Yes, yet another chapter. Comments would be appreciated but not needed.
Tim groaned and lay back on the sand. He stared up at the cloudless blue sky as if it were full of threatening grey thunderclouds.
The ship had finally sunk under the horizon and was far out of reach of Tom's device.
"Are you sure you can't get another message?" Ben was asking Tom frantically.
He nodded. "Yes. I'm positive. We're lucky I managed to send that one message, if you must know."
"But if you sent that message," Eliza pointed out, "Then they should be arriving to help us, no?"
The five looked at each other.
"Hang on a second," said Alex, "Can I see that message?"
Tom read it out: "Am stuck on island. Please come back we are running out of food. Ben."
"Why did you sign it Ben?"
"Well he's the one who told me to send it, isn't he?"
Alex groaned and rolled her eyes. "Boys. Honestly, do you have any common sense at all?"
Tom looked at her, hurt. "What do you mean by that?"
Alex opened her mouth to say something but Tim shook his head, breaking the argument before it became a full blown fight.
"They think that Ben's back in London, man. If you signed it Ben they'll just think you're playing a prank on them."
Ben sighed. "Tim's right. I don't exactly have the best track record with my brother."
Alex half smiled. "Come to think of it, does anyone?"
Four heads shook.
"Sorry guys, it's all my fault" Tom wasn't to be consoled.
"It's not your fault" Eliza told him.
"But I should have remembered…"
"But you didn't" Ben said, rather matter-of-factly. "You forgot, and what's done is done. No use crying over spilled milk. Um… does anyone else have nay more figures of speech I forgot to include?"
Nobody did. The five of them lay there for a while in silence until Eliza broke it.
"But what are we going to do now?"
There was silence. Then Ben realised something.
'Hey! Why are you all looking at me?"
No one said anything, so he sighed and shook his head.
"Alright" he said. "Here's what we've got to do."
He paused and looked around, apparently deep in thought.
"We're going to carry on as we did at the other camp" he said after a long moment. "Time, we need another shelter. Eliza, can you keep the fire going and go through the supplies we've got? Alex, we need water. You know how to find it, right?"
She nodded.
"Then go find some – we're running out. Tom, stay here and watch her with Flyspy. I need you two to agree on signals in case she gets lost or if something happens down here. I'll help Tim and Alex."
Like one well trained organism with many separate bodies and a hive mind, the group scattered.
So it was that when help finally arrived, almost a day later, the five of them were sitting round a campfire toasting invisible marshmallows. Also known as not toasting anything, but Alex had insisted that they put the sticks in anyway, just for the look of it.
The 'rescuers' got a bit of a shock when they landed to find them relaxed in front of the fire, and were even more surprised when Tim waved them over and offered them some soup.
"It's not very good" he added, almost apologetically, "but it's better than what Alex tried to make."
"Hey!" exclaimed both Alex and Eliza, both of whom, as the girls, had been naturally been ordered to do the cooking in an example of gender-inequality. The boys had regretted this when they found out that, despite the stereotypes, neither of the girls was actually a very good cook. Eliza was okay, but Alex… it turned out that she could burn water.
They glanced at each other and advanced on Tim slowly and menacingly. Tom nudged Ben, and the two of them crept backwards. And collided with Hex and Li.
"Uh oh" groaned Tom.
Ben looked to see his friend being held captive by his brother. "Hey Tom!"
"Yeah?"
"Switch siblings!"
In perfect synchronisation, almost as if they'd practised it, the two of them darted forward and ran away. Or that was the plan. Instead, they just found themselves being restrained by their own siblings this time.
"Mum is going to be so angry…" Hex told Ben. "What do you think you were doing?"
For once, the bookworm was lost for words.
Eventually, the whole story came out. Alpha Force learned of how their sibling were spying on them, while the aforementioned siblings learned of how they had been found.
Once they had received Tom's message, the team had suspected that something was up. Hex was sure it was just Ben playing a prank, but he emailed home to make sure. In reply, he received a bemused message from his mother saying she was sure Ben was with 'that nice blond girl from Northumberland. You know her brother. He was with you on that ship.'
Since Alex was the only one Hex knew who fit that description, Alex checked home only to find that his sister had flown to visit a 'pen pal in Argentina'. When he wondered who this pen pal was and why it was safe to let Alex visit there, he learned that she was the 'sister of that Paulo boy you spend all of your holidays with'.
Beginning to smell a rat, Paulo checked home and found out that his sister was staying in Northumberland too, only she wasn't.
Now Alpha Force had begun to put the pieces together. They had called John Middleton, explained the situation and had politely asked to borrow enough money to hire a helicopter. Stopping only to pick up the parents of Tim and Tom, they had flown back to the island, to find the lost people calmly sitting around a campfire.
So the five of them climbed into the helicopter and flew home, where they wee eventually left to look after themselves for the few days left until they were due to fly home. Of course, Alpha Force had also left them with a strict warning about not getting up to any mischief and getting home before five.
So now the five of them were stuck worrying about how much trouble they'd get in when they got home, and complaining about how unfair it was that Alpha Force got away with having all the fun and they just got grounded.
People will be people, after all.