‘It’s the finest pearl I’ve ever seen,’ he said. ‘We never get them that big in these waters. Your professor has certainly proved how a Persian Gulf oyster can make itself at home in the Pacific! Hand me that cup of water.’
He dropped the pearl into the coconut shell full of water. It sank swiftly to the bottom. That shows its weight is excellent.’
‘Keep it for us,’ Hal said. T’m scared to death for fear I might drop it. It will be safe with you. You take care of it.’
‘Not on your life!’ exclaimed Omo. ‘It would keep me awake nights. I’m afraid you’re stuck with it.’
Hal reluctantly took the pearl, wrapped it in palm fibre to increase its bulk so that it would be less likely to be dropped unnoticed, and put it in the pocket of his dungarees. He felt as if it at once began burning a hole. Now he had something to be anxious about, day and night.
‘Well,’ he sighed, ‘we may as well get back to work. The professor will want more than one specimen to judge by.’
Before the day ended two more pearls had been wrapped in with the first. The second was a shade smaller, the third a bit larger. Together they represented what Omo called ‘a comfortable fortune’.
‘Uncomfortable. I’d say!’ snorted Hal. ‘I know I wont be comfortable until I deliver these dratted things to Professor Richard Stuyvesant!’
And in a troubled sleep he dreamed that the raft upset, and sank deep into the ocean, and a shark pulled off his dungarees. Then he saw that the shark was really Kaggs with an evil grin on his face and three pearls in his hand.
He woke in a sweat and clutched his pocket. The precious package was still there.
Chapter 19
The raft
The raft was built on a sand beach sloping down towards the lagoon.
Impulsive Roger began to haul logs at once. But cautious Hal, with his habit of looking ahead, foresaw that the raft when built would be too heavy for two boys to carry to the water’s edge.
He placed one log near the shore and parallel to it, and another a little farther back. These were not to be part of the raft but would serve as rollers. The raft would be built on top of them and, when finished, could be easily rolled into the lagoon.
Seven logs fifteen to twenty feet long were laid side by side upon the rollers. The longest ones were placed in the middle to make a sort of bow. Logs that were too long had to be reduced to the right length. It could not have been done without the help of the beak-bladed axe.
The seven logs were lashed together with squid-hide straps.
The boys stood back and inspected their work.
‘It begins to look shipshape,’ Hal said. ‘But we ought to have a cabin to protect us from the sun. And we should have a sail.’
Roger laughed mirthlessly and looked about him at the coral rocks. ‘Not much material for either one,’ he remarked. ‘But wait a minute. How about that roof?’ He was looking at the hut. ‘We could get a cabin roof out of that.’
‘And a sail too!’ exclaimed Hal. Then his face fell. ‘But what do we do for a mast? A palm log would be too big.’
The answer to this problem meant more hard work. With stone wedges hammered into a log by means of coral blocks, they split the log in two. After splitting again, and once again, they had a stake about eighteen feet long and four inches through. With their knives they shaped it until it was nearly round.
It was rough and crooked and would have brought shame to any shipyard, but the boys were proud of it.
They whittled and hacked until they had made a hole in the raft near the bow, and in this hole they stepped their mast.
The cabin and sails must wait until they had no more need for their hut.
The building of the raft took the best part of three days. More days were consumed in gathering supplies for the voyage.
The most important supply was water. They must get it at once or there would be none to be had, for the undersea spring was Sailing steadily. Several times a day they had been diving for water, bringing up each time a coconut shell full. And every time the stream was weaker and the water more brackish.
Hal consulted Omo.
‘How are we going to carry water on the raft? One shell-full would be no use, and we can’t find any more coconuts.’ Omo knit his brows. ‘That’s a hard one. On our island we had goats and we could make a water bag out of goatskin. Perhaps if a dolphin stumbled into your trap you could use its skin.’
‘But we can’t wait for perhapses. We’ve got to store some water now before it stops flowing.’
