While I was working on La Tortuga, the Captain of the Police warmed up a bit. I soon found out why. Pie wanted American cigarettes. After he had mooched almost a pack, one at a time, I gave him some I had saved for just such a character, a mildewed package from a box of C rations dated 1944.
Our feeling of uneasiness about Porvenir increased. There was an atmosphere of tension as if the island were a prison and the men were just waiting out their sentences. We were anxious to leave, but each time I asked White Suit for clearance he found some reason to stall. It was the same when I requested the return of the governor’s letter, which was addressed to whom it may concern, and which we had been instructed to carry with us all along the coast.
White Suit was a nervous Peter Lorreish character who sneaked around the island and in and out of buildings checking up on everyone. But he stayed well away from the jeep—in fact whenever I looked for him he was nowhere around. How anyone could hide on an island that small was a mystery, but he managed to do it. That afternoon I tracked him down and cornered him in his office. Again I asked for the letter.
“It’s Saturday,” he replied sullenly. “My office is closed. You’ll have to wait until Monday.”
He left me standing with my mouth open, and Helen and I resigned ourselves to an uncomfortable wait.
The next day a trading boat bound for Colón steered into the channel, and we were able to buy enough gas to fill our tanks. Because of rough seas we had used almost twice as much fuel as I had anticipated; it had taken thirty-six gallons to travel the sixty-five nautical miles from Coco Solo. In the twenty-three hours of actual travel time we had averaged almost three knots.
When the trading boat was cleared with no delay, even though it was Sunday, I knew that White Suit was just being difficult. It was already late afternoon; we had lost two beautiful traveling days. It looked as if he would go on stalling forever, so I tried a bluff. When I threatened to radio Colón, he promised to have everything taken care of the next morning. I was glad that he didn’t know that our handie-talkie wouldn’t transmit much farther than I could shout.
Monday dawned bright and clear. White Suit came through with the necessary clearance and returned the governor’s letter—slightly the worse for wear, crumpled, and with a cigarette burn through it. With no regrets we left Porvenir.
The twenty-seven-mile run to our next stop, the island of Nargana, was all in the protected water between the mainland and a string of islands. After easing through the reefs and around the protruding mast of a sunken ship we relaxed and enjoyed the panorama of tropical beauty we were passing. Since receiving our ship’s papers and the Canal transit we had become quite nautical, at least insofar as the M.S. La Tortuga was concerned. With Helen on the top deck keeping the log and Dinah asleep on the bunk aft, I was at the helm, sitting on the edge of the top hatch and steering in a rather unorthodox manner for a ship’s captain—with my feet.
At our regular three knots we cruised past island after exquisite island, emeralds set in silver sand against a backdrop of turquoise water. Gradually we learned to read the depth of the sea by the color, and where it changed to the ugly brown of reef we steered well around the area. But sometimes, where the coral lay five or six feet below the surface, we cut the throttle and drifted over it, watching the variegated shapes and colors through the clear water, the orange-and-black tiger fish, the waving spines of purple sea urchins, and the rainbow of old shells catching the rays of the sun.
Sharp smacking sounds and silver flashes on the water signaled the presence of tarpon, but either they weren’t hungry or they didn’t fancy the war-surplus red-feathered spoon I trolled a couple of hundred feet behind the jeep. Giving up my attempts at fishing, I contented myself with watching the antics of a school of porpoises that cavorted around La Tortuga. Half as long as our dinghy-sized amphibian, they arched through the water, performing the acrobatics effortlessly, their shiny gray-black bodies making loops in the air in a long line that made the sea serpent stories of old mariners seem real. For several hours they literally swam circles around us, until, tiring of such a slow companion, they left in search of more exciting sport.
Closer to Nargana a few sailing cayucas scudded across the green water, heeling over in the light breeze while their Indian navigators balanced precariously on the gunwales to keep them upright. Twenty to thirty feet long, they were carved of a single log; with no keel, centerboard, or leeboard they looked difficult to handle, yet the Indians had been known to make trips to Colón in them.
