Amelia Earhart on Norwich Island
Part 14
July 22nd 1937
July 20?
I am not sure of the date. There
has been much to do, and I have failed to write and keep track.
I am still on Norwich Island, but have
moved down the beach and along the channel that leads from the sea to the
beautiful but shark-filled lagoon. A week or so ago three USN biplanes flew
over, almost certainly looking for me, but I was away from my camp and they
failed to see me. My attempts to attract
attention with my flare pistol failed. They flew away to the east, and I
thought they would lead their ship – for certainly they were from a ship – back
to me, but in this, so far, I have been disappointed. Hope springs eternal, however. Since that day I have scraped distress signs
into the beach wherever I have gone, or arranged driftwood or sticks to form
them, just in case airplanes return, and I am vigilant in my lookout for ships.
It became impossible to stay at my camp
near the shipwreck – no firewood left nearby, the boobies that together with
fish and hog apple have become my regular diet getting shy – so I moved a short
distance south to what appeared to be an ancient temple platform, long
abandoned. I hoped to find water there,
but I searched to no avail, and soon enough began to run low on firewood again. A further walk along the beach brought me to Purslane Camp,
or Booby Camp; I can’t quite decide what to call it. Immediately to the east of
the trees where I’ve strung my hammock, a small prairie of what I take to be
purslane has provided a fine supply of salads, together with booby eggs from
numerous nests. I’ve found that boobies, like chickens, will simply lay another
egg if one is taken, so by keeping track of which nests I’ve robbed, when, I’m
able to guarantee a supply of fresh eggs without risking a foetal encounter –
though I did experience a couple, initially, and felt very sad. There are ample
fish a few minutes’ walk to the west, on the reef flat, where a couple of
wadded-up pieces of windowscreen stuffed in outflow channels allow me to trap
them in a convenient tide pool.
Beyond the reef at the mouth of the channel, the
birds were circling and diving on something. Probably a school of fish.
And I have a pretty good view out to sea – if
only there were something there to see!!
Yesterday I walked around the head of the lagoon
to see if there was anything useful to be found. There wasn’t, and I was
distant from camp, with the swampy sandbar separating me from it, when clouds
suddenly gathered and it began to rain! I raced for camp, intending to set out
whatever containers I could to catch the falling drops, but didn’t make it; the
rain stopped even more abruptly than it had begun, while I was still stumbling
through the mucky sand. From which, or rather from more or less concealed
burrows in which, scores – hundreds, maybe thousands of crabs appeared. Not the
big, sometimes talking kind, or the smaller hermits, but plain beach crabs.
They emerged and stood stock-still with their pincers in the air, for all the
world looking like they were worshiping the rain god, but perhaps just escaping
being drowned in their burrows.
Making the most of my own missed opportunity,
when I reached camp I set out the dutch oven under a dripping branch, and
myself under another with mouth wide open, thus slaking my thirst and
collecting a couple of cups of precious fluid. Next time – if there is a next
time, if there NEEDS to be a next time – I will be better prepared, and watch
the clouds more carefully.
But I cannot stay here much longer. Once again
firewood is running low in the neighborhood, and the birds are becoming wary.
And truth to tell, the purslane is getting a bit thin.
The pencil dropped
from her hand and she slept. Awakened with a decision. It was time to relocate,
cross the passage and see what the other side had to offer.
Her uprooted bush was
still on the shore; a booby – was it Doctor Karla? No – had taken up residence
under it, but it squawked and ran away when she approached. Yes, she’d been on this side long
enough. She found another bush, wove the
two together into a sort of basket-raft to carry her gear. All her gear; maybe she’d never have
to come back to this side of the channel.
“Except to gather
purslane if I don’t find it elsewhere. Or when the ship comes...”
She organized the
gear into piles. Basic tools like Fred’s
lighter, the binoculars and flare pistol, the flashlight. The beer bottle she’d found on the beach, her
food-grilling plate, the sextant eyepiece, the bone handled knife, the bamboo
pole, the little steel wedges she’d found useful for opening clams, the
booby-boiler. Felt the now-familiar conflict
about boobies as food.
“They’re not all Dr.
Karla.”
She collected the two
water bags – one empty, the other half-full. Skin-care products (thankful she
had hung onto them, wishing she had more) – the hand lotion and Mennen skin
bracer, the St. Joseph liniment.
“Especially not the
males.”
Started to throw away
the now-empty freckle crème jar, thought better of it. It was a nice little cup to drink out of,
maybe to scoop water from a pothole when it rained, or as backup to her coffee
cup distillery parts.
“Though they are
understanding, and they share… Oh bushwa!”
