Mitch opened his eyes against a glare he could almost feel. Had he fallen asleep on the beach? The crusty sand under his cheek made him think he might have. Pushing himself up, he looked around.

A wide beach stretched toward some bushy undergrowth a hundred yards or so away. To his left, more beach, curving toward a coral reef in the distance. Water lapped at his bare toes, maybe that had awakened him. It looked like the tide coming in.

To his right lay another figure dressed like himself in ragged jeans pants and a slightly oversize US. Navy utility shirt. "Jerry?" he said.

Jerry could feel the sand under his body, and the salt crusted on him from having gone swimming ... but they hadn't been swimming had they? Then a voice called his name and he opened his eyes to see Mitch sitting up on the beach a few yards away. "Mitch? What happened?" he asked as he pushed himself up to a sitting position.

"I dunno," Mitch admitted. "Where are we? I don't recognize this place. Say, didn't we have a boat?"

"Boat? Oh, Hell, where's the boat? Mr. Pablo is going to be really pissed if we've lost his boat,"  said Jerry.   He pushed himself up to his feet, a little unsteady, and looked around for any sign of the small craft they'd borrowed for the day. He didn't see any sign of the boat, and in fact, aside from themselves, no sign of civilization of any sort. Just a bare beach curving away in both directions, some reefs out in the water and a heavy growth of jungle on the land side.

"Don't panic," said Mitch. He sat up, too, digging his toes into the soft sand and trying to remember.

"That storm ... we must have been tossed here ..."  said Jerry.

"Yeah, a storm ... one we didn't hear about before we left port." Mitch said as he shaded his eyes looking into the glare of what appeared to be a late afternoon sun.

"Didn't you check the weather?" asked Jerry,  a little panic leaking into his voice despite the admonition.

"You didn't check, either, did you?" asked Mitch, not exactly accusing Jerry but merely confirming their mutual stupidity.

"Well, no, but you usually do ..." Jerry said, then added before Mitch could reply, "Yeah. Yeah,  I know my dad will say you can't assume things like that."

"Mine too," agreed Mitch. "And my Mom, well, I'm not looking forward to hearing what Lt. Col. Johns has to say about this screw up."

"But at least your folks won't spout that stupid saying about what 'assume' does."

"Lame," said Mitch. "Old Navy saying, probably, they always seem to be preoccupied with asses." Jerry ignored the dig. "Think we better try to figure out where we are?" Mitch finished.

"Yeah. How'd we get here?  Did you manage to beach us in the storm?" Jerry asked, looking again for any sign of people, buildings or roads.  "I don't remember anything after that gale sprang up."

"I remember the wind taking our sail and the boom hitting you in the ass. After that, things were a bit wet and confused. I think we must have gone down in the middle of the Pacific and drowned," said Mitch.

"Baka!" Jerry said,  amused in spite of himself.  "I itch too much to be dead.  Maybe we should look for fresh water?   I want to wash off at least."

Mitch followed Jerry along the beach; they were most likely to find fresh water where it ran into the ocean. But he didn't give up easy. "You got a better explanation? You know as well as I do that there's no land near enough to Guam that looks like this for us to land on. This is a coral atoll. That's a lagoon. We're way the heck south of where we possibly could be."

"I don't know," Jerry replied, annoyed more by the situation than by his friend. "Maybe we were found by Captain Nemo in his submarine and he dumped us here.    I don't know about you but I don't feel bad enough to think this is hell, and it doesn't look good enough to be heaven, so I don't think we're dead."

"Damn it," said Mitch.

"What? You'd rather we were dead?" asked Jerry, looking back while scratching his chest, his elbow and his hip, in turn.

"Now you got me doing it." Mitch scratched himself vigorously. "Of course, lying unconscious on the sand, we're probably covered in dried salt and tiny little sea creatures."

"Yeah, that's why I want to find some fresh water, to wash that stuff off," Jerry replied, continuing to scratch. "Besides, if we can find fresh water we can survive here for months, and it shouldn't take that long for someone to find us".

"Which brings up the point that if we can't find fresh water, we're doomed. Doomed, I tells you." He waved extravagantly at the wide ocean as they rounded the nearer point of the island and picked their way through a field of coral rocks half-buried in sand.

"Yeah, yeah," said Jerry, unimpressed.

They continued along the beach on the outer curve of the island until they discovered a small stream that wandered out of the jungle and emptied into the ocean.

"Thank god, I need to get this salt and stuff off of me."  Jerry said as he stripped off his clothes and rinsed himself off with the water.  "That feels a lot better."

Mitch followed suit, stripping down to skin before bathing. Their tans extended to parts normally hidden by clothing, though their arms and faces had darkened enough to almost pass for natives of Guam. After bathing, Jerry and Mitch tossed their clothes into the fresh water to get the salt out of them too.

