Baker started to pick up the microphone, and then abruptly realizing that it was dead, he shouted back from the projection port.
"I think it is. Let me look for a chart."
Kazu waited patiently while we searched, placing the room on a hilltop to give us a steadier platform. We all began a mad scramble in the mass of debris. Kazu removed the roof to give more light, but it soon became clear that there wasn't much hope. All that we could find were thousands of slides of the Chinese classics. At last we gave up. When we told Kazu this, he looked across the water and wrinkled his brow. We could sense the reason for his anxiety, for the distant shore could hardly be less than seventy miles away. Mentally I reduced this to terms I could understand. Seven tenths of a mile, of which an unknown percentage might be swimming.
Kazu's voice rumbled down to us, "I would prefer to wade. I cannot swim well." He peered down into our roofless box anxiously.
"If we only had one chart," began Baker, when Walt, who had been rummaging near the projector window, called to us.
"Take a look over there, just around the point."
We saw the prow of a ship. There was a moment of terror lest it be an Indonesian coast patrol, and then we saw that it was just a small island steamer of a thousand tons or so, chugging along less than two miles offshore.
I THINK that the idea hit us all at the same instant. Baker, as spokesman, called to Kazu. The giant, for the first time, grinned at us. Then he picked up our box and waded into the ocean.
I don't think the people in the little ship even saw us until we were practically upon them, because of the mist and sunset glare. What they thought I can only imagine, for the water was little more than knee deep and Kazu towered fully four hundred feet above it. Then a hand as big as the foredeck reached down and gently stopped them by the simple expedient of forming a V between thumb and fingers into which the prow pushed. I heard the sound of bells and saw tiny figures scurrying about on the deck. On the opposite side a number of white specks appeared in the water as crewmen dove overboard. Our box was now lowered until its door was next to the bridge. We leaped aboard, under cover of a great hand which obligingly plucked away the near wall of the pilot house. We entered the house just as the captain beat a precipitate retreat out the other side, and after a moment in the chartroom we found what we wanted. While Martin stood watch at the far door, we took advantage of the electric lights to examine the chart of the east coast of Celebes. That island, we found, was only sixty miles away and the deepest sounding was less than six hundred feet. Kazu could wade the whole distance.