Friday, September 30, 2016

AE on Norwich Island Part 19

Amelia Earhart on Norwich Island
Part 19


August 7th, 1937


The moist, tropical darkness was almost palpable, a soft cocoon of utter blackness.  But not quiet.  Birds hunted through the treetops, with raucous whoops and screeches.  Crabs, rats, and who-knows-what scrabbled in the deadfall.  A branch fell with a prolonged crash.  All sound sources were invisible, all sounds magnified. 

The sounds of the night on Norwich Island.  She lay back in her hammock and watched the moon flickering through the leaves.  Waiting for The Lady.

Who appeared without seeming to come from anywhere.  One moment she was not there – or at least not visible – and the next she was.  Comforting, without communicating.

Though there was communication.  Her movements communicated, and her sonorous voice, incomprehensible as her words were.

If they even were words.  And the hand movements, almost more than movements just of the hands – a sort of surging upward of the whole filmy being.

“You want me to go up, somehow.” 

Had she said it aloud, or just thought it?  The ghost did something that seemed affirmative.  Had she nodded her head?  Shook it?  Something in between?  Something entirely different?  Whatever she had done – or not done – it seemed like an affirmation.  Amelia swung her feet out of the hammock and into her stiff, salt-encrusted shoes. 

“OK, I’ll go up.”

She walked a few paces over the moon-dappled ground to the base of a large, many-limbed tree – one of the great gray oak-like specimens – and began to climb.  It was easy enough; there were plenty of limbs, and they were mostly strong enough to hold her weight.  She ascended steadily. The Lady was with her, though when she looked around she didn’t see her.

Finally she was well up in the canopy, seated comfortably on a branch, swaying gently in the wind.  Surrounded by leaves, shimmering in the moonlight, alive with breeze-movement.  Beyond them the sea, dark and sparkling, and overhead the gigantic silver moon, its craters and mountains and seas plain to see.  Still beyond that, diminished by the moonlight, a powdery swath across the sky, the Milky Way.  Down to the south, the top of the Southern Cross.

Why had The Lady brought her here? Had she brought her here?  It didn’t matter – she felt wonderfully content.

“Happy…”

The soft swaying, the flickering moonlight through the leaves, the moon and the vast distances all around brought her to a strange state of alert somnolence, almost asleep yet wonderfully awake, alive to everything around her.  And there – there was The Lady, who seemed to smile and gesture still further upward. Amelia smiled languidly.

“I can’t climb any higher. The branches won’t support my weight.”

The Lady smiled in return, and gestured upward again. Then drifted toward the ground, and Amelia followed.

Halfway down, The Lady’s name came to her.  She had no idea how, or where it had come from, but there it was.  She paused between branches?

“Boo-Ka?”

The Lady smiled, affirmatively somehow.  They descended together.





