AE on Norwich Island Part 13

Amelia Earhart on Norwich Island

Part 13

July 17, 1937

How many days had passed since the planes?  She couldn’t remember.  They had passed, somehow, as she sat on the platform, scanning the horizon.  Communing from time to time with Dr. Karla, who had little to say but didn’t criticize. At night sometimes dancing with herself on the glowing sand. Finding no answers to her questions. During the long, hot days wandering the shore, looking with diminishing interest at the trees, the bushes, the coral, the fish, crabs and birds, the unfailingly blue sky and puffy white clouds.  The unfailingly empty sea.

“Amelia, you have got to get hold of yourself.”  

How many days had it been?  She looked at the fish bones and egg shells scattered around her on the platform’s surface – most of them carried off by crabs, but still…. Yes, it had been – well, several days. 

And nights, with those strange dreams.  Sometimes her family and friends, occasionally Fred, though thankfully never again in his post-crab condition – that she could recall. Sometimes people, or creatures, she didn’t recognize.  Sometimes coming to save her, sometimes chasing her through the trees, along the beach, intent on doing her some obscure harm.  Sometimes just looking at her, filtering away to nothingness when she tried to speak to them.  No dreams of home, that she could recall, or dreams of flying; those would have been comforting.  Her dreams were not comforting.

She had tried psychic projection – she remembered that.  She had found a comfortable spot, in the shade, tried to relax, concentrate on parts of her body, then on the whole body, then tried to help her mind get out to travel, to connect with other people, places – especially with Jackie Cochrane.  But things kept distracting her.  Maybe she had gotten out, maybe not.  And at night she just fell asleep, and the dreams came.

The boobies she was willing to catch and eat – at a bit of distance from her platform and therefore, she told herself, not Doctor Karla – were getting shy, and the crabs were getting bolder.  Her attempts at projection, if carried out anyplace but in her hammock, were regularly interrupted by the nip of claws.  She was safe enough in the hammock, but the crabs were always there when she got up to pee.  She threw them or kicked them off the platform, as far as she could, but they always came back.  When she had the energy she crushed them with rocks, but there were always more, always more.

And there wasn’t much firewood left; the driftwood pile was depleted and she had to walk quite a way to gather enough for even a pitiful little fire.  And on top of everything else, her zippered slacks were coming apart.  Her specially designed Elsa Schiaparelli style slacks.

It was time to move again.  Somewhere. 

Another blazing, glowing sunset, streaks of orange, green, yellow across the horizon, behind dark, somber cloud banks.  No lights, no ships, no sign of humanity. 

“No humanity at all,” the giant crab said. 

Mottled dark-purple in color, he was a good eighteen inches across the carapace, with claws reaching out another foot or more on each side.  She looked away, then back at him.  He was still there.

“Tsk-tsk, just you and me.”

“Go away!”  She threw a lump of coral at him; it was shaped like a hand.  He ducked backward, came forward again.

“How long do you think you can keep throwing things?”

“Long enough.  Or I can pick up a bigger rock and squash you into chowder.”

“You might be surprised.”

“Why are you talking to me?”

“Why not?  You have anything better to do?”

“Crabs don’t ….  Oh, why don’t you go chase a rat?”

“Lots more meat on you, though there’s less every day.”

“You’re not going to eat me.”

“Want to bet?”

“I didn’t see you at…..”

“The Fred-feast?  Just missed me, Sweetheart.  I was early on the scene.  Opened his guts for my little hermit pals and helped myself to a couple of choice parts.  I like to take ‘em away and eat in peace.”

“God, I’m going nuts!”

“You were nuts to come here.”

“I didn’t mean to come here; it was an accident.”

“An accident, huh?”

“Of course!  Do you think….”

“Think you just accidentally never bothered to learn Morse code?”

“I know Morse!”

“Sure you do.  ‘Dit…er, um, let’s see now, dot, and then, hum, dit-dit….”

“OK, I’m slow.”

“You can say that again, Meelie.  And you just accidentally didn’t get squared away with Itasca about your transmission times and frequencies?”

“I did!  I told them…”

“Different things, and never made sure they had it all straight.  Never thought through the half-hour time zones.”

“Shut up!  You’re just a crab!”

“A crab who’s going to get fat eating you, lady.  Just you wait and see.”

She scrambled to her feet, found a big rock.  She could hardly lift it but she did, raised it over her head and brought it smashing down on the crab’s carapace.  It let out a sort of squeak as its shell cracked and intestines squirted out over the rubble.

“There.  And now I’ll eat you, when you stop twitching.  There’s got to be lots of meat in those claws.”

His voice came calmly from under the rock.  “There is, but you lack drawn butter.”

July 18^th, 1937

She couldn’t get settled in her hammock, and finally gave it up, walked away the night.  Up the beach to Fred’s grave, sat on the beach watching the stars, dozed awhile. Woke when the first crabs found her, walked the other way, a hundred yards beyond Platform Camp.  Dozed again, repeated the sequence.  Fitful, fretful, fearful sleep, and walk, walk, walk.  Thinking.

