02 South Sea Adventure

by Willard Price

  ‘It must have been left there by the surf at high tide,’ Hal guessed. ‘Let’s look farther away from the shore.’

  They found plenty of hollowed rocks but no water in them. In some were lines showing that they had contained water but it had long since soaked away through the porous coral.

  Roger surveyed the coconut stumps. There must have been nuts on these trees.’ If they could find them they would not lack for drink nor for food. How refreshing the sweet, cool, milky water of the coconut would be! And the soft white meat!

  A diligent search failed to discover any coconuts.

  The trouble with coconuts,’ Hal said, ‘is that they float. When the sea swept over the land it must have carried them all off.’

  ‘What do we do next?’ inquired Roger.

  ‘Dig,’ suggested Hal. He led the way to the lagoon beach. They say you can sometimes find fresh water if you dig a hole in the beach at low tide. How about this spot - just below the high-tide mark?’

  ‘It sounds crazy to me,’ Roger said, ‘but mine not to question why, mine but to do or die,’ and he picked up a flat piece of coral to use as a shovel and began to dig.

  At a depth of about three feet Hal stopped. ‘Quit digging. Let’s see what happens now.’

  Water began to ooze into the hole. Presently it was four or five inches deep.

  ‘But what makes you think this will be fresh water?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Hal said. ‘I only hope so. It has happened on other atolls. Shipwrecked sailors have escaped dying of thirst by drinking the water from holes like this one.’

  ‘But why would it be fresh?’

  The sea water filtering through the sand loses some of its salt. And then there’s the rainwater that filters down through the rocks. Suppose you try it now. But be careful to skim off just the surface. The fresh water is lighter than sea water and lies on top.’

  Roger scooped off a little of the surface water and tasted it. Then he gulped down a couple of handfuls. ‘Salty,’ he said, ‘but not as bad as sea water.’

  Hal tasted the warm brackish water. He was disappointed. ‘It wouldn’t take much of that to make you sick.’

  Roger was gagging and holding his forehead. Presently he lost his breakfast.

  He turned upon his brother angrily. ‘You and your fresh water! What you don’t know about how to survive on a desert island would fill a book.’

  I’m afraid you’re right,’ Hal admitted. ‘All I know is that the U.S. Navy instructs survivors to do just what we have done.’

  ‘Then why didn’t it work?’

  ‘Perhaps because the sand is too coarse here to filter out the salt. Or perhaps there wasn’t enough rain, or it sank away through the rocks.’

  ‘All right, don’t stand there giving me perhapses. Find me some water.’

  ‘Sometimes,’ Hal said, ‘I think you’re a spoiled brat. Do you suppose you are the only thirsty person on this reef?’

  Roger was silent. They resumed their dreary search. They walked across the narrow part of the reef where it stretched like a bridge from one island to the other. On one side the ocean surf splashed among the rocks. On the other side a white beach sloped to the blue lagoon. The lagoon was as smooth as glass. It was not more than a dozen feet deep here and the bottom was a fairy city of pink palaces, towers, pagodas, and minarets, all built by the tiny coral insects.

  It was very lovely if you could just forget being hot, tired, sore-eyed, and thirsty. But you couldn’t forget.

  The reef broadened to form the other island. They spent an hour or more exploring it. There was no water, except surf water, in the cups of the rocks. There were coconut stumps and logs but no leaves. They looked hopefully in the tops of the stumps for pockets of rainwater, but it had dried away.

  Then they found a coconut! It was pinned under a rock where the waves that had buried the island had failed to dislodge it.

  Trembling with excitement, they slashed away the husk. The nut inside was cracked. Inserting his knife in the crack, Hal prised off the cap of the nut. Both boys groaned when they saw the contents.

  ‘Suffering cats!’ Roger mourned. ‘It’s rotten! ‘

  Salt water entering through the crack had spoiled both the meat and the liquid.

  Hal scraped out the inside of the nut. ‘At least we have a cup now.’

  ‘What’s the use of a cup with nothing to put in it?’

  ‘We’ll find something.’

  They searched until the sun was low in the west. Their stomachs were now reminding them of the need for food as well as water.

