The Ra Expeditions

by Thor Heyerdahl

  Daylight found Ra more loose-Jointed than ever before. In the Egyptian style, each leg of the straddled masts had simply been planted in a shallow groove in a wooden block lying like a shoe on top of the papyrus base. A short, naturally knee-shaped section of a tree was fixed with its horizontal part tied to the wooden shoe and its vertical end to the mast leg. These rope lashings round the foot pieces were now so slack that the rocking mast feet threatened to jump out of their slots. At roof height the mast was swaying as much as two feet toward and away from the cabin wall. The thirty-foot high masthead was swinging about so violently that Carlo only just managed to hang on through the wild antics up at the top. All the stays that ran like parallel harpstrings from each side of the Ra to the masthead were also slack, so slack at one moment that they hung in loops, giving the masts no support, while at the next they all tautened together with a jerk so violent that we were afraid the mast would break, or the papyrus bundles would be torn to shreds, for all the stays were fastened to a single thick rope cable tied right round the edge of the Ra. We hammered wooden wedges round the mast foot and tautened the boisterous shrouds one by one, at the risk of the first taut stays being jerked away while the rest were still slack. At last we had the dancing mast captive again.

  The sea was full of life today. Flying fish rained about us. Another moonfish drifted by, large and round and inert. Something invisible engulfed the hook on Georges' fixed fishing rod and made off with the whole line. Before he could pull it in, a hulking great fish swallowed the first, so Georges' catch was a severed fishhead. Meanwhile Ra was skimming over the wave ridges at record speed and we were all disappointed when Norman announced a moderate day's run after taking our noon position. We were being pulled south by a lateral current. In the last twenty-four hours the starboard corner of Ra's stern had sunk so far that the lower crossbeam of the steering gear was always dipping into the waves and acting as a brake. The water was permanently ankle-deep aft, and wavetops were constantly

  washing right up to the crate containing the hfe raft under the bridge. The crate shifted every time and chafed at the ropes holding the papyrus together.

  The sea was equally agitated and unpredictable next day and an increasingly strong north wind brought the cold back with it. While Yuri was trying to adjust the ropes on the steering spar splashing in the waves, he caught sight of a blue bubble that he grasped and tried to pull off the end of the spar. Yuri had never seen a Portuguese man-of-war and had no idea what was happening when in the next moment he was entangled in the long, stinging tentacles of one of the Atlantic's smallest but most lethal monsters. That wily bubble is not a single animal but a whole colony of minute creatures that live in an extremely complicated symbiosis in which each and every one has its special properties and tasks. The largest creature, which constitutes the bubble itself, has no purpose other than to keep the extraordinary community afloat and sailing. It tows a bundle of filaments several yards long, made up of all the bubble's littie fellow citizens. Some are hunters that provide food for the rest of the colony, others are responsible for reproduction, while yet others are soldiers that literally shoot caustic acid into victims and enemies of the bubble colony. Very large Portuguese men-of-war have paralyzed and killed human beings.

  The violent burning pain spread through Yuri's skin into his nervous system, paralyzed the muscles of his right hand and began to affect his heart. It took our unfortunate ship's doctor a good four hours draining the medicine chest for anything from ointments to nerve and heart pills before he allayed his own pain and got the movement back into his right hand.

  On June 13 an icy north-northeast wind was howling through the stays and whining in the wickerwork cabin walls, while the seas rose higher and boiled more savagely than anything we had seen up to then. There were howls, creaks and groans from every section of the heaving vessel, and breakers running across each other and over each other's backs crashed aboard aft. Some of the wave peaks sent tons of water at a time surging over us and we could actually see the stem section sinking gradually deeper under the pressure of the heaviest cascades. There was nothing we could do but wait until the masses of water had rushed out again on both sides of Ra, leaving

  US with our once popular bathing pool now sunk knee-deep in water. Abdullah was in high spirits and assured us that this misfortune aft was unimportant. We would not sink as long as the ropes held. Blue with cold, but humming, he ambled about in oilskins with his transistor to his ear. He had tuned in to a French-speaking Arab station that was reporting on the revolution in Chad, where the Mohammedans currently had the upper hand.

