The tail went down with a violent twist that sent a great wave of water across the raft from stem to stern, drenching its occupants.
‘Ring up the plumber!’ cried Roger, standing in water up Xo his knees.
But the raft had one great advantage over a boat. The water simply ran out through the floor.
The whale went under the raft and came up on the other side so close that another wave was rolled over the vessel. The beast’s shoulder crashed into the starboard logs and it seemed for a moment that the good ship Hope would be turning into kindling wood.
As if satisfied with the scare he had given these intruders in his domain, the whale sounded and was seen no more.
The outside log with its lashings torn loose was about to float away. The boys recovered it just in time and tied it fast.
During the morning the wind failed and the heavy sharkskin sail thudded idly against the mast. The swells lost their rough finish and seemed as smooth as oil. Without a breeze, the sun seemed ten times as hot.
Omo looked about. ‘I don’t like it,’ he said. ‘A sudden calm like this may mean trouble.’
But there was no cloud in the sky. The only thing visible was a dark column like a pillar far to the east. Presently, a few miles farther north, another appeared. ‘Waterspouts,’ Omo said. ‘There are more of them in this part of the Pacific than anywhere else in the world.’
‘Are they dangerous?’
‘Some are, some aren’t. Those two aren’t. They’re something like the dust whirls on land - you’ve seen them. They carry papers and leaves several hundred feet high. ‘Dust devils’, you call them. But —’ and he scanned the horizon anxiously, ‘those little fellows are often just a sign that a big one is coming. And a big one is like a tornado. In fact, that’s just what it is, a sea tornado.’ ‘But a land tornado can carry off houses!’ said Hal. ‘Exactly,’ replied Omo. ‘And I am afraid you are soon going to find out what a sea tornado can do.’ He was looking up at a point a little northeast of the zenith. The others followed his gaze.
A cloud formed before their eyes. It seemed to be about three thousand feet up. It became rapidly blacker and blacker and squirmed violently so that it looked like a living monster. A long tail dangled from it.
No wonder, thought Hal, that the Polynesians call it a sky beast and have many superstitions about it.
Greenish lights that one might imagine were eyes gleamed in the writhing blackness. ‘It can’t be as bad as the hurricane we had,’ Roger said. ‘It can be worse.’ Omo replied. ‘Of course it won’t last as long. And it isn’t as big. A hurricane can be six hundred miles across but these things are never more than two or three thousand feet. But it makes up in violence what it lacks in size. I’d choose a hurricane any day.’ Hal was itching to do something. ‘Can’t we get out of here? Do we just sit here and wait for it to grab us?’ He dug his paddle into the water.
‘You may as well save your strength,’ Omo said. ‘You can never tell which way the thing will go. We might paddle straight into it. The only thing we can do is to hold on and hope.’
The tail of the monster grew longer every moment. Now it looked like a long black tentacle groping towards the sea like the arm of an octopus.
The air had been breathlessly quiet, and still was around the raft. But from the cloud came a roaring or a rushing sound such as you hear when you paddle down a river towards a waterfall.
Now something was happening to the sea beneath that groping tentacle. The oily surface broke up into sharp ridges. Spurts of spray began to race round and round like elves in a wild dance.
The spinning became more intense. Now masses of water were joining the mad whirl, carried around by a screaming wind.
And yet there was not the breath of a breeze on the raft.
Hal knew that the land tornado acts in the same way. It may pick up one house and carry it away and not disturb another ten feet off. He had heard of a tornado that tore the roof from a house and yet did not budge a tin top resting on a churn outside the back door.
‘It may skip us,’ he said.
‘Perhaps,’ But Omo did not sound too hopeful.
‘Shall we take down the sail?’
‘If it wants the sail it will take it, no matter whether it is down or up.’
It was agonizing to know that you were completely at the mercy of the monster and there was not a thing you could do about it.
The spinning water had now become a great whirlpool. But instead of a hole in the centre of the whirlpool, there was a hill. There the sea was bulging upwards. It climbed higher and higher as if drawn from above. Now it rose to a conical point higher than the Hope’s masthead.
The whirling cone threw off spray and loose water that acted most strangely. Instead of falling to the sea it climbed into the sky, turning into a rapidly revolving ghost of mist.
The tentacle reached lower, the arm of the sea reached higher. They met and joined with a loud hiss.
Now it was truly something to see, that great spinning pillar three thousand feet high. At the top it spread out into the black cloud and at the bottom it spread again to take in the whirlpool. The whirlpool was a frightful thing to be hold, a crazy merry-go-round of wild horses racing to the shrill organ music of the wind. The swirling maelstrom covered more and more of the sea. Now the storm circle was two thousand feet across.
Within the circle the waves rose to points and crashed together as if determined to beat each other’s brains out.
‘Bet that wind is travelling two hundred miles an hour,’ shouted Hal. But the roar of wind and water was so great that he could not be heard.
The lofty column began to lean as if the upper end were being pushed. Hal breathed a sigh of relief as he saw that it was leaning away from the raft. Those upper winds were carrying the sky beast southwards and the Hope would escape its fury.
