From Raft to Raft

by Bengt Danielsson

  As soon as breakfast was over, while the rest of us were continuing our vain efforts, he suddenly came out of the cabin with a pair of swimming fins, a mask, a breathingtube and a spear-gun in his hands. He pulled on his diving equipment at top speed and jumped into the water, while at the same moment Hans quickly flung a long rope over the side. Half a minute later Jean was bobbing about in our wake fifty yards astern of the raft, gripping the end of the rope firmly with one hand and holding the spear-gun at the ready in the other. This was a daring method of fishing, which we others had never tried. But why should we not let Jean try to fish in this way if he wanted to? We knew lie was reputed to be an experienced frogman and a clever fisherman, and as long as he kept a tight hold of the rope the risk was very small—if there were no man-eating sharks about.

  But suddenly, to our alarm, Jean let go of the end of the rope and dived. When at last he came to the surface again he was a good ten yards astern of the rope. The wind was unusually light on that day, so that his situation was still far from catastrophic. But instead of swimming quickly to grasp the end of the rope, as any sensible person would have done, Jean began to tread water and wave one of his arms. For a moment I really thought that he had been attacked by a shark, but then we saw that he had been brainless enough to take his booty, a large dolphin, in his arms, which of course hindered his movements.

  Before I had been able to think out any means of saving him Hans plunged into the sea with a violent splash. Good heavens, I thought, what will happen to this clumsy lout who can’t control his arms and legs even on dry land? (I am ashamed to say that I had not yet come to the point of intervening myself.) But Hans reached his comrade with astonishing speed, took the spear-gun from him and began to tow both fish and man by means of the line which was fastened to the arrow, which was fixed in the fish, which Jean held in his arms. After several anxious moments the pair reached the end of the rope, and of course we were not slow to haul them on board.

  ‘I suppose you’re proud of yourself now, you silly fool,’ Eric shouted furiously as soon as Jean had crawled on board, still clasping the bleeding dolphin. ‘But I wonder if you’d have been as well pleased if the raft had sailed away from you and you’d had to swim ashore! It’s a nice little swim, 200 miles. As you don’t seem to have grasped it, I must tell you that the raft can’t stop or turn back. So everything that falls overboard, the crew included, is gone for good. And next time you want to show what a smart fisherman you are, for Heaven’s sake don’t take a bleeding fish in your arms like that. There’s nothing whets a shark’s appetite so much as blood, and if there had been any about it’s not likely they’d have contented themselves with the dolphin.’

  It was a long time before Eric’s anger subsided. To pacify him a little I proposed that we should prepare a dish of raw fish in the Tahitian style. The proposal was at once received with general approval. Juanito cut up the dolphin into small lumps, and put these to soak for a couple of hours in the juice of a dozen lemons—an important necessity which luckily was included in our stores. As soon as the raw fish appeared on the table our depressed morale rose considerably, but from this incident, unfortunately, the relations between these two ill-matched men, who in fact had only one thing in common —their keen interest in oceanic studies—were never again as cordial as they had been. As Hans took his friend’s side even more stoutly than before, the expedition even at this early stage was split into two, with poor bewildered Juanito forming a third, or neutral, party.

  But to be just I will add at once that in the course of time Jean obtained a well-deserved rehabilitation. As both Eric and I and all the rest of us frankly admitted, he showed himself after this to be both a clever and a shrewd fisherman, without whose welcome contributions our fare would have been infinitely more monotonous. To the general satisfaction he also altered his method of fishing somewhat by tying a long fishing line tightly to the iron arrow of the spear-gun and entrusting the other end of this fishing line to Hans. As soon as Jean had shot the arrow into a fish Hans saw that the quarry was brought into safety while Jean himself was able to concentrate undisturbed on getting on board the raft again.

  Both the radiantly beautiful summer weather and the fresh favourable wind continued, and each day we did longer and longer runs. When I marked our position on the chart on March 8th I was not greatly surprised to find that we were half-way already. Eight hundred miles in three weeks represented an average speed of forty miles a day, so we had certainly no cause for complaint.