  A splendid blue-green dolphin played round the papyrus bundles most of the day, but after breaking Georges fishing line, it would not allow itself to be either hooked again or speared. Carlo was going to prepare dried fish for lunch when a wet fish crashed in full flight onto the back of his neck while others thudded against the cabin wall around him. Eleven flying fish lay floundering on the deck ready for the pan.

  From June 14 to 17 the sea was constantly seething and inexplicably high waves crossed from two or three directions at once, an interplay of currents and countercurrents from unseen coasts. Georges had pains in the back and had to be helped to bed. Abdullah was sick, but cured himself with a concoction of twelve boiled garlic cloves. The bridge began to creak and sway and had to be hastily reinforced with fresh ropes and stays. Yuri had the bright idea of moving Sinbad the duck aft where she swam about happily in the inboard pool. Safi was so cross at this that she got diarrhea, but kept to the outer edge of the papyrus rolls as always on such occasions. She had become incredibly clean. Suddenly a school of tuna fish, about six feet long, shot out of the water, frightening Safi into hysterics; she hid in a basket and no one could coax her out of it until Georges put her in her special sleeping box inside the cabin after dusk.

  Once again the masts were jumping in their flat wooden shoes, while Ra v^ithed about in the wildest gymnastics to follow the chaotic dance of the waves. She was making a new, hoarse sound we had not heard before—like a mighty wind roaring to and fro as ten thousand bundled reeds bent in the water. The floor, walls and ceihng of the basket hut were also twisting and heaving with a new sound. The boxes beneath us jammed askew, so that the lids stuck, and we could lie, sit or stand on nothing that did not twist us with it. The stays were holding the masts in ominous tension, but we dared not

  slacken or tauten them in these powerful seas. It was bitterly cold, but Georges, Yuri and Norman all took a swim under the reed bundles for safety's sake. They came up and assured us with chattering teeth that the papyrus below us was in perfect condition, but now the sagging stern section was now exerting a severe braking action. Something had to be done.

  Then the starboard rudder-oar tore itself loose from the steering bar and danced madly in its efforts to wrench itself free of the bridge as well. There was a fierce battle in the deluges of water before we captured it and bound it in place with our thickest rope. There were fish everywhere- and Georges managed to spear a dolphin in the chaos. Something must be done to check the water, which by now was breaking in with insane fury aft. How long would the stern section continue to support these tremendous periodic loads? A wooden boat would have broken in two.

  We had to try to stem the flood of water. We collected all the spare papyrus we had and Abdullah, assisted by Santiago and Carlo, stood thigh-deep in water aft, tying on papyrus rolls as a bulwark against the seas. The water rose to their chests when the worst seas sent their crests surging on board. Abdullah was washed overboard several times, but was saved by his life line and only laughed as he scrambled on board again. After all, he was wearing his magic belt. When the work was finished he gave thanks to Allah.

  What I had feared happened. The higher we built the dam, the more water found room on board the tail, because the papyrus bottom had swollen tight and held the water in. Since there was no free outlet, the stern section was being pressed still lower by the enormous weight of wa
ter. So we tried to remove Abdullah's bulwark again. But as the original railing had now been pushed farther under water than before, so many tons of sea water surged in that the box containing the hfe raft began to float between the poles of the bridge. We could only tie the reed bulwark hastily on again. We even took a knife and cut away the ropes of two small papyrus boats we had on board for an emergency and used all this liberated papyrus to raise Abdullah's reed gunwales. Finally we undid our Egyptian life belts, made according to the paintings in the ancient tombs. When at last we had not a single papyrus reed left to fall back on, the sides were higher, and the pool aft therefore even deeper than before. It now

  filled the whole afterdeck, but there was much less force in the water cascading in over the papyrus barrier. Midships and foredeck were dry as before.

