Abdullah of the desert, standing v^dth gleaming eyes on the bridge at my side, now also grasped the long, thin horizontal rod. Four hands made steering easier still, and down on the deck the others scurried about, organized by Norman, hauling on ropes that set the mainsail in the position where it could best catch the changing wind. Our first hesitant steps were being followed by excited journalists and experienced old salts on board the chugging vessels that circled about us, and everyone seemed as relieved as we were to find that the reed boat really could be navigated. The northwesterly was blowing us straight toward land, but we managed to beat almost 90° up into the vidnd so that we took it on the starboard beam and traveled southwest, parallel to the land. The combers were rolling steadily and strongly here beyond the open coast where Cape Badusa gave no lee and the fishing smacks, crowded for the occasion v^dth more or less seaworthy passengers, began to turn back. One after another they blew their horns and waved good-by. The last I saw was my wife, Yvonne, who was trying, seasick as she was, to regain her sea legs long enough to wave both arms at once. The helicopter disappeared and the airplane made its last farewell pass just over our heads.
Then we were alone v^dth the sea. Seven men, a monkey gamboling gleefully in the stays, and a wooden cage full of cackling fowl and a single duck. It was suddenly so strange and quiet, mth. only the sea swelling and frothing round our peaceful Noah's ark.
As soon as Norman had managed to hoist the big sail and see to
it that the sheets and tacks were secure, he came stumbhng aft along the papyrus deck and confided to me that he was now feehng really ill. He was white-faced and red-eyed. Yuri wobbled over on unsteady legs and confirmed to our general consternation that Norman's temperature was 102°. Influenza. The sea wind was flinging itself at us in colder and colder gusts, and our Russian doctor ordered our American navigator to bed immediately in his sleeping bag inside the wickerwork cabin. With that our only sailor was temporarily out of action.
The onshore wind strengthened and the sea began to pile up in foaming breakers. When the largest waves came surging toward us Ra simply lifted one side and amiably let them pass under the rolls of reed. But now and then they smashed so vigorously against the oar blades that both shafts bent visibly and I had to roar at the powerful Abdullah to slacken his iron grip and yield a little to the pressure so that the oars would not snap.
Everything was going well and we were in high spirits—even the unfortunate patient, who lay bemoaning his uselessness. Carlo had quickly revealed himself as the vessel's supreme knot expert, quite used to both sleeping and eating suspended on a rope. Now he enthusiastically served hot coffee and the cold chicken legs we had brought with us and informed me gleefully that life at sea was just like life on the mountaintops: the same fellowship with nature, the same challenging duel with the elements, the same joie de vivre and necessity for quick solutions to unexpected problems.
We held our course steadily across the wind at a speed of about three knots, and the coast did not seem to be coming any nearer. It was three-fifteen in the afternoon and I felt that everything was going so well that Abdullah and I could be relieved by the two men on the next watch. Carlo and the judo champion Georges took over, fresh and vigorous, and Abdullah crawled into the cabin for a well-earned rest while I picked my way forward along the papyrus rolls to take a look at the foredeck, which was so stacked with jars, goatskins and baskets of vegetables that all further passage forward was barred for the time being, unless one balanced on the outermost round reed bulwark. Just forward of the wind-filled sail Santiago sat with a broad smile on his face, leaning against the chicken coop and enjoying the view of the distant coast. Stiff after nearly seven hours at
the rudder-oar, I dropped down beside him and relaxed for the first time in many hectic weeks. There we both sat and reveled in the papyrus boat's superb ability to ride out all the waves that lifted and flung themselves against us on the starboard beam without disturbing our trim, without even giving us a harmless drenching. I stretched out and was enjoying the glow of happiness pervading my whole weary body when I was suddenly jolted out of my blissful state by an appeal from three panic-stricken voices:
"Thor! Thor!"
