We clung to a battered little boat: alone on a wide, wide sea.
We were so low in the water that each rolling swell cut off our view of the skyline. We were a tiny speck in the sea, in the vast, pitiless ocean. For a moment the awareness of the forces arrayed against us would be almost overwhelming. Then hope and confidence would rise again as our boat rose to a wave and tossed aside the crest in a sparkling shower like the play of colours at the foot of a waterfall.
I often wondered what it was the albatrosses looking down at us from the sky saw with their hard, bright eyes. They seemed to have a quite impersonal interest in our struggle to keep afloat amid the battering seas. Penny, Ibrahim, Song, Miguel, Mole, Dee, Anastasia, Bill, Penguin, the two of us, and Old Gudge: twelve animals in a battered little boat, lost in the wild desolation of the sea.
The eighth, ninth, and tenth days of the voyage had few events worthy of note. The wind blew hard during those days, and the strain of navigating the boat was unceasing, but we always made some advance. There were no bergs on our horizon, and we knew we were finally clear of the icefields. Each day brought its little round of troubles, but also compensation in the form of food and growing hope. Some of the others were beginning to doubt it, but I knew we were going to succeed.
The sun rarely shone. The glass of the compass got broken one night, but I mended it with tape from the medicine chest. My most vivid memory from those days at sea is of Old Gudge singing at the tiller. He always sang while he was steering, and nobody ever discovered what the song was. It was as monotonous as the chanting of a Laudanese monk at their prayers—yet somehow it was cheerful.
On the tenth night Miguel couldn’t straighten his body after his spell at the tiller. He was totally cramped, and we had to drag him beneath the decking and massage him before he could unbend himself and get into a sleeping bag. A hard north-westerly gale came up on the eleventh day and shifted to the south-west in the late afternoon. The sky was overcast and occasional snow-squalls added to the discomfort produced by a tremendous cross-sea—the worst we’d experienced.
At midnight I was at the tiller and suddenly noticed a line of clear sky between the south and south-west. I called out to the others that the sky was clearing, and then a moment later realised that what I’d seen was not a rift in the clouds but the white crest of an enormous wave. In all my experience of the ocean in all its moods I have never encountered a wave so gigantic. It was a mighty upheaval of the ocean, a dragon quite apart from the big white-capped seas that had been our enemies for many days. I shouted, “Hold on! It’s got us!” Then came a moment of suspense that seemed drawn out into hours. White surged the foam of the breaking sea around us. We felt our boat lifted and flung forward like a cork in breaking surf. We were in a seething chaos of tortured water; but somehow the boat lived through it, half-full of water, sagging to the dead weight and shuddering under the blow. We baled with the energy of animals fighting for life, flinging the water over the sides with every receptacle that came to our hands, and after ten minutes of uncertainty we felt the boat renew her life beneath us. She floated again and ceased to lurch drunkenly as though dazed by the attack of the sea. I hope I never again encounter such a wave.
The conditions in the boat, uncomfortable before, had been made worse by the deluge of water. All our gear was thoroughly wet again. Our cooking stove had been floating about in the bottom of the boat, and portions of our last hoosh seemed to have permeated everything. Not until 3am, when we were all chilled almost to the limit of endurance, did we manage to get the stove alight and make ourselves hot drinks. Bill was suffering particularly, but he showed true grit. In the past week he’d ceased being an active member of the crew, and I couldn’t really understand it. Physically he was the strongest in the boat. Bill was a young man, he’d served on Laudanese trawlers, and he should’ve been able to bear hardships better than Anastasia, who, though not so strong, was always happy. I did my best to cheer him up, but he didn’t want to talk.
The weather was better on the following day, and we got a glimpse of the sun. Miguel’s observation showed we were no more than a hundred miles from the north-west corner of East Seiru. Two more days with a favourable wind and we would sight the promised land. I really hoped there wouldn’t be any delay, as our supply of water was running very low. The hot drink at night kept us going, but Gudge decided the daily allowance of water had to be cut to half a pint each. The lumps of ice we’d taken aboard were long gone. Thirst took hold of us. Lack of water is always the worst thing an animal can be condemned to endure, and the saltwater in our clothing and the salt spray lashing our faces made our thirst grow into a burning pain. That day and the following day passed in a kind of nightmare. Our mouths were dry and our tongues were swollen. The wind was still strong and the heavy sea forced us to navigate carefully, but any thought of danger was buried beneath the awareness of our raging thirst. The bright moments were those when we each received our one mug of hot milk during the long, bitter watches of the night. Things were bad for us, but the end was coming.
The morning broke thick and stormy, with squalls from the north-west. We searched the waters ahead for a sign of land, and though we could see no more than what we’d seen for many days, we were cheered by a sense that our goal was near at hand. About ten o’clock that morning we passed a little bit of kelp. An hour later we saw two shags sitting on a big mass of kelp, and knew then that we must be within ten or fifteen miles of the shore. We gazed ahead with increasing eagerness, and around midday, through a rift in the clouds, Ibrahim caught a glimpse of the black cliffs of East Seiru, fourteen days after our departure from the Pegasus. It was a great moment. Thirst-ridden, chilled, and weak as we were, happiness irradiated us. The job was nearly done.
