Nate kissed Marj good-bye and gave Kathy, Stevie, and Phil each a special hug before setting out. His first stop was Arajuno to pick up Ed McCully. As before, Nate had removed the door from the right side of the Piper Cruiser to make it easier for Ed to lower the bucket to the ground. From Arajuno they headed out over Auca territory.
It took Nate only a few minutes to spot the settlement he and Ed had discovered from the air. Excitement built in the two men as Nate circled above it. Ed leaned from the plane, eager for a first glimpse of a real Auca. Spread beneath the plane was a large house made with poles and thatched with leaves. The rectangular house with rounded ends was surrounded by several tiny houses, barely big enough for a single person to stand in. The main building stood beside a stream, and the men could make out a track from the building to a small sandbar in the stream. They figured that was where the Aucas probably washed themselves and drew water. Since the sandbar was clear of any trees or long grass, Nate decided it would be a great spot to drop the bucket with the kettle in it. That way, even if no one was around to watch the drop, someone would be sure to eventually find the bucket containing the gift on the sandbar.
Nate slowed the Piper Cruiser to fifty miles per hour and started flying in tight circles while Ed uncoiled the rope and slowly lowered the bucket two thousand feet to the sandbar below. “Yes!” he yelled enthusiastically, as the bucket landed on the sandbar about a yard from the water’s edge. The broom handle slipped from the rope loops as it was supposed to, leaving the bucket firmly on the ground. Ed hauled in the rope, and all the way back to Arajuno he and Nate talked about who might find the gift and what they might think of it.
Meanwhile, Jim Elliot made the four-hour trip to Hacienda Ila. Dayuma was happy to help him with a few simple words and phrases, and she didn’t even ask why he wanted them. Rachel Saint was away in Quito at a conference, much to Jim’s relief; he didn’t want to have to explain to her why he wanted to learn the words and phrases from Dayuma.
As he traveled home to Shandia, Jim pulled the index cards he’d written the words and phrases on from his pocket and began to memorize them. “Bito weka pomopa,” he repeated over and over. The phrase meant, “I want to come near you.” Then he started on “Abomiro imi?” or, “What is your name?” And then there was the word for outsider, cowodi.
Back at Shandia, Jim copied out the words several times, and over the next week he gave a copy of them to each member of Operation Auca. The men all practiced the phrases and tried to imagine how and when they would get to speak them to real live Aucas in the jungle.
A week after the first gift drop, Nate and Ed returned for another drop. They thought it would be good if the Aucas got used to their coming back on a regular basis. For this drop they decided to leave a machete, which was well wrapped in canvas, since they didn’t want it to swing around and hit anyone on the ground. That was, if anyone was there. All they had seen so far were Auca houses, but no live Aucas themselves.
Nate banked the plane and circled low over the house near the sandbar where they had left the kettle. The kettle was gone, as were the bucket and broom handle. Next Nate maneuvered the Piper Cruiser upstream to circle the next Auca house. They didn’t want the Aucas to think they were playing favorites with one family. A canoe was resting on the bank of the stream near this house, a sure sign that someone was inside. Ed leaned as far as he could from the open doorway of the plane. All of a sudden, he yelled, “I see someone!”
As he banked around, Nate glanced through the open right side of the plane, and sure enough, two thousand feet below them was a young man running in a circle and waving his arms towards the sky. Within a minute, two other men had joined him. What could be better than dropping the bucket right where the men were. Nate banked the plane into a tighter circle over the spot and told Ed to lower the bucket, which drifted lazily from the end of the rope towards the ground. At the last minute, a wind gust blew the bucket off course, and the bucket landed in the water a few feet from shore. One of the Auca men dived right in after it. He waded over to the bucket, grabbed the machete, and began waving it wildly over his head. Ed could make out a huge grin on his face.
Over the next several weeks, Nate and Ed made a bucket drop every Thursday. After the third week, they no longer needed the broom handle system because the Aucas had become daring enough to reach for the bucket and remove the gifts inside. Nate rigged up a battery-powered loudspeaker in the plane, and sometimes Jim Elliot came along with them and spoke his Auca phrases as the bucket was lowered. The Aucas who heard his voice gazed up with wondering looks on their faces. No doubt they were trying to work out who the person above them was with the booming voice and strange accent speaking their language. They were puzzled but not frightened. They even sent gifts up to them: a headdress made from parrot feathers, a smoked monkey’s tail, even a live parrot complete with half a banana to keep it occupied as it swung to and fro in the bucket on its way up to the plane.
On the eighth gift drop trip, Ed leaned out the door opening and yelled, “Bito weka pomopa” (I want to come near you). The four Auca warriors who heard him danced and raised their hands as if to say “Welcome.” Nate and Ed were thrilled. The Aucas had all but invited them to visit!
