Houghton finds a replacement watcher, but Eckland has to retrieve him from nearby Bundy Island by dinghy. He instead finds eight civilians stranded there who escaped from Rabaul: Frenchwoman Catherine Freneau (Leslie Caron) and seven young schoolgirls (four British, two French and an Australian) under her care. She informs him that the man he came for was killed in an air raid. Eckland reluctantly takes the party back to Matalava with him, but there is no safe way for them to be evacuated.