Chapter 01

Life on the Island

It is quite an impressive hut that Lord Charles Oxfridge built for his family, plus Mandingo, on the Island.

It is more like a stilt house, with a steep ladder that separates the stage from the hundreds of small insects crawling on the ground.

It is really astounding how he managed to build a two room house with only the use of salvaged shiprecks. He used wood boards to make the furniture, and palm logs to buid the walls.

How lucky he used to have carpentry as a hobby when he was a young and bored noble man.

Even if on an extreme situation like this, being casted away on a far away island, he still thinks he's lucky to have a nice wife like Charlotte.

And a lively girl as a daughter, Camilla. He thinks he's even lucky to have around the ex slave boy he named Mandingo, at least there's another one that brings food at home. Not that he really thinks of him as an equal, but at least he changed his mind about slvery, and now he recognizes him as a person, not like before the storm.

Life on the Island is not simple, expecially for the former spoilt noble people that now have to roll up sleeves and work hard to survive.

Mandingo fishes for the most part of the day, all days, sometimes even at nights, to bring home some meat to eat. There are not many animals on the island, just lizards, turtles, birds, that are not edible though. Then fish os the only source of protein for the castaways. And Mandingo takes his duty very seriously, feeling like this makes him a man more than a child.

Charles always thinks about improving their home, and spends lot of time fixing it and reinforcing it.

Charlotte takes care of the garden, ad she's always been a green thumb. Back in Bournemouth, she had the most beautyful garden of the city, and she let no one else than her tend it. She salvaged some seeds, fruits and vegetables from the remains of the ship, she started collecting form wild plants on the Island, and she managed to have a nice vegetable garden just outside the house.

Charles made a stone oven so she started to cook their meals, even if she's not a very good cook. She's always had someone else to cook for her. But times have changed.

Charlotte helps her mother in the garden, but she's asked to study as well. Her mother wants her to keep studying on the few book they rescued from the shipwreck.

Day after day of this routine, and a year passes without any trace of other people, or any ship to come and rescue them from the wild.