When John Frum Came

by Bill Schroeder

  There was a rumble coming from beneath the ground, and Lieutenant Shakaru was amazed to see a wave coming toward them. It was not coming from the ocean — there was a three-foot swell of sand on the shore. It behaved like an ocean wave, but in reverse. Its movement continued out under the lagoon, and made the placid surface dance. He was speechless.

  Sergeant Ubo watched the geologic display with him and said at the end, “What are your orders, sir?”

  “There is nothing to do but wait,” the officer said.

  “Wait for what?” the sergeant asked.

  “I shudder to think,” Shakaru said.

  ***

  John Bartlett was vaguely aware of a rumbling feeling. His head hurt sharply and it took a great deal of effort to open one of his eyes a crack. All he could see was cold gray light that had a slight tint of yellow to it. With both eyes open, he made out a compartment in which everything was painted gray. He felt like he was lying in the back of a pickup truck bouncing down an unpaved farm road.

  As his head cleared, he realized that he was in the crew’s quarters of the LCM, and was looking up at a pair of bunks built into the bulkhead. He was surrounded by boxes and bags with red tags.

  Painfully, he raised himself up on one elbow and reached for the nearest crossbeam to try to get himself off the deck. He had the oddest feeling of being drawn down to the corner of the room. It was painful, but he slowly brought himself far enough into an upright position to see out the closed porthole. He was looking down at the surface of the ocean. It was no illusion — the LCM was at a 45-degree angle to the horizon. It was traveling sideways at a high rate of speed, and he was looking at the backside of what he thought must be the largest wave ever seen by a living man.

  He climbed up the sharply inclined deck and looked out the other side. Contrary to what logic and reason told him, there was nothing to see. A hazy sun was no more than a bright orange circle in the midst of a gray cloud. He had the sensation of sailing through the air. The frightening part of the event was that it was more than just a sensation of flight — he was actually riding a 110-foot surfboard that would most likely wipe out on an atoll without notice.

  Fighting gravity and the angle of the boat, John worked his way over to the bottom bunk. Whoever slept here had made a mattress out of a modified inflatable, yellow liferaft. Most likely, it had been salvaged from a downed plane. It was deflated to just the right pressure to make it a comfortable little nest. He dropped into it, closed his eyes and tried to convince himself this was some kind of weird dream.

  ***

  Yani led the way back to the trail down the mountain. As they passed the bodies of Captain Nagama and the dead guard, the American averted his eyes. He had no desire to see the face of the man he had killed. Regardless of the natives’ acclamation of his heroism, he took no joy in ending another man’s life. He felt sure he would go through the rest of his life with the burden of having killed another human being uppermost in his mind. The only justification would be that he had saved his best friend from imminent slaughter in the process.

  Yani respected his silence as they descended to the plateau of their old camp. As soon as possible he would have to recover the radio-telegraph and generator from where he had hidden them. Port Moresby needed to know what had happened. He was sure they would tell him he had done well, and make a big fuss over his role in the shooting.

  “What about the rest of the Japfellas down on the beach?” he said to Yani. “We will have to deal with them now.”

  Yani laughed. “I think there are no more Japfellas on the beach. I think they all dead fellas.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I think pooja in village kill all Japfellas by now,” he said.

  With that, the rest of the warriors came down from the volcano rim. McDuff gagged at what he saw. The heads of the two Japanese who were killed at the top of the mountain were mounted on the war spears of two of the men. They also were carrying the heads of the other unfortunate soldiers who died on the way up. One of the native leaders stood before McDuff and Yani offering the new pooja his trophy.

  “Tell him to take it away,” McDuff yelled at Yani, turning away so he would not throw up. Yani shrugged and motioned the warriors to take their prizes down to the village.