Omo returned to his whittling. He was skilful with a knife and had already made himself a pair of crutches out of coconut wood. Now, from thin slabs of wood that the others had split from a coconut log, he was fashioning paddles for use on the raft. He looked at the half-shaped paddle before him.
‘We do almost everything with coconut. It feeds, shelters, and clothes us. I suppose you could even make a water cask out of a section of it, but it would be hard. You would have to hollow it out…’
‘Hold on!’ cried Hal. ‘How about using something that is already hollowed out?’
Omo looked at him with a puzzled air.
‘On the other island,’ went on Hal, ‘we found a clump of bamboo. Of course it had been blown down by the storm, but—’
‘Just the thing! Cut it into lengths about six feet long.’
But when this had been done there was a new difficulty.
Three bamboo logs were cut, each about five inches in diameter. They were hollow - bin; not quite!
At every joint the hollow chamber was closed by a stout partition.
How could these be broken down? Only the first one could be reached with the knife.
A swordfish came to the rescue. It had been caught in the trap two days before, and its excellent meat had provided many fine meals.
It was Roger who thought of calling upon the swordfish for help in the present emergency. He slipped away to the shore near the trap where the skeleton lay.
Dropping upon it a huge block of coral almost as heavy as himself, he broke off the sword. It was three feet long and came to a hard sharp point. He increased its length by lashing it to a stick.
Now he had a formidable spear. He knew that this spear would break much more than a bamboo partition. The swordfish has been known to ram its sword through the stout hulls of boats. One in Palau lagoon pierced not only the hull of a motor-boat but the metal petrol tank, letting out the petrol and setting the boat adrift.
Hal was delighted with his brother’s ingenuity. Both gripping the spear, they rammed it down into one of the bamboo tubes. They broke one partition after another until all were gone except the one that closed the bottom end of the tube.
When the three tubes had all been treated in this way they carried them to the shore just above the submarine spring. They took turns in diving with the coconut shell, bringing up water and emptying it into the tubes. It was an all-day job. When the tubes were full they corked them with plugs of coconut wood. They carried them to the raft, laid them in the dips between the logs, and lashed them in place. ‘Now whatever else happens, we won’t go thirsty,’ Hal rejoiced.
The bamboo clump yielded some very useful by-products. Bamboo shoots were growing up from the roots. They had evidently begun since the storm. Omo explained that this was not surprising - bamboo grows very rapidly, sometimes as much as a foot a day. The shoots added a much-needed vegetable to the diet of the castaways.
Also the bamboo gave them sugar! A sweet juice coming from the joints hardened into a white substance that Omo called Indian honey. It was almost like toffee and made a very pleasant dessert.
‘Imagine finding candy on a desert island!’ mumbled Roger, with his mouth full of the sweet gum.
The bamboo also gave them a cooking-pot. A single section of bamboo was used for this purpose. Water could be boiled in it without any fear of burning the pot.
Another bamboo trunk was prepared for the storage of food.
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They cut fish into strips and dried it in the sun. (How it smelled while drying!) It should be salted too, but they were at a loss to know how to get salt until Omo told them how it was done in the islands. Sea water placed in a hollowed rock was allowed to evaporate. When it was gone a thin film of salt was left. As for the oysters they had brought up from the cove of
pearls, they ate as many as they could, but had little luck in preserving them for future use. However, they packed a few untasty morsels of oyster into the bamboo tube along with the sun-dried salted fish.
Into the bamboo went also some dried seaweed of the sort considered good food by the Orientals. Roger was not enthusiastic about it.
‘Looks like spinach to me,’ he grumbled. ‘And tastes worse.’
A few birds had returned to the island, among them that comic creature known as a megapode. It flew as sluggishly as a cargo plane and waddled when it walked over the rocks. Evidently it had not learned to be afraid of human beings. It came running when Omo knocked two stones together. For some strange reason this sound had an irresistible attraction for the comedian.
