Aboard

by Nick Niels Sanders

  Aboard

  Volume 12 of the Book Series

  Born in the Sea

  By Nick Niels Sanders

  Published by Exotica Indica

  Publication as of April 2021

  6

  October 6

  It was 7:30. The clouds that had hovered at the western horizon the previous evening had disappeared – not that it mattered, because the sun was rising in the east, where there had not been and were not now any clouds. The usual morning breeze was already muted and the water of the lagoon already glassy. Sleepily, the twelve gathered at the edge of the water for tai chi, but their minds were somewhere else. The rescue boat was coming today!

  They went through the motions of qi’gong and the yang long form, but the enthusiasm level was much reduced today. No one, even Roger, leading the session, was living in the present moment. Everyone was looking forward to the arrival of the boat, leaving the island, returning home, seeing loved ones again, resuming the mantle of civilization.

  Roger made no effort to teach anything new. They did the long form a second time, spent somewhat longer than usual on a second set of qi’ gong exercises, then adjourned for breakfast.

  Marcella had made pancakes for breakfast and had again warmed up a portion of the huge supply of syrup. Everyone ate with the same inattention as they had put into tai chi that morning. Waiting was exhausting.

  James glimpsed Jeanne’s back during tai chi and knew pretty much what a detailed examination was going to tell him. He and Val examined Jeanne’s back together at breakfast, and agreed to do so again in the infirmary during a treatment after breakfast. Ron sketched Jeanne’s back for what would turn out to be the last time.

  After breakfast, Val led Jeanne away to the infirmary tent for her treatment, James following right behind them, Ralph following in his footsteps.

  They soaked Jeanne’s back, dried it and soaked it again. All six burns that had still not had full skin covering the day before were now closed. Of the original 42 burns, 30 of them were healed well enough that they were completely invisible.

  “This is truly amazing,” concluded James.

  “What?” there was a note of anxiety in Jeanne’s voice.

  “All of your burns have skin covering on them. Almost all of the original 42 burns have disappeared completely. I could not, by looking at your skin, even begin to tell you where they are.”

  Valerie felt a need to contribute: “I have never seen such rapid and complete healing of burns before in my entire career.”

  “Neither have I.”

  “Thanks for your care.”

  “I don’t know if you are aware, but Ron has been sketching your back each day. I hope to use the sketches for that journal article I was talking about.”

  “Oh, Dr. James. Do you really have to put my naked body in a magazine?”

  “No one will know you are naked. All they will see is the skin of your back in the pictures. I will be careful of that. There will also be no mention of your name, though I would like your permission to tell a bit of our story, and to identify you as ‘Mrs. X’ in the article.”

  “So long as no one can see that I am naked or knows who I am, that’s fine with me.”

  “Thank you. It shall be as you ask.”

  “OK.”

  “And for today, I think we can dispense with the honey, but sea water compresses four times today will still add to your healing.”

  This set both Jeanne and Val to thinking about how they would manage the treatments on the boat, but that was an issue that was still in the future. Ralph sat down on Jeanne’s right as Val, on her left, continued with the abbreviated treatment.

  In the Kitchen Tent, Marcella was being pushed out of the kitchen by Maria, Julia and Shelly, who were determined that Marcella should not have a part of cleaning up this morning.

  Marcella sat down near Mark, who was still whittling, and began threading flowers while thinking about lunch. Around her, Paul, Roger, Ron and Jim were also idly threading yesterday evening’s flower harvest and wondering how they were going to survive until the rescue boat arrived. Even making flower garlands seemed a pretty useless pastime, but almost anything else was even more pointless.

  A Slow Morning

  Marcella again requested small leaves of the lettuce plant for the salad. Maria and Shelly went to gather salad while Julia finished cleaning the kitchen. Ron, Paul, Roger and Jim abandoned stringing flowers for a more active role with the gathering group; Marcella remained near her kitchen working with the flowers. Ron brought his sketchbook and was making sketches again; the other three men began picking flowers into a large container they had brought. They were joined presently by James, then, when Jeanne’s treatment was done, by Jeanne, Ralph and Val. When the vegetables had been collected, Shelly carried the leaves back to the kitchen, where she set to work washing them; everyone else stayed to pick flowers. The large container filled rapidly, and the group headed back to the Kitchen Tent.

  The kitchen now clean, Julia escaped to string flowers with the others, as Marcella rose and returned to the kitchen to consider what she would fix for lunch and Shelly continued washing the small lettuce leaves. Maria got out one of the large plastic storage bins to put finished flower necklaces into, and another for the long strings that were initially designed to decorate the Kitchen Tent, but which seemed now more likely to be decoration for the rescue boat.

  Predictably, the day grew hotter and so did the people. At about 9:45, James suggested that everyone go for a swim to cool off. The heat and the sense of enforced inactivity were enough to entice Shelly and Marcella from the kitchen and to induce Mark to abandon both his whittling and his sulu for long enough to swim and cool off with the others. There wasn’t much swimming, but there was a lot of splashing and everyone emerged cooler than they had entered.

