Carmen instinctively clawed her fingers down the back of the tattooed hand and tried to pull away from the looming shape of her assailant. An upbringing spent clambering on the craggy sea shore, or climbing palms for coconuts, had given Carmen unnatural finger strength for a fourteen year old girl and she concentrated this into the points of four sharp nails.  She felt the skin catch under her nails and a sharp pain erupted from one of her fingers as one nail tore away.  However, the tattooed hand spasmed, releasing its grip and causing her to fall away back through the hatch, colliding with Charlie who had rushed into the cockpit just as she had screamed.

“For cryin’ out loud!” a harsh voice cried out in pain. “The freakin’ kid’s scratched me!”

“Don’t just sit there!  Get in and grab them, or get out of the way and let me past!” insisted another.

From the bottom of the cockpit, tangled up with each other and staring up through the open dorsal hatch in the roof, Charlie and Carmen could see two very angry faces peering down at them.  Just as one of the men got over the initial shock of Carmen’s attack, the other pushed past him and swung himself down through the hatch into the cockpit below, spraying seawater over the children.

“Come on, Carmen!” Charlie shouted, “Move!”  He scrambled up and backed out of the cockpit, dragging Carmen with him none too gently. 

There was something wrong with Carmen.  She appeared to be slow and dazed, stumbling crazily after Charlie.  In the darkness of the Catalina, the first man lunged himself at the children but a foot had got caught up in the pilots’ harnesses after he had landed on the seats.  Unable to see quite what had snagged his ankles, he lost his balance and fell full length on the cockpit floor, striking his head on the edge of the navigator’s table.  There was a mighty crash followed by a considerable amount of swearing and groaning.

“Jake!”  the man outside shouted.  “Jake!  Are you OK?  What’s going on?”

The only response to his questions from Jake was more cursing that told him precisely what Jake thought of missions to detain children on flying boats in the middle of the night, punctuated by a series of repetitions of one particular four letter word.

“Get off your butt and get down here.  Get the kids!” Jake ordered.

From further back in the Cat, Charlie froze, listening to the noises from the cockpit.  One man seemed to be rolling around on the floor groaning.  Then he heard the other scuffling round on the outside of the flying boat, grunt and lower himself through the hatch.  A series of yelps, shouts and yet more swearing followed this.  It appeared that the second man had managed to land on Jake and then stumbled around in the cockpit as Jake thrashed around in fury.

Charlie knew he didn’t have much time.  He had to do something.  He knew that there was no chance for him and Carmen if these two thugs regained the initiative.  There would be no escaping two grown men, not in such a small space as the Cat.  He knew that he and Carmen had to get away. Why had they come to the Cat in the dark of the night like thieves unless they meant the children harm?

Looking around in the pre-dawn light that had started to illuminate the interior, he spied something that gave him the inspiration he was looking for.  Wrenched from its bracket, Charlie cradled the cabin’s fire extinguisher.  He pulled the safety pin and charged back into the cockpit.  He knew he had to strike hard and strike quickly.  Squeezing the trigger, he directed the extinguisher and immediately filled the cockpit with a cloud of freezing halon gas.  Coughing and spluttering one of the men staggered forward and collided with Charlie.  In a panic, Charlie raised the metal cylinder above his head as he was knocked off balance and brought it down hard in a glancing blow on the man’s head.

 The effect was instantaneous.  The man fell to the floor, pole axed.  Charlie stood transfixed looking at what he had done as the cloud of halon rolled from the cockpit into the cabin, covering up the evidence of Charlie’s attack.  Was he dead?  Just as he began to think that he had committed murder, the mists stirred and a shape slowly, groggily emerged like a whale from the depths of the sea. 

“You little…” Unfortunately, Charlie did not get to hear the rest of the man’s opinion of him because Carmen hit the thug over the head with a paddle from the rubber boat. 

“I think it’s time to go, Charlie.”  Carmen said.

“Go?”  Charlie was confused.  Go where? 

“It’s time to get off the Cat.”  She had seemed to shake off her dizziness from before and she now acted with decision. “Quick, we have to go before those two get sorted out.  Let’s get off the Cat and find Dad and Rick.  They’ll know what to do.”

