sturdy, the whale-belly shape even more stylish than on Ra I. Look there, a hulking great grouper, nearly five feet long, fat and heavy. We could not be far from the Canary Islands; these fish do not venture far out to sea. The grouper came right over and poked at Georges' diving mask. An eight-inch, zebra-striped pilot fish came gliding like a little zeppelin toward my fingers. Santiago was right, the fish swam only when they were on the surface. They appeared not to swim, but to fly, free as birds, when seen from down in their own watery element. Two extraordinary creatures resembling footless stockings undulated past my nose. And there, a round disc resembling a rubbery jellyfish. With Portuguese men-of-war fresh in our memories we kept clear of this sort of unknown invertebrates.
"Shark, big shark!"
It was a long way off. Dorsal and tail fins were cutting through the water an uncanny distance apart, so it was really big. It was not bothering about the Ra. It continued unperturbed on its course at right angles to our own.
Everyone was in good humor after seeing how perfect Ra II looked under water. The tail was as strong and elegant as ever. No list to windward. Not one reed loose. Yuri and Georges even thought the papyrus bundles had lifted themselves out of the water a little in front. Perhaps the tropical sun was steaming off the moisture absorbed above water line during the first days' rolling. The day before, they had thought that not more than two or three men should be before the masts at one time, to prevent the bow from sinking. Now they agreed to our making seats out of the few materials we had left, to provide us with a cozy dining room on the foredeck.
For a week we lay idly yawing to the southeast, with feeble puffs of wind from east and west which did not even lift yard and sail free of the mainmast and with the whole sea drifting slowly under us. The sea was moving. Only we could not see it, because sea and boat were drifting at the same rate. Then the air began to follow suit, slowly at first. We began to nourish hopes of getting enough wind to enable us to steer. When we were bathing or diving to play with the tame fish, we always had a long rope looped round our bodies, so that we would be towed along if the boat began to move in the variable breezes. It would be too bad to lose the boat.
On the last day of calm, Norman, Santiago and Sinbad the duck were all swimming on their ropes when I dived out with mine and swam underneath the boat before coming up to the rippling surface on the other side and lying on my back to drink in the sun. A perfect holiday idyll. Unusual to see the underside of a duck swimming, nothing but a fat belly flanked by paddling feet. I turned over to enjoy the sight of the extraordinary vessel beside us. Noah's ark. Straw and yellow bamboo. Monkey in the stays, dove on the roof, and two bare feet sticking out of the cabin doorway. What a strange sight. The sail was bellying slightly. Small ripples round the rudder-oars, now we were really beginning to move. Strange that I could not feel the tug of the rope. What an astonishingly long rope I had. The rope! Where was it? Nowhere. Gone. I had swum out of the loop and was lying sunning myself alone on the Atlantic while the Ra sailed on. I felt a stab of panic—I was being left behind. Relax, the Ra was still quite close. I was far from being a swimming champion like Georges or Norman, but this I could manage easily. Made it. Jammed my fingers into the tight, thin rope round the smooth papyrus and hoisted myself on board. How safe those sturdy reed bundles felt. Said nothing, but rigged up the bathing net on the lee quarter, a sack-shaped net that I had designed so that we could scramble down into it and bathe overboard as we sailed. We did not know what effect soapsuds would have on the papyrus if we took a shower on board; the soap would remain between the reeds, for there was no planking here to be scrubbed like an ordinary deck.
We got our wind. With the northeast trade wind blov^dng in on the starboard quarter, we pushed the tillers of both rudder-oars across as far as we could and rushed along with the waves without sighting land in any direction. On May 26 Norman came down from the cabin roof with sextant, pencil and paper and breathed a sigh of relief. We must be past Cape Juby. Hurrah, the coastal cliffs, the Ra's most dangerous enemies, were behind us. Now the sea lay free and open before us once again, and this time we faced it with the Ra's tail still curving skyward and with unbroken oar shafts as thick as telephone poles. Everyone who had seen those exaggeratedly hefty poles before the start had smiled. We could have managed v^th something much slimmer and lighter, they
said; the thin papyrus stems would be torn to pieces a hundred times before such massive logs would snap.
