Devil at My Heels - Louis Zamperini [49]
Maybe God had answered our prayers; maybe the sudden rain was a coincidence. In either case, our daily conversations with the Almighty took on a new sincerity, and we recited the Lord’s Prayer more often. Clearly, it couldn’t hurt.
EVEN AFTER WEEKS adrift on the ocean, my stomach never growled. My whole body did. Hunger is constant. Next to water, food is crucial because the alternative is deadly and inevitable: the body would eat itself.
Occasionally the waves threw tiny fish into the raft. Even though they were edible and Mac’s eyes opened as wide as his mouth, I said we weren’t going to eat them. “We’re going to invest them for bigger returns.” Using the tiny fish as bait, we caught a ten-inch pilot fish, a good reward for our risk.
Our survival gear included a can of different-size hooks and some fishing line. But almost every time we tried to fish, the sharks easily stole the hook and the bait. As a last resort, I tied hooks to my thumb, index, and little finger and hung my hand in the water. Sometimes I would leave it there for up to thirty minutes—always watching carefully for sharks—until I had to unwrap my fingers to let the blood circulate. Sharks hunt side by side with their pilot fish, and when a curious fish got close enough I’d grab it. As the pilot fish tried to escape, the hooks dug in, and soon we feasted.
I DON’T KNOW on what day, but once we slept through a calm night and rose with the sun to find the ocean glassy smooth. I knew we had entered the doldrums, which often happens near the Equator. The seamless stillness was alien and yet exotic, and so quiet that we could hear small fish break the surface 150 feet away. I took advantage of the increased visibility to scan the horizon for a ship or submarine. Nothing.
The calm did not prevent sharks from tailgating us as usual. The smooth surface simply allowed us a better look at their graceful movements as they swam around the raft. As one glided by I reached in behind its head and allowed my hand to move down its back and up over the dorsal fin. The shark didn’t flinch. I was at one with nature, as they say.
I repeated this several times while Phil slept and Mac lay back, unconcerned. As the shark made another orbit, I got on my knees for a better perspective. Suddenly, the shark shot up, shattering the surface, with its mouth agape. It looked like a demon out of hell and tried to snatch me out of the raft. I reacted instinctively and thrust both my palms against its nose, which stuck out about a foot past the mouth, and was able to shove the ravenous creature back into the sea. Then, as its companion tried the same stunt, I grabbed an aluminum oar and jabbed it in the nose. Mac, much to my surprise, hoisted the other oar, and we worked together warding off the predators until they’d had enough.
I congratulated Mac and thanked him for his help. The incident had scared us both, but because of his response to the hairy situation, Mac’s attitude took a turn for the positive. As weak as he was, he performed excellently and had for the first time done something commendable. Now I considered him a credit, not a liability. I was proud of him and told him so.
I also told him I’d never heard of sharks jumping into rafts or even boats. It seemed unbelievable, but later I learned it wasn’t uncommon.
ANY ANIMAL IS dangerous when hungry. That goes double for man because he’s got the brains and the ingenuity to get what he wants. After days without food, our utter lack of sustenance took a menacing turn. I don’t mean cannibalism. That’s sick. I could never have lived with eating another human being.
I’d been thinking about those two miserable sharks who tried to jump into the raft. They still hung around and had become a thorn in our side, trying to eat us when we weren’t even part of their food chain. But when you’re famished, you take what you can get, and they had tried to take us. I had an idea.
“Turnabout is fair play,” I said to Phil. “The sharks wanted to take us; let’s take them. From now on they’re part of our food