August 12th, 1937


I have been at what I call Lagoon Camp for upwards of a week, I think.  I fear I have gotten bad at keeping track.  The days are all so much the same.  Up in the morning, find food, prepare food, eat food.  Maintain the camp, find firewood, sleep, chase crabs away, above all distill water, sleep.  Only the occasional passage of a rain squall, and my frantic scramble to set out every possible thing to catch water, brings variety to my days and nights.  That and visits from Boo-Ka, whose company I find tremendously comforting despite our inability to communicate. 
And, of course, my knowledge that she is a figment of my imagination.  Her name is proof of that, when I think about it logically.  What ghosts say, combined with the Egyptian name for the soul?  Ridiculous!  But still she is a great comfort to me, and I don’t want to do anything that might cause her to go away, stop visiting me.
Soon, though, I will have to move again.  I’m running very low on firewood within easy distance, and the boobies are getting shy.
Not the crabs, however; they seem to become more numerous all the time, but I have stopped letting them worry me.  I smash them with rocks whenever I can, and grill their meat.  Even the little ones yield a bit of sustenance – sort of an hors d'oeuvre.
The really tiny ones are in a way the most annoying.  Hardly bigger than insects, wearing the most diminutive of pilfered sea shells, they get into everything, and are every bit as voracious as their larger brethren. Maybe more so. Growing children.
I have found that the fruit of the dark gray-barked trees is not poisonous; whether it is life-sustaining is another matter, but I eat it now for variety.  Finding no purslane in this area, I have also begun making “salads” from the fleshy leaves and small white fruits of the ubiquitous shoreline shrubs, and simply grazing on them whenever I feel hungry.  Not much to them, but they haven’t made me ill, and they provide a modicum of fluid.
What else to write about?  She nibbled the end of the mechanical pencil, sitting on the bank overlooking the narrow lagoon beach.  Write about her near-nightly tree climbing, or the phosphorescence on the beach?  She had done that already.  Should she report on her health?  That she seemed – as far as she could recall – to have had no sinus problems since landing here?  No, no, too prosaic and personal.  About how sometimes she awoke from sleep unsure who and where and even what she was?  That she sometimes lost track of whole days at a time, wasn’t sure where or what she had been?  No, that was too – startling; it needed sorting out.
“You’re just what we all are, tastycakes.”
“Oh damn, you again?”
“You, me, the little guys, the fish, the birds.  You eat me, I eat you, the trees….”
“Go chase yourself!”  She jumped up, and the bank gave way under her.  She tumbled down to the beach, a tangle of arms and legs.  Her log-book sprang open; note pages and pencil went flying.
“Owww!” 
She was sitting on the beach, back to the rubbly bank. One foot in the water, holding her left ankle.  It hurt like the devil.
The crab peered at her over the bank. Waggled its eye-stalks. 
“Oops.  Took a tumble, you did.  Poor Meelie.”
She levered herself to her feet.  The crab continued his soliloquy.
“Oooo – twisted your little tootsie, maybe scraped it too.  And cock-a-doodle-doo, just look what you did to your shoe!”
Her left shoe was ruined. Stiff and cracked from repeated soakings and dryings, and infused with salt, it had split up the side and the upper had pulled most of the way off the rubber sole. A sharp piece of coral embedded in the bank had gashed her foot.  She pulled off the shoe, threw it at the crab, who ducked back over the bank with his usual chortle.
She sat for awhile, nursing her foot.  Not a deep gash, but a lot of abrasion, and certainly stressed tendons. It was going to swell, become hard to fit into a shoe.  And make it painful to walk.  But walk she must.  It was time and past time to move to someplace with a fresh supply of firewood.
