02 South Sea Adventure (19 page)

Roger gripped his knife. ‘The first one that shows itself will get its head lopped off.’

‘That would be the worst thing you could do,’ Omo warned him. ‘The blood would bring the sharks. Besides, their heads and necks are very tough - but their tails are tender. They can’t stand being rapped on the tail.’

Roger, lying on his side and looking down, felt a touch on his back.

Before he could turn Omo reached forward and brought the heavy handle of his knife down hard.

‘That one won’t bother us any more!’

Almost in Roger’s face a black tail slipped over the log, gripped fast, and powerful muscles flung a writhing figure up out of the sea. Against the stars Roger had a glimpse of an evil head and open jaws coming his way. But at the same instant his knife handle was thudding down upon the tail. A contortion twisted the eel’s body and it fell into the water.

There were no more snaky forms to be seen against the submarine moon.

Roger felt dizzy and weak. He had as much spunk as any boy of his age, but this night was a bit too thick for him. He immediately feel asleep, but was as promptly aroused when water buried his face.

Omo saw that if the boy did not get some sleep he would crack.

‘Sit up, Roger.’ The boy obeyed. ‘Now turn around with your back to me. All right - now just relax and go to sleep.’ Roger was too weary to argue. Supported in a sitting position by Omo he let his head drop upon the Polynesian’s shoulder and was instantly asleep. Now the waves rarely reached high enough to touch his face. When they did, Omo put his hand over the boy’s nose and mouth. When it was Omo’s turn to go overboard, Hal took his place. The change did not wake Roger.

The rising wind chilled the wet bodies of the castaways. They were glad to see the sun rise. But it had not been up for an hour before they began to long for the cool of the night.

Roger woke, refreshed by his sleep, but hungry and thirsty. He was indignant because he had been the only one to get any sleep.

‘What the heck!’ he fumed. ‘If you guys can take it, I can. I don’t need a baby-sitter.’

He looked at his companions’ hands and then at his own.

They were shrivelled and wrinkled by the salt water.

‘We look like a pack o’ mummies! Pass the cold cream.’

There being no cold cream available, he slipped over the side and took Hal’s place as motor of the not very good ship Hope.

Thirst and hunger became more acute as the day wore on. Constant immersion in the water had one good feature - moisture was absorbed through the pores, and the moisture of the body could not be so rapidly evaporated, so that thirst crawled up on them more slowly than on land. But by night they would have given one of the pearls, if it bad been theirs to give, for a long drink of fresh water.

During this night Roger insisted upon being baby-sitter for his companions, taking them alternately. He could hardly keep his eyes open. Once he did drop off and he and Hal, whom he was supporting, both rolled over into the sea. The cold plunge brought them smartly back to their senses. The next morning found a school of bonito swimming about the raft. The boys repeatedly plunged their hands into the sea but failed to catch any of them.

‘Wonder if we could make a fishline?’ Omo was examining the bark on the logs. ‘We usually make it from the husk of the nut. But bark might do.’

They spent most of the day picking out fibres from the bark, twisting and braiding them into a line. It was only five feet long when finished, but fairly strong. Omo gouged a splinter from a log and carved a hook. There was nothing to put on it for bait.

They dangled the hook in the water and hoped. Would any fish be fool enough to swallow a bare hook?

The school of bonito had disappeared. There were other fish, but they paid no attention to the hook.

Another night and another day. Sores began to appear on the boys’ bodies due to salt water and chafing of the skin against the logs. Their feet were swollen and tingling and spotted with blotchy red areas and blisters.

‘It’s ‘immersion foot’,’ Hal said, and added gloomily, ‘ Salt-water boils will come next.’

Their skins, constantly wet and salted, were being severely burned by the sun. Their eyes were bloodshot, inflamed and painful.

Thirst cracked the lips. The tongue swelled until it seemed that there was hardly room for it inside the mouth. It kept trying to push its way out between the lips, like the end of a wedge. The whole inside of the mouth felt as if smeared with glue. Roger rinsed his mouth with sea water, and swallowed a little.

‘Go easy with that,’ Hal warned him. ‘A very little won’t hurt. But it’s hard to stop with a little.’

