Part 10 (1/2)

We were now twenty yards away from that devilish step up on the reef, and it was there and beyond it that the breakers came rolling after one another in long lines. The coral polyps had taken care to build the atoll so high that only the very top of the breakers was able to send a fresh stream of sea water past us and into the lagoon, which abounded in fish. Here inside was the corals' own world, and they disported themselves in the strangest shapes and colours.

A long way in on the reef the others found the rubber raft, lying drifting and quite waterlogged. They emptied it and dragged it back to the wreck, and we loaded it to the full with the most important equipment, like the radio set, provisions, and water-bottles. We dragged all this across the reef and piled it up on the top of a huge block of coral which lay alone on the inside of the reef like a large meteorite. Then we went back to the wreck for fresh loads. We could never know what the sea would be up to when the tidal currents got to work around us.

In the shallow water inside the reef we saw something bright s.h.i.+ning in the sun. When we waded over to pick it up, to our astonishment we saw two empty tins. This was not exactly what we had expected to find there, and we were still more surprised when we saw that the little boxes were quite bright and newly-opened and stamped 'pineapple', with the same inscription as that on the new field rations we ourselves were testing for the quartermaster. They were indeed two of our own pineapple tins which we had thrown overboard after our last meal on board the Kon-Tiki. We had followed close behind them up on to the reef.

We were standing on sharp, rugged coral blocks, and on the uneven bottom we waded now ankle-deep, now chest-deep, according to the channels and stream beds in the reef. Anemones and corals gave the whole reef the appearance of a rock garden covered with mosses and cactus and fossilized plants, red and green and yellow and white. There was no colour that was not represented, either in corals or in algae, or in sh.e.l.ls and sea slugs and fantastic fish which were wriggling about everywhere. In the deeper channels small sharks about four feet long came sneaking up to us in the crystal-clear water. But we had only to smack the water with the palms of our hands for them to turn about and keep at a distance.

Where we had stranded we had only pools of water and wet patches of coral about us, and farther in lay the calm blue lagoon. The tide was going out, and we continually saw more corals sticking up out of the water round us, while the surf which thundered without interruption along the reef sank down, as it were, a floor lower. What would happen there on the narrow reef when the tide began to flow again was uncertain. We must get away.

The reef stretched like a half-submerged fortress wall up to the north and down to the south. In the extreme south was a long island densely covered with palm forest. And just above us to the north, only 600 or 700 yards away, lay another but considerably smaller palm island. It lay inside the reef, with palm-tops rising into the sky and snow-white sandy beaches running out into the still lagoon. The whole island looked like a bulging green basket of flowers, or a little bit of concentrated paradise.

This island we chose.

Herman stood beside me beaming all over his bearded face. He did not say a word, only stretched out his hand and laughed quietly. The Kon-Tiki still lay far out on the reef with the spray flying over her. She was a wreck, but an honourable wreck. Everything above deck was smashed up, but the nine balsa logs from the Quivedo forest in Ecuador were as intact as ever. They had saved our lives. The sea had claimed but little of the cargo, and none of what we had stowed inside the cabin. We ourselves had stripped the raft of everything of real value, which now lay in safety on the top of the great sun-smitten rock inside the reef.

Since I had jumped off the raft, I had genuinely missed the sight of all the pilot fish wriggling in front of our bows. Now the great balsa logs lay right up on the reef in six inches of water, and brown sea slugs lay writhing under the bows. The pilot fish were gone. The dolphins were gone. Only unknown flat fish with peac.o.c.k patterns and blunt tails wriggled inquisitively in and out between the logs. We had arrived in a new world. Johannes had left his hole. He had doubtless found another lurking-place here.

I took a last look round on board the wreck, and caught sight of a little baby palm in a flattened basket. It projected from an eye in a coconut to a length of eighteen inches, and two roots stuck out below. I waded in towards the island with the nut in my hand. A little way ahead I saw Knut wading happily landwards with a model of the raft, which he had made with much labour on the voyage, under his arm. We soon pa.s.sed Bengt. He was a splendid steward. With a lump on his forehead and sea water dripping from his beard, he was walking bent double pus.h.i.+ng a box, which danced along before him every time the breakers outside sent a stream over into the lagoon. He lifted the lid proudly. It was the kitchen box, and in it were the Primus and cooking utensils in good order.

