Two unlucky yachtsmen were attacked by a man-eating crocodile as they went ashore in search of a fresh water spring and became stranded for seven days, a Londoner told police.

The Sun, June 11, 2017

It seemed more than eerie after a sharp-eyed pilot spotted the universal SOS sign, fashioned from rocks, displayed on a beach in the middle of essentially nowhere.

A search of the area yielded nothing, no one, but the message of the rocks left a “creepy” feeling behind and a sense of “mystery” for the searchers.

When they heard the story later, it’s one to delight the grandchildren. Guys sailing in the area, short on freshwater, came on shore to search, but found utterly forbidding crocodiles instead. The kind of croc that opens its mouth to display teeth that only existed, until now, in your nightmares. That kind of croc that seems to be saying “Sure, come on. Walk past me, or try to swim past me. I dare you.”

And he had friends. Crocodiles versus men is only a fair fight if the men have high-powered rifles. Crocs own the beaches, the shallow waters, of the Swift Bay area of Western Australia, or anywhere else they live.

So the guys scrambled to high ground to hide from the crocs, and days went by. Finally recreational boaters on a yacht spotted them and picked them up, exhausted but relieved. They can be forgiven if in their scramble to get away from the crocodiles, and back to civilization, they neglected to “cancel” their SOS structure, spotted later.

A large SOS display in uninhabited territory has got to have a story, in this case a happy ending, except for the crocs, who may still be hungry.