Date: Fri, 27 Feb 2004 18:45:11 EST
From: Brit18uk@aol.com
Subject: The Castaways 6

This story is posted for the exclusive enjoyment of readers on the
world-wide-web. While you are free to make a personal copy, no copy of this
manuscript may be published, copied, posted to another website, or
otherwise distributed without express permission from the author.

The contents of this story are fictional. Any resemblance of the characters
to any other persons is strictly coincidental. Certain characters engage in
sexual acts, which may or may not be legal in the state or country in which
you the reader may reside. Any reader with objections to graphic
descriptions of sexual encounters between males who may not have reached
the legal age of consent, or whose local, regional, state or national
jurisprudence prohibits such descriptions, should not read
further. rick19uk@ntlworld.com

The Castaways...

Chapter 6. Copyright by rick19uk 22 February 2004

We gathered our equipment and moved away from this horrible place, and for
the next couple of hours we simply ran along the beach getting as far away
as we could. We had run ourselves ragged from the fear and shock of seeing
this barbaric sight. Rounding a section of the bush that jutted out onto
the beach, we spotted a rock outcrop that slowly tapered down from the
hillside and ran into the sea. We made our way to it and flopped down with
our backs against it to get our breath back and try to recover from the
horror. We began to babble on about our very dangerous predicament and the
possibilities of being captured by these un-Godly savages should they
return and find us. We as one came to the conclusion that our cave should
be fortified as soon as possible and we should try to make our presence on
the island as invisible as we possibly could.

      After a further hour or so of our panic stricken chatter some
semblance of calm returned to us. David, who had by this time got to his
feet had begun to wander over the rocks. He called to us and on joining him
we descended from the rock we had climbed onto a ledge that formed part of
the side to a rock sided cove. The cove was approximately fifty feet from
one side to the other and formed a rough half circle, which arced inwards
to the island for about seventy-five feet. On the inner most part of the
little rock cove we could see another ledge, which sat very close to the
waters surface. There appeared to be a canopy over-hanging the ledge almost
as if a shallow cave had been formed by erosion from the sea. It was
quickly decided to swim over to it, leaving our weapon and bags tucked
against the back of the ledge we now occupied. We dived into the water and
swam across, quickly pulling our selves up into this really quite large
natural shelter.

      Shaking off as much of the seawater as we could, it didn't take long
to explore our surroundings and we discovered the shelter was about ten
feet deep being about fifteen feet high. There were quite a lot of small
pieces of stone strewn about with a lot of washed up sand laying on the
surface including a large selection of various sorts of seashells and
fragments. After clearing ourselves an area on which to flop we began to
chatter again and as I idly lay on my stomach peering over the edge into
the water, I noticed what seemed to be something waving about near the sea
bottom. The water was crystal clear and after dropping a stone into the
water directly above the "creature" it sank and appeared to go right
through it without disturbing it in the slightest. I continued to drop
stones and with the concentration I was obviously devoting to my little
game, it wasn't long before the other two began to take an interest as
well. None of us could decide quite what it was, and it became the topic of
some quite avid and fanciful debate. We also decided that it couldn't be
dangerous as we had just swum over to here and it had obviously not
attacked us.

      We had eaten on the ledge we had previously rested on and indeed,
where our bags and gun now lay. The night by this time was drawing near, so
we decided to stay where we were and as it quickly went dark we cuddled up
and slept till daylight the following morning. I was the first to wake and
went to edge to pee over the side and into the water. On looking down and
drawing circles on the waters surface I noticed our "creature" was still
there waving against the side of rock face near the sea bottom. My wits
must have deserted me because I quickly stripped and slipped quietly over
the side and after taking several large gulps of air I dived down to it. As
I approached it simply continued to wave and didn't take the slightest
notice of me at all.

      It became clear as I got nearer, that the creature was coming from
the mouth of a tunnel and that it wasn't a creature at all. It transpired
that it was light refracting through the water and emanating from what
appeared to be a sort of up-wards rising flu. I resurfaced, took more gulps
of air and dived down once more. I was able, with little difficulty to swim
up the well-lit tunnel and very quickly surfaced inside the most wondrous
cavern that could be imagined. At first guess it must have been in excess
of a hundred feet across being equal that in height. The roof was very
craggy and appeared to glitter in a jewel like way. A beam of very bright
sunlight slanted down from the far side lighting and reflecting off what we
would later discern to be rock crystal. As I further surveyed my
surroundings, it became apparent that the sides of the tunnel I had swum
along opened up in a funnel like shape to eventually form a rock floor that
occupied three sides of the cavern. I clambered onto the resulting
platform/floor where I saw it was very smooth with a slight rise to it
towards the cavern walls. I forgot time and gazed in wondrous awe at the
absolute beauty of the place. It glittered and sparkled in a quite
breathtaking manner and the few stalactites that were present did nothing
other than to enhance its beauty. I realised with a start that I must have
already spent an hour and more here, so gulping great lung full's of air I
dived in, swam down the short tunnel, and swam upwards, surfacing loudly
next to our rock ledge.

