Last time Anatoly, Bentley and Thompson visited the cliff-island the children first visited and found some signs of recent human habitation, but no children and no Bill of course.

Chapter 15

After they finding their first clues as to where the kids and Bill might be, there followed a fruitless time of not finding anything on any of the surrounding islands.

They spent an entire day combing the five nearest islands, two to the east and three towards the north-west. They were sure that they might find something, as someone had certainly been on the last island but there was not so much as a flattened blade of grass or scrap of paper. As Anatoly had said, Bill and the children were very conscientious campers and so wouldn’t have left piles of litter around but if they had been there, there should have been at least some sign. None of the islands were particularly big so at least they had been able to cover them in a few hours each but they were still exhausted come nightfall and were taciturn over their meal before turning in to their makeshift beds for the night.

The next morning they were in for a shock. “The boat won’t start,” Thompson groaned in frustration after spending ten minutes trying to start the engine as Anatoly and Bentley packed all their camping gear into the boat once more. “I just can’t get the thing going!”

“Has it run out of petrol?” Bentley asked slyly, implying that Thompson was being dim. He considered himself captain of the boat and a far superior to Thompson, despite them sharing the piloting over the past twenty-four hours. Neither of them had offered Anatoly a turn, and he hadn’t asked as he hadn’t wanted to make a fool of himself, given his lack of experience.

“No, I filled her up last night,” Thompson replied testily, crouching down in the little cabin to lift the trapdoor that gave access to the engine. A small spiral of dark smoke wafted up.

“What was that?” Bentley asked, moving to Thompson’s side as he saw the smoke. “What have you done?” He pushed Thompson out of the way and then groaned. “Looks like the starter motor has burnt out!”

“I haven’t done anything!” Thompson growled. “The engine’s maybe just flooded. I’ll give it a few minutes and try again.”

A few minutes later and it was obvious the problem was more than just a flooded engine. Every time Thompson tried to start the boat there were sparks from the engine and the smell of burning was getting stronger.

“It might be the wiring,” suggested Anatoly, waving some smoke out of the cabin. “That would explain the smell of burning!”

“You’re a boat repair expert now are you?” Thompson snapped, his temper flaring. They were all frustrated by their lack of results at this time, and the prospect of being stranded on their boat for however long it took to repair was not an appealing one.

“No,” snapped back Anatoly. “But I did blow up small motors at school in the science lab! It is the same smell!”

“Oh well, if you did it at school,” Thompson retorted. “Remind me, when was it you finished school, five minutes ago? Or was it ten?”

“Which is why I remember it better than you, grandpa!” Anatoly snarled, his temper flaring.

“That’s enough!” snapped Bentley, stepping between the two of them. “This will not help us find Smugs and the kids.”

“I need to fix this boat and I can’t do that with you two bickering like children,” he continued. “I expect more from you both, so unless you want me to write you both up and report you as soon as we get back then you’ll only speak when you’ve got something constructive to say. And yes, Davey,” he added, speaking to Thompson, “I’m pulling rank on you, mate.”

Thompson shut his mouth, as he had just been going to protest Bentley’s tone. He turned his back on Anatoly and looked down at the engine.

“How are we going to fix this?” Anatoly asked stiffly.

Bentley raised an eyebrow at his tone. “I am going to examine the engine. In peace and quiet. You can find me the tool box, Petrov. Thompson, I want you to check over everything else and make sure we aren’t going to run into any more problems.”

Anatoly nodded and ducked out of the of the cabin to find the tool box that was hidden in amongst all the kit they had been carrying with him. He searched swiftly and then, tool kit in hand, went back to the cabin to hand it to Bentley.

Meanwhile Thompson was checking over the anchor winch and chain, studiously ignoring Anatoly. It seemed to take forever, Bentley checking the engine and Thompson examining the rest of the boat. Anatoly hadn’t been given any other tasks so he just sat on the edge of the boat, out of everybody’s way and waited.

Eventually Bentley sat back and stretched his arms above his head. “I think it’s just the wiring. Some of it’s burnt right away so I’ll have to replace it.”

“And how are we going to do that out here?” Thompson grumbled. “Shall I push Petrov overboard and get him to search the sea floor for discarded metal?”

Bentley swore irritably. “If anyone’s getting pushed overboard Davey, it’ll be you! I’m hoping there’s some spare bits and pieces in the tool box, if not, Henty’s going to get both barrels.”

Anatoly handed over the tool box, quietly hoping Bentley might push Thompson overboard as he was being so insufferable!