She hobbled along the beach collecting her papers, but the pencil was nowhere to be found.  Perhaps it had gone into the lagoon. 
What was she going to use to write?
“The compass.” 
The bow compass and leads clipped into the lid of the sextant box.  One of Fred’s clever adaptations, to keep as many of his tools as possible in one place. 
“Oh Fred…  Little did you know…..”
The ring binder in which she had kept her log was ruined – hopelessly sprung – but it had been on the verge of giving out for some time, and she had an alternative.  Arranging her papers in order, she struggled up the bank and put them in the sextant box.  Limped back to the fallen tree that formed the core of her camp, dabbed her cut foot with mercurochrome – the bottle was almost empty – and began to take stock.
In the rubberized bag, which was wearing thin: St. Joseph liniment (half full), hand lotion (about a third full), an empty Mennen skin bracer bottle (good for holding water), the unopened Benedictine bottle, the empty but useful freckle crème jar.  Her thermos with its useful cup.  The flare gun and two remaining flares. The salvaged beer bottle.  Five full cans of – something, the last of the Can Camp supply.  Her Alka-Zane bottle, empty; she kept it as a water holder but discarded the top. The last little vial of vegetable concentrate, almost empty. The flashlight. Sunglasses. Down at the bottom of the bag, forgotten till now, some broken glass tubes from – what were they from?
“Oh, yeah, sling psychrometer.” 
It seemed lifetimes ago that the instrument had been part of the “Flying Laboratory’s” kit, used to record moisture content in the air.  Useless now; she scraped the pieces out of the bag and tossed them on the ground.  Three small crabs inspected them but found them of no interest.
Outside the bag, both first-aid kits, the sextant box, of course, and ten empty cans, including two big biscuit tins.  Half or more of the cans had rust holes in them that made them unusable as water holders – she tossed these after the psychrometer tubes.  The others she would take along, together with the sextant box and its contents, her cooking gear, and of course her dutch oven still.   
Both first aid kits would travel with her to the next camp, though it would soon be time to consolidate what was left in them into one.  The sextant box too, with its precious papers, compass and leads, and inverting eyepiece to make fire.  The bone-handled knife, the wire, the little wedges of steel from the shipwreck that she used to open clams when she could.  The sheet of steel for cooking. The two water bags, now empty but fillable.
Clothes.  Not many left.  She was wearing Fred’s shirt and slacks (the seat wearing thin).  She had one more shirt of Fred’s, some kerchiefs, his coveralls.  Her one remaining flying shoe, her Swiss walking shoes, and a pair of Fred’s.  Some rags.  Fred’s helmet, thin and battered.  Her well-worn toothbrush and Vince can, empty for all practical purposes.  Fred’s belt and the sheath for her lost Javanese knife; she fingered its intricate pattern of decorative beadwork; there was no reason to let it go just yet.
Her hammock, some ropes, some extra canvas.  The windowscreen, some of it cut up and crumpled for ready use in the tide pools, a small roll yet to be cut.
What to do for shoes?  Her Swiss shoes were tight in any event, and with her injured foot certain to swell… She wrapped it in rags and pushed it into Fred’s left shoe, laced it up tight.  It supported her ankle well; she thought she could walk without limping, almost, and without too much pain.  Her right shoe would just have to last awhile longer.
“Until……” 
Never mind.
Everything loaded on the travois, she hauled it back along the channel to the ocean beach, and continued the trek south.  As usual, the beach was backed by a ridge of coral rubble, thrown up by storm surges.  Were there big crabs peering over its lip?

