And the Sea Will Tell

by Vincent Bugliosi

  The Fullard-Leo family was forced into a legal skirmish with the U.S. government to keep Palmyra. In anticipation of the expected Pacific war, Palmyra was declared a “prohibited defense area” by an Executive Order dated December 19, 1940, and assigned to the jurisdiction of the Navy Department, which constructed a naval base there for five thousand servicemen. The Fullard-Leos resisted in four federal court battles. The clincher came in 1946, when the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals declared the brothers’ title to Palmyra Island valid. The court held that since both occupancy and claim of title to Palmyra by Bent, Wilkinson, and their heirs (buttressed by regular payment of property taxes) existed long prior to U.S. annexation of Hawaii, and were honored by the Hawaiian government, Palmyra was in fact privately owned, even though it is a “possession” of the United States. Soon after the circuit court’s decision, the Navy swiftly pulled out, abandoning buildings, gun emplacements, and empty ammunition dumps.

  Since Palmyra’s status as private property had been affirmed, visitors like Mac, Muff, Buck, and Jennifer needed permission from the owners to spend any time there, but the Fullard-Leos, who live in Honolulu, had learned long ago that it was impossible to keep uninvited guests off their island. Sensitive to what South Sea sailors had long called the Palmyra Curse, her owners took out substantial liability insurance to protect them from a host of calamities that might occur to visitors on their island, and hoped for the best.

  JUNE 27, 1974

  AS THE Iola was towed into the lagoon, Jennifer was struck with the feeling that time had come to a halt on Palmyra. The lagoon, smooth as a mirror and so clear one could make out the coral configurations on its bottom, was flanked on three sides by miniature islands, each overgrown with tall coconut trees marching down to the waterline. The island was as pristine as she had hoped.

  But Palmyra, though uninhabited, was not, as she and Buck had hoped, a deserted island.

  On the north side of the lagoon they moored the Iola between two other boats at a line of steel-reinforced wooden pilings (four, in all) that boaters call “dolphins.” Scarcely fifteen yards of water separated the Iola from shore, and the boats on each side of it were around twenty yards distant. Jennifer and Buck, with a cargo of excited dogs, rowed their dinghy the short distance to the beach, where the pent-up animals went crazy and gamboled madly, barking and yapping and running around in circles.

  As Jennifer planted her feet on solid ground for the first time in twenty-eight days, the earth seemed to be shifting under her. She was ecstatic to be off the boat and safe after an ocean voyage of a thousand miles. From where she stood, she could smell the earthiness, the fertile greenery of the jungle. It pulsed with hidden life.

  Jennifer, her eyes moist with happiness, hugged Buck tightly. The warm, bright sun enhanced the specialness of the moment.

  They were soon introducing themselves to the other people on the island. One of the neighboring boats was the Poseidon, a forty-eight-foot ketch owned by Jack Wheeler. He and his lively teenage son, Steve, had manned one of the dinghies that towed the Iola. Also aboard Wheeler’s boat were his wife, Lee, and their attractive daughter, Sharon. The other boat was the Caroline, a forty-four-foot motor-sailer with twin diesel engines that was on a charter out of Honolulu and skippered by Larry Briggs, who had been in the other dinghy.

  “How was your trip?” someone asked.

  “Long,” Jennifer said, smiling. “Took us nineteen days from Port Allen. And we sat outside the channel here for over a week, waiting for the wind to shift so we could sail in.”

  “Sorry to hear that,” Jack Wheeler said. “Welcome to Palmyra anyhow.”

  Wheeler, fiftyish, was a wiry man with long sideburns and horn-rimmed glasses that rested near the end of his nose. He volunteered to take Jennifer and Buck on a tour of the island, “seeing as how I’m kinda the unofficial mayor of this place.” There was the hint of unspoken challenge in his tone.

  As they began walking, Wheeler explained that they were on the biggest islet—Cooper Island.

  “Named for an old judge, I’m told. All these islets were connected together by the Seabees during the war. The road that hooked them up is now gone in lots of places. The causeway through the lagoon is pretty broken down, too. Best thing to do if you want to get around to the other side of the lagoon is to take a dinghy right across.”