Organized her
clothes, such as they were, and Fred’s. His shoes, and her Swiss walkers. Medicine and personal items – the first-aid
kids, the Alka-Zane, her toothbrush and almost empty Vince can, her compact –
for the mirror, which she didn’t much want to look in, and the rouge in case
she needed to make another sign.
“They’re birds, for
heaven’s sake. Even if they’re easy to talk to.”
The curling iron, the
potentially useful wire. Writing supplies – Fred’s pencil and leads, her
notebook – pages coming loose as the paper softened around the binder rings in
the heat and humidity. Other than
today’s entry she hadn’t written much in the last few days, promised herself
that she would. Her eyes strayed to the
empty horizon; she brushed away tears.
“Because I will
publish all this!”
She and GP would make
a book of it, and everyone would know what a woman could do on her own.....
“Not that I meant to
be…”
Almost everything fit
in her surviving containers – the rubberized zippered bag, the suitcase, Fred’s
little tin briefcase, the sextant box – and she bundled them together in the
engine cover-hammock. She decided to
abandon the sextant – it was heavy, and what use was it? Rolled up the windowscreen and tied it with a
vine.
“No one to talk with;
all by myself. No one to walk with…”
Stashed the wrapped
first-day covers, the pidgin dictionary, and other superfluous gear in
protected but obvious places. Started
moving everything she was taking with her to the bush-boat. Stopped and dug out
a small canvas bag, filled it with fresh purslane, smiling tightly at the
thought of presenting it to the Itasca’s
cook.
Ready for the last
trip, she hiked up the beach for one last visit to Fred’s grave. Nothing there to collect – except…. She picked up the bottle of Benedictine. Her
potential trade item.
“You never know, and
I don’t think you … need it.” Tears
tickled the edges of her eyes. She
dropped to her knees by the grave. Spread out over it, face-down.
“Goodbye, Fred. I’m… I’m sorry. So sorry.”
She rose quickly and
stumbled back to her camp. Propped up
her “other end” sign securely among the rocks next to the now-cold remains of
her fire, tied Fred’s tattered shirt to flap from a bush. Looked around, businesslike; yes, everything
was in order. Carried the Benedictine
and the all-important dutch oven over to the bush-boat.
She wedged everything
in among the branches, and shoved off, looking out for sharks. A couple of them cruised up, but they were
little ones, and didn’t close in. She
reached the opposite shore with no difficulty, took the opportunity to duck
herself, rinse off. Unloaded the
bush-boat and looked for a good campsite.
Just beyond where the
land turned south at the mouth of the passage, there was an opening in the
bush, a sort of greensward of – well, sadly it wasn’t purslane – rather, a sort
of ground-clinging vine that didn’t taste like much of anything -- leading in
to the big trees. And they were truly
big – forty or fifty feet high, with canopies nearly as wide, full of
birds. A big pile of driftwood left over
from some storm; enough to keep her in fires for several days at least. Only a few crabs clattering around. Birds nesting under the bushes. A long, relatively straight pole sticking out
of the ground at an angle – almost like a sagging flagpole. She searched around its base, but came up
with nothing to identify it.
“OK, this’ll
do.”
She allowed herself a
swallow of water from the bag – time for some serious work with the still – and
returned to the bush-boat for the rest of her gear. Three trips back and forth, and everything
was piled at the new campsite. She
scanned the ocean from this new perspective.
Nothing there but blue sea, isolated whitecaps, puffy clouds, circling
birds. The Norwich was still a
dominating presence, off to the north, but over half a mile away, she
judged. To the south, just shelving
coral, the gravelly beach, the usual bushes and behind them, the great trees.
No sign of rain clouds, either.
She walked back under
the trees. The breeze – weak enough at
the edge of the beach – died altogether under their canopy, but it was a relief
to be out of the sun’s glare. Her eyes
gradually adjusted to the green twilight of the place. The tree-trunks were thick and twisted, with
cavities in them where branches had broken off and then rotted. Big gaps among their roots, some of them
occupied, she saw, by crabs large and small, mostly hermits. Overhead there was constant sound – branches
moving in the wind that stirred the canopy, however little it could be felt on
the ground, and birds screeching. A
great flock of snow-white terns lifted out of the canopy; she looked up and
watched them circling against the deep blue sky, above the green-gold
leaves.
How alive the whole
place was! How vigorously it pulsed with
life, each piece working with, against, around all the others, with never a
touch of human intervention! It was
humbling.
And frightening.
“The world will
little note, nor long remember….”
Lincoln had been
wrong about that, at Gettysburg, but if she died here, would the world ever
even know? Would anything be left? Would the island just absorb her, use her to
fertilize itself? Never miss a beat?
