02 South Sea Adventure (16 page)

Hal laid hold of the line and drew the bag to the surface. Before he took it out of the water he placed his arms beneath it lest the weight of the shell might break the palm cloth. He emptied the bag on the beach. Fifteen huge shells looking like so many black turtles lay before them.

They could not wait to see what they contained. They opened them one after another and explored for pearls.

There were none.

Roger gazed into the depths of the cove with dismay.

‘Don’t tell me we have to go through that again!’

‘Many times, I’m afraid. Now it’s my turn.’

‘Wear the gloves,’ Roger advised him, looking at his own red hand. ‘It will save you some blood.’

Hal put on the gloves, provided himself with a rock and the bag, and went down. He spent no time trying to bring his feet under him but let them float upward like sea fans while he hastily filled the bag.

Then he came up, trying to make the ascent as slow as possible. But when Roger had helped him out he lay on the shelf of rock completely exhausted, with drops of blood trickling from his ears, nose, and mouth. His chest rose and fell like a bellows as he breathed in great gulps of the good air. ‘I’m afraid I’m no - amphibian,’ he panted. Roger hauled up the bag and they eagerly opened the shells.

They worked alternately, Roger opening the first shell, Hal the second, and so on. Twelve shells were opened without result. The next one fell to Roger.

‘Thirteen!’ he grumbled. ‘There can’t be any good luck in that one!’

He thrust his knife into the muscle, twisted it, and the lips of the shell eased apart. He ran his finger along the inside rim of the lower lip.

He stopped halfway. He looked up at Hal and his eyes became round and his mouth dropped open. He began to breathe fast. ‘Golly, I believe this is it!’

His ringers closed upon it. He brought it out. For a moment neither could speak. They sat stunned, gazing at it.

Then Hal whispered, ‘Holy Moses! It’s as big as a barn!’

It was not as big as a barn, but it was as big as a marble.

It was the largest pearl the boys had ever laid eyes upon. It was a perfect sphere. Held in one position it seemed white, in another its opalescent depths reflected all the colours of lagoon and sky. It seemed alive.

Roger dropped it in Hal’s hand. Hal was surprised to find it so heavy. That meant it was a good pearl. He turned it slowly in his fingers. It did not have a single flaw or blemish. It was so unreal, so full of a mysterious light, that it seemed to be part of the sunshine or of the atmosphere.

When he cupped his other hand over it to shade it from the sun, it still glowed, but now like a moon.

Roger, a dazed expression on his face, murmured, ‘Boy! Wait till the prof sees that!’

‘I think he’ll decide that his experiment has been a success!’

‘A success, and how! But it’s a long way from here to the professor. Suppose we lose it. Or have it stolen. That Kaggs will be watching for us when we get back to Ponape - if we ever get there.’

‘Quit worrying!’ laughed Hal. But it was plain he also felt the great responsibility that had been suddenly thrust upon them. ‘That’s the trouble with treasure,’ he said. ‘Once you get it, you have to start worrying about keeping it. Let’s show it to Omo.’

Inside the dark cave the pearl still gleamed as if it had a fire of its own. Hal held it before Omo’s eyes. Omo whistled softly.

‘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.

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.

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.