“Probably nudging each other and chuckling. But they are not going to eat me!”

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

Notes

“…the fleshy leaves and small white fruits of the ubiquitous shoreline shrubs…” Scaevola frutescens, called “mao” in Kiribati.

She went through the contents of her rubberized bag…” See Earhart’s Shoes Chapters 12 & 15. The Aukaraime Shoe Site (or Bivouac Site) produced a broken sling psychrometer, the top of an Alka-Zane bottle, the heel of a man’s shoe and the remains of a Blucher-style oxford, apparently of the type worn by AE on the World Flight though larger than those measureable in contemporary photographs. Whether the shoes could have been associated with AE remains in doubt, but I have chosen to associate them for purposes of this story.

Thursday, September 29, 2016

AE on Norwich Island Part 18

Amelia Earhart on Norwich Island
Part 18


August 5th, 1937


She had been reluctant to sleep; who knows how long it would be before she woke?  But finally she had climbed into the hammock, tried to put crabs out of her mind, and drifted off.
And then The Lady was there, beckoning to her.  She swung out of the hammock, pulled on her shoes, and followed the ethereal form through the trees.
They crossed the island to the vicinity of the peninsula and the ponds with the clams and little flashing fish.  But now – she felt no surprise – there was a house there.  A large log-beamed house with a thatched roof that swept upward to a sharp peak, and walls of some sort of woven stuff.   There were people there – old people and children, but were they really people?  They were like The Lady, wispy, here and not here.  The house was the same; it seemed to waver in and out of existence.  The lady was talking to her, perhaps explaining, perhaps introducing her to the people. 
An old woman appeared at the edge of the group, stood stock still, then fell to her knees and held out her hands prayerfully, reciting incomprehensible words.
The Lady spoke to the old woman, not unkindly, then turned to Amelia, who for the first time understood…..
Thunder crashed; lightning streaked across the sky, and rain fell – a deluge.  Utterly confused, she found herself standing – alone – among the trees of the peninsula, with neither house nor people in sight. Soaked to the skin and hardly able to see through the pouring rain.  She struggled to get a grip on reality.  What reality?  Which reality?   One reality won out.
“Rain – oh my god, rain!” 
She raised her face to it, drank in the cool, fresh rainwater that fell on her.  Stripped off her shirt, wrung it out, let it get soaked again, wrung it out again, hung it on a bush.  Did the same with her slacks and jockey shorts.  Drank some more, let the rain rinse her body, then grabbed her slacks, shorts, and ran for her camp to spread some canvas, collect some water. 
Her hammock was full of rainwater.  Shrieking with laughter, she emptied it into the booby boiling can.  Spread canvas and engine covers, set empty cans, even her little freckle crème jar, upright to catch the rain – which was already slackening.  A few minutes more and it was all over, the storm sailing out to sea.  But she had gallons and gallons of fresh water! 
Her hammock was still wet, and she was naked; the breeze actually felt almost chilly.  But she was clean, and had fresh water running through her body, pumping among her cells.  She crawled nude into the hammock and slept peacefully. 
As the morning sun shot through the trees, and the birds rose out of the treetops, she awoke more refreshed than she could have imagined the day before, her mind clear and logic-driven, she organized her clothes.  Here were her slacks – thinning and ripped – and Fred’s jockey shorts, but where was her shirt?  She looked everywhere, couldn’t find it.
Luckily she had Fred’s last one, and his coveralls too, when his slacks gave out.  Not at all fashionable, or even good fits, but they would cover her nakedness and protect her from the brutal sun.
If they give out before someone comes!”
Dressed, she carefully decanted water into the two water bags, filling them completely with lots left over.  Decided to remain in Camp Can until she had gone through the “extra” water and perhaps found her Javanese knife.  But she would explore on to the southeast today to seek her next camp, perhaps begin moving some of her gear there.  Before that, though…..
She walked slowly back to the peninsula. Yes, this was where she had been.  No, there was no house there, and no people. 
Shuddering, she turned and hurried back to Camp Can.
After a breakfast of fish and biscuit – the biscuits were running low, and she was very untrusting of the other cans – she set out, walking briskly along the shore carrying the old suitcase filled with a potpourri of gear.  Crossing the small channel, she found the land just back of the beach to be rather low and swampy, and decided to try the lagoon shore for a change.  The lagoon was bordered here by a rather steep bank, four or five feet high.  Again she found evidence of long-ago people – strange little stone walls built out into the lagoon.  She kicked some sand off their edges so she could make out their shapes – just rough rectangles, at an angle to the shoreline. Did they have something to do with The Lady, and the tall thatched house?
“No telling.”
A short distance along the shore she found a pleasant grove of tall trees, with those mysterious little fruits. The cooling wind from the northeast blew through, from across the lagoon.  A big tree had fallen, providing a good deal of firewood, and there were trees conveniently spaced for stringing her hammock.  With no big branches directly overhead from which a crab could spring.  She put down the suitcase and sat on the log for awhile, the wind in her face, then left the suitcase to mark the spot and returned the way she had come.
That night Fort Putnam blazed for the last time – though of course, she would probably have to build a new one at her next camp.  It should have a new name, though.  Fort Fred?  Or what about the lady?  What was her name? 

“The Lady of the Trees.”
Why did she think that?  Why of the trees rather than of the sea, the wind, the stars, the birds?
“The crabs.  No, not the lousy crabs.”
She had tried smashing the small hermit crabs and extracting their meat, but there wasn’t much to them and they were troublesome to process.  Easy to catch, though; they were everywhere, and so interested in her….
“In eating me, that is.”  She pitched one as far as she could into the forest.
“He’ll be back.”
“Not you again!”  How had he gotten inside the burning fort?  He waggled his claws dismissively.
“Yep, me again, and all my little hermit friends.  Know how many of us there are here?”
“No, and I couldn’t care less.”
“Oh, you will, you will.  So I’ll tell you.  Eighteen thousand, seven hundred, forty – whoops, seventy-eight.  A bunch just came ashore.  I’m not counting the kids at sea, of course….”
“Bushwa!  Go chase yourself!”
“Rather chase you, but I can wait.  All the time in the world.”
She looked around for a big enough rock to crush him, found a log instead.  Beat him with it until he scuttled away, over a low spot in the burning wall, chortling as usual.
Forget him. Shakily, she threw the log on the wall to burn and climbed into her hammock. 
Think about the Lady.  Of the trees.  Why of the trees?
Of the sky too, really, and the sea, the air – everything.  But everything came together, was concentrated somehow, in the trees, and she, the Lady, embodied that coalescence. 
“A tree… takes nutrients from the ground, processes them, delivers carbon dioxide to the air….” 
Yes, that’s how it worked. Science made everything sensible, logical, understandable.
“But The Lady…..” 
Where did she come in?  What was she?
“What am I?”
Human being.  Around and around.  Strange….  She went to sleep thinking of ghosts, trees, the sky, the Milky Way.


