From Raft to Raft

by Bengt Danielsson

  One of our officers had just begun to look at the Nicaraguans through the ship’s binoculars. He suddenly burst out: ‘Good God, those aren’t telescopes in their hands, they’re rifles!’

  The unhappy Nicaraguans evidently thought that a new revolution had broken out in their country since they had left port and that we were revolutionaries intent on capturing their ship. As soon as we were within hearing distance, therefore, our captain stepped out on to the deck with true contempt for death, seized a megaphone and tried to explain our tragic situation in a language which he hoped was Spanish. For a long time the Nicaraguans stared at us mistrustfully, with rifles at the ready, but at last one of them pointed north-eastward and bellowed: ‘Doctor, doctor, Coiba.’ On looking at our chart we found that there was in fact a large island called Coiba in those parts, only twenty-five miles away. We gave the Nicaraguans a cheer and turned our bows towards Coiba.

  When at last we arrived there it was evening, and pitch dark. After a while we could vaguely make out a small patrol boat and three or four canoes rapidly approaching us. Before we realized what was happening the deck was swarming with bare-footed soldiers pointing their guns threateningly at our stomachs. Now it really looked as if we had got into a revolution in earnest, evidently on the wrong side. We cursed the Nicaraguans who had played this dirty trick on us. But perhaps they had really thought that we were pirates of some kind. Our captain, who had now had good practice, managed to explain what we wanted quite well, but the only reply was an angry shout in English from the patrol boat:

  ‘Coiba is a Panamanian convict settlement. The whole island is full of murderers. Landing here is absolutely forbidden. Clear off at once!’

  We had had another extraordinary stroke of ill-luck. The captain very sensibly decided to get out of the harbour as quickly as possible, and caught hold of the wheel himself to swing the vessel round. Our manoeuvre was interrupted by a new order from the commander of the patrol boat. He now wanted us to wait until the doctor of the convict settlement had examined us to find out whether we were speaking the truth. In astonishingly quick time a canoe came out with the doctor on board. After a hurried and casual examination of the owner— who fortunately looked very ill and weak—he declared to our relief that it certainly was a serious case, but that he happened to have the right medicine for it. When an orderly brought it on board a little later it proved to be a bunch of green coconuts. Immediately after this the commander of the patrol boat gave us permission to continue our voyage, and we made use of it without losing a second.

  We had no great confidence in the prison doctor’s peculiar medicine, but anyhow we opened a nut and forced the contents down the owner’s throat. It was not long before we realized that the prison doctor was an unrecognized genius, who ought to be remembered at the next award of Nobel prizes. For only half an hour after the owner had consumed his first nut he felt better, and after three or four more nuts he was quite cured of his mysterious gastric complaint—which may really have been nothing more than simple constipation. Even his seasickness was so much better next day that he was able to sit in a chair on deck for several hours. But of course it returned by degrees with its usual violence.

  Four days later we reached the Galapagos Islands, where we cast anchor in a bay with the ominous name Wreck Bay. The engine, however, had ceased to give trouble a long time before, and in other respects our vessel seemed to be in perfect order, so that no one had any gloomy presentiments. When we had filled our water tanks, we said goodbye without regret to the giant tortoises, the convicts and the crazy freaks who were the only inhabitants, and set a course for Tahiti. For a long time we seemed really to have left all cares and troubles behind us. The Pacific really justified its name, for the waves rolled on in level succession, and the distances between them was so great that we glided over them quite imperceptibly. The sun shone with just a pleasant warmth. We stripped almost naked and enjoyed life to the full. I began to wish that our lovely holiday voyage might last for ever. I had hardly formed this wish before it looked like being fulfilled. As usual, the chief engineer’s worried expression and unusual hurry revealed that all was not well below decks. Of course that wretched bearing had overheated again. To be exact, it was red-hot.