Life was sweeter than we had ever known it on a papyrus deck. From the invisible coasts on both sides of us we had been met by a colorful menagerie which came fluttering wearily out of the sky. One at a time, they had settled on the yardarm, on the cabin roof, on the shaft of the rudder-oar, on the papyrus peaks fore and aft. Carlo's fantasy of living in a floating birds' nest had materialized. There were friends from home, a wild dove, tits, swallows, finches and sparrows, a parrot-colored beauty of a roller with its dazzling blue and green plumage, and a carrier-pigeon with a copper ring on its leg that circled over us, made a half-landing on the mast and sailed down to join the bridge watch under the blue flag of the United Nations. The dove of peace, we all thought. It and the UN flag we were sailing under seemed to belong together. We read "27773-68A-Espana" on the copper ring. We had become a floating zoo. Mute, wriggling fish of many species kept us company below, and on board twittering birds in bright colors sat everywhere, pecking at water bowls and grain originally intended for the poultry. But as we glided steadily further away from the Canary Islands, v^thout attempting to reach land, the rested birds made their adieus one by one, and left. Only the parrot-colored beauty queen could do no more and gradually wasted away. She was an insect-eater and we had not so much as a fly to offer. But the ring-marked dove took a fancy to Sinbad the duck's grain ration. It grew sleekly fat and tame and had apparently made up its mind to come to America vidth us.
As the wind returned, Ra 11 seemed to rise a little in the water. It looked as if the mighty, wind-filled sail were lifting the foredeck into the air. We were sailing in a kite a little too heavy to become air-borne. And when Ra 11 came to life in the fresh breeze she rapidly began to make up for lost time. At a speed of 60, 70, or 80 sea miles, that is 110, 130 even 150 kilometers a day, she carried us on across the open Atlantic.
The days quickly settled into a routine. Everyone was happy. Song and laughter. Nothing to repair. Easy watches. Good food from earthenware jars. No rationing. Four superb cooks. Any Pharaoh would have envied us Georges' spiced Egyptian dishes and no
geisha could have bettered Kei's cooking. Madani's piquant recipe for salt meat in onions and oil a la Berber and Carlo's tireless capacity for producing something good when the others had not volunteered, all helped to make us feel we were speeding over the waves on a first-papyrus-class ticket.
When the evening shadow of the sail fell across the boat, seven sunburned, bearded, cheerful men sat round the empty poultry coop eating, while the eighth man stood on the steering bridge turning the thick rudder-oar with the setting sun for guide. The compass pointed west. The sun spread its very last rays like a peacock's tail over the sea in front of our own golden paper swan as she forged ahead on the very heels of the immortal Ra of past and present. And then the Big Dipper with the Pole Star stepped out on the starboard beam. Good friends. Part of our little world. We knew it all so well from the last time.
A fresh night breeze. On with long trousers and heavy sweaters. Madani in his thick Moroccan caftan with the pointed hood looked like a medieval monk as he kneeled down on the roof, silhouetted against the tropic sky, and bowed his face to the vwckerwork in worship. An unusually pleasant and good-natured traveling companion. He had come in Abdullah's place, to represent the colored men of Africa. He was not quite as raven-black as Abdullah, but he was of the darkest type of Berber. Abdullah was the only man from the Ra I team whom we had unfortunately lost on the starting line in Safi, three days before departure. For a year he had been a voluntary refugee from
Chad, where a bloody conflict was now in progress between his fellow Mohammedan in the north and the Christian Negro government, supported by the French Foreign Legion. Abdullah felt increasingly uneasy, with a wife here and a wife there, and geographical obstacles preventing a normal family life. In one hand a photograph of three charming African children in Chad, in the other a telegram to say that now, just now, his latest, favorite wife had borne him a daughter in Cairo. Who was going to sort out these tangles if Abdullah went to sea again on a papyrus ship? Good-by, Abdullah, we will all miss you. Abdullah was no sooner out of the door than Madani Ait Ouhanni stepped smilingly from behind the reception desk in the hotel where we all lived. Could he come with us? He had been
appointed supervisor by the big phosphate factory in Safi, which had recently taken over the hotel. He v^^as carried off from his hotel by seven guests about to set sail, who wanted a genuine African to replace Abdullah on the voyage.
