Fee put up her hand. “There’s no electricity when you’re a hundred miles from anywhere.”
“Exactly,” said Mr Rigger. “And apart from having a flat battery, your GPS might be broken …”
“Or have been dropped into the water,” suggested Ben.
“Yes,” said Mr Rigger. “And that happens, you know. You’d be surprised to know how many people drop important things. It happens all the time.” He paused. “So it’s useful to have other means of knowing where you are.”
Later, Badger was to remember this conversation and realise that every word that Mr Rigger said was utterly true. Australia is a big place, and there are plenty of opportunities for getting lost there.
Poppy and Fee were both on watch when the first signs of the Great Barrier Reef appeared on the horizon. To begin with, Poppy thought that her eyes might be playing tricks on her, but when Fee called out she knew she had not been mistaken.
“Something up ahead,” shouted Fee, who had gone to stand by the rail on the starboard side of the ship while Poppy stayed on duty at the wheel. “Can you see it?”
Poppy shouted out that she thought she could. And at the same time, from up in the crow’s nest, came Badger’s voice at full volume. “Reef ahead!” he shouted. “Fifteen degrees off the starboard bow.”
Mr Rigger now appeared from down below, followed a few moments later by the Captain himself.
“Reef ahead off the starboard bow, Captain,” reported Poppy. “About five nautical miles away.”
Captain Macbeth had his telescope with him, and he now extended it to its full length and looked in the direction of the reef. “That’s it, sure enough,” he said. “Well navigated, everybody.”
Orders were given to reduce the amount of sail. Almost immediately, the great ship responded and slowed down in the water like a runner who has reached the end of a long race.
The Captain took the helm from Poppy, who stood down and was congratulated on her fine steering. Then he and Mr Rigger discussed their best approach and gave orders to the new watch coming on duty. More canvas was taken down and the restraining ropes on some of the sails slackened. Now the ship was barely travelling at walking pace, as its bow pointed directly at the waves breaking over the distant coral.
They had to be careful. A reef will cut straight through the hull of even the strongest ship, and once that happens the ship is usually doomed. What they had to do was to get as close as they could without running aground on any of the coral outcrops. Then, once they had anchored, they would be able to approach the reef itself in one of the liberty boats – a much safer way of moving among the little outcrops of coral that made up the barrier.
Captain Macbeth found just the right spot to anchor. As he gave the command for the anchor to be lowered, a great clanking of chains was followed by a great splash as the anchor hit the water. Once enough chain had been laid, the noise stopped, although the boat was still being blown by the wind. The chain, now lying on the shallow sea floor down below, was pulled tight by the movement of the boat as the anchor settled. With a shudder, the Tobermory came to a halt, straining against the anchor and its chain, but not moving so much as an inch backwards or forwards.
The Captain called the entire ship’s company on deck.
“We’re going to spend the rest of the day here,” he announced. “Everybody will have the chance to go snorkelling, and those of you who have passed your basic diving certificate can do scuba diving with Miss Worsfold.”
Badger turned to Ben and gave him a high five. “That’s us,” he said proudly.
“And me,” said Poppy, her voice full of excitement.
They were some of the few students who had taken Mr Rigger’s introductory course when the Tobermory had recently been in the Caribbean. This had involved studying the rules of diving with an oxygen cylinder, as well as some short practice dives. There had been few places in the course, as the diving equipment on the Tobermory was limited, and those who had been chosen considered themselves lucky. Now there would be a chance to use those skills again, this time in one of the most exciting places of all to dive – a living coral reef with all that went with it: fish, turtles, and … sharks.
Miss Worsfold called the divers to a meeting. There were ten of them altogether – eleven counting herself. The group included not only Poppy, Ben and Badger, but also Bartholomew Fitzhardy and Amanda Birtwhistle, who was known for being an expert navigator. Thomas Seagrape was also a member of the group. Thomas had a lot of experience of diving at home in the Caribbean and could hold his breath underwater for longer than anybody else on board.