In the end, Bentley decided to take the whole starter motor apart, just to make sure the fault didn’t lie in there. He sent Thompson to relight their camp-fire and make them something hot to drink, and carefully removed the motor and began taking it apart piece by piece. He instructed Anatoly to sit and watch and explained everything he was doing, because as he said, it could prove very useful in the future.

With mugs of tea steaming on the wooden floor beside them, he showed Anatoly how to clean the corrosion off the motor with a bit of sandpaper, before wiping the area with a petrol soaked rag. “That’ll help stop it corroding again, though I reckon Henty ought to give the whole engine a once over when we get back and probably replace a few bits. I think all I can do is replace the brushes…”

He was half-way through that when Thompson called for their attention. At Bentley’s nod Anatoly was glad to lower the magnifying glass he had been using to direct the sunlight onto the motor where Bentley was trying to solder the new brushes into place.

“I’ve been scanning the islands we can see from here,” Thompson said, handing the field-glasses to Bentley. “Take a look at the one, and tell me what you can see.”

Anatoly scrabbled in one of the lockers and grabbed another set of field glasses, and trained them on the island that Thompson had pointed to. “There’s something in the tree,” Anatoly said after a moment. “It looks a bit like a big bit of canvas. Could it be a tent?”

“And do tents normally grow on trees in your world?” Thompson began, earning himself a thump from Bentley.

“Could be a tent, perhaps,” Bentley said. “It could also be a parachute, given that we’re dealing with aeroplanes in these parts.”

“Or,” he added, after a lengthy pause. “It might be the tarpaulin roof of an old shack, or a fishing net. We’re really too far away to be sure.”

“A parachute could be worrying,” said Anatoly carefully. “This is not on any flight path.”

“A parachute would be very worrying,” Bentley agreed soberly. “If it’s recent, at any rate. It could have been there for weeks…” They stared into the distance, the island not much more than a hazy shape on the horizon without the powerful field-glasses.

“Right,” he snapped after a moment. “Let’s get this bloody boat fixed. If someone’s landed on that island I do not want to be stranded here if they come looking this way. Thompson, I want you to keep watch, Petrov, get that magnifying glass.”

Anatoly pulled the magnifying glass out of his pocket and headed back to the cabin. He hoped that the thing in the tree was from a fishing boat and not one the kids’ tents. If they had lost a tent he was worried they might be injured or ill because they would be exposed to the elements. He hoped they could get the boat working and find them soon.

To be continued…

Last time Anatoly, Bentley and Thompson survived their night with the chickens and started their search properly.

Chapter 14

They had managed to get dried and dressed again before they reached the next island and both Anatoly and Thompson were hoping not to have to wade ashore again. This island seemed to be made primarily of a huge, towering cliff which was simply covered in birds. The air was full of birds, doing a complicated dance it seemed, swooping in and out without ever colliding. As before they circled the island, training field-glasses to survey the area, and then guided the boat towards a convenient sandy cove.

Bentley steered the boat into the cove, Anatoly jumped out and waded the last few feet with the mooring rope to secure the boat to a handy nearby rock. He waited on the sand while his colleagues dismounted and watched the circling birds. “Not sure I’d be able to camp here,” Bentley said wryly. “It’s a bit noisy!”

“That would not have bothered Jack, or the others, probably,” Anatoly commented. Of all of them he knew the children best, though even his knowledge was limited to a few brief conversations. If he had been a few years younger, he could have seen himself being friends with Jack and Philip, but whether or not they’d have accepted him was another matter.

They watched the birds for a few more minutes, marvelling at the sheer numbers – and at their terrible clumsiness on land as they knocked eggs from their precarious nests on uneven ledges – and then drew their minds back to the task at hand.

“I think, with all these clumsy birds around, we should split up,” Bentley said. “It’ll be quicker and then we can get away from this mess of an island!”

Thompson nodded. “Whistle if you find anything.”

They each picked a direction and went off, eyes peeled for any signs of human presence. Obviously a human present would be a clear sign, but they were also looking for remains of camp-fires, foot-prints, scraps of paper, tin cans and so on. After a while Anatoly found a couple of patches of grass which seemed to have been flattened down. It wasn’t terribly obvious unless you were looking at it from the right angle, and he circled the area a few times, looking closely. He was just fingering his whistle, considering whether or not to alert the others in case it turned out to be nothing when three short, sharp whistle blasts came from the east.

