Nim's Island: Chapters 3–7

Dear Jack Rusoe,
Your article “The Life Cycle of the Coconut Palm” was as fascinating as a feature film and as fact-filled as a documentary!

She mixed up dough to make some bread. It grew swollen and puffy and she punched it hard in the middle, oofing the air out of the puffiness and the knot out of herself. She punched and rolled it, over and over, till her arms were floppy and the doughball was smooth. Then she wrapped it in a fresh banana leaf and carried it to the Hissing Stones, where Fire Mountain met the rocks of Keyhole Cove, and fountains of steamy water sometimes shot high and wild into the air.

“We correspond by e-mail,” she says.

Far, far out in the ocean, a sailboat drifted. On its deck, a man lay sprawled like a boxer who’d lost a fight.

Jack’s head hurt and his legs wobbled, but he staggered to the tiller. He pushed the tiller and then he pulled it, but it swung loose and empty in his hand and he knew his rudder was broken.

“Leave him alone, Selkie!” Nim shouted. But it was hard not to laugh, and Fred sulked at the bottom of the cove when Selkie finally let him go.

It was easy to call Galileo if you had a fish, but Nim didn’t. “Come here,” she coaxed. “Come to me.”

I picture a ring of black rocks jutting out from the shore, stark against the blue sea—and bobbing ridiculously around in this idyllic pool, twenty coconuts waiting to be a raft.

I picture a ring of black rocks jutting out from the shore, stark against the blue sea—and bobbing ridiculously around in this idyllic pool, twenty coconuts waiting to be a raft.

The turtle paddled steadily toward her, a hump of shell glooming dark in the gray waves, and heaved herself onto the sand.

The stars scattered brightly and were mirrored in the sea, a fat crescent moon rose amongst them, and egg after round white egg rolled into the bottom of the nest.

She dragged some fallen-down branches and driftwood into a pile and used dried palm leaves for kindling.

Far below her was the top of Frigate Bird Cliffs; then Turtle Beach’s pale gold sand, the grasslands and Shell Beach, and the hut; on to Sea Lion Point and Keyhole Cove; and finally the grim black lava rock that stretched all the way back to the far edge of Frigate Bird Cliffs.

Then the earth roared and the mountain bellowed and an explosion of red covered the sky.

A fountain of lava, red and bubbling, shot up from the middle of the crater. Red and gold stars, hot and boiling, sprayed over the mountaintop.