We had been looking forward to landing on Nargana, our first Indian island stop. But instead of brilliant blouses the women wore shapeless cotton Mother Hubbards, and in place of a gesturing island chief we were met by a white-frocked young priest with a crew cut, riding a red motor scooter with a black-and-tan dachshund sitting on the back. Dinah and Mopsy the Dachsy took a liking to each other right away and it was the same with us and Padre Kolb, who had spent twelve years among the San Bias Indians since leaving Pasadena, California.
“You’re just in time for supper,” he said.
A special dispensation was made on the spot, and that evening Helen, Dinah, and I joined Padre Kolb, three other priests, and Mopsy in the dining room, where we were served a well-balanced dinner by a kindly German nun. We learned that the Catholic mission wasn’t responsible for the drab attire of the native women. That was brought about by a missionary who had spent ten years on Nargana prior to the rebellion in 1923.
After dessert of German-style white cake Padre Kolb brought out some of his special brew, an adaptation of the natives’ drink of fermented sugar cane juice and ground corn. “Strictly a scientific experiment”—he winked—“to test the effects of the beverage.”
I’m certain it couldn’t have been the one thimble-sized glass that I had of the sweetish-sour clear yellow liquid, but, whatever the cause, that night I dreamed that La Tortuga, Dinah, and I were being chased over a storm-tossed sea by an elephant-sized dachshund and a monstrous amphibious motor scooter driven by a San Bias Indian woman speaking German. Wearing a barrel-hoop nose ring and a red Mother Hubbard, Helen laughed at me from a saddle on the back of a porpoise that kept getting in the way of my flight. I woke up when the porpoise turned and opened its mouth and swallowed the lot of us like Jonah and the whale.
The next morning I helped Padre Kolb repair the wiring on his boat and he took us for a spin around the island, showing us how to get through the channel and on the course for Ratón Cay. The weather looked threatening, and when Padre Kolb told us that a boat was due that afternoon with some gasoline for the mission which we could buy instead, we decided to wait another day. I was beginning to be concerned about the problem of fuel. Beyond Nargana the trading boats called only at very irregular intervals, at Ailigandi, forty miles ahead and at Obaldía, near the Colombian border, over a hundred miles away. Unless we could make definite arrangements at Nargana for gas to be left at Obaldía, there was a good chance we might be delayed, and the natives predicted the chocosanos would be early. When the boat did not arrive that day, Padre Kolb graciously sold us twelve gallons of his own supply and offered to speak to the captain of the Rio Indio, which would be making a run to Obaldía that month. With our tanks again topped off, in calm weather we could just make Obaldía on the fifty-two gallons.
Wednesday morning the sun was shining brightly, and we headed for Ratón Cay, twenty-one miles away. One of the difficulties we had experienced in navigating by sight was identifying the many islands since not all of the hundreds of bits of sand and palm showed on the charts. It was the same that morning. Ahead of us the sky was clear, and scattered against the blue horizon dozens of islands seemed to float just above the surface of the water. For the first few hours after we left Nargana the sea was calm, but dark clouds were forming in the mountains to our right, where lightning flashed like a waving white sheet. We weren’t too concerned since the storm that had threatened the previous day had been a false alarm: a glorious afternoon
had been followed by a fiery sunset. Reassured by the light breeze coming from the azure sky ahead, we continued even though the waves became choppy, buffeting the bow of the jeep and leaving a white cake of salt on the steaming muffler. With the front hatch closed and the windshield wipers swishing constantly, I reduced the speed of the engine to prevent its overheating and engaged the bilge pump. Since fixing the propeller shaft on Porvenir we had taken on no water, but with the waves breaking over the bow a little had seeped past the rubber gasket of the hatch. Five miles from Ratón Cay the waves slackened and our small flag drooped. A few minutes later it stiffened again as the wind shifted and blew directly from the mainland, where the dark mass of clouds had mushroomed into a canopy of black that filled the entire horizon. Ratón Cay was the closest place where we could get ashore, and with the wind whipping the crests of the whitecaps into spray, I floored the throttle hoping to make the island before the engine boiled or the dark shroud closed in. We were still more than a mile from Ratón Cay when the blackness dropped over us like a sack, cutting off the sight of land, the island, everything.
