Bird Island Expedition - A Mel, Tab, Mewla & Cathy story

Chapter Four
A Strange Discovery


  Mrs Fisher had deemed the stream clean enough to wash the plates in, so she and Miss Mewola, along with Purlibya and Purbecca, went to the stream and washed all the plates. Mr Banmew was trying to plan some kind of PE routine for us, so that we could perhaps have a ball game or two sometime, just to keep us fit and be something fun to do. We all called to him that we wanted to play rounders, and he laughed and told us that if we could come up with something to use for posts and a bat, we were more than welcome.
  Mr Mewan was lounging outside his tent. There was very minimal reception on the phones (amazingly enough) so he texted Cathy to ask when she thought they would be able to see each other. She promptly showed us this message and we all sat and thought it over, much to Mr Mewan's amusement, as he could see us all having a conference from where he was sitting.
  "Having a debate, girls?" he called over.
  "Not really!" called back Cathy. "Nothing interesting!"
  She texted him back. 'sorry... no clue... you'll have to use your imagination xx'
  He read the message and rolled his eyes at Cathy in mock despair. We giggled.
  "Aaaaaaargh!" Tibbicca shot out from her tent with a rolled up magazine and started hitting herself with it, still shrieking. We all turned and stared at this weird outburst, and burst into giggles.
  "There's a... a thing... a creepy crawly thing in the tent!" Tibbicca screeched, still hitting herself with the magazine. We were all in hysterics. Mr Mewan got up and came over to help Tibbicca. We went with him. He opened the tent and we laughed when we saw Purla and Tibleau huddled up together in the back corner, their knees drawn up under their chins, looks of terror on their faces. Mr Mewan couldn't help but smirk.
  "Where is it then?" he said, trying not to laugh at them.
  "Probably down my trousers!" Tibbicca screeched from outside.
  "Well I'm not getting it out from there!" Mr Mewan laughed.
  "Well if...." started Mewla, and received a thump from Cathy before she got the chance to make a comment about her.
  "Shut your face." grinned Cathy.
  "There it is!" shrieked Purla from in the tent. Mr Mewan had barely pulled the tent flaps aside when Purla pointed by his knee. "There! There!"
  It was a large brown spider. It hurried past Mr Mewan's knee and off into the grass. Tibbicca moved away sharply and came to stand by us.
  "Well!" she sounded most indignant. "If there are huge things like that about I won't want to go doing Geography work in the bushes and stuff!"
  "Well just spare a thought for Cathy." mumbled Tab, and ducked as Cathy swung for her, laughing.
  "Creepy crawlies don't bother me, actually." Cathy said in a know-it-all voice.
  "What about that one on your leg?" Mr Mewan pointed. Cathy shrieked and looked down, only to see that Mr Mewan was joking. We all laughed.
  "Come on, why don't we go and do a bit of exploring?" Mewla said. "We have a whole island to check out!"
  "Okay then." I said. "I vote for that. We've only found this hollow so far - goodness knows what else we have yet to find!"
  Within ten minutes, Tab, Mewla, Cathy, Tibbicca, Purla and I were ready to go. Tibleau was still very tired and said she wanted to stay in the tent and have a rest. Mewbellinne had wandered off somewhere so Tibleau had the tent to herself.
  We decided to head over to the south side of the island, the opposite side to where we had climbed the cliff path. Cathy and Tibbicca were quite keen on finding somewhere they could sunbathe. We asked all the others if they wanted to come but they said no. The boys were all playing poker again, and the other girls were lounging about reading books and magazines. Everyone was very tired.
  We set off with a few bits and pieces with us in our bags. Miss Mewola had packed a kind-of picnic for us, consisting of rice crackers, pate and corned beef, with crisps, fruit and some chocolate. Mr Mewan called to us not to be gone all day and not to get lost, and we called back that we had Mewla's trusty pocket compass with us, and not to worry about us.
