Kensuke’s Kingdom

by Michael Morpurgo

Chapter 4
Gibbons and
ghosts.
 Chapter 4, page 1
The terrors came fast, one upon another. The lights of Peggy Sue went away into
the dark leaving me alone in the ocean. They were too far away to hear my cries of
help.

I knew there was no hope, I could be eaten alive by sharks or drown slowly.

I trod water looking for something to swim towards. Then suddenly a glimpse of
white in the sea. Stella! It had to be. I called out and swam towards her, I was so
relieved to not be all alone. She kept bobbing away from me. After several minutes
of swimming I got close enough to reach out for her.
Only then did I realise my mistake it wasn’t Stella , it was my football.
 Chapter 4, page 2

I grabbed the football and clung on, feeling the wonderful

buoyancy. I held on, treading water and calling for Stella.
I called and called but there was no answer. Every time I
opened my mouth the seawater washed in. I had to give her
up, and save myself if I could.
I would cling to my football, tread water gently and wait for
Peggy Sue to come back. Sooner or later they would come
looking for me. I mustn’t kick too much, just enough to keep
my head above water. I didn’t want to attract sharks.
Morning must come soon, the water wasn’t that cold and I had
my football. I had a chance.
I kept telling myself that over and over again. I was slowly
getting very cold. I tried singing to stop myself shivering and
thinking of sharks.
I sang every song I knew but after a while I’d forget the
words, so just sang ‘Ten Green Bottles’ as I knew I could
finish it. I sang out loud again and again.
 Chapter 4, page 3

Eventually I fell silent and my legs would not kick any more.
I clung on to my football, my head drifting into sleep. I knew I must stay awake,
but I couldn’t help myself. My hands kept slipping off the ball.
I would go down, down to the bottom of the sea and lie in my grave amongst the
seaweed, sailors’ bones and shipwrecks.

The strange thing was I didn’t really mind.

Chapter 1
I floated away into sleep, into my dreams.

I dreamt I saw Peggy Sue, I knew they would come back for me. I was hauled up
out of the water by strong arms. Someone was bending over me talking. I could not
understand a word they said. I felt Stella’s breath on my face, her tongue licking
my ear.
She was safe. I was Safe.
 Chapter 4, page 4.

I was woken by a howling, like a gale through the masts. I looked about me. There
were no masts, no sails. No movement under me. Stella was barking, but some way
off. I was not on a boat, but laying stretched out on sand.
The howling became a screaming, a fearful crescendo of screeching that died away
in its own echoes.
I sat up. I was on a beach, a broad white sweep of sand, with trees growing thick
and lush behind me.

Then I saw Stella prancing about in the shallows. I called

and she came bounding out of the sea to greet me, her tail
wagging wildly. When all the leaping and licking and hugging
were done, I struggled to my feet.
 Chapter 4, page 5.

I was weak all over. I looked about me. The wide blue sea
was empty. No Peggy Sue. No boat. Nothing.
I called again and again for my mother and my father. I
called until the tears came and I could call no more.
I stood trying to work out how I had got here. I must have
clung to my football and kept afloat until I was washed up
onto the beach. I thought about my football then, but it was
no where to be seen.
Stella was unconcerned and kept bringing me sticks to
throw, and would go galloping off into the sea after them,
without a care in the world.
Then came the howling again from the trees, and the
hackles went up on Stella’s neck. She charged up the beach
barking, until she was sure she had silenced the last of the
echoes. It was a musical, plaintive howling this time, not at
all menacing.
I had heard howling like it on a visit to London Zoo. Gibbons,
‘funky gibbons’, my father had called them.
 Chapter 4, page 6
“It’s only Gibbons,“ I told Stella, “just funky gibbons. They won’t hurt us.” But I
couldn’t be at all sure I was right.

From where I now stood I could see that the forest grew more sparsely up the side
of a great hill some way inland, and it occurred to me that if I could reach the bare
rocky outcrop at the summit, I would be able to see further out to sea.

