At Tarawa last week TIME Correspondent Robert Sherrod came upon a story oj incredible human endurance, the saga of a Gilbert Islands native who sailed 2,000 miles across the lonesome stretches of the South Pacific in a canoe. Nabetari's feat, unequaled in the lore of oceanic survival, has been officially confirmed. The story that follows is a simple English version prepared for translation into Gilbertese, which has only a 400-word vocabulary:
In April; 1944, there was very little food left on Banaba (Ocean Island). The Japanese made the natives work hard, and did not give them enough food or money. So some natives decided to sail to Tarawa (240 miles away).
They sailed away from Banaba in the middle of the night. But the winds were bad, and next morning they could still see the island. Luckily the Japanese did not see them. On the second night there was a storm, and the biggest canoe, which had three natives in it, was blown away and they never saw it again. The winds were bad and they could not get to Tarawa. Instead they were blown westward toward the Solomon Islands.
Nabetari and his friend sailed on alone for many days and nights. The days became weeks and the weeks became months, and still there was no sign of land. All this time Nabetari kept alive by catching fish.* When there was no rain he drank shark's blood. His friend had his arm bitten off when he was trying to catch a shark. Afterwards the friend died.
Nabetari drifted on alone. He was very weak from hunger and thirst and exhaustion. The sail was blown away in a storm, and he did not know where he was going. He thought he was going to die.
But still the canoe was carried along by the winds and current. And then one day Nabetari was blown onto the shore of a strange island called Ninigo, about 140 miles north of New Guinea and 1,800 miles away from Banaba. It was then November, so Nabetari had been at sea in his canoe for seven months without seeing land. Perhaps nobody in the world has been at sea so long in a canoe before, or traveled so far.
He was very weak and hungry, and nearly dead, but the natives of Ninigo looked after him until an Australian district officer came and took him to a hospital on a big island called Manus. Afterwards, Nabetari came to Tarawa by airplane.
Nabetari is quite well now, and he has gone back to Banaba as a laborer. But his wonderful voyage in the canoe will become part of Gilbertese history.
*The South Sea native's method of catching fish without equipment requires tremendous agility: one hand is dangled in the water, and when the shark or other fish makes a pass, the native grabs it with the other hand.