      I was met by two very frightened and panic-stricken boys who were by
this time, beside themselves with worry over where I had disappeared. I
drew myself onto the ledge and excitedly began to recount my rather
foolhardy dive to see quite what our "creature" was. They listened in
awestruck wonder as I described my dive, the discovery of the tunnel and
eventual beauty of the cavern. I further described its size, and my obvious
trepidation as I first approached "the creature" we had assumed the light
refraction to be. In short order we were soon gulping down air and diving
into the water and down to the tunnel. David, whom Brian and I had taught
to swim whilst we were in the Caribbean, and was our least experienced
swimmer, had to re-surface before being re-joined by Brian and I. He was
soon able to dive again and eventually swim up the tunnel into our cavern.

      They were as smitten as I had been on first seeing it, and after
gaining the platform strolled around in the amazing amount of light,
marvelling at what they beheld. The shaft of sunlight came through a rather
large jagged hole and what we thought we could see as some overhanging
foliage some hundred feet high and was obviously situated somewhere up the
side of the hill. There was evidence of this as directly under it was a
small pile of dead and fallen branches and leaves. There were what appeared
to be one or two skeletons of pigs that had quite obviously fallen through
the hole crashing to their deaths some hundred feet below.

       Forever the most practical of the three, Brian began to estimate our
distance from the cannibal's fire-pit and our distance from our own camp. I
deduced that as we had run for about two hours we had in all probability,
covered a distance of approximately eight miles. He then went on to say
that he thought I had discovered the perfect safe place to hide from the
cannibals should they return. It was at this point that hunger made its
presence felt and we dived in, swam down the tunnel, surfaced, and then
swam to the other ledge and our bags. We hungrily wolfed down, what
remained of our food.

      As we sat there Brian said, "I think it should be quite an easy task
to locate the hole in the roof. All we would have to do is get into the
cavern and taking dry flints, use the dead wood there to light a fire. One
of us could position himself here and look for where the smoke exited".
David and I looked at each other in amazement marvelling at the ease with
which Brian had come up with the solution. He further went on to say that
once we knew where the "chimney" was it would be relatively easy to lower
supplies and weapons on ropes into the cavern, and thus hide from the
savages should they return.

      After an hour of two of formulating our plans and gathering our
belongings, we made our tortuous way over the rock and around the inner
edge of the little rock cove. It was very difficult but we prevailed and on
gaining the beach on the far side, once more continued on our way back to
our camp. We arrived some four hours later having covered in my estimation
a further eight or ten miles. That put us approximately sixteen or eighteen
miles distant from the cannibal's fire pit, but more like eight or so miles
via the far more difficult overland route. Our first priority was to start
our fire and cook as we were by this time, feeling faint from hunger and
our exertions.

      As we prepared our meal we chattered on about the horrors of what we
had discovered and our extreme good fortune at finding the cavern, but the
thing uppermost in our minds was a palisade over the mouth of our
cave. Brian began to talk about planting bushes and trees in front of our
entrance in order to afford at least some camouflage. We also made up our
minds to try to build some sort of oven and make an attempt to bake
bread. Another priority was the building of a beacon to attract the
attention of any passing ships. Brian once again observed that once we had
got all our supplies moved to the cave, we should be at some pains to
eradicate any outward sign that we were here at all. He further observed
that any canoe full of at least half observant savages couldn't fail to
notice signs of habitation.

      Over the next several weeks, we did indeed get our palisade built and
camouflaged. We got all our supplies moved into the cave with some thought
given to the site of our cooking fire and oven. It was David who came up
with the idea that we keep one of our leather pails (buckets) close by and
filled with water. His idea involved keeping a large piece of the heavy
canvas nearby too as if we did detect savages we would draw attention to
ourselves from smoke. Indeed too, if one simply threw water over the fire
we would cause great billows of steam, which we couldn't hope would go
unseen. His proposed course of action involved first wetting the canvas
then covering the fire in order to smother it. We would still have some
smoke but far less than if it was drowned with water or simply left to
burn. We did try it out and found after several attempts that if we kept
the canvas wet then it too didn't set alight but that the fire did indeed
go out quite soon. We also lit our fire in the cavern, located the
"chimney" and lowered a good selection of dried goods and weaponry into it
including blankets. It had been discovered to our extreme discomfort that
it turned really quite cold there, this on the one night we had spent there
so far.