  The captain had a long and thorough discussion with the chief engineer and the owner, and at last the trio agreed to continue the voyage at all costs. I thought their decision right and wise, as did all on board. The trade winds were blowing without cessation from east to west, i.e., in the direction in which we were travelling. The ocean currents too were flowing the right way. So that even if the bearing broke up altogether and the engine stopped, we should certainly be able to work our way forward to our destination by rigging up a sail again.

  The bearing continued to overheat several times a day with astonishing regularity, but the engineers prevented it from going to pieces by cursing loudly and by diligently pouring water over it. If curses and water did no good, they simply stopped the engine for a few hours. So we gradually came to regard our fitful and capricious method of progression almost as normal, and did not worry about it any more.

  On April 25th we had covered two-thirds of the distance between the Galapagos Islands and Tahiti. A tittle after noon we made one of our usual stops to let the bearing grow cool. When an hour or two later the chief engineer considered that it was safe for us to proceed, the motor started at once. But something happened that was unusual and peculiar; Kaumoana refused to move. The captain gave an emphatic order for full speed ahead: but Kaumoana merely continued to bob up and down on the same spot. The captain conceived a horrible suspicion, and as if instinct told him that I shared it and was therefore the very man for the job, he ordered me to jump into the water and inspect the propeller. I put on a mask and a breathing tube and slid down a rope which the captain had made fast astern. One glance below the surface was enough for me to see what was wrong. We had lost our propeller! The shaft was quite undamaged, so the only explanation of the misadventure was that the shipyard workers in Panama had forgotten to insert the cotter pin or had inserted it so carelessly that it had fallen out.

  The chart showed that we were only 250 miles from the Marquesas Islands and not much farther from the nearest atoll in the Tuamotu group. If we rigged up a couple of simple sails, we should surely be able to reach one of these groups of islands in a few days. But what would happen when we did arrive? The Marquesas Islands had all high, inaccessible, rocky coasts, and those of the Tuamotu group had only narrow entrances, hard to navigate, or no entrances at all. Our steering capacity was extremely small, and we could not beat up against the wind, so it would be a hare-brained, if not impossible, enterprise to try to put in to one of these islands. What we needed was undoubtedly a tug, and the sooner we got it the better. The captain, loudly praising his own foresight, produced a large and handsome wireless transmitter and eagerly began to call up Papeete and the Taiohae station in the Marquesas group. Whichever way he screwed and turned the knobs, he could not get a sound. But it was not till towards the following morning that he gave it up and began to consider whether there was not some other way of getting us out of the nasty hole we were in. He soon saw that the only thing he could do was to launch the ship’s boat and send some of the crew off to Taiohae to ask for help. He decided to carry out this plan without delay, formed us up on deck and asked all volunteers to step forward.

  I offered myself at once: not at all, if truth be told, because I felt any more herioc than my companions in misfortune, but impelled rather by an egoistic instinct of self-preservation. I was convinced that I should have a much better chance of survival if I joined the party in the easily managed ship’s boat than if I stayed behind on board the clumsy Kaumoana. One of the mates, three Tahitian seamen and an engineer, who had evidently come to the same conclusion as myself, also stepped forward. Having hastily stowed away some provisions and water, we cast off and hoisted our sail. A steady following wind carried us quickly away from Kaumoana, a
nd we were soon alone on the sea.

  When the great warm sun rose above the horizon two days later we were relieved and at the same time alarmed to find ourselves quite close to a high rocky island, which could only be Uahuka, in the Marquesas group. At the same time the wind died away quite suddenly and incomprehensibly. We had no choice but to dip our oars and row for dear life.

  According to the chart it was over thirty miles from Uahuka to Taiohae in Nukuhiva, where the radio station was. We eloquently assured one another that it was only a temporary calm and toiled away at the oars. But hours passed and not a breath of wind ruffled the glassy surface of the sea. We suffered terribly from the heat. Our hands were cruelly split and tom. As we went on rowing dully and mechanically we sank by degrees into a kind of trance, which lasted till the cool of twilight brought us to ourselves again and we found that we had almost reached Taiohae Bay. A few flickering paraffin lamps showed where the village lay. But now we became conscious again of the pain in our lacerated hands and the ache in our long-suffering backs, and when at last we heard the sound of the boat scraping on the beach it was like the sweetest music in our ears. We crawled out more dead than alive and staggered off towards the lights. About halfway to the village we met two men.