  But if the raft’s sailing performance was above expectations, in another respect her behaviour was rather peculiar: her stem gradually sank deeper and deeper, and at last the waves were positively threatening to wash up on to the deck. It was not very probable that the same trunks should have absorbed more water aft than forward, so we decided that our heaviness astern was more likely due to the cargo being unevenly distributed, and to test this theory we moved forward all Jean’s cases of sample bottles, hundreds of which were already full of salt water or plankton. This had an immediate effect, but not so much as we had hoped. The only cargo which now remained aft was four empty forty-gallon drums below decks. It suddenly occurred to us that salt water might have got into one or more of them. We examined them without delay. Two of the drums were indeed found to be full of sea water, so that they were weighing the raft down instead of increasing her buoyancy. With a good deal of trouble we at last succeeded in emptying them. The raft, freed from this enormous extra weight, immediately resumed her horizontal position. Perhaps she still lay a trifle deeper than when we left Constitucion: but of course it was only normal that the dry trunks should absorb a certain amount of water at the beginning of the voyage, and we were convinced that it was only a question of time when this process would end. For that matter, it seemed as if this stage had already been reached, for henceforward the raft floated lightly and well. So we ceased to worry about the matter.

  I cannot remember now if it was because this little misadventure reminded us of our mortality, or if the cause was a sudden access of conscientiousness, but anyhow we now got out our wireless for the first time and tried to contact some of the fans in Chile who were sure to be listening eagerly. As on the outward voyage in Tahiti Nui I, we had two transmitters on board: a small one for telegraphy and a larger one for telephony. (We had also a simple receiver, which we seldom used.) The small one was driven by a battery, but the larger could only be worked by a petrol generator—an expensive thing which we could not afford to buy before sailing, but which we had good hopes of being able to get at Callao. During our voyage to that port the small transmitter ought to be sufficient for our needs: we had all agreed about that. I set up the aerial with inexperienced hands and sent out a call signal. The nice little apparatus seemed to be working as it should, but whatever the reason might be neither I nor Jean, who was my deputy as wireless operator, got any reply to our calls. We repeated the attempt for several days in succession without getting any sound whatever in reply.

  None of us took this very seriously, for we were in no trouble, and to tell the truth we were almost glad to escape the veritable quiz programmes with which many fans had plagued us during our outward voyage in Tahiti Nui I. Moreover, we were now approaching the coast again. Or, to put it more correctly, the coast was approaching us, for immediately north of the frontier between Chile and Peru the South American continent projects in a wide bulge to westward. So without changing our course, which from the beginning of the voyage had been due north, we were now suddenly making for land again. We sighted the majestic mountain chain of the Andes, which runs parallel to the coast for its whole length from north to south, for the first time on March 20th, and were welcomed by a party of playful seals, which performed the most extraordinary circus tricks, evidently from sheer joy at seeing us. After standing a long way out to sea during the night for safety’s sake, next day we continued to sail towards the coast and began to follow it northward at a distance of a few miles. This playing
at being a coaster was by no means free from risk, but we had no choice if we were to avoid such an ignominious disaster as to miss Callao and drift out to sea again.

  As we glided slowly onward along a steep stony beach, inside which a desolate sand desert stretched as far as we could see in every direction, Eric told us about the strange Nazca people, who far back in pre-Inca times had succeeded in cultivating the whole of this desert area by means of an ingenious system of irrigation. I tried to imagine how the Nazcas would have received strange sailors arriving from the South Sea islands on a raft, and lost myself in dreams which were not all of the most agreeable nature.

