to build a home for just him and his daughter, because he knew now that Nim’s mother had stayed down at the bottom of the sea.
Like a mermaid, Nim thought.
He built a hut of driftwood logs and good strong branches, with a palm-thatched roof and a hard dirt floor. He put up a satellite dish, and a solar panel to charge the batteries for a torch, a mobile phone and a laptop computer.
He made sleeping mats stuffed with rustling palm fronds, a table and two stools, a desk, bookcases and shelves for his science stuff, coconut-shell bowls and sea-shell plates. He dug a vegetable garden in the rich soil at Fire Mountain’s base and planted avocados, bananas, lettuce, oranges, pineapples, strawberries, sweet potatoes and tomatoes, and bamboo for making pipes and useful things.
Then he went on being a scientist, and when Nim got older, she helped him. They read what the barometer said, measured how much rain fell every day and how strong the winds were, how high the high tides reached and how low the low tides fell, and then they marked the measurements on a clean white chart with a dark-blue texta.
They studied the plants that grew on the island and the animals that lived there. They put blue bands on the birds’ legs and wrote down the numbers so Jack could rememberthe birds’ birthdays and who their mothers and fathers were. (Nim remembered anyway.)
Sometimes Jack wrote articles about the weather and the plants and animals, and emailed them to science magazines and universities, and sometimes people emailed him questions to answer. He would tell them about tropical storms and iguanas and seaweed, but he would never tell them where the island was, in case the Troppo Tourists ever found it, because Jack hated the Troppo Tourists worse than sea-snakes or scorpions. Only the supply ship—which came once a year to bring them books and paper, flour and yeast, nails and cloth and the other things they couldn’t make themselves—knew where they lived. It was too big to weave its way through the reef, so Jack and Nim always sailed out to meet it, and the ship’s captain never saw just how beautiful the island was.
And every day, no matter how excited Jack got about finding a new kind of sea-shell or butterfly, they looked after their garden; they watered it if it was dry, weeded the weeds and picked what was ripe. Jack built a three-sided shed for the tools, with a hook for the bananas and his big machete to cut them with. The machete was Nim’s favourite tool.
When they’d looked after the garden and fished for dinner and checked the beaches for driftwood or bottles or anything else that might have floated in on the tide, Nim had school.
That was what they called it, but it wasn’t inside and it wasn’t at a desk. They sat on the beach in the dark to study the stars, and climbed cliffs to see birds in their nests. Nim learned the language of dolphins, about the tiny crabs that float out to sea on their coconut homes, and how to watch the clouds and listen to the wind.
Sometimes for a whole day they talked in sea lion grunts or frigate-bird squawks or plankton wiggles.
Jack loved plankton. Nim’s favourites were the ones that shone bright in the sea at night, but Jack loved them all, because they were so little, and so important because little fish ate them and bigger fish ate the little fish and the biggest fish ate the bigger fish, and there wouldn’t have been any fish at all if it wasn’t for plankton.
But Nim liked animals that you could see, and have fun with, so when Jack had said he was going sailing for three days to collect plankton, Nim had decided to stay home.
‘I’ll phone every night at sunset,’ said Jack. ‘And then you can check the email. If you don’t hear from me or see me for three days, send an SOS.’
But Nim knew that Jack would be okay because he was the best sailor on the ocean, and Jack knew that Nim would be okay because Selkie was always with her, and Selkie sometimes forgot
Like a mermaid, Nim thought.
He built a hut of driftwood logs and good strong branches, with a palm-thatched roof and a hard dirt floor. He put up a satellite dish, and a solar panel to charge the batteries for a torch, a mobile phone and a laptop computer.
He made sleeping mats stuffed with rustling palm fronds, a table and two stools, a desk, bookcases and shelves for his science stuff, coconut-shell bowls and sea-shell plates. He dug a vegetable garden in the rich soil at Fire Mountain’s base and planted avocados, bananas, lettuce, oranges, pineapples, strawberries, sweet potatoes and tomatoes, and bamboo for making pipes and useful things.
Then he went on being a scientist, and when Nim got older, she helped him. They read what the barometer said, measured how much rain fell every day and how strong the winds were, how high the high tides reached and how low the low tides fell, and then they marked the measurements on a clean white chart with a dark-blue texta.
They studied the plants that grew on the island and the animals that lived there. They put blue bands on the birds’ legs and wrote down the numbers so Jack could rememberthe birds’ birthdays and who their mothers and fathers were. (Nim remembered anyway.)
Sometimes Jack wrote articles about the weather and the plants and animals, and emailed them to science magazines and universities, and sometimes people emailed him questions to answer. He would tell them about tropical storms and iguanas and seaweed, but he would never tell them where the island was, in case the Troppo Tourists ever found it, because Jack hated the Troppo Tourists worse than sea-snakes or scorpions. Only the supply ship—which came once a year to bring them books and paper, flour and yeast, nails and cloth and the other things they couldn’t make themselves—knew where they lived. It was too big to weave its way through the reef, so Jack and Nim always sailed out to meet it, and the ship’s captain never saw just how beautiful the island was.
And every day, no matter how excited Jack got about finding a new kind of sea-shell or butterfly, they looked after their garden; they watered it if it was dry, weeded the weeds and picked what was ripe. Jack built a three-sided shed for the tools, with a hook for the bananas and his big machete to cut them with. The machete was Nim’s favourite tool.
When they’d looked after the garden and fished for dinner and checked the beaches for driftwood or bottles or anything else that might have floated in on the tide, Nim had school.
That was what they called it, but it wasn’t inside and it wasn’t at a desk. They sat on the beach in the dark to study the stars, and climbed cliffs to see birds in their nests. Nim learned the language of dolphins, about the tiny crabs that float out to sea on their coconut homes, and how to watch the clouds and listen to the wind.
Sometimes for a whole day they talked in sea lion grunts or frigate-bird squawks or plankton wiggles.
Jack loved plankton. Nim’s favourites were the ones that shone bright in the sea at night, but Jack loved them all, because they were so little, and so important because little fish ate them and bigger fish ate the little fish and the biggest fish ate the bigger fish, and there wouldn’t have been any fish at all if it wasn’t for plankton.
But Nim liked animals that you could see, and have fun with, so when Jack had said he was going sailing for three days to collect plankton, Nim had decided to stay home.
‘I’ll phone every night at sunset,’ said Jack. ‘And then you can check the email. If you don’t hear from me or see me for three days, send an SOS.’
But Nim knew that Jack would be okay because he was the best sailor on the ocean, and Jack knew that Nim would be okay because Selkie was always with her, and Selkie sometimes forgot
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