23 No Smoke, No Fire

CHAPTER 23 No Smoke, No Fire Years and years passed, and nothing much changed on my island. The rains came and went. The sun shone. My days continued as they had for many, many months. I came to love my early morning walks. Nothing made me happier than to make my way to my summer house, to see my goats, to look at my crops.

Then, as quickly as the rains could come, everything changed in an instant. I was walking to the other side of the island one morning when I saw them—the natives! There were great numbers of their canoes on shore. They were busy building a giant fire. I hid and watched them, wondering what to do. Instead of fleeing back to camp, I sat down and thought about it logically. I have been here for almost twenty years, and they have never found me. They have never even seen me. If I stay hidden, they might never find me. I slipped away from the shore and went home. I wanted to get on with my life, but I knew things would never be the same. My morning ritual from that day forward included safety measures. I would hike up to the top of the lookout hill with my old binoculars and take a look around. Instead of watching for ships, I looked out for the

canoes. Weeks, then months, went by. I came to the conclusion that my island must not be a spot they visited often. Maybe years would pass again before they came back. Maybe they would never come back. The most important thing on my mind was making my life on the island as invisible as possible. The biggest problem I had to solve was how to make a fire without smoke. I didn't want to start a fire in my cold storage cave; that would smoke out my entire camp. No, I needed to find a cave away from my camp. The smoke was really the only evidence that another human being was living on the island. Without the smoke, the natives might never discover my camp or my summer home. It took me a couple of days before I found a place that would work. The cave was quite big. As I walked deeper inside, I found that I could easily stand up in the middle of it.

Then, something happened that scared me to my bare bones! While exploring the cave, I turned a corner and came face-to-face with a pair of bright eyes staring right back at me. What a shock! After getting my breath back, I took a closer look. There was a sick, old billy goat just lying there. He didn't want to move and I didn't make him. I just gave him a sip of my water and left him alone. The next day I came back to the cave with some supplies. I had some candles and some other things. The cave had a long narrow hallway that led to a beautiful room. It sparkled in the light with bright, twinkling lights. Maybe it's diamonds! I thought. But now was not the time to think about mining! The cave was safe and dry so I decided to store the rest of my gunpowder there, along with my extra guns. I also did most of my cooking inside, where no one could see the

smoke from my fire.