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

Chapter Five
Strange Happenings - And A Shock


  Mrs Fisher had tea cooking over the camp fire when we got back. The delicious smell of sausages cooking wafted all round the camp, and the cosy crackling of the fire made it seem really welcoming. As with very hot days, the evening was becoming cool, even though the sun was still out.
  Mr Banmew had provided little battery-powered lights for us to hang up in our tents so we could see what we were doing, and all the tents had one in when we got back.
  "Hey, cool!" Cathy said, clicking on our lamp.
  "I know!" Tibbicca stuck her head out of their tent and grinned at us. "Hey, Sir! These are really groovy!"
  Mr Banmew, who was passing by, laughed.
  All the boys were over at the side of the camp, kicking a ball around, and the rest of the girtls were in their tents, apart from Mewbellinne, who, very surprisingly, was helping Mrs Fisher cook the tea.
  "Wow, just look at the sun." Cathy said, pointing at the gorgeous reflection on the water as the sun slid lower in the sky. We all stood and watched it for a moment or two. Cathy's mobile phone beeped from in the tent just then and she dived in to get it. She came back out grinning.
  "Mr Mewan wants me to meet him tonight when everyone else has gone to bed." she said.
  "Honestly, it's disgraceful." Tibbicca laughed. Cathy grinned.
  "Tea will be ready in five minutes!" called Mrs Fisher. "Boys, I suggest you quit your football now please!"
  The boys stopped kicking the ball, and Tom threw it to Mr Banmew, who put it back with the other supplies.
  "Oh yeah - Mewfal!" called Cathy.
  "Yeah?" Mewfal came wandering over, trying to rub a grass stain off the knee of his jeans.
  "Howcome you didn't come down to see us this afternoon?" Cathy said.
  "See you? Why should I?" Mewfal sounded surprised.
  "Well we waved and yelled for you to come down." Cathy said.
  "Waved? Where?" Mewfal said.
  "We were in the lagoon." Cathy said. Surely you saw us from the cliff?"
  "What lagoon? What cliff?" Mewfal looked really bewildered now. "I haven't been near any cliff or lagoon all day, we were playing cards here."
  "It must have been one of the others then." Cathy said. "We were sure it was you."
  "It couldn't have been any of us." Mewfal said. "We were all here all afternoon, playing poker."
  "What?" Tab said. "All of you? Are you sure?"
  "Of course I'm sure!" Mewfal laughed. "I think we'd have noticed if one of us left our game! What's all this about, anyway?"
  "Well we were swimming this afternoon and we saw someone on the cliff." Cathy said. "We thought it was one of you lads, and we yelled up for you to come down and swim with us."
  "Weird." Mewfal said. "No - it definitely wasn't any of us."
  "Maybe it was Mr Banmew or Mr Mewan." Mewla said, thinking hard.
  "I doubt it, they've been here with us reading nature books." Mewfal said.
  Cathy looked at us.
  "Then who the hell could it have been?" she said. Mewfal shrugged and wandered off.
  "I think one of the boys is playing a joke on us." she said. "I reckon it was either Mewfal or Tom - you know what jokers they are. They'll all be sniggering at us later on because they think they've puzzled us."
  "Well why don't you ask one of the teachers?" I suggested. "They won't lie to us. They'll be able to tell us if the boys were all here all afternoon."
  "I'll ask Greg." Cathy said. "Mr Mewan! Sir! Can I ask you something?"
  Mr Mewan came amiably over.
  "Yes, Cathy?"
  "Were you here all afternoon?" Cathy said.
  "Yes." Mr Mewan looked faintly surprised at this question. "Why?"
  "Were all the boys here?" Cathy asked.
  "Yes." Mr Mewan said, after thinking for a few seconds. "They were having a big game of cards."
  "Hmmm. Are you sure all of them were here?" Tab put in.
  "Yes, Positive." Mr Mewan said. "Why are you asking?"
  "We just thought that the boys had played a trick on us this afternoon." Cathy said. "But obviously they didn't, as they were all here."
  "Yes." Mr Mewan said. "Come on then girls, tea is ready."
  He wandered over to the campfire, where Mrs Fisher was ladling out food onto plates, still assisted by Mewbellinne.
  We all looked at each other.
  "Who the hell could it have been?" Cathy said quietly. "It wasn't any of the girls."
  "No, it was definitely a male." I said.
  "I don't like it." Cathy said. "It's creepy."
  "Oh, come on, Cath!" laughed Mewla. "Why is it creepy?"
  "Well who on Earth was it?" Cathy said. "The boys said it wasn't them, and Mr Mewan vouched for them by telling us they've all been here all afternoon. Does that mean there's someone else on the island?"
  We all looked at Cathy.
  "Someone else? Who else could be here?" I said.
  "I don't know." Cathy said. But it seems quite likely, doesn't it?" and she walked away to get the plate that Mrs Fisher was holding out to her.
  Tea was a lively meal. We didn't say anything else about the strange figure we had seen, and Cathy seemed to forget about it when she leapt up to join Tom in a comical war-dance round the fire when they had eaten. This, of course, made everyone laugh, particularly when Tom kicked the kettle and stubbed his toe. I think we all thought at the backs of our minds that it was one of the boys playing a joke on us.
  "Right, settle down you lot!" Miss Mewola called, and banged a spoon on the frying pan. "We're going to discuss the plan for tomorrow."
  "I want to take us on a nature ramble to study the wildlife of these islands." Mrs Fisher said. "We have brought plenty of nature books with us so we will spend most of the day rambling round the island making notes of what we've seen, and then we'll come back to camp in the afternoon, you will take some books into your tents, and use them to write up reports of what you've seen."
  "And then the day after, I am going to take you down the cliffs to study the rock formations." Mr Banmew said. "We have hammers and chisels in case we find any evidence of fossils. The rocks seem quite soft here, which often indicates a good place to find and remove fossils."
  "Cool!" the boys grinned.