It was barely five minutes since I had been standing on the bridge. I sprang up and grasped the edge of the suddenly flapping sail in order not to lose my foothold on the reeds. Hanging on to it, I clambered around it over the water and made my way toward the stern with a thousand fearful misgivings buzzing in my head Yuri came wobbling toward me like a drunken tightrope walker, so over-vnfought that he could only speak Russian and gesticulate toward the stern where the two men on the bridge were leaning forward, shouting to me in helpless desperation. So everyone was still on board. As long as we could manage to stay on board we would be all right. Georges waved his arms and Carlo yelled in Italian that the rudder-oars were broken. Both of them! One look was enough to reveal the extent of the damage. Both oar shafts had snapped at the throat, just above the shoulders of the blade, and the two big, yellow-brown blades had come to the surface and were being towed behind like surfboards. Iroco could not possibly be the robust wood we had been told it was. Fortunately we had tied a rope to each blade in the Egyptian manner, so that the oar itself could not slip away aft, and we hurried to pull in the vital broad wooden blades before the ropes were chafed away. Carlo and Georges were left with two empty shafts projecting into the water aft, vdth no flat surface to control our course, no matter how they twisted the handles.
It was like a punch in the solar plexus.
"Do we have to give up?" Carlo asked in a low voice. The three men aft fixed me with looks of miserable inquiry.
Before there was time to answer, I realized that Rd was coming slowly about. With sail filled again and bow pointing in exactly the right direction the reed boat continued serenely on the very course
we had been trying to hold by force. In that second I understood what had happened and felt a surge of relief. Two perpendicular oars, which were still made fast as a lee-board forward, had truly come into their own now that there was no longer a rudder projecting aft as a keel. The onshore wind was thus pushing the stern sideways to leeward and the bow away from the coast. The whole vessel now obediently turned along a course that automatically pointed away from land.
"Wonderful!" I shouted in English, putting the most obvious joy into my voice in order to instill my own new confidence into these men who, with good cause, were about to abandon all hope of continuing the voyage across the Atlantic.
All the uproar brought the feverish Norman crawling out of the cabin just in time to receive his share of my jubilant shout. Delightedly, he asked what the good news was.
"Wonderful!" I repeated enthusiastically. "Both rudder-oars are broken! So for the rest of the voyage we can use the ancient guara method of the Incas!"
Norman stared blankly at me with bloodshot eyes, uncertain whether to laugh or cry. The others scrutinized me closely, all obviously wondering if I had gone out of my mind as a result of the accident or if I was conversant with some Indian witchcraft they knew nothing about. For, sure enough, Ra was holding her course more steadily than ever, as we could see both from the compass and from the line of the bow in relation to the coast. Carlo considered me for some time. Then the unhappy expression disappeared from his blue eyes and he gradually began to roar v^dth laughter, until his red beard shook. Then Abdullah in the basket cabin woke up too, and soon we were all laughing uproariously with relief and delight at this vessel that steered herself. All we had to do was go and sit on the cargo. Up on the bridge the compass needle was left alone in its well-secured binnacle, pointing due southwest. It was there we wanted to go, and it was there the Ra was obediently heading under full sail in briskly foaming seas, while we all enjoyed life as passengers.
"Now we really are castaways," I admitted to my still slightly bewildered companions, but I hastened to add that for the experiment this was the best thing that could have happen
ed. Something
Just like this might have befallen ancient vessels of this type that sailed past Gibraltar and tried to steer farther along the Moroccan coast. Now we would really see where they would have landed.
Carlo was beaming like the rising sun. He just went on shaking his head and laughing. One only had to let nature have its way, he agreed, and the elements took care of transportation. We had one spare rudder-oar on deck but we did not put it out for fear of breaking it as well before we had seriously begun to cross the great Atlantic Ocean. In any case the iroco wood had proved so brittle and insubstantial that we would have to reinforce the reserve oar before risking it in the waves.
Toward evening Yuri came crawling out of the cabin with an anxious expression.
"Now we have two patients who absolutely must stay in bed," he explained.
For the past two days Santiago had been tormented by a sort of eczema below the belt. The sea air seemed to have made the disease break out in full vigor. His skin had peeled away in several places and he himself feared that he might have caught the dangerous tifia sickness he had seen on the Canary Islands, for which we were now heading. Yuri was afraid Santiago might be right; tina was a dreaded disease, widespread in North Africa.