Miss Worsfold went over the safety rules.
“Never dive by yourself,” she said. “That’s one of the most important rules there is. If you have somebody with you, they will be able to help you if you get into trouble.”
One of the other rules was about paying attention to how long you can stay down. “You can get carried away,” she warned. “You’re enjoying yourself so much that you forget how long you’ve been underwater and then, all too soon, you discover you’ve used all your oxygen.”
Everybody listened carefully to this briefing. They would never break any of the rules, they thought. Never …
At last it was time to go. They all fitted into one of the smaller boats that were equipped with outboard engines. Once everybody was on board, Miss Worsfold put the engine into gear and began the crossing to the reef. The water rapidly became shallower, until it was probably not much more than twenty feet deep. It was sandy on the bottom, but now there were coral formations as far as the eye could see, some of them almost reaching up to the surface.
Miss Worsfold stopped the boat. “Time to get your gear ready,” she said.
This was quite tricky, but the ten students helped one another to clip their oxygen cylinders onto their backs and to put on their flippers. Then Miss Worsfold inspected everybody to check that no mistakes had been made. “The last thing you want is to discover a problem with your equipment when you’re way down below.”
Poppy and Amanda Birtwhistle were to be dive partners. Amanda was pleased about this, as Poppy was just the sort of person anybody would like to dive with: she was a good swimmer and, more importantly, she was clear-headed. Poppy never panicked, even in a dangerous situation. There would be no need to be nervous with Poppy at her side.
Yet Amanda was still a bit uneasy as they waited their turn to go into the water. She knew that this was probably not the best time to ask a question about sharks, but she felt that she had to do just that.
“Do you think there are any … any sharks around here?” Amanda tried to make her voice sound normal, but it went high when she got to the word ‘sharks’.
“Sharks?” replied Poppy. “Oh, I don’t know. Probably not, but there might be.”
“Might be?” asked Amanda.
Poppy tried to sound unconcerned. “Well, you can never tell. It’s possible, yes …”
Amanda’s voice quivered. “Possible that there are sharks?”
Poppy looked at her friend. She did not want to alarm her, but she did not want to lie either. She could say that there were no sharks and that Amanda need not worry, but she knew this would not be the right thing to do. So, as calmly as she could, she said, “There can be sharks anywhere, Amanda – anywhere in the sea – and even in some rivers that are close to the sea.”
Amanda’s voice sounded tiny. “Oh,” she said.
“But you have to remember some things about sharks,” Poppy went on. “Firstly, sharks are often very shy creatures. Most of the time they don’t want to get close to people at all. They keep their distance.”
“Most of the time?” said Amanda. “That means that some of the time they like to get close.”
Poppy thought about this. “All right,” she said at last. “Some sharks are not all that shy.”
“Like great whites?” asked Amanda, her lip trembling at the thought of those large and dangerous creatures.
r /> “Yes,” said Poppy. “I wouldn’t call them shy. But remember, there are lots of other sharks that are much shyer than great whites. Reef sharks, for instance. They don’t attack people – most of the time.”
Amanda absorbed this information. “Most of the time,” she said. “Most of the time …”
“And the other thing,” Poppy said, “is that sharks usually don’t like shallow water, and the water around here is really very shallow, isn’t it? Look down there – you can see the sand quite clearly.”
Amanda glanced over the side of the boat. She could see the sand at the bottom, but it seemed to her that it was a good way down. There was plenty of swimming room for sharks, she thought.
Ben and Badger were the first to go, rolling backwards into the water the way that divers do. They were followed by Bartholomew Fitzhardy and Thomas Seagrape. Then it was the turn of Poppy and Amanda. Poppy made a thumbs-up sign to Amanda and entered the water with a splash, her friend following a moment later.
