Surprise Stories
Volume 6 of the Book Series
Born in the Sea
By Nick Niels Sanders
Published by Exotica Indica
Publication as of April 2021
26
September 26
Breakfast surprise
Julia checked on George and Roger again at the end of her “shift.” Valerie also checked a few moments later and thought both were sleeping. At the end of Valerie’s shift, the moon had just set and it was very dark. She was able to see Roger’s head clearly enough to make out a face, but of George, only a lump of bedding could be seen – which proved nothing other than that he was not facing into the starlight, and since he usually lay with his back to the world, this seemed normal to her. Michelle and Jeanne made the same observations on their shifts. It was at sunrise that Jeanne checked again and noticed that the lump that they had thought was George was a cleverly devised hump of sand and bedding made to seem like a person sleeping.
Jeanne went searching for George, but did not find him at the latrine or at the Kitchen Tent, where Maria was cooking breakfast. Maria had not seen George since she had last been in the infirmary – early yesterday. Jeanne looked around and saw no one. She then did what she thought best – she went to tell Dr. James that George was missing.
James was immediately alert. A missing patient! And on a small island! George was not the one he had been worried about moving around, somehow, so it was a surprise that he should be missing. Could he have wandered off? He asked Jeanne to walk down the beach past the Kitchen Tent and around the corner to the end of Camp beach and see if she saw him in that direction. Slipping out of bed and into his sulu and sandals, he started off in the opposite direction, walking along the edge of the palm grove, looking among the trees for signs of George, planning to look over the lava ridge into Bathing Beach and walk back at the water’s edge.
Bathing beach was empty. As he walked back, he saw what looked like a clump of seaweed on the sand, which would have been most unusual. He ran to it and found that it was George’s pajamas, lying where he had apparently taken them off on going into the water.
By this time, Jeanne was walking toward him a ways up the beach. Waving to her and running to meet her, seeing her running too, James met Jeanne quickly, imparting the information that George’s pajamas were on the beach, and it looked as though he had gone swimming. James would need help. Would Jeanne wake Ralph, Paul and Ron, if she could, and get them to come help? He was going to swim out to the reef to see if he could find any signs of George out there. Jeanne nodded and ran back toward camp. Dropping his sulu next to George’s pajamas, James dove into the water and swam rapidly out to the reef, aiming for the area where the ship had gone down, since that was the area George had asked about.
By the time he got there, he could hear the sounds of others firing up the engine on one of the life rafts to follow him. Crawling out of the water onto the coral, James saw the thing he had most feared – George’s body, floating face down a short distance past the far edge of the coral reef, at the edge of the oil slick. Clawing his way across the coral, James dove into significantly colder water, swimming to George, catching his hand, rolling him over to get his face out of the water, realizing quickly that there was no hope of saving him, dragging George’s body back toward the reef.
The life raft arrived. Ralph and Paul had come more quickly than Ron was able to awaken and out of bed – they could see Ron on the shore, looking as though he might also swim out to join them. They waved him off.
Pushing George’s floating corpse before him, James maneuvered to the reef, piloting George to the waiting hands of Ralph and Paul, who loaded him into the raft, then helped James up and into the raft himself. It was a sad group that motored back to the beach. Paul and James had liked George on board the Fiji Queen, though neither had been able to get him to talk since the wreck. Getting one of George’s blankets from the infirmary, they rolled him from the life raft onto the blanket to carry him up the shallow incline to where Lord and Lady Richard were buried, wrapping him in the blanket and leaving the burial until after breakfast.
The three men started together toward the Kitchen Tent until Paul reminded James he was not wearing his sulu; James ran back for his sulu, bringing George’s pajamas to bury with him.
Maria had made pancakes and sausage for breakfast. There was still some fruit juice, plenty of syrup and she had diced mango and papaya. Appetites were somewhat impaired by another loss to the group, but the surge of physical activity first thing in the morning piqued the appetites of some. After breakfast, the grave digging crew went to work to dig a grave for George while James checked on his remaining patient. Michelle and Marcella wanted to help with the digging. Jeanne went back to sleep. Julia helped Maria to clean up after breakfast.
Morning Activities
James went to check on Jim Hawthorne, who was sleeping in the midst of all the breakfast activity. When awake, Jim thought he was doing pretty well. His throat was no longer sore, his nose was no longer stuffy; in fact, he felt pretty darned good and why had no one awakened him for breakfast?
James did the routine neurologic checks and looked in Jim’s throat and felt for lymph nodes. Jim seemed completely healthy. James told him to go get some breakfast; not only was he released from the infirmary, he was no longer a patient.