  Just before they entered the jungle, Wheeler pointed out a clearing adjacent to his boat. “We have a nice fireplace there for outdoor cooking. You’ll have to try some of the wife’s smoked fish.”

  Wheeler smiled knowingly. “Now, you know about the poisonous fish?”

  “Poisonous?” Jennifer said, her expression tightening. She looked at Buck for his reaction, but he disguised his surprise. They had both been counting on a diet rich in fish.

  “Yeah. Ciguatera is what I’m talking about. The fish carry a toxin produced by a certain kind of algae here. You also see it in Hawaii and the Caribbean. Even Florida. But there are a few varieties of fish that are edible, and tasty, too. Papio are excellent eating, and they’re all over the place. Mullet are good, too, but leave the red snapper alone. They’re good eating back home, but you’ll get mighty sick if you eat them here. We had a cat with us on a trip here some years back. We’d feed her a piece of fish and then watch to see if she threw up. If she kept it down, we figured it was all right.”

  Jennifer was appalled by this apparent insensitivity. “Weren’t you worried about killing the cat?”

  “Naw. Cats are different. If people and dogs eat something that’s poisonous, they can get real sick, even die. A cat will just puke.”

  As far as sea life was concerned, Jennifer told Wheeler what was uppermost in her mind: Buck’s scary run-in with the shark.

  Wheeler nodded sagely. “They’re as thick as fleas on a hound. The lagoon’s a breeding ground for blacktip sharks. They’re one of the most aggressive sharks in the Pacific. Get up to six feet long. Be careful about taking a dip.”

  “Don’t worry,” Jennifer said with a shudder. She had no intention of even wading in the picturesque lagoon. Its peaceful aspect was all illusion, she thought. Part of the dream had soured.

  Wheeler led them inland along a narrow trail that had obviously been painstakingly chopped through the brush. What had looked like feathery greenery from the sea was actually quite a formidable hedgerow. Soon they came upon a strip of steaming-hot, pockmarked asphalt. Jennifer was jolted to realize that the pavement was alive with squirming, squawking birds, thousands of them. Buck’s dogs charged for the grounded birds as Jennifer scooped a frightened Puffer into her arms.

  There was a great explosion of shrieks and flapping as the black-and-white terns rose in protest, hovering in squadrons ten or twelve feet in the air. Jennifer could now see why the birds refused to leave. The asphalt below them was covered with nests of helpless baby chicks.

  “Buck!” Jennifer hollered.

  Before Buck could react, Popolo, the pit bull, gripped a full-size tern in his jaws. Buck cuffed the dog on his head, and it dropped the bird. The bird flapped once or twice, then lay still. It had been bitten nearly in two.

  “Oh, Popolo,” Jennifer said scoldingly. “Look what you’ve done.” Puffer’s whining seemed to echo her distress.

  “Your dog that hungry?” Wheeler asked, not kindly.

  “Nope,” Buck said, with eyes narrowed. “Just that ornery.”

  Buck put his dogs on a length of rope he’d brought along and tied them to a coconut tree.

  The tour resumed. “This is an old military airstrip,” Wheeler explained. “It was built back in the early forties. The damn thing’s a mile long, though you can’t tell now because of all the vegetation taking over. Those birds nest all the way down it.”

  The three of them worked their way across the crowded runway, all—but especially Jennifer—walking gingerly to keep from stepping on eggs and chicks. Occasionally, an angry parent would dive-bomb the trio, brushing their heads at top speed.
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br />   “We’ve eaten some of the eggs,” Wheeler said, his voice nearly drowned out by the whoosh-whooshing of the frantic birds. “Kinda fishy-tasting, but not bad. To make sure they’re fresh, what you do is mark off a twenty-by-twenty-foot area here on the runway, clear it of eggs, and come back the next day. Any eggs inside the marked area are fresh ones.”

  When they reached the other side of the runway, the racket calmed down. Wheeler led the way along another jungle footpath.

  It was like walking in a huge greenhouse. The humidity and heat had become stifling. Jennifer was breathing with difficulty from the excitement and exertion. Buck dripped with sweat.

  “Is it always this hot?” he asked.

