like this are not seen against the sky of today. Strange squeaks and snorts from papyrus, wicker, wood and rope did the rest. We were not Hving in the age of the atom bomb and the rocket. We were hving at a time when the earth was still large and flat and full of unknown seas and continents, when time was the common prerogative and no one was short of it.
Stiff but fitter from the struggle that now lay behind us, we changed night watch by the meager light of kerosene lanterns swaying above our undulating vegetable deck. It was unspeakably good to crawl to rest inside a warm sleeping bag. You woke up with such an infernally good appetite. You felt an extraordinary physical well-being. Small pleasures grew big; big problems felt small. The Stone Age life was certainly not to be despised. There was no reason to believe that people who lived before us, using their bodies strenuously, merely endured hardship and never received their share of life's joys.
Over sixty miles* progress westward could be plotted on the chart every day, even though the horizon never changed. It remained the same every day and at all hours; it moved with us keeping us always in its center. But the masses of water also moved invisibly with us. The Canary Current was a fast-moving, salt-water river flowing toward the setting sun, keeping eternal company with the trade wind, westward; air and water and all that floats and blows, westward. Westward with sun and moon.
Norman and I stood together on the bridge, he with a regular sextant, I with a "nosometer." ''Nosometer" was Yuri's approved denomination for a home-made instrument I had carved from two flat pieces of wood, to measure the latitude. They were joined to a little wooden block, cut in a curve so that it fitted against the nose, hence the name. With the block exactly at eye level, the idea was to look along the upper surface of one piece of wood with the left eye and hold it so that it pointed at the horizon. The other flat piece was attached to the same block with a leather hinge and was supposed to be tipped up under the right eye so that it pointed exactly to the Pole Star. The angle between the two pieces could be read directly off a disc placed on edge between them, and this angle represented our latitude without any further calculation. This extremely primitive "nosometer" appealed to everyone's sense
of humor because it was so incredibly simple and quick to use, and moreover seldom resulted in an error of more than one degree. Tliis was accurate enough to enable us to make a chart of our daily position and it was amazingly close to the correct version marked off on another chart by Norman.
We gradually began to learn interesting lessons from our testing of the papyrus boat. The slanted rudder-oars had been first to disclose their secrets, and shown themselves to be a missing link in the evolution of man's earliest steering mechanism from oar to rudder. Next the wash-through bundle body of the raft-ship itself began to expose its true qualities: in addition to an almost unbelievable loading capacity the papyrus reeds possessed both a toughness in rough seas and an enduring buoyancy that was out of all proportion to the preconceived verdict of modern man. Yet it was the rigging that revealed the most significant secrets about this ancient vessel's forgotten history, showing that it had been originally developed as something more than a river craft. In the design we followed, Landstrom had copied all details of mast and rigging from the ancient Egyptian wall paintings. A strong rope ran from the masthead to the bow of the boat. But no corresponding rope ran from masthead to stern, although one rope forward and one aft would have been all that was needed to hold the straddled mast erect on a river boat in calm waters. The architects of the ancient Egyptian ships, however, had, for some unknown reason, carefully avoided running any rope from the masthead all the way aft. Instead, they had secured five of six ropes at different heights on each leg of the straddled mast. These ropes were stretched diagonally down in parallel lines to either side of the vessel a little aft of midships. In this way the whole sternmost part of the boat was free of mast stays and could rise and fall on the waves with no attachment to the mast. No sooner had Ra begun to pitch on high seas than we realized how vital this special system was. The stem hung behind the rest of the boat like a trailer that was allowed to ride up and down freely over all the bumps. Had it also been secured by a stay to the masthead the mast would have broken as the first big ocean rollers surged beneath us. In our dance over the high wave crests the middle section of Ra was rhythmically thrust upward while the full weight of bow and stern sagged simultaneously in
the wave troughs on either side. Had both ends of the hull been attached to the mast, it would have snapped under the burden. As things were, the mast supported the curved bow and held the central part of the soft deck suspended in a straight line. The aft third of the boat was allowed to follow the motion of the sea.
Daily, all praised this ingenious arrangement and special function of the rigging. Norman, the naval expert, immediately realized what this special design indicated. There was no mistake about it. The creators of the old Egyptian rigging had prepared their flexible reed boats for the meeting with ocean swells. After the third day at sea I was already writing in my diary: "This rigging is the result of long experience in navigation on the open sea; it was not born on the calm Nile."