‘Everybody needs salt,’ objected Roger. ‘What could it do to you?’

‘Too much will put you in a coma. Then you have two chances. You may come out of it crazy, or not come out at all.’

‘What’s the difference?’ Roger said bitterly. ‘We’ll get the purple moo-moo whether we drink sea water or not.’ He passed his hand over his forehead. I’m beginning to see things already - things that aren’t there.’ ‘Such as what?’

‘Such as a rainstorm. Cool, sweet rain falling! Over there.’ He pointed to the south-east. ‘I know it can’t be, but…’

‘But it is!’ cried Hal. Not half a mile away a small shower was streaking down and spattering the sea. ‘Let’s go!’

They tumbled overboard and joined Omo behind the raft. All three pushing, they propelled the logs rapidly towards the spot.

But before they could reach it they were sorely disappointed to see the rain fade into mist and the mist dissolve in sunshine.

‘Look! There’s another one!’ This time it was only a quarter-mile west. Surely they could reach it in time. The water fell from a small black cloud that was being carried west by a light breeze.

They swam with all their strength. They soon saw that it was hopeless. They tired, but the breeze did not tire. The harder they swam, the farther away the shower seemed to be.

Presently the little cloud rained itself out and there was no sign that there had ever been a shower.

‘Do you think we just imagined it?’ Roger said doubtfully.

‘Of course not. We all saw it, didn’t we?’ No one answered. ‘Well, didn’t we? Didn’t you see it, Omo?’

1 think so,’ Omo hesitated. ‘I-I’m not sure of anything any more.’

‘Well, here’s something we can be sure of!’ cried Roger. ‘Because I’ve got my hands on it. An albacore has swallowed our hook.’ He lifted the fish for them to see. It was black and glossy, not more than a foot and a half long, but plump with good meat.

They attacked it at once with their knives and devoured everything but the bones - and one scrap which they saved to bait the hook.

They felt better - and not so thirsty. The flesh of a fish, specially a juicy one like the albacore, contains moisture -and it is fresh water, not salt. But it was not enough. It hardly amounted to a tablespoonful for each man.

The baited hook worked better than the bare one and soon attracted a young sawfish. It was hauled aboard and quickly eaten, saving only enough for bait.

Where there are young sawfish there are apt to be larger ones and Hal was not surprised to see sudden turmoil in the water.

‘Look out!’ he cried to Omo who was swimming. A huge sawfish was wildly dashing about attacking small fish with its great saw. After slashing them to bits it would feed upon the torn flesh. The sawfish was sixteen feet long and could cut a man in two as easily as a fish. Many a whale has been attacked by a sawfish, and the whale has not always been the winner.

Omo did his best to keep out of the way of the great blade. The mangled bodies of the small fish rose to the surface and Hal and Roger seized as many of them as they could get their hands on.

Attracted by the blood, a huge tiger shark hove in view. It darted at some of the torn fish and gulped them down.

This annoyed the sawfish, which came at once to the attack. It did not plunge its weapon straight into the shark as a swordfish would have done. It came within six feet, then swung its saw with a sidelong movement and slashed deep into the body of the shark. Blood poured out.

‘There’ll be a hundred sharks here in ten minutes,’ Hal cried. ‘This is no place for us.’

He slid overboard and Roger followed suit. Their legs tingled with dread of the savage saw.

They joined Omo and quickly pushed the raft away from the scene of slaughter. Looking back, they saw the sea boil with the thrashing of many sharks and turn red with their blood. They munched tattered shreds of fish. ‘That sawfish did us a good turn,’ said Hal. ‘You see, not all the luck is against us.’

But on the following day the luck ran pretty thin. The only fish that came near were jellyfish. They covered the sea thickly for miles. The man behind swam through them and the two on deck were washed by them every time a wave went over. The stinging tentacles of the jellyfish, which are powerful enough to paralyse fishes, were like nettles on the boys’ skins.

The worst of the jellyfish was the ‘sea blubber’, a red jellyfish that reaches a breadth of seven feet and has tentacles a hundred feet long. When the swimmer became tangled in the tentacles of one of these he had to call upon his companions to help unwind the stinging threads from his body.

