Covered by the Sea: Surviving a Hurricane – Part 28
It turned out that Frisbie was not suffering the same mild stomach upset that seemed to ail his son, Johnny. Frisbie had been delirious with fever, probably resulting from his elephantiasis, but of course he wouldn’t have told Clark the cause of his fever, or it would’ve been noted in Clark’s diary. Teophilo had caught a large fish and Jimmy roasted it in the oven. The children joined them for kai. Apparently Frisbie was too ill to eat.
Frisbie wrote the story of the hurricane. He worked diligently on it and, as Clark noted on the 21st, he finished the last few pages of his book.
Clark also noted that his shoes rotted out. As a result of going barefoot, he was cut by coral and the cuts became infected, which he called coral poisoning. Since this was before the advent of strong antibiotics, infections from cuts were dangerous and could turn fatal. Though he doesn’t say so, Clark would have washed his cuts in fresh water and then applied sulfa, which would have been the antibiotic supplied in their first aid kit.
Thursday, the 23rd, Clark wrote, “Robert [Frisbie] down to see us at 12 but was not asked for kai as he no doubt had expected. Went up there [to Frisbies’s tree house] in the morning and had a yarn with him just to cheer him up.”
Ellenden spent almost all day either working on his radio equipment or attempting to send or receive messages. A typical day’s diary notations from “Wednesday, the 22nd: “Up 6 a.m., clear Raro[1], vibrator still giving a lot of trouble and try readjust points, appear to improve. Send message to Raro in 2 sessions. Vibrator intermittently faulty, arcing badly at times. 4 p.m. take power tranny [transformer] to bits and find primary burnt-through to electrostatic shield in a few spots. Will rewind tomorrow. Wish I could get radio equipment more stabilized—too many faults developing.”
Frisbie had been taking the canoe out frequently to go to the other islands in the lagoon where he and his kids could catch coconut crabs and bird’s eggs to supplement their mostly fish diet. Sometimes he took all his cowboys for the ride; at other times he left the two youngest, Elaine and Nga, in the care of Teophilo, Jimmy and Clark. Often Ellenden was too busy to help babysit.
On Sunday, the 25th, Clark lost Frisbie’s canoe. They had used it in the morning to load it with “rubbish” [read garbage] to take out past the reef and dump. Then Ellenden and Clark headed east in the lagoon, using the incoming tide for help. When they returned, Clark noted, “got back about 12:45 and tied canoe myself to stone as I had intended to go to Fanu in the afternoon after lunch. About 1 p.m. I saw canoe drifting off toward reef edge so I dashed down to Teophilo to [swim] out, but we were too late. Jimmy went out on a second attempt. Just watched it drift until it disappeared between Lewis and Greenlands [two islands in the middle of the lagoon]. After confab with Frisbie, I attempted to get it as soon as possible with the other boat. So I put Teophilo on repairing it and I got onto the [second] outboard, which was not going properly.”
Clark tried to get the outboard running while Teophilo caulked the boat. Four of them carried it to the beach and launched it. Even after Teophilo’s caulking job, the rowboat leaked like a sieve, and in two hours had filled completely with water. They anchored it off the beach and attached empty, 44 gallon-drums to it to keep it from sinking. There was no “Plan B”. Until or unless they could repair the leaking boat, there would be no way to retrieve Frisbies’s canoe.
The loss of their canoe was devastating news for the Frisbie family. Without it they could not go to the other islands, which they counted on for food other than fish. The others had tinned food; the Frisbies did not. Clark and Frisbie got into a long discussion about the situation. After some thought they allowed the rowboat to sink in hopes that the expanding planks would help seal the cracks. Nonetheless, the chances of resurrecting it did not look good.
Eventually, Clark and Frisbie reached an agreement whereby the New Zealanders would provide the Frisbies with food in return for losing their canoe. Neither Clark nor Ellenden mention this in their diaries, but Johnny Frisbie did. She says that her father demanded a large quantity of food in return for their losing his canoe. Further, she says, that if they did not provide the food, her father said that he would murder them as they slept. No one took Frisbie’s threat seriously. Ah, well. Did he really say that? Even in jest? Whatever he said, it worked, because Clark provided them food, though maybe not enough to last until the rescue.
Clark and Teophilo spent most of the day trying to repair their boat. Clark didn’t mention what he used for caulk, but it seems to have been a laborious chore with no guarantee it would plug the leaks, which appeared to be located in many planking joints. However, their repair efforts were successful. Two days later Clark and Teophilo attached the outboard and headed out to look for the canoe.
First they went to Green Island, and then on to New Island, where only three coconut palms still grew. The rest of the island was covered with stumps. They followed the reef to High Island and wandered around ashore, catching coconut crabs and finding some small glass fishing floats and a note sealed in a bottle. The note, dated August 25, 1940, said, “To Finder: This bottle was thrown overboard by Keith Shepherd on route to Australia between Madang and Salamaua, Sumatra. Please write and tell me where you found it. G.P.O. Box 583, Shanghai China.”
The east coast of Sumatra was over six thousand miles from Suwarrow, so the easterly drift must have been substantial for the bottle to have traveled that distance, (and likely much more), in twenty months. Actually, the bottle seemed to have made much better time than the Taipi on many of her voyages.
Clark’s journal indicated that he spent the better part of the next two days coding and decoding radio messages. This boggles the mind. What were the great secrets coming and going to this isolated little atoll that required two days of coding and decoding, not to mention sending and receiving the messages. Maybe Powell was right: maybe the messages were all about overtime. Good thing the Japanese didn’t get their hands on those!
[1] This may refer to making successful contact with Rarotonga.