  As the men left the clearing and headed home, Yani and McDuff were knocked to the ground by a loud explosion, and a furious shaking of the ground. As they lay there dazed for a few moments, watching the trees doing their strange dance, small stones began to pelt them from above. They scrambled to their feet and sought the shelter of a shallow cave in the side of the hill. McDuff‘s Harvard training identified the stones streaming from the sky as tektites.

  “Big wave come from ocean soon, climb mountain. I think we see Jesus today,“ Yani declared.

  “I realize the situation is serious,” the minister said, “but it doesn’t mean we will be killed.”

  Since numerous volcanoes on other islands had already blown their tops, large gray clouds of ash had been building in the upper atmosphere. The sun’s light was being gradually blocked out. McDuff was just too busy to notice. Yani had, however, observed the changes and drawn some conclusions.

  Without prelude Yani said, “Our father who art in Heaven, Hallow-ed be thy name. Thy kingdom come.”

  “Considering the situation,” McDuff smirked, “I think the prayers of the congregation are in order.”

  Back on Wombat you say, “When Jesus comes back to earth, there will be a day of Judgment ... ‘Thy Kingdom come’ means there will be a terrible day. This is a terrible day, is it not?”

  “Terrible day?” McDuff said. “I can’t think of a worse one.”

  “But it will be wonderful for the true believers who have accepted Jesus Christ as their savior. We will be with him in Heaven. You say so. The Bible tells us so.”

  McDuff was embarrassed to be told his business by a native convert. This man is a better Christian than me, he thought. All I have been doing is feeling sorry for myself. He sees us going to Heaven. McDuff reached into his backpack and took out his Bible.

  Both men jumped when a wild sow and three piglets came squealing out of the jungle, and ran across the clearing toward the top of the mountain.

  “You find the part about Sun, and raining stones,” Yani begged eagerly.

  He ran his finger down the page. “The sun shall be darkened in his going forth, and the moon shall not cause her light to shine...”

  Yani pointed to the fading outline of the sun without comment.

  “And the wild beasts of the islands shall cry in their desolate houses...”

  “Pigs know ocean come ... climb mountain. Some children not get up hill... houses spoiled. You see. Trees tell story already.

  He turned to Revelation 16, Verse 18, and read: “And there fell upon men a great hail out of Heaven, every stone about the weight of a talent...”

  Yani was quiet and thinking while the tektites continued to fall near them. “I remember you say, ‘All things are possible in the Kingdom of God ...”

  McDuff simply nodded his agreement.

  “I think we will see Jesus today ...” Yani said. “Kingdom come.” Then silently, since he knew McDuff did not like to hear him say it, Yani thought, And John Frum, he come!

  ***

  A mile ahead of John Bartlett’s private toboggan was yet another tsunami, considerably smaller than his. The residents of Chase Island, directly in its path, had felt the same ground tremors as the Japanese. However, they dropped whatever they were doing and snatched up the nearest small children. They had felt the ground shake and they knew instinctively from the behavior of the palm trees that a giant wave would be upon them in no time. Everyone headed for higher ground, even though the mountain was a volcano that just might blow up. No one stopped to save a single possession. Time was the only thing worth saving.

  The Japanese soldiers saw the mass exodus of people from the village, and knew that something was happening,
but had no idea what. They, too, had felt the vibrations but the only thing they knew to do during earthquakes was to lie flat in an open field. They were already doing that.

  Looking in the direction of the ocean, Lieutenant Shakaru’s men saw a wall of water 30-feet high that spread as far to the left and right as the shape of their peninsula allowed them to see. He panicked.

  Those soldiers whose prayers asked that the gods find a way to remove them from this terrible, living hell got an immediate positive response. Those who had not prayed for deliverance were delivered anyway as the water surged over the rocks.