He hot-footed it in that direction and found Thompson who was crouched by a small, gurgling stream. “I’ve found some footprints,” he said without preamble. Anatoly joined him in crouching and examined the ground. Around the spring there were clear signs of people. Flattened grasses and heather, slightly churned up mud where the ground was wettest, and, as Thompson had said, a couple of reasonably clear foot-marks.

Bentley turned up a few moments later and looked down at the footprints with them. “It’s a good start, I haven’t found anything,” he said as he examined the prints. “All I found was a lot of birds.”

“Pity they can’t talk,” Thompson remarked, taking a couple of photographs of the spring as evidence. “We could have asked them if they’d seen anything.”

“I think I might have seen something,” Anatoly broke in. “I was just about to whistle when you did.” He swept his arm in the direction he had come from. “There’s some big patches of slightly flatter grass over that way.”

The other two nodded and followed him without comment, showing that had at least some faith in him. Like he had, they circled the area a few times, examining it from all angles. They agreed it did not look like the sort of flattening that could happen to grass in the wind, it was too regular a shape. “Possibly a couple of tents,” Bentley said, crouching down as if looking more closely at the grass would tell him more.

“In that case we had better assume they could have stayed here, even if it was only for a night or two, and make a thorough search,” Bentley said with a firm nod. “I would have expected to see their boat if they were still here though, but there may be a hidden cove on this island that they came in at.”

They split up and began a slower and more methodical search of the island, starting around the spring and the potential tent area, and working outwards.

Coming back together, several hours later, they admitted that no other major clues had been found. Some loose earth had been investigated and a couple of tins had been found buried, and one or two other foot-prints had been spotted but that was it.

“They are not here,” Anatoly said with a shrug when Thompson and Bentley debated the fact. “They may have been here for one night and moved on. We need to keep looking.”

“Do we think this is where they have gone missing from?” Anatoly asked cautiously.

“We don’t know that they are missing,” Bentley reminded him. “All we know is that we can’t raise Bill on the radio. It could be broken for all we know and he’s gallivanting around some island miles away and having a grand old time!”

“All right,” Anatoly said, though he had a gut feeling that Bill was not having a good time at all. “Do we think that they left this island as recently as our last contact with Bill?”

“It’s hard to tell,” mused Thompson. “But I’d wager it was a bit earlier. The grass has mostly sprung back from where we think the tents were, and those cans are starting to rust already.”

“We don’t even know it was Bill on this island,” Bentley added, always the sensible one. “It could have been any trippers, here a week or so ago perhaps.”

It was disheartening, but they had made notes and taken photographs of what evidence they had found, and so all they could do was head back to their boat, get it back on the water and travel on to the next bit of land.

They ate on the boat as they were starving, having last eaten when Anatoly had prepared them breakfast, and Bentley powered the boat towards the next island, aware that it would be getting dark soon.

To be continued…

Last time the search and rescue team ignored the fisherman’s warning and ran into a bit of trouble.

Chapter 13

It took Anatoly a long time to get to sleep, he kept wondering where Bill was and how he was coping. He hoped that he was safe and they were being jumpy over nothing. Anatoly didn’t think he could lose a second father figure in his life. He would do everything he could do make sure that Bill was found, alive and well. Eventually he fell asleep on his pillow of straw, quite comfortable with his service blanket over himself even as the storm raged overhead.

It must have blown itself out at some point as when he woke in the early hours – thanks to one of the chickens mistaking his shoelaces for worms or something else edible – it seemed calm apart from a light rain. He shooed the chicken off and it retreated with a huffy-sounding squawk which made Thompson and Bentley stir slightly and then everyone settled back to sleep.

The next time he woke the sun coming in the grubby windows told him that it was morning and he rolled over in his sleeping bag and yawned. His back was a little tense from bracing against the waves the day before and then sleeping on the floor. He looked at his watch and groaned at the early hour, wondering if he should try and get some sleep but the sound of the sea birds was so loud that he wasn’t sure he could. He got up, stretched and decided to go for a swim in the cove where they had moored the boat. Grabbing his trunks and a blanket as a towel, he strode off to wake himself up in the cold Scottish waters.

An hour later Anatoly made his way back to the cottage, towelling his wet hair. He started on getting the fire back alive to start breakfast for the three of them. Soon the smell and noise of frying bacon and eggs wafted through the cottage. “Are those real eggs I smell?” asked Thompson as he sat up.

“Courtesy of our hosts,” he grinned, indicating the chickens which were scratching around the straw floor.