Omo caught it easily and after it was dressed and cooked it was added to the store.
Sea urchins containing masses of eggs went into the tube. The eggs were edible but one had to be careful not to be stuck by the spines which, in this variety, carried a poison like a cobra’s.
One night Roger was awakened by scratching in the beach. He crawled out of the hut in time to see what looked like a round dark boulder crawling towards the water’s edge. It was a sea turtle, two hundred pounds of fine food. It had probably come ashore to lay its eggs in the sand, and that explained the scratching Roger had heard.
He could not allow it to escape into the lagoon. He ran after it and fell upon its back. It did not seem to mind and continued its march. Roger dug his feet into the sand, but was dragged loose.
He jumped off the back, seized the edge of the shell, and tried to turn the big fellow over. It was too much for him. He called for help.
Before Hal and Omo could get the sleep out of their eyes, the turtle had reached the lagoon and plunged in.
But Roger was not ready to quit. He swung himself on board the turtle’s back as on a horse. He knew how Polynesian boys ride turtles, though he had never tried it himself.
He gripped the front of the shell just back of the leathery neck. Then he threw his weight backwards and pulled up.
That prevented the turtle from diving. It was forced to swim on the surface.
But it kept straight on going out into the lagoon, headed for the pass and the ocean. Roger tried to remember what he should do next. Oh yes, he must get hold of one of those hind flippers.
He reached back with one hand and got the right hind flipper. He held it tightly so that it could not paddle.
With the other three flippers going and this one quiet, the turtle could not help going around to the right. Roger held on until headed back towards the beach, then let go. He could dimly see Hal and Omo on the beach. ‘I’m bringing home the bacon,’ he called to them. But the turtle had ideas of its own. It began to swing one way and then the other and Roger was kept busy seizing the right or the left hind flipper to keep his course straight for the beach. When he forgot to hold back on the front edge of the shell the creature promptly sounded and Roger was carried a fathom or so under water before he could collect his wits and bring his submarine back to the surface. Hal and Omo waded into the water and helped him get his mount ashore. The big turtle snapped its jaws together and nearly nipped a piece out of Hal’s leg. ‘We’ll soon stop that.’ said Hal, and took out his knife. The turtle raised its head menacingly. Its leathery skin and appearance of great age made it look like an angry old man.
‘Don’t murder grandpa!’ cried Roger. ‘I’ve a better idea. Let’s take him along with us on the raft - alive. Then we’ll have fresh food when we need it.’
‘Good idea,’ said Omo. He was digging in the sand with a stick. ‘But it’s grandma, not grandpa. Here are the eggs she was laying.’
In a pit a foot deep the turtle had buried more than a hundred eggs.
Roger was surprised, upon picking one up, to find that it was soft like a rubber ball. It did not have a brittle shell like a hen’s egg.
‘How do you eat it?’
‘You bite a hole in the skin, then squeeze the insides into your mouth. They’re good food. We’ll boil them and take them along.’
Grandma was tethered to a stump and the boys turned in. At dawn they were stirring.
They agreed that they had enough supplies. Today they would take off on their hazardous voyage.
They took down the sharkskin that had served them as a roof and cut it in two. It made two sections, each eight by ten feet. One would make the sail, the other the cabin.
A rough spar was lashed to the upper edge of the sail and it was then hoisted to the masthead by squid-leather halyards. To each of the lower corners of the sharkskin sail was attached a line by which it could be sheeted home.
The cabin was a simple affair. Three split bamboo canes were curved to form the framework, their ends fastened to the deck. Over them was laid the sharkskin with its two edges touching the deck and lashed fast to the logs.
The result was a shelter that looked something like half a barrel. It was precisely like the roof of a Chinese sampan except that it was made of sharkskin instead of matting.
‘It’s just like the toldo we had on our boat on the Amazon,’ Roger said.