  The wave crashed through the village and jungle, knocking over houses, palm trees, pig pens and anything natural or man-made that stood in its path. The people on the mountain screamed and continued pushing their way up the trails as far and as fast as they could go. The warning had been in time for practically all the able-bodied men and women, most of them carrying children. The aged who could not navigate under their own power were left to be claimed by the flood. Tidal waves had been passing over this and similar islands for thousands of years. The priorities of who got saved had been determined several hundred waves ago. There would be a proper ceremony honoring the victims at a later time. Right now survival beat sentimentality in the homestretch.

  The fluid dynamics of the wall of water meeting the volcanic mountain resulted in a slowing down in the rush of water. Following the laws of physics, the mountain sent a good portion of the water back in the direction from which it had come. When John Bartlett’s wave met the churning surf from the first one, the net result was for the undertow to neutralize some of the forward momentum of the second tsunami. Not that it made much difference since the first wave had moved most of what was moveable.

  ***

  John edged from his stupor and heard noises mere words could not describe. He was sure that anyone else who had heard similar noises before, did not live to discuss them. The dropping-elevator feeling meant that the LCM had been launched from the crest of the wave and was now airborne. He pictured himself as a flat stone being skipped across the surface of a pond by a colossal ten-year old. The flight lasted an eternity and when the LCM touched down on the sea’s surface, it was with such a thud, that the only thing that kept him from being splattered on the deck was the partly-inflated, yellow life raft he was wearing like a cocoon. Water surrounded the boat and from what he could see through the porthole, the surface seemed somewhere above the cabin.

  The watertight door had been properly secured and successfully held out the sea.

  The LCM aquaplaned the full three-mile length of the lagoon. If the boat were submerged, the outcome was inevitable. But he felt the landing craft come to rest on the bottom.

  Can I get loose and swim out the door? he thought. He was struggling with his rubber straight jacket, when it seemed as though someone had pulled the stopper out of the bathtub. The water outside rushed away, leaving the decks. Sitting upright, he worked on regaining his equilibrium. Finally, when most of the water was off the decks, he stood up and looked around. Most of the Bartlett family’s possessions were in a logjam near the foot of the bunks, a tangled mess.

  He went out on the elevated deck and looked over the side. The water was receding from the lagoon where the LCM had come to rest. The water was still rough, but it was clear that he had been lifted over a coral reef that ringed the island. It would not allow him to get out again even if the boat had working engines.

  Shakily, he took stock of the situation. He was not a religious man, but it is not just in foxholes that there are no atheists. He looked skyward and called out, “God! If you’re out there ... Thanks.”

  Chapter 35

  From McDuff’s camp to the rim of the volcano, and for as far as he could see in all directions there were refugees from the tidal wave. Children ran after each other in games that only they understood, but the adult population of Chase Island virtually sat in silence. The ocean had climbed the mountain as Yani predicted it would, and now an hour later had receded back to from where it had come.

  McDuff was stricken by the quiet orderliness of the people. There was no wailing and crying. There were no hysterical demonstrations of grief. Everyone seemed to be looking his way. Do they expect me to do something? He thought. I would share the food I had left before the Japanese came, but they’ve already taken that. Do they expect me to pull some kind a rabbit out of a hat. Jesus may have been able to feed the multitudes, but I am kind of shy on miracles right now. He smirked. Is this the White Man’s Burden? Do they really think there is anything I can do?

  He was nudged out of his reveries by Yani. “Japfella kill Ooma. Yani must go down the mountain and clear the way through the spirits so his people can return to the village.”

  The words came as sort of a shock to McDuff. The people were not looking at him. They were looking at Yani. He felt like a fool. No one was looking to this presumptuous white man to take over their problems. They were looking to their new spiritual leader, their shaman, the “man who really knew.”

  “Blackfella afraid to go back to village. Spirits make too much simka,” Yani said. “I learned formulas from Ooma to send spirits back into sea. I go now and see village.”

  Incredulously, McDuff said, “Yani, do you still believe that black magic business that Ooma held over these people’s heads? I thought you were a Christian, now. I know you say the Lord’s Prayer every day. How can you go back to the old ways?”