I shall never forget that wade across the reef towards the heavenly palm island that grew larger as it came to meet us. When I reached the sunny sand beach, I slipped off my shoes and thrust my bare toes down into the warm, bone-dry sand. It was as though I enjoyed the sight of every footprint which dug itself into the virgin sand beach that led up to the palm trunks. Soon the palm-tops closed over my head, and I went on, right in towards the centre of the tiny island. Green coconuts hung under the palm-tufts, and some luxuriant bushes were thickly covered with snow-white blossoms, which smelt so sweet and seductive that I felt quite faint. In the interior of the island two quite tame terns flew about my shoulders. They were as white and light as wisps of cloud. Small lizards shot away from my feet, and the most important inhabitants of the island were large blood-red hermit crabs; which lumbered along in every direction with stolen snail-sh.e.l.ls as large as eggs adhering to their soft hinder-parts.

I was completely overwhelmed. I sank down on my knees and thrust my fingers deep down into the dry warm sand.

The voyage was over. We were all alive. We had run ash.o.r.e on a small uninhabited South Sea island. And what an island! Torstein came in, flung away a sack, threw himself flat on his back and looked up at the palm-tops and the white birds, light as down, which circled noiselessly just above us. Soon we were all six lying there. Herman, always energetic, climbed up a small palm and pulled down a cl.u.s.ter of large green coconuts. We cut off their soft tops, as if they were eggs, with our machete knives, and poured down our throats the most delicious refres.h.i.+ng drink in the world sweet, cold milk from young and seedless palm fruit. On the reef outside resounded the monotonous drumbeats from the guard at the gates of paradise.

'Purgatory was a bit damp,' said Bengt, 'but heaven was more or less as I'd imagined it.'

We stretched ourselves luxuriously on the ground and smiled up at the white trade wind clouds drifting by westward up above the palm-tops. Now we were no longer following them helplessly; now we lay on a fixed, motionless island, really in Polynesia.

And as we lay and stretched ourselves, the breakers outside us rumbled like a train, to and fro, to and fro all along the horizon.

Bengt was right; this was heaven.

French scientist who sailed across the Atlantic in a rubber dingy to test his theory that castaways could survive in an open boat by obtaining food in the shape of fish and plankton from the sea itself, and drinking sea water in limited quant.i.ties.

'Land! Land!' is the cry of the castaway when he sights the first coast. My cry on 11 November was 'Rain! Rain!'

I had noticed for some time that the surface of the sea had become strangely calm, exactly as if it were sleeked down with oil, and suddenly I realised why: 'Rain! Here comes the rain,' I cried aloud.

I stripped ready for it, so that I could wash all the salt off my body, and then sat down on one of the floats. I stretched out the tent on my knees, and held between my legs an inflatable rubber mattress, capable of holding some fifteen gallons of water. I waited. Like the sound of a soda syphon, monstrously magnified, I heard advancing from far away the noise of water beating on water. I must have waited nearly twenty minutes, watching the slow approach of this manna from heaven. The waves were flattened under the weight of the rain and the wind buffeted me as the squall hit the boat. The cloud pa.s.sed over slowly, writhing with the vertical turbulence of a small cyclone. I was drenched in a tropical downpour, which rapidly filled the tent sheet and made it sag with the weight between my knees. I plunged my head in it and as quickly spat the water out again. It was impregnated with salt from the tent and I let it all spill overboard. At the second fill, although the water tasted strongly of rubber, it was like nectar. I washed myself voluptuously. The squall did not last long, but the rainfall was tremendous. Not only did I drink my fill that day, but I was able to store three or four gallons in my rubber mattress. I was going to have a gurgling pillow, but each night my reserve of water was going to renew my hopes for the next day. Even if I had nothing to eat, even if I caught no fish, I at least had something to drink.