  ‘Here’s water!’ exclaimed Hal. Roger came to see what he had found. It was nothing but a low flat weed rooted in a little soil between the rocks.

  ‘So that’s water!’ sneered Roger.

  Hal paid no attention to his sarcasm. He broke off one of the small pulpy leaves and chewed it. The leaf was full of a cool juice. It was wonderfully refreshing to the dry mouth and parched tongue. A grin of content spread over Hal’s face.

  Roger bit into a leaf. ‘Boy, does that taste good!’ But he did not take any more. The two boys, with a single thought, dug up the plant and trudged with it to their own island. If they were thirsty, their feverish patient would be much more so.

  Omo was tossing restlessly. He opened his eyes. They were bright with fever.

  ‘We brought you some water, Omo. But it’s water you have to chew. I don’t know what your island name for it is, but we call it pigweed or purslane.’

  Omo took the plant eagerly. He chewed the leaves, stems, and roots, extracting and swallowing the juice.

  ‘It’s wonderful,’ he said gratefully. ‘I hope you got plenty more for yourselves.’ His eyes questioned Roger.

  Take it all,’ Roger said. ‘We’re okay.’

  ‘Sorry we can’t offer you any dinner,’ Hal said. Omo smiled. ‘Water was all I wanted. Now I can sleep,’ and he closed his eyes.

  Hal looked for more pigweed but found none. The drop or two of water he had pressed out of the leaf seemed only to have increased his thirst. He was glad to see the killer sun sink below the horizon. The coral rocks quickly lost their heat. Thank heaven for the night! He dreaded the thought that another blazing day must come, and another, and another, until they died in this infernal sea-trap.

  How to get water! It was still the number one problem. He sat down to think. His hand rested upon a rock. Suddenly he realized that the rock was damp.

  The dew! The dew was falling. In the darkening shadows a mist drifted over the lagoon. If he could find a way to catch the dew….

  The Polynesians had a way of doing that. If he could just remember how it went. He would like to ask Omo - but Omo must be allowed to sleep.

  He went to the lagoon beach and dug a shallow hole in the sand about two feet wide. He placed the cup of coconut shell at the bottom. He covered the hole with Roger’s shirt taken from Omo’s forehead. Omo would not need it now that the air was cool. He pierced an opening in the shirt just over the cup. Then he piled a pyramid of stones about three feet high over the shirt.

  The principle of the thing was that dew would collect in the chinks between the stones, trickle through them to the shirt, and run down into the cup. In the morning there might be a cupful of fresh water.

  Hal went back to find Roger stretched out on the rocks near Omo fast asleep. Hal tried to make himself comfortable on the lumpy coral.

  But he could not sleep. The three words that separate life from death kept going through his brain - water, food, shelter.

  He thought of the soft life at home. Where you slept in a smooth bed under a good roof. Where you had only to turn a tap to get water. Where you were called three times a day to a table groaning with food.

  Life was so easy at home that a fellow got out of the habit of appreciating it. You took it for granted. Hal was certain he would never take it for granted again.

  His throat was as dry as sandpaper and his stomach felt as hollow as a drum. H
e dozed off and dreamed of rain. He woke up with a start and looked at the sky.

  There was not a cloud as big as his hand. The stars blazed like the hot merciless suns they were. The Milky Way looked like a path of powdered glass.

  That other night on the island at Bikini he had heard small animals moving through the brush. Here on Dead Man’s Reef, as Omo had called it, there was no sound but the sob and suck of the surf. There was even the smell of death, drifting across the island from the body of the rotting shark.

  Hal fell into a troubled sleep.

  Chapter 15

  The sharkskin house

  The light of early dawn woke him. There were kinks and quirks in his back where the rocks had jabbed him with their sharp elbows. But the air was cool and fresh. Hal did not feel quite as hungry and thirsty as he had the night before. He knew that was not a good sign - his system was becoming numb.

  The brisk invigorating air put new ambition into him. Somehow they were going to beat this reef, and Kaggs too.

  He tried to remember how it went in the poem - the morning’s dew-pearled, all’s right with the world. He rose cheerfully and went to see what he had caught in his dew-trap.

