The Black Pearl

Surfers speak of the seventh wave.  Nature is not that precise, but from time to time she does put a larger one in the procession and it is for this that surfers will sit on their boards waiting for the thrill of what they hope will be a power ride.  Occasionally, instead of a, for example, five-foot wave breaking the steady monotony of a succession of three-foot waves, a really large surge of water seven or eight feet from trough to crest will appear. This is what shocked Charlotte and her friends, who, unlike patiently watching surfers, were totally surprised by the four-feet of curling water smashing down on their reef.  They had been accustomed to the intermittent splash of one and a half foot waves and were taken unawares by the “monster”, whose strength had they even been braced for it would have rolled them.  An experienced swimmer would have launched himself into the spume and green water, swimming or body surfing with the wave, which quickly would have deposited him in the calmer waters inside the reef.

As it was, the three relative novices were battered on the coral as they were swept by the wave.  Charlotte had heard one shout from Tim and then her eyes and ears were filled with salt water.

It was the cotton dress that snagged on the coral after she had been rolled twenty feet.  That and some primitive instinct to resist the wave resulted in her hands being torn as she clawed at the coral.  With the wave’s subsidence, she again heard a voice.  Tim was calling for Emily.  Blearily from the reef’s near edge she watched as Tim floundered in search of his wife.  Five minutes?  Charlotte did not know.  She was becoming conscious of her own cuts and bruises when a sharp cry from Tim signaled further trouble.  The basin between the reef and the shore was some seventy yards.  He and Emily, the latter unconscious or half drowned, like Charlotte, were bleeding from dozens of shallow cuts.  Sharks can smell blood in the water at considerable distances.  The fishing boats with their baited lines and bleeding fish would have attracted more of them to this vicinity than would ordinarily have congregated here.  Soon the quiet basin was alive with sharks who had quickly found the holes in the reef that gave them ingress to the basin and its tempting “food”.

The large wave had set the fishing boats bobbing.  The Japanese naval officer, a carrier pilot, used his glasses to follow the wave’s progress.  Yes, those people on the reef were in trouble.  He and others had familiarized themselves with many details of the American defense installations on Oahu by actually walking right up to them. What he was doing here was establishing perspective for the approach of aircraft to the island, supplementing his sketch of the shore line with the background hills and the plateau.  Imperial Naval headquarters would put his work in a drawer for possible future use.  This was 1939.  The Rising Sun had swept through Manchuria and China and was poised for its next move in concert with Hitler’s armies or alone.  Matters far removed from a lieutenant in the Navy.  Taka Yokichi felt benevolent.  His country was not at war with these people.  Not yet.

“Go to the reef, Kurita san.  People need help.”

Kurita san bowed his head.  After all Yokichi san was an officer of the Japanese Navy.  Who knew what the future held?

Exhausted, bleeding and frightened to death of the strength of the incoming tide, Charlotte watched the approaching sampan.  Thank god!  It dropped anchor, put out a small boat carried on blocks athwart its stern.  Two men maneuvered the rowboat to take the next wave.  Like a surfer they slid across the barrier.  After that, it was a matter of a minute to bring the boat up to the reef.  One hopped out, took Charlotte’s arm and got her into the boat.  It took several minutes to find a suitable passage back through the reef.

“Miss, I am Kurita, the captain of this fishing boat.  We dock in Honolulu tomorrow early.  For now you are our guest.”

“Thank you, Kurita san.  I told your boatmen of my two friends, possibly killed by sharks.  Can we check on them?  My name is Charlotte Ross.”

Kurita acknowledged the introduction with a bow.  “They do not speak English, Ross san.  They reported several sharks swimming inside the reef.  Your friends are dead.  Eaten by those and other sharks.  Now we must assist you.”

“Kurita san”, the lieutenant ordered in Japanese.  “attend to her wounds, then a bowl of rice and fish.  Find a kimona.  Her clothes are in tatters.”

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