When night fell we saw the lights of several ships passing us in both directions, some at disturbingly close quarters, and Carlo clambered up and made a little kerosene lantern fast to the swaying masthead, since there was an obvious danger of our haystack being rammed and sunk. The night watches on deck were divided between Italy, Egypt and Norway. Russia had more than enough to do caring for U.S.A. and Mexico, and we preferred to let the carpenter from Chad have his sleep out so that he could attack the problem of repairing the rudder-oars next day. The wind alarmed us by blowing in treacherous gusts toward land from both northwest and west-northwest and I spent most of the night keeping my eye on a lighthouse blinking away on shore, until it, too, disappeared. As long as it was pitch dark I dared not succumb to the temptation to take a nap. With the navigator struggling with waves of fever, our only hope of judging the distance from the land was to gaze into the darkness for a light. Each new ship that appeared ahead or to port
made my heart thump with excitement; was it a hght from the coast, were we drifting toward buildings, or was it simply other seafarers? Not until we saw the red or green running lights could we relax, especially when we had assured ourselves that they would pass out of range of a collision. As long as there was enough water round us we had no serious problems.
WTien day dawned in the east and there was no land in sight we turned a smiling Yuri out into the morning chill, equipped as if for the Antarctic. It was his watch now, but he could do nothing on the steering bridge. So he simply sat down, solid and confident, in the cabin opening and filled his pipe while the rest of us crawled into our warm sleeping bags and let the papyrus bundles sail the sea for themselves. I was not the only one to be dog-tired after twenty-four hours of hectic vigilance. Sleep came before I had time to become really familiar with the highly personal character of the basket cabin and its energetic efforts to outdo the papyrus bundles in peculiar creaks, snorts, cracks and whines.
Our first day on board the Ra was over.
Chapter Eight
DOWN THE AFRICAN COAST TO CAPE JUBY
i COCK crowed. There was a scent of fresh hay. I was on a farm. No, I was certainly not on a farm, because I was being carried helpless on a swaying stretcher. I woke up in a sleeping bag and heard water gurgling beneath me and waves foaming against my ear. Of course: I was on a boat. I half-opened my eyes and saw blue-gray waves through the chinks in the wicker wall before my nose. I was on the Rat The scent of hay came from the mattresses which were filled with freshly dried Moroccan grass.
Cock-a-doodle-doo! I heard it again, now that I was awake, and shot on all fours to the opening in the bamboo wall to look ahead. We must be really close to the coast, about to run aground. Outside I could see nothing but breaking wavetops as far as the eye could reach, but straight ahead the view was blocked by the burgundy-red sail, taut as a drawn bow shooting us over the surface of the sea. Through the rushing of the waves in front of the sail I could hear a furious cackling and again a clear cock crow. Of course, it was our own poultry in the big chicken coop forward. Relieved, I crawled out, clad only in my underpants. Outside the air was icy and Yuri was sitting on the deck of the bridge, wrapped up like an Eskimo, writing notes.
We must be far out at sea by now, because there was a biting north wind with chaotic wave crests leaping ten to twelve feet above
the troughs, and even from the masthead the horizon showed only an undulating transition between sky and sea at all points of the compass.
"Where are we?" asked Yuri.
"Here/' I replied jokingly, and fell into the cabin over the navigator, who lay sprawled as if unconscious, while pills and germs raced round inside him. Only he knew how to use a sextant. I only knew how to drift about on a log raft. Heaven knew where we were. What I needed was a sweater and a windbreaker. A very cheerful whistle cut through the orchestra of creaks and the roar of the waves, from the narrow passage between sail and cabin. Carlo's ruddy, bearded face appeared behind the bamboo wall.
"Come and get it! Hot karkade tea a la Nefertete, and mummy-bread-and-honey Tutankhamen!"
Abdullah woke up in the cabin and shook his African neighbor Georges awake. Ravenously we swarmed round Carlo, who had served breakfast on the lid of the chicken coop, and every man found himself a big jar, a potato sack or a water-filled goatskin to sit on. We would get the deck tidy and make life comfortable gradually, as soon as we had mastered the steering gear.
"Where are we?" asked Georges, echoing Yuri's earlier question.
"Here," Yuri repeated on his way to the patients witii two hot cups of karkade.
"Africa is still there" I added, waving a hand over to port. "Is there anything else you want to know?"
"Yes," said Georges. "How did the old boys in the past find their position at sea without sextant or compass?"
"They could work out east and west by looking at the sun," explained Carlo, "and north and south from the Pole Star and the Southern Cross."