She went to the main door and pushed it open.  Then rushing back into the cabin she reached under one of the bunks and dragged out a large orange canvas pack about the size of a pillow.  Realising what it was Charlie moved to help but Carmen shooed him away and dragged it to the open door.  As she pushed it out she pulled on a toggle that hung from the pack.  With a rush of escaping gas the life raft exploded from the pack in a burst of erupting yellow plastic.  Almost instantaneously a means of escape drifted on the ocean beneath the door.

            “Grab the paddles and get in!”  Carmen ordered.  She dashed back to the bunk and reached down for a small yellow plastic case clipped to the cockpit bulkhead.  Charlie jumped down into the raft.  Mistiming the jump somewhat, not realising that the floor of the raft did not have that much give in it, his legs folded up beneath him awkwardly and his knees rose up and struck him in the teeth.

            “Aargh!” he cried out and rolled to his side clutching his mouth as blood poured from a huge cut on the inside of his lower lip. He felt the raft shake as Carmen landed beside him.

            “Come on, Charlie! Paddle!  Get a move on!”  Carmen knelt at the side of the raft and dug the black oar into the sea, driving it down with her left hand, guiding it with her right, pushing the oar through the ocean like a blade.  The raft moved sluggishly but steadily away from the Catalina.  Charlie scrambled to his knees along the rubber base of the raft, which was now awash with seawater, and moved to the opposite corner of the square based raft.  Grabbing the remaining oar, he attempted to copy Carmen’s confident strokes.  He leaned over the side of the gunwale and pulled the oar down and into the sea.  After several strokes he began to find a steady rhythm and stopped catching the blade of the oar in the top of a wave.  He felt the oar begin to bite and pull the raft forward.  Looking to his side he could follow Carmen’s lead as the most experienced paddler and they began to work together more effectively.

“Are you all right?”  Carmen said. “You’re bleeding!”

Charlie put his hand to his mouth and was shocked to find it covered in sticky blood.  He realised it had dripped down his chin and was soaking the top of his t-shirt.  As he worked his oar, bent over the side of the raft, blood from his mouth dripped into the water in a steady, stringy drip.  “I’m OK; I don’t think it’s too bad.”

“Be careful!” she called back, “the blood might attract sharks!”

“Great,” he muttered to himself, “How could this get any worse?”

The raft slowly worked its way around the flying boat, moving from the shaded port side to starboard as the children paddled furiously towards the island.  It was as they went under the starboard wing tip that shouts could be heard coming from the flying boat.  Both children turned their heads and saw the two men clambering on to the top of the airplane.  One appeared to be limping and one took a number of steps before shaking his head and sitting down.

“Paddle faster!” Carmen shouted frantically.

“I’m doing the best I can!” he yelled back.

“Well do it better, then!”

“Oh I’m sorry, I seemed to have forgotten to practice for my escape-from-a-flying-boat-from-crazy-nutjobs-in-a-liferaft exam. I’ll do better next time!” Charlie said, angered by Carmen’s superiority.

“Stop whining and get on with it, or there won’t be a next time!”  Carmen wailed, tears streaming down her face, eyes wide with fear.  She plunged the paddle down again, muscles taut across her shoulders, yanking it towards her as hard as she could.  Reach, dig, pull, reach, dig, pull; Carmen’s cadence had at first been steady but when the men emerged on to the top of the flying boat her tempo increased stroke after stroke. 

Charlie realised that Carmen was starting to lose control.  He also knew that she was the one between the two of them who could best guide the raft to shore before the two maniacs on the boat recovered enough to chase after them.  She needed to calm down before she exhausted herself and left them with only one effective paddle, and that wouldn’t be very effective if it was in Charlie’s hands.

“Look, Carmen!  They’re not following.  You must have hit that last guy pretty hard, he’s sitting down!  That was pretty amazing what you did back there!”

