Where the trade winds blow

The winds were whipping and whirling around the entrance of the grotto. Marcus stirred and turned over to lie face down in an attempt to shield his face from the spray and sleep a little longer. Just a little longer. Or maybe forever.

A big gust charged through the grotto and instantly chilled the sweat on his back. No more sleep for Marcus. He sighed deeply and pushed himself to his feet where he wavered like a reed before steadying himself with a hand against the damp grotto wall. Through the entrance he could see that the winds were tossing the sea into angry, urgent waves that crashed noisily onto the strand.

No fishing today. No crabs today. Not unless the wind dies down.

Marcus stepped gingerly out of the grotto only to be blown sideways by another gust that sprayed his face with stinging saltwater and made his whispy hair blow around his eyes. He staggered around like a drunk before his spindly legs regained their purchase and he swept the hair out of his eyes. The wind was still blowing around as he tottered unsteadily over the rocky plates outside his grotto, making his way towards the nearest fringes of the jungle to pick some sea grapes.

He retrieved his food parcel from the grotto and made his way towards the big palm tree just up from the strand where he could eat sheltered from the wind. He opened the folded leaf and counted 5 fingers of coconuts, 3 dried out leaves of seaweed and 2 crab claws. He sniffed the claws. No good; on the verge of putrefaction. He chucked them into the jungle and sated himself, as much as he could, with the coconut, seaweed and grapes. He was used to the rawness by now.

What day was this? Day 246? No, 364? No, no. More like seven hundred and something. He could no longer remember. From the first day that he washed up on this shore, a bedgraggled, half-drowned survivor of a shipwreck which claimed all lives but his, he had dutifully marked the days off on the rock outside the grotto, every day at sundown. The lines were still there, carved forever into the rock face. 4 horizontal lines and fifth line diagonally across to mark each period of 5 days. Like ranks of soldiers, they lined up in rows of eight, six deep. How many days? Marcus had stopped counting them and stopped marking them after all traces of his hope had drained away.

As the wind died down a little, Marcus thought again about ending this. He could just wade outinto those broiling waves and let them drag him out into the wide ocean to feed the fish with his remaining flesh.

"Not much of a meal, though" said Marcus, out loud, looking down at his painfully weedy thighs and prominent ribs. "To hell with it. Die a slow death or die a quick one", he thought.

He hauled himself up, took a deep breath of the salty air and walked slowly towards the sea, passing the big S.O.S sign that he marked out in the sand with rocks the day after he washed up on the shore. Fat lot of good it did.

Marcus waded into the water up to his shins. This was it. This was his escape; his only escape. This was his way off of the island. He would finally be free. He felt he should say something; say it out loud. One last chance to let his voice be heard in this world, even if the only person to hear it was him. Then it hit him.

"A note. I have to leave a note. Or a sign. Something to tell the world that I was here and that I died here."

He turned and splashed back to shore and scampered up the sand back to his grotto. Picking up a sharp hand-sized rock on the way. Once inside the cave, he identified a suitable space on the black, basalt wall and began to scrape his message. He scraped out the words in runic lines, his thin arm working like a steam pump, up and down, up and down, until he finished. He stepped back to read it.

MARCUS KEPPEL

LAST SURVIVOR OF THE SS GLORIA

SANK 16 JUNE 2016

DIED – DATE UNKNOWN

PRAY FOR ME

He was breathless from the exertion and he felt weak. His shoulder was protesting loudly. That would do. It was fitting.

He placed the remains of his writing-rock down and as he did he heard a buzzing sound. No, more like a drone. He cocked his head to listen more intently. What was that? Whatever it was it was getting louder. Marcus tottered out of the grotto and looked around but could not see any source for the noise. He walked back towards and the sea and looked up and as he did he saw salvation. It was a plane; an actual plane, traversing the sky above his head, it's fuselage glinting in the sunlight.

"Heeeeeeeeyyyyyyyyyyyyyy" he screamed. And he screamed again and ran over to the big S.O.S sign and jumped and waved his skinny arms and screamed for all that remained of his worth.

"Heeeeeeyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy, heeeeeeeeeeeeeeyyyyyyyyyyyyyy".

The aircraft cruised overhead from right to left and just as Marcus was about to lose sight of it, it arced around and flew back towards him again.

He must see me. He must see me.

Marcus picked up a dried palm frond and began waving it back and forth while yelling with every breath he could still muster.

And then the miracle happened. The pilot saw him. The plane tipped it's wing and Marcus could see the pilot's face in the cockpit and the pilot smiled and gave Marcus a thumb's up. Big, wet blobs of tears ran down Marcus' face as the pilot climbed and headed back round in the direction of the trade winds over west side of the island.

Marcus followed his path and spotted an object that was dropped out of the plance on a small parachute. It floated down gently until it was picked up by the wind, those old trade winds, which carried it away over the spine of the island towards the east. Not that they were trade winds. Not really. That was just a comforting lie he told himself in the hope that someday another ship may pass. But trade winds brought trade and there was no trade here. They were just winds.

No, no, no, no, no, no. I'm here. I'm here.

Marcus watched the object, which looked small and metallic, float down over the jungle until it came down on the other side of the island, somewhere beyond the rocky bluff that jutted out into the sea. The plane was now a dot in the distance.

I am saved. I am saved. He saw me. He dropped me something. Food? Medical supplies? I must find it.

His weakness and exhaustion forgotten, Marcus started out along the beach to the east side of the island. The beach ended at the wall of the rock and he would either have to clamber over it to reach the other side or take to the water to swim around it. He wasn't sure he had the strength to swim.

