Island Life

by Nick Niels Sanders

  Island Life

  Volume 7 of the Book Series

  Born in the Sea

  By Nick Niels Sanders

  Published by Exotica Indica

  Publication as of April 2021

  28

  September 28

  September 28

  James and Maria woke and walked together to the Kitchen Tent. Crystal clear, as if the rain had washed it out, the air was a little cooler than it had been on the several previous mornings – still comfortable, perhaps better for being cooler.

  Marcella was serving bacon and scrambled eggs. She had saved aside a small number of eggs to use in cooking; otherwise, these were the last eggs. The sausage was gone. There was still more bacon, but not much. They would be on canned meat and fresh fish from here on in, unless the brining Marcella had started yesterday was really successful – and even then, it would extend the meat supply for only a day or two – longer if the brined meat was used as a supplement or an accent in dishes that were primarily something else.

  Inquiring about the meat, James learned that it seemed to have taken the brining well and Marcella planned to do some smoking during the morning to see if she could get maximum preservation effect. Ralph and Mark had worked to help design a smoking hood made of several layers of aluminum foil wrapped over woven palm fronds, with leaflets woven together to make shelves in the volume to be covered by the hood. The three of them were quite proud of the smoker. No one knew how palm frond smoked meat was going to taste, but since there really wasn’t a choice, they were moving ahead.

  Others came for breakfast, Valerie coming to get breakfast for Roger, asking Marcella to save her some food as she would eat after Shelly; Jeanne, Julia, Jim and Ron appearing as Valerie and Marcella conversed. Valerie left, carrying a plate to Roger. Shelly appeared next, hungry for breakfast. Paul was belatedly putting in his appearance as James excused himself to go to visit with Roger.

  He found Roger sitting on his box, staring off into space, an empty plate at his side.

  “Good morning, Roger.”

  “Oh, good morning, Doctor.”

  “How are you feeling this morning?”

  “I am doing well. I think I have more energy today. Shall we go swimming?”

  “In a few moments. Something happened last night that you should know about.”

  “Oh. That sounds serious.”

  “In a way, it is. Valerie and I both think you are recovering very well.”

  “Thanks.”

  “And we think you should be eating and working with the rest of us, being a member of the community rather than an exile.”

  “OK. I think I would like that.”

  “There is an obstacle.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yes. When we came ashore, like you, we came with the clothes we wore. No one thought it would be important to pack suitcases. So we were walking around in grungy, dirty clothes in no time, becoming more and more uncomfortable and smelly. We met and decided to make some rules about what would constitute acceptable attire on the island until we were rescued. The women suggested that everyone should be clothed when we are together as a community, but that nudity is desirable while swimming. We have lived by those rules, and have been swimming mostly in gender-segregated groups.”

  “Interesting. Were there people opposed to just being ‘clothing optional’ at all times?”

  “Yes. Several of them pretty strongly so. A couple of them surprised me, but it doesn’t really matter who they are. Last night, Valerie and I proposed that you should rejoin the group. Everyone seemed to like that idea. Then we told them that you are currently not wearing clothing and that you have announced that you do not intend to wear clothing until we are rescued.”

  “Yes, that’s true.”

  “We tried to get special dispensation for you. That got voted down. What we did get was a relaxation of the rules to the point where nudity is permitted everywhere except in the Kitchen Tent, where most of us sit to eat.”

  “Oh.”

  “We would be happy to have you eat with us, but you will have to stay out from under the Kitchen Tent, both during meals and during the “out of the sun” period between 10 AM and 2 PM.”

  “OK. I think I can do that. But I can sit just outside of the Kitchen Tent so that I am generally eating with everyone?”

  “Yes. Or you can put on a sulu – a garment like the one I am wearing – and sit in the tent with most of the rest of the crowd.”

  “I don’t think I want to do that. But being nearby would be good. Would I be allowed to sing, and participate in the stories at night?”

  “Yes.”

  “Thanks. That’s really very good news.”

  “I’m glad you see it that way. It’s really good news for us that you’re feeling so much better.”

  “It’s good news to me too. Shall we go swimming now?”

  “Yes.”

  And they did. Roger’s swimming performance was discernibly better than the previous day. He actually managed to swim about 20 feet before becoming winded – swimming parallel to shore so that he always had sand close enough under his feet that he could stop and stand. James watched with more than amusement. If all his patients put this much energy and intensity into rehabilitation, many of his invalids would be better a lot sooner.

  Roger tired and they walked back to his tent.

  “This is no longer part of the infirmary, so you’ll have to walk down for meals now.”

  “With great pleasure. Thanks, Doc. I don’t know what I’d have done without you.”

