THE CASTAWAY

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLIII, Issue 20669, 6 March 1937, Page 9 (Supplement)

THE CASTAWAY

By

ION L. IDRIESS

AUSTRALIA’S MOST POPULAR WRITER An adventurous story of North East Australia. The coast and waters described are true to locality. The story was told by prospectors, who seeking gold in the beach sands, actually saw the castaway approaching the shore. THE castaway was so happy that he nearly slipped into the sea; his gingery beard fairly rippled with smiles. He sang—and laughegl at the noise; he shouted just to hear his voice echo among those trees. Yes, trees on the mainland! His ragged shirt and pants were held together by threaded vines; his tangled hair kept the sun from his eyes but not the smiles. Standing with feet wide apart on the logs he whistled a jazz tune ot long ago. He was not a big man, but he made a noise like a giant. The sun shone and the water sparkled; he was nearly home at last.

Home! The northern Australian coast. White and golden sandhills, mountains in the distance, a beach ahead beckoning. He could distinguish the very trunks of the trees, the paper-barks snow white against the gums. Perhaps the nearest white man lived hundreds of miles away; but this was the mainland, the Australian coast! He pirouetted from log to log of the raft; he wished he could dance. It was a small raft, but he was mighty proud ot it. He petted the logs with his feet. They were mangrove saplings really, cross-sected by poles lashed together with fibre rope he had made of coconut husk. The sail was his pride, a plaited mat ot strips of coconutleaves against storm or spray. A big “cargo” too ot golden-brown coconuts, drink for the gods, the reservoir all held together within a crate of sticks. Why, he could have voyagedya week longer! But fate had been kind at last; and given him a Ught following wind; had made the tides always set m the right direction, and sent no cross-currents to whirl him away back out to sea. Yes, he was proud oi his raft. It

was great to be a man, a lord of creation, great to be able to plan out and do things; why he had even beaten the sea! His face changed at that thought, he gazed swiftly around as if guilty of sacrilege, almost as if he feared the voice of a taskmaster. But the sea was a sunlit lake sparkling with good humour. Some joy, though, had been taken from the man. He gazed longingly towards the shore, wishing, praying it would quickly come closer. The gentle breeze on his cheek fanned by in a playful puff. The sail creaked, the raft gurgled, water bubbled up over his toes. He stood again with waving arms and laughed. The breeze livened. Heavens! in half an hour he would step ashore. He wheeled around to a rumbling snort that suggested a giant in trouble And so it was. A column of water spouted skyward, he could hear it falling like r fountain Waves broke back from a slate-coloured bulk as a tall like a rearing stallion lunged down with a thunder-clap that echoed past him to the land. “A whale,” he cried aloud "attacked by killers!” He stared curiously as that massive

disturbance forged away on another tack seeking sanctuary from the tigers of the sea. And hawks of the air too, for a ravening flock of sea-birds were screeching and swooping and pecking right on top of that surging mass. “I hope the poor beggar gets away,” murmured the castaway sympathetically. "It would be wretched to die on a beautiful day like this. By Jove, he’s travelling some! They’re tearing him to pieces, poor old boy. How he rolls! I believe he’s nearly done. There, he’s gone now—sounded. I hope he manages to dodge ’em down under.” He watched awhile the birds swiftly flying in a twisted cloud that followed the course of the whale below. Birds were raining from the sky to the anticipated feast; their raucous screechings dispelled the peace of the day. The castaway turned again to the land; he could see the stones upon the beach; counted some aloud; there were tufts of grass farther back too. His nut-brown face was very likeable, but no one was there to see that laughing excitement. “I believe there are flowers on the trees,” he called to space "There will

be bees buzzing among them and a butterfly or two.” He would have danced this time tor sure, had there not been danger of loosening the lashings that held the timbers together. A volleyed screeching hoarse with excitement seemed thrown through the sky to swirl directly above him in hissing wing-beats that fanned his very face. He turned fear-stricken, his heart painful from presentiment. Right behind him the water blackened as a cloud rose up from below and the whale broke the surface with tumultuous splashlngs. Its fog-horn g*>sp wheezed before it spouted hesitantly like the choked pipe of a bore. The castaway threw up his arms and wailed to the sky: “Oh God, me the only man in the whole wide sea and a whale must run me down!”

With a terrifying, rolling momentum the great bulk swayed around to forge straight towards the raft. Perhaps in its agony and despair its small brain felt towards the raft as a drowning man feels towards a straw. A pack of killer-whales were at its throat; several thirty-foot lengths of stark murder streaked like black torpedoes to the white gut below. The water hissed to their tiger ferocity; it boiled from their powerful flippers as they darted and snapped at the smaller lower jaw of the whale. As its mighty head surged aside they missed again and again to flash in at the towering body and tore out mouthfuls of blubber. The horrified castaway shivered tu the clash of teeth, the hoarse rumblings frohi the whale, the thunder of flukes and leaping crash of tails. A flash of blue streaked the wavelets as a twelve-foot swordfish buried its sword in the whale, to wrench free with a convulsive tail kick that plunged it away to wheel again and charge in a berserk fury, ceaselessly repeated. There was a frightful menace In the very movement of that thing flinging itself again and again at the whale. The castaway snatched at his slithering coconuts; then dropped the crate to grab the logs lest the heaving force them apart. They groaned as a rollicking wave took them broadside on, and he nearly stood c.’. his head as the raf rose up. His ears were stunned by the shrieking birds swooping to snatch a beak of blubber from the living prey. Thunder slapped the water

to echo and re-echo along the tree-girt shore. “Thresher sharks and all!” cried the castaway as he slapped his knees in helpless despair. “Every demon in the sea all on to the one whale, and the whale on me!”

