Maybe those Marfa’s will continue on forever. It looks that way but I’m determined mine won’t. I’m beginning to think it is a Jap and nothing supernatural like the Marfa’s, and I’m working on a plan to sneak up on him. I’m going to catch him and steal his radio. If I can contact Australia or Fiji, I will have it made. But maybe Fiji will think I’m a Japanese decoy. The Japs might also think I crashed, and they have caught me using their radio and now they want to ambush me. Something like that–it is just like them.
Word is coming from Guadalcanal that marines are running into all kinds of enemy subterfuge. Japs are hiding in trees and in holes and sniping away at them as they advance. Scores of marines have been killed and even more wounded. And that’s not the only sneaky scheme they have going.
But I understand the marines are catching on to the Japanese–they refuse to fight fair. I think we are all coming to realize there is no such thing as fair where they are concerned. And I think all they have done is hardened the marines and the army against them. When it comes to this no holds barred warfare, the Japs are going to wish they had played by the rules. Once we gain air superiority, we are going to arm our carrier marines with napalm. The last thing you ever want to do is to have an enemy with superior air power, one that has an unlimited supply of napalm. The worst way in the world to die is to burn up by napalm. Now on top of Pearl Harbor and some of the other atrocities they have committed, comes this camouflaging themselves and hiding in the ground or in the trees. I’m not sure they are going to gain a thing other than to bring down a shower of liquid fire on themselves.
If I make an attempt to chase my light down one more time, only to have it disappear, I’m going to get seriously stressed. I might start talking to myself in earnest. Then, where will I be?
I changed the subject with myself. I’m tired of this flash phenomenon and the Marfa lights. I want to get back to the tidal waves. Not them exactly but other natural calamities endemic to these islands. The kind I should be afraid of. How about hurricanes? I need to protect myself from hurricanes as well as the big waves they generate if I’m going to live here by the beach much longer.
A hurricane would devastate the low part of this island and maybe drown me. I have no conception of the force of such a thing, other than what I saw in another movie starring Dorothy Lamour and Jon Hall. It was aptly named The Hurricane and Jon Hall played the role of a young islander, who ran afoul of the law. He spent most of his time hiding out with Dorothy listening to the beautiful strains of The Moon of Manakoora or in jail until the big wind came. Blowing across a real low island like Manakoora, the big waves almost washed it away; maybe it would the beach and the hills of this one but not the mountains.
But the screenwriter didn’t spend much time teaching anybody how to stay out of the way or what to do to survive, other than to tie him or her to a big tree. I’m bound to catch at least one, even if I only spend a fraction of the time Ben spent marooned. And if it ever comes, I need to be on the high ground and have the sense enough not to try to ride it out anywhere near the water. Just because it is peaceful and tranquil now doesn’t mean it will stay that way, but what about a tidal wave or tsunami as the japs call them? An earthquake could occur thousands of miles away, and the rising water could catch me unaware and drown me before I could make it very far inland. That’s what I’ve heard anyway.
Chapter 4
A couple of days later, I returned to the spot where I first saw the light.
I realize now it might only be seen when the sun is just right and maybe only from where I am standing. It would be a shame if I couldn’t find it again, so I intend spending some more time thinking about it before making up my mind what it is and where it is.
Marking the direction with a stick in the sand is not the way to go. It will be just my luck to experience another storm before I can get back, but I did mark it that way. I also laid-it-out with an arrow of small rocks, and then stacked-up a small pile to indicate where I had been standing. Then I made a mental note to mark the trail I took to get there. I am glad I did, I can’t begin to tell you how glad I am that I did.
Three days later it rained, another hard rain, very much the way it does on the gulf coast from Texas to Florida, and some other places in the country.
Almost every late afternoon in Florida, in the summer, monsoon winds bring in moisture off the gulf. Any uplifting cools it and causes violent lightening storms. They are spectacular, and after a similar one here caught me by surprise, I set about fashioning a way to catch the rain. I did get some but I want more. I want all I can get.
After I drank my fill and topped-off my can, I went fishing. When I felt refreshed, I went to work instead of to sleep. I made a large bowl of interwoven vines, propped it up with four corner poles of thick bamboo and then guyed the poles with braided vines. After this, I laid a thick layer of broad leaves on top of the vines. I then made a drain from a bamboo shoot, and inserted a bung that could easily be removed without tearing it all down. I figured the guywires would hold it up when it was full of water.
This contraption, along with my full jerry can, will supply me with at least two weeks of fresh water. And the way I have my bowl rigged, the overhead network of dripping leaves, with the added daily rain, should keep it full. But it is clear; I must have a much larger cistern, or maybe another one, since I have no idea how long these westerly storms will last or how regular they will continue to be.
I have decided to stay on this island. However, I am looking forward to a change in diet. I don’t know about goats but I do know about “luau” cooked pork. I have even eaten it roasted in the ground and it’s delicious. As for the goats, I might try raising one for the milk–maybe even cheese at sometime in the future.
