02 South Sea Adventure

by Willard Price

  Hal made a quick move that attracted Kaggs’ attention and at the same instant Omo bounded like a tiger upon the big man’s shoulders. He locked an arm about his neck. As Kaggs’ gun hand came up Omo seized the wrist and tried to squeeze the gun loose. Hal and Roger were attacking from in front.

  Kaggs, straining every nerve, kept his grip on the gun and turned its muzzle to bear upon Hal.

  ‘Look out! The gun!’ Omo cried. He vainly struggled to twist the arm that held it. The gun blazed. The pearl trader’s previous shots had been warnings only, but this time he meant business. Only the Polynesian’s tugging on his wrist prevented the shot from reaching its mark.

  Again he brought the gun to bear on Hal whose fists were methodically crashing into his face.

  Omo despaired of controlling that powerful arm. But there was one thing left that he could do. He swung around his opponent’s shoulder so that he came between the gun and Hal. There was a shot and Omo fell to the ground.

  Hal immediately dropped beside his friend. Vividly he remembered the night on the beach at Bikini when they had sworn loyalty to each other and had exchanged names. Omo had been true to his pledge.

  Roger quit his pummelling of the giant’s solar plexus to see what had happened to Omo. Kaggs promptly disappeared.

  ‘Let him go,’ Hal said. He wouldn’t leave Omo now. ‘We’ll deal with him later.’

  Omo lay with eyes closed. Hal felt his pulse. It was still beating. Blood trickled from his right leg some ten inches above the knee.

  Hal examined the wound. There were two holes, one where the bullet had gone in, one where it had come out. The skin about the first hole was scorched with powder burns because of the close range of the firing.

  The bullet had probably gone through a muscle. Luckily it had missed the artery. The wound was bleeding, but not profusely.

  Hal stripped off his shirt, soaked it in the lagoon, and bathed the wound.

  ‘Wish we had some penicillin,’ he said, ‘or some sulfa powder.’

  ‘We’ve got both on the boat,’ Roger said. ‘Shall I go and get them?’

  ‘We could take care of him better on board. Put him in his bunk. But it would be pretty hard to carry him over this rough ground. Suppose you run the boat over here. No,

  wait a minute. I think I hear the motor now.’

  Sure enough, across the lagoon came the gug-gug-gug of the Kiku’s engine.

  ‘Kaggs is bringing it. The fellow must have a white streak in him after all.’

  Out from behind an elbow of the reef came the Kiku and plodded its way across the lagoon and into the bay of pearls. Hal in the meantime had turned his shirt into a tourniquet and applied it just above the wound. He must remember to loosen it every fifteen minutes.

  He could almost forgive Kaggs. Evidently the big fellow was sorry for what he had done.

  ‘Show him where to bring the boat up against the rocks,’ Hal called to Roger.

  Then he looked up, surprised, for the motor had quit. The boat was still a hundred feet away from shore. She had almost lost momentum.

  ‘You’ll have to give her a little more to bring her up,’ Hal called.

  Kaggs’ reply was a lazy laugh. He spun the wheel. The boat slowly turned and came to a standstill with her bow headed out towards the lagoon.

  ‘You’re making a slight mistake,’ Kaggs chuckled. ‘I wasn’t planning to come ashore. Just wanted to exchange a few compliments with you before I leave.’

  Hal and Roger stared, unbelieving.

  ‘What do you mean, leave?’ demanded Hal, uneasiness crawling like a snake along his backbone.

  ‘Just what I say. You won’t take me up on my proposition, so I’ll have to go alone. I’ll toddle down to Ponape and get a pearling lugger and divers. Then I’ll be back.’

  ‘You can’t do it,’ Hal said. ‘You know you can’t navigate.’

  ‘What of it? Ponape is a big island. If I keep her headed south I’m pretty sure to strike it.’

  ‘But Omo should be taken to a doctor. He may die here. Doesn’t that concern you?’

  ‘Why should it?’

  ‘And this place…’ Hal looked about him at the hurricane-ruined island and panic shook him. ‘You can’t leave us here. We couldn’t last until you got back. There’s no food. I haven’t even seen a crab. There’s no shade, nothing to make a hut out of. There’s no water. We’d die of thirst. And you’ll go to prison.’

  ‘I’ve been to prison,’ Kaggs said. ‘I don’t plan to go again. That’s why I didn’t shoot all three of you dead. If anybody asks me - and I don’t suppose anybody will - I’ll just say you decided to stay on the island till I come back. If you can’t stick it out it’ll be no hair off my hide.’ His hand reached for the throttle.

  ‘Wait!’ called Hal. ‘At least you can do this. Reach into the first-aid kit and fling us that tube of penicillin and the can of sulfa.’

  Kaggs laughed. ‘Might need them myself, old man. No telling what might happen on the perilous deep you know.’ The light breeze had been drifting the boat a little closer to shore. Suddenly Roger made a running dive into the cove and swam for the boat with swift powerful strokes. In a flash Hal was after him. If the motor failed to start at the first touch they might just make it. Exactly what they could do against an armed man when they got there they did not stop to consider.

  Kaggs supped the throttle. The engine roared into life. The propeller churned. The heavy boat got under way slowly and it seemed for a moment that the boys would overtake it. Then it began to pull away faster than they could swim.

  They stopped swimming and, treading water, watched the boat chug away across the lagoon. Just before it rounded the spur of rock that hid the channel to the ocean, Kaggs waved his hand.

