AE on Norwich Island Part 24

Amelia Earhart on Norwich Island

Part 24

September 1^st, 1937

A war was going on in the sky.  A familiar one; she had seen its battles dozens of times by now, though usually she just caught a glimpse of the edge of a skirmish.  This time she had a panoramic view, looking up from the tide pool where she had been bathing.

The boobies came soaring in from the sea, their beaks and throats loaded with fish to share with their fledglings.  The young ones – not yet able to fly – would reach into their parents’ beaks with their own to grab a fish, or wait for it to be regurgitated.  But first the parents had to get the fish to shore, and that could be a challenge – as it was today.

Here came the Frigate Birds, on their long, slender dark wings, diving on the boobies or attacking from below.  Threatening a mid-air collision but usually peeling off at the last instant – so startling the boobies that they threw up their fish.  Which the Frigate Birds, wheeling and diving, caught in mid-air and swallowed with a gulp.

But some of the boobies fought back, or so it appeared, flying straight into an attacking Frigate or even diving on it, colliding in a flurry of feathers.  The skirmishing passed overhead and the birds, breaking off the engagement, settled into the trees or onto the ground.

She turned back to her bath, after a quick scan of the next tide pool to hers, where she had crumpled bits of screen to block what she was pretty sure were all the channels connecting with the sea.  The fish could swim in, but if they waited too long they couldn’t get out. She had fished this pool at least twice before, with good results.

But for her worrisome foot, she had had a good week, carefully drinking from the cans of water and feeling fully alive. Feeling energy, focus, a clear mind.

She had been able to reach some conclusions.  There was no telling how long it would be before rescue came, so she simply had to accept that for now, the island was her home.  Feeling silly but persuading herself of its practicality, she had begun putting together a grass skirt, tying bunches of salt grass together, against the time when even Fred’s coveralls gave out. 

“The latest offering from Amelia Earhart Fashions.”

She wrapped a length of vine around a bundle of grass.

“All the rage for 1938.”

She soaked her swollen foot every day, and although the infection was not gone, it did not seem to be spreading, and might have been reduced a little.  She tried to vary her diet; booby, fish, hog apple, mixed greens from various plants that she first tasted in small samples to make sure they didn’t make her sick. None had, yet.

She killed birds sparingly – there were plenty around, but by taking one only every few days, from different nests, she was able to keep from driving the whole flock away. Besides, it wasn’t as easy skinning them with the bone-handled knife as it had been with her little Javanese dagger. And there was the Doctor Karla factor…

She gathered eggs strategically, too, keeping track of which nests she had robbed so that she could rob them again as soon as the boobies obligingly refilled them.

She systematically harvested fish from the tide pools, had gotten skilled at using the crumpled-up window screen. Scaled them and cooked them on her baking sheet, or wrapped in screening on the coals.  Collected sea cucumbers and hung them in bushes to dry, still unsure about how to prepare them.

Today, on her way to the tide pools, she had come upon an injured sea turtle.  No telling how it had been injured – maybe nipped by a shark – but one of its legs was badly cut and bleeding; it was clearly not long for this world.  Its suffering was enough to help her get over the revulsion she felt at killing such a brave, patient, mindful-seeming beast.

“Oh Mrs. Turtle, I’m so sorry!” 

She had looked into the turtle’s big, sad, gray-green face and almost lost her nerve, but something – was it The Lady? – told her that she was doing what was best, and she had drawn the blade of the knife across the turtle’s throat.  Which, she had thought as its life pumped out of it, the turtle had made no effort to retract into its shell.  Could sea turtles do that?

The turtle was too big and heavy to carry up to camp, and there was no need to.  She had built a fire on the beach, butchered it and grilled what passed for steaks…

“Or something.”

What a strange, strange anatomy the beast had!  A loosely held-together pelvis, vertebrae and ribs fused into the shell, and the – whatever it was on the chest.  She had had quite a time getting it off, but she finally had opened the turtle up like a treasure chest and…..

Well, it had been a messy job, but now she had steaks carved from the beast’s upper legs, and they smelled pretty good cooking.  The crabs – as aggressive on the beach as back up in the trees – were happily slopping around in the intestines she had scooped out and thrown to them. 