            We spent a further two days during this time finding the most
direct overland route to our little rock cove and the quickest and easiest
way down to approach our underwater entrance. We had given some thought to
using some of our rope to fashion a rope ladder and simply gain entry that
way but after thinking about it, we arrived at the conclusion that it was
safer to enter via the water tunnel. It would after all, simply provide an
easy entrance if found by the savages. Our final big and necessary job was
to dismantle our raft and eradicate all signs of the footpath that trailed
from the beach into the trees. This had been made more than obvious from
dragging the large hatch-cover that formed the platform to our raft. It
proved to be a backbreaking task and gave us blistered hands that took
weeks to fully heal. We were lucky too in that four of the casks that
floated our raft were, after cleaning, fit to use and we were able to press
two into immediate service as water butts inside the cave.

The preserved pigs and other food supplies we had brought from the ship had
long since run out by this time. Fortunately, on our forays into the island
we had found all the fruit trees the native boys had shown us so we didn't
starve. David had proved to be the best shot with a rifle but we tried not
too shoot the wild pigs too often fearing we would drive them into
extinction. We also feared running out of gunpowder and shot because in the
event that savages ever confronted us we would need every means of defence
we could muster. We were however lucky with a few of the larger birds and
were able to supplement our meat supplies with a few of those. These we
found we could "down" with a slingshot that David had made, thus preserving
our powder even further. Brian and I waded out into the shallower parts of
the lagoon and using our net we could whenever we wished, catch any number
of fish. We wrapped these in the large leaves we had seen used by the
natives and cooked them slowly in our successful attempt of oven
building. We prayed before every meal we ate and had tried to work out
which day of the week it was too. On the day we estimated to be Sunday we
prayed to Our Lord for our eventual rescue, salvation and continued bounty
upon the island.

      It was after some three months of hard and often-backbreaking toil
that we generally agreed to have a holiday from our labours other than our
most basic tasks needed to survive. We had a most wonderful time of it, and
played all manner of games from hide and seek to our favourite game of
"dick tag". This game inevitably degenerated into hours of mutual
exploration, measuring and such, and finding out how many times we could
indeed "do it". David won by achieving "it" five times during one afternoon
and evening. He had by this time caught up to Brian in the measurement
department and flaunted it as often as he was able. I was still some way
behind but reasoned that David was some eighteen months older than me, with
Brian being about twenty two months senior. I still had one and a half
years to go to get to David's present stage of maturity. Meanwhile "it"
worked, giving me and the other two boys hours of mutual pleasure. As a
result of our wonderful camaraderie and closeness (not least of which was
the said "mutual pleasure"), we loved each other dearly and found it hard
to envisage our lives without one another.

      One evening about seven months after our arrival here, we were sat at
the mouth of our cave and had eaten our dinner of fresh caught wild pig,
vegetables and fruit. We had fallen into chatting for an hour or so before
we turned in for the night generally discussing our progress so far, the
chances of ever being rescued, and the one thousand and one other things
that occupy boy's minds. We still cuddled together as we slept and found it
hard to sleep any other way; it was after all, the best way to enjoy our
love and "mutual pleasure" of each other. I digress however. We had fallen
asleep after this busy day of hunting when Brian shook David and I awake. I
know that as I surfaced I felt my bowel's turn to water on hearing what
were obviously the drums of the cannibals. They had returned by the sound
of it and we sat there owl eyed and quaking, imagining the fate of the
hapless individuals they had doubtless captured and were about to slaughter
and eat.

      We quickly went through a routine we had drilled countless times and
as quickly as we could via moonlight, made our way along our escape route
and to the cavern. We slipped silently into the water and dived down to our
concealed entrance in complete darkness. Our forethought and practices had
paid off in gold as within a matter of an hour or less we found ourselves,
if somewhat wet and chilly, safe within the cavern. Quickly drying
ourselves off we sat and cuddled together in our blankets unable to sleep
at all. Three days passed before we dared venture outside and other than a
little hard bread, ships biscuit and water, we had eaten very little and
were totally starved. It was feeling weak from this hunger that drove us to
leave our sanctuary and we did so with extreme caution and in fear of our
lives. Once we exited our cavern had gained the hilltop, we strained to
hear any sounds from the cannibals. As we crouched there, still very
frightened and shaking terribly, we realised with relief that the silence,
other than the birds and insects, was absolute. Nor could we detect any
smoke, which whilst on our way to the cavern, though we couldn't see it, we
could certainly smell it. We fell to our knees once more, and prayed to the
Blessed Virgin that we were, once again alone. Afterwards, I thought to my
self, what a paradox!