  ‘Oh, there you are at last,’ one of them said cheerfully.

  We don’t want to hear any stupid jokes,’ groaned the mate.

  ‘Our ship’s lost her propeller and we’ve sailed and rowed here to get help,’ I explained in a faint voice.

  ‘We know all about it,’ man number two interrupted me. ‘The radio man here at Taiohae got into touch with Kaumoana half an hour after you’d started. So your little sail has really been quite unnecessary.’

  They both laughed long and heartily.

  We would have liked to murder them on the spot, but unfortunately we were much too weak and exhausted to deal with them: and really, when we came to think of it, it was not their fault that the wireless had not worked earlier.

  But why had it been so long before Kaumoana had been able to establish contact with Taiohae? Luckily for our peace of mind we got no answer to this question till the day after, when we had pretty well recovered. The explanation was as simple as unexpected. All the wireless telegraphists in the whole of French Polynesia had been on strike for a week past to get higher wages, and it was by pure chance that the administrator at Taiohae had picked up Kaumoana s wavelength while looking for a short-wave station with jazz music. A schooner which had just arrived at Taiohae had gone out at once to rescue our drifting comrades. She returned in triumph the very next day with Kaumoana in tow. It could not be denied that our heroic exertions had been absolutely unnecessary.

  Kaumoana, then, was safe in Taiohae Bay, but how and when she was to be repaired no one really knew. As I was formally still only a passenger I felt that I was fully entitled to abandon the owner and his companions in misfortune at once and jumped on board the copra A week later I was in Papeete at last, and this time I was a free man.

  It took me only a week or two to find out that life in Tahiti was not quite as carefree and simple as I had imagined. One could not settle down anywhere one liked under the palm-trees, for all the land had owners and was divided, enclosed and fenced round at least as thoroughly as in Europe. It was not a fact that all the trees were groaning with ripe fruit which could be picked free of charge. Although the lagoon swarmed with brilliantly coloured fish, it was almost impossible for a poor European, who had not the natives’ thorough knowledge of where and how to fish, to catch any. It was evident that the money I had saved would not last long and that the most sensible thing for me to do was to look for a job at once. But despite all this I was not disappointed, for life was interesting and different from what I had known, the climate was delicious, and the inhabitants extraordinarily good-natured and full of fun. What more could I ask? Especially as the Tahitian women fully deserved their reputation of being the most charming, seductive and frivolous in the world.

  When I had parted with all my money, I shipped as a seaman on board a copra schooner. It was hard and monotonous work, continually loading and unloading hundredweight sacks of rancid copra or vanilla with its sickly sweet smell, but we were well paid for our toil each time we called at a new island. Everywhere in the hundred islands of French Polynesia a visit from a schooner was a great and rare event, so wherever we went we were met with song and dance and general jollification.

  What finally made me abandon my free roving sailor’s life and stay for eight whole months on Rurutu, one of the Austral Islands, was not women, but the sight of a vegetable garden there. Nowhere in the world had I seen such large and perfect melons, radishes and lettuces as on this island. Here, I told myself, as I walked to and fro among the plantations, was the solution of all my financial problems. There was a shortage of vegetables in Papeete and consequently prices were high. If I did not want someone else to get in ahead of me, I had better start planting and exporting to Tahiti at once. Before I went to sea I had often helped my various foster-parents to grow vegetables, so I was not by any means so ignorant and inexperienced as might be thought. I tried to put my plans into execution at once. To rent a piece of land was easy enough. All the vegetables I planted did well and grew splendidly. The harvest which I gathered in a few months later was a record. So far everything was surpassing my expectations.

