No human and few other birds could have viewed this stunningly colorful sight from his vantage. The Chief probably assumed the sun’s evening rays had illuminated the spectacle for him alone. Yet that was probably when he noticed he was not, in fact, alone. Attracted to him and following at a distance as he glided back down was another, even larger, black bird. It had the white throat of the same species but was of a different sex. He had probably spied the female glide by one of his boats and suspected she was trying to poach on his territory. That was when they both would have felt a distinctive pressure change in their ears. An instinct would have spoken to both at the same time, suggesting that they glide on the oncoming breeze toward the safety of the atoll.
Down below, the elder woman must have shivered at the sight of what she had been expecting.
“Jebrọ!” she called. Then she chanted with an eerie scream. “Kapiḷak ej buñ!”
Ḷainjin awoke from his contented half nap and immediately began tearing himself from the cozy octopus who was clinging to him, insistently shaking her head, and whispering, “No, no.”
“Liṃanṃan! Let him go! I need him on deck!” the elder commanded.
“So Liṃanṃan was her name,” thought Ḷainjin as she obediently went limp and allowed him to squirm his way out of the hull. Before he stood, he could not resist glancing at her face one last time. She had transformed it into a ridiculous pout, like that of a little girl disappointed by a parent’s stern refusal to provide the object of her desire. Then quickly, before he glanced away, she broke back into tongue-wiggling mode and he laughed. He stood and took in the enormity of the thin line of gray clouds across the entire southern and eastern horizons.
“Liṃanṃan is certainly a fitting name for her. What should I say is my name?” he asked himself.
The wind had freshened slightly during the afternoon, and he felt quite pleased that the elder had gotten them so close to their destination. The green island ahead looked inviting.
“Can we make it?” asked the elder.
“No. Look at how quickly the dark spirit rises.”
“We don’t have to make it to the passageway. It is high tide, so we can go right over the reef to the shore of that island,” she said.
“Thank you, Grandma. You are a good helmswoman, but we won’t make it. That thing will have its chance to crush us first. We are better to get to flatter water over there,” he said, pointing north, farther into the atoll’s lee.
She relinquished the helm to him. He changed his point of sail and started closing the gap between them and the other boat. By the time he was alongside them, they too had noticed the quickly rising band of gray. Ḷainjin warned them that trying to reach shore before the storm struck was futile, that they should instead take advantage of the storm’s foregusts to follow him north as far as possible, deep into the atoll’s lee. Under whatever circumstance, they should keep their eyes on his boat, lower their sail upon his signal, and then tie down quickly and drift until the storm passed.
“And dump those fish! They are sure to spoil now anyway!
“Emejjia wa ilọmeto!” he chanted. When they chanted back, he sheeted in and headed north. The wind freshened a bit, and crisp waves began slapping up against their starboard hull. Their kubaak began to glide across, rather than dip into, their crests. His strategy was to resist the temptation to head directly to the island from the southwest, but rather to make better use of the firmer wind to head straight north, so as to be more in the island’s lee and sheltered from its wrathful wake of choppy waves as the storm struck and passed over them. With the atoll sheltering them somewhat from the wind and storm waves — and hopefully they would be out of the current at its south end — they should drift away more slowly and comfortably during the night ahead.
Liṃanṃan had absorbed all of this without speaking. Although she had demonstrated some boat skills, Ḷainjin assumed her father had mostly taken her out in fair weather. She exhibited an innate braveness tinged, due to lack of experience, with naiveté, and her current situation was clearly out of the realm of any prior experience. She was no complainer. She did not question his strategy, but he could see fear growing in her eyes as she watched the gray, billowing wall approach. It was not the amorphous, ugly gray of a normal rainstorm but something distinct, despite its approach from more than one quadrant. The burnishing light from the sun setting on the clear, western horizon ensured that every aspect of the furious beast was illuminated in such manifest definition that its awe-inspiring fearsomeness would be almost hypnotizing were it stationary. It was the astonishing rapidity of the beast as it swept toward them that they found so increasingly self-diminishing. He watched her face as the spirit of the thing drained the natural liveliness from her eyes. He waited patiently for her furtive glance.
