Lost in the Pacific, 1942_Not a Drop to Drink by Tod Olson

Author:Tod Olson [Olson, Tod]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.
Published: 2016-02-15T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 10

DESPAIR

They started with an ounce of water on the morning of the ninth day. Rickenbacker poured each ration carefully into one of the remaining Very cartridges and passed it down the line. The handoff from raft to raft was made with great caution. All eyes watched as the man whose turn it was drained the tiny vessel. Even so, as the cartridge made its way back, everyone who handled it brought it to his mouth and lifted his face to the sky, hoping to catch one remaining drop.

The excitement of the night before still hung in the air—the mad dash for the storm; the scramble to save Cherry, Whittaker, and Reynolds; the first taste of freshwater in more than a week.

But each ray of hope seemed to dim as soon as it appeared. And like the empty sky after a flare burned through its powder, their prospects for survival looked darker than before.

Rickenbacker carved up the one remaining fish and doled out each portion. Now they had no food and a paltry ration of water to show for their efforts in the night. Despite their initial success using the bird intestines as bait, they hadn’t caught another fish since.

One day, Whittaker decided to go shark hunting. He got out the pliers and set to work making a weapon out of an aluminum oar. He bent the corners of the paddle end back and forth until they broke off. After some painstaking work, he had something resembling a large, clumsy arrowhead at the tip of a spear. He knelt at the side of the raft, waited for a shark to surface within reach, and stabbed at it as hard as he could. The oar bounced harmlessly off the shark’s hide. After a few more tries, Whittaker gave up in disgust.

Shortly after they consumed the second fish, Cherry tried to tempt a two-foot shark with an empty hook. To everyone’s surprise, the shark bit. Cherry wrestled it onto his lap and stabbed at it with a sheath knife. The shark bucked and writhed, and the raft nearly capsized. Whittaker and Reynolds clung to the side rope. Finally, Cherry drove the knife through the shark’s head, and the fight was over.

When they carved the fish up, the meat was so rubbery and foul-tasting that most of the men threw their portions overboard. Cherry, Whittaker, and Reynolds were left with a hole in the floor of their raft where the knife had punctured it during the struggle. They plugged it as best they could with a leftover shell from the .45.

Not long after, a shark carried away the last of their fishhooks.

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