James next went to talk with Roger, finding him sitting on the same box, dressed in the same very dirty pajamas, with a dirty, once-white cloth wrapped around his head (James wondered where in the world that came from and what had inspired Roger to wear it), and a breakfast plate, now empty, sitting on the ground beside him. He looked up as James approached.
“You’ve come back.”
“Yes. I told you I would.”
“Thanks.”
“You’re welcome. Did you eat breakfast?”
“Yes. It wasn’t very good.”
“It is the best we can do.”
“Did the ship sink? I can’t remember.”
“Yes.”
“What happened?”
“At about 2:30 in the morning, George Fuller woke me. His wife was ill. She had an upset stomach and diarrhea. She was having trouble speaking and double vision. Botulism. George and I tried to rouse the crew so we could get back to Lautoka and proper medical care. But the crew, including Captain Wilkie, were all dead – probably botulism.”
“That’s what Jayne had.”
“Yes. George, Jim Hawthorne and Ron Haskell and I decided that the best plan was to get underway back to Lautoka even without the crew. We raised the gangplank and started.”
“I remember the engines starting.”
“Yes. I got help and started visiting everyone. That was when I found out that Jayne was also very ill. There were others, some dead, some dying, some who looked as though they might be saved.”
“Poor Jayne!”
“Yes. Botulism is not lovely. Anyway, we ran into the reef around this island. Thank goodness the reef cushioned our stop, or we would all have died from the impact. But there was a big hole in the bottom of the ship. It started taking water. We got as many people and as much stuff off the ship as we could. As you know, Jayne was dead by then. She went down with the ship. It slid backwards off of the reef and sank. I was still taking care of one passenger. She was alive, but she wouldn’t have survived. When the ship sank, she drowned. There was nothing I could do. I managed to get out and up to the surface.”
“I’m glad you did.”
“Thank you. Do you want to talk today?”
“No thanks, not now. I’m thinking and looking. Maybe later.”
“I’ll come back later.”
James rose and went to see how the grave digging was doing. He was very encouraged by the fact that Roger was now asking questions about what was going on in the world, thinking that this was a sign that he was re-emerging after his grief. It would not do to let him drown himself as George had done, however. James reminded himself to talk to Valerie about what precautions they might take.
The grave digging was proceeding well. The grave would be another shallow one, but it would be deep enough. It was separated by a moderate distance from the Kirkpatricks so as not to confuse identities if it took some time for exhumation to take place. They laid George’s body, wrapped in the blanket, at the bottom of the shallow trench, Paul said the same words again, and they covered George with sand.
For Valerie and the infirmary crew, the fact that George had run away and drowned himself was a major crisis. James sat down with Julia, Valerie and Michelle to talk about what had happened, to try to sort out how George had managed to sneak away. They could only conclude that George had really made an effort to deceive them. George probably left shortly after Valerie checked on him the first time, making his way through the palm trees to get to the shore while there was still enough moonlight to get him to the right place on the reef. James remembered how upset George had been at being carried away from Joan after the crash. He wondered if George had tried to dive far enough down to find Joan. If so, James felt he must certainly have drowned in the process – the wreck was far too deep to be able to reach it in a free dive. They compared notes on Roger, concluding that he was actually improving mentally. They decided to encourage him to additional physical activity, and even to swim. At night, they would need to keep a close watch on him, perhaps by staying in sight of the inside of his lean-to. James did the best he could to assure the three women that they were not responsible for George’s death. Given the difficulty of the situation, there was really not much they could do to keep a willful patient from swimming off as George had done. James speculated that George had died as close as he could get to Joan’s body – that would probably have been the best outcome George could have imagined. They all thought this was a little twisted, but they all felt better after talking.
By the time the grave had been dug and George buried and the conference held in the infirmary, it was after 9:00, and too late to mount an expedition to get water without being out during the height of the sun. James met the men back at the Kitchen Tent and announced that the expedition was rescheduled for 2:30.
Mid-Day
“Does anyone know how to make baskets and other things from palm fronds?” asked Marcella.
“I learned some about it when I was on vacation in Hawaii about ten years ago,” responded Julia.
“Will you teach us?”
“If I can remember any of it. Let me work on it a bit. I will need some of the palm fronds, and I need them cut up the middle and whittled so that the spine is flexible.”
Mark: “As you know, I can do the whittling. I had forgotten your course in basket weaving. Maybe I can help you to remember some of what you learned.”
“Thanks. I will use any help I can get. Anyone with ideas?”
Jeanne: “Once, when we went on a vacation together about a year ago, Ralph and I went to a tropical village thing on Tasmania. They demonstrated palm weaving and also climbing palm trees. We didn’t actually do anything, but we watched. Maybe we can help.”
Marcella: “Do you think we could figure out how to make grass skirts like the dancers wore?