“Liṃanṃan, now that is a perfect name for such a beautiful woman,” he commented in his calm way, almost as though they were strolling down one of the stone-lined paths on her father’s island. “Grandma, how could her mother have known that such a slimy little octopus would grow into such a perfectly formed body as to guide a man’s journey through life?”
The elder seemed to realize and appreciate the distracting and calming effect of his words amid the impending danger and rose to the occasion with appropriate eloquence. “Every man out there” — she tilted her head toward the atoll — “would forfeit his house to sit on a boat next to her, and to think she crawled into that hull with you! Why, you must be so invigorated by her scent that you could suck up the spirit of that ugly storm and spit it out as a fart from your butt!” At that, the three of them managed to laugh in the face of the impending gale.
“I just might decide to do that, but the two of you can help me. Grandma, when the time comes to eat this thing, you must give it warning. When I give the signal, I want you to turn the boat straight into the wind, hold it there, and then count aloud very slowly to twenty. Like this, juon … ruo … jilu. The timing is very important.
“Liṃanṃan, as Grandma counts, I want you to loosen the halyard there and lower it, three hands per count, while I flake the sail as it falls. By the time Grandma gets to joñoul, we should be wrapping it up with these sail ties. By the time she gets to roñoul, we should have it securely propped and sheeted down and the two of you should head below, one to each end.”
“Let me know when you intend to fart so I can hold my nose,” quipped Liṃanṃan.
However, the time for jokes was over. The gray wall was swelling toward them like a wave about to curl onto the reef. Ḷainjin turned the helm back over to the elder woman. The strongest point on the proa was where the two skyward-rising outrigger booms were yoked and tied onto the hull at its middle, or point of harness. He had long lifelines neatly coiled below, and he unstrung one for each woman’s ankle. Then he had two other lines attached at the yoke point that he readied to secure the sail, once furrowed. Taking one in each hand as a safety line, he scooted himself out onto the outrigger platform and sat, legs astraddle, at the point where the two upward booms began to rise. The wind was now filling their sail with such force that he needed to add his weight to windward by crawling out even farther on these outrigger beams to add ballast to the kubaak, which was now flying well above the surface of the water. It was particularly intoxicating to fly an outrigger like that on the lee side of an atoll, where there was a lot of wind but where the wave action had yet to catch up.
He looked at the elder woman at the helm. She was now standing with her legs braced against the inside of the hull, both hands grasped onto the end of the oar tied to the bulwark. The oar was levered beneath her arm, and her ragged black-and-silver hair flew unremittingly in the wind. She glanced back at him with a wild look of exuberance in her confident eyes that showed him she could still handle the tiller. He looked over his shoulder at their companion craft, and their outrigger was flying high as well.
The two boats glided like two birds before the impending clouds. It was for but a f
ew moments, yet it seemed an exhilarating eternity of excitement that no doubt carved an impression into their souls that would seal their friendship and instill confidence in one another to their lives’ end. Then, as the color of the beast’s edges turned amber from the setting sun, as the whiskers of its nasty beard fell almost to the water’s surface, and just as it was about to exhale the first burst of its cold breath, Ḷainjin gave the elder the signal to turn their craft into the wind. On cue, Liṃanṃan began to lower their sail as he stood at the boat’s yoke to flake it. They accomplished the task in perfect harmony and just moments before the first fierce arrows of rain were about to spear them.
Not everything, however, had gone as planned. The crew of their companion craft had not turned into the wind to lower and secure their sail as instructed. Instead, they had shunted and foolishly headed off on an opposite tack, back toward the passageway into the atoll. By the look of their boat’s rise upon the waves, he could see it was still overburdened by its cargo of fish. That, however, would be the least of that crew’s worries. Ḷainjin watched as a second fierce gust of the dark spirit’s breath overwhelmed the sail of the misguided craft, raised its outrigger booms vertical, and catapulted its crew, leaving the boat flipped like a turtle — hull up, flat upon the sea.