Or perhaps there’d be a house or farm further inland, or maybe a road and I could
find someone to help. But if I left the beach and they came looking for me, What
then? I decided I would have to take that chance.
 Chapter 4, page 7

I set off at a run, Stella Artois at my heels and soon

found myself in the cooling shade of the forest. I found
a narrow track going up hill, in the right direction I
thought.
I followed it, only slowing to a walk when the hill became
too steep. The forest was alive with creatures. Birds
cackled and screeched high above me, and always the
howling wailed and wafted through the trees, but more
distantly now.
It wasn’t the sounds of the forest that bothered me, it
was the eyes. I felt as if I was being watched by a
thousand inquisitive eyes. I think Stella did too. She had
been very quiet since entering the forest, and constantly
glancing up at me for reassurance and comfort. I did my
best to give it, but she could sense that I, too, was
frightened.
What had seemed like a short hike now felt more like a
great expedition into the interior. We emerged
exhausted from the trees, clambered up the rocky scree
and stood at last on the peak.
 Chapter 4, page 8

The sun was blazing down. I had not really felt the heat
of it until then.
I scanned the horizon. If there was a sail out there I
could not see it. Then it came to me that even if I were
to see a sail, what could I do? I couldn’t light a fire. I
had no matches.
I knew about cavemen rubbing sticks together to light a
fire but I had never tried it.
I looked all around me now. Sea. Sea. Sea. Nothing but
sea on all sides. I was on an Island. I was alone.

The island looked perhaps two or three miles in length. It

was shaped like a elongated peanut, but longer one end
than the other.
There were brilliant white beaches on both sides, and at
the far end another hill, the slopes steeper and more
thickly wooded than mine but not so high. Other than the
peaks the whole island was covered in forest. So far as I
could see there was no sign of human life.
 Chapter 4, page 9

Even then, as I stood there on that first morning, filled

with apprehension at the terrifying implications of my
dreadful situation, I remember thinking how wonderful it
was, a green jewel of an island framed in white, the sea all
about it.
I was not down hearted but felt strangely elated and
happy. I was alive. Stella Artois was alive. We had
survived.
“We’ll be alright,” I told Stella. “Mum and Dad, they’ll
come back for us. Mum will get better and they’ll come
back. She won’t just leave us here. She’ll find us you’ll
see. All we have to do is keep a look out for them and
stay alive.”
“Water we will need. But so do monkeys, right? We’ve
just got to find it, that’s all.”
“And there must be food too, fruit or nuts, something
Whatever it is they eat, we’ll eat.”
 Chapter 4, page 10

It helped to speak my thoughts out loud to Stella ,it

helped stop me panicking. More than anything it was
Stella’s companionship that helped me through those first
few hours on the island.
I decided to explore the shoreline first, to be honest I
was too frightened to plunge into the forest. I might
come across a stream flowing out into the sea, and with
luck something to eat.
I set off in good spirits leaping down the scree like a
mountain goat. Where monkeys lived so could we. I kept
telling myself that.
I soon discovered there was nothing edible on the track
down. There were coconuts but the trees were impossible
to climb. Some were two hundred feet tall. I had never
seen such giant trees.
 Chapter 4, page 11

At least the intertwining canopy did provide welcome

relief from the heat of the day. All the same, I was
becoming desperately parched now and so was Stella.
She padded along side me all the way, her tongue hanging.
She kept giving me baleful looks, but there was no
comfort I could give her.
We found our beach once again, then set off round the
island, keeping wherever possible to the edge of the
forest to keep in the shade.
We found no stream. The fruit I saw was too high up and
the trees too smooth to climb.
I found plenty of coconuts on the ground, but they were
always cracked open and empty inside.
When the beach ended, we had to go into the forest
itself.
I found a narrow path to follow. The forest became
impenetrable at this point, dark and menacing.
 Chapter 4, page 12

There was no howling any more, but something infinitely

more sinister; the shiver of leaves, the cracking of twigs,
sudden surreptitious rustlings, and they were near me all
around me. I knew, I was quite sure now, that eyes were
watching us. We were being followed.
I hurried on, swallowing my fear as best I could. I
thought of the gibbons I had seen in the zoo, they looked
harmless. They’d leave us alone, they weren’t man eaters.
As the rustlings got closer, I found it harder and harder
to convince myself. I began to run, and kept running till
the track brought us out onto rocks, back into the light of
day, and there was the sea again.
This end of the island appeared to be littered with
massive boulders that lay like tumbled cliffs all along the
coast.
We leaped from one to the other, and all the time kept a
keen eye out for the trickle of a stream coming down
through the rocks, but I found none.
 Chapter 4, page 13

