02 South Sea Adventure (12 page)

At least he could not tell them yet. It might snuff out what little hope they had and endanger Omo’s recovery.

Hal dismissed his gloomy thoughts and devoted himself to Omo. The wound had stopped bleeding. The native remedy had worked. He cautiously removed the tourniquet - it would be well to get it off to avoid any chance of gangrene. Still the wound did not bleed. Hal developed high respect for the astringent qualities of powdered coconut bark.

He took the torn shirt to the edge of the cove, soaked it, waved it in the air so that evaporation might cool the water in it, and laid it across Omo’s hot forehead. Omo hardly seemed to know what was going on.

Roger was not having much luck. The natural material to make a roof would be palm leaves. There were numerous palm stumps, but most of the fallen trees had been washed away by the waves which had evidently rolled high across the reef during the storm.

A few of the logs had been pinned fast between the rocks. He examined them hopefully but their leaves had been stripped from them before they fell.

Well, it didn’t have to be palm leaves. He shut his eyes, for the light was blinding, and tried to think what else he could use. Pandanus leaves would do, or taro leaves, or banana leaves. On a proper desert island there would be all of these and more. He had read many stories of castaways on desert islands. He knew just what a desert island ought to be.

It should be a jungle as full of food as a refrigerator. You had only to reach up and pluck a banana or a breadfruit or a wild orange or a lime or a mango or a papaya or a custard apple or a durian or a persimmon or a mamey or a guava or some wild grapes. The lagoon was full of fish, you could dig up any quantity of clams and mussels from the beaches, the birds were so plentiful you could catch them by hand, there were nests full of eggs in the cliffs on the seaward side, you could trap a great sea turtle when it comes ashore at night to deposit its eggs, you could drink pure water of mountain streams and bathe in woodland pools - and you could make a house of bamboo poles and palm thatch in no time.

He opened his eyes and the glare of the white rocks hit him so hard that he blinked with pain.

Then he saw something lying among the rocks just above the reach of the surf. It looked like a boat upside down.

Perhaps it was a boat tossed ashore by the storm.

His heart began to thud with excitement. If it was a boat-they could escape from Starvation Island. He ran towards it, stumbling over the rough coral.

It was not a boat, but a great fish. It lay belly upward and was quite dead. It was fully thirty feet long and as big round as an elephant.

Its body was brownish and covered with white spots. Its face was the ugliest Roger had ever seen. It looked like the face of a very unhappy bullfrog enlarged many hundreds of times. Far out at each corner popped out a small eye.

But the most terrific feature was the mouth. It was four feet wide. Long fringes dropped from its corners.

One would think that such a huge and hideous creature would be a cannibal and a man-eater, but Roger had already had some acquaintance with fish of this sort. He knew it to be a whale shark, the largest of all living fish, sometimes twice as long as this specimen. Although a shark, it was harmless and lived on very small creatures, some of them so small that they could be seen only with a microscope.

‘But this isn’t getting us a roof,’ Roger reminded himself, and started away. Then a thought struck him and he turned back. He tried to remember pictures he had once seen of the houses of tribes living along the Amur River in Siberia. In that region there were no trees to use as building materials, so the men made their houses of - fishskins!

What was the matter with building a shanty out of sharkskin?

He ran back to tell Hal. He expected his brother to laugh at his idea but Hal said, ‘Why not? I think you’ve got something there.’

They went back to the sea monster.

‘That surely must be the plainest face in the whole Pacific Ocean,’ Hal said. He touched the hard sandpapery skin. ‘It’s not going to be easy to cut that. But we have good knives. We’ll slit him down the belly and then cut just behind the head and in front of the tail fin.’

The skin was as tough as emery cloth. Sometimes the knife could not be forced into it unless pounded in with a coral block.

Hal, sweating and straining, said, ‘There’s one good thing about it. Once we get it up it will be more durable than any roof of palm thatch. It ought to last as long as asbestos shingles!’

‘And all we ask,’ Roger put in, ‘is for it to last a couple of weeks until Kaggs gets here.’

Hal felt his heart sink. He was not ready to tell Roger yet, but shouldn’t he begin to prepare his mind for the bad, news that Kaggs would not return?