August 6th, 1937


Pulling her travois, she trudged down the beach, along the narrow passage to the lagoon side. Waded across the channel and continued down the narrow lagoon beach to her new campsite.  Unloaded and carried her gear up the bank to where she had left the suitcase.  She strung up her hammock, set up a firepit, arranged her clothes, tools, and equipment on the fallen tree.  Decided to put off building a new burnable fort until and unless it proved to be necessary.
“Maybe the crabs don’t come here.”
One immediately scuttled over the leaves; she laughed at her wishful thinking.
The new camp was pleasantly cool, facing the northeast wind and well sheltered by trees, but it didn’t present many food choices.  It was a short walk back to the ocean shore, though, with its tide pools and nesting boobies.  She spent much of the day there, exploring the tide pools. Lots of fish, eels, and on the beach lots of lobster exoskeletons, all empty of lobsters. She grinned crookedly.
“Hannibals. But the critters themselves must be somewhere.”
Visions of elegantly presented lobster tails filling her mind, she explored far out on the reef flat but found no living lobsters. Finally gave up and trapped a handsome big fish in a tide pool. Threw it up on the reef to flap itself dead.
“Very sorry, mister fish.  You were a beautiful fellow.”
And free.  Free to swim anywhere, everywhere.  But not alone.  Part of this great network, this film of life.
“As are we all…..”
And now she would eat it and it it would be part of her. And one day….
“You’ll be part of me, sweetcakes.”
This time there was a good big rock nearby.  She dined on grilled fish and crab claws that evening, and sampled the pomegranate-shaped fruits.  Little meat, but some, and the seeds seemed edible – at least, she ate them.
“We’ll see…..”
She watched the moon rise over the lagoon. Should she go back to the ocean shore and look out for – what was she looking out for?  Oh yes, a ship.  No, watch the moonrise instead.

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

Notes

The lady was talking to her, perhaps explaining, perhaps introducing her to the people.” See Laxton 1951, https://tighar.org/wiki/The_Ghost_Maneaba, and Thirteen Bones Chap. 10 for other descriptions of this encounter.

“…strange little stone walls built out into the lagoon.” We noted these in 1997 but have not investigated them. They may be more prehistoric fish traps, or perhaps structures designed to catch sand and create new land in the lagoon.
                   
I’m not counting the kids at sea, of course….” Coconut crabs go through their larval stage at sea, and come ashore as juveniles and occupy gastropod shells until they outgrow them. See http://www.iucnredlist.org/details/2811/0. Hermit crabs go through a similar metamorphosis; see http://crabstreetjournal.org/blog/2013/02/21/what-is-the-life-cycle-of-a-land-hermit-crab/.

“…continued down the narrow lagoon beach to her new campsite.” At approximately 4o40’54” S, 174o 30’54” W, on the land unit known as Aukaraime, this is what we have called the Shoe Site because of TIGHAR’s discovery of shoes there in 1991, or the Bivouac Site because Eric Bevington reported seeing signs of an “overnight bivouac” in this vicinity in late 1937; see Earhart’s Shoes Chapters 12 & 15, http://tighar.org/Projects/Earhart/Archives/Research/Bulletins/29_ShoeFetish1/29_ShoeFetish1.html, http://tighar.org/Projects/Earhart/Archives/Research/Bulletins/31_ShoeFetish2/31_ShoeFetish2.html, and http://tighar.org/Projects/Earhart/Archives/Research/Bulletins/48_ShoeFetish3/48_ShoeFetish3.html

Hannibals.” The name given by young AE and her Atchison playmates to the leftover exoskeletons of locusts. See Courage is the Price, pp. 61-2



