AE on Norwich Island Part 30

Amelia Earhart on Norwich Island

Part 30

October 7^th, 1937

Another morning’s light filtered through the trees.  The birds stirred, made their murmuring waking-up sounds.  Spread their wings and sailed out to sea.  The surf boomed.  The trade wind tickled her face.

She opened her eyes slowly; the lids seemed to stick together. 

The diarrhea had come in the night and she had only narrowly made it to her biscuit-tin toilet, and back to her hammock.  Soiled herself anyway. 

What might have brought it on?  What had she eaten? 

It all seemed to blend together.  Crabs, clams, fish, birdmeat, turtle meat, hog apples, canned mutton.  What had she eaten, when? 

“Doesn’t matter.”

Out of the hammock, to the dead fire around the dutch oven.  Time for a drink of water from the freckle crème jar, then re-fill the still, build up the fire.  She lifted the inverted pot lid.  Stared inside.

“Oh no.”

The freckle crème jar had broken.  Its three shards lay on the bottom of the cooled, salt water in the dutch oven.  She stared at them stupidly.  Picked them up and held them in her hand, looking at them.  Could she repair it?  Patch it together somehow?

Tape.  There was adhesive tape in the small wooden first aid kit.  Carrying the jar fragments, she hobbled over to her cooking fire and pile of gear.  Sat down and opened the kit.  Yes, a roll of adhesive tape was about all that was left in it. 

She dried the shards carefully with the remains of her shirt.  Peeled the tape off its roller.  God, how her hands shook!  She pressed the pieces together and wrapped tape around them, as tightly as she could.

It peeled off in her hands.  It had lost its adhesive in the heat and humidity.

“Oh, damn.”

She sat awhile looking at the shards and tape in her hand, then let them fall to the ground. 

Could she use a can?  No, she’d decided that they were too big, some time in the past. But maybe she could figure something out. Cut one down. Or maybe it was time for her thermos cup.  Where was it?  She didn’t know. 

“Damn.  Lost.”

It was the cup that was lost. She wasn’t lost.

“I’m not lost….”

Birgie emerged from a pile of brush.

“But you will be if you can’t find water.”

“Make water, with the still. There’s no water to find, unless it rains.”

“Says the world’s expert on island hydrology.”

Hydrology. Hydro – relating to water. Ology – relating to the study of something. Yes.

“What are you telling me?”

“Me, tell you something?”

“That there’s water to be found?”

“Beats me. I’m just a crab.”

“Right.”

“Butcha know, even crabs gotta have water. Rats, too, and birds.”

“O..kay.  Where do you find water?”

“Where do you find water, what?”

“Oh, bushwa.  Where do you find water, Birgie?”

“Hmm…?”

“Where do you find water please, Birgie? With sugar and cream!”

“Can’t deliver the sugar and cream, but water – in the trees, of course.”

“Oh God, more riddles?”

“Would I tell riddles at a time like this?”

“Yes.”

“You know me so well.  Check the trees, Meelie.  No joke.  Ta-ta, I’ll be back.”

 She scuttled away, across the clearing to the north.

Trees.  How would the trees produce water?

Slowly, she recaptured an image – great thick trees with their trunks full of water – where?  And how?

Africa –  she had seen trees full of water in Africa.  Af-ri-ca. 

But those trees had been filled with water by people.  Hadn’t they? 

“Not by crabs….”

Shaking her head, she struggled to her feet and hobbled north, following the crab.  She stopped at every tree, every bush, to lean on it and catch her breath.

“So weak…..”

Just a short distance from where she had made her first and second fires at Freshwater Camp – how ironic that name seemed now, but how good that she could remember the fires, and know that she was moving north from them! – the big dark-barked trees gave way to the lighter-colored ones.  Thick, gnarled trunks, twisting branches.  One huge one had three great branches that spread out at about chest height.  She staggered to it, looked in the space where the branches sprang out….

“Oh my God!.....”