Once rinsed, Jerry put his undershorts back on to dry on his body and rolled up the rest of his clothes to carry them until they found a good place to dry them. Mitch hadn't been wearing underwear and he chose to spread his pants and shirt out on his arms and shoulders to dry more quickly.

"Mitch, you look like a poorly done scarecrow." Jerry said as his friend finished his preparations.  "Do you think we should follow this stream and see where it comes from?"

"Well, we know where it goes. Yeah, if anybody lives here, they probably need freshwater, too. And we've seen enough of the island to know it isn't very big. You hungry?"

"Yeah,  I haven't eaten since breakfast, and it looks like it's afternoon already.   Maybe we can find some easier to get food too."  Jerry said looking at some of the palm trees near the water. "I'm no good at climbing coconut trees."

The two boys followed the stream into the jungle moving carefully to protect their bare feet and other parts of their anatomy. "We had shoes on the boat," Mitch commented.

"We had a radio on the boat, too," said Jerry.

"Right at this moment, I'm thinking shoes," said Mitch, stepping carefully to avoid sharp pieces of coral rock. Periodically, he checked his laundry for dryness, eventually putting it back on when only slightly damp. The edges of some of the big leaves were sharp enough to feel the need to protect himself.

The jungle growth was thick, but not bad enough to prevent them from following the stream.  The trees provided some welcome protection from the sun, and there was a pleasant cool breeze.  They were both dressed by then, Jerry having given up on stopping to dry his clothes and used Mitch's method to achieve an at least comfortable dampness.

After about a half hour of following the stream the brush parted to reveal a small clearing. Jerry just stared for a moment at the pink globes that dotted the clearing, but Mitch exclaimed, "Boobs?,  What are a bunch of boobies doing here with no girls attached?"

"Baka!" Jerry exclaimed taking a swipe at Mitch. Then he looked again and snickered, "They do look like boobies, though, don't they? Some kind of melon, I guess. I dub them booby fruit."

"Do you suppose they taste more like milk or cantaloupe?" asked Mitch.

Their stomachs growled. They looked at one another. "Um?" said Jerry.

"Yeah," said Mitch. "How do we find out if they're poisonous?"

Jerry looked around and then pointed, "Look, that one's been eaten at, and I saw one of the birds flying away from it when we came in.   I read somewhere that that's how you can tell what's good to eat.  You see what the other birds and animals eat and you can probably eat the same things."

Mitch looked skeptical but Jerry picked up a ripe looking one, and broke it open against a tree, making quite a mess in the process.

"Well, aren't you going to have one?" Jerry asked as Mitch watched him pick up a few pieces. The fruit was a fleshy pink inside, too, with a wad of seeds in the middle, very like a muskmelon except for color and smooth skin.

"No, no, I want to see if you turn purple and swell up to the size of an elephant first." Mitch replied.

Jerry sighed, then sniffed the exposed melon, and took a small nibble.  "Hmmm," he said, considering, then his eyes opened wide and  he got a shocked look on his face.  "Oh no," Jerry said as he swayed a little bit.   He staggered over to his friend and reached a hand out to him  "Mitch..." he said hoarsely, swaying as his friend stared at him with wide eyes. "It's-it's....   Very tasty." Jerry finished straightening up and taking another bite.

"Bozo!" complained Mitch. "Is it really okay?"

"Sure," said Jerry. "Tastes like honeydew, but kind of buttery." He grabbed another large piece before Mitch's hand could close on it. "Get your own."

"Ay, caramba," said Mitch in his best Bart Simpson. But he picked one of the aptly named booby fruit up and examined it. The pink outer rind really did look very much like human skin. Mitch had the feeling, though, that real boobies would be softer.

He carefully broke his open with a sharp rock instead of simply dashing it against a tree. The smell seemed musky, fruity and a bit wild and it really did have a buttery after taste. "Kind of like cantaloupe plus avocado," he said around a mouthful.

"Whatever," agreed Jerry, already feasting on his second melon. Mitch finished two also, then both boys settled down against one of the larger tree trunks, their stomachs full.

"It's still only the middle of the afternoon," remarked Jerry. "I think. The sun seems lower now so it must be afternoon."

"I don't know about you, jungle boy, but I'm pooped after slogging through that bush," said Mitch, yawning.

"Yeah, but, we haven't found out if the island is inhabited or not."

"Sure it's inhabited, we're here, ain't we?"

"Idiot," said Jerry, in English for once. But he yawned before he could say anything else. "We could take a nap, I guess," he conceded.

Mitch was already asleep and soon Jerry joined him.

While the two boys slept, a small, pale green bird cautiously approached, pecked at Jerry's pant's leg, and after a bit of work, flew away with a blue thread.