  Yani was confused by his words. He saw no conflict in believing in the spirit world of his people and the Witman’s Jesus. “Blackfella have no food now. Big Man Duff come with me to call ships to come with tinkens for people. You call ship to old island when we have no food. We say Our Father together. We ask Sheepy-sheep to help. If we call ships from Heaven together maybe we get tinkens sooner.”

  McDuff was flustered. “I believe in the power of prayer, but it’s not as simple as you seem to think. Just praying for ships to deliver food isn’t going to do it. I think we’ll get better results if I fix my radio and we call Port Moresby for some kind of relief aid.”

  Yani wondered what had happened to Big Man Duff. He had always been ready to pray before. But, he did not have time to waste on a reluctant partner. His people were depending on him to come to their rescue, so he sniffed the breeze and decided the wind was right for exorcism.

  ___

  Yani thought it over and decided that it would be appropriate for him to start calling the ships as he walked down the trail, since he needed to be on the actual site of the village to drive the spirits out.

  He was reciting, “...Thy will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven...” in a loud voice as he came upon the high-water mark. This was the point where the wave ran out of steam. However, it was not before the water had pushed everything in one direction, broken off fully grown palm trees, loosened rocks, and then drew all the debris back again like a giant broom, scraping the topsoil and loose gravel down to the sea.

  He stopped praying. It took all his concentration to pick his way down the last fifty feet or so to the island’s sea level. His eyes were riveted on the ground, to pick out the safest foothold for the next step. When he reached the sandy floor where the jungle stubble ended, he finally looked up.

  He was stunned.

  There in front of him was a massive ship shaped like a box. It was at least as big as the Wombat, maybe larger. It was hard to say, since it was shaped more like the wooden Japanese boat that sank on the reef. But this one was apparently made of iron, and was partly submerged in the sand dune the receding tide had stacked against it.

  He rubbed his eyes, and looked again. It was still there.

  Since the tide was out and the lagoon was filled with sand, Yani was able to walk around the whole thing — at a distance. He wanted to touch it, but chose to look at it for a while longer before making so bold a move. He sat down on a fallen palm and allowed his senses to return.

  I’ve done it, he thought. I’ve
really done it. I have called to Heaven for a ship, and Jesus sent me one. I hope it is a good one and not full of Japfella soldiers or bad men like Captain West.

  ___

  Aboard U.S. Navy LSM #666 John Bartlett was recovering from his ride. His primary thought was that he had no idea where he was. When he looked over the side earlier, all he could see was a lot of muddy water, and a devastated tropical island. He thought it unlikely that anyone on it had survived the huge wave.

  So, what am I — a modern Robinson Crusoe? At least I won’t starve to death. I don’t even have to go ashore. Everything I need is right here on the boat. I’ll just sit tight until they come looking for me.

  The next thought was whether or not the Great Snitkin had survived the tidal wave itself. It might have gone down. It could have capsized.

  Suppose the Japs find me first. Now that’s a really scary thought.

  He had found a War Department pamphlet one of the crewmen had in his quarters. It was titled “Pidgin English for Americans.”

  He opened it at random and read a sentence or two:

  “The native is nearly, if not quite, as good a man as you are. Don’t underrate his intelligence. Don’t curse and swear at him — and don’t make fun of him. Joke with him by all means ... but don’t deliberately descend to his level.

  “...Don’t beat a native drum without first asking ... as often as not the village drums are under taboo...

  “...Remember three things in any village — gardens, pigs, and women. Interference with any of them will bring trouble for you and your mates.”

  John flipped to the glossary of commonly used words and phrases.

  “It is estimated that there are more than 700 languages spoken in the islands of the South Pacific. Because of the absence of communication until the 19th Century, each island developed virtually its own language. However, Pidgin was developed by island traders and is understood in many places. It is a combination of English, German, and local languages. Following are some words and phrases American Servicemen might find useful.