BT No. one
© PAPILLON
(THE BUTTERFLY)
By the ® Wicked Mind’s Eye of Captain don/
An underwater volcano called "Kick ‘em Jenny" is the Caribbean’s newest forming island located a short distance northeast of the island of British Grenada. Kick ‘em Jenny has continued to grow since her eruption in December 1988 slowly moving upwards from the bottom of the ocean towards the surface.
The Caribbean disaster preparedness planners needed to know if and when the volcano might break the surface. Ballistic materials blown into the sky could render enormous dangers to nearby islands, and the entire Caribbean could be jeopardized by a total area seismic sea wave known as a tsunami.
A study was made by small group of French scientists led by renowned volcanist Professor Francois Du Prey who specialized in just such volcanoes as Kick em’ Jenny and was known for daring investigations of many active volcanoes.
A young student of his, a girl called Monique, was just about the death of poor Professor Du Prey. Immense volcanoes had no effect on him. Daring dives to great depths didn’t bother him. However, Monique was just about his undoing. She knew no fear, continually taunting fate and death. Somewhere in the vast upper regions of heaven near where God is said to live, someone surely had to be watching over her.
Du Prey wondered where she had acquired the perpetual energy that drove her like a reactor. Much younger than himself, only 27, she was attractive or more like what the Americans would call cute. "God, she' s a doll," the yanks would say. Her red woolen watch cap was inseparable from the back of her head. Jacques Cousteau had been her role model from the time she began to read. My Lord, she was Jacques, of course, except for his nose and his height. Monique was a small girl with shoulders broader than her tight hips, a flat stomach, and muscles that lived within that diminutive frame like coiled tempered springs.
Du Prey's volcanic team had spent the entire month of February studying, analyzing, and recording as scientists always do, with no change in Kick ‘em Jenny since their arrival. Next would come the marine biologists, and the studies would begin all over again.
Monique’s explorations had taken her many times to great depths in the sea on that growing mound of explosive real estate. It appeared that she did not possess any fear at all. One day during the expedition Monique was aboard the steel hulled diving boat hovering over the crater amidst a mass of gas bubbles boiling up from the crater itself when the ship defied Archimedes principles and literally lost its flotation and sank. Fortunately there were several rubber boats floating nearby that picked up the crew who managed to stay afloat because of their balloon like air collars. As the ship was slowly sinking, Monique swam back to rescue the overwhelmed captain from the pilot house, gave him her own collar, and hauled him to one of the rubber boats. Then, missing her red watch cap, the intrepid girl swam back over the sinking boat and made a free dive down to the boat and recovered her cap from the swirling waters.
Eventually came the end of Du Prey's research, and everyone was packing to return to France. Monique too was packing, but not to return to Paris. She would venture further south, to the realm of the southern continent, to the jungle's edge, to French Guyana where the language would feel more natural than the patois English she had been exposed to over the last month.
The Professor shrugged, paid her a student’s token wage, kissed her on the forehead, adjusted the red watch cap, and watched her board the British aircraft for Trinidad where she would transfer to a small freighter bound for Cayenne, the capital of French Guyana.
Monique was excited and intrigued by the culture gap she had just spanned. She smiled to herself. At least the language is French, although influenced by a sharp African accent. She spent the first few days getting acquainted with the city and listening to the Creole jabber of the street. Watching her coins so as not to be robbed or molested was the furthermost thought from her mind, but not from the minds of the macho's in the cantinas and other dark places. She acquired a room, a clean looking place, in a small rooming house on a main street. Though she knew no fear, she was not stupid enough to make herself available to street thugs.
She came to hear many tales about life in Guyana during earlier years. Stories about the penal colony on Devil’s Island fascinated her to the point that she had to visit that place. The infamous prison had been closed after the war in 1945, but on a guided tourist visit to the island, while looking at the ruins of the cells and dungeons, she came to learn the story of Papillon. The Butterfly.
With her smiles and persistent coaxing, the tour guide finally led her to the cliff from which Papillon leaped on that famous day in 1938 when he had simply jumped off and escaped into the sea. Attracted to all daring things, she became infatuated with the idea of a person doing such a thing and surviving.
The following day she took the tour for a second time, omitting the cells and dungeons part of the tour, to stand again on the cliff. Almost mesmerized, she gazed down at the sea one hundred and twenty feet below her. She watched, as Papillon must have, timing the sea that rolled into the base of the cliff. A miscalculation would crush a person on the exposed rocks below. However, when the sea rolled in, it seemed there might be more than enough depth to absorb a falling body. Maybe if Papillon had been holding a bundle of twigs or something to slow his penetration, and if there were a floating raft or boat just outside the breakers, an escape could have been survivable.