  After tea we all helped to clear up and wash the plates, then we all retired to our tents to relax. There was much giggling and screaming going on from Tibbick's tent, as the four of them played some game or other. Mewbellinne, who seemed to be in a very odd mood because she was being vaguely nice, asked Tibbicca, Purla and Tibleau if they wanted to read some of her fashion magazines, so they all settled down in the tent, even though Tibbicca came over to ours to reassure us that they weren't getting friendly with Mewbellinne, and that she suspected Mewbellinne was up to something in her sudden friendliness.
  "I couldn't agree more." Cathy had said grimly. "Well if she starts quizzing you about my love life, make up something wacky and bizarre - that'll shut her up."
  Tibbicca had laughed and went back to her tent.
  We had decided not to bother with the odd piece of stone we had found. Well, not till the next day, anyway. It was getting fairly late and we were tired, and didn't feel like getting into any complicated geological talks with Mrs Fisher, who is known to ramble on a bit once she gets started.
  When it got to about half past ten, we all started getting ready for bed. Purla scared us to death by creeping along to our tent and sticking her head through the flaps to tell us to look at Mrs Fisher and Mr Banmew, who were sitting talking together by the camp fire.
  "I wonder where Mr Mewan is then?" Purla joked. "Ooh wait - he'll be in his tent getting ready for his midnight rendevous."
  "Oh get knotted." Cathy laughed, from over at the back of our tent.
  Once we had cleaned our faces with our cleansers and brushed our teeth outside the tent, we snuggled down in our sleeping bags, with the exception of Cathy, who was fiddling with her hair and make-up. The night had gone cold and it was nice to be snuggled up, cosy and warm, talking and giggling together in the soft light of the lamp.
  Cathy's phone beeped about twenty minutes later. She read the text message and grinned.
  "He says he'll meet me near the beach." she said.
  "Go on then, get going to your disgusting rendevous." grinned Mewla.
  "I'm going in about ten minutes." Cathy said. "It would look highly suspicious if we went off together and the other teachers saw us. He's going off first and I'll join him in a bit."
  So, in about ten minutes, Cathy pulled on her sandals, picked up her phone and a torch, said bye to us all, and left the tent. We all peeped out to watch her go. The camp was all quiet, and no-one was about. Mr Banmew and Mrs Fisher had gone to their tents, and all that was left of the dying fire was a dim red glow and the occasional crackle. Tibbick's tent and Tibbicca's tent still had their lights on, but the boys' and Alimew's tents were in darkness. Cathy crept over to the bushes at the side of the hollow, then tiptoed past them and off down the path to the beach. We got back into our sleeping bags, laughing.
  "She's crazy." Mewla grinned.
  "She wouldn't be so fun if she wasn't a little bit crazy." I said.
  "So shall we ask Mrs Fisher about this tomorrow?" Tab said, reaching over to the back of the tent and unwrapping the piece of stone from Cathy's t-shirt.
  "Yes." I said. "We want to know about it, don't we."
  "It's so puzzling." Tab said, examining the stone. "Why on Earth would something like this be in a lagoon up here? It looks like it belongs on the bottom of the Mediterranean."
  Mewla held out her hand for the stone and Tab passed it over.
  "It certainly looks like some kind of marble or something like it." she said, staring at it and examining it so closely that we all burst into giggles at the sight of her with her nose almost touching the stone. "I can't understand it."
  "Oh well, we won't worry about it till tomorrow." Tab said. "Come on, let's try and go to sleep. I'm tired."
  "Yeah, so am I." I said. "We don't need to wait up for Cathy, do we?"
  "No." Mewla said. "She's got her torch, and I daresay Mr Mewan has one too. Come on - let's turn the light off and snuggle down."
  So we clicked off the light and cuddled up in our sleeping bags.
  I didn't know what the time was, but I was woken up by Cathy scrambling into our tent and falling over my sleeping bag, as mine was nearest the door. She fumbled around and clicked on the light. I opened my eyes and squinted in the bright light, then saw that Cathy's face was panic-stricken and that she had tears streaming down her face!
  "Cath?" I half sat up and shivered in the chilly air. "What's the matter?"
  "Oh, Mel! Something terrible has happened!" she said.
  "What?" I said, taking hold of her paw. "Are you OK? Is Mr Mewan OK?"
  "Yes, we're both OK." Cathy said. "Mr Mewan has gone to wake up the teachers."
  "What? Why?" I said.
  "Well, we met up and went down to the beach." Cathy said. "But it was a bit chilly down there by the water after bit, so Mr Mewan suggested that we went round to the boat, but when we got round there, it was gone! The boat is gone, Mel!"
  "Oh my God!" I said. "How... how can it be gone? Where's it gone?"
  "We don't know." Cathy sobbed. "But we're stuck till we can find out! Mr Mewan is going to tell the teachers that he went down there to fetch something he'd forgotten. But we have to pretend not to know, so they won't know I was with him. So we have to keep it quiet till tomorrow, when he tells the rest of the class."
  I was struck dumb for a moment. My head was in a whirl. Where was our boat? What had happened to it?
  The commotion had woken Tab, and when she sat up Mewla woke up too. They saw our worried faces and asked at once what was the matter. We told them and they looked very panicky. Cathy explained that we had to keep it quiet till the morning. She undressed and got into her sleeping bag, for she was shivering. She opened a packet of chocolate and we all munched it. We talked in low voices for a while before slowly drifting off to sleep. Cathy was convinced that the disappearing boat was something to do with the figure we had seen on the cliff, and for the first time, we actually started to think the same...


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