  The sun was wonderfully hot as we trekked across the cliff. Cathy was grumbling because Mr Mewan couldn't come with us, but Tibbicca had pointed out that it wouldn't be fun for any of us lot to have Cathy and Mr Mewan all over each other all afternoon.
  The cliff started to slope downwards and became more rocky. In places the ground was dusty and stony, and we had difficulty walking down the gentle incline in places, as our shoes kept slipping on the rough dusty earth. Tibbicca had better grips on her shoes than most of us, so she went ahead to look. Suddenly she shouted.
  "Oh! Come and look! I can't believe it!"
  With much scrambling and slipping, we all made our way over to where she was stood, and we stared in amazement. Way down below us was a beautiful clear blue-green lagoon, completely surrounded and protected from the sea by a ring of rough rocks, apart from one small break in the rocks where the sea lapped into the lagoon. The sun shone on the water, making it look a beautiful transparent green colour. We could clearly see the golden sand on the bottom of the lagoon.
  "Oh, wow!" Cathy said. "Come on - we have to get down there!"
  "If we can get down to that beach down there, all we have to do is climb over the rocks and we can swim in the lagoon!" Purla said, pointing to a small golden beach down below the cliffs. "Come on - what are we waiting for?"
  Purla set off at a great pace, slipping and stumbling down the sloping path, which, we hoped, led right down to the sand. We all followed, holding paws so that we wouldn't fall. Well, that was the theory, anyway. It wasn't long before Mewla landed on her bottom and dragged Cathy and Tibbicca down with her.
  Purla got down to the sand first and took a flying leap from the bottom of the rocky cliff path, which ended about four feet above the sand. She landed on her hands and knees, and looked up at us and laughed. We were all still gingerly making our way down the path, holding tightly onto each other's hands.
  The sun was incredibly hot, and by the time we all made it down onto the sand, we all had to stop for a couple of minutes and have good long swigs from the bottles of water we had brought with us. The beach was very pretty. It was only a small expanse of sand, the waves lapped prettily at the bottom of the beach, and the surrounding rocks and cliffs were green with ferns and pretty plants. The water was incredibly clear. To the right of the beach, the tall rocks that formed part of the lagoon barrier rose up from the sand, probably about fourteen feet or so tall. Thankfully they seemed fairly easy to climb, as there were convenient bits of rock jutting out here and there that could be used as foot and handholds.
  "Come on then!" Cathy hurried over the soft sand as fast as she could go.
  We all followed her. She stood at the foot of the large rocks, looking for somewhere to start climbing.
  "Here, hold this." she passed her bag to Tibbicca. "Let me climb up, then you can throw it up to me, and I'll hold yours."
  Tibbicca took Cathy's bag, and Cathy started to climb up the rocks. It was fairly easy, and she was soon on the top.
  "Oh, wow!" she said. "It's beautiful!"
  Tibbicca threw Cathy's bag up to her, then her own, then started to climb up to join her. It wasn't long before all of us were up there, standing looking in awe at the gorgeous clear lagoon spread out in front of us.
  "Look down there." Cathy pointed. "The rocks by the water are fairly flat - that'd be a good place to put our stuff, and to sit. Let's make for there."
  So we started to climb slowly down the other side of the rocks, and finally we reached the flat rocky ledge by the waters' edge. The lagoon was shallow at the edges, and the sandy bottom gently sloped away towards the middle of the lagoon, but even there the water was still clear enough to see down fairly deep.
  "Well what are we waiting for?" Purla took off her t-shirt, underneath which she had her bikini on, pulled off her shorts, and wandered over to the water. She stuck a foot in, exclaimed that it was quite warm, and leapt into the water! We laughed. She surfaced and slicked her hair back off her face, before grinning up at us all.
  "It's lush and warm!" she said.
  "No wonder - it's fairly still and the sun is on it all day." Cathy said.
  "Are you coming in then?" Purla said, kicking her legs to stay afloat.
  "You bet!" Cathy was in with her in half a minute, and the rest of us followed.