For three weeks I had not had a drop of fresh water, only the liquid I pressed from my fish, but my reactions were perfectly normal, just the marvellous sensation of swallowing a real drink at last. My skin was still in good order, although much affected by the salt, my mucous membranes had not dried, and my urine had remained normal in quant.i.ty, smell and colour. I had proved conclusively that a castaway could live for three weeks (and even longer, because I could have continued perfectly well) without fresh water. It is true that Providence was to spare me the ordeal of having to rely again on the flat, insipid fish juice. From that day on I always had enough rainwater to slake my thirst. It sometimes seemed as if my stock was about to run out, but a shower always came in time.

I found that it was impossible to wash the salt out of my clothes and bedding, and I had to remain until the end 'a man of salt water' (as the Polynesians say of people who live off the sea) completely encrusted with it until the day of my arrival.

The day of the rain brought me both pleasure and perturbation. The pleasure consisted in a new sort of bird, an attractive creature called, in English, I believe, a white-tailed tropic bird, and which the French call a paille-cul. It looks like a white dove with a black beak and has a long quill in its tail, which, with an impertinent air, it uses as an elevator. I rummaged quickly for my raft book, written for the use of castaways, and read that the appearance of this bird did not necessarily mean that one was near land. But as it could only come from the American continent, being completely unknown in the Old World, it was a good sign. For the first time, I had met a bird which came, without a shadow of doubt, from my destination.

This pleasant interlude was succeeded at about two o'clock in the afternoon by twelve hours of terror, which lasted until two the next morning. Just as I was peacefully reading a little Aeschylus, there was a violent blow on the rudder: 'That's another shark,' I thought, and looked up. What I saw was a large swordfish of undeniably menacing aspect. He was following the dinghy at a distance of about twenty feet, seemingly in a rage, his dorsal fin raised like hackles. In one of his feints round the boat, he had collided with my rudder oar. I found I had a determined enemy. If I only succeeded in wounding him he would surely attack again, and that would be the end of L'Heretique. What was worse, as I was hurriedly getting my harpoon ready, a clumsy movement knocked it into the sea. It was my last one. Now I was disarmed. I fixed my pocket knife on to my underwater gun as a makes.h.i.+ft bayonet, determined to sell my life dearly if he attacked in earnest.

This intolerable anxiety lasted twelve long hours. As night fell I could follow the swordfish's movements by his luminous wake and the noise his dorsal fin made cutting the water. Several times his back b.u.mped the underside of the dinghy, but he still seemed a little afraid of me. He never approached from ahead, and every time he came at me he changed course at the last moment before striking the floats. I came to believe that he was frightened, probably as frightened as I was. Every living creature possesses some means of defence, but it must perturb an attacker not to know what it is. In the early hours of the morning his wake disappeared, but I spent a sleepless night.

One of the lulls in this encounter brought a minor relief, which I interpreted as a message from the land. It was one of those little gla.s.s floats used on fis.h.i.+ng nets, encrusted with little sh.e.l.lfish, cirripedia and other sorts of barnacle. It had clearly been in the water a long time, but it was a sign of human life.

It was an exhausting day, and by the time it was over I was utterly miserable. It rained so hard during the night that I thought I was going to have too much fresh water, after having gone without it for so long. I wrote: 'It would really be too much if I drowned in fresh water, but that is what is going to happen if this downpour goes on. I have enough for a month. My G.o.d, what a cloudburst! What is more, the sea is rising. A pale sun poked through this morning, but it is still raining.'

Another excitement was what I took to be my first clump of Sarga.s.so seaweed. In fact, it was a magnificent jellyfish, the float blue and violet, of the type known as a Portuguese man-of-war. Its long treacherous filaments, hanging to a considerable depth, can cause dangerous stings, which often develop into ulcers.