This was but a small detail now. He was saved. He would be going home. At the lowest moment, at the nadir, when he believed that the open ocean was his final resting place, that angel flew down out of the clear, blue sky and saved him. There is a God. There must be a God. Thank you, God.

Home. Roof over head. Proper food – pepperoni pizza, steak and chips, cheese toasties, big steins of frothy lager beer. Showers. Family. Friends. Sex. Parties. Books. Movies. Internet. Sex. Life. Music. Did I mention sex? Have I been missed? Of course I have. Perhaps they thought I was dead. In a sense, I was. Wait until they see me again. Marcus Keppel: returned from the dead. I know what I'll do, I'll write a book. Yes, that's what I'll do.

"Desert Island Survivor" by Marcus Keppel. No, too corny.

"I Survived". No, too melodramatic.

"Stranded". No, too filmic.

Wait, I've got it: "Marooned" by Marcus Keppel: the incredible true story of a shipwreck survivor".

Yes. That's it. New York Times bestseller. Mann Booker Prize. Amazon Bestseller. Talk shows. Movie deal. Who will play me? Tom Cruise? No, too old now. Someone else. I will be the movie consultant. Might even get my own TV show!

The wind had died down by the time Marcus reached the rock wall but the sea was still too choppy. He could not stop now. The wall of jungle covered rock rose up in front of him like the north face of the Eiger. Driven by a combination of desire and hope, he began to scramble up the rocky incline, grabbing branches or vines for purchase as he grunted and sweated ever upward in the baking tropical heat. By the time he reached the top, his paper-thin body was covered in scratches and blood; his hands were raw.

Looking around from the top of the bluff, he scanned the horizon for sight of the parachute. He was gripped by a brief panic-pulse at the thought that it might have dropped into the sea when he spotted the white fabric flapping in the breeze. The parachute and its precious cargo was caught in the branches of a tree that was growing out from the rocky escarpment that formed the entire east side of the island. There was no way he could reach it.

But, wait. Yes. Yes. He could use the jungle cover. The trees were bunched close enough together for him to get to his destination by using the trees. Summoning his remaining dregs of courage, he began to climb from tree to vine to tree, looking for all the world like a demented spider-monkey. But it was working and as he closed on his prize he could see that the cargo was a metal cannister about the size of a thermos flask. It was within his sweaty reach. With a deep grunt, he swing himself toward the final tree and grabbed on with one hand while he used his other hand to unravel the parachute from the branches. He had won.

But now he had another problem; the problem of getting down. He did not have enough left in his tank to make it back through the jungle so the only option was to try to traverse his way down the rocky escarpment that led to the flat rock 30 feet below.

He hung the parachute over his scrawny neck and let the cannister dangle up against his stomach. Thus set, he took a deep breath and started to slide his body down the rock face, braking himself by finding tiny ridges of purchase with his feet below and his hands above. It was a painful and painfully slow descent as he inched down a foot at a time, searching for sufficient grip with his feet before lowering his body.

He was about two-thirds of the way down when his sweaty-covered right foot slipped of its crag and he descended the final feet the by the express method, landing with an agonising, sickening crunching thwack on the narrow shingle rock shoreline. His mouth filled up with blood and chunks of tooth enamel and he slowly opened it wide and let out a primal, excrutiating scream that rose up from the pit of tiny, shrivelled belly and grew and grew until the sound filled the entire universe.

It wasn't until the scream subsided that he felt the burning hot agony emanating from his left arm. He looked down and saw that he had acquired what appeared to be an extra elbow. The arm was already ballooning up and useless. With his good right arm, he pushed his torso upright and felt the nauseating crunch from what were surely a couple of broken ribs.

But, at least, he has his prize. Soon they would come and take him away in a boat and there would be doctors and dentists and splints and all the medical care he needed.

The canister was dented but unbroken. He could see that it has a screw top, like a flask. With his left arm throbbing and useless, he placed the cannister between his knees and held it form between his legs as if in a vice. With his right hand he turned the screw top. It wouldn't budge. Crying with a mixture of elation and frustration, he spat on the seam and rubbed his sweat all around it as a makeshift lubricant. Then, still holding it firmly between his knees, he tried again only this time with an almost manic effort of will. He felt the lid budge and a flood of triumph. He wrenched it again and it unscrewed as smoothly as you like.

Casting the unscrewed lid aside, he reached in and felt something like paper.

A message. Of it's a message. The plane didn't have any supplies and it can't land here, so the pilot dropped a message; a message of hope and encouragement. "We're sending a boat for you. Hang on in there, friend". Yes, something like that.

Marcus fumbled the paper out and saw that it was a long white envelope. On the front were typed these words:

+++++++IMPORTANT MESSAGE++++++++

Despite the burning, debilitating pain, Marcus threw his head back and laughed like a demon. He kissed the envelope like a long-lost lover and clutched it to his heart.

Thank you, God. Thank you, Jesus. Thank you for my life.

Clamping one corner of the envelope between his remaining teeth, he used his right hand to tear it along the top to retrieve the message inside. Even that proved difficult as the paper proved tough and resistant to tearing. But, growling with renewed fury, he managed to tear of entire top portion of the envelope. He spat away the remains and pulled out the folded paper sheet inside which he flipped open. It said:

"Dear Customer,

We have updated our privacy policy. Your information will not be shared with any third-parties. For further details please follow the link below to read our full terms and conditions".

Blood from his mouth sploshed onto the message and, just then, the wind picked up and snatched the sheet from his hand.

It fluttered away over the turbid ocean like a bird.

[Ends].