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stay normal, that way.
    So I didn’t say anything about it to Miranda.
    The sky was still blue, but the sun was slipping down behind the far headland by the time we set off for “home.” The beach was cool. The bay, soft and blurred by my poor vision, guarded by its two sleeping dragons, looked very beautiful as we walked along beside the water.
    “How long do you think it’ll be before we really get that roast suckling pig?”
    Miranda laughed. “About a year! That net bag was about as useful as a tea cozy!”
    “Me and my pathetic fruit-picking stick. I must have looked such an idiot!”
    “But maybe we have to learn. We need to expand our food resources somehow.”
    We walked in silence for a bit.
    “You don’t think anyone’s ever going to rescue us, do you?”
    She looked at me seriously. “It’s getting to be a long time. But we’re alive and in good shape, and they’ll find us.
We are going to be rescued, Semi.
Don’t ever give up hope.”
    I knew what she meant. We had to believe. It was the only way to keep sane. I was glad I’d decided not to tell her about the piglet with hands. I didn’t want to worry her.
    “Tomorrow,” I said, “the film crew for the next James Bond movie will arrive. This island has been picked out to play the role of the villain’s secret hideout.”
    “It’s good to have something to look forward to.”
    “If not tomorrow, then the next day.”
    “I certainly hope so. I don’t fancy playing Adam and Eve with Arnie.”
    We were still snorting and giggling over this idea as we arrived back in camp.
    Arnie was nowhere in sight.
    “Typical,” muttered Miranda.
    He’d probably gone off into the woods, looking for more trees to chop down. Arnie loved to do nothing. If he wasn’t working on his raft, he’d sit daydreaming all day if we let him. Since he’d been
supposed
to sit on the beach keeping watch, naturally he would have decided to do something else. But he should have been back by now. I wandered about, picking up oddments of our salvaged possessions that had somehow strayed out of place.
    Miranda looked up and down the beach.
    “Semi,” she said, worriedly, “the raft’s gone.”
    The sun left our beach early, because of the curve of the bay; but by this time it was dusk. The moon, which was nearly full, was well up in the sky. We went up to the trees, and searched around and called his name. Because it was Arnie, and we were used to his idea of fun, we weren’t totally, seriously frightened. We were sure he was hiding and he’d taken the raft with him to make us really scared. But he didn’t come back. When it was getting really dark we started looking for his footprints, or traces of the raft having been dragged off. But it was too late. The moonlight was terribly confusing, and of course there were footprints everywhere. We looked for him at the coconut palms, we even groped our way up to the waterfall pool. But under the trees it was too dark to search; and the beach was empty.
    We called his name, over and over, but he didn’t answer.
    We came back to the camp, shocked and horrified.
    We couldn’t sleep. We walked up and down by the lagoon, which lay flat and bright and empty under the silver-penny moon. There was no sign of Arnie’s raft.
    In the morning we discovered that the machete was gone, and our stored food.
    “He
wouldn’t
have gone out on the raft on his own,” I said. “He’s not that stupid.”
    “Then where is it?” whispered Miranda.
    Out in the middle of the bay, the Girl Who Waved flapped her ragged arms, as if she was signaling to us that she knew where Arnie was.
    She knew.

chapter four
    On Day Thirteen, at low tide, I went out along the coral causeway alone, wearing the reef sandals, watching carefully where I put my feet. There are some very nasty creatures that live in the holes in coral rock. It was something we did regularly, this trip, to see if more stuff had drifted in. Strange oddments kept on turning up: