About noon Carlo was busy hauling on ropes which might succeed in bending the basket cabin to a more even keel. Standing on the bridge, I thought to my horror that I could see low green grassland through the binoculars every time we were lifted particularly high on a wave aest. A moment later Carlo was at the masthead with Norman at his heels. They called down that there was an uninhabited green slope running parallel to our own course, six sea miles away, at most, and perhaps even closer. We altered course as much as we possibly could. Soon the grassland disappeared from view. It must have been the low banks surrounding Cape Juby, where the coast swung southward. It must have been the last comer of Africa that we had put behind us, for there was no more land to be seen.
Carlo set about to prepare our first big feast, so Abdullah slaughtered three chickens over the rudder bar. Yuri's hqueur was ready. There was a lot to celebrate. First we would drink a funeral toast to the iroco tree. It was much too brittle for steering oars. Then we would drain a beaker to the papyrus reed. What a phenomenal boatbuilding material! It was now May 31 and the papyrus had been in the water for two weeks without rotting and without disintegrating. On the contrary, it was stronger and more pliant than ever. Not a single reed had been lost. We had been sailing for a week from Safi to Cape Juby, farther than from the Nile estuary to Byblos in the Phoenician kingdom. As far as from Egypt to Turkey. So we had al-
ready proved that the Egyptians could have dehvered their own papyrus wherever they hked on the coast of Asia Minor without the help of foreign wooden ships.
Skol, Norman. Skol, Yuri. Skol, you fellows. Skol to Neptune and to all Abdullah's hippos. Safi sat between us on the chicken coop, drinking from a freshly opened coconut.
Then I heard someone babbling about "white houses" and leaped to my feet to look. Georges was lying on his stomach in the cabin opening, pointing inland to where we had seen the low banks disappearing. They had reappeared, this time rows of small white houses. A typical North African Arab village. To the right of all the houses lay a picturesque old fort. Here it was. Cape Juby, which we were sure we had already passed. We had been celebrating while in the greatest danger. We were gliding past the treacherous spit of land that had haunted our thoughts for a whole week and had claimed so many wrecks over the centuries. For a week we had been struggling to steer away from land, and here we were, passing on the current within gunshot of Cape Juby.
The white houses sank into the sea as quickly as they had appeared. We were drifting fast. Good-by, Africa. Good-by, Old World. We have no rudder. We don't need one on this voyage.
A big gull came out and landed on the upright papyrus bundle in the bows. It was chased off by the duck, which was taking an airing outside the chicken coop. The gull took off. Soon afterward we were surrounded by a whole flock of screaming sea birds, while the chickens cackled in their cage, which served as our dining table.
"I know what that first gull flew off to tell the others," said Carlo. "It said it had found a floating bird's nest off Cape Juby."
Chapter Nine
IN THE CLUTCHES OF THE SEA
1 HE Canary Islands were behind us. In eight days we had sailed the same distance as across the North Sea from Norway to England. A vessel that does not lose its battle with the seas on such a long voyage is usually considered a "seagoing" watercraft. Despite broken rudder-oars and yard, despite the maltreatment of inexperienced, non-Egyptian landlubbers, and despite storm and waves, Rd was as buoyant as ever. The whole cargo still lay safely out of reach of the ocean. We sailed on in high seas that had little in common with the serene waters of the Nile.
We had passed the Canary Islands in a drizzle without catching sight of land. Now that the sky arched blue over our heads we could see the flat, low carpet of cloud, lying along the African Gold Coast, which marked the position of the continent to port. The position of the Canary Islands off the starboard quarter was clearly marked by the invisible volcanic cone of Teide on Tenerife, twelve thousand feet high, which sent passing humidity up into cooler altitudes where it condensed into a succession of little puffs of clouds which the wind carried out over the sea like the ribbon of smoke from a big steamer.
Abdullah, who knew no islands other than the flat ones floating on Lake Chad, was alarmed when he heard that there were islands out
here in the fierce seas, with men Hving on them. He wanted to know if they were black hke himself, or white like us. Santiago, who had lived on the Canary Islands and was also an anthropologist, told us about the mysterious Guanches who were living on these distant islands when the Europeans "discovered" them some generations before they sailed farther and "discovered" America. Some of these original tribes on the Canary Islands were dark and rather short of stature, while others were tall and fair, with blue eyes, blond hair and aquiline noses. A pastel drawing from the Canary Islands in 1590 shows a group of such Guanches with full golden beards, all fair, with long, yellow hair hanging in soft waves down their backs. Santiago could also tell us about a full-blooded, fair-haired Guanche whom he had known personally when he was up at Cambridge. This Guanche was a mummy brought from the Canary Islands. The original population of the Canaries had practiced both mummification and cranial trepanning, just as had been done in ancient Egypt and Peru. The fact that the fair Guanches resembled Vikings rather than the races generally associated with Africa has led to endless speculation about prehistoric Scandinavian colonization, and even to theories that the Canary Islands are the remains of the lost Atlantis. But mummification was never practiced in ancient Europe, and skull trepanning was extremely rare. These and many other cultural features clearly link the Guanches with the ancient cultures of the North African coast. The indigenous population of Morocco, collectively referred to as the Berbers, many of whom the Arabs displaced southward into the Atlas Mountains over a thousand years ago, was just such a mixed race as the Guanches: some short and dark-skinned, others tall, fair, and blond, with blue eyes. Fairly pure descendants of both these Berber types are common in Moroccan villages to this very day.
We looked at the puffs of clouds from the skyscraping but extinct volcanic cone on the Canary Islands. In clear weather the peak itself could be seen from the Moroccan coast. There was no need to go to Scandinavia or dive to the Atlantic sea bed to find the homeland of the Guanches. They could quite simply have originated in the indigenous population of the very nearest continent, who in ancient times had succeeded in crossing the same stretch of sea which we ourselves had now cut across in our reed boat.
The real mystery of the Guanches on the Canary Islands was not so much who they were as how they got there. When the Europeans found them, some generations before Columbus, they owned no boats of any sort: not even a log raft or canoe. And there were large trees growing on the Canary Islands, so they were not short of timber. Both the dark and the fair Guanches were exclusively farmers, who bred sheep. They had managed to bring live sheep with them from Africa to the islands. To leave the African coast with women and live sheep on board, you must also be either a sailor or a fisherman, at all events not just a herdsman. Why had the Guanches then forgotten the boats of their .seafaring forefathers? Could it be because their forefathers knew no boats other than the sail-carrying reed boats, madia, which have survived on the north coast of Morocco to the present day? A boatbuilder who only knew how to build reed ships and had never learned the principle of joining flat planks together to form a hollow, watertight hull, would be left helpless and shipless on the beach when his own reed boat decayed with age and no papyrus or other floating reeds grew on the island where he had landed.
Ra suddenly began to pitch and complain so violently that we had to forget the Guanches and rush to the sail, which was beginning to flap. The wind had not changed, but a series of waves had caught up with us, growing more and more tempestuous, with deeper and deeper troughs into which we sank, and higher and higher crests which threw themselves after us from on high, but never broke over us because our golden paper swan simply raised
her tall tail daintily and let the seas slip under us as quickly as they came. Abdullah had a headache and could not keep his food down. Yuri suspected seasickness, although Abdullah had shown no symptoms until now. He sent Abdullah to bed with dry Egyptian "mummy" biscuits, while Santiago was allowed to come out on deck with the rest of us, for Yuri had now succeeded in healing his skin. Norman was in tremendous form, and we were sitting round the chicken coop, enjoying Carlo's hot risotto with almonds and dried fruit, when someone shouted, "Look up!" Startled, we all looked up, and almost ran for our lives as a gigantic comber came reeling toward us, high above the cabin roof. Then it dwindled into a little drift of foam that trickled, sputtering, under our reed bundles while we stared down into a deep
IN THE CLUTCHES OF THE SEA lOl
wave valley. More waves of the same type followed. When the sea behaves in this way for no apparent reason, it is usually off an estuary, where the waves are forced higher and higher by a strong current. We must have entered an area where the strong ocean current from Portugal had been intensified by compression as it passed the narrow straits between the largest of the Canary Islands. So we traveled still more briskly on our chosen course. This was the Canary Current itself, running toward the Gulf of Mexico.