  Unfortunately I had overlooked a small but important detail. There was no reliable, quick and regular communication with Tahiti. The schooners had seldom any cargo space available for my vegetables, and if by chance they ever were able to take them they cruised about in the Austral group for so long that the vegetables were rotten when they arrived at Papeete. But I had to pay the freight in any case. My ambitious project collapsed like a house of cards, and I left Rurutu a disappointed man by the first schooner that came along. I could not remember having seen her before, but none the less she seemed strangely familiar. Suddenly it dawned on me. She was my old ship, the unlucky Kaumoana, newly repaired and reconstructed so as to be almost unrecognizable.

  Among the passengers on board was a native from the Marquesas Islands who for one reason or another needed money and was therefore on his way to Papeete to sell a copra plantation. I realized at once how stupid I had been to try my hand at anything so new-fangled as vegetable growing. Of course the only thing by which one could make money in French Polynesia was copra. The nuts fell down of themselves, and it was easy to take out the meat and dry it in the sun. Copra, too, was not injured in transport, while the relatively high price was guaranteed by a special fund.

  Alas, I had not even the surprisingly modest sum which was needed to buy the Marquesan’s copra plantation. But as always in my life when my need has been greatest, my brother Michel was at hand, for only a few days later I met him in the street in Papeete quite unexpectedly. He had finished his military service a long time before, but had not wanted to return to Tahiti earlier, considering that he ought first to earn a decent sum of money as starting capital. I embraced him with quite special cordiality and gave him a rapid account of the splendid deal which a person with a fair supply of capital should be able to bring off if only he acted promptly. Michel produced the sum required without a moment’s hesitation and made me his partner on very favourable terms. In the best of spirits we took a schooner up to the Marquesas Islands with our new contract in our baggage. A few weeks later we were on our way back to Tahiti, downcast and disappointed. In a sense, the seller had not swindled us, for our land was certainly there and there were plenty of palms on it. But we were swindled none the less, for the land was situated on a hillside so steep that it could without exaggeration be said to stand on edge. Only wild goats could keep a footing on it, and to crown everything it ran right down to the sea, so that all the nuts fell into the water.

  On our return to Papeete Michel immediately obtained a good post as mate of a motor ship which plied regularly between Tahiti and the neighbouring phosphate island Makatea. I myself w
as just about to sign on with another copra schooner when my brother returned from one of the uneventful routine trips which he now made twice a week and told me eagerly that the post of assistant harbour-master on Makatea was vacant. According to Michel I was just the sort of man for the job. I considered my position. I was already twenty-three and it was time that I gave some thought to the future. This was certainly a job with a future. I applied for the post, without any great hope of getting it. To my surprise and, I think, Michel’s too, I got it.

  Time passed. I seemed to be doing my work to the general satisfaction. I had a more comfortable and more pleasant life than I had ever had before. But nevertheless I gradually became strangely restless, and before two years had passed I began to look longingly after every ship which left ‘my’ harbour.

  Once more it was Michel who gave my life a new direction.

  Chapter 2

  EASTWARD BOUND

  Michel was on one of his usual weekly visits to Makatea, and he and I were sitting together and chatting about one thing and another. After quite a while he mentioned in a casual way that he had just decided to accompany Eric de Bisschop on a voyage to South America by raft. I was by no means sure that I had really heard him aright, and asked him to repeat what he had said. He told me again of his strange decision, as quietly as ever, and added that he had already given his employers notice. I was speechless with astonishment and could not utter a word for a long time. I had often heard of Eric during my stay on Rurutu, where he had lived a long time before me, and I had read several books about his adventurous journeys. To me he was a remote, wonderful legendary figure, fully comparable with Magellan, Cook and Laperouse, and the daring voyage which he now proposed to undertake at the age of sixty-six seemed to me at least as magnificent and fantastic as the explorations of his more famous predecessors in the Pacific hundreds of years before.