02 South Sea Adventure (7 page)

One reason is that the wooden schooner is more buoyant than the steel steamship and rides the waves. Also a small craft can slide down one wave and climb another while the big ship lies across several waves and is attacked by all of them; and the parts of her hull that are not supported may buckle under the strain. The big ship resists the waves, the small craft goes with them.

So the Lively Lady shot heaven high and dropped into dark depths and flung herself this way and that so that it was hard to hang on - but she stayed on top.

Birds by the hundreds swept into the centre by the storm collected in the rigging. Noddies, boobies, and gulls slid about the deck and two big frigate birds settled in the dinghy. Thousands upon thousands of butterflies, moths, flies, bees, hornets, grasshoppers, were clustered on the masts and ratlines or buzzed about the faces of the men at work.

The ship had been headed northeast to keep her nose in the wind. Now the captain brought her around to southwest. ‘What’s that for?’ Hal asked.

‘When the wind comes again it’ll be from the opposite quarter.’

And then it came - with a bang. Its arrival was so abrupt that Roger and Hal were all but swept overboard. The roar of the wind struck like a clap of thunder. The stinging spray began to cut into faces and hands. The blue sky was gone and there was nothing but that ghostly darkness streaming past.

The waves were lower, not much higher than the masts now, but they were all going one way and seemed to have a deadly purpose.

It was soon plain that the hurricane’s second act was going to be worse than the first. Both wind and wave were more violent than before. Birds and insects disappeared as if by magic. Rigging was being blown to bits. The sails escaped from their lashings and went up into the wind in rags and tatters. The boom broke loose and swung murderously back and forth across the deck.

There was too much to do for Hal arid Roger to consider the luxury of lashing themselves to the masts. They helped Omo - and wondered about Crab. .

The ship was wrenched as if by giant hands. There was a rending sound aft and the wheel went lifeless.

‘The rudder!’ cried Captain Ike. ‘It’s gone!’

The ship’s nose dropped away from the wind. She broached to and lay in the trough, rolling with a sickening wallow.

At every roll she took on tons of water that surged across the deck shoulder-deep and thundered down the companionway into the hold.

The captain already had the pumps working to clear the hold but water was coming on board too fast.

Crab’s siesta came to a choking end. He woke to find himself under water, salt sea crowding down into his lungs. He got into action with remarkable speed, and struggled up to the deck, gasping and sputtering.

Nature evidently liked to play tricks with Crab. He had no sooner come on deck than a wave caught him and washed him over the rail.

‘Man overboard!’ shouted the captain.

The words were just out of his mouth when the backwash of the same wave that had carried Crab overboard carried him back and deposited him with a thump on the deck. The boys laughed to see the look of dumb surprise on his face.

‘Get a grip on yourself,’ said the captain sharply, ‘or you’ll be going over again.’

But no one had time to pay much attention to Crab. The Wind that Kills, as the Polynesians call the hurricane, seemed determined to do away with the Lively Lady.

The ship lurched violently, there was a tearing, splitting sound, and the mainmast fell. Still bound to the ship by stays, ratlines, and halyards, it dragged in the sea, listing the deck heavily to port. A few moments later the foremast went down, smashing the dinghy as it fell.

This was no longer an adventure. It was a tragedy. The Lively Lady was no longer a ship, she was a wreck. And the lives of those on board could not have been insured for tuppence. ‘Rig a sea anchor!’ bawled the captain. With the hold full of water, every wave now rolled clear over the ship. To add to the torment, rain began to fall, not in drops but in bucketsful. Unbelievable weights of water dropped like sledgehammers on the heads and shoulders of the seamen.

Hal could now believe what he had been told of hurricane rain. In a certain Philippine hurricane more rain fell in four days than the average rainfall for a whole year in the United States.

It was almost more comfortable under a wave than under the flailing of the rain.

But there was no moment for rest - if a sea anchor were not rigged quickly the ship was going to founder with all hands.

The boys swung the fallen foremast parallel with the mainmast. They lashed the two together. They made fast a stout cable to the masts and looped the other end over mooring bitts on the bow of the vessel.

