جنی

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Jenny

One day, Fritz went away in his little canoe. He stayed away all day. In the evening, my wife became very worried.

‘I’m afraid that something has happened to him,’ she said.

We couldn’t do anything, so we went to bed. But we didn’t sleep very much. The next day, we went up to the top of a hill, but we couldn’t see him. Then Ernest pointed.

‘Look!’ he said. ‘Is that him?’

We looked. It was Fritz in his canoe. We all ran down to the water to meet him.

‘Oh, Fritz,’ cried his mother, ‘I thought you were dead.’

While he was having breakfast, Fritz told us his story.

‘I’ve always wanted to know more about the west of the island, so I decided to look there. I took my gun and some gunpowder, a fishing line and my knife. I came to the place where we found shellfish for the first time. I went for a swim there, and I found a lot more. I brought some up on to the beach and opened them. Inside one of them I found this.’ He held out his hand. In it there was a large pearl. ‘I opened some more and I found a lot of pearls. Look!’

‘If you make holes through them, Mother can wear them around her neck,’ said Jack.

‘No, no,’ said my wife, ‘I don’t want them. Who wants to wear pearls on this island?’

‘Perhaps one day,’ I said, ‘a ship will come and take you home. You can sell these for a lot of money. We’ll put them in a safe place.’

‘I haven’t told you the most important thing,’ said Fritz. ‘I went on farther to the west. In the evening, I sat on the beach and had a meal. As I was sitting there, a big bird flew over me. It was flying very slowly, so I shot it. Then I saw why it was flying so slowly. It was hurt. And this was tied around its leg.’

He showed us a little piece of cloth with writing on it.

I looked at the writing: ‘Help! Sailor on Smoking Island.’

‘The person wrote the message in blood!’ I said.

‘Yes,’ said Fritz, ‘but where is the smoking island? I went up the hill behind me and I looked out to sea. There, far out at sea, there was a little smoke going into the sky. It came from a small island.

‘I went out to the island and climbed up to the top. In a little wood, I saw a small hut made of branches. In front of the hut there was a fire, and fish was cooking in a big shell. I hid behind a tree and waited. Then someone came out of the hut. She was wearing the coat of a ship’s officer. She went to the fire. I came out of the trees and she turned round.’

‘She!’ I said. ‘Did you say “she”?’

‘Yes. It was a young woman! I told her not to be afraid. I told her about us. She can live with us, can’t she? We will bring her here, won’t we?’

‘Yes, of course we will. But tell us about her.’

‘Her father’s William Montrose, an officer who lives in India. Her mother died when she was born. Her father was going back to England in a ship with his men, so Jenny had to travel in another ship. Her ship was lost in a storm a year ago.

‘She got away in a boat with a ship’s officer and some sailors. The officer gave her his coat. He told her to watch for another ship or for land. Then another storm came. A big wave covered the boat. She doesn’t know what happened after that. When she opened her eyes, she was on that little island.’

‘How has she lived there for more than a year?’

‘I asked her that. She’s got shellfish, and there are coconuts on the trees. She made a fishing line from her hair and she catches small fish. She uses stones to make a fire. She’s made a little hut for birds from bamboo, but she can only catch small ones. When the big bird came down on the island, it hurt its leg. So she was able to tie that piece of cloth round it, with her call for help.’

‘And the bird came to you.’

‘Yes,’ said Fritz. ‘I sat with her and listened to her story. Then I told her to stay on the island. I promised to return as quickly as possible. I couldn’t come all the way home that day. I slept on the beach and started again this morning. Can we go to Jenny today?’

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘yes, if we start immediately.’

I asked my wife to make preparations for Jenny. Then, taking a day’s food with us, Fritz and I left in the ship’s boat.

Jenny was waving from the beach as we came near. We stepped out of the boat onto the beach, and she threw her arms round my neck and cried.

We sailed back home along the coast. Mother and the three boys were waiting on the beach to meet Jenny.

My wife said, ‘I’ll have to dress you like one of my sons, because these are our only clothes.’

Jenny had a bath and dressed in sailors’ clothes. Then she joined us for a large lunch, and Jack put flowers in her hair.

Perhaps my boys thought that they could teach Jenny a lot of things. But she could shoot better than they could.

‘My father taught me in India,’ she said.

She was very good at catching fish. She was able to tell Ernest the real names of many of his plants.

‘I learned all that at school,’ she told him.

Very soon she and the boys were close friends.

Jenny thought about her father all the time. ‘I’m sure that ships are looking for me,’ she said.

Fritz said, ‘If a ship comes, we’ll hear a gun. We’ll answer with our guns. Then they’ll know that we’re here.’

‘A ship will come one day and take me back to Father,’ Jenny said. ‘I’m very happy with you, but he’s probably very sad. He doesn’t know if I am alive or dead.’

The summer ended and the winter passed. Early one morning, Fritz went out in his canoe. He was looking for a nice big fish for our lunch. Then, suddenly, we saw him turn round and come back.

‘Quick! Quick!’ he cried. ‘There’s a ship!’

We ran up to the top of a hill with our guns.

‘BANG!’ There was an answering shot from far away.

We waited, then used the gun again, and the answer came, louder and nearer. Then we saw a boat coming towards the beach. We ran down to meet it. An officer stepped out.

‘I am Officer Littleton,’ he said, ‘of the Unicom. Is Miss Jenny Montrose here? Some of the sailors from her ship, the Dorcas, told me to try these islands, because the ship was lost near here.’

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘Miss Jenny Montrose is here, and she’s safe.’

He looked at me and my family, and at Jenny in sailors’ clothes.

‘But.’ he said.

I told him my name. ‘And this is my wife. my sons Fritz. Ernest. Jack. Franz. and this,’ I said, ‘is Jenny, our Jenny.’