His words had an immediate effect on her.  Breathing hard from the exertion of paddling, she paused to look back at the men and that gave her the break she needed to see that the gap that the children had opened up between the raft and the Catalina was considerable.  She waited, watching to see what the men would do.  When they appeared to remain where they were she slowly turned back to her work and continued paddling at a much slower rate.  Charlie breathed a quiet sigh of relief.

They worked at the paddles, occasionally looking up and guiding the raft into the bay towards the beach.  As they got closer to the beach the sun broke above the horizon, flooding the island with light, revealing more of the shore and forest bordering the beach.  Luckily, the beach seemed empty. 

It was just as they thought that they were out of immediate danger that they heard the motor start up.  They both snapped their heads round in unison and groaned.  From around the other side of the Catalina came the black rubber boat, chugging along powered by the tiny outboard motor. The men must have unpacked the rubber boat and figured out how to use the compressor from the earlier trips.

“Why can’t they leave us alone!  WHY?”  She sat down in the water at the bottom of the raft and began to cry.  “We were almost there!”

Charlie didn’t understand at first but then he realised that even though the life raft was close to shore, the children would not be able to get it there before the men in the rubber boat caught up with them.  “Come on, Carmen.  We can’t give up now.  There must be something we can do?” he said.

She shook her head and continued sobbing.  Water sloshed around them as the raft was tossed up and down by the waves.

“Well I’m not giving up!”  He picked up his paddle and looked towards the island before he bent over the oar to fix his course.  I need to guide the raft into the beach in line with that palm, and that cliff over on the ridgeline, he thought to himself.  That way we can get off the beach quickly away from their camp.

It was at that moment that he heard a strange, distant phut from high up on the slopes of the volcano.  He looked up and saw a trail of vapour that streaked high into the sky in a long curving arc.

“What?”  Charlie just had time to say when a phenomenal roar exploded behind him, the volume and power of which seemed to stab deep down into Charlie’s ears, causing him to double over with the sudden pain.  A wave of pressure swept over the children in an instant.

Carmen and Charlie whipped around, ears ringing, and gazed uncomprehendingly at a pillar of white water that rose into the sky between the men in the rubber boat and the life raft.  The pillar fell back in on itself leaving a patch of disturbed, foaming water on the sea’s surface and a misty cloud of vapour drifting with the light breeze towards the island.  As the spray covered the raft, the children could smell a faint whiff of rotten eggs.

“What was that?” they both said at once.

“I dunno, but I don’t think it’s going to be a good idea hanging round here.” said Charlie.

“Let’s go then!  Stop wasting time!” Carmen grabbed her paddle and got back to her position in the raft. 

Phut!  Another vapour trail rose from the island.

“Move!” Charlie screamed.

The wall of sound that roared across them was much closer this time.  So close in fact that the children were drenched with spray from the explosion.   Eyes wide with terror, tears and snot streaming down their faces, they paddled furiously for the last fifty metres, racing both the rubber boat and the source of these mysterious explosions.

The raft scraped on the beach and then was lifted by an incoming wave.  The surf foamed in, around and over the raft, soaking the children further and threatening to capsize the flimsy vessel.  Somehow it stayed upright and shot forward, scraping up the shore until it grounded.  Dazed, the children spilled out of the raft and tumbled onto the coarse sand.  Before they could get to their footing they were immediately caught in the force of an incoming wave, which rolled them over and over, disorientating them in the surf.

Drenched, choking, spitting out sand and seawater, they clambered to their feet and hauled each other out of the waves.  With barely a glance for their pursuers, they staggered up out of the waves onto the firmer footing of the beach.

Phut!  The children cringed as they expected yet another explosion to tear at them but the detonation that they felt several seconds later was much fainter than the last.  Confused, they turned to see where the blast had occurred.  Out in the narrow reach of the bay they could see the disturbance of the white water but there was no sign of the men in the rubber boat.  They had completely disappeared. 

“Where’ve they gone?” Charlie panted, utterly confused by what they were experiencing.

“I don’t know, Charlie!  Please come on!”  Carmen called at him.  She started up the beach towards the shelter of the forest.

Charlie kept looking. Where were they?  They couldn’t have gone back to the Catalina, which he could now see bobbing up and down in the morning light at the head of the bay, the white hull flashing like a beacon in the azure water.  There simply hadn’t been enough time.