We stood in towards the shore to look for a landing place, and presently we could see the green tussock-grass on the ledges above the surf-beaten rocks. Ahead of us and to the south, blind rollers showed the presence of uncharted reefs along the coast. Here and there the hungry rocks were close to the surface, and over them the great waves broke, swirling viciously and spouting thirty and forty feet into the air. The rocky coast appeared to descend sheer to the sea. Our need of water and rest was desperate, but attempting a landing would have been suicidal. Night was drawing near, and the weather indications were… well, not favourable. There was nothing for it but to haul off till the following morning, so we stood away on the starboard tack until we’d made what appeared to be a safe offing. Then we hove to in the high westerly swell.
The hours passed slowly as we waited the dawn, which would herald, we dearly hoped, the last stage of our journey. Our thirst was a torment and we could scarcely touch our food; the cold seemed to strike right through our weakened bodies. At 5am the wind shifted to the north-west and quickly increased to one of the worst hurricanes any of us had ever experienced. A great cross-sea was running and the wind simply shrieked as it tore the tops off the waves and converted the whole seascape into a haze of driving spray. Down into valleys, up to tossing heights, straining until her seams opened, swung our little boat, brave still but labouring heavily. We knew the wind and set of the sea was driving us ashore, but we could do nothing. The dawn showed us a storm-torn ocean, and the morning passed without bringing us a sight of the land; but at 1pm, through a rift in the flying mists, we got a glimpse of the huge crags of the island and realised our position was desperate. We were on a dead lee shore, and could gauge our approach to the unseen cliffs by the roar of the breakers against the sheer walls of rock. Gudge ordered the double-reefed mainsail to be set in the hope we might claw off, increasing the strain upon the boat. The Timothy Obi was bumping heavily, and water poured in everywhere. Our thirst forgotten, we baled unceasingly.
Dimly in the twilight, we could see a snow-capped mountain looming above us. The chance of surviving the night, with the driving gale and the implacable sea forcing us onto the lee shore, seemed small. I think most of us had a feeling the end was near. Just after 6pm, in the dark, as the boat was in the yeasty backwash from the seas flung from this iron-bound coast, then, just when things looked their worst, they changed for the best. In all my adventures I have often marvelled at the thin line that divides success from failure and the sudden turn from disaster to safety. The wind abruptly shifted, and we were free once more to make an offing. Almost as soon as the gale eased, the pin locking the mast to the thwart fell out. It must’ve been on the point of doing so throughout the hurricane, and if it had gone nothing would’ve saved us; the mast would’ve snapped like a carrot. Our backstays had carried away once before when iced up and were not too strongly fastened now. We were thankful indeed for the fortune that had held the pin in its place throughout the hurricane.
We stood offshore again, tired almost to the point of apathy. Our water had long been finished. The last was about a pint of hairy liquid, which we strained through a bit of gauze from the medicine chest. The pangs of thirst attacked us with redoubled intensity, and I felt we must make a landing on the following day at almost any hazard—and I think Gudge felt the same. The night wore on. We were very tired. We longed for day. When at last the dawn came there was practically no wind, but a high cross-sea was running. We made slow progress towards the shore. About 8am the wind backed to the north-west and threatened another blow. We had sighted in the meantime a big indentation and Gudge decided that we must land there. We set the bows of the boat towards the bay and ran before the freshening gale. Soon we had angry reefs on either side. Great glaciers came down to the sea and offered no landing place. The sea spouted on the reefs and thundered against the shore. About noon we sighted a line of jagged reef, like blackened teeth, that seemed to bar the entrance to the bay. Inside, comparatively smooth water stretched eight or nine miles to the head of the bay. A gap in the reef appeared, and we made for it. But the fates had another rebuff for us. The wind shifted and blew from the east right out of the bay. We could see the way through the reef, but we could not approach it directly. That afternoon we bore up, tacking five times in the strong wind. The last tack enabled us to get through, and at last we were in the wide mouth of the bay. Dusk was approaching. A small cove, with a boulder-strewn beach guarded by a reef, made a break in the cliffs on the south side of the bay, and we turned in that direction. Dee stood in the bows directing the steering as we ran through the kelp and made the passage of the reef. The entrance was so narrow that we had to take in the oars, and the swell was piling itself right over the reef into the cove, but in a minute or two we were inside, and in the gathering darkness the Timothy Obi ran in on a swell and touched the beach. I sprang ashore with the short painter and held on when the boat went out with the backward surge. When the Timothy Obi came in again three of the others got ashore, and they held the painter while I climbed some rocks with another line. A slip on the wet rocks twenty feet up nearly closed my part of the story just at the moment we were achieving safety. A jagged piece of rock held me and at the same time bruised me badly. But I made fast the line, and in a few minutes we were all safe on the beach, with the boat floating in the surging water just off the shore.
We heard a gurgling sound that was sweet music to our ears, and peering round found a stream of fresh water almost at our feet. A moment later we were down on our knees drinking the pure, ice-cold water in long draughts that put new life into us. It was a splendid moment.
Next episode: The Island