But the waterspout is a fickle giant and loves to tantalize its victims. The leaning tower changed direction, swayed one way and then another, writhed and twisted like a fabulous boa-constrictor hanging from a branch of heaven. A seagull drifting placidly through the quiet sunny air was suddenly snatched by the whirlwind and tossed upwards, spinning round and round, its wings beating helplessly, until it was swallowed by the sky beast above.
What made everything go up? Even at a moment of peril such as this, Hal’s scientific mind asked questions and figured out the answers.
The air rushed upwards to fill a low-pressure area above. It whirled, for the same reason that hurricanes whirl, for the same reason that ordinary winds are inclined to travel in circles, because of the rotation of the earth. The centrifugal force of this whirling made almost a vacuum inside the column and therefore the sea was sucked up. In a land tornado that vacuum around a house made the walls burst out because the air pressure was so much greater inside the house than outside. Corks pop out of bottles during a tornado for the same reason. And it suddenly occurred to him that if the storm caught the raft the plugs would pop out of the bamboo tubes and the water would be lost.
He had no .time to consider this problem, much less do anything to solve it. Suddenly a giant finger of wind slipped under the cabin roof and carried it up and away. The boys threw themselves flat on the deck and held on.
The sail went next. It spun away like a crazy thing around the great circle of the whirlwind, rose to a height of a hundred feet or more, and then was tossed out to fall in the sea.
Daylight faded. The air seemed full of water. Omo shouted something but his voice was inaudible. There was a deafening roar and Roger would have clapped his palms over his ears if he had not needed both hands to hold himself to the logs.
Now the raft was caught in the frantic circle. The waves stood up in spear points, then crashed their tons of water down upon the raft and its passengers. At times the Hope was completely buried. Then it would leap up into the air through a smother of foam. The boys held on as if to the backs of bucking broncos.
Grandma was the first to
go. A wave flicked her off and broke her leash. She was tossed a dozen yards, whirling like top, before she disappeared into the flank of another wave.
Hal could look into the side of the wave as into a store window. He saw grandma turn tail up and swim straight down to the depths where all would be calm and peaceful.
You could do worse than copy a wise old turtle. He resolved to do the same thing if the raft broke up.
The hill of water at the heart of the waterspout crept now closer, now farther away, keeping the sailors trembling between hope and despair.
The boys could not look steadily at anything. Their eyes were beaten shut by the wind.
With so much air flying past them, still it was difficult to get enough to breathe. You dared not face the wind - it would ram its way down your nose and throat and fill you like a balloon. If you turned your head away you were in a vacuum where there was no air to be had. You must bury your face between the logs, or protect your nose and mouth with your hand, in order to slow up the air long enough to get some of it into the lungs.
And just when you had found a way to do it, you would be buried under tons of water. Sometimes it seemed that you would never come up.
As the raft rose to the surface after one of these plunges, Hal saw that the whirling hill was bearing down upon them. It looked like a moving volcano, the black column rising from it resembling smoke. The entire column was leaning now, with its top passing over the raft. Hal thought it was-like a tree - but ten times as high as the loftiest giant sequoia in California.
As the spinning hill approached, the wind changed its tactics. Instead of blowing sideways, it blew up. Now they were coming into the heart of the updraught.
On land, it was strong enough to carry up roofs and heavy timbers. Would it lift the raft, crew and all, and carry them high into the sky like Arabian Nights’ passengers on a magic carpet?
More likely it would break up the raft and beat them to death with the thrashing logs. That was why they should swim down. Hal put his mouth close to Roger’s ear. ‘Swim down!’ he shouted.
The updraught was already tugging at their bodies. What was left of their palm-cloth shirts was now ripped loose and carried up the black pipe as through a pneumatic tube in a department store until it reached the cloud above.
If the hill would only stop coming, the centrifugal force might throw the raft away from it. Hal tried to believe that this would happen. If faith could move mountains, perhaps faith could stop a mountain from moving.
But the gods of the winds far above were deciding where the hill should go. They took a malicious delight in carrying it down upon the raft.
Suddenly the forlorn Hope faced a solid wall of green water. High up in this glassy wall, far above the raft, Hal was horrified to see a large shark. There it was like a stuffed specimen in a glass case.
He had only a glimpse of it before the raft upended on the flank of the hill and the tumultuous waters writhing under the suck of the tornado wrenched the logs apart as if they had been matches tied with fine thread.
A moment more and those tossing logs might brain them. Hal knew that Omo would know what to do - but he clung to his log until he was sure of Roger. When he saw that both boys had dived straight down, he did the same.
It was not easy to swim down for the water was running uphill, twisting and tossing him, pushing him back where the sky beast might suck him up through its trunk as a butterfly sucks a drop of honey from a flower.
He put all his power into his stroke. Now the pressure upwards was less and he could begin to swim out.
He stayed beneath the surface turmoil. It did not matter what direction he took so long as he swam straight. Any direction would take him to the edge of the circle.
The eternal quiet below was very soothing. After the frenzied tumult above he could almost rest as he swam. He was conscious of some current even at a depth of a couple of fathoms but he knew that this current was centrifugal and would help carry him out. This whirlpool, unlike most, whirled out instead of in.