Where the branches separated from the trunk, they formed a kind of basin, and it was full of water!  She cupped her hand and drank some.  Earthy, rather bitter, but it was water, at least a gallon of fresh water. Left – she guessed – by the last rain, protected from evaporating by the tree’s canopy.  She drank another handful, hobbled back to camp for bottles and a can.

Birgie had helped her!  A tickle of suspicion played across her mind.  Why would the crab help her?  Birgie wanted her dead, so she could eat her.  Why prolong her life?

“Don’t know.  Don’t know.”

Later – how long? She wasn’t sure, didn’t know whether it mattered – she sat by her dead fire and tried to make her brain work.

“Have to purify it somehow.”

She trembled; her head swam.  One moment she was burning hot, the next freezing. 

She pinched one of the cans’ open tops to form a sort of pour-spout; carried it and the bottles – the beer bottle, the Benedictine, the St. Joseph’s – to the basin tree, and bailed the basin dry.  Filled two of the bottles that way and a third at another, smaller basin.  Couldn’t find any more water trees before dark fell. 

At the bottom of the second basin, her can encountered something soft and squishy.  Some fur came up on the edge of the can. 

Halfway back to camp, the diarrhea struck again with a vengeance.  She had barely time to get her pants down.  Poor Fred’s almost worn-out coveralls, she thought, and his tattered jockey shorts. She sat in them on a log and stared at the charcoal and ash of her fire place.  Her mouth felt full of cotton, but she couldn’t trust the water.

“Boil it.”

Of course, boiling the water would purify it, even if there had been a dead rat in it.  She looked around for firewood.  Not much ready at hand.  The small first aid kit gave her a beginning; it was made of nice dry wood, and empty now.  She smashed it with a rock, arranged its pieces in a pile.  Dragged herself around to pick up more sticks and twigs until she had a decent heap of wood, and used the inverting eyepiece to set it alight. 

So, she would put the bottles of water in the fire, and when they boiled….

How would she get them out of the fire?  Pick them up with the metal straps she used to turn fish?  No, that wouldn’t work. 

Wire.  Yes, of course.  She found the wire she had brought from – where?  The vague image of something big and hulking – oh yes, the shipwreck.  Wrapped one end of the wire around the beer bottle, the other around the St. Joseph; she would start with them, and when they boiled she could lift them right out with the wire.

The fire was crackling.  Trembling, she carefully lifted the two bottles by their wire handle, lowered them into the flames.

She sat back to wait for the bottles to start bubbling.

Was she forgetting something?

“I’m forgetting everything!”

Her attention drifted to the birds swooping through the trees – then snapped back into focus on the fire – as both bottles shattered, their water putting it out.

“Oh, damnation.”

Of course.  High heat applied to relatively cool glass…..

“Oh, Amelia, you are so damned stupid……” 

The fire was out, the bases of the bottles slowly melting in the still-hot coals.  She watched them numbly, at the same time registering the dutch oven sitting in the coals.  Why hadn’t she used that? Couldn’t find an answer.

“Well, that may have killed the cat.” 

Unnoticed, Birgie had scuttled up next to her.

“My bottles broke.”

“Yup.”

“What cat?”

“The cat’s a metaphor, Honey.”

“A metaphor?”

“Sure, you know.  We met afore.  Maybe we met later.”

“We’ll meet later.”

“Maybe.”

“I was correcting your tense.”

“You are tense.  You need to get over that time thing.”

“What I need to get over is needing clean water.”

“You’ll get there, honey-chops.  Soon enough.” 

Amelia started to answer, but the crab had disappeared.  Scuttled away, or just vanished like a Cheshire Cat?  What was a Cheshire Cat? It was too much trouble to figure out.

There were a few inches of water left in the Benedictine bottle.  She sipped a little of it.  Threw up.

She crawled into her hammock, careful not to rip it.  It was so thin.  She was so thin.  Mister Eric and Koata and their men would have no trouble carrying her.  If they came.