Up, up, up, and down into the depths. Abdullah was asleep and missed the five great cachalot whales that surged up right alongside the papyrus and sank before Carlo could reach for his camera. Up, and deep, deep, deep down. Then some piece of timber creaked and cracked again. Another of our small rowing oars had been reduced to matchwood, for only a stump of shaft was left hanging outside the papyrus rolls. Even the small oars were beginning to be in short supply. Something had to be done. Should we try to steer in to the Cape Verde Islands and get some stronger wood? A unanimous "No." But we carried with us as cargo a strong square spare mast of Egyptian cenebar wood. So far the masts had not broken; they had even weathered the storm. Therefore, we would probably never need the spare mast, so we bound it instead as reinforcement to the thick, round iroco shaft of the hitherto unbroken spare rudder-oar, which we had been keeping in reserve. The result was a rudder-oar so thick and heavy that all seven of us had to lend a hand in order to lift it when it was ready to be lowered into the waves late at night. There was a full moon and the stars were glittering. Running seas came chasing after us, shimmering, high, fierce and black, but they did not frighten us, for they never got the upper hand with the papyrus. It was only timber which the seas hated and destroyed as quickly as we pushed it over the side. As long as it lay unused on deck the wood remained undamaged, together with 160 fragile ceramic jars and all the rest of the cargo. But now the giant oar had to go out and do battle with the sea.
Santiago and I took our places on the steering bridge, where we held onto the end of the twenty-five-foot-long oar shaft which had to be made fast up at our level. At the same time, down on the papyrus deck, all the others stood hanging onto the long heavy oar blade. This had to be pushed out into the waves and then fastened with its
neck section resting on the port side end of the thick crossbeam that projected for this purpose on either side of the afterdeck.
Sea and papyrus were tossing wildly when the order was given and the giant oar pushed out. A mighty wave rose at once and lifted the blade out of the hands of the five who were trying with every ounce of strength in their bodies to secure the thick ropes which were to hold it in place. On the bridge Santiago and I barely managed to cling to the upper, narrow part of the shaft that was to be bound to the solid guardrail of the bridge. But as the wave hissed beneath us and passed amidships, a gap opened under Ra's stern and the runaway blade of the rudder.-oar slammed down with all its weight against the crossbeam. It was like a colossal sledge hammer whirling down on an anvil. The next wave lifted it again for a second blow; the five men below fought desperately to recapture the rogue hammer with rope loops and bare hands, while Santiago and I were tossed up and down like weightless puppets, unable to do anything but guide the thin end into position every time the oar floated, enabling us to lift its upper end. When the wave troughs allowed the full weight of the oar blade to fall, the two of us on the bridge were flicked into the air, while the five men on deck slung all their ropes round the throat of the blade in unsuccessful attempts to fasten it to the crossbeam before the next wave tore it out of their hands sending the oar up, and us, on the other end of the seesaw, plummeting down again. We came down so hard and fast that our fingers and feet would have been crushed had they been in the way when the heavy oar shaft smashed into the guardrail round which we had to hook our legs. This was the only way in which we could prevent ourselves and the oar from being catapulted overboard. So frenzied were the undisciplined antics of the leaden rudder-oar that we all soon realized we might have to let it go before it hammered the crossbar aft to pieces, and with it all the ropes that held the papyrus together.
But the thought of being reduced to a haystack drifting helplessly sideways to America gave us the extra reserves of strength of wild animals and before we knew what had happened the oar had fallen into a lucky position enabling all seven of us to catch it in the ropes at the same instant. We got the monster tethered to Ra top and bottom with rope cables so thick that the seas could not budge them. This meant that once again we had one of ancient Egypt's two
rudder-oars in position astern. The shaft was shapelessly thick and awkward and rotated badly because it had been sphced to the square reserve mast, but it was so strong that when the waves tried to snap it off the whole papyrus boat would twist before the shaft broke.