The water was wonderfully clear. As Poppy looked around, she was able to see far into the distance, into a vast green world through which light filtered down from the surface. She saw outcrops of coral below her – tiny mountains around which brightly coloured fish swam in lazy shoals, drifting in the flow of water, darting here and there for some tiny scrap of food or to escape from some larger fish. Waving fronds of seaweed made tiny forests in which were hiding cautious, half-hidden sea creatures. She saw a large crab, its pincers held out before it, scuttling sideways across the seafloor. She spotted a fish with a nose like a needle, almost as long as its body, stretching out in front of it.
Amanda stayed close to Poppy, feeling more secure when she had her friend firmly in sight. She was less nervous now and was enjoying the feeling of weightlessness that a diver experiences. At the same time, she was aware that there was a current, and that if she stopped moving her arms and legs she would drift away really rather fast, as if carried in unseen arms.
Poppy pointed to an outcrop of coral that she wanted to examine more closely. Amanda nodded and followed her towards the colourful mound. There were large clumps of seaweed at its base and strange, bulbous formations on its side. A couple of large grey fish, their eyes as big as saucers, watched them from the sides of the coral, their mouths opening and closing as if engaged in conversation.
Both girls were caught up in the fascinating world of the coral reef. Poppy had found a tiny cave – no more than the width of two hands – that some brightly coloured fish were using as a hiding place. Amanda was watching a school of small striped fish. Neither noticed that slowly but surely the two of them were being separated by the action of the current. Poppy was not moving very much, keeping her position by moving her flippers up and down like paddles. Amanda, however, was drifting along with her school of fish, so absorbed in watching them that she did not notice how far the current was carrying her.
After a few minutes of examining the coral, Poppy turned around to look for Amanda. In a moment of shock, she realised the other girl was not there. Moving away from the coral, she scanned the underwater landscape around her. Not far away she saw two of the boys swimming together towards a coral face. But that was all.
Poppy thought hard. Amanda could not have been gone for more than a few minutes, so she was bound to be somewhere nearby. And then she thought: If she has drifted away, then she would have gone in the same direction as the current. Now, by looking at the way in which the fronds of seaweed were floating, Poppy was able to work out where that would be.
But then the thought occurred to her that she should not go off on her own to find Amanda: that would be breaking the rule that you did not dive by yourself. What she should do was to get the two boys she had just seen to join in her search. So, swimming as fast as she could, she made her way over to join them.
The two boys were Thomas and Bartholomew. When they saw her swimming towards them, they waved cheerfully and pointed at the fish they were studying.
It was frustrating for Poppy. One thing you cannot do when you are diving is talk, so Poppy had to communicate by hand signals. Pointing in the direction in which she thought Amanda must have drifted, she made a series of frantic movements with her hands. They had all been taught basic diving signals, but now, in this emergency, Poppy found that she could not remember them. Through their diving masks, Poppy could see at first puzzlement on the faces of Thomas and Bartholomew, but this soon changed to concern. Thomas remembered his signals and made the sign for ‘okay’ with his fingers and thumb. That prompted Poppy’s memory, and she made the action for ‘swim in this direction’.
All three were strong swimmers and they were soon shooting through the water, scattering the surprised fish about them. As they went, they scanned the water ahead, hoping to see a line of rising bubbles that would guide them to their missing friend.
It was Thomas who spotted Amanda first. Grabbing hold of Poppy’s arm, he made the diving signal for ‘look over there’ – pointing two fingers, forked into a V. Poppy looked: a short distance away, rising up like a stream of silver, were bubbles of air. And as they got closer, they saw a figure huddled on the sea-bed, in much deeper water. It was Amanda. But what was she doing? From where they were, it seemed that she was struggling with something and was waving her arms frantically.
It took barely a minute for them to reach her, but it was not until they were directly on the scene that they realised that she had been caught by an immense giant clam. This sea creature had closed its wide, serrated shell on a strap of her cylinder harness, and try as she might she was unable to free it.
