Devil at My Heels - Louis Zamperini [50]
I had it all figured out. Phil would hold the bait, dipping it in and out of the water to get a shark’s attention. Then I’d grab the shark’s tail, haul it into the raft, and kill it.
When the bait tempted a small one, I leaned over the raft and grabbed the tail. Big mistake. Sharks are gritty like sandpaper, and I couldn’t hold on because a five-foot shark is stronger than a six-foot man. It quickly pulled me out of the raft. I forget how I got back in, but I shot out of that water like a Polaris missile. I thought it would turn around and attack me, but I guess it was just as scared as I was.
After that I said let’s forget the five-foot sharks.
A couple of days later we saw some three-and four-footers, and no larger ones. We hung the bait again. This time I decided to get lower in the raft. I grabbed a passing tail and, as quickly as I could, pulled the shark out of the water. Its mouth opened, but Phil was ready, holding an empty flare cartridge. He shoved it in. The shark instinctively closed its mouth and wouldn’t let go of the cartridge. I took the screwdriver end of the pliers, rammed it through the shark’s eye, into its brain, and killed it.
Ripping a shark open without a knife is a very tough job. I’d used the pliers to fashion sawlike teeth on one corner of our chromed-brass mirror. Though sharp enough to open a man’s arm like butter, the shark skin put up a fight. It took almost ten minutes to cut through the belly.
Because of my survival course, I knew that eating raw shark meat would make us sick. The smell, a bit like ammonia, was bad enough. The only edible part was the liver, a great source of vitamins. On two different occasions we had a luscious, gooey, bloody meal.
Meanwhile, the larger sharks remained our constant companions, often thrusting their heads up out of the water, trying to avenge their brothers by eating us.
OUR ONLY OTHER source of food came from the sky. Gooney birds—albatrosses—are beautiful and graceful creatures in flight, with six-to eight-foot wingspans. We admired the way they took advantage of the warm tropical breezes to maneuver in all directions, foraging for small fish. Their colors, going from a pure, dominant white to a gorgeous chestnut or black, made them works of art.
Now and then we’d see an albatross fly by, but we never expected to catch one. The sailors’ superstition about killing an albatross was written of in Coleridge’s “Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” and it seemed a shame to think about eating one, but when the time came we knew it had to be done, superstition or not. I remembered the scene in Mutiny on the Bounty when Captain Bligh spots a bird on top of the mast and hits it with an oar. That made sense. Ocean birds will land on whatever’s available. Too bad we didn’t have a mast.
One afternoon, while Phil and Mac slept and I dozed lightly under the sun hood, I saw a shadow and felt something land on my head. I knew that gooney birds usually settle in just after they’ve fed, so if I could catch one, its stomach might still contain small fish. Some we could eat, some we could use for bait.
I lay very still and made my plan. I had to be careful. Any quick movement and the bird would take off. I must have taken two minutes to move my hand into position, though it seemed longer. Then I shot out and grabbed a leg. The gooney sliced at me repeatedly with its razor-sharp beak in an attempt to break free. An albatross beak is serrated, like a knife, and the end is comparable to an eagle’s claw. I still have the scars on my knuckles, and remember the sharp pain. To make it stop I wrung the bird’s neck.
By then, Phil and Mac were awake. We were so hungry that I immediately tore the gooney apart. I ripped off the feathers and used the mirror teeth to cut the flesh open, dismember it like a chicken, and distribute the parts.
We had only one problem: we couldn’t eat it. The smell was unbearable, gamey, like a dead horse, and the warm blood—gah!—threw our stomachs. An unexpected effect of drifting in a raft on the ocean is that we’d lost our sense of smell.