other looked a bit like a blunt
razor blade.

'Fire steel,' said Beck. 'I carry it everywhere.
It's made of magnesium mixed in
with other stuff. When you strike the
rod with the scraper, it sends off showers of
sparks and – hey presto – with a bit
of practice, fire! Matches are useless when
they're soaking wet anyway. And this'll last
ages.'

He stood over the tinder of dried grass,
which he had fluffed up into the size of a
tennis ball. Then, with a small stick, he
poked a hole into the centre. Striking the
metal scraper against the rod with deft flicks
of his wrist, he sent a shower of sparks raining
down into the centre of the tinder.

Then, with a
whumph
, a lick of flame
burst into life, followed by a loud crackle as
the grass began to burn fiercely. Next Beck
built a tepee of small twigs over the grass
from the kindling Marco had collected.
Within moments it was ablaze and the
twins started to pile on thicker and thicker
sticks.

'Be careful now,' warned Beck. 'Fire is
fragile. It needs air to breathe. If you
smother it, we'll have to start all over again.
Just take it easy and we'll be there in no
time.' As the twins backed away, Beck blew
long, steady puffs of air into the base of the
fire. The flames began to leap up through
the pyramid of sticks.

Broad smiles burst onto the twins' faces
as the heat warmed their bones. 'Perfect,'
said Beck. 'I feel a seafood and coconut stew
coming on. Any takers?'

The twins went in search of more wood
to feed the flames while Beck climbed down
onto the rocky headland, filling his pockets
with limpets as he went. The trick was to
dislodge them with a sudden kick before
they sensed danger and clamped down like
superglue onto the rocks. Then, moving
slowly and quietly, he scanned the rock
pools, watching for the telltale darts of crabs
and stranded fish.

The sun was already setting when, an
hour later, he headed back to the cave.
Marco and Christina were grinning like
Cheshire cats as they sat contentedly feeding
wood onto the fire, which was already
sitting on an impressive bed of glowing
charcoal. The flickering flames of the campfire
threw eerie shadows onto the back wall
of the cave.

Beck smiled proudly as he held up his
prize catch. His fingers were clasped tightly
around the brown shell of a huge crab, the
pincers flailing harmlessly in the air.
Holding it out towards the twins so they
could get a better look, he made a sudden
dart with the crab towards Christina.

'
No, inglés!
Get away from me, English
boy!' she screamed as Marco collapsed in
laughter. 'For that you can go without your
water ration.'

Beck looked down at the fire, where
steam was rising from the tin can that he
had last seen filled with fish guts aboard the
Bella Señora
.

'Found it thrown up on the beach,' said
Marco proudly. 'And guess what?'

Beck raised his eyebrows enquiringly.
'You found Uncle Al and your dad at a
beach bar drinking cocktails?'

'That's not funny, Beck,' said Christina.
'I bet they won't be having a crab supper
tonight, wherever they are.'

Beck realized at once he had upset the girl
and mumbled an apology.

Christina remained silent as she fought
back tears. Then, without warning, a smile
broke over her face. 'I found about three pints
of rainwater in the trunk of a rotten tree. And
we managed to scoop it out with the tin.'

'Top girl,' said Beck approvingly. He
turned away and sighed quietly. For the
time being, the crisis had passed. Survival
was as much to do with what went on inside
their heads and hearts as their struggle
against the elements. Fighting their own
emotions was the first step. Beck knew he
had a battle on his hands to keep their
morale high and their eyes on the prize of
finding their father and Uncle Al.