“Well, I’m glad we have such accommodating ones!” yawned Bentley. “How long have you been up?”

“I’ve shared accommodation with worse,” Thompson said, picking straw from his dark hair.

“About an hour,” Anatoly said, keeping an eye on the breakfast. He had stopped at the fisherman’s house on his way back and, while the fisherman was already out on his boat, his wife had insisted that he take the bacon, butter, bread and frying pan with him if he wouldn’t let her make them breakfast. The discovery of eggs amongst the straw had been an unexpected extra.

“Is there anywhere to wash?” Bentley asked, eyeing Anatoly’s wet hair. “Or have you been foolhardy enough to go swimming?”

“I had a very refreshing swim,” Anatoly said. “What is so foolhardy about that?”

“You will catch your death!” Bentley chuckled. “Honestly, how cold was it?”

“It is May,” Anatoly said, rolling his eyes, “hardly the middle of winter. It was a perfectly fine temperature.”

“We are in the middle of the sea here,” Thompson laughed. “Anyway, we’d better get moving soon, we have a large area to cover today!”

Anatoly portioned the bacon and eggs into their mess tins and along with the bread it made a fine breakfast. “You can come along with us every time if you’re going to feed us like that,” Thompson joked as they packed up their sleeping bags and headed out of the cottage, the frying pan tucked under Anatoly’s arm to be returned to the fisherman’s wife on his way past.

The fisherman’s wife was very pleased to see them and when they thanked her for the pan and the breakfast, she blushed and told them not to worry. She also pressed a heavy cake into Anatoly’s hands and wouldn’t accept any payment for it. The men thanked her and went off to their boat. Bentley took them out of the cove and headed the boat in the same direction they had gone the previous evening before the storm had forced them to turn back.

After around five hours of sailing they finally spotted some islands on the horizon, just little green and brown blobs at that distance. The number of birds in the air and the water increased dramatically as the islands slowly grew larger and Anatoly felt sure that Bill and the children must have headed for one of these islands as they were after birds.

They headed for the first bird-packed island and Bentley took the boat as close as he could, as they couldn’t find a place to dock. “You two might need to jump ashore, because I don’t think we can tie up,” he said to Anatoly and Thompson.

They had a brief discussion. None of them thought it likely that Bill and the children had camped on an island that appeared to have nowhere to dock a boat, but it wasn’t impossible and they felt they ought to at least make a cursory exploration just to rule it out. So Thompson and Anatoly stripped to the waist and, holding a small waterproof bag containing a few essentials like weapons and first-aid supplies, they slipped from the boat into the water.

“Refreshing, as I told you,” Anatoly said with a laugh as Thompson swore at the feeling of the cold water, and they made their way ashore.

Soon they were scrambling ashore, the rocks jagged against their hands. Here and there seaweed made their path slippery and they had to make sure they didn’t put their hands and feet into various birds nests that littered the cliffs. “If they camped here, then they are crazy!” Thompson grunted as they finally reached the grass top of the island.

“Agreed.” Anatoly said, saving his breath. They surveyed the rest of the island, which was as rocky and inhospitable as the part they had already crossed. It was, at least, not a very large island and so if they headed back down and to the shore on the opposite side with a little bit of meandering they felt that they would be able to see enough of it to be sure that Bill or the children were not there. He checked that plan with Thompson and then they communicated with Bentley by waving and pointing.

“How many more islands have we got?” Thompson groaned as they started down the rocks again to the boat. “I already feel like I’m lost on a maze!”

Anatoly laughed. “In our section? Thirty-seven. So only thirty-six to go!”

Thompson grumbled under his breath and shook his head. “Smugs needs to be more careful,” he added, annoyed at his colleague.

“Could happen to any one of us,” Anatoly said diplomatically, heading a little to his left to check behind a rocky area with a couple of scrubby trees which might have provided a little shelter. He wanted to defend Bill, but also didn’t want to alienate his current partners.

“Aye, true,” Thompson conceded. “Just it does appear to always happen to Smugs.”

“Adventures always come to the adventurous, there is no doubt about that*,” Anatoly quipped.

Thompson’s only response was to grunt again as they scrambled over more rocks and returned to the sea, and then their boat.

To be continued…

*This is actually a quote from Five Go to Smuggler’s Top (this is where it all becomes a bit Inception-like, as although Julian and the rest of the Five will have had this adventure already, in our particular universe it hasn’t been written yet, and won’t be written until Julian is in his early thirties).