I wonder if similar thoughts ran through the minds of Crusoe an old Ben Gunn? And if so, why didn’t Ben make himself some goat’s cheese?
I poured about half the contents of the can back into the cistern. Then I tied the can with several fishes to the parachute pouch, converted into a back pack, and headed for a two or three day boy scout like outing. I was looking for the light.
To tell you the truth, I don’t like scout outings. I never really did. I remember going with my troop, once, on a fishing trek in some high mountains. What a mistake that was, loading the pack with pots and pans and canned goods, every conceivable thing with no sense of how heavy it was going to be.
We left our main camp in the afternoon, heading for another smaller lake. The scoutmaster and his assistant wanted to fish the next morning, and, of course, they had all the trappings to be comfortable over a weekend of rain. They were also full grown and capable of lugging heavy packs over several miles of steep terrain.
I was twelve years old and maybe weighed sixty pounds. My pack would scare a professional soldier to death if he thought he might have to carry it very far in those mountains.
I was no infantryman or did I ever want to become one. This was never so clear as it would become on that hike. Suffice to say, I threw most of my goods away before I went very far. But I never forgot what it was like to carry a heavy pack.
Aviation cadets, at some time before they start flying are made acquainted with an army field pack. A kind of Hollywood pack, not for real, since there is no steel helmet, rifle or ammunition involved, but a heavy pack nonetheless. But due in part to that one scout trip, the Hollywood exercise was as close as I ever came to the real thing. But then, too, maybe infantrymen are not always the worst off; they seldom find themselves lost in a storm at sea, or marooned alone on an island in the South Pacific.
The next day I went back early to wait for the sun. I had already determined the light to be about three miles away. Sure enough, if I sighted along the arrow I had placed there two days before, I could see it for about five minutes after the sun reached the tops of the trees. After that it disappeared completely. But I was convinced I could figure out some way to solve the problem of where it was and how to get to it.
&
nbsp; The thing I came up with back at the beach was a kind of alidade I once saw aboard a yacht. Alidades are simple pointers. Referenced to true north, they are used for taking bearings from boats and ships to objects at sea or on the shore. But in the jungle with the sun above the trees, I had no idea where north was.
This sighting device I come up with consists of two pieces of bamboo tied together. One piece points at the sun as it emerges above the trees and the other points at the light.
As I move through the jungle towards the light, I will need to view the sun at this same altitude every morning, but since the trees along my track are not the same height, I will have to judge its altitude by time–and to do this I will need my watch.
I thought about taking the back off and cleaning the one I have. The reason I didn’t throw it away is because of the keepsake saying on the back.
Gene had it engraved when she gave it to me as a birthday present. Now I’m glad I did save it, actually I have looked at the back already–and more than once–when I was particularly lonesome.
If I can get the back off, I might be able to wash it in rain water, maybe let it soak and then blow it dry, checking it later to see if it keeps time. But what time am I going to set it? Then it occurred to me that it doesn’t matter as long as it keeps time. I just need to know the time, any time, when the sun first shows above the trees each day.
But how will I know how high the sun is if it doesn’t keep fairly good time. I won’t. And the next day, I might be off several yards and then several more the next. Literally pushing my way through a wall of green vines and foliage, odds are I’m going to get off course and lost before I hardly get started. But I have to give it a try.
I managed to get the back off. I washed it good and let it dry. But good is not good enough. It is one of those Swiss seventeen-jewel types–precision when precision is not what I’m looking for–it never ticked again. What I needed was one of those cheap Mickey Mouse types with loose insides that ran forever.
I sat on the beach, staring at the water. I was trying to figure a way to calculate the sun’s altitude without a timepiece of some kind and without a reference to the horizon, any horizon. It didn’t need to be accurate, either, just within a few minutes; just enough to let me stay pointed in the right direction.
Let me state again how important it is to find what ever it is. It isn’t just my curiosity it has to have been put there by a human. And I need to know what kind of human. Particularly, I need to know if he’s a Japanese soldier–my life might depend on it.
Let me see now, I have tried it three times and each time I have gotten lost and had to wait for a glimpse of the afternoon sun. The problem is, I move a few yards and then I have to vary from my heading because the vines become too thick, and then while I’m trying to get back on track, I have to deviate again and then I end up guessing at my original heading.
The next morning, from my new position in the jungle, I couldn’t see the light the tangle of vines and foliage was too dense. And I don’t know whether I am walking straight toward it or not. And I won’t be able to tell unless I know where the sun is supposed to be at the time it rises above the trees at my original spot.
If I could figure out a way to make a screwdriver I would try again to recover the clock in the instrument panel that is if the airplane is still there, and if the clock has not been contaminated with seawater.
I do keep a dzus fastener in my flying suit. Actually it isn’t a real fastener, not the kind mechanics carry with them. It’s a regular coin, a quarter.
Many important things in an airplane, like electrical fuel booster pumps, are installed beneath the skin. And they need to be inspected before flight. They leak at times, and if they leak badly, they could catch fire and cause the airplane to explode. Still they can’t be mounted outside where they are unprotected, so they are covered with an “inspection panel” and secured with this little device called a dzus.
