LOST ISLAND | bxb adventure

5: ANOTHER CRY IN THE NIGHT

Brad leaned back, digging his hands into the hot sand. He jerked his chin towards the native quarters. "So your sweet old grandma up there was a real live lady pirate?"

Jimmy nodded. "You betcha. But not for long. It was early in their voyage from Hong Kong that they were searching for Palua Pae and happened to find it."

"So how did she get off that island and get here ... to Lateela?" Clint wanted to know.

"She was stranded there for several days and survived on the fruit that grew on the trees inside and outside the crater. Then she found one of the lifeboats from the wrecked schooner. It had washed up onto the beach within the reef and was still intact. It took her several attempts to row outside the reef passage, and once out there the swells took her and she knew by the position of the sun that she was heading east. The island was quickly left behind her. But Granny says the seascape  there was a nightmare and unbelievably treacherous. She didn't think she'd make it out of there alive."

"Why not?" Brad asked. "What was so bad about it?"

"Reefs," Jimmy answered. "Lots of them and very dangerous. And whirlpools and eddies. Even worse, underwater volcanic activity. Granny says lava and stone and fire were spewing out of the water hundreds of feet high."

"Sounds like she was lucky to get out of there at all," Brad agreed.

"Right." Jimmy spoke on, "The sailors around here often talk about dangerous areas like that, how deadly they are. Granny passed out from sheer exhaustion after a while and when she came to she was still heading east on the swells. Imagine her excitement at seeing a ship nearby. It was the American missionaries and they sent a lifeboat to pick her up. They were heading here to Lateela Island from Hawaii to set up a mission and school. They made a stop at Rabaul in New Britain, but Granny stayed on the boat and wouldn't get off. She was terrified because of what had happened on the island of Palua Pae. And she didn't want to go back to the world as she had known it. So she came here to Lateela with the missionaries and worked with them, devoted her life to it, until a few years ago. She was here for only a few weeks when she found out she was pregnant, and later my mother was born. She's a lovely Chinese-Caucasian woman and she married my father, the son of a kanaka warrior chief."

"So that's how you're white, black, and Chinese, huh?" asked Brad, his heart hammering just looking at the boy.

"You got it." Jimmy nodded with a big smile. "And I'm pretty sure you won't see anybody else quite like me."

Clint had to laugh. "That I can believe. You love it, don't you, coming from such an exotic and adventurous background? Cripes, compared to you, Brad and I are just two plain boring boys from any-old-place America."

Jimmy grinned. "Yes, I'm very proud of my multi-cultural heritage. In Brisbane I was mostly considered somewhat like a museum piece because New Guinea is perceived as a paradise to the people in Australia. And I'm very good-looking, of course, which makes even a native person usually considered lowlife highly acceptable. But there were times I had to throw a few punches down there when racial slurs were slung at me."

Clint looked at him with a questioning smirk on his face. "Searching for victims of a pirate kidnapping might call for some fighting. Are you sure you know how to throw punches?"

Jimmy glared back at him. "I sure do, bud. If you don't believe it, any time you wanna find out, just let me know. I'll pound the fuckin' bananas outta you."

"Ha!" Clint's eyes were like blades of steel. "Don't kid yourself, jungle boy. You might be real disappointed after having such high hopes."

"Hopes?" Jimmy swelled out his chest and pointed a finger at Clint. "I was the boxing champ at my school in Brisbane for three years in a row and beat the crap out of guys way bigger than you."