I've always wanted to travel to the south pacific or for that matter any place, so when the school I was teaching at asked if I would go with the boys and girls volley ball teams as a chaperon I jump at it. I could not afford to pay for a trip like this and they paid for everything! We were going island hopping in the pacific rim area to play volley ball against other schools.
The first two islands were a pretty good size the third island was a small island I'd never even heard of the name before. This is where our troubles started. We arrived on a Thursday late in the evening. On Friday we met the other school's volley ball teams. We would play our game on Monday so we had the weekend to see the island. As I said it was a very small island so there wasn't much to see. The local language was French and since I was a French teacher I got to practice talking to the locals.
"Oh, Miss Davis I need your help." Mr. Anderson the boys coach asked me.
"What do you need Mr. Anderson?" I replied.
"Well there are two things I need. The authorities here tell me we must leave the island because of a big tropical storm that could even turn into a typhoon is heading this way. The second is two boys and one girl got into trouble in a town about ten miles away. I'm going to get a hold of our embassy on the big island to try and work out a solution but since I don't speak French and you do I need you to go to that town and talk to the police and our kids and see if something can be worked out." He told me.
"No problem Mr. Anderson. I'll leave right away." I told him.
I left with the driver we had been using in his minivan. The ten miles took over an hour because people were leaving the coast area before the storm hit the island.
"Excuse me. May I speak to whoever is in charge of this police station?" I asked the officer behind the front desk.
"I am the police chief here?" A man sitting behind the officer said.
"I'm Miss Davis, one of the teachers of the students you have here. I like to know what they've done and try to work out a solution if possible." I told him.
As I sat down in the chair in front of his desk I felt he was un-dressing me with his eyes. I didn't like the look of his face at all.
"Well, Miss Davis those three students were in a fight at a local dance last night. They caused a lot of damage there too." He said.
"May I speak to them first?" I asked.
"Of course Miss Davis. I'll bring you back to the jail cells where they are." He told me and led me back to the cells.
"Hi Miss Davis, get us out of here. We didn't do anything wrong." They all said at the same time.
The two boys, Romeo and Paul Wilson were in a cell together and Barbara Johnson was in the cell across from them.
"Tell me what happened at the dance." I asked them.
Paul started to talk. "We were all having a good time at the dance when this big guy tried to hit Romeo so a fight started. Barbara and I tried to break it up. Then the police showed up and only arrested us." He said.
"That's just like it happened Miss Davis." Barbara replied.
"Romeo, what have you got to say about it?" I asked him.
"Miss Davis I was just talking to this girl at the party and this guy came up and started screaming something in French at me then he started swinging his fists at me." Romeo told me.
I knew Romeo from the school was always hitting on the girls so I guessed this was the girl's jealous boy friend. I went back to the front office to talk to the police chief. I explained to him what they had told me as he hadn't heard their side yet. I asked him if I could use the phone so I could call Mr. Anderson.
"Hello Mr. Anderson this is Miss Davis it was about a fight at a local dance here. I think I might be able to leave a deposit or bail money and get them out however." I explained.
"I'm glad you called. We have to leave in about 10 minutes because this storm looks like it's becoming a typhoon. There will be only one more flight out and I've reserved the plane for you and those students and about half the boys team that wanted to wait for you and them. They with Miss Thomson at gate two." He said, "You'd better hurry back before it's too late."
I talked to the police chief who had talked to the town's mayor. They wanted $1000.00 bail, I think it was really blackmail but I signed over all of my travelers checks and we went on our way. The rush of people leaving the beach area made the trip back take almost two hours.
We found Miss Thomson and the other boys at the airport and quickly got on the plane. As big as the plane was we were the only ones on it. The airline stewardess, Debra Parker, told me that only she and the flight crew were on the plane.
"I won't give the usual pleasantries at this time, but please keep your seat belts on because we're going to be fighting some very strong winds in this flight. Be prepared for a bumpy ride." The pilot said over the speakers.
The stewardess, Debra Parker, sat next to me and we were off the ground and in the air.
"Excuse me Miss Davis I'm going to check and see if the flight crew needs anything before it gets too bumpy." She said.
"OK, and please call me Vicky." I told her.
"I will, Vicky, and I'm Debra ok." She said as she went forward to the cockpit.
By the time Debra started back down the aisle way she was being bounced from one side to the other. She even fell sitting on Tony Bell's lap, the shiest boy I'd ever seen in school. I was almost sure I could see the blush of his face shining off of Debra's face. When she sat down next to me she looked worried.
"What's wrong Debra?" I questioned.
"Well I'm not suppose to tell anyone this, but the winds are so strong we have to fly straight through the storm. It's bigger than anything the crew has ever seen. Plus we can't get radio contact with anyone either. Don't tell anyone please." She said a frighten look in her face.
Then the pilot made an announcement over the speakers.
"Ladies and Gentlemen I'm very sorry for the bumpy ride, but please stay seated as I must make a turn to head back to where we came from because the winds are keeping us from gaining ground right now." He said.
The turn he made was like a roller coaster ride. The metal on every part of the plane squealed as we turned. I thought we would come apart at the seams. We were buffeted for over an hour before the pilot came back on the speaker again.
"Everyone please brace your selves for what might be a rough landing." He told us.
From the rocking and rolling the plane was doing I could tell the pilot was having a lot of trouble handling the plane. Looking out the window I couldn't see any lights on the island a head in fact I could hardly see out the window because of the rain. Rough landing was an understatement. We bounced twisted and one wing was even ripped off. Everyone seemed ok except we found that Miss Thomson was dead. I think her heart gave out, maybe even before the landing started.
Debra got up very quickly. "Everyone exit the plane as fast as you can and move at least 100 feet away from it." She told us as she tried to open the cockpit door.
When I got outside and looked to the front of the plane I saw there was no cockpit. It had been torn away in the crash. I went in the plane to tell Debra about the cockpit.
Our landing was about a half of a mile from the airport. We waited in the rain with only some trees to protect us. After 45 minutes no one had come from the airport so we walked to it.
The airport was empty. Very few cars were around and it looked like the people had gone in terror. We got towels from a store in the terminal and dried ourselves off than we slept there.
Romeo and Paul had disappeared during the night but I was too tired to look for them. In the morning there still wasn't anyone showing up there. At 10:00 AM Romeo and Paul came driving up to the door.