But there was another detail of the special Egyptian ship design that we took a longer time to understand, and for that we were to pay dearly. Every day we looked admiringly at the broad, in-turned curl on the high peaked stern. What purpose did it serve? We placed no reliance on the general conviction that this curl was simply intended to beautify the shape of a river boat. Yet as the days passed we ourselves were as unable as the Egyptologists to detect any practical function for it whatever. We did constantly make sure, however, that the curl was not beginning to straighten out. It remained in perfect shape, so our friends from Chad seemed to have been right in thinking that they had done their work so thoroughly that it would keep its curve without having to be tethered to the deck by rope. The only mistake we were aware of having made so far was in stowing the cargo as in an ordinary sailing boat in those first days. No living man, only our own costly experience after sailing in the trade-wind belt, could have taught us that a papyrus boat should have its heaviest cargo concentrated on the lee side. Now we were already so waterlogged on the windward side that the starboard gunwale was inexorably approaching the water level. This was most conspicuous far back on the starboard quarter, where as time passed we were able to do our washing over the side without hanging head downward with our legs in the air as we would have had to do anywhere else on the boat. Eventually, we did all our washing there, and, in fact, everyone found it extremely handy.
On June 4 the rough seas began to calm down, and next morning we awoke to a new world. It had turned nice and hot, and the sea was a procession of long, shining rollers. We received another quick visit from five big whales: a majestic assembly. Perhaps they were the same ones which had called on us before. They were beautiful and friendly in their own element and we thought v^th horror of the day when mankind would have succeeded in launching its harpoons into the last of the sea's warm-blooded giants, so that in the end only the cold steel hulls of submarines would be frolicking in the ocean depths where the Almighty—and most men—would rather have seen the whale suckling its young.
It was so nice and hot that Georges tore off his clothes and dived overboard with his life line on. He disappeared under the Ra in his diving mask and came up again with a shout of delight which made Yuri and Santiago dive after him, each on his life line, while the rest of us watched and waited our turn. Only Abdullah still sat in the cabin opening watching the calm seas, sulking. Unless the wind came back we would be becalmed here and never get to America. Norman consoled him with an explanation of the invisible ocean current. Perhaps we would not cover over sixty miles a day as we had before, but we would certainly manage thirty.
Soon everybody had been under Rcfs belly except Abdullah. He washed himself in the canvas bucket on board and knelt facing Mecca for lengthy prayers. Perhaps he was praying for a wind.
The exhilarat
ing salt-water bath made everyone feel new-born again. And to see the Ra from below was among the greatest of all thrills. We felt like little pilot fish swimming under the curving belly of a gigantic yellow whale. The sunbeams were reflected like searchlights from the depths and played up against the papyrus bundles over our heads. Sea and cloudless sky together created the bluest blue round the big, shining yellow whale that glowed above us. It was swimming so fast that we were dragged along behind it on our ropes unless we ourselves swam as fast as we could in the same direction. For the first time we were able to see that we had zebra-striped pilot fish faithfully s\dmming in wedge formation in front of the reed prow, just as I had seen them swimming in front of the logs of the Kon-Tiki. We sailed past the stump of a big African tree that lay wallowing heavily in the rollers. A fat little
pampano fish peeped out from under the trunk and waggled its tail as hard as it could to get across to the Ra, where it found one or two smaller relatives already darting to and fro round the big oar blade. Now and then they darted off and took a playful nip at Yuri's white skin.
Here and there on the underside of the papyrus hull, small long-necked barnacles were beginning to grow, waving from their blue-black shells with orange gills like soft ostrich feathers. But there was no sign of seaweed or other plant growth to be seen anywhere. The papyrus reeds, which in the Sahara sand had been grayish-yellow, shrunken and dry, had swollen under the water into smooth, shining stalks of gold and when we pressed them they were no longer brittle and fragile as before, but hard and resilient as automobile tires. Not a single reed had worked loose or broken. The papyrus had now been in the water for three weeks. Instead of dissolving by decomposition after two weeks it had become stronger than ever, and there was no sign of the reeds losing buoyancy. The list to windward was due to water absorbtion above the water line, adding an extra weight of useless cargo.