Somewhere to our left lay a scattered chain of reef called Spokeshave, to our right was the mainland fringed with coral, and in between was Ratón Cay, on either side of which was a wide breach of open water. I kicked myself for not having installed a spare compass—the one on the dash had been gyrating like a dervish since shortly after leaving Coco Solo. With only a general idea of the direction of the island, there was one chance in a thousand of hitting it before running straight out to sea or going aground on the reefs. The only thing to do was to sit tight—I pointed the bow into the storm and kept it there with just enough power to maintain steerageway while the wind rose to a gale that smothered even the sound of the exhaust.
As I gripped the wheel and struggled to keep the jeep from yawing and turning broadside to the waves I was doing some rapid mental calculating. We had come twenty miles in rough seas since Nargana. The gas gauge was hovering around the zero mark, but I figured that at the rate I was pushing the engine to keep control there was enough in the main tank for another hour. In a pinch the outboard motor might be good for another hour and a half. We had two and a half hours to ride out a storm that showed no sign of abating. To conserve the main engine fuel for a landing I switched to the outboard motor and sat on the bunk with the control arm clamped in my hand and tried to forget that I had said this was the one thing that could never happen.
Although very excitable in a minor emergency Helen was extremely calm. On her lap was the little book Chaplain Best had given us. It was open to the Navy hymn:
Eternal Father, strong to save,
hose arm hath bound the restless wave,
Who bid’st the mighty ocean deep
Its own appointed limits keep.
For more than an hour I kept La Tortuga pointed into the storm that shrieked over us. The jeep shuddered each time a wave crashed down, lurched as its bow plunged into a trough, and I wondered how that thin sheet of glass in front of us could keep out the force of tons of water. Except for the flashes of lightning that split the sky and glared from the white tassels of the waves everything was as black as night.
With the thunder came rain, lightly at first, but as the drops became larger it seemed that the wind let up a bit and the waves calmed. By the time the outboard motor tank went dry we were sitting under a deluge on a flat stippled sheet of gray water in the middle of a gray void, silent except for the rain that rattled like buckshot on the roof.
With the main engine just idling we drifted on the calm for another half hour when Helen spotted a single break on the horizon. Faintly outlined was an island. I groaned. “If only we had a compass. We could take a bearing before we’re socked in again.”
Helen sputtered. “We do have a compass. Remember?” She fumbled through the cabinets and came up with the small box Commander Bookhammer had given us in Coco Solo.
I had just enough time to take a reading before the island disappeared again. Blindly following a compass course, we headed for it. Two hours and fifteen minutes from the time we were blacked out we sighted Ratón Cay through the rain and poled our way over the surrounding reefs to the beach. It was too steep and narrow to get completely out of the water so we left La Tortuga where we landed, with her bow high between two coconut palms and her stern half submerged. For a few minutes we sat on the beach and just enjoyed the feel of solid ground before investigating our refuge.
I had always wanted to explore an uninhabited island. The whole trip I had looked forward to landing on one, and though we were soaked through by rain and salt spray, and the conditions weren’t exactly as I had pictured, I could hardly wait to explore Ratón Cay. We pushed through the heavy growth, enchanted by the exotic flowers, the pink shells on the sand, and the fan-leafed plants that glistened, newly washed by the rain. In the one deserted grass hut we poked among the bits of pottery and straw mats, and then on the way back to the jeep we picked wild bananas and coconuts for supper. All the while we were alert for any sight or sound that might indicate the presence of snakes. When Dinah’s hackles bristled, we froze and then laughed as she backed cautiously away from the island’s one inhabitant, a lone cat. Later the moon sent streaks of silver through the palms and a gentle breeze fresh showers of water from the rain-soaked fronds. It was a tranquil starry night: the waves bubbled on the beach and crabs scampered before them, and occasionally we heard a coconut falling.