  “Never varies more than a few degrees, day or night.” Wheeler smiled dryly. “Even the rain is warm.” He enjoyed having the edge on these newcomers. It was the kind of authoritarian attitude Buck and Jennifer had hoped to leave behind.

  There were only a few feet of visibility through the vegetation in any direction. The occasional chatter of brightly colored birds darting from tree to tree in the green canopy above was the only evidence of life, but Jennifer sensed that scores of unseen creatures were lurking out of sight, watching silently.

  They came to a wide clearing that had recently been cut out of the underbrush. An old warehouse stood at the edge of the forest. Inside they found a dilapidated road grader, a ten-wheeler military truck, and an old boat with the letters “U.S.A.F.” on both sides of its hull. All showed the effects of more than three decades of neglect in a tropical climate, as well as vandalism.

  “In the eleven years since we were last here, there’s been a lot of wanton destruction,” Wheeler said. “Look at all the slashed tires. And bullet holes.”

  Jennifer was troubled by the jagged holes in the metal. Who would get their kicks shooting up an old truck? Whoever these trigger-happy cowboys were, she didn’t want them coming back while she and Buck were living here.

  “You’d think sailing people would be a better sort,” Wheeler reflected.

  He went over to the rescue launch. “They call this a drop boat because the Air Force would drop it into the water from a plane. It was equipped to take care of survivors who had to wait for a rescue. You know, fresh water, canned foods, first-aid gear, life jackets, that kind of thing. It was still running when I was here years ago and we used to play around with it in the lagoon. One time I used it for a real rescue. A Japanese trawler was tooting its whistle like crazy just outside the channel. I took the rescue boat out. One of the fishermen had been impaled by a swordfish.”

  “What happened to him?” Jennifer asked in horror.

  “Poor fella didn’t make it.” He turned away.

  Jennifer’s uneasy feeling about Palmyra was growing stronger. The lagoon was postcard-quality but full of sharks. Catching fish was apparently a snap, but some of them were poisonous. Though the island, from a distance, suggested the fertile South Seas paradise created by the genius of Gauguin, the empty, crumbling structures and rusting hardware left by the military from a time gone by gave a ghostly feel to the place.

  “This is my third trip,” Wheeler said. “First time was back in ’57.”

  They had stopped under the shade of a tree for relief from the broiling sun. Jennifer tried to fan herself with a palm frond, but the splintery leaves couldn’t capture and push much air. Buck was too uncomfortable to interact much with the others. Wheeler, utterly at home on Palmyra, seemed oblivious to the sultry, unyielding heat, although his tan cotton shirt, drenched with perspiration, stuck to his back like the wrapper of a melting Hershey bar.

  “I had a job with Scripps, the oceanography institute, during the international geophysical year,” Wheeler chattered on. “The wife and I spent fifteen months here. I was taking upper-air weather observations, monitoring the tide, stuff like that. We like it here. It kinda grows on you. There’s lots of exploring to do. The wife and I and the kids found an underground bunker once. Enough goodies to open a war surplus store.”

  “You sure know your way around,” Buck said, wiping sweat from his eyes. Jennifer sensed he might be trying to set the older man up. But for what?

  “Yeah.” Wheeler grinned widely. “Like I told you, I call myself the unofficial mayor of Palmyra. We know the Fullard-Leos, the owners. Say, how long you guys staying?”

  “Awhile,” Buck said cautiously. He looked exhausted, but he was on full alert.

  “Well—what did you say your name was?”

  “Roy Allen. And my wife is Jennifer.”

  “We were thinking of planting a garden,” Jennifer interjected. “Maybe live off the land for awhile.”

  Wheeler thought about that for a moment. “If you folks are planning to stay, you should write the owners for permission, seeing as how it’s private land and all. I’m here as their representative this trip. They want me to get the airstrip in shape so planes can land. I don’t know, though. All those birds are a real problem, if you ask me. But my son and I are doing what we can to clear the strip.”

  “I’ll give you a hand,” Buck said. He had decided how to play the hand fate had dealt them. Who knew? If he ingratiated himself with this officious “old bore,” as he would later refer to Wheeler, a situation might arise where he could use Wheeler’s help.