Santiago declared that it had been the most harrowing experience of his life. Yuri treated a couple of us for minor finger injuries, but that great hefty rudder-oar kept us on such a steady course that we were able to crawl exhausted to bed and divide comfortable night watches among ourselves. The watch had only to look out for ships that might run us down. The moon, the constellations and for once the constant direction of the straight lines of frothing wavetops showed the night watch that the course was steady. He sat enjoying himself in the shelter of the cabin opening on the lee side and only when the watch changed did we crawl up to the bridge to take a look at the compass. The little man-made compass. But we soon learned that the starry sky above our heads was itself a giant luminous compass with its scintillating disc facing downward. We were heading due west. We did not care much where we were going; in any case it was now away from land.
For three days we sailed with no problems, while we repaired the other rudder-oar with patched-up bits of two different broken shafts. No spikes or nails were used. All the joints were made of rope, otherwise the wood would have splintered at once. The powerful running seas continued, drenching the windward side of Ra so that the papyrus rolls became still wetter, right up to the railing, and weighing that exposed beam deeper and deeper into the water. As long as the seas were running so high we were not going to risk putting out the other repaired rudder-oar, but we kept it ready in case the one strengthened with the spare mast should break, for now and then it bent ominously in its worst encounters with the sea. On the other hand, we did risk setting the full sail, and that went well. The wind was from the north and bitterly cold, although we could still glimpse the low sky ceiling along the coast of the Spanish Sahara. As far as possible we restowed the cargo on the port, or lee side, which was as high above the water as when we set out. Under full sail our heavy, broad reed bundle picked up speed again and moved westward at a steady rate of about sixty nautical miles in twenty-four hours, or 2.5. knots, and we could clearly see our own wake behind us. After
eleven days' sailing we had covered 557 nautical miles as the crow flies, and we had to put our watches back an hour.
For two days ships had been constantly appearing round us. Once we could see three big ocean-travelers at the same time. We must be on the Great Circle route round Africa. The brightest of our kerosene lanterns had to be hung at the mast head to avoid collisions at night. But soon the
sea was empty of human voyagers and only schools of porpoises danced about us, some so near that we could have patted them. One or two lethargic moonfish drifted past, and the first flying fish began to shoot up under our bows. The sky was empty of living things. Only the occasional lost insect blew aboard and a pair of small petrels flew in rapid darts between the wave troughs. This little sea bird sleeps on the water, because it floats over the highest seas as lightly as papyrus. In the last few days masses of small brown beetles had begun to creep out of holes in the papyrus and we only hoped that the sea water would kill off eggs and larvae so that we would not be eaten away from within. The skeptics who had seen the camels trying to eat the side of our boat had prophesied that the reed might well be fodder for hungry marine creatures. Up to now neither whale nor fish had tried to feed off our floating sheaf, but we were not at all happy about these emerging swarms of beetles.
Sun and moon rolled westward in turn to show us the way. The lonely night watches gave us in full measure that timeless perception of eternity that I had experienced on Kon-Tiki. Starry sky and night-black water. The immutable constellations sparkled above us, and just as brightly beneath us the shining phosphorescence glittered: the living plankton glowed like sparks of neon on the soft dark carpet on which we were floating. With the sparkling plankton beneath we often seemed to be riding under the night sky on a billowing mirror; or perhaps the sea was crystal clear and bottomless, so that we could see right through it to a myriad of stars on the other side of the universe. The only thing that was firm and close in these omnipresent stellar heavens was the supple bundle of golden reeds we rode on and the big, square sail that stood like a shadow against the stars, broader above, by the yard-arm, than across the bottom, near the deck. This ancient Egyptian outline of the trapezoid mainsail in the night was enough in itself to turn the calendar back thousands of years. Silhouettes of sails
The Ra Expeditions Page 23