  The coconut shell was nearly half-full of water. He had hoped for more but evidently the dew had been light. He took the precious liquid to camp.

  Omo was stirring but seemed to be in a sort of stupor. Hal raised his head and poured half of the water down his throat.

  ‘You drink the rest,’ he told Roger who was sitting up yawning, rubbing some of the creases out of his hide. Hal put the cup in Roger’s hands and went off to renew his attack upon the sharkskin. That terrific sun would be rising soon and it was essential that they should have some protection against it.

  Roger sat looking at the water in the bottom of the shell. If he had been offered a choice between the water and a hundred dollars at that moment he would have said, ‘Me for the water!’ But shucks! - camels could go a week without water. And his brother had called him a spoiled brat. Omo was groaning softly. He was muttering, ‘It’s so hot -so hot - so hot!’ Perspiration ran down his face. If he was so hot before sunrise, how would he feel later? Roger parted Omo’s lips and emptied the cup into the brown boy’s mouth.

  Then, feeling pretty noble, he went to join Hal. He wanted to tell Hal what he had done so that his brother wouldn’t think him a spoiled brat. But he decided to hold his tongue.

  The red-hot devil of a sun rose before they finished flensing off the skin. It was a magnificent sheet nearly twenty feet long and eight wide. They scraped the fat off the inner surface. Then they stood back and admired their work.

  ‘That was a good idea of yours,’ Hal said.

  ‘Well, I remembered your telling me that somewhere they build houses of fishskin. Isn’t it in Siberia?’

  ‘Yes. The people called the Fishskin Tartars. Their food is fish, they make their clothes and shoes out of fishskin, and their huts are built of poles with fishskin stretched over them. And you can always tell when you come near a fishskin village by the smell!’

  ‘I know what you mean,’ said Roger, turning up his nose.

  The sharkskin won’t smell so bad after the sun has cured it But we ought to get rid of the carcass. Let’s try to roll it down where high tide will take it.’

  By dint of hard labour they inched the monster’s body down close to the water’s edge.

  There’s a lot of meat here,’ Roger said. It’s a shame we can’t eat it’

  ‘It’s too badly decayed. Better to eat nothing than that.’ So, turning their backs upon the poisonous breakfast that the sea had offered them, they returned to camp, dragging the sharkskin behind them.

  Now they launched into building operations in earnest. Having no nails, screws, or bolts, no beams, joists, or planks, nothing that a house-builder would ordinarily think necessary, they had to use considerable ingenuity.

  ‘We have only enough skin for the roof,’ Roger said. ‘How about piling up rocks to make the walls?’

  ‘Sure! But we’ll need a ridgepole. And a couple of posts to hold it up. That palm log might do for a ridgepole. It’s slender -1 think we can lift it.’

  ‘And if we could find a couple of stumps the right distance apart they would do for posts.’

  There were plenty of palm stumps left standing. They found two that stood about eight feet high and a dozen feet apart. With their knives they cut notches in the tops of the stumps and hoisted the palm log in place so that it lay in the notches and stretched from one stump to the other.

  Now they had their ridgepole.

  ‘Funny to start with the roof,’ Roger said.

  ‘Not so funny. The Polynesians often do that, and the Japanese always do. Build the roof first, hoist it up on stilts, hold a celebration, and then build the house under the roof.’

  They stretched the twenty-foot skin over the ridgepole so that it was ten feet long on each side. Then they proceeded to build the walls. They piled coral blocks up to a height of about four feet. They fitted them together as well as possible so that the inside surface would be nearly vertical. On the outside the wall was solidly buttressed with more rocks. They left four gaps to serve as doors for getting in and out, and for ventilation.

  Then they stretched the sharkskin out until it went smooth and straight from the ridgepole in both directions down to the tops of the walls. There they pinned it fast with lumps of coral.

  The house was finished - and surely no stranger one had ever been seen, even in the land of the Fishskin Tartars!

  They brought Omo in and laid him down on the least rough portion of the coral floor. He breathed a sigh of contentment for the place was dark and cool. The three-foot-thick rock walls defied the sun. The sharkskin, although not as heatproof as palm thatch, was thicker than shingles. The roof was a bit low, but it was better to have it low and snug in case of a windstorm.