Then they cut the stays and lines that held the masts to the ship. The masts slid off the deck into the sea.

Since the ship was carried along by the wind, while the masts, half-submerged, were not, the effect of the sea anchor was to bring the bow of the ship up into the wind, so it met the waves head-on and the danger of foundering was a little diminished.

Another hour the gallant little ship struggled to stay above the surface.

Then, as suddenly as it had come, the wind howled away. Men who had been braced against the wind found themselves unbalanced for lack of it. They had become used to lying on it as a firm bed.

The blue sky appeared again. The sun blazed. The whirling wrack of the storm full of howling devils, and looking like a monstrous evil genie, bore off to the westward at about twelve knots.

For a time the sea, without the wind to hold it down, was worse than ever. Then it moderated and waves ceased to surge over the deck and pour into the hold. The pumps began to win. The ship rose.

Five exhausted men breathed a silent prayer of thanks.

Hal anxiously inspected the tanks. None of the lids had been dislodged and since he was always careful to keep the tanks full to the brim there had been no sloshing to injure the specimens. They seemed to have come through the experience better than their human friends.

‘Do we abandon the masts?’ Hal asked the captain.

‘No. We’ll tow ‘em to Ponape. We can get them restepped there.’

And so, with a roughly repaired rudder, her proud sails replaced by a chugging engine, her masts dragging behind her, the unlively lady limped on to Ponape.

Now they were in little-known seas. Even Captain Dee Flint had never been here before. They saw no ships, for the regular ship lanes lie far to the north and south.

Between the two world wars this part of the Pacific had been governed by the Japanese. They had jealously barred all ships but their own from its waters. Its 2,500 islands had no contact with the outside world except through Japan. Non-Japanese travellers visited them at risk of their lives.

And it was still a shut-away world in spite of the fact that it had been taken from Japan in World War II and was now governed by the United States as a trust under the United Nations.

Boys of the U.S. Navy stationed here felt as if they had been marooned on the moon. So it was with some excitement that they saw a strange craft enter the harbour of Ponape. They were going to have visitors!

Their excitement was shared by the visitors who were eager to step from the deck of the limping lady to the shores of the loveliest island they had yet seen.

‘Isn’t it a beauty!’ exclaimed Hal, looking at the white reef, the blue lagoon inside it, and, inside that, the towering green skyscraper of an island. Its wildly picturesque mountains were dressed with groves of coconut palms, spreading mango trees, giant banyans, and hundreds of unknown varieties bearing brilliant flowers or heavy fruit. The old Spaniards were right - they had called this ‘the garden island’.

And, unlike the low coral atolls, it evidently got plenty of rain. The high peaks invited storms. Even now around lofty Totolom peak there roared a black thunderstorm pierced with yellow shafts of lightning.

‘Gosh!’ said Roger, his eyes popping. ‘They talk about Tahiti and Samoa and all that. Are they really any better than this?’

‘Not near as fine,’ declared Captain Ike, who had seen them.

‘Then why do we never hear about this - gee, I don’t even know how to pronounce it…’

‘Po-nah-PAY is the way they say it. You don’t hear about it because mighty few people have ever been here.’

‘Look at Gibraltar!’ cried Roger.

It did look like Gibraltar. But according to the chart it was the Rock of Chokach. It loomed 900 feet high over the harbour, its basaltic cliffs falling away so steeply as to defy climbers.

Through a gap in the reel the dismasted schooner put-putted her way into the harbour. The lagoon was sprinkled with fairy islands. Between two of them, charming Takatik and Langar, Captain Ike dropped anchor in ten fathoms. The chart indicated dangerous shallows near shore.

There were no craft in the harbour except fishing boats and a few naval AJCs and L.S.T.s. There was one plane to be seen - a tired-looking Catalina.

From the town of Ponape which nestled on a point of the mainland a launch put out. It came alongside and a smart young naval officer climbed on board. He made himself known as Commander Tom Brady, Deputy Military Governor of Ponape. ‘You evidently got a taste of the hurricane.’ he said. ‘More than a taste,’ admitted Captain Ike. ‘Did you feel it here?’

‘Luckily it slid by to the north of us. But one of our supply ships was in its path.’ ‘What happened?’