Julia: “I didn’t learn anything like that, but I suspect that once we start weaving, we will discover that variations on the same theme will be able to produce lots of different things. But we will need that supply of palm fronds.”
Mark: “OK, OK, I’m on my way.”
Ralph: “I’ll help you.”
Mark and Ralph set out to find some green palm fronds. They harvested two from a palm tree that was still small enough that they could reach them, and found another two lying on the ground. They were back at the Kitchen Tent in less than half an hour, well before 10:00.
James, Maria, Ron, Jim, Paul and Jeanne all went to their lean-tos to rest. Shelly and Val went to the infirmary to keep track of Roger – they had, in fact, alternated eating breakfast, so one was always near Roger. Marcella and Julia finished the after-breakfast clean-up.
Mark and Ralph remained to work on the palm fronds. Mark remembered that splitting them should start from the tip of the frond and cut back towards the base, which assures that the knife does not break through the sides so you get the whole half of the frond. Whittling to reduce the bulk of the spine also had to go the same way. Near the tip of the frond, it was flexible enough without any work, but as one worked closer to the base, the spine became thicker and thicker and therefore less and less flexible. Mark and Ralph spent a major portion of the “out of the sun” time whittling.
Marcella had realized that there were cheeses and other perishables that were going to go bad if they didn’t eat them soon. So, for lunch, she brought out bread and a selection of cheeses – of which there were plenty. She put out some soft cheeses and some hard cheeses. She also made a fruit salad using bananas and other fresh fruits that were also on the verge of becoming overripe and inedible. The meal was a great success. Tastes in cheese varied greatly, but everyone was able to find several cheeses he or she liked. In what would become a routine, every person took his or her own plate, cup and flatware to the edge of the water, cleansed them with sand and sea water, rinsed them and brought them back to drain in the kitchen. Even under the noonday sun, it was a rare day on which this did not happen.
Afternoon Activities
At 2:30, the men gathered at the Kitchen Tent. The intent was to go to the spring and move rocks where Mark had found water, but Mark declined to come. “I am whittling palm fronds for weaving. This is a better activity for me because of my knees.”
Ralph: “I was whittling too, but I’ll come. I remember where the place was. I’ll bet Ron does too.”
Jim, Ron and Paul joined James and Ralph, carrying the six empty water jugs to the spring, hoping to get enough water to fill all of them. It was a matter of only a few moments to get close to the place where water had been spotted. It took half an hour of all five men looking to relocate the exact place. They started moving rocks to gain access to the water. James encouraged them to do this with considerable care, since they could easily contaminate the water by dropping things into it. Some of the rocks were quite heavy, requiring two or three of the men to lift and move them. Gradually, a hole opened in the rocky slope and with almost two hours of concerted effort, it was large and deep enough to allow access to the water.
At the bottom of the newly-created hole was a pool of water about the size of a bathtub, held in an indentation in the surface of the lava rock. James lowered himself carefully to be adjacent to the pool and a bucket brigade of water jugs started. It was pretty easy to fill all six, and there seemed to be plenty of water left after they were done.
James wondered if they should try to cover the pool with a tarp or something to keep it from evaporating, but decided that such a device would also keep it from refilling from rain falling into it. He scratched small marks into the lava at water level and resolved to return the next day to check on the height of the water. If it fell significantly, they would put something over it to shade it.
Returning to camp with the water, the five sweaty men left the water in the Kitchen Tent and set out for Bathing Beach with clean, dry clothing to wash their dirty clothing and to rinse and cool themselves. The sun was getting low in the western sky as they reached the beach, waded into the warm water, rinsed out apparel that had not been improved by the afternoon’s labors, carried it up the beach to set it on the rocks to dry and returned to the water to swim.
Mark was whittling. Val and Shelly were with Roger in the infirmary. By the time the men left to get water, the women had cleaned the kitchen and were ready fo
r their next activity.
Marcella had indicated again to Maria the need to get fish in the near future to keep up their diet. She and Maria had agreed that everyone should learn to snorkel and spearfish so everyone could contribute. With all the chores out of the way and camp otherwise empty, it seemed an ideal opportunity to have a snorkeling lesson. Gathering up the snorkeling gear and walking to Bathing Beach, Maria and Jeanne, who both knew something about snorkeling, began giving instructions to Julia and Marcella, who were anxious to learn.
The ship’s supplies had contained six sets of masks, snorkels and fins and four spears for fishing. For a first lesson, they left the spears behind and brought only enough equipment for four of them. Crossing the rocky barrier between Camp Beach and Bathing Beach, leaving their clothing on the rocks, expecting to find it clean and dry on their return, they walked to the edge of the water to teach and to learn how to wear the mask and snorkel.
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