“When they come!”

Wait, hadn’t they come?  No, not yet.  But….  She struggled with what had been, what was yet to come, what was now.

“Get over that time thing……”

Time thing.  There were other times.  Before now.  After now. 

Before now she had been in other places, done other things. 

Visions. Great piles and mountains of cloud; she flew between and around them, sometimes right through them.  Vast fields of green below her, then equally vast seas of sand, sharp-crested dunes stretching away in all directions.  Blue ocean, green ocean, islands in strange exotic forms, lakes in others.  Endless vistas of jungle – trees!  Ocean again, clouds.

“Billows and breeze, islands and seas, mountains of rain and sun….”

Lovely; she wanted to sing, but couldn’t move her lips, open her parched throat. 

Visions of islands, seas, rain and sun and cloud mountains.

Had she been asleep?  It was dark.  She knew that the canopy of leaves was solid above her, but without surprise realized that she could see through it.  There was the Milky Way – so bright, such a thick pathway of stars.  Leading – where? 

In a circle – no, a spiral.  Like water going down a drain.  Was there a drain?  Where did it go?

Her eyes were awash in stars.  Millions and millions of stars.  Was each a sun?  Did each have planets? 

“So much….”

So much to see, experience, explore.

Explore.  Was she done exploring?  Would she soon be just inert matter, going nowhere, doing nothing? 

“All that was me… is gone.” 

Her eyes were too dry for tears.

Boo-ka was there, somewhere in the void between her hammock and the Milky Way, gesturing upward, beckoning. 

But was there a void? 

Of course there was a void – millions and millions and millions of miles of void. 

No.  That was simplistic.

“Continuum.”

Crab gut to earth to tree to bird to Milky Way to wherever the Milky Way went.

Gone up! What an infinite, swelling feeling of comfort and rightness!  Gone on! 

She felt Boo-ka smiling.  The Milky Way filled her vision.

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

Notes

“The freckle crème jar had broken.” See Joe Cerniglia et al: “A Freckle in Time or a Fly in the Ointment?” http://tighar.org/Projects/Earhart/Archives/Research/ResearchPapers/freckleintime/FreckleInTime.html, for discussion of the possible Freckle Crème jar found at the Seven Site.

“…she had seen trees full of water in Africa.”  Writing of Chad during the World Flight:  “Throughout that region the tebeldi tree is used as a water reservoir.”  Last Flight, p. 92.  Tebeldi and tabaldi are local names for trees of genus Adansonia, generally known as the Baobab tree.

“…they formed a kind of basin, and it was full of water!” We have seen such water-holding buka (P. grandis) trees in the forest north of the Seven Site.

“The small first aid kit gave her a beginning…” In our 2007 excavations at the Seven Site we found both sides of a small snap in the WR Feature. The snap matches one that closes a compartment in a red wooden first aid kit acquired by TIGHAR’s Art Carty on Ebay that is consistent with the description of the smaller wooden kit listed in the Luke Field inventory. See http://ameliaearhartarchaeology.blogspot.com/2016/05/earharts-first-aid-kits-at-seven-site.html

“Wrapped one end of the wire around the beer bottle, the other around the St. Joseph.” In the WR Feature we also found two broken, partially melted bottles and a twisted piece of wire. One bottle appears to have been a 1930s-style liniment container, possibly St. Joseph's Liniment, while the other appears to be a pre-war beer bottle. The bases of both were melted and the tops shattered, as though they had been placed upright in the fire. See https://www.academia.edu/20111385/Amelia_Earhart_on_Nikumaroro_A_Summary_of_the_Evidence.  

“Blue ocean, green ocean, islands in strange exotic forms, lakes in others.” In Last Flight, p. 90, AE writes of lakes and islands like “strange creatures and outlandish forms.” 