"And they could get the latitude by measuring the angle from the horizon to the Pole Star," I added. "It's always 90° seen from the North Pole and the same star is right down touching the horizon when seen from the Equator. If you are at 60° north, the Pole Star is 60° above the horizon and if you are at 32° it is 32°. If you can see the Pole Star, you can read your latitude directly from it. The Phoenicians, Polynesians and Vikings knew this, but longitude they could only guess roughly by calculating the distance according to
their speed. For ancient navigators, however, the invisible ocean current was always an uncertain factor once they lost sight of land."
In the Egyptian museum back home in Cairo Georges had seen his countrymen's instruments, many thousands of years old, for measuring the angles of the celestial bodies, and he knew how important the sun and the Pole Star were in all their calculations, both astrological and architectural. On Ra, we could always tell direction by the sun, moon, and major constellations. And I decided to put together some sort of home-made device that would show us our latitude without our needing any special skills or modern instruments.
The red Egyptian karkade tasted like hot cherry juice and was both refreshing and stimulating. The Egyptian bread biscuits looked like flattened buns. They were crisp and so tasty that, with or without honey, none of us had eaten better expedition rations. In good heart for a new day, we all went in and exchanged good wishes with the two brave patients in the cabin. Norman was really ill, but both his and Santiago's morale was first class. Santiago's problem was that the degree of humidity on the Ra, barely two hands' breadths above sea level, made all our clothes, sleeping bags and blankets sticky with salt sea air and his skin was being constantly chafed, so that the slightest movement hurt him. Yuri had his hands full with the two of them. Ill
as they were, it must have been something of a strain for them to lie idle and listen to the heart-stopping, deafening bangs, squeals, creaks, and snorts that every single big wave forced out of the papyrus bundles, as they bent, buckled and stretched again in their many ropes. From time to time it sounded as if a hundred thousand Sunday editions of the New York Times were being torn to shreds under the heaving boxes on which Norman was sleeping. Sixteen wooden boxes were stacked on the wickerwork floor of the cabin, two under each man, with straw mattresses on top, and two spare boxes were reserved for Norman's radio and navigating equipment. As the papyrus undulated like a banana peel on the waves, the flexible cabin floor followed the movement, and with it, too, the boxes and straw mattresses, and the vertebrae and back of the man on top. Or the shoulder and hip, depending on whether he chose to he on his back or on his side. It was like sleeping on the back of a live sea serpent.
Out on deck this sinuous action of the Ra was no less obvious. If one stood aft looking along the deck one saw the yellow railing
billowing companionably with the masses of water below, and if one leaned outboard to catch a glimpse of the high, pointed bow forward of the sail, both it and the foredeck could be seen to rise with rhythmic restraint, as if to take a look over the wave crests. In the next breath the bow plunged down so steeply that its tip was barely visible above the chicken coop. The whole of the Ra was like a great, puflBng sea monster, swimming with long undulations and snarling, snorting and bellowing to scare any reefs or obstacles out of its way. The oddest thing was the straddled mast with the big sail. It was like a huge distended dorsal lin, moving back and forth in time v^dth the movement of Rd's big round bundles of muscle. One moment there was a good three feet between the mast and the cabin wall where Carlo had stacked the cooking boxes, the next the distance had closed so much that one had to watch out in order not to get his toes caught under the cabin floor or the foot of the mast. Mast, cabin and steering bridge were all simply lashed to the flexible deck with rope and were therefore allowed considerable play. Had this not been so, we would not have survived even the first day. Had we not followed all the ancient rules, had we hammered the bridge together with nails, made the cabin of rigid planks or secured the mast to the papyrus with steel cable instead of rope, we would have been splintered, sawn and ripped to shreds by the very first seas. It was the suppleness and flexibility of every part which ensured that the sea practically never had a chance to snap the yielding papyrus fibers. All the same, it was quite a shock on the first day when carpenter Abdullah took out his measure and showed us that the elevated deck of the steering bridge periodically gaped a full eight inches from the back wall of the cabin, only to return a moment later and squeeze so tightly against the cabin wall that to have a finger caught between would have been disastrous. It was vital to keep really alert and have an eye on every finger until we were thoroughly at home on board. We looked forward v^ath some anxiety to the probable behavior of our paper boat in a few weeks' time since it was already so elastic and loose-jointed on the second day at sea.
The Ra Expeditions Page 20