Alex shook his head at Li, pretending to be irritated, but secretly he was pleased to hear her laugh. 'That condom will hold up to a litre of water, Li. It makes a good water-bag in an emergency.' He took the lid from his shirt pocket and closed up the tin. Then he sealed the join once more with the waterproof tape.

'Shouldn't you keep that handy for signalling?' asked Paulo.

'It's more important to keep the tin dry,' said Alex, carefully packing the tin away in his belt pouch. 'I'll be able to reach it quickly enough when we need it. So,' he continued, 'we already have one signalling device to attract attention if a ship or a plane comes along, but we'd better check the stern lockers too. Li and Paulo, have a look, will you? You never know, we might find some flares or an air-horn.'

'Yeah, right,' said Amber, her voice full of mockery. 'Would you like to ask the wish fairy for a VHF radio while you're at it? Or a transponder? Maybe even a satellite EPIRB? Then the wish-fairy helicopter will pinpoint our signal and-'

'Shut up, will you?' said Hex.

'This is not a lifeboat, OK? It's a small, open boat which is only ever used for ship-to-shore hops within full sight of land. We are not going to find any communications equipment aboard this boat.'

'Speaking of communications equipment,' growled Hex. 'If you hadn't thrown my palmtop overboard, I could be sending an e-mail SOS right now!'

'Yeah, right,' sneered Amber. 'From the middle of the Java Sea.'

'It was state of the art. It had infra-red connections-'

'You have to be near the coast for that to work-'

'It was working on the Phoenix , until you-'

'That's enough!' snapped Alex. 'You two have to stop this. Understand? We are in a survival situation now. Everything depends on our sticking together. Hex, don't mention your palmtop again. No point. It's gone. Amber, you need to stop being so negative.'

'I'm only saying, they won't find anything,' muttered Amber.

'Found something,' called Li. She pulled a plastic sack from the locker. It was full of lumpy shapes and thudded heavily onto the boards in the bottom of the boat. Alex leaned forward as Li struggled with the knot which tied the neck of the sack. Maybe, just maybe, they were in luck.

'This must be one of your knots, Paulo,' said Li, still struggling to untie the sack.

'Ah, yes,' said Paulo, rubbing his nose in embarrassment. 'That is one of my knots.'

'You untie it then,' said Li, shoving the sack towards him.

'No need,' said Paulo. 'I know what is in there.'

'What?' asked Alex, feeling his heart sink.

'Boots,' said Paulo.

'Boots?' repeated Li. 'No air-horn? No flares?'

'Our boots and socks,' explained Paulo. 'The ones we wore in the swamp, on the last island.'

'The dirty ones Heather told you to clean,' said Alex.

Paulo looked stricken. 'I did not want to clean them. So I hid them.'

Everyone groaned and slumped back in the boat.

'Sorry,' whispered Paulo. 'Sorry it was not a radio.'

No-one answered. The creaking of the boat seemed loud in the growing silence. Alex looked around at the other four. He could see that this small set-back had cancelled out the boost in morale he had managed to achieve. They were back to being very frightened but they were all showing it in different ways. Li was about to cry, Amber looked ready to kill someone, Hex had withdrawn into himself and Paulo was a picture of guilt and misery. Alex had to admit he was feeling pretty scared, too. His heart was beating fast and he could feel the adrenalin surging through his bloodstream. He knew that it would be fatal to let this sort of bad atmosphere develop, but he was at a loss for words.

It was Paulo who recovered first. He took a deep breath and sat up straight. 'It is good we have our boots,' he said. 'We will need them when we make land.'

'There is no land,' said Li, her voice wobbly with tears. 'Anywhere.'

'Yes there is,' said Paulo, reassuringly. 'This whole area is dotted with thousands of islands. We just cannot see any at the moment, that is all.'

Amber leaned over, hooked the little compass out of Alex's shirt pocket and waited for the needle to settle. After a few seconds, she nodded to Alex. 'We were right, this is a northerly current.'

'We're moving at a good pace,' said Alex. 'I reckon if we just let it carry us for a while, we're sure to come across an island group. And when we do, we can row ashore.'

Alex pointed to the oars, which were tucked under the thwarts on one side of the boat and smiled at Li. She tried a wobbly smile in return.

'In the meantime,' said Paulo, calmly, 'we have Amber as our navigator, but we need a leader. Alex, you have a good survival knowledge, yes?'

'My dad taught me a lot,' said Alex. 'He's in the SAS.'

'Then I nominate you as our leader for now,' said Paulo. He looked questioningly at the other three and, one by one, they nodded their agreement.

Alex looked around the little boat. 'First,' he said, 'we need to get organized. Li, store that sack of boots back in the locker. Hex, get that painter coiled and stowed away too. Amber, you fold the bunk blankets and store them with the boots for now. Paulo, you and I are going to unload these rucksacks to see what we have left in the way of supplies.'

'Maybe we could rig up some shade from the sun with one of these blankets,' suggested Li.

Alex looked around, assessing the situation. Everyone was dressed in shirts, shorts and deck shoes and only he and Hex were wearing caps. It was true that they were all well used to the tropical sun after a week on the Phoenix , but an open boat offered no shade at all. Everyone was sweating hard in the humid heat and losing precious moisture. He nodded. 'Good idea. You could wedge the end of one of the oars under the stern thwart and then drape the blanket over it.'

They set about their tasks willingly, glad to be busy. The rucksacks yielded three cans of lemonade, a large plastic bottle of water, a bagful of apples and bananas and a box of cereal bars. Alex put the food into one rucksack and the drink into the other, while Paulo checked the contents of the two storage tins.

'We still have some rice in there,' he said, handing the tin to Alex. 'All the chicken has gone, though.'

Alex bent to pack the rice tin into the food rucksack and Paulo emptied the chicken bones from the other tin into the sea.

'It is a good container,' said Paulo, waving the empty tin. 'I will give it a wash.'

Paulo leaned far out over the side and dipped the tin into the sea. A rush of water gushed in to fill it, taking him by surprise. The tin started to sink and Paulo lunged forward to get a better hold on it. The little boat rocked violently as he lost his balance and started to topple overboard.

'Careful!' said Alex, grabbing Paulo by the back of his T-shirt. Amber plunged her arm into the sea and took hold of the lid of the submerged tin before Paulo lost his grip.

'Gotcha!' said Amber. 'C'mon, Paulo. Pull!'

Together they hauled the tin back to the surface and something huge and grey came out of the depths after it. They both froze, their heads hanging just above the sea as a wedge-shaped snout broke the surface, followed by a gaping mouth with rows of sharp, serrated teeth. They were close enough to see the shreds of white flesh caught up in the teeth and smell the stink of decaying meat. A dead, black eye regarded them coldly for an instant before rolling up into its socket as the shark turned onto one side, preparing to bite. The snout angled upwards, making the mouth gape wider and pushing the upper jaw forward.

'Drop the tin!' yelled Li. 'It's a shark!'