Inside La Tortuga we were preparing for bed. The steep angle at which we had landed was uncomfortable, but that night we could have slept standing up. Helen was about to crawl onto her bunk when she saw flashes a few hundred yards from shore. We made out the dim form of a cayuca with four or five Indians in it. Padre Kolb had warned us that the Indians regarded the islands as personal property and were suspicious of anyone stopping on an uninhabited island. Each island was a bank where money grew on trees. The coconuts were worth four cents apiece in trade.
“What do you suppose they’re doing?” Helen asked nervously.
“Oh, they’re probably hunting for lobsters on the reef.” I wasn’t as casual as I tried to make out. “Let’s be quiet and maybe they won’t discover us.”
Helen sat there a few minutes more and then climbed over the seat to her bunk, but she wasn’t very quiet about it. Her foot hit the horn button and the silence was blasted by a sound as foreign to the San Bias Islands as a conch shell on Broadway. The lights from the cayuca vanished.
“Well,” I said disgustedly, “if they didn’t know before that we’re here, they do now.”
I got out some cigarettes and soap to make peace and waited. A few minutes later I heard a noise near the jeep and switched on the headlights, but instead of an Indian vigilante committee it was the cat busily devouring the remains of Dinah’s supper. Helen pointed to where we had seen the lights. The cayuca was shooting across the water toward the mainland, the Indians paddling as if all the demons in hell were after them.
The next morning we zigzagged back over the low-lying reefs to the safe Prussian blue of deep water and headed for Ailigandi. For the next forty miles the charts were useless: in place of soundings there was an empty blank space, and even the shape of the coast line was indefinite, traced from a Spanish map dated 1817. But it was that lack of knowledge that made it more exciting, for perhaps in that area might lie the undiscovered location of the legendary Swan’s Nest, the secret harbor Sir Francis Drake had concealed by training trees to grow over the entrance.
Profiting by the experience of the previous day, we stayed close to shore, ready to dash in should the warning black clouds swell over the mountains again. Around noon the wind freshened. We were navigating between two parallel shoals of brown coral, and I gave the jeep full throttle to get to the end or a low spot where we could get through to shore. But even faster than the day before the clouds closed in and the waves started thrashing. With Helen probing with the bamboo pole on the bow, we found an opening and steered for
a bit of white sand beach. When she shouted “Stop,” I wasn’t ready. Before I could throw the jeep into reverse, Helen lunged against the pole trying to stop the jeep before it ran up on a sharp point of reef. But two and a half tons doesn’t stop easily. The pole was flipped from her hands and she was thrown sprawling to the edge of the jeep, which was tilting up on the reef. Cutting the engine, I climbed through the hatch, pulled Helen back, and then jumped in after the pole, but it was gone, carried away by the wave that had concealed the reef until we were on it.
What we had thought was a channel was a blind alley with no way open to shore and no room to turn around. For a half hour I stood with the remaining pole on the bobbing bow of the jeep trying to keep it from being battered against the reef while Helen ran the engine in full reverse until the rain fell and the waves calmed. We were poling backward into deeper water when an Indian paddled by in a cayuca and offered to lead us to Ailigandi. For the next four miles he sat in the jeep, piloting us with assurance over shallows where to me it looked as if even his canoe would go aground and avoiding places that seemed safe to me but where he said were sharp points of coral. In his cayuca tied to the back of the jeep his frightened wife wailed loudly, and it wasn’t until we were almost there that we could persuade her to join us in La Tortuga.
For the next three days the weather varied from overcast skies to torrential rains as we waited impatiently on Ailigandi for the sea to calm. During that time we enjoyed the hospitality of Dr. and Mrs. Iglesias, leaders of the only Protestant mission in the islands. Dr. Iglesias was a San Bias Indian, educated in the United States by the same missionary who had so diluted the customs on Nargana. Ailigandi, however, had suffered no such drastic change, the women still wore their exquisitely bizarre costumes, their nose rings and heavy ear pendants, but it did seem incongruous to hear them sing “Onward Christian Soldiers” in Cuna dialect.
20,000 Miles South Page 14