  Wheeler seemed to consider Buck’s hefty shoulders and taut muscular arms. “A couple more strong arms would be good,” he agreed. “We start around dawn and knock off before the hottest part of the day.”

  “Sounds like a good plan,” Buck said.

  Rested, they resumed the tour, but Wheeler soon stopped under a palm tree and rummaged around for something. “Here’s another good thing to know,” he intoned, still coming on strong. “See this here coconut? It’s the beginning of a new tree. Sends out a little sprout on the top when it’s ready to start growing.” He pointed out the burgeoning root. “At the same time, the insides of it change.” He slipped his machete from its sheath on his belt and hacked open the coconut’s husk by making parallel gashes, then stripped off the sections between. Then he cracked the inner nut with one blow, revealing a white pudding-like substance. “The milk on the inside turns solid. It’s called spoonmeat. It’s supposed to be the new tree’s food.” He cut the spongy stuff in two and gave the halves to Jennifer and Buck. “Go ahead,” he urged. “Try it.” The offer sounded more like a challenge than a gift.

  Jennifer compliantly bit into her piece and was rewarded with a pleasantly cool sweetness. “Oh, yes. That’s delicious,” she said, inwardly laughing at the charge this old-timer beachcomber so obviously got from disclosing the lore of life on a tropical island.

  Buck just grunted.

  Wheeler beamed. “And it can be fried or baked. Comes out tasting somewhere in between squash and yams. I’m going to leave the rest of the coconut here. We’ll come back in a few minutes and check on it.” He made this announcement with an odd expression.

  Once again, they moved on and Wheeler continued to lecture enthusiastically. He demonstrated how to cut out the heart of a palm tree by slicing the trunk in two right below the lowest fronds. He praised it as great for salad, as if this were not generally known.

  “The owners don’t like us to cut mature trees down,” he explained. “So we look for the small ones coming up that are two or three feet high. I wouldn’t even call them trees yet. It’s okay to thin them out. Most of them wouldn’t grow up anyway because they’re so close together.

  “Now, if you want to do some exploring by yourselves later on, there’s a barracks out yonder,” he said, stopping to point to a section of jungle indistinguishable from the rest. “Still has odds and ends of furniture and stuff. And there’s a path through the trees that takes you out on the island’s north shore, where you’ll find more old buildings, concrete ammo dumps, gun-battery housings, and machinery all over the place left by the Navy. There’s a few drums of old gas, too. It works fine. You can help yourselves.”

  That got Buck’s attent
ion. “We can use it for a little generator we’ve got,” he said.

  “Hey, if you’ve got a portable generator, you’ll want to know about the ice cream parlor. It’s back this way.” Wheeler once again forged ahead, explaining en route exactly how they could make “ice cream” from coconuts.

  Soon they spied a flat-roofed concrete bunker nestled in the undergrowth. Next to one outside wall sat an outmoded refrigerator with an extension cord snaking inside the building through a barred window. Inside the small freezer section of the refrigerator was a container of coconut ice cream. “The wife just made it this morning,” Wheeler explained. “Have a taste.”

  Jennifer dipped a finger into the frosty, rich mixture and licked it clean. It sure wasn’t Baskin Robbins, but it was good.

  Buck declined. He was tiring of this road show.

  “Not sure what the Navy used this building for,” Wheeler spouted on, “but I keep my generator inside. Feel free to use the fridge. Cools your beer, keeps your ice cream and fish, even makes ice cubes. Guess you’ll inherit the fridge when we leave. You can hook up your own generator to it and be in business. Now,” he paused dramatically, “let me show you the bathtub.”

  “Bathtub?” Jennifer practically screeched.

  “A freshwater bath at that,” Wheeler said triumphantly. “The military left behind a big tank that collects rainwater. The water is no good for drinking ’cause of all the algae that’s growing inside the tank. But it sure feels good.”

  “A real bath sounds like heaven,” she said.

  On their way to the bathtub, they passed by the tree under which Wheeler had left the coconut shell, and Jennifer was flabbergasted. In the short period of time they’d been gone, the shell had filled completely with small crabs fighting with comic ferocity over the remnants of the coconut meat.