I realised after one or two wakeful nights, how essential it was to get a good sleep: 'Forty-eight hours without sleep, and I am utterly depressed; the ordeal is really beginning to get me down. Moreover, the sea is infested with tunny and swordfish. I can see them leaping all round me. I do not mind the tunny and the birds so much, but the swordfish are a real menace. Am making good speed, but would willingly add another five or six days to the voyage if I could rest up in comparative calm. This dark, forbidding sea has a depressing effect.' It really seemed as if the sea was in mourning. It was as black as ink, flecked from time to time by a white crest, which the plankton made luminous by night. It looked like an evening dress with occasional white flowers, or a j.a.panese mourning robe. Not a star to be seen and the low sky seemed about to crush me. I realised the full meaning of the term 'heavy weather'; it felt like a physical weight on my shoulders.

At five o'clock on 12 November I noted: 'Rain and yet more rain, this is more than I can stand. But I wonder if I am not nearer the coast than I think, as there are several more birds. There are ten round me at the same time, and my bird book says that more than six mean that one is not more than a hundred or two hundred miles from the coast.' Little did I think that I was only just over a hundred miles away from the Cape Verde Islands.

During the night of 12 and 13 November, I had another visit from a shark, or at least so I hoped. There was no way of telling whether it was a shark or a swordfish. Every time a shark appeared during the day, I felt perfectly safe. I gave it the ritual clout on the nose and off it went. But during the night, fearing that one of those devilish creatures might spear me with his sword, I was no longer able to be so bold. I had to remain watchfully awake, trying to identify the intruder, and waiting wide-eyed for it to make off. Sleep was effectively banished. And often it seemed that sharks or other creatures were playing some sort of ball-game during the night with my dinghy, without my daring to interfere.

It was still raining in torrents. Under such a deluge I was obliged to stretch the tent right over my head, but it formed great pockets of water which trickled down through the gaps. After a certain time, the weight threatened to break the guy ropes, and I had to push from underneath to spill the water overboard. It must be difficult to realise the sacrifice involved for a castaway in thus jettisoning his reserve of fresh water. Even without sharks and swordfish, sleep had become practically impossible. The rain thundered down and every quarter of an hour or so I had to heave it overboard. An unbelievable quant.i.ty of water fell on the tent and trickled through every crevice.

I began to believe, in a confused sort of way, in the active hostility of certain inanimate objects. I might decide to write up the log or work out some calculations. I would sit down, with a pencil ready at hand. I only needed to turn round for ten seconds, and it found some means of disappearing. It was like a mild form of persecution mania, although up till then I had always been able to meet such annoyances with good humour, thinking of the similar misfortunes suffered by the Three Men in a Boat.

'Friday, 14 November The last forty-eight hours have been the worst of the voyage. I am covered with little spots and my tongue is coated. I do not like the look of things at all. The storm has been short and violent. Was obliged to put out the sea anchor for several hours, but hoisted sail again at about 9.30. Raining in sheets and everything soaked through. Morale still fairly good, but I am starting to get physically tired of the perpetual wetness, which there is no sun to dry. I do not think I have lost a great deal of time, but it is impossible to determine my lat.i.tude as I can see neither sun nor stars, and another of these confounded rainstorms is blowing up from the horizon. The sea is calmer, but yesterday I s.h.i.+pped plenty. They say, ”fine weather follows rain”. I can hardly wait for it.'

During the night a tremendous wave, catching me by the stern, carried me along at great speed and then flooded L'Heretique, at the same time breaking my rudder oar. The dinghy immediately turned broadside on and my sail started to flap in a sinister manner, straining at my rough st.i.tches. I plunged forward to gather it in, but stumbled against the tent and tore a great rent near the top of one of the poles. There would be no way of mending it properly and it happened just as I had to battle for life with the waves. I threw out both my sea anchors. Docilely, L'Heretique turned her stern to my normal course and faced up to her a.s.sailants. By this time I was at the end of my strength and, accepting all the risks, I decided that sleep was the first necessity. I fastened up the tent as close as I could and made up my mind to sleep for twenty-four hours, whatever the weather did and whatever happened.

