CHAPTER 28 – CONTROL

I said, “I am willing to help you but I have one condition. I want full control over the ship if we manage to get it back.”

The captain and the other two prisoners agreed and they gave me full control over the ship and over their lives.

We freed the prisoners. Then we went back to the forest. I gave them guns and we started to plan the attack. In the middle of our conversation, we noticed that the sailors who stood guard were woken up. They stood up. They shouted to three other men who were near to them. At that moment, we shot the guards. Then the captain spoke to the three other men. He told them to be loyal to him and help him get back to the ship. They agreed and we tied them and left them on the beach.

The other three men who heard the shots came back. They could see the situation changed. We were five. We had a lot of guns. The situation was bad for them.

They also agreed to be loyal to the captain. We tied these men too.

We hid our six prisoners in the forest. Then I and the captain had finally time to talk to each other. I told him my story and he was shocked. He also thanked me a lot for my help.

He and his two friends were hungry, so we went to my house, where I showed them what I built for myself during my stay on the island. They were amazed by all the things which I had.

However, we didn’t have much time to explore my inventions because we had to plan how to get the ship back. There were sixteen people on board and we were only five.

First we decided to take everything out of the boat. We thought the sailors could send another boat to the island if the men from the first boat didn’t come back with the next high tide.

In the morning we heard the ship fire a gun as a signal for the boat to return. After a while, the ship fired a few times again. There was no response. Then we noticed that the sailors took another boat and went to the beach.

Through my telescope I could see eight men rowing and they were all armed.

We could observe the boat approach us and the captain recognised the sailors. He knew that six of them were still faithful to him, but there was also the man who started the mutiny.  The captain feared that the leader of the mutiny and the other men in the boat would be difficult to defeat, but I told him that we had a good chance of winning. But we had to act quickly.

The captain trusted two of our prisoners. They promised to fight on our side, so we gave them weapons. Prepared this way, with seven men ready to fight on our side, we expected the arrival of the boat.

As soon as it reached the beach, the men jumped out of it and pulled it up the beach. Then they ran to the other boat and were surprised to see it empty. They tried to call their friends. They shouted their names.

Then shot in the air, but it was all useless because nobody shouted back. This surprised the newly arrived sailors even more and they began putting the boat in water again.

It seemed they wanted to go back to the ship to inform the others that some accident happened with the sailors in the first boat.

Observing all this, the captain got scared they would go back to the ship and leave the island altogether. Luckily, during a few seconds the sailors dropped this idea. Now they left three men in the boat and the others went to the forest to look for their friends.

WORDS FROM CHAPTER 28