Mechanics remove them for maintenance with a screwdriver. Crew chiefs have an abbreviated screwdriver they carry in their pocket–they call it a dzus fastener. Pilots, wanting to check whether a leaking pump is still leaking after maintenance, use a quarter to remove the fastener.
But the screws on the clock will not fit a quarter. I will have to grind it down. It might take forever to do it, too, using coral rock for a grinder. But now I really am grasping at straws.
What a lot of work I have let myself in for. But I’m convinced it is necessary and I can’t back out. No longer is it a curiosity. But if it really is a lone Japanese with a radio, he has to be able to come and go. And to do this he is going to make a path of some kind.
There is no question that I need to locate this bird before he sees me. And I’m thinking, maybe the reason he hasn’t is because I haven’t made a fire yet.
But I might be going at it all wrong. Before I try making a screwdriver out of a quarter and going back to the airplane again, I think I’ll go farther down the beach and look for footprints leading from the edge of the beach into the jungle.
But it hasn’t been for nothing, even if I don’t find anything. It has kept my mind busy at a time when I needed to get back to thinking. And it has been entertaining. As I was saying, these kinds of mind exercises have always been entertaining as far back as I can remember.
When I was around eight years old, I saw an old washing machine in the town dump. It had a hand wringer. That is the wringer consisted of two rollers coupled together by a strong spring. The top mounted wringer was turned with a handle that did the job an electric motor would do on later models.
I managed to remove it and carry it home. I had the idea of making a miniature push-type automobile we called a “bug,” except this one would have an engine. And the engine would be the wringer. The power to turn the roller, which was connected to a rear wheel pulley by an old automobile fan belt, would come from me. My good right arm would perform the function of a piston to drive this engine of mine.
No it didn’t work but not because the idea wasn’t sound, but because I didn’t have the tools or the skill necessary to install the wringer. But the project was interesting, and it kept my mind occupied for a week after I went to bed at night.
I can’t remember when I didn’t have some mechanical project going on in my head. Some of them worked and some didn’t. Some were my own ideas, some I got from magazines, and some others from older kids in the neighborhood.
One such came from a local airplane builder, who graduated from models to the real thing. He designed and built an airplane similar to a World War 1 fighter plane. He planned to install a motorcycle engine in it and fly it from a field on the other side of his back yard. I thought the whole scheme smacked of genius at work, and I stayed as close to the construction as he would allow me to.
I would sit in this airplane; he had “hangered” in an old garage and play with the controls. I knew how they were supposed to work; I figured it was a good first step to one day becoming a real pilot.
However, it was never finished. Somehow the federal authorities heard about it and told his mother to intervene before he got himself hurt. They explained that the strips of building lathe it was made of were too heavy for the size of the engine he was going to use. And, furthermore, it would not have been properly balanced, because he didn’t understand. But I disagreed with them. It seemed to me that an airplane was an airplane, whether or not it was a model the principle was the same. But none of this really mattered, because after all, he didn’t know how to fly–he just thought he did.
But the federals stopped the work, nevertheless. And the airplane fuselage sat in the garage for another year. By then he turned seventeen and had joined the navy. Two months later, the Japs bombed Pearl Harbor, and my friend took his young genius to sea and used it for a better purpose.
The last I heard, he was a Petty Officer on one of our capital ships. I think he’s out there now, somewhere, looking for Japs. I might look him up if I can ever get off this
island. I want to thank him for letting me play around with his airplane. It got me seriously interested in flying school, and it took my mind off becoming an engineer. And that’s what I want; I want to continue flying rather than work in an office for a company after the War.
It occurred to me in the middle of the night that my Japanese soldier needs a supply of fresh water and something to eat. His problems are exactly the same as mine. His navy can’t chance being spotted trying to land food and water. And he wants his presence to remain a secret. What I want is to find a stream that empties into the ocean. If I ever hope to find his footprints, they will be running along a streambed leading from the interior. I’m going to give this creek bed idea serious consideration before I try again to retrieve the clock in my downed aircraft.
The next day found me packing my jerry can and walking barefoot down the beach. It was a beautiful day and I couldn’t help thinking it might cost me a lot of money after the War to walk barefoot down this same beach.
I became occupied, watching little crabs running back and forth along the edge of the water. I filed it away for the future; they are not crawdads but they might make good bisque if I had a fire. But I haven’t tried making one yet. I have been too busy looking for the source of this strange light. It is going to be my next project, though.
It also occurred to me that they might be related to crawdads and I had heard that in most places in the world, crawdads live in shallow creeks. And the source of the light has to be human, but the jungle is too thick for a human to move very far in the area where I can see the light. As I said, whoever was responsible for it, has to have access to a creek or to a cut path. But what is a path doing on an island that is uninhabited. I admit this convoluted reasoning of mine is not very scientific but it’s all I have. Anyway it keeps my mind occupied. And I find it entertaining if not too productive.
Somewhere West of Fiji Page 4