“Why did he…?” No, that one was beyond solution.

“The planes…” No, she had thought that one to death.

“Should I have been clearer with the Coast Guard…?” Maybe, but what point was there in worrying over that now?

Likewise with “why didn’t we get more rest in Lae,” and “why, oh why didn’t I pay more attention to Paul?”

“What are GP and Gene doing?” Everything in their power, surely, and she couldn’t help them.

Who owned Norwich Island?  That at least was a fresh question. Someone must.  The British?  Yes, probably the British.  Not the Japanese – they’re to the north.  Not the Dutch, not the French. 

“So, do the Brits patrol their islands?”

To make sure nobody’s stealing their crabs?  Still, the British were sticklers for keeping things under control.  Maybe they sent a ship around every….

“Every few years?  Whoopee!”

Perhaps an hour of sleep, a crab pinch.  Up again, walking again.  No moon, a million stars overhead, in a calm black sky.  The Milky Way arching across, silent but somehow seeming to shout, call to her.

Was the crab right?  Had she intended to put herself here?  Arranged it through calculated carelessness? Had Jackie been right? Had she just found an agonizingly elaborate way to commit suicide?

Or had someone else brought her here?  Some malign force?

“Bushwa, Amelia!  Luck of the draw.  Get on with it!”

So, where to move?

“Should stay close to the ship.  That’s the landmark.”

But if someone came, they’d surely search the island – at least circle it, blow their ship’s whistle.  That’s what she’d do, if she were the captain. 

Of course, if she’d been flying those search planes…..

A fluke.  They’d search, circle, make noise.  And then she could come down to the beach, if she wasn’t there already, and wave Fred’s shirt or something.

“And I can have a fire wherever I am, make smoke for them to see. And fire the rocket.”

She had two signal flares left, tucked in the rubberized bag with the pistol.

“If I don’t step in another damned hole.”

And she still had her sign: “At other end.”  She could leave that in her camp, or in the opening through the vegetation, in line with the Norwich’s bow.  And she could leave some other markers – the tool kit, for instance, clearly from the Electra.  She had no need for it now.  The canceled postal covers, wrapped in propeller covers to keep them dry, but easy for anyone finding them to unwrap and figure out.

No, there was no reason to be tied to the ship.  She could go anyplace.

“But what’s anyplace?” 

The ponds at the other end weren’t fresh, and….

“But you don’t know what else there might be.” 

A flowing spring…..

“The fountain of youth.” 

She smiled, a twisted smile.  “The cattle of Helios.  The….”

She furrowed her brow, sat down.  The Cyclops?  Were there dangerous creatures here?

“The crabs…..” 

Yes, the crabs, but anything else?  Poisonous snakes?  Orang-utans?  Crocodiles?  She slept again, got pinched again, walked again…..

In the cool of the early dawn, after breakfasting on grilled crab meat (Yes, drawn butter would have been nice, but the claw meat was sweet) she began gathering her gear.  Her mind was made up.  She had barely looked at the other side of the passage; who knew what might be there? 

And what about the lagoon? She hadn’t looked at it, at all.

“Decisions, decisions.”

This crab was a bit lighter colored than the one she’d just eaten, but just as big or bigger.

“Oh for heaven’s sake! Another one?”

“The more, the merrier, sweet chops. Or not. Maybe it’s just me. Anyway, just lie down and relax, and you’ll see how many of us there are.” 

“No doubt.” She advanced to kick him; he scuttled sideways up the slope into a low bush. She decided to ignore him. He couldn’t really be talking.

“I can’t really be talking.”

“Shut up.”

“Shut what?”

“I…”

“You think I have a tongue and vocal chords and tasty stuff like that?”

“You’re not real!”

“Are you?”

“Damn!”

She flung herself down the scree slope and away. Down to the shore of the passage and along its beach to the east, toward the lagoon shore. Walking calmed her, helped her focus.

“Hallucinating...”

She was obviously hallucinating the crab, but why?

“Fred…”

Well, of course. She had witnessed what the crabs had done to Fred; it was only natural to imagine…

“But talking? Making bad jokes?”

Tasteless humor. She smiled tightly.

“But the first one was tasty enough.”

Was there a first one and a second one? Or was it all one? One meta–crab, expressed in myriad individuals? She tried to recapture something of college lectures on psychology. Was it – yes, of course it was Karl Jung; thank you, Dr. Karla. Was she tapping into some sort of … archetype?

“There’s a scary thought. But even an archetypical crab wouldn’t talk.”

Stop thinking about it. Stop thinking, period. Remember the Buddhists in Rangoon – walking meditators.

She walked, trying to clear her mind of thought, just experience what was happening around her, within her. Looked at the sky, the water, the trees and circling birds without judgment or criticism, without plan. Tried to calm her breathing, walk steadily.