  A short time afterwards I was brusquely recalled to modernity by Eric, who, with an ironical smile playing about the comers of his mouth, pointed out that the wind had died away and that we were drifting slowly towards the coast. I could do no more about it than Eric, for it had become quite impossible to steer the raft. Even if we had had oars or ship’s boats it would not have helped us much, for it would have been useless to try to row or tow such a heavy raft. Accordingly we did the only possible thing: we sat down on the long bench aft and hoped for a miracle. The unwelcome calm had set in about 4 p.m. Not till 7 p.m., when we were so near the breakers on the beach that the noise of them drowned our excited talk, did the first breath of wind, miraculously indeed, come to us over the smooth surface. Fortunately enough, the wind, which rose quickly, was from the south-east, and we were not slow to remove ourselves from that inhospitable coast.

  As we were now in waters where there was a good deal of traffic, Eric gave us strict orders to keep a good look-out, especially during the night watches. But no ships were sighted until the morning of March 24th, when we all perceived, practically at the same moment, a British cargo ship only a few miles away. Although we had kept a long way off the coast for the greater part of our voyage, we had already met five or six ships, and several of them had passed quite close. But none of them had detected us, which all things considered was not very surprising. A small low raft of a dirty grey colour blends extremely well with the marine landscape. We were therefore both astonished and flattered when the British ship quite unexpectedly sounded her siren and dipped her ensign, and we were not slow to answer her greeting. Only a few hours later a northward-bound Peruvian tanker overtook us. Presumably thinking, quite understandably, that we were shipwrecked, her captain steered right towards us. He stopped his engines about 300 yards from the raft. We could read the tanker’s name, Oyala, quite plainly on her bow, and we saw with mixed feelings that two sailors aft were dragging a tow rope to the rail. With diminished speed Oyala continued to glide on through the water and finally lay across the bows of the raft. As we had a fair wind, we were far from pleased at the Peruvian captain’s helpfulness. We gesticulated to him wildly, indicating that we wanted him to back, and shouted in three or four different languages that all was well on board and that we could take ourselves to Callao without difficulty. It was only after long hesitation that Oyala s captain abandoned his plans for saving us and proceeded northward. Another ship passed shordy afterwards, but to our relief did not notice us.

  That same evening we came into the dangerous waters off the famous prehistoric burial ground at Paracas, where according to the chart several strong currents met. We had no desire to end our days in this burial ground, however famous it might be, and therefore spent an uneasy sleepless night looking out for ships’ lights, of which there were more than we liked, and a lighthouse which never appeared. (Presumably the Peruvian lighthouse keepers were on strike, as the French telegraphists had been when I arrived at the Marquesas Islands in Kaumoana.’) When dawn came we were already, thank heaven, a good way off Paracas and had not suffered the slightest mishap. We were only eighty miles from Callao, and as both wind and current were with us two easy days’ runs would take us there.

  We were always eager to grasp at any imaginable excuse for having a bit of a party, so we got out one of our last bottles of Chilean brandy and sat down in the stem. While we were still sitting there, laughing and joking and drinking toasts, a red two-engined airplane suddenly appeared from nowhere. At any rate we did not discover it till it was right above the raft, either because of the brandy or because the pilot had intentionally hidden himself in the clouds as long as he could. The plane dived towards us in a graceful curve, and we returned the pilot’s courtesy in the only way possible at the moment—that is, by raising our glasses and drinking to our unknown visitors. These seemed to want to keep us company, for the plane swept down towards us again and again like a weary sea-bird anxiously seeking a place to settle. Each time we caught a fleeting glimpse of several doubled-up figures with lifted cameras, so we concluded that it was a newspaper plane. Not till it had dived half a dozen times did it disappear.

  Next day, March 26th, another aircraft appeared, and this time it was a seaplane of the Peruvian Navy that came to welcome us. And the following day a grey-painted patrol boat bore right down on us just as if her captain had had advance knowledge of our course and average speed, so we concluded that he was guided by a report from the pilot of the seaplane. Without asking our view of the matter, or offering any explanations, he made a sharp turn and sent a hawser over to us: after which he set his course for Callao, which was already just in sight behind the island of San Lorenzo. It seemed evident that Peruvian patrol boats were accustomed to towing rafts of prehistoric model. In spite of the Peruvians’ undeniable skill we were glad that only ten miles separated us from the quay at Callao, for the towing was a trifle too fast for our taste, and the raft dipped her fore-deck under water again and again.

