Tales of the South Pacific - James A. Michener [139]
But there was no sleep for us! Around our tent metal stripping had been laid to drain away excess water. Two days before a pig had died somewhere in the bush. All that night huge land crabs crawled back and forth across the tin.
"What the hell is that noise?" Tony shouted when he first heard the unholy rasping of crab claws dragging across corrugations.
"Sounds like land crabs!" Bus said with a slight shiver in his voice.
"Oh, my God!" Tony cried and put his pillow over his ears.
But the slow, grisly sound of land crabs cannot be erased in that manner. They are gruesome creatures, with ugly purple and red bodies as big as small dinner plates. Two bluish eyes protrude on sticks and pop in angular directions. Eight or nine feet carry the monstrous creatures sideways at either a slow crawl or a surprising gallop. A big, forbidding claw dangles in front below the eyes. This they sometimes drag, making a clacking noise. Upon tin their hollow, deathly clatter is unbearable.
Finally it became so for Tony. With loud curses he grabbed a flashlight and a broom. Thus armed he dashed out and started killing crabs wherever he could see them. A sound wallop from a broom crushed the ungainly creatures. Before long the tin was strewn with dead crabs.
"What the hell goes on?" a Marine pilot yelled from another hut.
"Killing these damned crabs!" Tony replied.
"You'll be sorry!" the Marine cried mournfully.
But we weren't. We all went to sleep and had a good night's rest. It was not until nine o'clock next morning that we were sorry.
"My God!" Tony groaned. "What's that smell?"
"Do you smell it, too?" I asked.
"Smell it?" Tony shouted. "I thought I was lying in it!"
"You'll be sorry!" Bus whined, mimicking the Marine.
"It's the crabs," Tony cried. "Holy cow! Smell those crabs!"
How could we help smelling them! All around us, on hot tin strips, they were toasting in the tropical sun. And as they toasted, they gained terrific revenge on their tormentor. We suffered as well as Tony. Our clothes would reek of dead crab for days. As soon as we could dress, we left the stinking hut. Outside, a group of Marines who had learned the hard way were waiting for us.
"You'll be sorry!" they chanted. The garbage detail, waiting with shovels, creosote, and quicklime, grinned and grinned at Tony as he tiptoed over the mess he had made.
Next morning we shoved off for home. We were disappointed. Christmas was only five days away, and we had no whiskey. In disgust Tony gave one of the ice machines to the Marines for a hot-water heater. "You can never tell what might be just the thing to get some whiskey," he explained. Dismally we flew our disappointing cargo south along the jagged shoreline of New Georgia. We were about to head into Segi Channel when Bus zoomed the Belch high into the air and lit out for Guadal.
"I'm ashamed to go back!" he shouted into the interphone.
"Where we going?" Tony asked languidly.
"Anywhere there's some whiskey."
"There's some in New Zealand," Tony drawled.
"If we have to go there, that's where we'll go!" Bus roared.
At the Hotel De Gink on Guadal we heard there were ample stores on Espiritu Santo. That was five hundred miles south. And we had no satisfactory compass on the Belch. "We'll trail a C-47 down," Bus said. "And we'll pray there's no clouds!"
I arranged a deal with a New Zealand pilot. He would wait aloft for us next morning and let us follow his navigation. It would be a clear day, he was sure.
Since we had to leave at 0430 there was not much reason to sleep so we killed that night playing Baseball, a poker game invented by six idiots. You get three cards down. Then you bet