This called for another Operation Auca “committee” meeting, at which Jim Elliot suggested that the time was right to land the plane somewhere near the village and wait for the Aucas to come to them. But they would need to act quickly because the rainy season was nearly upon them. He thought the next full moon, the night of January 3, 1956, would be a good time to do it, because the moonlight would give them lots of light in the jungle and make it more difficult for Auca warriors to ambush them in the dark. Nate just shook his head. Jim made it sound so easy, but in all his years flying in the Oriente, Nate had never come across a natural landing site in the jungle. He thought they’d probably have to trek in to make contact with the Aucas, and it would be better to wait until after the rainy season to do that.
They talked about the situation some more and finally it was agreed that Nate should make some more passes over Auca territory to look for possible landing sites. Nate knew it would be a miracle if he found a suitable site.
Chapter 13
Operation Auca
Nate skimmed the Piper Cruiser as close to the surface of the Curaray River as he dared. The muddy river curled below him like a sleeping snake among towering trees. Nate and Ed had just finished their ninth gift drop to the Auca village on the next river over south from the Curaray. The weather was clear and there was no wind, so instead of flying directly back to Arajuno, Nate decided to follow the twisting, brown Curaray River in the hope of finding a suitable landing spot not too far from the Auca settlement.
About four miles by air from the Auca village, or a six-hour slog by foot along a jungle trail, Nate spotted a possible landing place. It was a white sand beach perched between the jungle and the slow-moving river. He circled the plane back for a better look. It seemed promising, straight and wide, but was it long enough for a landing? Thankfully, Nate had planned ahead. He asked Ed McCully to reach into the back of the plane and grab the cardboard carton there. As Ed pulled the box into the front and lifted the lid, a puzzled look spread across his face. The box was filled with neatly stacked small paper bags, each filled with something heavy and tied shut.
Nate grinned. He loved to keep his friends guessing. Finally he explained the bags to Ed. The paper bags were filled with flour, and if they were dropped on the ground from a height, they would burst, and the flour would spill out. If Nate flew the plane at a constant speed and Ed dropped the bags at set intervals, say every two seconds, they could count how many bags fell onto the beach. Then, when he flew back to the Shell Mera airstrip and dropped the same number of bags at the same time intervals and airspeed, he could measure the distance between the first and last flour “bombs” and determine how long the beach actually was.
Ed nodded as Nate banked the Piper around for another pass over the beach. Nate slowed the plane’s speed to a steady sixty miles per hour. Ed looked at the second hand on his watch. He let go of the first flour bomb bag, then a second, and a third. He had dropped five bags by the time the beach disappeared beneath them. They headed back to Shell Mera, and once again, Nate steadied the plane’s speed at sixty miles per hour. Ed kept his eyes on his watch as he dropped five more flour bomb bags two seconds apart. Nate landed the plane, and he and Ed measured the distance between the first and last bags—210 yards. The beach on the Curaray River was 210 yards long. Nate whistled. It was going to be a tight squeeze landing and taking off in that distance, but it could be done. Nate would have to pay close attention to the weight in the plane though. Every extra pound of weight meant the Piper Cruiser would need another foot of landing and take-off room.
Tight as it might be to land and take off there, Nate was sure it was the best landing strip they would find. They named the strip “Palm Beach” because of the palm trees that surrounded it. Now that they had a place to land, they could make firm plans for their trip into Auca territory.
The men decided they would land, set up camp on the beach, and stay there for three days and nights. Jim Elliot volunteered to draw up plans for a simple tree house where three men could sleep in safety high above the jungle floor. He would precut all the timber so it could be put together quickly once they got to Palm Beach. Jim had some leftover scraps of wood from the new house he’d just built at Shandia. Nate would use the sling system to fly in some sheets of aluminum for a roof.
Nate was concerned about leaving the plane on the beach overnight. For one thing, if it rained heavily and the river flooded, the beach could easily be covered with water in twenty minutes, making it impossible to take off. Or worse, the plane could be washed away. It would also be impossible to protect the plane during the night. While the men were sleeping in the tree house, the Aucas could destroy the plane and leave the missionaries with no way to escape. Everyone agreed it would be best if Nate flew out each night and returned the following morning. That way he could also bring in fresh supplies.
Planning for the final stage of Operation Auca was well under way when the sun rose over the jungle on the Oriente on Christmas morning, 1955. The Saint kids were ready for action. Kathy poked Phil until he woke up, and then she hoisted him out of his crib. He had no idea what Christmas was, or even that it would be his first birthday in a few days, but Steve and Kathy needed as much help as they could to get their parents out of bed. The three of them hurried into their parents’ bedroom to remind them there were presents to open. Nate smiled as three little blond heads appeared over the edge of the bed. He could remember as well as anyone the childhood lure of unopened presents. He and Marj got up, and while Nate dressed Phil, Marj made a large pan of oatmeal. With the noise in the kitchen, the rest of the household awoke.
Five other children were staying in Shell Merita. They were older children who had come down from Quito to spend Christmas with a family rather than in their dorms at school. Their own parents were missionaries who, for one reason or another, couldn’t be with them for Christmas. Nate and Marj welcomed them to their home with as much love as if they were their own children. Soon the pan of oatmeal had been devoured, and it was time to open presents.