‘It went down - all five thousand tons of it. It’s a miracle that this little eggshell came through on top.’

Captain Ike proudly surveyed his battered schooner. ‘Pretty stout little ship! Is there a place here where we can get her repaired?’ ‘Right around in the shipyard.’

‘You’ll want to see her papers,’ said Captain Ike, producing them. ‘And how about port charges?’

Commander Tom Brady laughed. ‘Don’t worry about that. We don’t have enough visitors to have to levy port charges. You’re the first, outside of Navy, in six months. How long do you stay?’

‘That’s for Mr Hunt to say. He’s the master of this expedition.’

‘Not long,’ Hal said. ‘While the captain is having the ship repaired I’d like to hire a motor-boat and make a little side trip - out to some of the small islands.’

There was a moment’s silence. Brady seemed to be waiting for more details. But Hal had no intention of disclosing the nature of his errand to Pearl Lagoon, especially in the presence of witnesses. ‘Fine,’ said Brady, accepting the situation, ‘We’ll get you a boat. But just now I know you’d all like to get ashore. Pile into the launch.’

The captain, Roger, and Omo boarded the launch. Hal was about to follow them when the captain said, ‘Where’s Crab?’

‘I’ll find him,’ said Hal, and went forward. Crab was not in the forecastle. Hal returned aft and went down to look in the storeroom. Crab was not there. A rustling attracted his attention and he opened the door to his and Roger’s cabin.

There was Crab, rummaging through Hal’s notebooks and papers.

‘What are you doing here?’ Hal asked sharply.

‘Nothing. Nothing at all,’ Crab sullenly answered, and pushed past Hal out of the door and up the companionway. Hal followed him and they both dropped aboard the launch without another word.

But Hal was thinking hard. Crab must have been looking for information about the pearl island. Evidently he was in with the plotters who had searched Professor Stuyvesant’s papers and threatened his life. They had put him aboard the Lively Lady to get the information that they had failed to get.

There was no use making a scene over it. But Hal knew that whoever went with him to Pearl Lagoon, it would not be Crab, and when the Lively Lady sailed again Crab would not be a member of the crew.

The town of Ponape consisted mainly of Japanese stores and houses built by the Japanese during the thirty years they had held the island. In the outskirts were the thatch homes of native brown Ponapeans.

Brady led the way to a Japanese house on the edge of a bluff with a magnificent view across the harbour to the towering Rock of Chokach.

‘This is yours for as long as you want it,’ he said. ‘Make yourselves at home.’

It was pleasant to lie at full length on the clean golden-yellow mats and look out over the blue lagoon dotted with green islets and the white sails of fishing boats, to the big rock backed by mountains thousands of feet high from whose cliffs tumbled silvery waterfalls.

‘It’s a sort of paradise,’ said Hal.

But a worm of anxiety crept into his pleasure when he noticed that his party was one man short. Crab had again disappeared. What was that rascal up to now?

There was only one business street in the town and Crab had no difficulty in finding the Post Exchange.

He went in and looked about as if he had an appointment to meet someone here. A big man with a slight hunch in his back came towards him.

He did not smile or offer to shake hands. He only said gruffly:

‘What took you so long? I saw your ship come in and I’ve been waiting here for half an hour.’ He cast a suspicious glance at the clerk. ‘Let’s get out of here - go some place where we can talk.’

They went out into the street and turned at the next corner into a quiet lane. It wound away towards the hills between thatch huts set in lush gardens from which came the perfume of jasmine, frangipani, cinnamon, and aloes. Crab and his companion walked under a huge breadfruit tree from which hung fruits almost as big as footballs. They passed dozens of strange plants and trees - it was like going through a botanical garden.

The people were as fine as the trees. The men were more than six feet tall and powerful muscles rippled under their brown skins. Women wore white flowers in their hair. The babies were fat and cheerful. One of them sat in the road directly in the path of the big man. It laughed up at him.

He scooped it up with his foot and gave it a fling into the bushes, whereupon it broke into a loud wail.

Crab grew more and more nervous. It was evident that the man was in a bad temper. What Crab had to tell him would not make him any happier.