Everyone seemed rather subdued and tense that morning. No one had slept well, being kept awake by thoughts and fears as well as more practical discomfort. Most of them were tired and disinclined to do anything strenuous like collecting firewood or finding food. But the supplies from the plane were nearly used up, and they were starting to get worried about where their next meal would come from.
And yet the morning was practically wasted. After that bright dawn the sky had turned overcast and grey, and Ruth felt that there was a storm in the air. A few people made a half-hearted attempt to collect some more fruit but all that was easy to reach had been collected yesterday and it was difficult to know what was edible and what wasn't. Besides, Ruth thought, they couldn't live for any length of time on fruit alone.
She looked round. Nick, Jack, David and Ernest were gathered round the fire, still arguing about the best way to make a bigger, better shelter, and drawing diagrams in the sand. Some of the others were there too, listening but doing nothing to help. Others were still sleeping, or at least dozing, in the shelter or in the shade at the edge of the forest. Patrick had wandered off after everyone else had begun to wake up- she did not know where he had gone.
Ruth felt frustrated. No one seemed to be taking this seriously, to face the fact that unless they were rescued today they were in serious trouble. The longer they went without proper food the weaker they would become and the harder it would be to find the energy needed to collect food. People would get ill and depressed. If their rescue was delayed for any reason it might come too late for some of them. She tried to calm down by telling herself that they had all had a shock yesterday, that everyone was tired and afraid and uncertain what to do. But something had to be done, and done soon.
She carried the armfull of fruit she and Rachel had been able to gather back to the fire. The techies were still arguing about how to make the shelter waterproof and seemed no nearer to a conclusion or to starting work.
"It's just as well we built one last night or we'd have been sleeping outside," Rachel said to Ruth. Ruth didn't comment. She was trying to resist the urge to shout at the techies to just get on with it- something she had frequently felt during setbuilding sessions back in York, but even more now where more than the look of the next show was at stake. She sighed. Tom had also returned and was sitting nearby, obviously as uncomfortable as she was. They exchanged a glance that showed they were thinking along the same lines.
Quite a few people were now hanging around the fire. Ruth could feel the tension in the air. People weren't sure what to do. They needed to be told, to be led. But she knew that wasn't a role for her. She was an administrator, not a crisis leader. No one would listen to her, she didn't have sufficient respect. She couldn't stand it any longer. Leaving the others to it, she slipped away alone again.
She wandered away from the camp and headed down towards the sea, still thinking about their situation. Bad as it was, it could have been so much worse. From here, the sea looked pleasant and peaceful, but if they had been forced to land in the ocean rather than on an island, she knew that their chances of survival would have been much slimmer.
She heard a shout coming from the direction of the crash site. A shout of fear, quickly echoed by a chorus of other shouts and a scream. She ran back towards the noise. Before she had taken many steps there was a huge crash.
It wasn't until afterwards that she found out exactly what had happened. The techies and some of the others had gone to the crash site to look at what was left of the plane and see whether any of it was salvageable to use in their shelter. The techies had found some more of their tools. While they continued searching the plane, Matt and Kat had taken a couple of saws and begun to test them on a nearby tree. Apparently there had been an argument about whether their tools were good enough to cut down a whole tree, and Matt was determined to prove his point.
Until the tree started to sway, no one had noticed that the direction it would fall. Afterwards Matt insisted that it should have fallen the other way. Whatever, by the time they saw it begin to sway it was too late. Slowly at first, but gathering momentum as the remaining fibres of its' trunk broke under the strain, it began to descend towards the fragile remaining shell of the plane.
It was Tom who saw it and shouted out to warn those inside the plane of the danger. Nick and Jack scrambled clear just in time. Rick, his arm still in a sling, had been stood between the tree and the wreck of the plane and was fortunate to be missed by the main trunk, although a stray branch did catch him on the head and cause him to fall awkwardly to the ground.
By the time Ruth got there everyone was talking noisily about what had happened, in reaction to the shock. Half a dozen people, Rachel first among them, tried to tell her what had happened. Rick was sitting down, rather dazed, and Nick, Jack and Alex were looking at the damage the fall had caused. Where it had struck the plane the metal had been crushed and contorted almost through to the floor of the plane. Anyone underneath at that moment could easily have been severely injured or even killed.
Ruth went over to Nick and the others. "That was close," Jack was saying.
"Matt and the others should have waited, or gone further away," Nick replied. "But he wanted to prove his point..."
"Without you guys we'd be in trouble," Ruth said. "We need you if we're going to be able to fix the radio and get rescued. But people don't know what to do- they need organising."
"I think you're right," Nick said, as Alex nodded and Jack shrugged in agreement. "We'd better get things sorted out."
The story continues...
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