Nate let some air out of the tires to keep them from digging into the sand of Palm Beach as much as on the first trip. Jim hoped it would work; he was on the next flight.
By the time Nate and Jim were airborne on the second trip to Palm Beach, the sun had driven off the fog. It was a beautiful, clear morning over the Oriente. Within minutes, the plane was following the Curaray River as it snaked through the dense jungle. Finally, with the sun glinting on the river, Jim caught his first glimpse of Palm Beach. The strip of sand was wider than he had imagined, but shorter! Jim marveled that Nate had been able to land and take off from it. Nate was quite a pilot.
From above, Jim and Nate scoured the riverbank for Ed McCully.
“There he is,” said Jim with relief, pointing toward the far end of the beach.
Jim gripped the edge of his seat until his knuckles were white as Nate calmly and expertly guided the Piper Cruiser down onto the beach. The partially flattened tires did a great job. The wheels thumped against the sand but did not dig in. Nate brought the plane to a halt a few feet from the trees at the end of the beach. Ed bounded over to the plane, the home-movie camera in his hand still rolling. With a huge grin, Jim jumped from the cockpit.
The plane stayed only long enough to drop off Jim and the load of supplies. After Jim and Ed had picked up the Piper’s tail and turned it around, Nate gunned the engine and took off for Arajuno to collect Roger and another load of cargo. He had a tight schedule to keep if they were going to get everything they had planned done before dark.
When Nate returned, Roger jumped out and, along with Jim and Ed, helped unload the cargo, which included several days’ supply of food. As soon as the plane was empty, Nate was on his way again.
The men went straight to work. Jim and Ed had already selected the tree they thought was most suitable for their tree house. It was a giant ironwood tree about two hundred feet tall. About thirty-five feet up, a wide branch fanned out, providing what looked like a solid foundation on which to perch their temporary new home.
Jim began the task of nailing strips of wood up the tree to use as steps. Each man took turns standing guard while the other two hammered away. As the steps got higher up the tree, one of the men threw a rope over a lower branch to use as a harness. The last thing they needed was for one of them to slip and fall. It took a surprising amount of time for them to nail all the steps into the tree. It was clear why these trees had been named ironwood. The work was remarkably like trying to drive spikes into iron. Still, the crew persevered, and once they reached the branch, Jim was satisfied it would do nicely for the tree house. Jim tied a rope to the branch and lowered it to the ground, where Ed attached precut lengths of timber. Jim and Roger pulled the planks one at a time up into the tree and nailed them in place.
As the tree house progressed, Nate made two more flights to deliver materials and supplies. On the last flight, he brought Pete Fleming with him. Pete and Nate unloaded the plane and then began stacking and arranging all the supplies.
Since the tree house had been designed and precut to sleep three people, someone was going to have to fly out each night to Arajuno with Nate. Since Pete was the lightest man in the group, Nate decided he would be the one to accompany him each night. The lighter the load, the better for taking off from tiny Palm Beach.
As the sun began to sink low on the horizon, the five men gathered on the beach to sing a hymn together. They then said a short prayer, and Nate and Pete climbed into the plane and took off. Jim watched in amazement as Nate skillfully guided the Piper into the air from such a narrow strip of sand.
Jim, Ed, and Roger stood on the beach talking. Ten minutes later, they heard the buzz of the airplane’s engine. The men had planned for Nate to circle Terminal City and for Pete to deliver the message “Come to the Curaray tomorrow” in Auca over the loudspeaker. Nate dipped the plane’s wings as a signal that the message had been delivered. Then he looped around and headed west toward Arajuno.
Jim, Ed, and Roger prepared dinner, which they ate as they sat around a small campfire. Before it got dark, they climbed up into the tree house. As the three men settled down for the night, they wondered who might be watching from the cover of the jungle.
At two o’clock in the morning, Jim still lay awake. The suffocatingly hot night kept him from sleeping, as did the fact that he couldn’t stretch his tall frame out properly without banging against the low wall of the tree house. He wished he’d added another six inches to the length of the planks when he cut them.
Jim listened to the breathing of his two companions, who sounded as if they were not asleep either. They weren’t. The three of them decided it was time for a coffee break. The evening before, the men had packed a few sandwiches and filled a thermos with coffee, just in case they couldn’t sleep. They ate and drank in relative silence, straining their ears to listen for unfamiliar sounds.
After what seemed like an eternal night, dawn broke over the jungle, and the men climbed down for breakfast. Jim noted puma tracks in the sand that had not been there the night before. At 9:00 he cranked up the radio, but to his dismay he couldn’t send out a transmission on it. He could hear people on it, but they couldn’t seem to hear him. So he just listened to the daily round of morning conversation between the various mission stations and Shell Mera. One station needed an extra bag of flour, another more antibiotics, while a third inquired as to whether a specific package had shown up in the mail. The voices on the radio made everything seem strangely normal, except for one thing: Jim, Ed, and Roger were right in the middle of Auca territory.
When the transmissions were over, the men continued with Operation Auca. Each man took a position along the beach and then took turns holding up gifts and yelling Auca phrases. At every crackle of a branch or rustle of a bush, they paused. Could it be an Auca, or was it a puma? As the morning wore on, they saw neither.
