When Darkness Falls (15 page)

From the very first time the boy had taken to the water,
the old couple were amazed by his lack of fear. As an infant, his need to immerse himself within the sea had frightened them. They looked on in horror as the boy disappeared over the edge of the creek bank and tumbled into the water below. They stood in awe as his head broke the surface, before he disappeared beneath the clear water, snaking for the bottom his small legs kicking. As the child resurfaced, the father grabbed him and lifted him clear, hugging him to his thumping heart, not understanding why the child fought to be free, to return to the water from whence he had come.

When both his parents died, Ningaloo sat in grief. He looked about and wondered what would become of him. Should he look for the people of his parents' tribe? They had never hidden from him the fact that they had found him in a sand cradle beneath the mangroves in a tidal creek. They had also told him that his skin colour was a lot lighter than any people they had known. To reach the people of his parents, he would have to face many hardships. He knew in what direction he should travel; he had only to make the decision.

He would walk to the top of the small cliff where he used to go with his mother and father, look off into the hazy distance and try to imagine many, many people of all ages and sizes that would look like his parents. All he had to do was close his eyes and he could see them—standing on the beach waving for him to come in from the lagoons or off the reefs, his father bending over to examine a spoor or to explain a track or a broken twig. He could still hear his mother's quiet voice as she soothed his pains and calmed his fears. He heard the strength of her voice as she admonished him for his errors. They were the ghosts of his life, they were all about him.

If the other people were anything like his parents ... would
they be the same? Thin, emaciated, with thick, curly black hair covering their wiry frames?

Many times he had examined his own body and had reflected on the differences. By the time his manthing had begun to grow, he was already as tall as his father, yet his build belied his height. His frame was solid and muscular. His body was smooth, dark brown and supple, turning a shade of brownish-grey as the winter winds blew from the ice. His body hairs were light and few, giving his skin a shiny texture, especially as he walked out of the water. The hair on his head was dark brown to black, as straight as new-grown grass. His legs and arms were long and supple though well muscled, and the breadth and depth of his chest indicated the power and capacity of his lungs.

All through his childhood, he had romped and swum and dived, learning to control his air supply and lengthen the time he could spend beneath the surface. His watery world was as natural to him as his existence on the land.

When his father was alive he had caught the boy far out in the depths of the open ocean, far beyond the swell of the waves as they rolled on an incoming tide across the shoal. He had forbidden him to venture out beyond the reefs into the perils that lurked beyond the bay. But Father was gone now. Ningaloo was free and old enough to make his own decisions. His life was his to do with as he willed.

He was aware of his limitations when he was wallowing far out in deep water, hovering over the vestiges of submerging reefs as the tide came to its peak. He had no means of rest, other than to float. He spent long periods out in the deep water and it became apparent that there was little to fear from sharks. They came, they looked, and went on with their business. He found that it was only when he lashed about in the water that the sharks closed in, looking for prey that was
in difficulty, their radar honing in on the sudden sharp vibrations. If he submerged and actually swam towards them, they would veer off, swimming in ever widening circles. The small, curious sharks of the reef he grew accustomed to, and when curiosity got the better of them and they swam close, he found that a good solid punch on the snout deterred even the biggest of them.

It was as his body began to tire that he became most vulnerable to attack. He needed something that would float and support his weight. His first effort was the remnants of an old tree washed up by the storms. It had supported his weight well, but it took most of his time and a great deal of his strength to get it out to sea leaving him limited time to explore.

Gradually Ningaloo devised a means to stay longer in the water. He had been sitting on a limb of a semi-immersed mangrove tree, breaking off twigs in a subconscious action. They fell at random into the water below, gathering together on the water's edge. Suddenly a large
mungel mungel
came skipping across the top of the water making for the tree limbs. Quickly, it changed direction and skipped to the mass of twigs. There it lay at rest, regaining its strength, bobbing up and down in the clear blue water. The boy had seen and understood the implications of the action. “Yuckaboora!”, he exclaimed to the heavens, falling from his perch and swimming for the shore, with ideas tumbling through his head thick and fast.

He gathered together long-dead dry mangrove trees washed up high above the waterline and assembled them on the beach, and bound them together using strips of hide. He dragged his first prototype into the water, and watched in satisfaction as it bobbed about on the calm waters of the bay. Taking heart, he clambered aboard the frail craft, then sat
totally disillusioned in the sand after falling through his disintegrating design. He dragged the pieces ashore and made another effort.

He had to find a way for his knots to hold; the method used to fix spearheads to a shaft wasn't working in this case. Through trial and error he found the right method of lashing and fastening. He trimmed each tree and found that then they matted together closer, more firmly. He hacked and cut and lashed, and little by little the craft grew until it supported his weight. He didn't stop there, he made it bigger and strong enough to float his body totally free of the water.

Then he set about moving the platform out to the furthermost reefs. The effort so tired him that after spelling he swam directly for the shore, leaving the heavy, cumbersome platform to float around the bay on a neap tide. In a depressed state of mind, he made his way to the clifftop overlooking the bay, and sat looking aimlessly at the scene before him. It was the same scene that he had first seen as a growing child under his mother's care. He recognised the subtle changes of colours and the moods of the ocean and the different seasons of the vegetation and how the landscape changed. He realised a new season was about to begin. The life-giving rains were about to quench the dry earth. Soon great storms would lash his homeland and he would have to make an adjustment to his present living situation, moving his camp and equipment back to the cave in the hills until the season was over.

Next day Ningaloo rose with the dawn. He set out on an early morning swim to retrieve the platform, and with a length of hide manoeuvred it back to a central position, securing it to a stand of coral.