The squalls continued for another ten hours, during which my eggsh.e.l.l craft behaved admirably. But the danger was not yet pa.s.sed. The worst moments came after the wind had dropped, while the sea continued to rage. The wind seemed to enforce a sort of discipline on the sea, propelling the waves without giving them time to break: left to themselves, they were much less disciplined. They broke with all their force in every direction, overwhelming everything in their path.

'Sat.u.r.day, 15 November, 13.30 Taking advantage of the rain to do a little writing. Have only two rudder oars left. Hope they will hold out. Rain has been coming down in torrents since ten o'clock yesterday evening, no sign of the sun; am wet through. Everything is soaked and I have no means of drying a thing, my sleeping-bag looks like a wet sack. No hope of taking my position. The weather was so bad during the night that I wondered for a time if I had not drifted into the Doldrums. Fortunately there is no doubt that the trade wind is still with me. Making good time, almost too fast for comfort. Still worried about the sail. When will the weather clear up? There was one patch of blue sky in the west, but the wind is from the east. Perhaps tomorrow will be better, but I am going to have another thick night. About seven o'clock this morning an aircraft flew over me quite low. Tried to signal it, but my torch would not work. First sign of human life since 3 November, hope there will be more. Sky to the west now clearing rapidly, difficult to understand why.'

There was a sort of battle in the sky the whole day between the two fronts of good and bad weather. I called it the fight between the blue and the black. It started with the appearance in the west of a little patch of blue, no bigger than a gendarme's cap, as the French song has it, and there seemed little hope of it growing. The black clouds, impenetrable as ink, seemed fully conscious of their power, and marched in serried ranks to attack the tiny blue intruder, but the blue patch seemed to call up reinforcements on its wings, and in a few hours to the south and north, that is to say to my left and right, several more blue patches had appeared, all seemingly about to be engulfed in the great black flood advancing towards them. But where the clouds concentrated on frontal attacks, the blue of the sky used infiltration tactics, breaking up the ma.s.s of black until the good weather predominated. By four o'clock in the afternoon its victory was clear. 'Thank G.o.d for the sun! I am covered with little spots, but the sun is back.' Little did I know that the most troublesome part of my voyage was about to begin.

I had not the faintest idea where I was. With no sun for three days I was in a state of complete ignorance, and on Sunday the 16th when I got my s.e.xtant ready, I was in a fever of apprehension. By a miracle I had not drifted much to the south. I was still on lat.i.tude 16 59', which pa.s.ses to the north of Guadeloupe. That vital point was settled, but my boat looked like a battlefield. My hat had blown off in the storm and all I now had as protection for my head was a little white floppy thing, made out of waterproofed linen, quite inadequate in such a climate. The tent was torn in two places and although the dinghy seemed to have suffered no damage, everything in it was drenched. Even after the long sunny days which were now to come, the night dew continued to re-impregnate my warm clothes and sleeping-bag, so I was never again to know a dry night until I touched land.

A disturbing incident then showed that I could not afford to relax my vigilance for one moment. During the storm, I had tried to protect the after part of L'Heretique from the breaking waves by trailing a large piece of rubberised cloth fixed firmly to the ends of my two floats. This seemed to divert the force of the waves as they broke behind me. Even though the storm had died down, I saw no point in removing this protection. But the following night, a frightful noise brought me out of my sleeping-bag at one bound. My protective tail was no longer there. The piece of cloth had been torn away. I checked anxiously that the floats had not been damaged and that they were still firmly inflated. Some creature which I never saw, probably attracted by the vivid yellow colour of the cloth which hung down between the floats, had torn it off by jumping out of the water. This it had done with such precision that there was no other visible sign of its attack.

Like the boat, I too had taken a buffering. I was much weakened and every movement made me terribly tired, rather like the period after my long fast in the Mediterranean. I was much thinner, but was more worried about the state of my skin. My whole body was covered with tiny red spots. At first they were little more than surface discolorations, not perceptible to the touch, but in a day or two they became hard lumps that finally developed into pustules. I was mortally afraid of a bad attack of boils, which, in the condition I was in, would have had serious consequences. The pain alone would have proved unbearable and I would no longer have been able to sit or lie down.