“Billows and breeze, islands and seas, mountains of rain and sun….” Robert Louis Stephenson, variation on the Skye Boat Song. See http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/45949, I do not know whether AE liked Stephenson’s take on the old Scotts lay, but I do. 

AE on Norwich Island Part 29

Amelia Earhart on Norwich Island

Part 29

September 28^th, 1937

It was a lovely tide pool. Bigger than a swimming pool, ranging from four to eight feet deep. Crystal clear water, replenished regularly by the surf now booming just beyond the lip of the reef. Full of fish, every size, shape, color imaginable. Big brain corals that seemed almost iridescent. Staghorn corals, plate-like corals. Sea anemones and sea cucumbers.

She had been looking for sea cucumbers when she came out here, clear to the edge of the reef – hard on her foot except that the warm, circulating water seemed to soothe its fire. Once here, she hadn’t been able to resist stripping off her ragged shirt and jockey shorts, lowering herself gently into the water. Floating, paddling, ducking herself.

“For the fun of it.”

She smiled, floating on her back in the shimmering water. Her shirt and shorts were hung on the stick she had used for balance on the way out, now stuck upright in a crack. Her hair, long and no longer curly, spread out around her head. She looked placidly out over the edge.

There were dolphins – not in the tide pool, of course, but right off the reef, so close that she had been startled at first by their blowing. Half a dozen or more, leaping and cavorting. She blew them a kiss.

She had awakened that morning with a pretty clear head. Not too much confusion. Probably because there had been a brief rain squall last night and she had been able to drink her fill, even fill a few shells and cans and her Swiss shoe to set aside. It was perfectly remarkable what a difference it made to have enough water – or not.

“I’ll write something about it for Cosmo.”

It was refreshing to imagine the future; she should be grateful to Birgie for helping her do so. Making her do so.

“But how can you be grateful to someone who wants to eat you?  Academic question; she’ll not get the chance.”

So, what about the Bureau of Air Commerce? Gene would support her, and Eleanor would too, most likely. And the public, when she came home from this ordeal – even with a leg missing, or maybe that would make it better – the public would be behind her all the way.

So much to be done, to improve airports, regularize flight schedules, encourage industry to build bigger, faster planes capable of carrying big cargo loads long distances. Prepare, very likely, for war.

“War. My god…”

But she would be living proof of what women could do. She would never again have to lecture on the subject – at least not often; she would make the point simply by doing her job, with grace and elegance.

And she could take care of Mommie, and Pidge… Tears sprang from her eyes. How worried they must be! If only there were a way to let them know that she was alive, and that she was coming home. She grimaced furiously in the direction of America.

“I am coming home!”

As if summoned by her thoughts, there was a schooner.

Quite a way offshore, heading northeast. Was it really there? She blinked, closed her eyes, opened them again. Yes! It was still there! Solid, real, heeling over as it tacked up the wind.

Up, on her feet. Oh heavens, she was naked! Into the jockey shorts, never mind the shirt. No, wave the shirt, jump up and down…

“Ow!” Not on her swollen, tender foot. But wave, wave! She could see… yes, someone on the stern, maybe at the wheel. A flash of light – binoculars! He saw her, surely!

“Oh, Mister Eric, Koata – you’re here!”

What to do? Stay here and keep waving? Surely she had been seen by now; yes, there was another flash from the binoculars. The man – just a silhouette against the shining sea – waved an arm! What would they do? Go around and anchor in the lee – or tie off to the Norwich City, as the schooner had in her dream. This WAS the schooner in her dream! Nimanoa!

So she should go around to the other side, meet them when they came ashore. And – heavens, make herself presentable! One last wave, and she began to hobble back toward the beach.

But in her dream they had found her on this side, in her camp. Should she do something that violated the structure of the dream? What would happen then?

“Oh god, I don’t know. Just let them come!”

She turned, waved again, stepped in a hole and went down, her foot sending such shock waves up her leg that the world went black, streaked with brilliant red, and she collapsed on the reef.