We had known Madani for three days. None of us had ever seen Kei before. A Swedish friend of mine was going to Tokyo to negotiate an exchange of television programs. I had asked him to recommend a Japanese cameraman with a friendly nature and good health. Soon after, stocky little Kei Ohara tumbled in through the hotel doors in Safi, laden mth camera equipment, and bursting with joie de yivre, music and judo muscles. Experience at sea? One sightseeing trip by water bus in Tokyo Bay. And then he had been on a film assignment on Lake Titicaca and photographed the Indians in reed boats.
"And you, Madani?" asked Norman, rather anxiously.
"I went on a fishing trip off the jetty once, when I first came down to Safi from Marrakesh, but I was seasick and returned to shore."
"Nothing but landlubbers this time too," said Norman, looking at me in mild despair.
"Then they won't load the papyrus boat as sailors would have loaded an ordinary wooden ship," I said, referring to last year's catastrophe. "Safest with those who realize they know nothing about papyrus navigation. A practiced ski jumper is seldom flexible enough to make a good parachutist."
Both the first-trip men suffered the fearful torments of seasickness the first two days, while the slender papyrus boat rolled and pitched like an empty bottle in fierce seas. Then Buddha and Allah seemed to hear their prayers for calm in defiance of all the statistics and the weather chart, and when at last the wind stole up on us again the representatives of Japan and Morocco had slipped quite naturally into the picture. As on Ka I, we shared the same trials and the same blessings. Those who were pale turned brown in the sun. Those who were still browner increased their lead, without anyone thinking about family trees, certificates of baptism, membership cards or passports. There was little room on the foredeck, still less on the afterdeck, and only a strip three feet wide along both sides of the thin cabin walls. The basket cabin consisted of a single
room too low for standing—except on top of its roof—and much too narrow to turn over in bed in a curled-up position without putting a knee in one's neighbor's stomach or an elbow in his eye. We knew each other's swear words, snores, table manners and jokes, even though the shrieks and creaks from mast stays and lashed steering bridge often made it difficult in the darkness to decide who was producing what sounds. Only Santiago and Georges occasionally asked Yuri for sleeping pills. We might have been at a non-stop party, no room for secrets, at all times of day and in every situation we were all there, at the closest possible range. If an American and a Russian seldom get properly acquainted, two of them were getting thoroughly familiar with each other now. If Arabs and Jews had been natural enemies, one of them would have disappeared into the waves behind Ra. If the Almighty did not allow Himself to be worshiped under many names we would have had a religious war on board. We represented a Babel of eight different languages, but English, Italian and French were the ones spoken daily, Arab and Spanish occasionally, Russian, Norwegian and Japanese only in our sleep. We argued, told funny stories and sang in chorus whenever we had leisure, especially after supper, with two or three men sitting at the bottom of the mast ladder and the rest seated round the poultry coop table, because inside the cabin there was always someone wanting to sleep. We discussed politics, and never pulled our punches. For here the arguments for East and West were uncensored; no one was standing by with loaded pistols. Hand harpoons, hatchets and fishhooks were the nearest things to weapons on board. They were used for the common good, for we were all in the same boat. Together, like other people, we mulled over the Palestinian problem, the tribal feuds in Africa, the intervention of the Americans in Vietnam and of the Russians in Czechoslovakia. No one got angry, no one was offended, no one raised his voice. We most often agreed. We discussed religion and no one felt a holy wrath. Copt and Catholic, Protestant and Mohammedan, Buddhist, atheist, free-thinker and half-Christian Jew, there was no space for a greater mixture on our little ark, where the monkey was Noah and we played the animal roles. We had no religious feuds on board. But—we dis-
cussed the ownership of a lost-and-found toothbrush and then we heard yells of rage and angry curses in various tongues. In their inmost hearts human beings are amazingly alike, regardless of geographical distance. A toothbrush held close to your nose is bigger than a cannon a thousand miles off. It is easy to find differences between man and man, but still easier to find the highest common denominator of mankind. Whether we tried to understand one another or not, we were packed close enough together on board our papyrus ark to see each other as slices cut from the same loaf. We rejoiced and were angry over the same things, we helped each other all we could, because we were thus helping ourselves. One steered so that others could sleep, cooked so that others could eat, sewed sails and hauled on ropes so that we would all make good progress. We had to keep each other in top form so that we would all be ready for a major effort whenever it was needed to withstand the threat from outside.