Even after the Hope had made its way out of the sea of jellyfish the logs were still covered with a slippery stinging coat of jelly.

On the next day the first birds were seen. Noddies and boobies sailed inquisitively around the raft. ‘It means that land isn’t far away,’ Omo said. Sore eyes followed the horizon around but could not discover a single palm.

All three of the boys were now ‘raft happy’. Or, as Roger had put it, they had ‘the purple moo-moo’. They were sick of everything, even of each other.

Hal announced that he was tired of having Roger on the same raft with him. Roger retorted that he suffered most from not having anything to throw at Hal. Each began to think the others were losing their minds.

They said strange things. Omo began to talk in his island language. He talked on and on. Roger said, ‘I’m going up the beach’. He rose and started to walk off into the sea. Hal caught him by the ankle and brought him down with a thump.

Hal saw rainstorms - rainstorms that weren’t there - and islands with palm trees and waterfalls tumbling from high cliffs through tropical forests soaked with spray.

So they hardly knew it when the wind quickened, the sky darkened, and the sea rose. Rain fell. They had barely enough wit left to raise their mouths to it.

An angry sea flung the raft south-westward. By a sort of desperate instinct, they clung to the logs.

The darkness of the storm merged into the darkness of’ night. Hal was vaguely conscious of the screaming wind and the sickening lift and drop of the raft over steep waves.

Then there was a roar that was not exactly the roar of the sea. It was the roar of a shore.

It must be another of his crazy fancies. It sounded like surf pounding upon land but it might be only the hammers in his aching head.

The raft was speeding forward dizzily now, only to be sucked back, then driven forward again. There was another surge, and a grinding sound underneath. Then another lift, and a crash.

The logs broke apart. There was no more motion. Hal felt hard sand under his body.

He reached for Roger. The boy had been thrown free of the surf.

But how about Omo? Omo had been in the water with his wrist secured under the lashing of the raft so that if he became unconscious he would not be lost. The lashing must now be broken, for the logs had parted.

Hal explored. The stars were blotted out by the storm and he could see nothing.

He groped all about the logs, then ventured back into the surf. His foot struck something and he reached down. It was Omo. Hal pulled him out of the surf and ten feet up onto the beach.

Omo was as heavy as a sack of meal. He must be half-drowned.

Hal knew what he had to do. Take the pulse. Get the water out. Apply artificial respiration.

Hal dreamed he was doing all these things. But he had dropped upon the sand and was sound asleep.

Hal woke in heaven. A golden-brown angel with red hibiscus flowers in her dark hair was holding a coconut shell full of cool sweet Water to his lips.

It was hard to get any of it past his great tongue but he managed to swallow a little.

The sun had risen but was not beating upon him. He lay in the shade of stately coconut palms richly loaded with fruit. A soft breeze brought him the scent of flowers. There was music somewhere.

Roger and Omo lay beside him. Other golden-brown angels were ministering to them. Handsome young men came through the grove.

But he was very weak and closed his eyes. Now he was back in the storm and the night, clinging to the logs. He was conscious of being carried, but whether it was the waves that were carrying him he did not know.

Very gently he was laid down. There were many voices. He smelled wood smoke and the heavenly odour of cooking food.

He opened his eyes. He and his companions lay on clean mats in a sort of lanai or veranda in a village of thatch houses. Flowering vines clambered over the roofs. Above the houses stretched the protective arms of magnificent mango trees from which hung ripe orange-coloured fruits like ornaments on a Christmas tree.

At the edge of the veranda brown faces were peering in -gentle, friendly faces - not the faces of night and storm.

Someone was bending over him. It was his angel again. He smiled up at her. She fed him something from a wooden bowl with a wooden spoon. It was a sort of mush made of breadfruit, bananas, and coconut milk and he thought it the most divine food that had ever passed his lips.

When he choked she drew back, thinking she was feeding him too fast. But it was gratitude, not his thick tongue, that choked him.

An old man seated himself on the mat beside him. To Hal’s surprise, he spoke English.

‘Garapan is my name. I am chief of this village. You have had much suffering. Now you are among friends. You will eat, drink and rest.’