Wednesday, September 28, 2016

AE on Norwich Island Part 17

Amelia Earhart on Norwich Island
Part 17

July 27th, 1937


She was sick in the night.  Violently sick.
After retching till her empty stomach was in knots, she lay back in her hammock and listened to her heart beat.  Pounding, and not very regular.  The crabs were all over what she had thrown up.  The walls of Fort Putnam had burned down and cooled.
Had she eaten something bad?  The ship’s biscuits had seemed all right, and she’d had a fish, and finished off with a can of peaches.  Had they gone bad?  Maybe. Or was it possible that her vegetable tonic was getting rancid? There was so little of it left.
“Well, whatever it was, it’s out now.” 
But her heart kept fluttering, her head pounded, and she was sweating profusely. 
Then she slept, and the ghost came again.  Standing over her looking sad.
“What do you want of me?  Can’t you see I’m sick?  Why don’t you fly off someplace and get someone to come find me?”
The ghost shook her head and went through a long soliloquy, with many graceful upward gestures.  Then faded – or did it turn into a tree….?
She woke feeling weak and shaky, but determined to look around farther south.  If she couldn’t trust the food in the cans, maybe staying here wasn’t such a good idea after all.  And she had not fully explored the south part of the island – she had just walked through, then run heedlessly, chasing the search planes.  It only made sense to give it closer inspection.
After a sparing breakfast of ship’s biscuit, she made another attempt to project her mind out of her body, communicate with someone somewhere else.  As usual, she didn’t feel that she had succeeded.  Too many crabs, too much bird noise, the ground too hard and rough – or something wrong with her? 
“Or maybe I’m getting through and just don’t know it.” 
She got up, brushed herself off.  Set off down the beach.  Past the place where she had run out of the bush when the planes passed over – the holes and slides her feet had made in the scree could still be seen.  On down to the shallow passage, without discovering anything of interest.  She followed the passage to the lagoon shore, but couldn’t get far along it; the brush came right out to the water’s edge, overhanging it.
Back along the passage to where it opened onto the reef. Tired and weak, she sat under a bush and scanned the sea. Empty, empty.
“Always empty.”
“You were expecting?”
She was not surprised, did not turn to look
“Expecting nothing. Go away.”
The crab was off to her left, under a log. Delicately moving its pincers.
“You know, you wouldn’t be here if you’d listened to Paul.”
“You just know everything, don’t you?”
“Only what you know, Sweet-chops. And you know that.”
She did, of course. But it was all so long ago…
“You’d be safe back in California now. Or on the lecture circuit. Or curled up finishing your book.”
True, all true.
“So…?”
“So why did I skip out on him? And his lessons?”
“Let him fly off to St. Louie, Louie, thinking he’d have lots of time…”
“…to lecture me about throttle settings and RDF and…”
“…getting prepped to fly around the world, but nope, Amelia Earhart doesn’t need preparation, does she? She’s not like other people.”
“All right! So I fouled up! I was – thoughtless! I thought I was – invincible. I thought – Oh, damn it, it’s done, done!”
“No telling what you could have done, if you’d made it.”
“Bushwa. This was my last big flight.”
“Well, it is now.”
“We’ll see.”
“Make up your mind, Meelie. But think about it. Lots of things to do with your life besides flying. After flying.“
“Go away.”
“But now you’re not going to have…”
“We’ll see about that, but you’re not going to!”
She got to her feet – god, she was weak! Looked for a big rock, but by the time she found one the crab was gone.
“As though he’d never been here.”
Slowly, shakily, she made her way back to camp. By the time she had the fire started she was too tired to catch anything to eat, and too wary of the cans to open one.  She nibbled a biscuit and fell into her hammock, instantly asleep.