Poor Mrs. Turtle was in fact female, but had no eggs in her – Amelia was grateful for that, choosing to think that she had left them in a nest ashore before whatever it was had injured her.  They would be edible, of course, and maybe she could find them, but it didn’t seem right.

“And anyhow, who knows how developed they are?”

She had stripped before butchering the turtle, feeling like a savage and rather liking it, so when she was done she had simply hobbled down to this tide pool and scrubbed off.  Her foot looked and felt no better, but no worse either.

She rose from the pool and went to sit in the light of the fire, on Fred’s coveralls but still naked, chewing turtle meat and sipping the last of the Benedictine.  Watching the sparks spiral upward toward the Milky Way.

“Yes, a pretty good week or ten days, all in all.  Don’t you think?”

The Lady Boo-Ka, somewhere, agreed.

September 8^th, 1937

Disaster!  This morning I opened the last can of water – the biscuit tin I’d used to boil boobies – I thought it good for a week – and found it empty!  The bottom had rusted through and the water simply ran away into the coral gravel.  So it will be back to distilling with my dutch oven, unless another storm sweeps in and recharges my once-lively little stream.  I honestly feel sick to my stomach.  I had so enjoyed having enough water, and……

“And what, Sweet Chops?”

“And I thought maybe it’d last till….. till someone came.”

“Nobody’s coming, you delectable morsel.  Nobody’s coming.”

“So you say.”

“That I do, that I do.  Get used to it, Meelie, they’ve given up on you.”

“Bushwa.”

She got up and limped toward her new fire.  She had moved from her first camp on the ridge to another about twenty yards north, having used up the firewood at the first.  Skirting the turtle shell set up hopefully as a rain catcher, she grimaced at the clouds – nothing but puffy white cumulus.  As usual.

In a clump of brush near her new fireplace, she sat awhile on the toilet she had fashioned from the erstwhile booby-boiler.  Since its bottom had rusted out, she had decided to put what remained of it to good use. It was much more comfortable than hanging over a log, or just squatting. But at present there was nothing doing.  Need more greens in the diet, she thought.

“And more water…..”

At the fire, she started to set up the still. 

“Cracked.”

She stared at the heavy cast-iron pot.  It was cracked around the top, in three or four places.  Not long cracks, but cracks.

Did cast iron do that?  Yes, of course.

“Like an engine block…. Uneven heating and cooling.  And maybe the salt, getting concentrated.”

She had kept the pot clean – rinsed it regularly.  But still, heating up so often, then cooling down, salts building up, being washed out……

“Nothing to do but keep it going as long as possible.” 

She hobbled down to the ocean and got a can of water, hobbled back to the fire and poured it into the pot.  Positioned the coffee cup, closed the upside-down lid.  Built up the fire, sat and watched.

“As long as possible.  Survive…..”

Boo-Ka appeared – maybe she had always been there – on the other side of the fire.  Smiling sadly, gesturing.

“I know, I could just – let it go.  But I’m not made like that…. Lady.  I’ve got to keep trying.  Keep…. trying.”

The Lady understood.  Of course she understood.  Boo-Ka was her friend.  Her friend?  Well, her patroness?  Sponsor?  Friend would do.

Her foot hurt too much to climb a tree. 

“Damn! Too bad!”

A clattering on the coral.  The crabs were coming.  Sighing, she got up and limped to her hammock.

September 12^th, 1937

She threw the third fish into the turtle shell, left it to flop itself to death with the others.  Unwrapped her foot to soak it in the tide pool.

“Not good….”

The foot – was it really her own? – was swollen, white streaked with red, hard to the touch.  Both the colors and the swelling extended up her leg halfway to the knee.  Gangrene.  There was nothing in either of the first aid kits that would help, and even their Mercurochrome and iodine were sadly depleted. 

Grimacing, she opened the bone-handled knife and pierced the swollen flesh, cut an inch-long incision and let it drain.  Fish and small crabs came to eat the blood and pus.  She watched.  If rescue didn’t come soon…..