Before lunch, Nate and Pete flew in with encouraging news. When they had flown over Terminal City that morning on their way to Palm Beach, they had seen hardly a person. Perhaps a ground party was on its way to meet the missionaries. Jim was exuberant. Today could be the day!
The five men tried to busy themselves with other tasks while they waited. Nate quickly discovered why the radio would not transmit—the microphone had a loose connection. The men built a makeshift roof over the fire and cooking area to give them shelter from the relentless sun as it hung overhead at midday. They also took turns napping, swimming, reading, and keeping watch for their neighbors. But no one saw anything. Finally, late in the afternoon, Jim, Ed, and Roger wrote notes to their wives. Nate and Pete collected the mail with a promise to deliver it when they flew to Arajuno in the evening.
That night, before climbing up to the tree house, Jim placed a machete at the bottom of the steps. He hoped that if the Aucas came in the night, they would find it and understand it was another gift.
The three men woke sharply at 9:00 p.m. Jim could feel his heart thumping in his chest. He looked around. “Did you hear something?” he whispered.
In the moonlight, he could see his two companions nod. Then he heard the noise again—a long, low creak.
After a few minutes, Jim relaxed. The wind had picked up since they had gone to bed, and the noise they were hearing was the planks of their tree house shifting in the swaying tree. The three men drifted back to sleep.
Jim awoke again at 5:00 a.m., just before daybreak. He was anxious to see whether someone had collected the machete from the bottom of the tree. He shined his flashlight down the thirty-five feet to the jungle floor. The machete was gone! Jim’s whoop of joy woke Ed and Roger, who celebrated with Jim. Then Ed took the flashlight and shined it down to see for himself. This time the tip of the machete glistened in the beam of light. A huge leaf had blown down and covered most of the machete. Disappointment clouded Jim’s face.
While they waited for Nate and Pete to arrive, the men ate breakfast and held a prayer meeting. Then Jim decided it was time to catch some fish for lunch. He stripped to the waist, found his fishing pole, and waded into the river. Every so often he would continue his one-sided conversation with the Aucas. Just as he was reeling in a good-sized catfish, he heard the familiar buzz of the Piper Cruiser’s engine. Shortly, Nate and Pete were on the ground telling them more hopeful news.
Nate had seen footprints on a small beach upriver! The Aucas must be nearby after all. The group ate lunch with one eye on the jungle. No one knew how old the tracks were, but if they were recent, the Aucas could burst into view at any moment. Still, no visitors appeared during lunch, and Jim was beginning to find the waiting much harder than he’d anticipated. He felt like a coiled spring just waiting to be let go.
After lunch, Jim and Pete set off upriver to investigate the footprints more thoroughly. They stopped frequently to study the many tracks from tapirs, birds, alligators, and pumas that crisscrossed the sand, a clear reminder that the jungle belonged more to the animals than to anyone else.
“Hey Jim, over here,” called Pete.
Jim came running. Sure enough, Pete had found human footprints. The prints seemed to have been made by an adult, a child, and a toddler. To Jim and Pete’s dismay, the footprints had deep cracks running through them. Neither Jim nor Pete knew as much as the Quichua Indians knew about reading footprints, but they had learned that deep cracks meant that the prints were old, perhaps as much as a week. It seemed unlikely that the footprints belonged to potential visitors to their campsite. Besides, it was highly doubtful that anyone coming to meet the missionaries would bring a toddler.
Dispirited, Jim and Pete waded back downstream to tell the others the disappointing news.
When Jim and Pete arrived back at camp, they found Nate, Ed, and Roger swimming. Underwater the men were at least able to get some relief from the thousands of flying insects that swarmed around the camp.
The rest of Thursday passed much the same as Wednesday. For the third night, Nate and Pete flew back to Arajuno, and after dinner, Jim, Ed, and Roger climbed up to their tree house without any sign of the Aucas.
As Jim drifted off to sleep, he prayed that the following day would bring an opportunity to finally meet the mysterious tribe face-to-face.
Chapter 15
Visitors at Last
Friday, January 6: The day started ordinarily enough. Nate and Pete flew in around midmorning. By the time they arrived, the three other men had taken up their usual positions. Ed was upstream a little from Palm Beach, Roger was in the middle, and Jim was a little downstream. Each man took turns yelling Auca phrases into the vast greenery.
Jim was in the midst of yelling “Bito weka pomopa” when a male voice rang across the water and said in Auca, “We have come.”
Someone had answered from the jungle!
Jim watched transfixed as the leaves rustled and three naked figures emerged from the tangled jungle. The first to step into the open was a man. Jim guessed he was about twenty years old. The man was quickly followed by a slightly older woman and then a teenage girl. The two groups stared at each other across the Curaray River. For a moment, there was total silence, and then the realization of what was happening sank in. In unison, Jim, Ed, and Roger yelled across the river to their guests, “Poinani!” (you’re here), the Auca way of welcoming one another.
The Auca man, probably thinking the missionaries spoke fluent Auca, began a long speech. As he spoke, he kept pushing the teenage girl toward the men. It was obvious to Jim that the man was trying to offer her as some kind of gift or exchange.
Finally, the man stopped talking, and it seemed to Jim the next move belonged to the missionaries. If they didn’t do something, the three Aucas might slip back into the jungle.
