When Darkness Falls

by John Bodey

  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 le
aving 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.

  He surfaced wildly, frantically searching the area around him, and saw both his crafts moving at a steady pace away from him. He began to swim in desperation, then paced himself so that his strength wouldn’t give out before he was in reach of the craft. And yet he never seemed to close the distance; when the craft picked up speed, he decided the chase could possibly kill him if he continued. He hung suspended in the water and looked about. The crafts were still travelling away from him at a fair rate, but the sea breeze was slowly blowing them towards the shore. Inevitably, they would beach themselves.

  His direction was now firmly set. He put his mind to following the craft, and it was late in the day when fighting against an outgoing tide, he sighted his two runaways hooked in amongst some mangrove trees. His strength had been drained, as he pulled himself aboard the wunnaguri where it rode, and reached weakly for the hanging waterbag.

  That night he slept the sleep of the dead. He felt neither incoming tide, nor the sedate outgoing one, but woke to the idyllic lapping of small waves on the hull as the craft rode the gentle swells in the early morning light. He untangled the rope that had become entwined in the low branches of a mangrove tree, pushed the wunnaguri out into clear water and clambered aboard, the raft following in its wake. As yet there was no real breeze, just a gentle wisp dancing across the top of the water. He let the craft drift while he thought. How was he to steer the ungainly big craft that would run him down every time the breeze came up behind him? He had to find some way for directional control.

  He sat in perplexion on the stern of the wunnaguri, his legs dangling in the water. If he didn’t move the craft back into deep water, he would soon be hooked in the mangroves again. He swam to the raft and lay on the boards. He kicked his way to the front of the wunnaguri, then began to kick with a steady rhythm, twisting his body as he did so to force the small craft to turn seaward dragging the larger one out into deep water. At some distance from the coastal mangrove a cool breeze picked up. It was blowing northerly, and the craft swept along still hugging the coast, but as time passed Ningaloo could see that he was being driven slowly away from land. All day the wunnaguri travelled northwards at a steady rate. The land to his right had disappeared into a smoky haze around the middle of the day, and as nightfall came, he was still lying off the landmass, still drifting north.

  He had dropped the rock over the side of the raft, but it made no difference, a long way from the bottom. There was nothing for it but to let the crafts drift and hope that no storms or severe squalls would come through the night. Morning came with a calmed sea. He wasn’t sure where he was, how far he had drifted, but by the way the craft were sitting in the water, they either turned around in the night, or the sun had come up on the wrong side. He scanned the horizon, and saw behind him, far off in the distance, seemingly balanced on the very edge of the horizon, a range of hills. All else was water. He decided to head for the land. He turned the craft around with the aid of the new paddle he had made the day before and sat and ate the last of his cooked provisions, waiting for the breeze he knew would come.

  The cool winter wind came with a rush. The craft surged and began to move and he felt a lift in spirit, as if his life had started off on the next part of his journey. He felt the shift of the craft, and the shuddering as it ploughed sideways through the water. Then just as suddenly it stopped and smoothed out in its flow—moments later it shuddered onward, then it smoothed off again. This change of action mystified and intrigued him. He crawled out of the shelter and on hands and knees looked about at the water now swirling out from beneath the stern of the craft. At that moment the craft went into its shuddering mode, and he realised it was now skidding sideways in its drift. The distant hills seemed only the tiniest bit larger than before.

  As the craft swung back onto the right bearing, Ningaloo lowered himself over the stern into the water and hung suspended for a while, waiting to see if the craft would swing again now that his weight was acting as a sea anchor. He was heartened to see that only the raft was now doing its slow dance in the water. He had his answer, he clambered back aboard the wunnaguri and pulled out two skins. The largest he tied to the stern of the big craft so that it floated as a sheet, then he swam to the raft and did the same with it. Back on the wunnaguri he sat and watched for the reaction. The drift had been corrected, the action of the raft would stop the bigger craft from making a complete turn. For the next two days the craft travelled in a more or less straight line directly for the hills.

  Being inactive for so long was totally alien to the boy. He decided that perhaps the new direction wasn’t all the wunnaguri needed; he would just have to take the chance of being run over again by his floating home. In all the time the two craft had been floating around the ocean, the raft had still been tied to the front of the larger craft, so by simply pulling in the dragging skin that had settled a little beneath the water, both craft began to move freely once more, and with a few strokes of his new paddle, Ningaloo shot to the front of the large craft and had taken up the strain.

  He paddled through the morning, revelling in the exercise, his mind clearing, his nagging need for food forgotten with the job on hand. The wind had picked up and the paddling became easier. Sometimes sudden gusts of wind would drive the larger craft sideways, then with his paddle on the opposite side to the drift, he could correct the movement and realign both craft. By late afternoon the hills had become large. He’d only just returned to the wunnaguri when a sudden gust threw the craft sidewards. Ningaloo dug the paddle over the side near the stern to counteract the yaw, and was surprised and impressed at how effective the result had been. He drank his fill from the waterbag and returned the paddle to hang suspended below the surface, using it when necessary to correct the direction. Both craft were now skimming across the slight chop in the water, straight towards the hills.

  He watched the sun disappear over the horizon, and waited for full night to fall. Steering at night would be a new experience for him, and with the going down of the sun, he wondered just how he would keep his direction. The problem was solved by the brilliance of the evening star as it emerged out of the light of the dying sun. Though his father had taught him the rudiments of finding his way around on land by the simple use of stars for guidance, in conjunction with landmarks, the t
hought of using the stars in the great open spaces of darkness on the water hadn’t occurred to him. Now, with the evening star closing the gap to the horizon, he sought out those few stars that he remembered and found their places in the heavens. He sailed long into the night, watching the shifting heavens above him, noting how the broad band of lighted sky high above him moved through the heavens, slowly following the path of the sun, each star in turn seeking its bed to rest up until the coming day had spent its allotted time. He pulled the raft over to the wunnaguri and dropped the sodden skin back over the side, then dragged his weary body to his bedding and closed his eyes to sleep.

  The heat of a warm winter sun woke him next morning. He lay still and let himself come fully awake, then stirred to reach up for the near-empty waterbag. As he did so he heard the call of a gull as it wheeled in flight.

  “Strange,” he thought. “I haven’t heard another sound of life for many days. How good it is. I wonder, am I getting close to land?”

  He pulled himself out of the shelter and looked out upon calm water between two massive islands. Off in the distance he could see what looked to be an even bigger land mass. The crafts were drifting slowly towards the biggest of the two islands. On impulse he peered over the side of the wunnaguri. Far below he could make out the rocky bottom; at last he was back in water that was within reach of his lungs. He dropped the wet skin over the end of the wunnaguri to let it drift in, and dropped the anchor over the front end. He took his fire-making sticks, a container the quartz adze and waterbag, mounted the raft and made for the rocky shore of the island. His first thoughts were for a decent feed of whatever was his for the taking.