August 4th, 1937


She was staring at something made of criss-crossed....  threads?  Yes, threads were what they were called.  The stuff was some kind of -- fabric, yes.   Woven; the image of a loom floated across her mind.  This stuff had a name – it was – canvas.   Yes, canvas.  A name.  What was a name?  Why was a name?
With only the mildest alarm, she realized how little she knew.  Where was she?  Who was she?  WHAT was she?
"Human being."
Yes, not canvas.  Human being; the canvas was outside her, in front of her eyes.  Beyond the canvas – what did “beyond” mean? – spindly dark things against the sky. 
“Trees.”
She was not a tree. No, not a tree. 
“Human being.”
But she had some identity beyond human being, didn't she?  She wasn't the only human being -- at least, she didn't think so, though she wasn't sure why she didn't.  Other humans?  Did she know other humans?
"Mommie. S-Sam….  G.....  GP?  P…P…Pidge?"  
And the -- woman, yes, that was the word, woman – who took care of her, with the long beautiful hair and sad face.  Yes, she must be a human being too!
She opened her eyes wider.  Light was spreading across the fabric in front of her eyes, and there were sounds.....   Birds!  Yes, birds made those sounds, and....
Something large and heavy, a flurry of clacking claws, landed with a thump on her midriff, and the hammock spun around, dumping her on the ground.  Reality -- this reality, her reality -- clicked into place.  The crab was trying to eat her!  Grabbing at her belly with his great nasty claws!  But falling out of the hammock had broken his grip, and she wasn't about to let him regain it.  She scooted away, rose wobbily to her feet, kicked the crab as hard as she could.
It scuttled into the brush, chuckling.
She leaned against a tree, taking stock.
"I am Amelia Earhart.  Human.  I fly airplanes.  I landed my...  my Electra .... on this island.  Norwich Island.  My ... Fred, my navigator.. has died."  She paused; there was something profound about the word "died," or about what it meant.  Something she had recently learned.  Something the beautiful woman had taught her.  But it flittered away from her consciousness like the woman's filmy hair.
"I am awaiting ... rescue, by other ... people.  They will come on a ship.” 
What was a “ship?” She flew in a ship, but there were other ships that went on the ocean….. 
“I have been staying...."
Here, this place, this camp.  How long had she been here?  She looked around.  There were opened cans, empty biscuit tins, a fireplace and burned log walls that still smoldered.  She must have been living here for some time.  Days?  Weeks?  What were days?  Oh yes, the time it takes the sun to go around -- or really for the earth to rotate...  Information organized itself across her brain, but didn't tell her how long she had been here.  Her body told her, though, that she was desperately hungry, and her mouth felt foul. 
And something was missing – some part of her.  She considered, groped around, finally realized – her knife sheath was empty!  Her lovely Javanese knife was gone!
Shakily, she searched the campsite with no result.  Finally gave up for the time being and set about putting her life back together.  Gathered firewood, got a fire going.  Set the still to bubbling.  Wrung a booby’s neck, and – with some difficulty using the bone-handled folding knife – skinned it, cut it up, put its parts on the baking sheet.  Plunged into a tide pool, stripped, washed herself and her clothes.  Brushed her teeth with sand and what little tooth powder she could shake out of her Vince can. Where was her knife?
Time had certainly passed.  There was much less firewood than she remembered, and many more opened cans.  Crumpled pieces of screen that someone must have used to catch fish in the tide pool, and that someone must have been she.  Someone must have built the walls of the fort, kindled the fire.  Her shirt was thinner than she remembered it being – or thought she remembered, and torn.  Her slacks – Fred’s slacks – were ripped down one leg, though still usable.  But she had no memory of it at all.
“Dehydrated.”
Yes, she simply had to get more fluid. The brain couldn’t work if it didn’t have enough moisture. She watched the still, pulling it off the fire to cool as soon as its top stopped bouncing, letting it cool, drinking the first two cups of water, while they were still hot; decanting the next three.
As she went through the day, the feeling grew that she had to move on, find a new campsite.  The firewood was running out, and the crabs were getting bolder – the big one must have climbed into the tree above her hammock and literally leaped down on her.  Did crabs do that?
“These do.”
She glanced around.
But what had happened in the time – several days, anyway – that had escaped her memory?  Something important, something to do with the ghost.  The ghost she now thought of, with respect and some sort of awe, as “The Lady.”   She had learned something, been given something, very profound, but what had it been?
“Something to do with the island. And the trees.  And death and life and……”
It hovered just outside her consciousness, teasing her.
But what if a ship had come while she had been out of her mind?  She leaped up, ran down to the shore, scanned the horizon. 
No ship.  Had it come and gone?
“No, no, they’d come ashore; they’d search.  They’d blow their whistle.”
Maybe.
“Anyway… it’s time for another change of scenery.”

She found two fairly straight, stout poles and a couple to use as cross-braces, tied them together with vines in a sort of double-crossed “A” shape.  Tied her canvas floor-mat to the cross-pieces, and loaded her gear on it.  A clumsy but serviceable travois.   In the morning…..

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Notes

“…you wouldn’t be here if you’d listened to Paul.” For a concise account of how AE duped Paul Mantz about her departure date, cutting short his efforts to help her prepare, see Sound of Wings pp. 245-5.