She asked the guard about this man Papillon who was called The Butterfly. How old was he? How big was he? How much did he weigh? Fascinated, she listened.
Before she left that day she found a stone of about four or five pounds and carried it to the edge of the cliff. Watching a wave rush in to bury the rocks with deep water, she then dropped the stone at the instant she thought was the correct moment and watched it fall. It took what seemed forever, then at the exact moment it was to drop into the sea, the wave disappeared and her stone smashed down amongst the rocks.
Visiting time was running out, and she hurried to try it again. The game had become intense. She counted the seconds of the falling stone. One, two, three, and a half, and the stone plunged into the incoming sea. So, she thought, Papillon had engineered this with extreme accuracy, and he had to do it at a time that he would not be detected. During the night of a full moon! The possibility of discovery on the cliff was risky, but the light of the moon was needed to see the incoming sea. Her chest swelled at the thought of such a man, and she became entranced at the thought that she might try to reenact his escape. The thought of the 220 mile voyage in an open raft to later fetch the beach of the Dutch island of Curaçao didn’t seem anywhere near as harrowing as the leap from the cliff.
That night Monique didn’t sleep well as she repeatedly envisioned Papillon in the moon light experimenting with his stones. Then as if yanked up by a wire, fully awake she sat up in bed. The curtains were drawn, and she looked to the window as if for the first time seeing the rising of the moon. It would be full in three days.
The following day with what scant money she had, Monique arranged to purchase a small aluminum lifeboat of sorts that she thought sea worthy, groceries, and water jugs. There would be no ores or sail. The craft was to be totally dependent on the elements, the wind, and the currents to move it onward. March was the same month The Butterfly had made his escape in 1938, and she knew that in the sea nothing ever changes.
Two days later she joined the ranks of tourists again visiting Devil’s Island. Again she ventured to the cliff, gathered a stone, dropped it over the edge, and counted the rate of its fall. Confident she had the timing correct, she returned to a previously selected place in the ruins of an old near by house, one closest to the cliff. She hid in a small space designed to hold firewood next to an old earthen oven. She knew there would be an alarm at her disappearance and an intensive search if they did not find her.
The thought amused her as she snuggled deeper into the wood box to contemplate what she was about to do. Nothing had changed. She had been doing this sort of thing all of her life, and she smiled to herself thinking of what Professor Du Prey might say.
She had no concern about the negligible tide in this part of the world, so that left only the timing of the jump to be right. The fishermen had promised to have the boat anchored and waiting for her some time after midnight. The boat could not be near during the search that evening, so it had to be delivered sometime after midnight. Monique set the wristwatch alarm, pulled down her watch cap over her face and waited. Monique was that sort. The more dangerous the venture, the less concerned she appeared to be.
Some years ago, while still a second year student at the Academy Francoise Lycee, Monique had on a dare leaped from the arch of the Eiffel tower on a bungi jump. "It was thrilling," she was quoted to say from her jail cell in Paris. The event gave Monique two great firsts, the jump and the jail.
The wrist watch alarm went off at exactly two hours after midnight. She awoke, not startled, and listened into the night, wondering if the guide service had left a watchman, but that would have cost hard francs, and the French were not spendthrifts. She dragged out her small nap sack, opened it, removing a soft drink bottle which she opened. Taking a mouthful, she swished it about in her dry mouth, slung the sack over her shoulder, and moved toward the edge of the cliff. She knew exactly where to stand. From her sack she pulled out an air collar, placed it over her head, secured it tightly, and fully inflated it.
Finishing the drink, she flung the bottle far out to sea and searched for the lifeboat. "Ha! There it is!" The raft was placed where promised and secured as agreed upon.
She picked up the several stones she had placed previously that afternoon, cradled the rocks in her arms, and walked to the edge of the cliff. As she neared the edge, she stopped and started shuffling her feet slowly forward, her toes seeking the sharp edge of the drop off.
"Ah! There you are!" Her toes in her soft soled slippers curled over the edge. She looked down, focusing on the phosphorous glow of the in-rushing waves. She felt herself at that moment poised again on the railing of the Eiffel tower, the bungi cords secured tightly around her ankles. "Wow!" She watched, she counted, and she dropped a stone, not being able to see it fall, but she did observe the splash on the top of the wave as it frothed up the wall of the cliff.
She watched, she counted, then threw the last stone, which precisely mimicked the first. She took a breath, pulled off her red watch cap, shoved it into her sack, and carefully zipped it closed. Then she watched, counted, and… just stepped off the cliff as simply as if it were a sidewalk curb in the center of Paris.
fin
don/ |
By Captain Don (Experienced BonaireTalker - Post #282) on Saturday, June 14, 2008 - 2:10 pm: 