  “You’d have been fine. I’ll see you at lunch. We’re going to try to rescue some sunken treasure now.” James started toward the Kitchen Tent.

  On his way, James met Valerie, just returning from breakfast. He stopped to talk with her briefly about his conversation with Roger about rejoining the group and the clothing issue.

  “So, he will rejoin us, but he will not put on clothes. He will just stay out of the Kitchen Tent. I think you anticipated that.”

  “Yes, I did. How was the swim this morning?”

  “He has gained strength and wind. I am surprised.”

  “I’m not. He has been going to the water to swim repeatedly through the day. He went swimming near sunrise, before you came to breakfast. He is really working earnestly at this.”

  “Good for him. But keep an eye on him when he goes swimming. I don’t want him getting too ambitious and drowning.”

  “Me either. See you later.”

  Salvage Operation

  James arrived back at the Kitchen Tent to find that the others had gathered the snorkeling equipment and the two motor-powered life rafts. He and Paul looked at the water – inside the reef, it was as calm as glass; outside the reef, there was a slight swell, producing small wavelets on the reef.

  “I don’t think it gets better than this, Paul.”

  “No. Let’s get going while it’s calm.”

  They gathered their expedition, Ron piloting one life raft with Paul, James and Maria in it, Jim piloting the other, carrying Ralph and Jeanne.

  At the reef, they posted Jim to the left of where they thought the chain of loaded life rafts had crossed the reef. Ron was posted to the right. The snorkelers would swim toward the outer edge of the reef and gradually converge, looking for any sign of the lost life raft.

  Five swimmers disrobed, strapped on fins and jumped into the water, donning masks and snorkels once they had swimming patterns worked out. Well spaced along the reef, they worked slowly forward, Ralph at the left, Paul at the right, Jeanne, James and Maria spaced between them. They were expecting to find residues between Ralph and Paul, so this seemed a good way to scan for signs.r />
  The inner boundary of the reef rose to meet them, clean sand fading into a raft of colorful coral and even more colorful fish. Clown fish and sergeant major fish seemed to be everywhere, splotches of color darting in and out of the coral. At one point, it looked to Maria as if she were facing a vertical purple wall with several kinds of small fish darting in and out of it. She swam close to the wall, which gradually looked fuzzier and more irregular as she got closer, waved her hand at it and witnessed thousands of tiny purple filters retract, leaving behind an irregular, rocky surface with crevasses and holes leading back into it, into darkness. As she continued to swim forward, the top of the reef came closer and closer under her until it felt as though she was almost touching it. Off to her left, she thought she saw a glinting or glittering in the light. Turning left, gliding over the shallow coral surface, frightening fish and filter feeders in her haste, waving her hands to drive all the residents into hiding to reveal that shine again, she came upon a can of food, its paper label gone, lying in a shallow crevice between two coral heads. She stood up to wave, indicating that she had found something.

  In the two rafts, Jim and Ron watched carefully as the five snorkels, followed by the backs of the five swimmers, moved slowly forward toward the place where the wavelets were breaking. First James, then Maria, turned, seeming to aim toward a single goal, stopping at almost exactly the same time, standing in the shallow water to point at an area between them. The first signs of the life raft had been spotted! Ron and Jim waved back; they had no idea what was there but as each of the other three reached the breaking wavelets and turned to check, they were directed to where James and Maria were exploring.

  James turned and swam back across the reef, looking up once to locate the nearer life raft. Arriving at the life raft, he lifted up two hands with cans in them and put them into the boat, exchanged a quick word with Ron, then turned to swim back.

  Over the next half hour or so, one by one, the snorkelers all repeated this process, bringing cans to put in the rafts. Several of the cans had imprinting on them to indicate what they were, but most were without labels.

  James and Paul swam out past the reef and were alternately diving for what seemed to Jim to be incredibly long times. They had discovered shreds of the life raft stuck on coral outcroppings on the outer surface of the reef. They brought them to the surface to be carted away, but even with multiple dives as deep as they could go, they were unable to identify any additional food items. Far below them, they could see the glint of cans and other debris resting on the bottom. Farther away from the reef, they could see the Fiji Queen, her keel parallel to the reef, having rolled onto her starboard side, the large hole in her hull clearly visible. There were sharks circulating around and occasionally into the wreckage, but they did not seem to be able to find the food they smelled.

  Jeanne and Ralph continued to ferry cans from the reef to the rafts; Maria snorkeled in an enlarging spiral pattern, looking for more, not finding any. She rejoined Jeanne and Ralph. Under one of the cans, she spotted something else – a large brass staple. She carried this also to the raft – it seemed to her to be evidence that the bunch of cans they had discovered had been in a cardboard box with a stapled bottom, and that the box had disintegrated just as the labels on the cans had.