I was exhausted by now. I sat down to rest, my mouth

dry, my head throbbing. I was racked with desperate
thoughts. I would die of thirst. I would be torn limb
from limb by the monkeys.
Stella’s eyes looked into mine. “There’s got to be water,”
I told her. ‘‘There’s got to be.” So said her eyes, what
are you doing sitting here feeling sorry for yourself?
I forced myself to my feet and went on. The water in the
rockpools was so cool, so tempting. I tasted it, but it was
salty and brackish. I spat it out at once. You went mad if
you drank it. I knew that much.
The sun was already low in the sky by the time we
reached the beach on the other side of the island. We
were only half way round by my reckoning. The island was
alot bigger than it looked from the top of the hill that
morning.
I had found no water and nothing to eat. I could go no
further, and neither could Stella. She lay stretched out
beside me on the sand, panting her heart out.
 Chapter 4, page 14

We would have to stay where we were for the night. I

dared not venture into the forest with the shadow of
night falling.
The howling started up again far away in the forest. The
whole orchestra of the jungle was tuning up. But it wasn’t
the sounds that frightened me, it was those phantom
eyes.
I wanted to be as far as possible from those eyes. I
found a small cave at one end of the beach with a dry
sandy floor.
I lay down and tried to sleep, but Stella would not let me.
She whined at me in the pain of her hunger and thirst, so
I slept only fitfully.
The jungle droned, cackled and croaked, and all night long
the mosquitos were at me too. I held my hands over my
ears to shut out the sound.
I curled myself round Stella, tried to forget where I was,
to lose myself in my dreams.
 Chapter 4, page 15

I remembered then that it was my birthday, and I

thought of my last birthday back at home with Eddie
Matt, and the barbecue we’d had in the garden, how the
sausages had smelled so good. I slept at last.

The next morning I woke cold and hungry and shivering,

and bitten all over. It took some moments to remember
where I was and what had happened. I was suddenly
overwhelmed by one cruel reality after another.
My utter aloneness, my separation from my mother and
father, and the dangers all around me.
I cried aloud in my misery, until I saw that Stella was
gone. I called for her, I listened but only gibbons howled
in reply.
Then I turned and saw her she was up on the rocks above
the cave, half hidden from me, but even so I could see
her head was down. She was clearly intent on something.
I clambered up to find out what it was.
 Chapter 4, page 16

I heard her drinking before I got there, lapping noisily

as she always did. She didn’t even look up as I
approached. Then I saw she was drinking from a bowl, a
battered tin bowl.
Then I noticed something strange up on a flat shelf of
rock above her.
I left Stella to her water feast and climbed up further
to investigate. Another bowl of water and beside it,
palm leaves laid out on the rock and half covered with
an unturned tin.

I sat down and drank the water without pause for

breath. Water had never tasted so wonderful as it did
then. I lifted aside the tin. Fish! Thin strips of
translucent white fish, dozens of them laid out neatly in
rows on the palm leaves.
And five, six, seven small red bananas. Red bananas.
 Chapter 4, page 17

I ate the fish first, savouring each precious strip. But

even as I ate I was looking around me, looking for a tell
tale trembling of leaves at the edge of the forest, or a
trail of footprints in the sand. I could see none.
Yet some one had brought me this food. Someone must
be there, someone watching me. I wasn’t sure whether
to be fearful or overjoyed.
Stella was whimpering pitifully at me from the rock
below, and I knew it wasn’t love or comfort she was
after. She caught every strip of fish I threw her,
snaffled it in one gulp and waited for the next piece.
After that it was one for me, one for her.
Her beseeching eyes wouldn’t let me do otherwise.