It was, except that it was lower and snugger, which was a good thing in case of a Pacific storm. It was only three feet high and five feet wide. From front to back it measured eight feet. It was quite large enough to lie in and furnished protection from the tropical sun. Since the front and rear ends of it were open, the man at stem paddle could look straight through to the bow.
The turtle eggs were boiled and stored. Grandma was led on board and lashed to the mast.
Now that they were ready to go, they began to regret leaving the spot that had been home to them for two eventful weeks. They did not need to be told of the dangers of an ocean voyage on a raft.
They would be at the mercy of wind and wave. They would try to go south, but might just as easily be driven north, east, or west. Their paddles and crude sail would be of small consequence compared with the force of wind and current.
They tried to cover their fears by shouting and singing as they made preparations for casting off.
‘Let me christen her,’ cried Roger. Lacking a bottle of champagne, he smashed a turtle egg on the bow log and proclaimed, ‘I christen thee the good ship Hope!’
Then the three mariners rolled the craft into the lagoon and hopped aboard.
The momentum of the launching carried the raft across the bay of pearls. Hal and Omo studied its behaviour carefully. ‘It floats high and dry,’ Omo said. ‘And it holds its course well,’ Hal remarked. Thanks to the pointed bow, and the straightness and smoothness of the coconut logs, the vessel showed no tendency to yaw over to starboard or port. ‘How does she answer the helm?’ Omo at stern paddle put his weight on the blade and the vessel veered slowly to starboard. ‘It does pretty well for a raft.’
The wind was on the beam and Hal trimmed the great rectangle of sharkskin sail to take advantage of it. But to get through the pass it was necessary to go straight into the wind’s eye. Rather than trouble to lower the sail for the few moments necessary to make the passage, Roger sheeted it so that it was edge on into the wind.
Then the boys took to their paddles. It was a stiff job, but Hal had estimated correctly that the ebbing tide would help them escape from the lagoon in spite of the wind. After fifteen sweating minutes they were in the clear, and the home-made Hope rose and fell on the swells of the greatest of oceans.
Chapter 20
Disaster in the waterspout
The first two days of the voyage passed so smoothly that the mariners three almost forgot the anxiety with which they
had begun the trip.
The wind held from the northeast and they sailed steadily south. If this kept up, they should reach Ponape, or, failing that, they would at least get into the shipping lane that runs from the Marshall Islands to Kusaie, Ponape, Truk, and Yap. There they might hail some schooner that would pick them up.
By day the sun was their compass and by night the stars. They roughly divided the twenty-four hours into twelve watches so that no man had to stick at the steering paddle for more than two hours at a time. Although they had no chronometer, they could compute time with a fair degree of accuracy by the angle of the sun or a star above the horizon.
Water sloshing up through the cracks between the logs kept them a bit wet all the time, but the dampness was cool and pleasant. When one began to suffer from the blows of the equatorial sun he had only to crawl into the cabin and lie in the cool shade of the sharkskin roof.
The bamboo tubes of drinking water nestling between the logs were kept cool by the water that splashed up from beneath. Hal was a trifle worried because the food seemed to be disappearing rather fast, but he hoped they would be able to catch some fish.
Brilliantly coloured dolphins played alongside. They were usually bright blue and green and their fins were golden yellow. But they could change colour like a chameleon and sometimes they shone like burnished copper. One flopped on board and as it died it lost its colour and became silver grey with black spots.
On the third day a big whale investigated the Hope. It came straight for the raft, blowing and puffing each time its great head reared up out of the water. It seemed strange to hear heavy breathing in these fishy wastes where breathing was not the fashion - except for the boys on the raft; and they almost stopped breathing at the thought of what a sixty-foot monster could do to a few logs.
‘Just one flick of that tail,’ worried Roger, ‘and we’d be in the drink.’
The whale circled the raft twice. Then he dived and upended his tail twenty feet into the air, carrying with it a huge quantity of water that fell like a heavy shower upon the voyagers.
02 South Sea Adventure Page 13