Yeah, only one chapter this week. I got behind on my other story (Sunny) so this is late. But I hope to have another episode by midweek: Dawn

Stone

Chapter 61 – Stuck on the Island

For the next few months the crew and passengers fell into a routine. Jason knew that keeping people busy was the key to morale, so he immediately started projects. In the grove surrounding the ships he had men chopping down trees. Only the mature trees were harvested; those over eight inches diameter. Smaller trees were left to mature and to continue providing coconuts. It seemed that any tree over about five inches would bear fruit.

The carpenter also had a crew and they trimmed the trees into logs and planks and started building dwellings. Stone and family were first, and then the captain and mates. Soon there was a little village sitting on the beach.

Other men were assigned hunting duties. Mostly they just brought in wild goats. Those that came from the ship had soon gone wild as well. But on the south shore they found a colony of bird/fish that Stone said were birds called penguins. They couldn’t fly, and swam well, so many of the men referred to them as fish. They didn’t have much meat, but what they had was tasty. What they did have was a lot of fat, or blubber, and the cooks found this useful in many ways in cooking and baking.

Yes, that is cooks plural. There was the ship’s cook, of course, but Rayla and Emily had taken one of the first huts built and made it into a little restaurant. Rayla’s dolly training had included a wide range of tasty recipes, and pretty Emily was the waitress. The restaurant was only open three days a week and seated 12. That gave everyone a chance to eat there about once a week. Jason didn’t feel that the food was all that much better than the cooks (although he didn’t tell his mother that) but the change was good for morale and the tickets to the restaurant were being used in stakes in gambling games since cash was of low value on the island.

Sissy had her flock of chickens to look after as well and was able to gather a number of eggs each day, mostly going to the restaurant. But that was not the only poultry on the menu. The hunters discovered giant birds nearly seven feet tall nesting in one corner of the island. Stone said they appeared to be like the ostriches or emus of earth. One fact was that they were extremely difficult to bring down. Jason was the one who finally worked out the method. He and four other sailors surrounded a sitting hen. They did not like abandoning their eggs, which were usually two to a nest. Jason threw a looped rope around the long neck of the hen, and then another man did the same from the other side. The bird set off a long and loud squawking when dragged from the nest, then two males arrived and attacked the men. Two of the other sailors had spears that they used to keep the males away. The fifth man grabbed Jason’s rope and the youth went up to the bird and used his knife to kill it.

The male birds seemed to know immediately when the hen fell and backed off. Both had received wounds from the spears. One man picked up the two eggs from the nest, while Jason and another dragged the dead bird back to the camp. At the camp the bird was plucked and cleaned and was so large that it had to be roasted in the big bread oven.

Once cooked, Stone said it tasted like turkey, whatever that is. It certainly had a nicer taste than chicken, and the one bird was large enough to provide a meal for the entire camp. There was an immediate clamoring for more, but Jason said that they would only take one bird a month to prevent it becoming extinct. The two eggs were fertilized, but not well developed, looking much like the unfertilized hen’s eggs, except much bigger. Jason cut each egg cleanly in two with his knife, providing a huge amount of scrambled eggs in the restaurant, again with a slightly different taste from chicken eggs. The big half shells were also of use. Once cleaned out each provided a huge mixing bowl, with two being assigned to the cook and two to the restaurant.

Life continued month after month. After the half year mark had passed the men discovered that coconut shells that were not harvested became fermented and produced a liquor that enabled the sailors to get drunk. The grog had run out earlier, and some sailors had cravings. Two men got drunk on the first batch of the beverage and Kalosun had to take them onto the ship to treat them for the next three days. Coconut hangovers were much worse than the conventional type.

From that point on Jason was vigilant in making sure that all coconuts were brought to the cook and opened for food and milk. For a few months this seemed to work, but inevitably some nuts were hidden away and went bad. Or good, according to the men who had secreted them away.

Thus three more men had to be hauled up to the ship drunk, and Kalo worked his way up on a rope to tend them.

The next morning Sissy came to Jason with a worried look on her face. “Sun is pretty again,” she explained. The youth followed her to her chicken clearing and looked east, seeing the view he was fearing. It was a hurricane sunrise, meaning that by evening the storm would be on them and blow for the next few days.

He immediately went into action, stopping all tree cutting and hunting and having the men move everything to the caves, where he intended to have the colony weather out the storm. By noon most of the stuff was in the stone halls, and soon after the rain started. By supper, with it nearly dark outside three hours early, the rain was torrential, and everyone hunkered down in the caves.

The next morning the sun didn’t rise at all, with the rain-soddened camp only dimly visible. There were ropes set up between the two populated caves and Jason was working his way along that to check on the family when he heard a massive noise of wood breaking from the beach. There were no ropes heading down that way, so he couldn’t investigate.

“Something happened,” he told his father, explaining what he had heard.

“We heard it in here, too,” Stone told the youth. “Just not as clearly as you did. Wood breaking, you say? That sounds like it might have been the buildings being washed away. The waves would certainly be cresting the beach with this force of storm.”

“Oh no! My restaurant!” Rayla cried out.

“Gone, surely,” Stone said. “But it can be rebuilt. Next time we will relocate it up here on the hill, where the water can’t reach.”

The storm blew all that day, and most of the next. By noon on that second day there were sounds of the winds and rain abating, but it was still too dangerous to go beyond the ropes. The men played at cards, while Jason kept his family and Kookla entertained by telling sailing stories: both ones he had experienced and ones he had heard from the other sailors in the crow’s-nest.

The next morning the winds were down, and the rain was merely miserable, not near-fatal. Jason and Stone decided to go check out the damage. They struggled out, carrying a huge coil of rope that was tied to a rock at the edge of the first cave. They let out rope as they walked down the hill until they came to the beach, which was waist deep in water, making it hard for Jason to walk. Waist deep was in between waves. The waves pounded into Jason’s chest and occasionally his face. He eventually wrapped his arm around Stone’s belt. The giant was able to walk safely in the surf pounding across the beach.

The entire little town they had built over the past eight months was gone. There were a few upright timbers still in place, but only three or four. The rest were gone, with the wooden walls and coconut leaf roofs totally washed out to sea.

The devastation seemed terrible until Jason turned around and gasped. The ship was no longer there. Two of the four trees were broken off at the base, and another halfway up. “That was what I heard yesterday,” Jason said. “The ship broke free. And Kalosun and three men were on it!”

Stone held tightly to his son as he sagged. Kalosun was Jason’s natural father, and his mentor. And Stone’s best friend and accomplice. They both prayed that the men had survived the launching back into the sea.

It was the next morning that the entire group gathered on the beach, which was no longer underwater, if not dry. Everyone was in mourning. Kalosun had been both the crew’s Kithren minister and their doctor and was liked by everyone. More than a few eyes were misty, and the females were outright crying.

After a suitable mourning time, Jason called the men to action. “We don’t know they are dead,” he announced. “There were four of them, and four men can sail a ship. They might come over that horizon in a day or two. And when they do, I intend to have a proper dock built for them to land on. Carpenter, take as many men as you need to get started. It looks like there were enough logs on high ground to give you ample wood. Let’s get to work like the Kithrens we are, not some weeping whites.”