Chapter 21

When Jeremy returned to camp, he found Nicole and Sara and Sunni working together in the shade, on what he wasn’t sure. He went back to work on his sextant. It was mostly done. He made a crude compass with a bit of line and two sticks, the kind you draw circles with as opposed to the kind that’s magnetic.

Jeremy looked up and saw Naomi join the other three girls. He wondered briefly whether Shannon, Anabell, and Tiffany had found yet another way to torture Anabell. He marked out degrees on the sextant. It was tedious work, but he managed it fairly efficiently and got it rigged pretty well by lunchtime.

After lunch, the four women came up to him. “We want to show you what we made,” Sunni said proudly.

“Okay,” Jeremy said, leaning again a tree. Sunni turned and peeled off Sara’s shirt and skirt, beneath it she was wearing what could only be described as a mail shirt and loin cloth using interwoven pieces of grass and what looked like bits of wood. It covered Sara modestly, but it appeared that it was almost skin tight, supporting her breasts as well as cinching her waist.

“Very interesting.”

“Well, we had so many of these empty coconuts, and you remember those old pictures where the island girls wear coconut tops? I broke one into pieces and started making this shirt and skirt. This is just a first try. The other ones will be better, I promise.

“Basically, I used water to make the shell kinda soft, and then I flattened them under some rocks for a few hours. Then I used a rock to rub two holes in them and strung them on a rope like you taught us. What do you think? Naomi and Sara and Nicole helped a lot too, but it’s good, right?”

“I’m impressed Sunni. We can see if we can’t get a little salt too, and try to tan some goat skins and you can use that as a material too.

“Like leather?”

“A lot like leather, except it will have fur on one side and the other will be like leather, not supple like you’re used to, but we can see. We will have to be a bit cautious on our use of the goats. It’s a good source of food for us and I don’t want to run out of them because we went crazy making clothes with their skins.”

“Why?”

“Because Sunni,” Nicole said “while there are goats on the island we don’t want to kill off all of them if we can keep them breeding and cull out a few every once in a while. We can manage them better that way, and we won’t go hungry.”

“Oh okay, well then um, how do we, you know, tan the leather?” Sunni asked.

“I’ll work on that,” Jeremy said. “It will probably be a long process.”

“Not like we have a shortage of time,” Sara grinned. “Do you like it?”

“It looks good on you, Sara.” Jeremy smiled and Sara blushed as the girls went back to their little work area.

“Whatcha got there,” Naomi asked as the other girls retreated.

“A sextant. I think it should give us our latitude anyway or a rough guess at what it is,”

“That’s what I thought it was. Can I give it a go?” Naomi asked.

“You know how to use one of these?”

“I sure do. Had an old school type teach me how when I was learning to fly,” Naomi smiled.

“You know how to fly?”

“Yeah, didn’t you know all stewardesses do?” she joked.

“Um.”

“I’m kidding, Jeremy. No one would hire a black woman pilot, so I fly in my free time and serve drinks to pay the bills.”

“Ah,” Jeremy said, handing over the crude device. Naomi took it and shot the sun, then counted the marks.

“Degrees or?” she asked.

“I think it should be half-degrees. Anyway, it’s not terribly accurate, but it’s better than nothing.” Jeremy said.

“Well then, looks like 29 degrees,” Naomi commented, handing the sextant back to Jeremy.

“Okay, well, that’s not too bad,” Jeremy commented.

“Its very tropical, that’s for sure,” Naomi grinned.

“Indeed,” Jeremy smiled back.

“We need to make a salt pot.”

“You know how to do this, I assume?” Naomi said, looking at him quizzically.

“I know the theory.”

“Well then, I guess that’s all we need. What do we do first?”

“We need a container, so I guess I’ll see what I can figure out.