‘Of course,’ and he tried to speak lightly, ‘there’s always a chance that we won’t see him again.’

Roger stopped and looked at him.

‘Then what will happen to us?’

‘Oh, we’ll make out. We’ll have to. Now then, let’s try to flay the skin up at this corner. Boy, isn’t it thick!’

The skin was not more than half off. The smell of the dead fish was overpowering. The sun beat down like hammers on their heads. Their eyes were narrowed to slits to avoid the glare. Roger wiped his perspiring face with his sleeve. Hal, having made a tourniquet, bandages, and a wet compress out of his own shirt, dried his face on his brother’s shirt-tail. ‘I could do with a drink of water,’ Roger said. Hal looked serious. ‘What have I been thinking of? Water! That’s more important than shelter - more important even than food. Let’s leave the rest of this job until tomorrow. ‘I’ll see how Omo is - then we’ll go on the trail after water.’

Omo was asleep. The shadow of the stump had left him. Hal and Roger moved him into the shade and Hal soaked the compress and replaced it on the patient’s forehead.

The quest for water began. The boys started out in apparently good spirits but secretly each had little hope. How could one expect to find fresh water on this sunburnt reef?

‘It must have rained a lot here during the hurricane,’ Hal said. There may be some of it left in the hollows of rocks.’

Close to the shore a rock hollowed out like a bowl held a little water. Roger eagerly ran to it, scooped up a little of the water in his hand, and tasted it. He spat it out. ‘Salty!’

‘It must have been left there by the surf at high tide,’ Hal guessed. ‘Let’s look farther away from the shore.’

They found plenty of hollowed rocks but no water in them. In some were lines showing that they had contained water but it had long since soaked away through the porous coral.

Roger surveyed the coconut stumps. There must have been nuts on these trees.’ If they could find them they would not lack for drink nor for food. How refreshing the sweet, cool, milky water of the coconut would be! And the soft white meat!

A diligent search failed to discover any coconuts.

The trouble with coconuts,’ Hal said, ‘is that they float. When the sea swept over the land it must have carried them all off.’

‘What do we do next?’ inquired Roger.

‘Dig,’ suggested Hal. He led the way to the lagoon beach. They say you can sometimes find fresh water if you dig a hole in the beach at low tide. How about this spot - just below the high-tide mark?’

‘It sounds crazy to me,’ Roger said, ‘but mine not to question why, mine but to do or die,’ and he picked up a flat piece of coral to use as a shovel and began to dig.

At a depth of about three feet Hal stopped. ‘Quit digging. Let’s see what happens now.’

Water began to ooze into the hole. Presently it was four or five inches deep.

‘But what makes you think this will be fresh water?’

‘I don’t think so,’ Hal said. ‘I only hope so. It has happened on other atolls. Shipwrecked sailors have escaped dying of thirst by drinking the water from holes like this one.’

‘But why would it be fresh?’

The sea water filtering through the sand loses some of its salt. And then there’s the rainwater that filters down through the rocks. Suppose you try it now. But be careful to skim off just the surface. The fresh water is lighter than sea water and lies on top.’

Roger scooped off a little of the surface water and tasted it. Then he gulped down a couple of handfuls. ‘Salty,’ he said, ‘but not as bad as sea water.’

Hal tasted the warm brackish water. He was disappointed. ‘It wouldn’t take much of that to make you sick.’

Roger was gagging and holding his forehead. Presently he lost his breakfast.

He turned upon his brother angrily. ‘You and your fresh water! What you don’t know about how to survive on a desert island would fill a book.’

I’m afraid you’re right,’ Hal admitted. ‘All I know is that the U.S. Navy instructs survivors to do just what we have done.’

‘Then why didn’t it work?’

‘Perhaps because the sand is too coarse here to filter out the salt. Or perhaps there wasn’t enough rain, or it sank away through the rocks.’

‘All right, don’t stand there giving me perhapses. Find me some water.’

‘Sometimes,’ Hal said, ‘I think you’re a spoiled brat. Do you suppose you are the only thirsty person on this reef?’