  We had a great time in the water. We splashed about, chased each other, had races and dived down as far as we could go to have a look at the lagoon bed.
  "Hey look - there's one of the lads." Cathy pointed up at the cliff-top, a little way away. "Who is it?"
  "I can't tell." I said, squinting. "Possibly Mewfal."
  "MEWFAL! OI!" Cathy yelled at the top of her voice. "COME DOWN HERE!"
  He disappeared from the cliff edge.
  "Cool, he's coming down." Cathy grinned. But after five or ten minutes, there was no sign of him.
  "Stupid idiot." laughed Cathy. "Passing up a chance to swim in here. It's heavenly!"
  "Hey, I hope nothing happened to him on his way down." Tab said, frowning. "What if he slipped or something?"
  "Nah, I coubt it." Cathy said, shaking her head. "Probably just thought better of it. Probably thought he'd get teased for swimming with us girls."
  After about an hour in the water, Cathy, Purla, Tibbicca and Mewla got out and lay on their towels on the flat rocks, sunbathing. Tab and I stayed in the water, enjoying a leisurely swim around.
  We decided to swim right to the far side of the lagoon, where there were rocks sticking up out of the water that we could sit on. Tab swam off and I followed.
  It really was heavenly in the lagoon. The weather was amazingly hot, and the warm water rippled over our shoulders like silk. I dived under the water as we swam, and watched the little shoals of fish swimming along way beneath us. I was just about to surface again when something on the bottom of the lagoon caught my eye. I couldn't tell what it was from such a distance, but whatever it was caught the sunlight and glistened bright white, almost dazzling me. I surfaced quickly to get my breath, then dived under and swam further down. Luckily the lagoon wasn't nearly as deep there because a rough shelf of rock ran along from the side of the lagoon, and whatever it was down there was on the shelf, amongst the weed and shells. I swam back up to the surface and yelled to Tab.
  "Tab! Come here! There's something odd here!"
  Tab was over in a flash, swimming strongly across the lagoon to join me.
  "What is it?" she asked. "Where?"
  "Well, I don't know." I said. "Down there. I didn't go down far enough to find out. Something white."
  "Well let's have a look!" Tab said. "Deep breath!"
  The two us took deep breaths and swam right down to the shelf of rock. I reached out and cleared the gently moving weeds away to reveal a piece of creamy-white stone, about a foot in length, and obviously broken off something. I looked at Tab. She pointed upwards and we surfaced, almost out of air. We bobbed on the surface of the water for a few seconds, getting our breath back enough to speak.
  "Whew!" Tab brushed her hair back off her face. "What is it?"
  "It's stone of some sort." I said. "Looks almost like marble or something, but..."
  "What an odd thing to find in here!" Tab said, taking it from me and examining it. "It's weird..."
  "Hey! What are you two up to?" Cathy yelled to us from the other side of the lagoon. "What have you got there?"
  "Hang on!" I yelled. "Come on Tab, let's go and show them."
  Tab and I swam back across the lagoon, taking it in turns to carry the piece of stone, as it was awkward to swim with. Cathy took it from us as we climbed out onto the flat rocks and sat down on our towels.
  "What on Earth?" she said, examining the piece of stone. "Where did you find it?"
  "It was down on a rocky shelf amongst the weeds and stuff." Tab said. "Odd, isn't it!"
  "I'll say!" Cathy said. "Shall we show the others when we get back?"
  We all looked at each other.
  "I don't know, should we?" I said.
  "I think so." Tab said. "Mrs Fisher might be able to tell us something about it."
  "Yeah, we won't know anything if we keep it to ourselves, will we?" Mewla said. "We'll ask Mrs Fisher, she's the Geography teacher after all."
  Cathy wrapped the stone up in her t-shirt and put it in the bottom of her bag. We said no more about it, but started tpo tuck into our picnic and enjoyed the sun for another couple of hours or so, before getting dressed, packing up our things and heading back to the camp.


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