  It was now time to be out of the sun, so they retreated back to the Kitchen Tent, cooler, still idle and restless, still watching and listening for the rescue boat, stringing flowers, marking time. Slowly, the time passed. No one said much – there didn’t seem to be much to say. Only Marcella seemed to manifest a mission - smells of cooking bread came from the kitchen.

  Flowers moved from the collection box to the completion boxes, but no one was keeping track.

  Eventually, Marcella announced lunch. She had made pan bread to eat with a do-it-yourself sort of smorgasbord of canned fish – sardines, canned salmon and canned tuna – and condiments, including dill and sweet pickles, pickled jalapenos, pickled onions, mayonnaise, mustard, ketchup. And there was the green salad with a mustard vinaigrette dressing. It wasn’t gourmet fare, but the fact that Marcella had constructed essentially nothing put the other twelve to work doing something for themselves – and it was a singularly therapeutic activity. They milled around, bumped into one another, and broke into conversation.

  Over lunch, the conversation was lively if aimless, covering such things as speculating on the time of the arrival of the rescue ship, what the Fijians were going to do with their camp, would someone really have to clean out their latrine, and other topics of interest. Roger indicated an interest in what they might find on the Fiji Queen if they actually did salvage her. Jayne had traveled with a locked chest that he had never seen inside of. It was ancient and well made – it must have been a hand-me-down from at least her grandfather and perhaps farther into the past than that. Maria’s interest was much more prosaic – there must have been another storage place for food, because they certainly had not found enough food to sustain the crew and 30 passengers for the full ten days of the cruise. But they had taken most of what they had found.

  They finished lunch and there was some debate about cleaning up – but they did it anyway, because it s
eemed like the proper thing to do. Cleaned dishes were stacked to dry and Julia and Shelly started getting the kitchen straightened up. For about fifteen minutes, the bustle of noise was louder than the conversation had been, dying down as the last dishes were stacked to dry and people returned to threading flowers.

  This time it was Jeanne who heard it first. She and Val had just risen to give her a back treatment and she stopped with a strange expression on her face. “I think I hear the boat coming. Ralph, watch for it please.” And she followed Val to the infirmary.

  The others listened. No one could hear anything. Then, one by one, they heard the low pitched humming of a distant internal combustion engine. It took a good half hour for the boat to be close enough to recognize, but it came. While they waited, Julia and Shelly continued to straighten the kitchen; Marcella tended the fire; the others continued to work at stringing flowers.

  When it was close enough to be visible, they would have mistaken it easily for the Fiji Queen. The paint job was the same, and it looked to be the same size. Captain Sharma had said that it was a sister ship – and now it appeared that they were twin sisters. The boat chugged along the reef, circled out and anchored due south of the Kitchen Tent, several boat lengths away from the reef. As they watched, a single life raft was lowered from atop the Main Deck into the water and two men climbed in. A bundle followed them. Then the little boat came puttering across the reef and into their lagoon, landing on the sand near the two life rafts of the Fiji Queen.

  One of the two men stayed in the boat – he had piloted the boat in, and that was clearly his job. The other, tall, brown skinned with curly black hair close to his head, dressed in shorts, white polo shirt with “AquaMarine Cruises” over the left breast and sandals, stepped out and moved toward the thirteen people he had been sent to rescue.

  “Mbula! Greetings! I am Captain Viliame Lovane of the Lautoka Lady. Please call me Captain Bill. We have come for you. I have clothing here for you.” He held out the large bundle. Stepping forward to receive it, James unwrapped it, and sorted out six identical muumuus in a large size made of white cloth with printed red hibiscus flowers. He distributed these to the women. He also found seven extra large tee shirts, white with blue lettering, saying “Fiji” on the front and seven sulus of light blue cotton cloth with dark blue, green and red fish imprinted. These he distributed to the men. Jeanne asked him if it would be OK to wear the muumuu now. His response was that it would be OK, but she should be sure to have two more sea water soaks today.

  Everyone donned the proffered clothing. To do so required taking off flower necklaces and putting them back on again. Several of them ended up on Captain Bill, who stood patiently waiting for them. Maria and Shelly walked to the life raft and each put a flower necklace on the pilot.

  Captain Bill started speaking as the group gathered around him again. “We are both grieved by the loss of our friends of the crew of the Fiji Queen and joyful that you have survived what must have been a significant ordeal. Congratulations. We will want to hear your story and to celebrate your success. I would like a tour of your camp.”

  James stepped forward again. “I am Doctor James Frederick, Captain. I will be happy to show you around as I did Captain Sharma yesterday. After we leave, there’ll still be work to be done here to restore our habitation back to its pristine state.” James took Captain Bill to see the three graves, to the pit latrine, to the garbage dump of well washed cans and bottles, and through the group of structures.