  When the last of the cans were on board, the entire group began moving the pieces of salvaged life raft to join the cans for transport to shore. The five snorkelers eventually met at the side of Ron’s raft to confer. It seemed to be a reasonable idea to use the same search pattern to search the bottom of the lagoon between the reef and the shore of Camp Beach to check for anything else that might have fallen overboard. Jim and Ron would follow them and be available in case something else was discovered.

  So the group assumed the same formation and started slowly back toward the beach. There were no additional discoveries, though they saw a lot of fish and some clumps of coral forming on the sandy bottom.

  The five swimmers emerged from the water, carrying flippers and snorkels, followed quickly by Ron and Jim who beached their rafts. James collected all the snorkeling equipment and took it to the Kitchen Tent. The debris from the sunken life raft they piled by the fire – it was rubber and would make a lot of smoke if put on the burning fire – so it would be their signal mechanism if they saw a boat or airplane. The seven workers carried cans to the Kitchen Tent, where Marcella piled them up, fretting that there was so little information about what they were.

  As they pulled the empty life rafts back up onto the beach, Paul spotted his sulu lying in the bottom of one, and realized that he was not wearing any clothing. He retrieved and donned the sulu, then handed clothing to James and Maria who were also unclad. At the other life raft, Ralph and Jeanne were making the same discovery, putting back on the clothing they had forgotten for such a long time.

  The seven tired workers walked into the shade of the Kitchen Tent to sit down and rest for a few moments before deciding what to do next.

  Smoking the Meat

  After swimming and boating and carting the salvaged materials from the lifeboats to the Kitchen Tent, the seven who had engaged in that activity were pretty tired. They flopped down in one attitude or another in the Kitchen Tent, had drinks of water and coffee, and began to recover.

  At this point, they began to notice the aroma around them. The fire was a bit smokier than usual, true, but this odor was different. Mark and Marcella had gone to work in their absence and had loaded the smoker with meat, placed it over the fire with a pan of smoldering whittling shavings from the palm fronds below it. The smoke was thick in the smoker hat, and a trickle of it escaped through the top, as planned, but what escaped carried also the odor of the meat and the spices Marcella had added to the brining water. If this was any indication of the taste of the meat in the smoker, they would all be sorry they hadn’t thought of smoking the meat much earlier.

  Mark was back at work whittling on a replenished pile of palm fronds and Julia was working on various patterns of weaving for different purposes. She had figured out how to tighten the weave for a bowl so that it would almost hold water – but since they had lots of containers for water, she didn’t think this was important until Marcella told her that it might work very well as a rice steamer. Julia was working on a weave that would be water repellant and flat – something that could be used as a shelter. She was finding that one section consisting of two frond halves with the leaflets pointed at one another was easy to weave for this use, but that the connecting or overlapping of the panels thus created would be more challenging. She wondered how the natives did it, and made a point of asking Paul.

  Paul’s response was less than totally satisfactory. He thought that the natives generally relied on piling many layers of palm fronds onto a roof to get it to be relatively waterproof, rather than on skillful weaving. He was actually fascinated to see what she was doing to get a waterproof panel. He began to follow and imitate her movements, and was soon well into the project of creating another panel.

  Roger’s Exercises

  Roger Applebee had started doing tai chi exercises the previous day after he and James had gone into the water the first time. Easily recognizing how weak and out of condition he was, Roger had resolved on ways to improve his physical status, and tai chi had seemed like it would help. For years he had taken lessons. He knew the whole Yang Long Form, as his instructor taught it in Sydney, and he knew a number of qi’gong exercises to use as warm-up or cool-down exercises. He had not done any tai chi for several years – and he was not sure why, though he remembered that Jayne had not liked it because it was a pagan ritual. He supposed maybe she had asked him not to do it.

  In any case, he started in again, piecing bits and pieces of the qi’gong together and gradually reassembling his knowledge of the Long Form. Every hour, he would stand, do five minutes or so of qi’gong, then as much of the form as he remembered. It came back to him very quickly. At first he was unsteady on his feet
and noticed that he lost his balance a lot, but that rapidly improved, as did his recollection of the form itself.

  Today, he recalled most of the form, and he was getting to be reasonably good at it again. He was pleased with himself for remembering and with his body because it was still responsive when he wanted it to be.

  Valerie found him doing the tai chi form. In spite of his effort to practice every hour, no one had noticed before – Roger was certainly not trying to keep it a secret.

  “What’re you doing?”

  “Tai Chi.”

  “What is it?”

  “It is a sort of martial arts exercise. It improves coordination, balance and strength. It is based on hand-to-hand combat, but the moves are all symbolic now. It is a form that comes from Ancient China.”

  “Wow! Could you teach that to others?”