Days and nights passed. Weeks passed. A month passed.
"It's getting quite boring," Carlo complained cheerfully as he picked up his fishing rod. "Not like Ra I, nothing to repair, no breaking timber, no ropes to splice."
He sat down in the bow Vidth his feet overboard and hooked on a little flying fish as bait. Plenty of them came sailing on board. We had pampano among the pilot fish underneath us that were quite good and bit at once when we wanted them to. But the coveted dolphin, or gold mackerel, the raft sailor's surest prey, was a far from frequent visitor this time, and the tuna fish just flipped their tails or shot into the air at a distance without allowing themselves to be tempted onto the hook. One day Georges swam through a seemingly endless shoal of silver cigars: bonitos. Once, close to Africa, a group of big whales passed quickly by; perhaps it was the same family as last time. A flat manta ray, big as the whole bridge of the Ra, shot itself above the waves in a mighty leap and dropped like a pancake with a shattering crash. Busy, resilient porpoises rolled past us, crisscrossing and leaping for joy, and a fat, lazy eel, as long as a man and thick as a thigh, undulated sleepily away in our wake. One afternoon a pink giant of a squid appeared from beneath the Ra and climbed, arm over groping arm.
from papyrus bundles to rudder-oar before it let go, and stretching all ten tentacles above its head, shot backward down into the depths by built-in jet power.
So there was still some life left in the ocean, but there were far more oil lumps than fish. In the first month there were only three days on which Madani did not spot any of the drifting black clots, but then the sea had been too choppy for proper observation. On June 16, one month after the start, the sea was so filthy that it was uncomfortable to wash in it. Big and small lumps, from the size of a potato to a pea or a grain of rice, covered the water. Only in the current between Morocco and the Canary Islands had we seen worse on this voyage, but then there had been a flat calm when it was easy to see anything afloat. On May 21 I had noted in the logbook:
"The pollution is shocking. Madani is fishing up tarlike lumps as big as prunes and overgrown v^dth little barnacles. Small crabs, worms and many
-legged Crustacea are living on some of them. In the afternoon the smooth surface of the sea was covered v^dth enormous quantities of brown and black clots of asphalt, floating in something that looked like soap suds, and here and there the surface shimmered in all colors as if covered with gasoline."
In the same area a few of the stocking-like coelenterates were swimming. When alive they were taut like sausage-shaped balloons painted orange and green. However, thousands upon thousands of them floated dead among the oil clots, collapsed and flat as punctured toy balloons. For two days we drifted in this muck of oil and dead coelenterates before sailing beyond it. This polluted surface was traveling on the same course, but more slowly, toward America. Later on the voyage, when the seas began to mount up, big clots, big as a fist, were washed on board and left there when the sea water filtered away through the papyrus stalks as it does through the baleen of a whale. Yet oil pollution was not modem man's only gift to the sea. As we kept a lookout scarcely a day passed without some form of plastic container, beer can, bottle or more perishable materials such as packing cases, cork and other rubbish drifting close by Ra's sides.
The Ra Expeditions Page 37