The foot wasn’t the only problem.  The coffee cup – that integral part of the distilling operation – had cracked.  Too often heated and cooled, she supposed, just like the dutch oven itself, whose cracks – though small – were increasing in number and length.  It was only a matter of time till it fell apart, and then how would she make water?  Even now, with the coffee cup gone, the tiny freckle crème jar was the only available catcher for the distillate.  The empty cans from Camp Can were all too big, too high to accommodate the inverted top of the dutch oven.

“Maybe the thermos cup would work, if I weighted it with a rock.”

Which would displace most of the water the cup might collect.

“God, I’m tired…..”

And thirsty.  And hot.  And dirty, salty, sweaty, sticky, itchy….

The tide pool’s water was becoming discolored.  What was causing that?  Oh yes, that thing she was dangling in it; some red fluid oozing out of it…..  She looked at it. There was something she should know about it, do about it.  Finally, sluggishly, got her mind around it.

“My foot……” 

She pulled it out of the water, wrapped it with gauze, then rags, the remains of Fred’s shirt. 

“Fred…..”

Who was Fred? 

“So tired…..”

Where could she get another coffee cup?  The first one had come from ….. where?  And had there been one before it?  Oh yes, at the shipwreck.  The……

“Norwich… City.”

The image of it – big, black, pointed – kept  getting mixed up with another – a silver airplane.  Anyway, where was it? 

Thinking was like swimming through mush – so hard to form thoughts, muster memories. 

What was mush?

“Need water…..”

She dipped a can – how handy that she had one – where had it come from? – into the tide pool and filled it with water.  Looked at the fish in the turtle shell, decided she couldn’t carry them.  Made her way back to her smoldering fire on the ridge. 

She set the freckle crème jar in the middle of the dutch oven, poured water in till it rose to the top of the jar’s stem, covered it and built up the fire around the steel pot. 

The ship was far away.

“The ship is gone.”

No, that was the other ship.  The silver one.  But the big rusty one was far away.  She could never get there on her foot.

Why had she wanted to go there? 

“Coffee cup…  Replace coffee cup.”

What else could she use, other than the little jar?  Bigger. 

“If I broke a bottle and just used the bottom….” 

That would be low enough to fit in the dutch oven but bigger than the freckle crème jar.  Worth a try.

She selected the hand lotion bottle, placed it carefully on a flat coral rock, tapped it near its shoulder with a rock.  It didn’t break.

She tapped it a bit harder.  Nothing.

Tapped it harder still and it broke into four pieces; the bottom fragment retaining only a small section of wall.  Too small to hold anything.  She threw the fragments down in disgust.

“Damn!” 

What had she wanted the bottle for anyway?  Why had she broken it?

There was something else – back at the tide pool.  What?

She got up, hobbled down her path through the bushes, saw the fish in the turtle shell.

“Oh, yes….”

She brought the fish back to the fire.  Noticed a shiny shard of glass on the ground, wondered what it was.  Gutted and scaled the fish – an automatic operation – and put them on the griddle, maneuvered it into the fire.

“So tired…..”

Night was coming.  She used the metal straps to shift the top off the dutch oven, was pleased to see a full jar of water, tiny as it was.  Dug the fire away from the pot to let it cool.  She would have time to run the still one more time before it got fully dark. She began gathering wood for the purpose. 

As darkness gathered under the trees, she sipped water, nibbled fish.  She felt a little more focused, though much of the day was a blur. 

“Need more water.”

More than she could produce with a deteriorating dutch oven and a freckle crème jar. 

And her foot was getting worse.

------------------

Notes

“A war was going on in the sky.” Frigate Bird thefts from Boobies are widely documented (Multiple videos can be viewed on YouTube). We have observed such thefts, and Boobie retaliation, on Nikumaroro.

“The latest offering from Amelia Earhart Fashions” See http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mary-hall/amelia-earharts-fashion-l_b_341283.html

“…the turtle shell set up hopefully as a rain catcher…” We found fragments of one adult sea turtle’s carapace and plastron at the Seven Site; see http://ameliaearhartarchaeology.blogspot.com/2014/09/some-other-seven-site-bones-by-joe.html.

“…the hand lotion bottle…” See Joe Cerniglia, “Notion of a Lotion,” http://tighar.org/Projects/Earhart/Archives/Research/Bulletins/62_LotionBottle/62_LotionBottle.htm, regarding the probable broken bottle base at Seven Site.