When his wind was spent he surfaced, only to find himself still within the whirl. He submerged and swam on. When he came up again he found himself among small choppy waves beyond the reach of the tornado.
The column was leaning more than ever and the entire spout was travelling towards the southwest. The circle of clashing waves, with the Tower of Babel in the centre, slid away across the sea and the scream of the winds diminished.
The air around Hal was now as quiet as it had been before the sky monster’s arrival. The clashing waves gradually settled down.
It was not until then that Hal thought of the shark. He wondered if it also had been terrified by the commotion. Now that the commotion was over, would it begin to take an interest in him and his companions?
He saw a brown head break surface a hundred feet away.
‘Hi there, Omo!’ he called. ‘How’s tricks?’
‘Glad you’re okay, Hal,’ shouted Omo. ‘Have you seen Roger?’
‘No. Suppose you circle around one way and I’ll go the other.’
They swam in opposite directions around the recently troubled area. Hal wondered how the younger boy had stood the experience. Would the kid be so scared stiff that he couldn’t swim? Had he lost his head, come to the surface, and been bashed to death by flying logs?
He did not need to worry. When he found Roger, the boy was not only safe, but busy. He had discovered two logs and had towed one alongside the other. Now he was trying to lash them together with the broken pieces of squidskin strap that hung from the logs.
‘Good work!’ shouted Hal. ‘I’ll see if I can find some more logs.’
Omo Joined the search. They swam back and forth across the circle where the raft had broken up and as far out into the sea in all directions as they dared, but found no more logs. They must be somewhere, but lay so low that it was difficult to spot them from any distance.
There was a blast of thunder. Lightning blazed in the black cloud that topped the waterspout. Thunder rolled again.
Then the great squirming hose that connected sky and sea broke in the middle. The lower part collapsed, causing gigantic waves. The higher portion coiled up into the cloud. Bombs seemed to be exploding in the cloud. Then a heavy rain fell from it. The upper winds quickened and the thundercloud, with the rainstorm that hung from it like a trailing dress, travelled swiftly towards the horizon.
The sky monster was gone, but it left three badly discouraged boys behind it. Hal and Omo searched in vain for more fragments of the lost Hope.
Wearily, they returned to the two logs. They crawled aboard and lay down. Three men were too much for the slender raft and it began to sink.
Roger slid off into the water and held on by one hand. The raft rose until the top was about level with the surface. Every wave rolled over it and over the bodies that lay upon it
The bamboo tubes of food and water were gone. The mariners were without sail or paddles, without shelter, without even palm-cloth shirts and eye-masks to protect them from the whipping sun, without enough of a craft to support all three of them at one time, without weapons except their knives in case of attack from below. Roger, submerged up to his neck, kept glancing furtively about, expecting the dorsal fin of a shark to break surface at any moment.
‘I don’t know about you guys,’ he said, ‘but I’m a-feelin’ mighty low!’
Omo, whose face had been twisted with pain by too vigorous use of his lame leg, raised his head and smiled.
‘I’m rested now,’ he said. ‘Let’s change.’
He slipped into the water and Roger took his place on the logs.
‘It’s not so bad,’ Omo said softly. ‘We’re all alive. We’ve got two logs, three pairs of dungarees, and three knives. And we still have some pearls to deliver - or have we?’
Hal clapped his hand to his pocket. ‘We have!’
‘Good. So we’d better set about delivering them.’
He slipped around to the en
d of the logs and began to swim, pushing the raft before him. He headed it south. Slowly it ploughed through the ripples.
Perhaps it didn’t help much, but it was a lot better than doing nothing. Hal’s heart was filled with deep affection for his Polynesian friend. So long as there was such courage and patience aboard, the Hope was not lost after all.
Chapter 21
The wreck of the ‘Hope’
They took turns overboard. After lying on the hard logs for an hour or so with the waves breaking in your face, it was a relief to swim and push for a while and get the kinks out of your muscles.
And after swimming a while it was a relief to climb aboard and stretch out.
But as time went on each relief grew less and there was nothing but continual discomfort.
Night was especially hard to bear. It was impossible to sleep. You must be continually awake and alert, ready to hold your breath when a wave swept over. You no sooner dozed than you awoke half-strangled by water pouring into nose and mouth.
Dozens of strange and somewhat terrifying creatures came up to investigate this floating thing. The boys had never seen the ocean so full of life.
It is always full of life but the passenger on a schooner or steamer sees little of it. A few dolphins and flying-fish may come near, but most denizens of the deep are afraid to approach the monstrous moving thing with smoke billowing from its funnels or sails beating the sky.
Even seven logs with cabin and sail are much more frightening than two logs, mostly submerged. This little floating affair might be just a strange fish, and the other fish came to call.
The depths below were full of travelling lights like a city at night seen from the sky. Roger looked down over the edge of the raft.
‘There goes a lantern fish. And there’s a star-eater. Gosh, what’s that?’
Two enormous eyes were lazily following the raft. They were more than a foot wide and they shone with a yellow-green light.
‘That’s your old friend, the giant squid.’ Hal said.
02 South Sea Adventure Page 14