Devil at My Heels - Louis Zamperini [55]
Now we really had to fight for our lives. I grabbed a pump, screwed it to a valve, and started pushing like mad. The bullets were 7.7s, larger than a .22 shell but not as big as a .25. I could count a total of forty-eight holes. Fortunately, a hole in rubber semiseals automatically, and when the air pressure outside and inside is virtually the same, no air escapes. Bubbles emerged as I pumped, and we floated slightly higher, but this was a long, long way from okay. The holes needed patching, and thus began the eight most miserable days of our lives. We had to pump around the clock; it nearly killed us.
To get to the rubber itself, I had to cut a cross in the canvas cover with the mirror edge. (No knife, remember?) I’d peel back the canvas to reveal the hole, then rough up the rubber around the puncture. The sandpaper didn’t work; water in the kit had long ago melted off the grit. Emery cloth, waterproof, is a better choice. The idiot who made the raft should have thought of that. I had to use the mirror teeth to scrape the rubber before I applied glue and a patch. Sometimes a whitecap spoiled the glue and I’d have to start over, but when it worked the patch held, even though the rubber bulged through the canvas.
If patching was all we needed, it might have been easy, but everyone had to pump to keep the raft afloat. During my turn I grew so tired that I put the handle on my chest and pulled the pump toward me. We’d take five-minute shifts, going around in a circle; for the first few days we pumped around the clock. It was brutal. Mac could only do it maybe five times; Phil a bit more. I had to do fifty or a hundred pumps to make up for them.
I repaired holes on the top first, and we pumped a little less. Then I patched the bottom. The dilemma was figuring out how to do it with three men still in the raft. I decided to let the air out of one raft tube while we sat precariously on the other half. Then I’d pull the bottom of the flat half face-up to patch it. Phil would hold up that section, and Mac’s job was to ward off the sharks with the oars to keep them from biting us on the butt.
I also cannibalized the second raft. With pliers, I tore the canvas from the galvanized rubber and used it for protection against the sun during the day and and as a blanket at night.
My kingdom for a knife.
THE SALLY BOMBER attack had one good result. For twenty-seven days I’d hoped we’d be saved. Hope is incomplete and ongoing. Faith is the substance of things hoped for and is complete. Now I had evidence of land nearby. My hope turned to faith that, if we lived, we’d see this through.
Their bomber, a copy of our B-25, was our reference. It probably had the same airspeed and the same range. The Japanese probably took off for their missions the same time in the morning as we did. Using that knowledge, and the time they’d spent shooting at us, Phil and I did some calculations to figure out how far we were from the Marshall or Gilbert Islands. I knew that unlike some currents that will drive rafts around in a circle, ours was steady and headed west. I could tell by the position of the sun and stars. Allowing that we might drift between the scattered islands at night—a heartbreaking thought—we bet a full-course meal on who could correctly predict landfall.
“We’ll probably land on the forty-sixth day,” said Phil.
I picked the forty-seventh.
A COUPLE OF mornings later I awoke to dead calm. The water looked like a sheet of glass, slightly iridescent, mesmerizing. Nothing moved. We’d hit the doldrums again. At times it’s probably the most still water in the world. I imagined stepping out of the raft and walking on it.
In the distance, I saw a black line on the horizon. Unlike the water, it moved, growing, undulating, rolling toward us. I thought, My God, it’s a gigantic wave, the roaming hundred-foot wave I’d heard stories about. I couldn’t tear my eyes away.
Suddenly I knew it was not a wave but hundreds of porpoises, swimming together, diving in and out of the water, coming right