He glanced into the face of the elder woman, whose jaw had dropped. She stared back in bewilderment, eyes pleading for his help. At this point, uncharacteristic of his careful and deliberate manner, Ḷainjin suddenly transformed into his warrior mode, where instinctive action would henceforth precede careful thought. His plan of hunkering down for a warm and cozy, if rocky, drift had altered. He planted the elder woman on the outrigger platform and told her to point at her grandson. “Do not blink, Grandma, or you may never see him again!”
Then, taking his ring back from around Liṃanṃan’s neck, he deftly cut the ties they had just used to secure the sail and, defying the teeth of the storm, took the helm. Just as the first needles of cold, horizontal rain began to sting her shivering shoulders, he ordered her to hoist it. That proved to be a difficult task, and he could not help but admire her determination as she struggled against the force of the storm to raise the sail and then secure it.
“Kipeddikdik!” he chanted. This was the type of sailing that such a situation called for. He sheeted in tight and pointed the yard so close to the wind it allowed most of the gust to spill from the sail. There was a downside to this point of sail. It was very difficult and very hard on the material of the sail, and progress was very, very slow, with a lot of lateral drift. But there was no other choice. Were he to point the vessel more than a fraction off wind, they could share the same end as the other craft. So the elder woman pointed as all were blinded by the cold, stinging rain, all warmed by the ocean water as it splashed off their prow. The proa bobbed and then plunged into wave after wave, and all heads ached with tension from the cold and the tortuous, tedious lack of progress. Finally, by wind shift, by chance, or by fate — or part suprahuman inspiration — and long after the sun had set, they could begin to follow the shouts of the young men to the location of their overturned craft.
They heard the words “hurry” shouted several times, and “pako.” At this, the shark hunter grinned. Amid the gusting winds of the gale, he was more worried about anchoring his craft, in its kipeddikdik sailing mode, to theirs, and about timing the anchoring with the dropping of his sail. If the connection was mistimed, his boat would drift rapidly away from their raftlike, upside-down proa in the storm, and they might never find them again. The men, faces turned away from the wind, had surely seen Ḷainjin approaching long before he could see them, and all three men, in cowardly fashion, quickly swam from their overturned boat toward his as soon as, or even before, they judged the distance safe. Were they not so afraid of sharks, they might have begun swimming toward him earlier. At any rate, there they were in the water beneath him — pleading to come aboard, impeding his progress toward their craft, mumbling about sharks, and distracting him from his mission. He grabbed the club he had used to crush the skull of the tuna the day before and threatened to beat anyone who dared touch his boat without his permission.
“Which one of you decided not to follow my plan?” he demanded.
The irooj’s son quickly admitted it was he.
“All right, take this line and tie it to the middle of your kubaak when I tell you to — not before!” Ḷainjin tied the other end of the line to the yoke of his craft.
The irooj’s son did not swim. “But what about the sharks?” he asked. “I felt one rub against me.”
Ḷainjin was in no mood to hear shark tales from the young man who kept defying him. “Well, did you empty the boat of fish like I told you to do?”
“The fish are still good!”
“Well then, call to the women on shore to come and clean them!” he shouted. There was no response so he continued. “Now take that line and swim back while you still can! You two swim with him! Stay by your boat, and don’t come back here or I’ll thump your skull like a fish!” he said, shaking the club fiercely.
The net result of the men holding onto the boat and dangling in the water before he threatened them — combined with his lack of concentration at the helm — was that they had drifted back, farther away. Nevertheless, the elder had been doing her assigned task. She had kept the boat in her sight. She kept pointing to it amid the driving rain, fierce wind, and growing waves. After another period that seemed longer than it should, they were on top of the stranded men again, all three of them sitting like birds on a branch atop the upside-down hull. Ḷainjin surrendered the helm to the elder woman again.