The only medicament I had to treat such an outbreak was mercurochrome, which made me look as if I was covered in blood. During the night the pain became very bad and I could not bear anything in contact with my skin. The least little abrasion seemed to turn septic and I had to disinfect them all very carefully. The skin under my nails was all inflamed, and small pockets of pus, very painful, formed under half of them. I had to lance them without an anaesthetic. I could probably have used some of the penicillin I had on board, but I wanted to keep up my medical observations with a minimum of treatment for as long as I could stand it. My feet were peeling in great strips and in three days I lost the nails from four toes.

I would never have been able to hold out if the deck had not been made of wood, which I regard as an essential piece of equipment in a life raft. Without it I would have developed gangrene or, at the very least, serious arterial trouble.

For the time being my ailments were still localised. My blood pressure remained good and I was still perspiring normally. In spite of that, I greeted with relief the victorious sun which appeared on the 16th, expecting it to cure the effects of the constant humidity which I had endured. I did not know that the sun was to cause even worse ordeals during the cruel twenty-seven days which were to follow.

The castaway must never give way to despair, and should always remember, when things seem at their worst, that 'something will turn up' and his situation may be changed. But neither should he let himself become too hopeful; it never does to forget that however unbearable an ordeal may seem, there may be another to come which will efface the memory of the first. If a toothache becomes intolerable, it might almost seem a relief to exchange it for an earache. With a really bad pain in the ear, the memory of the toothache becomes a distinctly lesser evil. The best advice that I can give is that whether things go well or ill, the castaway must try to maintain a measure of detachment. The days of rain had been bad enough, but what followed, in spite of the rosy future the sun at first seemed to promise, was to seem much worse.

British soldier and explorer. During 19756 Blashford-Snell led the Zaire River Expedition, which marked the centenary of H. M. Stanley's historic trek through Central Africa.

Following my bout of malaria I was also struck with some pretty uncomfortable dysentery, but by New Year's Day I was fit again, the boats had been made ready, the engines tested, the crews briefed and a great crowd gathered on the Island of Mimosa near the capital to watch our fight with Kinsuka, first of the thirty-two cataracts of the Livingstone Falls that cover more than 200 miles between Kinshasa and the Atlantic. a.s.sisting us on much of the stretch were the two Hamilton water jet boats. They had been designed in New Zealand and built in Britain. These 220 horsepower, fast and highly manoeuvrable craft were to be a vital part of the forthcoming operation.

At 11.00 hours La Vision pa.s.sed easily through the narrows where the river had now been constricted from something like nine miles wide to one mile across. Running down a smooth tongue of water, the inflatables skirted the line of tossing twenty-foot waves that rose and fell in the centre of the river. Acting as rescue boats the jet craft lay in the lee of weed-covered boulders. Gerry Pa.s.s and Eric Rankin, the SurvivalAnglia television team, had been positioned on one of these tiny islands to get a really first-rate shot of the drama, which they did when David Gestetner appeared with her white ensign fluttering. On the sh.o.r.e an elderly English lady missionary, overcome with emotion, is said to have burst into tears and then fainted at the sight. However, I put this down to the fact that the Gestetner's crew were Royal Marines!

As the boat crossed the first fall, her stern engine struck a submerged rock which hurled it upwards off its wooden transom. The flaying propeller sliced through the neoprene fabric of the stern compartment, which deflated immediately. Aboard the jet we could not understand the cause of the trouble, but we could see the great raft was being swept out of control into the angry wave towers that we knew must be avoided at all costs. In a second Jon Hamilton, our skipper, had opened the throttle and driven the eighteen-foot boat straight into the pounding mounds of coffee-coloured water.

I could see Mike Gambier in the water; his white crash helmet and red life jacket showing clearly, he bobbed amongst the flying spray. Our sister jet, driven by Ralph Brown, was already making for him with a scramble-net down the side. Lieutenant Nigel Armitage-Smith was standing by to pull him in. The deafening roar of water and engines drowned all commands. Everyone was acting instinctively now. David Gestetner's skipper was trying to pa.s.s us a line, his face contorted as he yelled against the din.