  On June 17 the storm reached its height, the wind turned westward and the high seas became more regular. We found flying fish everywhere; there was even a little one floating in the coffeepot. We must have returned to the main current, for, thanks to a momentary gap in the heavy cloud ceiling, Norman was able to report that we had sailed 80 nautical miles, or 148 kilometers in the last twenty-four hours, even with a broad, sagging stern slowing us down like a lobster tail. That amounted to something, even on a world map.

  During the worst of the storm we were about five hundred nautical miles off the West African coast, heading straight for the Cape Verde Islands west of Dakar. Both the north wind and the current were carrying us straight toward this large group of islands that might loom up around us at any moment, and this gave us an uncomfortable feeling of insecurity as we drifted and struggled in the storm with an intractable stern section behaving like a yellow submarine. Late one evening when the thought of the islands out in the darkness was haunting us badly, Norman took out the U.S. sailing directions for the area we were in and read aloud to us by the light of the kerosene lantern. It swung from the heaving ceiling, making our shadows dance about us, distorted and elastic, in time to Ra's deafening spectral orchestra.

  We learned that cloudbanks and haze could lie so thickly round the mountainous Cape Verde Islands that the white surf against the rocky coast often became visible before land itself had been sighted, although the highest peaks reached nine thousand feet. In addition there were powerful currents near the islands, so treacherous that they had caused innumerable shipwrecks. The heavy rollers round the island group were most active during the full moon and the new moon. "Great caution is therefore necessary when navigating in the vicinity of these islands," Norman read aloud in conclusion. It happened to be a new moon.

  *Tou heard what he said, boys: great caution," remarked Yuri sardonically, pulling his sleeping bag up and his leather cap down until they met at his nose.

  There was not much we could do. The moon was new. The night

  was as pitch black as the day was misty gray. For the last four days the islands had lain straight ahead in our line of drift and now they must be somewhere just in front of us. They could appear that night or next morning if we were caught by a strong southerly crosscurrent. Rain was falling from low clouds and neither sextant nor "noso-meter" could tell us where we were.

  June 18 was a dramatic day. The Cape Verde Islands had to be somewhere just ahead or off the port bow, swathed and hidden in fog and rain clouds. Just two weeks before we had passed the Canary Islands at close range without seeing them through the cloudbanks. But today more serious problems were brewing than the ones lurking beyond our decks. We had been together in tolerance on the papyrus bundles for twenty-five days and the reed had been floating in sea water for at least a month. Despite all our adversities the Ra had sailed well over a thousand miles round the whole northwest coast of Africa. Now the voyage across the Atlantic from continent to continent was to begin. If the Egyptians had sailed as far from the mouth of the Nile as we had now sailed from Safi harbor, they would have reached far up the Don in Russia, or else passed through the Strait of Gibraltar into the Atlantic. The Mediterranean was obviously not big enough to exhaust the range of a papyrus boat.

  But damn that stern section! If only the ancient scribes had left directions, we would have understood the principles of the papyrus boat in advance; then we could have looked forward to the trans-Atlantic crossing without problems. Now the waves were not slipping under us and lifting us up any more. They were creeping over our stem and pushing us down. The night before a big sea had lunged right over the cabin wall and I was awakened by a bucket of cold water in my face. Salt water was running down inside my sleeping bag.

  "We are starting with a handicap," I admitted to the others.

  It was then that Santiago threw a match into the powder keg.

  "Let's cut up the life raft," he said suddenly.

  "Of course," I said. "Now we have broken up the two little papyrus life boats, so just let's cut up the rubber life raft as well."

  "I mean it," said Santiago. "We must try to raise the stern. We have no papyrus left, but the life raft is made of foam rubber. We

  can cut it in strips and use it in the same way as the Egyptians would have used spare papyrus."

  "He's crazy," came mutters in several languages.

  But Santiago was obdurate and refused to give in.

  "You brought a life raft that only takes six men and there are seven of us," he challenged me. "You explicitly said you would never get into it yourself."