“Let’s see what’s on
the other side.”
She shook herself all
over and pushed on through the trees, waving a stick to knock down the spider
webs. Crabs scurried away from her feet,
and a little gray rat.
“Hello there, fellow
mammal. We’re in the minority here,
aren’t we?”
She broke out onto
the lagoon shore. A long, curving beach
– real coral sand here, even less rubbly than the channel shore, stretched off
to her right, to the south. The breeze,
out of the northeast as usual, ruffled her hair, a relief after the turgid air
under the trees.
But still a lagoon
shore; no view of the sea. She shook her head and turned back into the forest.
Working her way back
to camp, she strayed from her original track and came into a grove of – palm
trees! The ground was littered with
fallen fronds, fallen coconuts. She
walked around kicking them to see if any might be fresh. None were – all old, mostly just husks, some
sending roots down. Like those in the grove north of the Norwich, they were tethered tightly to the coarse coral rubble.
Up above, in the
swaying treetops, she could see fresh coconuts – clusters of big green globules
below the crowns of fronds. But how to
get them? Like those on the north shore,
these had no steps carved into them, and none with nuts was less than twenty
feet high. She looked up at them, again considering ways to climb. Maybe a rope
looped around the trunk, tossed up higher and higher as she climbed?
“Climbed how? Need
footholds.”
Pondering how to
fabricate a machete from pieces of Norwich
steel, she found her way out to the beach, collected firewood and prepared
to…..
“Oh, damn!”
The lighter sparked,
but produced no flame. Out of fuel.
She looked at it for
a moment, put it in her pocket and fished around for the sextant’s
eyepiece. Gathered together some dry
bark and leaves in Fred’s sun helmet, carried them out to the beach. Squinting in the brightness, she held up the
eyepiece and focused sunlight on the tinder.
It took only a minute before it started to smoke, then burst into
flame. She hustled back to her
fireplace, dumped the burning leaves and bark, began feeding twigs into the
fire, then larger sticks. Soon she had a
crackling blaze.
“So, lighting a
fire’s no problem, but I need a better tinder box if I want to keep my hat.”
She dusted it off –
there was a singe mark here and there, but nothing serious.
“My hat…..”
Memory of Fred
peering out from under the sun helmet’s rim, with his crooked smile. Poor, dear, dead, Fred.
I am now perhaps half a mile or more
south of where I lost the Electra and poor Fred, across the channel (which I
crossed pushing a pair of floating bushes in which I stashed my clothes and
equipment). I have created a comfortable
camp, with a cheerful fire that even now is bubbling fresh water out of salt in
my improvised dutch-oven still. Soon I
will try my luck in the tide pools for fish. Maybe see if I can find a lobster. Perhaps get an egg for breakfast, although I
see that some birds have new hatchlings, so perhaps it’s squab I’m considering.
I’m reluctant to trouble the minds of the birds, though, for whom I’ve gained
new respect.
There is a gravelly beach in front of me,
then the reef and the infinite ocean.
Behind me is the dark forest, alive with birds, crabs, and rats. Not far away, a grove of coconuts, though I
have no way to climb the trees and get the nuts. Plenty of what Fred called hog apples, which
smell nasty but seem harmless, and provide a respite from fish and bird
meat.
Almost a tropical paradise, but this Eve
is ready to be ejected.
----------------------
Notes
“Purslane Camp.” Known to
TIGHAR visitors as Booby Point, this field of purslane is at about 4o39’58” S, 174o32’10”
W.
“…boobies, like chickens, will simply lay another
egg if one is taken.” Source: Naturalist Robert Nansen,
Betchart Expeditions, 2015.
“…stood stock-still with their pincers in the air.”
We have often observed crabs engaged in this seeming sky worship.
“…a sort of ground-clinging vine…” Identified
by botanist Rachel King in 2015 as Boerhavia,
commonly referred to as hogweed. Although sometimes used as a famine food by
Pacific island societies, it is not very nutritious or tasty.
“…almost like a sagging flagpole.”
My speculation: the flagstaff left by HMS
Leith on 15th February 1937; see https://tighar.org/wiki/History_of_Nikumaroro
“…the new campsite.” Somewhere around 4o40’ S, 174o32’20”
W. This
is the area later called Ritiati, where the colonial government station and
village were set up in 1939. I have no evidence that Earhart camped there, but
it seems plausible. In 1937 it was the site of one of the island’s two coconut
groves, the trees having been planted by workers for the entrepreneur John Arundel
in the 1890s.
“…a little gray rat…” The Polynesian rat, Rattus exulans, Nikumaroro’s only permanently resident mammal, probably introduced
centuries ago by canoe voyagers.
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