The lagoon was opening in front of her. Turquoise water rippled by the wind, reflecting the piles of cumulus overhead, criss-crossed by the fin-wakes of small sharks. Unlike the ocean beaches she had walked on both sides of the island, the beach here along the shore of the passage was relatively flat and almost sandy, with a low, steep rubble embankment along its inland edge, about shoulder height. It wasn’t crowned with the usual brush and small trees; instead there was a continual fringe of low gray-green plants, over which a few boobies peered at her like spectators in a stadium’s bleachers.

“Well, that’s different.”

Setting meditation aside, she turned and scrambled up the embankment.

“My… gosh!’

Behind the embankment was an open field, at least a couple of acres in extent, almost entirely covered in the low-growing gray-green plants, and studded with boobies sitting – presumably – on eggs. She grinned.

“The Elysian Fields. The peaceable kingdom.”

The boobies nearest to her turned to look, but otherwise evinced no interest or alarm. What about the plants? They looked familiar, but from where? Was it Marblehead?

“Purseley. No, purslane. Grew in the dunes. Weed but people said it was good to eat...”

The plants had small fleshy leaves. She tentatively plucked one – making sure it wasn’t white-crusted with boobie poop – and tasted it. Crunchy, fresh, moist, salty.

“Ummm!”

She started to pick more, then stopped. What if it was poisonous?

“It wasn’t in Massachusetts.”

“But we aren’t in Massachusetts, are we?”

She whirled, just in time to see a crab scuttle away over the embankment. Was he…?

“He was NOT chuckling!”

Indeed, he was not even here. She shook her head, returned to considering the purslane – if that was what it was.

“OK, so I’ll eat just a few leaves and see if it does anything bad to me. If not, I have salads for … to share with the crew when Itasca gets here. They probably need fresh green vegetables.”

Very deliberately chewing five leaves, she walked on across the field, which finally ended at the lagoon shore. To her left stretched the long inland sand flat on which she had elected not to land. A step or two onto it convinced her that her decision had been the right one, as her foot broke through the surface crust and went into wet sand up to her knee. She pulled it out and backed up onto the relative stability of the purslane field.

“Would’ve nosed over without even a roll. Like landing on cold porridge”

To her right, and in front of her, was the lagoon itself. Placid but for small wind-driven ripples and the V-shapes of shark wakes. Shadowy places that she knew marked barely-submerged coral heads. She shook her head.

“Really had no choice…”

She sat for awhile contemplating the white birds circling in the sunlight over the silent, bright green trees across the lagoon.  The surf boomed on the windward shore, invisible beyond the trees. 

Invisible but far from inaudible. Omnipresent, like the heartbeat of the island or the sea itself.

The lagoon beach might be a pleasant place to camp.  She shook her head. 

“Need to watch for ships.” 

They’d be invisible from the lagoon beach.  The thought of being missed again made her shudder.

But her stomach felt fine; the plants might or might not be purslane, might or might not be nutritious, but at least were apparently not going to poison her. She rose, munched another handful of leaves, and hiked back to camp to begin loading her gear.

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Notes

“She had tried psychic projection…” There are multiple stories about Earhart’s interest in psychic matters, many of them presented in Susan Wels’ Amelia Earhart: The Thrill of It; see also Sound of Wings pp. 237-8, and http://www.ameliaearhartbook.net/amelia-earhart-media/blog2/amelias-psychic-adventures-with-mae-west/ for an example.

“Her specially designed Elsa Schiaparelli style slacks.” AE designed much of her working wardrobe, and briefly undertook fashion design line of her own (See for instance Sound of Wings p. 203, East to the Dawn p. 299, and http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mary-hall/amelia-earharts-fashion-l_b_341283.html). She was acquainted with the famous fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli, with whom she shared ideas about functional design. See https://www.thehenryford.org/explore/blog/amelia-earhart. Both Schiaparelli’s and AE’s designs featured the use of zippers.

“Never thought through the half-hour time zones.” There seems to have been confusion between AE and Itasca about transmission times, perhaps linked to the use of half-hour time zones; see https://tighar.org/Projects/Earhart/Archives/Research/ResearchPapers/Worldflight/finalflight3.html.

“Had Jackie been right?” “As Jackie (Cochran) recalled, ‘I told her she wasn’t going to see that damned island (Howland).’ She warned Amelia, ‘I wish you wouldn’t go off and commit suicide because that’s what you’re going to do.’” Turbulent Life, pp. 192-3

“Buddhists in Rangoon.” AE and Noonan were delayed by weather in Rangoon and visited its Golden Pagoda (Last Flight p. 118); it’s my speculation that she would have had some contact there if not elsewhere with Buddhist meditation practice, including walking meditation (See http://www.wildmind.org/walking/overview).

“The Elysian Fields” We TIGHARs walked across what we call “Booby Point” for decades and thought nothing of its low-growing plants. My daughter, botanist Rachel King, in 2015 identified the plant as nutritious Sea Purslane (Sesuvium portulacastrum), and introduced me to it; it really is delicious.