He snatched up his rude paddle and slapped the water shouting “Shoo! Shoo! Shoo!” at the tiny agonised eye of the whale as ‘ts rounded bulk rolled aside, pressed in the very nick of time by the killers at its jaw. The castaway clung with knees and hands and feet as his vessel rose to buck and plunge in a veritable storm at sea. He lost three coconuts; he bumped his head when he jammed his toe; his mouth was choking with water and his heart with despair. The sum glinted on oily ribbons where gaping strips of blubber had been tom from the slate-grey hide of tl e whale. It was only fifty feet long. 1 t the castaway gazed up its glistening bulk as at a dreadnought. Its back humped ominously, then the great tail heaved up to thunder down in a water-spout that drenched the raft.

The rush of the thresher sharks nearly paralysed him; the cold, dead expression in their eyes froze his heart. Their terrible flails of tails swung up and hurtled down with blows that tore strips from the whale and clapped away to the shore.

The tortured leviathan writhed and forged right around the raft until out of a tidal wave, with titanic action, it threw its bulk clear of the water and fell like a shuddering ship, to crash these maniacs that were tearing it piece by piece. The castaway clung petrified to his rocking vessel staring helplessly at the froth-red water through which halfglimpsed streaks of ferocity sped and thrashed and snapped. It was the whale drawing their fury like a magnet that saved him, but in this maelstrow accidents might happen, and now again the whale was turning towards the raft as if irresistibly impelled. The demons at his throat seemed fully to realise that attraction and fought to drive him off lest his hope save him. With the white patch above his eyes emphasising his devilry, a killer charged and rammed his tiger-toothed jaws into the glum, closed mouth of the whale, then catapulted on his own body to s -aighten out with a frightful leverage that obtained a crunching grip on the leviathan's lower jaw. Instantly the attendantant killers rushed in to the vantage, their teeth clashing like steel traps that sickened the heart of the castaway. Desperately ” hands and knees he strove to hold

his craft together. One killer among the furies at the whale’s jaw was squeezed out of a grip, so twisting his body into a gigantic spring he straightened and hurtled up into the air to land “thump” on the whale’s bac’-, tearing out a mouthful of blubber as he slithered back into the sea. The whale’s head writhed up in a last monstrous shaking, the killers clinging Eke tigers as the castaway clung to his raft. There came a grinding dislocation as of bone, a snapping, a thundering of flukes and flails, hiss of .lying spray as the whale groaned down, his lower jaw sagging. The fury of the thresher sharks became frenzy, the swordfish a livid streak careless whether it rammed friend or foe. Frantic gulls swooped headlong down to crash into the mat sail one swished full “smack!” on the castaway’s ear and overboard he went, but was aboard again with a shriek. He had lost all his coconuts, all his fish and his yams; now his logs were creaking and groaning and falling apart, two were bobbing away astern. He clung with fingers and legs and toes and tried to save the wobbling mast while he howled in helpless despair at the combat around. But it had ended when the leviathan’s small under-jaw hung limply down, making the castaway feel sick as the whale looked, for he stared into a meaty cavern packed now with fiends tearing out the whale’s tongue. The castaway frantically paddled his crippled craft out of the storm, skirting the nose of the dying whale through a blood-foamod sea ringing

with clashing noises and submarine groanings that mingled with the sucking sobs of tearing blubber. With two more timbers trailing askew and his sail at a rakish angle the castaway paddled as if Satan were reaching towards him. He paddled harder still, with eyes bulging from their sockets, as the sea far around appeared dotted with fim travelling at a terriffic pace.

Sharks came from everywhere, and like the demons they are tore and fought in the maddened swirl washing the whale, not only sharks, but the sea from shore and back on the seaward side was streaked with fins and ripples and foam as shoals of great fish raced to the feast. Air and sea was thick with ravenins green. The castaway glanced once back at that frothing maelstrom, but his hair stood on end, and he paddled for the shore. Copyright.

The use of the word gum is immediately associated with a substance for sticking. But there are kinds of gum which are not used for this purpose, and are very valuable indeed. In New Zealand, for instance, kauri gum, from trees buried centuries ago, is found a few feet below the surface of the earth, and apart from its beauty when made into various articles, makes transparent varnish. Amber is the most valuable gum. It is found on the shores of the Baltic and is the fossilised resin of extinct coniferous trees.