  Unlike the previous day, the group allowed the two to walk alone together. Instead, they looked around to see if there was anything valuable they wanted to take with them. The flowers around the eaves of the Kitchen Tent were taken down and added to the bins of flowers, one of which was placed in each of the Fiji Queen life rafts. Ron had his sketch book and pencils; Jim had his recorder; Maria had her lap top computer; Mark had a knife that he had fallen in love with as a whittling knife – he would later ask permission to keep it – that permission would be granted and the knife would be shipped to him in Los Angeles so there would be no problems with it getting through airport security checks. No one else found anything of either real or sentimental value to take. Paul and Ralph helped Marcella to put out the fire that had burned continuously since being lighted by a single match the night of their arrival.

  They stood in the Kitchen Tent saying goodbye to their island.

  They did not wait for long, for the walking tour was a short one; James and Captain Bill were soon back and everyone was climbing into life rafts – Paul, Val and Shelly joined Captain Bill and his pilot; the other ten climbed into the other two craft, Ron at the helm of one and Jim at the helm of the other. They followed Captain Bill back out to the Lautoka Lady, where they and their passengers and their precious cargoes were carefully helped aboard.

  As they encountered them, each crew member was given flower necklaces. As on the first day on the Fiji Queen, they were shown to cabins. Someone had been very careful – they were shown to exactly the same cabins they had occupied on the Fiji Queen. Roger immediately asked to be moved to another cabin – any other cabin – and he was. Val and Shelly, who had been in a cabin with two single bunks asked for one with a double bunk, and were moved. Marcella, who had accompanied her employer in a cabin, also asked to be moved, and was moved to a single cabin.

  There was no luggage to carry into the cabins and nothing to put away. They started to string flowers up and down the passageway and up the steps to the deck, then went to the main deck and hung strings of flowers there too.

  While they were engaged in decorating the Lautoka Lady, her crew was busy getting her underway for the return trip to Lautoka. Within ten minutes of their arrival on board, all three life rafts had been stowed, the anchors raised and they were under way. Captain Bill, flowers still around his neck, found them on the main deck and informed them that the distance to Lautoka was about nine hours of steaming time. They would be able to do about half of that today and half tomorrow morning. Cocktails would be served at 5:00. At 6:00 they would be asked to clear the Main Deck so that the crew could set up for supper, which would be served at 7:00.

  He asked if there were any questions – there didn’t seem to be any and he turned and exited into the galley door, where he was overtaken by Roger, who talked to him for a few moments, then returned to the Main Deck and the decorating crew.

  Aboard the Lautoka Lady

  It didn’t take long to string up all the flowers. In their containers, it had seemed they had a fearful lot of them, but out of the containers, strung around the deck, it was not so much.

  People melted away from the Main Deck into staterooms. Val, who had insisted that a bucket of sea water be brought to the stateroom that she and Shelly would have occupied if they had not been moved, took Jeanne aside and gave her another treatment.

  James and Maria discovered that brushes, combs, shampoo and conditioner, toothbrushes and toothpaste, dental floss, shaving cream and razors, after shave lotion and a sampling of several colognes had been placed in the bathroom. They took showers; Maria shampooed, conditioned and brushed out her hair, brushed and flossed her teeth and applied cologne that had the smell of plumaria flowers; James also shampooed and conditioned and combed his hair, shaved his beard back to its normal proportions and brushed and flossed his teeth. He applied an aftershave that smelled of lemon-lime and decided to forego the cologne. They ended up on the bed, naked, in an embrace that started out as love, rose to spend itself as passion and lapsed into a nap.

  It would not be unreasonable to presume that similar activity was taking place in each of the other occupied staterooms. Marcella, newly clean and radiant in cologne hinting of roses, knocked on Paul’s door, asked if he had showered, assured that he had, she entered, shedding her muumuu. Jim and Ron, always the least comfortable of the group with the primitive conditions on the island, were equally the most relieved to be heading back to “civilization,” and spent time apprecia
ting one-another’s clean and beautiful bodies that afternoon. Ralph had the luxury of the shower first, and the joy of shaving and combing his hair while he waited for Jeanne. She arrived and insisted he back off until she had also showered, after which they tried out this new bed and found it entirely satisfactory.

  Val joined Shelly in their stateroom, finding her washed, brushed and naked in the chair by the window. Val showered and went to her, finding neither their love nor their passion diminished by leaving the island.

  Time passed.

  At 5:00, there was a knock on each door to announce cocktail hour.

  By 5:30, cocktails had been served and had mostly not been accepted. After two weeks of not drinking any alcohol, no one was very interested in drinking. The crew had withdrawn, leaving two bottles of white wine, open, in ice buckets, two bottles of red wine, only one of them open, a dozen wine glasses, and half a dozen pre-mixed pina coladas on a table at the forward end of the Main Deck.

  Roger: “It is tai chi time. I can understand that no one may want to do tai chi this evening, but I offer the opportunity to any who do. I have arranged with Captain Bill that we will not be disturbed, should anyone wish to do tai chi in the nude, which is what I intend to do. You are welcome to join me or not, as you prefer.”