For a time all she could do was lie half covered by water, while waves of pain swept through her, but gradually they diminished. She watched as the world slowly lightened. Saw sky, clouds, birds.

Gingerly, she sat up, removed her foot from the hole into which it had slipped. Twisted to look out over the reef edge. There was no ship.

“Gone around. Going to anchor, tie off.”

She got up on her knees. The stick had floated away. Managed to rise to her feet, pain stabbing up her leg. Hands on knees, keeping weight off her left foot, she struggled to maintain consciousness. Surely she really had seen a ship – yes, surely. Though maybe not. She shook her head, grimaced.

“OK, going to meet them isn’t in the cards – if…. So, back to camp. Follow… follow the dream.”

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

Aboard the schooner Leukothea, beating upwind for Canton Island and a hoped-for cargo of copra, Ivan Yonklopovitch pounded the taffrail, almost in tears.

“Please, Captain! I saw her! Woman, white woman! Long hair, nothing but…” He pondered a second, could she really have been wearing jockey shorts?

“Almost naked, waving a cloth. She must be – how you say? Castaway!”

Dirty Mike McWatter grimaced around his cold cigar, scanning the receding shoreline with the binoculars he had seized from his mate. Deeks Enos, the Hawaiian helmsman maintained a studious silence; it was fun to watch the haoles argue.

“Igor, you drunken Bolshie….”

“My name Ivan, Captain, you know that. And no god-fucking Bolshevik; White Russian; how often I tell you?”

“You look like an Igor to me, you vodka-swilling Commie. So you had me dragged up here from my nap…”

“No good Kanaka didn’t want, but I said must get captain! Poor woman! We rescue!”

“Igor, that island – Gardner Island, it’s called, is unin-fucking-habited!” Nobody there! Get it? No woman, no man, no nothing but birds and crabs.”

“Woman maybe shipwrecked! Got to save her!”

“Igor, you pathetic drunk, there’s nobody there! I’m looking; I’ve been looking. Nothing but birds and fucking dolphins.”

“She wave and run back toward beach!”

“So she must not’ve been too anxious to be rescued, eh? Anyways, she’s not on the beach now, and nobody seems to have seen her but you.”

“I saw! I saw! For sure! Must rescue her!”

“This island doesn’t even have a fucking anchorage, you bleary-eyed Bolshie. We couldn’t get ashore if we wanted to!”

“Not Bolshevik! I take boat, four Kanaka, we go over reef!”

“And bust up my boat, and maybe my Kanakas too? You’re dreaming, you crap-mouthed Cossack!” He handed the binoculars back to Yonklopovitch and spat over the rail..

“Enough of this crap, Igor. Steady as she goes.”

Enos nodded, began composing a song in his head about a lonely woman on an island. No one had asked what he had seen.

September 29^th,  1937

Morning. Another morning. Bird calls. Surf. Crab clatter. Wind in the boughs.

No one had come. She had reached camp, unwrapped her feet, found the long-discarded tin of Vince and used the dregs of powder she found there – or did she just imagine them? – to scrub her teeth with her finger, rinse her mouth. Put on her only remaining outerwear – Fred’s fraying coveralls – and composed herself in the hammock.

But what if they missed her? She should at least go out to the beach! Maybe leave a sign there.

But in the dream they had found her on their own. Trust the dream.

She had waited, and finally gone to sleep.

And now it was morning and no one was there. Except Birgie, hanging upside down on the tree-trunk above her feet.

“You were expecting…?”

She fought back tears.

“I saw a ship.”

“So, figured it was Mister Eric come to rescue you, eh?”

“Well, it wasn’t impossible. Still isn’t.”

“Been a long time, though.”

It was true, of course. But maybe they had had trouble anchoring, or mooring to the shipwreck.

“Maybe they had trouble mooring, but I don’t think so.”

“You’re now an expert on ship operations.”

“Nope, don’t know a spanker from a spinnaker, but I am part of the great crab communication network, and I’m not picking up any signals.”