The fish was raw but I didn’t mind. I was too hungry to
mind, and so was Stella. I kept the bananas for myself,
I ate them all. They weren’t like bananas back home,
they were much sweeter and juicier, much more
delicious. I could have eaten dozens more.
 Chapter 4, page 18

Once I finished I stood up and scanned the forest, who

ever had put the food there must be nearby.
I put my hands to my mouth and called out again and
again “Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!”
My words echoed round the island. Suddenly the forest
was alive again with noise, singing, hooting, howling,
cawing and croaking. Stella barked wildly back at it.
As for me I suddenly felt exhilarated, elated,
ecstatically happy. I jumped up and down laughing, until
my laughter turned into tears of joy. I was not alone.
They must be friendly or the wouldn’t have fed us. But
why wouldn’t they show themselves?
They would have to come back for the bowls, I thought.
I would leave a message on the rock beside the bowls.
I found a sharp stone, knelt down and scraped out my
message. ‘Thank you. My name is Michael. I fell off a
boat. Who are you?’
 Chapter 4, page 19

After that I decided to stay on the beach all day, and

stay close to the cave and rock. I would at least be
able to see who it was that had helped me.
Stella ran on ahead and into the sea. I plunged in and
whooped and splashed, Stella just cruised steadily on.
She always looked so serious when she swam, chin up
and paddling purposefully.
The sea was balmy and calm, but I didn’t dare go out of
my depth. I’d had enough of that for a life time. I
came out clean and refreshed a new person. The sea
was a great healer, my bites were still there, but they
didn’t burn any more.
I decide to explore further along the beach, right to
the end if I could keep the cave in view.
There were shells here, millions of them, golden and
pink in long lines along the beach.
 Chapter 4, page 20

I came across what looked like a flat rock. Stella was

scrabbling excitedly at it. It turned out to be a long
sheet of rusted metal – all that was left of the side of
a ship’s hull, now sunk deep in the sand.
Had some terrible storm driven her onto the island?
How Long ago? Were there any survivors? Could any of
them still be here?
I noticed a fragment of clear glass lying in the sand
nearby. It was too hot to handle. It came to me in a
flash. Eddie had showed me how to do it. A piece of
paper, a bit of glass and the sun. We made fire.
I didn’t have any paper but leaves would do. I ran up
the beach and gathered twigs, bits of cane, all sorts of
leaves, all tinder dry.
I made a small pile on the sand. I held my piece of glass
close to the leaves and angled it at the sun.
If only I could light a fire. I could sleep by it at night –
it would keep the flies and animals away. And sooner or
later, a ship would come by and someone would spot the
smoke.
 Chapter 4, page 21

I sat and sat, Stella wanted to play but I pushed her

away. In the end she went off and stretched out under
the shade of the palm trees.
The sun was roasting hot, but nothing happened. My
arm began to ache, so I made a frame to hold the glass.
Still nothing.
All of a sudden Stella sprang up, a deep growl in her
throat. She turned and ran towards me, barking in fury
at the forest. Then I saw what it was that had
disturbed her.
A shadow under the trees moved and came lumbering
out towards us. A monkey a giant monkey. It moved
slowly on all fours, and was ginger brown.
An orang-utan, I was sure of it. He sat down a few feet
from me, and considered me. I dared not move. When
he had seen enough he scratched his neck, turned and
on all fours made his way back into the forest.
I had seen a Clint Eastwood film with an orang-utan.
That one had been friendly. I just hoped this one would
be the same.
 Chapter 4, page 22

Then I saw smoke. I smelled smoke. There was a glow

in my pile of leaves. I crouched down and blew gently.
The glow became flames. I put on more leaves. I had a
fire! I had a fire!
I ran into the forest and collected all the wood and
leaves I could find. Back and forth I went till my fire
was crackling like an inferno.
Sparks were flying into the air, smoke rising into the
trees behind me. I could not rest now, the fire would
need more wood, bigger branches even. I had to have
enough to keep it going. My pile of wood grew huge.
Stella waited for me by the fire , she would not come
into the forest. I knew she was frightened of the
orang-utan.
I was coming out of the trees when I realised there was
less smoke and no flames at all. Then I saw him the
orang-utan. He was crouching down and scooping sand
onto my fire. He stood up and came towards me out of
the smoke. He was not an orang-utan at all.
He was a man.