It was then that he saw the scrap of black fabric fifty metres from the beach, floating on the surface, undulating slowly with the movement of the waves like a battle flag struck down in the heat of conflict.   Now he knew what had happened to the men, he felt a conflicting surge of emotions; the relief of deliverance from their pursuers, horror at their fate and fear of what would happen next.

Something caught his eye in the foam, bobbing back and forth with the waves as they came in, something small and yellow.  A sudden urge to grab the object took Charlie and he found himself splashing back into the sea up to his thighs to obtain it. 

“Charlie!” Carmen shouted frantically. 

            He looked up.  She was pointing a down the beach in the direction of the forest track.  He glanced over and saw a number of men burst out of the forest and pause at the edge of the beach, tiny with the distance.  Charlie turned his attention back to the yellow object that was knocking against his legs in the water.

            “Please come on, Charlie!”  Carmen begged, her voice catching with fear.  She was halfway to the forest but had paused, turned around and appeared to be reaching out to him, “Please!”

            His fingers closed on the yellow object, which to his surprise was the plastic case that Carmen had thrown into the life-raft earlier.  At the edge of his hearing he heard distant voices shouting in his direction above the boom of the rolling combers.  Spinning round he surged up out of the sea, water spraying out before him in sparkling curls that seemed to hang in the air momentarily. A sense of urgency took him; a voice in his head was saying get off the beach, now!

            Phut!

Carmen screamed again.

The voices of the men on the beach could be heard shouting, “Get down!”

            Charlie threw himself into the sand face down.  This time there was no deadening of the explosion by the sea.  Charlie felt the ground convulse beneath him at the same time as the crack of the blast assaulted his ears.  Wet sand slapped down around him, partly covering his body as he cowered on the beach.  As the sound of the explosion receded he was left with a sharp ringing in his ears.

Move, Charlie Buttons!  Get the lead out of your pants and get off the beach!  The voice in head instructed him.  Uncomprehendingly, he got to his feet, shedding sand and bowled forward.  He quickly caught up with Carmen, who was sitting down in the sand with a blank look on her face and her mouth open and closing silently.  Now’s not the time for a rest, Charlie said to himself, grabbing her by the upper arm and manhandling her up the beach, over the high tide line, towards the forest.

He looked up the beach to where the men had been but he could not see them, although that could have been because there was now a haze of fine dust and smoke hanging in the air between where Charlie was and where they had been.  He continued to drive forward, forcing Carmen before him.

The children stumbled into the forest.  The sharp light of the new morning gave way to a green dappled shade, which became deeper in colour the further they moved away from the beach as the plant life grew thicker, and the trees closer together.  They charged onward, away from danger, away from the terrifying explosions, away from the men.  Plunging on they whipped through giant basket ferns, or under broad leaf banana, scraped through thorns, dodged vines and low hanging branches.  Fear gave them wings and they flew in blind panic away from the beach, tears streaming from widen eyes and lungs heaving in rasping shallow breaths.

Eventually they were forced to slow down as their legs began to give out.  The headlong dash became more of a jog, then a tottering walk. Lastly, deep in the forest, they came to a fallen tree that blocked their way and the exhausted children collapsed on the ground with their backs to the trunk, facing the way they had come.  For a long time they sat there crying, wiping the snot away from their faces with the backs of hands, their breathing slowing and becoming less laboured.  Carmen tentatively reached out her hand to Charlie’s and as she held it tight Charlie felt himself slowly calm down.  He looked at her.  Her normally glossy hair was matted with mud from the forest, wild and tangled from the adventures on the sea.  Her t-shirt was torn at the shoulder and he could see scratches and grazes all over her exposed skin, the blood seeping into the mud and dirt that encrusted her.  When he looked down at his own torn shorts, mud streaked legs and bleeding hands, he realised he must look very much the same.  Ragged, dirty, frightened and lost, the children sat quietly together in the gloom of a forest a long way from home.

“Bloody hell!” he said with forced cheer, “That was a bit scary!”

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