At night he would lie in his bedding on the clifftop waiting for the heat of the day to dissipate, for the first breeze to come off the ocean. Lying there, his mind would work slowly
through the design of a more functional craft. He had worked out that if he could create a craft to support him, he could propel it through the water just by lying on it and kicking, but the few small craft he made as experiments still showed up the same old problems—a solid face of wood making it difficult to break cleanly through the water. The problem followed him out to sea, and he lay on the decking of the platform staring down into the clear, clean water.

He watched without interest as a Shovel-nose shark slid into view, scraping the sandy bottom. A moray eel suddenly shot out from the coral, and with a panic-stricken flick of its tail and uplift of its snout, soared towards the surface, out of reach and out of danger. The sign was there for the design he required. He dolphin-dived his way back to land. In his mind lay the plans for a new platform, a lighter, easier to manoeuvre craft. One that he could propel through the water in a set direction without its weight dragging all the energy out of him. The Shovel-nose shark had unknowingly given him his design.

He set about collecting fallen dried trees to make the craft. As he dragged each length of timber to the foreshore of the sandy beach, he noticed that some of the dead trees were lighter than others. Testing them for flotation, he found they also rode higher in the water. He started by laying the longest pole on the ground, then other poles of the same width, though a little shorter in length on either side of the centre pole and lashing them together, then poles of smaller length beside these, and so on. His craft did indeed resemble the shape of the Shovel-nose shark when it was finally completed in the coolness of a storm-darkened night. Tomorrow he would test it.

In drizzling rain he dragged the craft into the millpond flatness of the sea. He was already pleased with the weight
difference, and smiling with the pleasure, he pushed the craft out into waist-deep water, and with the supreme confidence of final success, he pulled himself onto the craft from the narrowed end made by the tops of the poles. The pointed end reached for the sky, but as he pulled himself onto the raft, the nose settled back into the water, and the craft lay on flat, even keel. He'd done what he'd set out to do. Now he had to see if his theory of propulsion would work also. He slid off the raft on the narrow end, and with his bottom half in the water, began to kick, and as the craft picked up speed, he began to laugh.

With his new mode of transport, Ningaloo found he could swim all day and travel beneath the water, towing his craft above him or let it ride idly above him tethered to a rock on the bottom to stop it drifting. No longer was he restricted to the bay in which he had grown up; now he could venture out into the open sea, drift along driven by wind or sea, or paddle and kick his way to new horizons.

Now, with his raft, he had the means to travel as far as he wished. It was time to leave his sheltered haven and go out into the world.

He spent hours planning. He knew that if he was to journey south along the coast, he would one day run into his mother's people. Deep inside he knew this was not what he really wanted. What did he want? He could not tell. In the end he decided to go north ... as far as it took to find people.

He realised that to travel the distance that lay before him, he would have to build a much larger, sturdier craft that could hold enough water and provisions to last for several days, and with enough room to enable him to sleep. He would also have to make some sort of shelter for shade from the glaring heat of the day.

At nights, by the light of a blazing fire, he sliced hides into
strips, and as the fire died to embers, he plaited them into lengths. During the day, he would take his craft and visit nearby bays and beaches and scour the area above the high-water mark for the dried out tree that had caught his attention in the making of his first craft. He would tow his finds back to his cove and lay them out, choosing the straightest and the strongest. Then, using the quartz adze made by his father to hollow out and smooth the sides of coolamons and spear shields, he set to work.

The making of a bigger craft had taken longer than he expected. Squalls raced across the bay reminding him of the perils of driving wind and lashing rain on an open sea. Now he worked at making a standing shelter that could withstand wind and rain, somewhere to keep his gear dry. He put the largest of the skins down as a floor, then lashed pieces of smaller timber to the deck poles of the craft. Placing them in a square, he had the base from which he could erect a tenable frame, to which he could sew skins to three sides.

Trial and error had taught him a lot. The first time he hung his heavy water-bag to the frame, a gust of wind had sent it crashing down. By the time he had finished, the shelter was strong enough to bear his weight easily. He then nailed another square of timber to the outside of the shelter, bracing the hide onto the deck poles. He hoped that this would help to keep the water out in a rising sea.

As the first of the cold winds blew up from the ice, his craft was as ready as it would ever be. The storms had passed on to some distant land; his time of leaving was upon him. It was a battle of will and muscle to get the craft into the water. Ningaloo brought out all the skins that were left; he laid some on the floor, the rest he tied down on the roof. He selected the two largest water-skin bags his mother had made, and lashed them on the outside of the shelter, with a smaller one for
his everyday use at the entrance. Along the side of the shelter he strapped down extra poles of the light wood in case he had need of them. In the front he placed some cooking pots and some baked clay containers his parents had made, covered them with hide and lashed them down.

He was ready mentally and physically, to leave his homeland and go out into the world. In the afternoon of his final day, he paddled his little craft all over the bay, fixing in his mind's eye the favoured reefs and spots of his childhood, places and things he could recall to offset the loneliness he knew he would feel.

At sunrise he visited his parents for the last time and stood in silent reverence before their graves. With tears filling his eyes, he made his way to the beach, and crawled onto the raft. He was not quite sixteen.

He slipped over the side of the larger craft, pulled his small raft to him, lifted the rock that acted as the anchor for his floating home, then slipped aboard the raft and began to paddle towards the open sea, dragging the wunnaguri, as he named his floating home, behind him. He cleared the opening to the bay as the sun rose on high.

He was sitting on the small raft paddling along when the wind picked up. It came up behind him and swirled around the wunnaguri, which hesitated, lifted, then silently surged ahead. Ningaloo was suddenly aware of his predicament. He flung himself sideways as the bow of the wunnaguri made to plough into him, and passed over the raft, swamping it.