Overjoyed at what we had seen, we scrambled back onto the papyrus deck and soon afterward chicken feathers were floating in our wake again as Carlo cooked us a banquet.
Emboldened by our observations we now decided to lower the other repaired rudder-oar into the sea as well. We would never know more peaceful seas than these. But this second oar with its spliced double shaft was so long and heavy that darkness had fallen before we managed to maneuver it clear of all the stays and over the cabin roof to windward, where it was to be pushed out. The rollers were peaceful, but still high enough to guarantee problems if we attempted to put the oar out. The blade would begin to jump before we could get it down in the right groove and lash it on. Having learned by experience, we decided to postpone the launching until daylight, so we left the mighty rudder-oar safely lashed with the long shaft in the air and the blade on deck, farthest aft on the windward side.
Next morning the weather was still wonderful and I clambered aft over the jars for a morning bath. There sat the morning watch, Yuri, happily enjoying himself washing his underclothes, but on
board, without the canvas bucket. Every roller sent a little ripple over the papyrus gunwale at our lowest point, starboard aft, where the tremendously heavy unlaunched rudder-oar was now also weighing us down. The rhythmic trickle was just enough to keep a little pool at the deepest point aft.
"This yacht is getting more and more and more practical," observed Yuri happily. "Now we have a washstand with running water."
We hastened to launch the heavy rudder-oar so that the waves would support most of its weight, but our lowest corner continued to let in the ripples and as- long as it simply provided us with a washbasin this was generally popular. We checked the curl on the stern. It was just as before and showed no signs of straightening. For safety's sake Georges swam underneath Ra and discovered for the first time that the bottom was beginning to sag just aft of the basket cabin. But the papyrus bundles were whole and strong and when he squeezed the reeds air bubbled out. The reed was just as buoyant as before. We must simply have been carrying too much weight aft.
Now we moved all the cargo from the afterdeck so that the only weight left behind the cabin was the heavy crossbeam on which the two rudder-oars rested and the steering bridge itself, which stood on poles and sheltered the crate containing the life raft.
The ripples continued to wash in over the starboard quarter. We made another thorough inspection both above and below water. It was obvious that the Ra had preserved her original shape perfectly, from the bows back to the point where the last pair of stays ran dovm from the masthead and were secured to either side of the boat. Aft of this point there was a visible kink where the whole afterpart of Ra began to tilt gently downward.
We began to ponder again. It was the freely trailing aft section of the boat that had taken a downward turn, while everything which was attached to the stays held up by the mast was still as it should be. The bow was as high as ever. Our proud golden swan still stretched her neck; only her tail was beginning to droop. If the mast could only have supported the strain of a stay to hold up the stem as well, this would not have happened. But if we tried to hoist the stern up with such a rope, the mast would break when
the first roller passed under us. The stem must be allowed to undulate. But it must not be allowed to sag at a permanent angle in this way. We tried to pull it up with ropes stretched diagonally to either side of the cabin. We tried to fasten a thick stretcher from the stern, over the guardrail on the bridge and on across the cabin roof to a pole erected on the foredeck. This was the ancient Egyptian method of lending rigidity to wooden ships, but there was no such horizontal hawser shown on paintings of papyrus boats. And however much we strained and hauled on all these ropes we did not succeed in heaving the afterdeck up again. Carlo tied all sorts of ingenious knots and hauled harder than anyone on wet ropes, until the palms of his hands began to swell up like white macaroni.
The days passed. More water washed in over the stem every day. The fine curl at the upper end of the stern arched as elegantly inward as ever, showing no sign of losing its decorative shape, while its bottom extension slowly gave way beneath it. But the curl was serving no purpose and was beginning to overload the weak afterdeck which supported it. All the storm waves that had washed over the peaked stern had caused it to absorb quantities of sea water above the water line. Since the stem was broad and thick and stood taller than the cabin roof, it must now, in its soaked state, weigh at least a ton. Should we cut it off? That might bring the underlying stem section up again. But it would be like cutting the tail off a swan. We did not have the heart to disfigure our proud craft.