  The room measured only eight feet in the direction of the ridgepole, but nearly twenty feet the other way - quite big enough for three persons.

  There’s even room enough to do our cooking inside on rainy days,’ Hal said.

  if there is any rain. And if we have anything to cook. And if we can make a fire without matches.’

  Hal gritted his teeth. ‘We’ve got to lick those ifs. We can’t make it rain, but there must be some way to find fresh water. Let me think. You can get water from the guiji vine but none of it grows here. There’s water in the barrel cactus but there’s no barrel cactus. How about pandanus? It often grows even in as bad a spot as this. Those little air roots that look like leaves contain water. Let’s go.’

  They went out with pretended enthusiasm but no real expectation of finding pandanus.

  Hal picked up a pebble and gave it to Roger. ‘Chew on that,’ he suggested. ‘It makes the saliva flow and you’ll almost think you’re getting a drink.’

  They searched diligently the rest of the day. They found no pandanus nor anything else that yielded moisture. This reef seemed as dead and dry as the moon.

  At night Hal again built a cairn of stones to collect dew. But a wind came up and dew did not form. In the morning the cup was empty. Even the patient had to go without water.

  Omo was conscious now. His leg gave him great pain and he suffered from thirst that had been made more intense by his fever. But the heat had gone from his forehead and cheeks. Hal consulted him on the problem of water. He told him what they had done to find it. ‘You probably would have better ideas.’

  ‘No. I would have done just what you have done. You were pretty smart - that pigweed and then catching the dew.’ ‘I never felt so stupid in my life,’ Hal grumbled. Omo looked at his friend’s haggard and troubled face. ‘You’re letting worry get you down. Will you do me a favour?’ ‘Sure. Anything.’

  ‘You and Roger go in for a swim. Our people believe that when things get very bad it helps to turn your back on them and go and play for a while. It will relax you. You’ll be able to think better.’

/>   ‘Very well, Dr Omo, if you insist,’ Hal said. ‘But it seems an awful waste of time.’

  ‘Boy. it sounds good to me.’ Roger said. ‘Let’s go in on the ocean side - it will be cooler.’

  They plunged into the surf. The bottom did not slope gradually away but dropped abruptly to great depths. They performed like two playful seals, diving, swimming, splashing, and their cares flowed away like raindrops from a duck’s back.

  ‘You can’t catch me,’ shouted Roger.

  ‘What’ll you bet?’

  ‘I’ll betcha this island.’

  ‘I don’t want your blasted island, but I’ll catch you,’ and Hal burrowed deep down after the disappearing form of Roger.

  At a depth of twenty feet or more. Roger began following the shore. Hal was close behind. Where the bridge of reef widened into the second island Roger suddenly felt the water go very cold.

  It seemed to be a submarine current coming from the land. In a moment he was out of it. Now Hal felt it. Astonished, both boys popped to the surface.

  Roger shook the water from his face. ‘What do you make of that?’

  ‘It comes from a cave in the land. Do you know what that means?’

  ‘Can’t say that I do.’

  ‘It means it’s fresh water, or I’m a donkey’s breakfast.’

  ‘You’re probably a donkey’s breakfast,’ agreed Roger.

  ‘Wish we had a bottle. Well, let’s go down and fill our mouths.’

  Hal dived. When his head came into the cold stream he opened his mouth and let the water crowd in. It was fresh and sweet! He swallowed it, gulped another mouthful, and came up. Roger emerged beside him.

  ‘It’s the real thing,’ he marvelled.

  Hal was beaming. ‘Things are looking up,’ he exulted. ‘Stay here and mark the place while I get the cup.’

  In ten minutes he was back with the coconut shell.

  ‘But it ought to have a lid or a cork,’ Roger said. ‘How can you keep it empty until you get down there?’

  ‘I don’t think it needs to be empty,’ And Hal dived with the shell which promptly filled with sea-water. When he reached the cold stream he held the cup in it and turned it upside down. He pushed his hand into it a few times to change the water. The salt water, being heavier, should fall out of the cup and be replaced by fresh.