Thomas was the first to reach Amanda’s side. Seeing him, she stopped struggling and pointed to the clam and the strap that was so firmly wedged in its shell. As Poppy and Bartholomew looked on, Thomas pulled as hard as he could on the strap. It would not budge, nor did it make any difference when Bartholomew added his strength and joined the tugging match.
Thomas did some quick thinking. He realised that there would be no way of opening the clam shell – it was far too powerful for its jaws to be prised apart. That meant the strap would have to be cut, and for that he would need a knife. Turning to Poppy, he made a sawing motion with his hands. She understood what he meant and shook her head. Bartho-lomew did the same. None of them had a knife of any sort, let alone the sort of strong diving knife that would be needed for a task like that.
Thomas thought again. If the strap could not be cut, the only thing Amanda could do would be to abandon her oxygen cylinder altogether. The difficulty with that, of course, is that when you have been deep underwater, you have to swim to the surface slowly and let the body gradually adjust to the change in pressure. If you do not do this, you can get something called ‘the bends’ – a very dangerous condition that comes about when bubbles form in the blood or muscles. The only way to avoid the bends is to take the journey to the surface very slowly, and that would be Amanda’s problem: how could she go up slowly when she had no air to breathe?
These were the thoughts that were going through both Thomas’s and Poppy’s minds. Poppy wondered how they were going to get around it. And then an answer came to her. It was a simple answer, and she was sure that it would work. Gripping Thomas’s arm, she pointed to the strap and then to Amanda’s oxygen tank. After that she gestured away from Amanda, hoping to send the message that she should abandon the cylinder. Thomas watched her closely but it was clear he had not yet understood what she meant. So Poppy continued, pointing to her regulator – the mouthpiece through which divers breathe – taking it momentarily out of her mouth and passing it to Amanda before putting it back in her own mouth.
Suddenly, Thomas and Amanda understood. Now all that Thomas had to do was to detach Amanda’s air cylinder and then accompany her on a slow ascent to the surface. The first part of that was easier said than done, as complicated fasteners had to be unbuckled, but eventually the oxygen tank fell loose. Amanda was clearly nervous, but Thomas immediately took his regu
lator from his mouth and offered it to her. Reassured that she would not be left airless, Amanda took a deep breath and began to swim gradually upwards, supported by Thomas on one side and Poppy on the other, with Bartholomew following after. After a few strokes they stopped and Thomas passed his regulator back to Amanda to allow her to take another breath. And so they made their way slowly, but safely, to the surface.
Once they had broken the surface, Amanda gasped in a lungful of fresh air and immediately expelled half of it in a shout of joy.
“Thanks!” she shouted. “You saved my life.”
Bartholomew and Poppy laughed. Thomas, who was always modest, shook his head. “No, I didn’t. You would have been fine.”
Amanda knew this was not true. “No, I wouldn’t. I was beginning to panic. I wasn’t thinking straight.”
Poppy noticed the boat now heading over towards them. “Miss Worsfold’s on her way,” she said.
“Good,” said Thomas. “I hope she has a diving knife.”
When Miss Worsfold arrived, she helped all four of them into the boat and listened as Poppy gave an account of what happened. “Thomas was the hero,” she said. “He saved Amanda.”
Miss Worsfold looked at Thomas and smiled. “Well done, Thomas,” she said. “That was good thinking. If Amanda had come straight up, she could have got the bends.” Then she frowned. “Mind you, there’s still a valuable piece of equipment down there – we’ll have to do something about that.”
Thomas lost no time in volunteering. “I’ll go straight down again,” he said, “as long as you lend me a diving knife.”
Miss Worsfold nodded. “I can, but I think I should come with you.”
Poppy’s face fell at this. “Couldn’t I go with him, Miss Worsfold?”
Miss Worsfold hesitated. But then she said, “Why not? You will be careful, won’t you?”
Thomas and Poppy reassured her that they would be very careful. There had been enough emergencies for one day and they did not want to cause another one.