  "The next size up was a twelve-man raft," I explained. "That was too big. But it's true that I shall stay on our nice big bale of reeds if you six decide to move to that little rubber thing there."

  "Me too," said Abdullah. "Let's cut it up. Its wooden crate just keeps gnawing our ropes away."

  "No," I said. "The rubber raft is meant to give everyone a feeling of security. This is nothing but a scientific experiment. Without the rubber raft no one would be able to leave the papyrus boat if he wanted to."

  "Come on, where's the saw? What's the good of something we will never use?" Santiago insisted provocatively.

  The rest of the crew were indignant, but everyone went aft to have a look, at least, at the heavy packing crate that Abdullah wanted to get rid of.

  There was no ship behind the back wall of the cabin any more. The only thing that projected out of the water there was the curved tailpiece which rose in lonely majesty, separated from the rest of Ra by the rippling waves that swept in from one side of the boat and out at the other. The crate with the life raft was sloshing about in green water between the legs of the bridge.

  Abdullah seized the ax that hung ready, but Yuri protested furiously. It was absolutely crazy! We must think of the people at home. Norman agreed with Yuri: our families would despair if we had no lifeboat. George took the ax from Abdullah. Carlo began to waver. He wanted me to make the decision. For the first time on the voyage a serious breach was opening. On a vital decision opinions were sharply opposed and both parties grew steadily more bitter in their uncompromising demands.

  We all went and sat together on the foredeck on our goatskin containers, sacks and jars, while Carlo served salt meat, onion ome-

  lette and Moroccan sello. But this was the calm before the storm. The dry reeds in the papyrus deck at our feet bent and straightened like strips of paper, keeping time with the seas that were still high and choppy. The reed was stronger under water where it was wet. With her two spliced rudder-oars lashed fast and her lobster tail hanging down and acting as a brake, Ra steered herself before the wind. Yuri, Norman and Georges reflected the murky thunder clouds hanging over us on all sides, as they grimly cracked almonds in their fists, prepared to defend their position. It was essential to lance the boil.

  "Many things can happen," I said, trying to keep my voice cheerful. "Let's think about all the situations where the life raft might be useful. Fm most scared of someone falling overboard."

  "I'm most scared of being rammed by a ship," interjected Norman, "and then of fire on board."

  "The bows are floating splen
didly, but not the stern," said Yuri. "No one knows if the reeds will still be afloat in another month's time."

  "True enough," I admitted. "And it's still theoretically possible that the skeptics are right and the papyrus will gradually rot and disintegrate in the sea water."

  "What I'm scared of/' came quietly from Georges, who was never afraid of anything, "is a hurricane."

  No one could think of more than these six good reasons for keeping the life raft in reserve. But six reasons were enough. We therefore agreed to find out what each man would do in each of these six eventualities. We counted on our fingers.

  First possibility: man overboard. Everyone felt safe because we were all roped up like mountaineers. We also had a life belt trailing on a long rope astern. If a lonely night wanderer stumbled over the jars and fell overboard, launching the life raft would not help him. (For one thing, the raft was intended for an extreme emergency and could not be launched without our cutting down the entire bridge. Furthermore, it was deep and rectangular, with two inflatable tents that opened both below and above deck, no matter which side came uppermost. It was thus not intended for fast sailing and would be left far behind the Ra even if we lowered the sail. Accordingly, the

  life raft would be of little avail if a man fell overboard. No argument about that one.

  Second possibility: collision. Everyone agreed that if Ra were split in two we would not have time to launch the raft, and if it was already afloat we would still all prefer to clamber back on the much larger remaining portions of the Ra.

  Third possibility: fire. In the Sahara, Ra would have burned like tissue paper, but here it would be difficult to set fire to her. In any case we had a fire extinguisher. Smoking was only allowed on the lee side, where sparks blew overboard, and the windward side was so soaked with water that it would float, fire or no fire elsewhere on board. No one would prefer the little life raft to the large, wet, unburned portion of Ra.