  Then there was nothing to be seen but the wake of the boat across the lagoon. And nothing to be heard but the cry

  of the lone gull left by the hurricane.

  ‘That’s that,’ said Hal, thus mildly expressing the despair that iced his heart. They wearily swam back to the shore, crawled out onto the hot rocks, and dropped beside Omo.

  Hal and Roger stared at each other in silence. It was still hard to realize what had happened to them. Their eyes travelled over the bare piles of coral blocks.

  Roger began to laugh weakly. ‘I’ve always wanted to be cast away on a desert island. But I never meant it to be quite as much of a desert as this!’

  Chapter 14

  Desert island

  Omo stirred and groaned. A wrinkle of pain went across his forehead; He opened Ms eyes. He looked up at Hal and Roger. Slowly he remembered what had happened.

  ‘Sorry I passed out on you.’ He tried to get up but sank back, making a wry face.

  ‘Better lie still,’ Hal said. Omo managed a grin. ‘What’s been going on while I’ve been snoozing? Have I missed something?’ ‘Not much. We’ve just been saying goodbye to Kaggs.’ ‘Goodbye?’

  ‘He’s gone - with the boat. To Ponape to get a lugger and divers.’

  Now Omo’s eyes opened wide. ‘No! He must be bluffing - just trying to scare yon into making a deal with him. He’ll be back before night. He wouldn’t leave us on this reef.’

  ‘Wish I could think so.’

  ‘But it would take him at least three days to get to Ponape. He might have to stay there a week or even two before he could get a lugger and divers - they’re hard to come by. Then three or four days to come back. Does he realize what could happen to us in three weeks?’

  ‘I think he does. But that doesn’t worry him.’

  ‘Or even one week,’ said Omo, looking about at the desolation of white rocks under the blinding sun. ‘Do you know why this island is uninhabited?’

  ‘No - why?’

  ‘Because men can’t live here. Or, at least, none have been willing to try. There could never have been enough to support life here - and what little there was was smashed by the hurricane. Even the birds have no use for the place. I haven’t seen any fish i
n the lagoon. Roger called it Starvation Island. That’s a good name for it. Or Dead Man’s Reef.’

  He closed his eyes and wrestled for a while with pain. Then he looked up and smiled.

  ‘I shouldn’t talk that way. Guess it was just because I felt weak. Of course we can make a go of it - somehow. But there’s a lot to do. I can’t lie here taking my ease.’ He struggled to a sitting position.

  ‘You lie down!’ said Hal sharply. ‘Now see what you’ve done - started it bleeding again. And we don’t have any medicine.’

  ‘Luckily that’s where you’re wrong,’ Omo said weakly. ‘This is a medicine chest that I have my head on.’ His head rested on a palm log.

  ‘What can we do with that?’

  ‘Take your knife, Hal, and scrape the bark. Scrape it fine so as to make a powder. Then put it on. It’s astringent. It will stop the bleeding.’

  ‘But is it antiseptic?’

  ‘Oh yes. The sun has sterilized it.’

  Hal had often heard of the skilful use the Polynesians make of herbs, grasses, roots, and trees for medical purposes, but had not expected to find a medicine chest under his patient’s head.

  He scraped until he had a plentiful supply of the powdered bark of the coconut palm and then applied it to the wound, binding it in place with a strip torn from his shirt which was serving as a tourniquet.

  Hal put his hand on Omo’s forehead. It was hot. Omo was tossing feverishly.

  ‘We’ve got to get him into the shade,’ Hal told Roger. Squinting to protect their eyes from the glare they scanned the island. The blazing rocks laughed back at them.

  There was a band of shade cast by a palm stump. They laid Omo in it. It was better than nothing, although as the sun travelled across the sky they would have to keep shifting the patient. ‘Somehow we’ll have to build a shelter,’ Hal said. Roger laughed bitterly. ‘Fat chance!’ But he got up at once and began to search the island for building materials. Omo was muttering and Hal bent down to hear what he was saying.

  1 hope that what I said didn’t worry you, Hal. We can manage all right. After all, it won’t be long. A week or two, or three, and he’ll be back. He can find it okay - he’s got the log to go by. It isn’t as if he weren’t coming back. That would be tough. No ships ever come by here. We could rot. But there’s no need to worry about that - he’ll be back.’

  ‘Yes, Omo,’ Hal said- ‘Now see if you can snatch some sleep.’

  A terrible chill settled upon Hal’s heart. He alone knew that Kaggs would never come back.

  Kaggs had the log to go by. What a bitter joke that was! Hal had intended it to be a joke on Kaggs. It had turned into a joke on himself and his two companions. A joke that might cost them their lives.

  The bearings in the log were a hundred miles off. Finding no island there, Kaggs would not have the slightest idea in what direction to sail. The chances would be a thousand to one, perhaps a million to one, against his finding Pearl Lagoon. He might hunt for it for months, or years, without success. He could come within a few miles of it without seeing it. Nowhere did the reef rise more than ten feet above sea level and there was not a tree left standing. At a short distance the white reef might be mistaken for a wind ripple on the ocean’s surface.

  And even if Kaggs did by a miracle come upon the island after perhaps a year of search, what good would it do them ? He would find their white bones among the rocks. Perhaps Kaggs had not actually meant them to die here.

  Perhaps he had intended to get back before they perished. But Hal had fixed it so that he would not get back.

  Would Roger and Omo blame him when they knew that he had signed their death warrants? They would try not to, but could they help it as they lay dying of starvation and thirst on this horrible white skeleton of coral rock?

  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. Sometim
es 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!’