But how, how, how the devil had the creators of this extraordinarily ingenious vessel succeeded in keeping the showy tail in the air without a rope to hold it up? On the contrary, they had used a rope that seemed to tether it down to the deck. The boat-builders from Chad had fortunately dispensed with that. We had not missed it up to now. Or? Or! I threw down the coconut I was scraping out and began to draw frantically. Well, blow me down! I shouted for Norman, Santiago, Yuri, Carlo, the whole crew. I had found the mistake. We had not known how to put the curly tail to its intended use. This, too, was something that only bitter experience could have taught us, because all those who had learned the purpose of the curly tail from its inventors had been in their graves for thousands of years. The peculiar arch over
the afterdeck was not built for beauty. The rope, which everyone thought would serve only to hold the cocked tail in tension, had a completely different function. The arch of the tail stood by itself. The rope was not intended to pull the curved tip dovm, but the afterdeck up. The high, harp-shaped stern was meant to act as a powerful spring, supporting the free-swinging afterdeck while the stays to the masthead supported the rest of the papyrus boat. To enable the papyrus ship to sail the open sea without breaking, its brilliant architects had divided it into two linked components. The forward part was kept up by the straddled mast with its parallel stays; the afterpart -was allowed to move independently, but always returned to its place, thanks to the bowstring attach
ed to the big spring arching above it.
We tied the bowstring in position, but it was too late now. After three weeks the afterdeck had developed a kink, lowering the curved sternpost so much that we would have needed a crane or something to Hft it from above. As things now stood, no rope could correct our situation. We had to suffer because we, like everybody else, had assumed the peculiar arch of the tail to be the ancient boat designers' decorative end, whereas it had been their ingenious means.
Yuri and Norman stood in the pool of water astern, staring at the slowly sinking golden tail. Suddenly they began to sing with one voice:
"We don't want a yellow submarine, a yellow submarine, a yellow sumarine . . ."
Neither did we, so soon all seven of us were standing in the stern, singing Yuri's refrain in chorus. No one took it more seriously than that. Indeed, the rest of the boat was bobbing like a champagne cork, so Yuri and Norman set about washing socks and trying to find a rhyme for "submarine."
To my mind our main problem was not so much how the papyrus reed would ultimately survive its interplay with the sea, but how we seven passengers on board would ultimately survive our interaction with each other. In the basket cabin, which measured eight and one half by twelve feet, there was not even elbow room between us when we lay down, and the papyrus deck was so full of jars and baskets that there was no room to put a foot down. This meant that, outside of our sleeping bags, we lived either on the narrow
papyrus roll in the shelter of the port cabin wall, or up on the little steering bridge which could be spanned with both arms, lengthwise and crosswise. Everyone was within speaking and touching distance of everyone else day and night. We were stuck together like seven-headed Siamese septuplets, with seven mouths speaking seven languages. We were not only black and white, from communist and capitalist countries, we also represented the extremes of educational level and living standards. When I visited the one of our two Africans in his home in Fort Lamy, he was sitting on a fiber mat on the earth floor with no other furnishings than a kerosene lamp that stood in the middle of the mat, while his passport and travel tickets lay on the Hoor in one corner. With the other African, in Cairo, I was ushered in by bowing oriental servants between the pillars of a rich man's home, with massive French furniture, tapestries and antique heirlooms. One crew member could not read or write; another was a university professor. One was an active pacifist; another a naval ofBcer. Abdullah's favorite occupation was listening to his little pocket radio and dispensing news about the fighting between the Israelis and the Egyptians on the Suez Canal, of which he himself had caught a glimpse. His own African government in Fort Lamy supported Israel against Egypt and the other Arab countries, and now they had asked France to drop parachutists to suppress the Arab rising in the desert beyond Bol, where we had met. Abdullah was a fanatical Mohammedan and therefore supported the Arabs. Norman was a Jew. Georges was Egyptian. Their distant relatives were shooting at each other from opposite sides of the Suez Canal, while they themselves lay side by side in a wicker-work cabin, afloat on the Atlantic. Abdullah dispensed news with equal enthusiasm about the war in Vietnam. He was completely bewildered because Yuri and Norman, who were both white, represented two countries which were hostile but wanted peace and therefore helped the yellow-skinned men in Vietnam to kill each other. He wanted Norman and Yuri to agree on an explanation of this anomaly. There was ample fuel on board for a serious conflagration. Our paper boat was loaded with psychological gasoline and the heat generated by friction in the little basket capsule could only be extinguished by the ubiquitous waves.
The Ra Expeditions Page 24