“Ok, tie us up!” he shouted.
After some discussion, one of the men reluctantly slipped into the water and tied the line to the outrigger. The line grew taut immediately, and Ḷainjin’s boat swung directly into the wind. Liṃanṃan had been through her tasks once before, so she knew exactly what he wanted, and they dropped, furrowed, and secured their sail as they had previously. He had accomplished his first goal. Although he had successfully anchored to the relatively stationary overturned boat, he realized he had anchored to the wrong spot, but this was only the first step in his plan. He would next secure a much-needed second line to the other boat’s yoke, beneath the water but over its upside-down hull. Then he planned to secure the other boat’s mast, which he must first detach, and tie onto its kubaak at the point where the boats were tied. Though much preparation was necessary, the final step in his plan was to simultaneously cut this line tied to the other boat’s kubaak, have the men “climb” the mast, forcing its float to submerge vertically, and let the force of the wind pushing on his boat help rotate the yoke of the other, flipping its hull upright. At that point, they should be able to bail the water from the capsized boat and tie the bow of one to the stern of the other. With both their outriggers to windward, they would be prepared to drift together till the storm passed. It was a solid plan, but it would need the participation of all to succeed.
Ḷainjin ducked down below to find a second line. By the time he popped up, he found all three men straddling the overturned hull again.
Liṃanṃan had observed all this from the prow deck, fully exposed to the storm. She shouted through the wind at Ḷainjin. “You speak to them as men, but they are scared little boys! Forget about them! They are useless! Tell me what to do and I’ll do it!”
He thought for a moment but decided not to put her at risk. “Here, hold this and play it out little by little as I swim. I am going to tie on a second line, unsecure their mast, and tie it to their kubaak. Then I’ll be back.”
With that, he secured his ring, lowered himself into the water, and began swimming. He heard the elder woman gasp “Jebrọ!” but there was no time for further discussion. He swam around the other boat and had the men string the line between them over the hull as planned. He then grabbed the loose end, exhaled, and lowered himself down to tie it at the submerged yoke. He immediately ran in
to the sand-like surface of a shark that had its head poked up into the overturned hull, probably trying to dislodge a fish that was somehow still within. He let go of the line, and still submerged, backed off a bit, touching it but gently to get his bearings on the thing next to him. Then he deftly inserted the shark’s tooth on his ring into the soft spot under its belly fin and punched it in the stomach with his free fist. The monster ripped open its own thick hide by its agitated motion. It backed out and turned away as his knife cut loose. When Ḷainjin surfaced, he was half gasping and half laughing, quite pleased with himself for getting the better of the hungry shark, and especially for the story he would be able to tell about it.
However, he was surprised to find that the men were no longer straddling the overturned hull. His fingers searched the hull above him for the line that he had temporarily draped there, but he could not find it. When he swam around the prow of the upside-down hull, he saw that something had gone wrong. His boat was no longer there but some distance away. He swam to the upside-down kubaak and took the anchor line, which had gone limp, tracing it to its end. Even in those few moments, his boat had drifted a great distance. There was movement on the boat, and he could see that one or all of the men had climbed aboard, but any sounds being made were carried downwind. The boat was drifting so swiftly that he judged he could never catch up with it. He inspected the line’s end in his hand. It had snapped. Caught in the gale winds and now in the high seas, his craft and crew had drifted out of his sight even as he wondered how to catch it. Gone! They had simply vanished, like the stuck shark, into the blackness. Now it was not the shark’s stomach but his that seemed ripped open. His insides could now end up as the bait that the sharks would trace to his story’s end.
What could have possessed him to leave the safety of his boat? There was a rule for that. A navigator never, ever leaves his boat. He must have been drunk from the scent of that woman, and now he would never see that intriguing creature again.
Man Shark Page 7
