Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
from assorted cans, Bully beef, sweet corn, and sauerkraut for the main course and yellow-
cling peaches and evaporated milk for dessert.
I could not visit a deserted island without spending at least one night ashore and decided to
do just that. I loaded my sleeping bag, a bottle of water, some cabin crackers, matches, and
a flashlight into a bag and rowed ashore. Gavin had opted for an early night on-board.
I began to round up some driftwood for a fire and managed to get an armload by flashlight.
I soon had a cozy, little fire going and lay down on my sleeping bag. It was still way too
hot to get inside. I stared up at the millions of twinkling stars. There was a small sickle of
a moon, not enough for any light. I wondered if I would be bothered by any mosquitoes. I
had not seen any water anywhere, but we had not explored the whole island by any means,
and I wasn't sure. In fact we weren't even sure that it was deserted! I strongly suspected as
much though; it certainly had that feel about it.
I fed the fire until my driftwood was all used up. I arose, stretched, and walked around and
relieved myself. I had a gulp of water and finally lay down to sleep, still on top of the sleep-
ing bag.
I was just drifting off, lulled by the liquid lapping of the waves on the shore, when suddenly
I heard a strange clicking sound. I shot up and looked around. My heartbeat increased
somewhat; my breath caught in my throat. There it was again, an odd clickety clicking
sound. Without any more warning, I felt an excruciating pain on my bare toe and leapt
up howling in pain and fear, mostly fear! I scrabbled about for my flashlight and quickly
turned it on. There in the spotlight was the culprit or should I say culprits. You are right if
you guessed crabs, hundreds of them, circling me with their spidery, hard pincers waving
menacingly at their find. Their eyes out on stalks, glowing by the hundreds, they were sid-
ling along sideways (surely one of nature's ugliest specimens). They were held back by the
light that I trained on them. I had to keep moving the beam around as they ventured closer
to me in the dark.
That was it! There was no way I was spending any more time out here with this lot, lest I
wanted to be found in the morning, skeletal remains picked clean. I bundled up my belong-
ings as fast as I could and returned to Déjà vu, much to Gavin's great amusement. “Scared
off by a few baby crabs!” he crowed gleefully.
I knew that he would have a line out on the bottom of the seabed, probably baited with
either the sardine flour muck or some of those helpless little minnows. I quietly went above
and tied a spare line to one of the winches and silently led the end back to my cabin porthole
which was open.
