While sailing with his parents on a boat called The Peggy Sue, Michael is washed overboard, ending up on a remote Pacific island with his dog, Stella. He makes friends with the only other inhabitant, an old man named Kensuke, who has lived on the island for over forty years. Kensuke does not want either of them to leave the island. However, Michael wants to send home a message in a bottle…
For some days, I kept the Coke bottle buried under the sand whilst I wrestled with my conscience or, rather, justified what I wanted to do. It wouldn’t really be a betrayal*, not as such, I told myself. Even if the bottle was found, no one would know where it would come from, they’d just know I was alive. I made up my mind to do it, and do it as soon as I could.
Kensuke had gone off octopus fishing. I had stayed behind to finish a shell painting – or so I had told him. I found an old bed sheet at the bottom of one of his chests and tore away a small corner of it. Then I knelt down at the table, stretched it out and painted my message on it in octopus ink.
To: The Peggy Sue. Fareham. England.
Dear Mum and Dad
I am alive. I am well. I live on an island. I do not know where. Come and find me.
Love
Michael
I ran the entire length of the island, keeping always to the forest, so that there was no chance Kensuke could see where I was going or what I was up to. The gibbons* howled their accusations at me all the way, the entire forest cackling and screeching its condemnation*. I just hoped Stella would not bark back at them, would not betray where I was. Fortunately, she didn’t.
At last, I reached the rocks under Watch Hill. I leaped from rock to rock until I was standing right at the very end of the island, the waves washing over my feet. I looked around me. Stella was the only witness. I hurled the bottle as far out to sea as I possibly could. Then I stood and watched it as it bobbed away and out to sea. It was on its way.
I did not touch my fish soup that night. Kensuke thought I was ill. I could hardly talk to him. I couldn’t look him in the eye. I lay all night in deep torment, racked* by guilt, yet at the same time still hoping against hope that my bottle would be picked up.
Kensuke and I were at our painting the next afternoon when Stella came padding into the cave. She had the Coke bottle in her mouth. She dropped it and looked up at me, panting and pleased with herself.
Kensuke laughed and reached down to pick it up. I think he was about to hand it to me when he noticed there was something inside it. By the way he looked at me I was quite sure he knew at once what it was.
There fell between us a long and aching silence. Kensuke never once reproached* me for what I had done. He was not angry or sullen with me. But I knew I had hurt him to the soul. It wasn’t that we didn’t speak – we did – but we no longer talked to one another as we had before. We lived, each of us, in our separate cocoons, quite civil, always polite, but not together any more.