“You communicate… how?”

“Our little arthropodic secret, sweet-chops, but take my word for it, everything around you is communicating, all the time.”

“How?”

“Like I say, honey, it’s our secret. Just like radio’s yours. How do those signals propagate?”

“Radio signals? They’re waves of electromagnetism – created by passing electricity through a magnetic field.”

“Um-hmm. And electricity is…?”

“Electricity is… Why am I explaining this to a crab?”

“So I’ll explain to you about crabmunication, and tree-talk. But never mind; I won’t, and you wouldn’t understand if I did.”

“I will not be patronized by a crab!”

“Hoity-toity! No conversations with crustaceans!”

She closed her eyes, blinking back scarce tears.

“I didn’t say that. I just… Oh damn!”

Why wasn’t Dr. Karla here? Or Boo-ka? Why did she have to talk with this…

“…this bilious bug!”

“Hey, hey, careful, there, madam mammal; let’s have some interspecies respect!”

“I’m supposed to respect you?”

“You might try it. You know…”

“Bushwa!”

“…you’ve actually been pretty good at that.”

“What?”

“Respecting other life forms – rodents, birds, horses, Syrians, Chinese…”

Was Birgie complimenting her?

“So why not a little fellow-feeling for Birgus latro?”

“Right; you’d like me to give you a hand.”

“Good one! But I’ll settle for a foot – that left one’s really no use to you.”

“Thanks, but I’m attached to it.”

“You’re hittin’ on all sixes today! Give the girl some water and she turns into Joan Blondell!”

“Not really my style.”

“There you go again. Going all high hat on me.”

“Bush…”

“Y’know, if you hadn’t gotten so high hat, you wouldn’t …”

“Be here.”

She hesitated, looking up into the leaves.

“I know, Birgie; I know…. If I hadn’t let myself think I could do anything, that the gods or fates would take care of me…”

“Yup.”

“If I’d been more honest with people – including myself. If I hadn’t taken to lording it over Mother and Muriel. If I’d accepted more help, learned more…”

She lapsed into silence, staring stonily into the branches. When Birgie spoke, it almost sounded gentle.

“Hindsight’s a wonderful thing, Meelie.

She nodded. Knowing that didn’t help.

And you’d be home now, safe in the bosom…”

“I’d be home, publishing another book, making more lectures, and then…”

“Then…?”

And then. Well, yes. Just imagine…

“Maybe help Franklin, and Eleanor. Use my … my fame – to advance good causes, help people. Help develop aviation. Help the country, the world. And of course, my family…”

Birgie was silent.

“And damn it, that’s what’s going to happen! I’m not done yet! Mister Eric and his men are tying up to the shipwreck right now! They’ll be here, and… Birgie?”

No response. Overhead, the leaves sparkled against the sky. She concentrated on them, forming her words carefully, speaking to the trees.

“Or… OK, let’s face it.”

The branches quivered in the breeze; two snow-white terns zoomed across her field of vision. She whispered.

“…or ‘I, like you, shall lay me down and die.’”

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

Notes

“I’ll write something about it for Cosmo.” AE wrote regularly for Cosmopolitan Magazine, and served as its aviation editor. See http://www.ameliaearhartmuseum.org/AmeliaEarhart/AEAviator.htm

“…there was a schooner.” “Some years after her last flight, it was reported that a Russian sailor had seen a white woman signaling from a small island dressed in jockey shorts. George told Gene that the outfit was wrong – it couldn’t be Amelia, because ‘she always wore my shorts when she flew, but I wear boxer shorts’” East to the Dawn 291-2. On this thin basis I have built this otherwise entirely imagined episode.

“Joan Blondell.” Popular vaudeville and movie performer in the 1930s and beyond, often in comic roles. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joan_Blondell.

“I, like you, shall lay me down and die.” From a poem fragment attributed to AE; see Courage is the Price, p. 108.