Roger was silent. They resumed their dreary search. They walked across the narrow part of the reef where it stretched like a bridge from one island to the other. On one side the ocean surf splashed among the rocks. On the other side a white beach sloped to the blue lagoon. The lagoon was as smooth as glass. It was not more than a dozen feet deep here and the bottom was a fairy city of pink palaces, towers, pagodas, and minarets, all built by the tiny coral insects.

It was very lovely if you could just forget being hot, tired, sore-eyed, and thirsty. But you couldn’t forget.

The reef broadened to form the other island. They spent an hour or more exploring it. There was no water, except surf water, in the cups of the rocks. There were coconut stumps and logs but no leaves. They looked hopefully in the tops of the stumps for pockets of rainwater, but it had dried away.

Then they found a coconut! It was pinned under a rock where the waves that had buried the island had failed to dislodge it.

Trembling with excitement, they slashed away the husk. The nut inside was cracked. Inserting his knife in the crack, Hal prised off the cap of the nut. Both boys groaned when they saw the contents.

‘Suffering cats!’ Roger mourned. ‘It’s rotten! ‘

Salt water entering through the crack had spoiled both the meat and the liquid.

Hal scraped out the inside of the nut. ‘At least we have a cup now.’

‘What’s the use of a cup with nothing to put in it?’

‘We’ll find something.’

They searched until the sun was low in the west. Their stomachs were now reminding them of the need for food as well as water.

‘Here’s water!’ exclaimed Hal. Roger came to see what he had found. It was nothing but a low flat weed rooted in a little soil between the rocks.

‘So that’s water!’ sneered Roger.

Hal paid no attention to his sarcasm. He broke off one of the small pulpy leaves and chewed it. The leaf was full of a cool juice. It was wonderfully refreshing to the dry mouth and parched tongue. A grin of content spread over Hal’s face.

Roger bit into a leaf. ‘Boy, does that taste good!’ But he did not take any more. The two boys, with a single thought, dug up the plant and trudged with it to their own island. If they were thirsty, their feverish patient would be much more so.

Omo was tossing restlessly. He opened his eyes. They were bright with fever.

‘We brought you some water, Omo. But it’s water you have to chew. I don’t know what your island name for it is, but we call it pigweed or purslane.’

Omo took the plant eagerly. He chewed the leaves, stems, and roots, extracting and swallowing the juice.

‘It’s wonderful,’ he said gratefully. ‘I hope you got plenty more for yourselves.’ His eyes questioned Roger.

Take it all,’ Roger said. ‘We’re okay.’

‘Sorry we can’t offer you any dinner,’ Hal said. Omo smiled. ‘Water was all I wanted. Now I can sleep,’ and he closed his eyes.

Hal looked for more pigweed but found none. The drop or two of water he had pressed out of the leaf seemed only to have increased his thirst. He was glad to see the killer sun sink below the horizon. The coral rocks quickly lost their heat. Thank heaven for the night! He dreaded the thought that another blazing day must come, and another, and another, until they died in this infernal sea-trap.

How to get water! It was still the number one problem. He sat down to think. His hand rested upon a rock. Suddenly he realized that the rock was damp.

The dew! The dew was falling. In the darkening shadows a mist drifted over the lagoon. If he could find a way to catch the dew….

The Polynesians had a way of doing that. If he could just remember how it went. He would like to ask Omo - but Omo must be allowed to sleep.

He went to the lagoon beach and dug a shallow hole in the sand about two feet wide. He placed the cup of coconut shell at the bottom. He covered the hole with Roger’s shirt taken from Omo’s forehead. Omo would not need it now that the air was cool. He pierced an opening in the shirt just over the cup. Then he piled a pyramid of stones about three feet high over the shirt.

The principle of the thing was that dew would collect in the chinks between the stones, trickle through them to the shirt, and run down into the cup. In the morning there might be a cupful of fresh water.

Hal went back to find Roger stretched out on the rocks near Omo fast asleep. Hal tried to make himself comfortable on the lumpy coral.

But he could not sleep. The three words that separate life from death kept going through his brain - water, food, shelter.

He thought of the soft life at home. Where you slept in a smooth bed under a good roof. Where you had only to turn a tap to get water. Where you were called three times a day to a table groaning with food.

Life was so easy at home that a fellow got out of the habit of appreciating it. You took it for granted. Hal was certain he would never take it for granted again.