  At the entrance to the harbour we were met by a motor boat with a full load of journalists and photographers, and a queer motor yacht with a double hull like a Polynesian canoe. The captain of the patrol boat told us that Rapa Nui, as the queer motor yacht was called, was to take over the towing, and as we had no reason for objecting to this arrangement we obediently cast off the tow-rope. At the same moment the Press boat ran alongside the raft, and before we could utter a word of protest all the journalists and photographers had jumped on board. As we slowly approached the quay our uninvited guests began to pepper us with the most extraordinary questions. Eric, however, was in top form and had an answer for everything. Here are a few examples of his readiness.

  ‘Why are you calling at Callao?’—’Because we didn’t want to lose the pleasure of meeting you.’

  ‘How much water have you left?’—’None. It came to an end the day before yesterday. But so long as a Frenchman has wine he needs no water.’

  ‘Is anyone waiting for you here in Callao?’—’Yes, all the pretty women in Peru, I hope.’

  ‘Why is the raft so low in the water?’—’Because you are weighing her down. She’s meant for five persons, not fifty.’

  We moored the raft at the Yacht Club’s pier at 7 p.m. Our successful trial trip had thus taken forty-one days, which tallied exactly with Eric’s estimate of from six to seven weeks made before we left Constitucion.

  Next morning, to our undisguised astonishment, several of the papers of the Peruvian capital announced under large headlines that Tahiti Nui II had arrived at Callao in a sinking condition. One of the imaginative writers even went so far as to say that the raft would have sunk altogether if the voyage had lasted a few days longer. When we saw the pictures which illustrated the articles we understood at once the cause of this absurd mistake. The journalists had seen the water washing over the deck while we were being towed, and had at once concluded that the raft had lain as low in the water before the towing began. After the towing ended they themselves had weighed the raft down so heavily that they got wet feet, and of course this had strengthened them in their mistaken idea. In reality the raft lay only about a foot deeper than when she left Constitucion, which was not disastrous in any way.

  For safety’s sake we inspected the raft thoroughly from stem to stem, and among other things we sawed in half one of the fifty cypress tru
nks which formed the body of the vessel. But nowhere did we find the slightest trace of ship-worms, which we feared most, and the trunk showed clearly that the sea water had penetrated the wood to the depth of only an inch or two, so that nine-tenths of it was still dry and hard. There was no doubt that the raft was still in first-class condition. But as, nevertheless, she lay a good deal deeper than we had orginally intended, and the waves had shown an unpleasant tendency to break into the cabin in a strong head wind, we decided to try to increase her buoyancy a little. Bamboos could not be obtained within a reasonable time, and we also sought balsa trunks in vain until the president of the Yacht Club hit upon the idea of advertising in the newspapers. Then a number of well-disposed people came to us with trunks which varied enormously in size, age and quality. We chose the twelve largest trunks, which even so were only about twelve feet long and about eight inches thick, and made them fast astern in the empty space between the cypress trunks and the deck. There was room for at least as many again, but unfortunately no more could be obtained.

  At this juncture a Belgian chemist who lived in Lima, and had followed our proceedings with great interest from the start, said that we should supplement our rusty galvanized iron water drums with aluminium tanks. As he shrewdly pointed out, such tanks would be doubly useful to us on account of their durability, for as they became empty we could fasten them under the raft to increase her buoyancy. At first we thought this an unnecessary precaution, but when the Belgian kindly offered to get the tanks for us and the price proved to be one we could afford, we took his advice—primarily because our old drums were really in a wretched state. We thus became the possessors of no fewer than four forty-gallon and ten ten-gallon aluminium tanks, which actually was a good deal more than we needed. But Jean, who had just received two new heavy cases of oceanographical equipment, declared with a satisfied air that the surplus tanks would come in very handy for keeping fish, plankton and other kinds of marine life, so we filled only half the tanks with drinking water and wedged in the others, empty, under the after-deck on both side of the balsa trunks.