THE FIRST THING I did next morning was search out all my medical supplies. I had many cuts and abrasions, and skinless knuckles and joints. I wanted to get them healed before hunger began taking its toll. I salved, and patched over, my dozens of cuts and scratches.
My next move was to take steps to plan out my navigation; to somehow keep a record of my position and my progress along the track to Samoa. I scratched out a makeshift chart on the floor of the cockpit showing the sector between the Marquesas and Australia. I etched the islands in from memory and remained fully aware when I finished that my work wasn’t exactly accurate.
On the chart, as closely as I could figure it, I drove in a nail to represent my position, intending each day to shift the nail as I made to westward. Thus, on entering my second day under full sail, I tapped the nail in at a point a little to the south and slightly to the west of the Suvorov Islands. And, since I had no calendar and in order to keep up with the passing days, I managed a kind of calendar that consisted of X’s on the wall—knifed in just above my bunk below the porthole.
My fishing kit I never found. But I ran onto two hooks, and some line. I found, too, a small packet of fish bait. It was salted pork strippings. I baited a hook and fed it over the stern, keeping the line fast to my little finger.
For the first time since the hurricane I noticed that Old Death and his voracious boys were still with me. It was heartening to see them; now I had a mobile food supply. They were having difficulties in orienting themselves to the slower speed of the boat. Before the hurricane, when I had sailed faster, they were able to advance at a more favorable clip upon the unsuspecting schools of flying fish, but now the flying fish were able to observe my approach from a distance, and scatter. Despite this handicap my faithful dolphin never deserted me; nor did they trust me, keeping a discreet distance to avoid my spears and ignoring my baited hooks.
Happily, the hurricane had not pitched all my books from the bookshelf just above my bunk. There were nine volumes with which to shorten the hours to Samoa. I spent most of the morning reading. One hour I gave over to a nap. Other than pumping out, and searching the horizon, I did nothing. I avoided the deck in the heat of the day, but as the afternoon waned I came out to enjoy the fresh breeze and see to the steering. At the same time I made a check of the sails and my jury rigging. Everything looked okay.
I remembered that it is a good idea for those living in thirst to bathe the body with salt water. The pores drink in the moisture, and a little of the parched condition is thus comforted. I slipped over the stern and dragged in the wake to my neck. The cool water was delightful, laving over me with soft fingers and washing away my uneasiness. After ten minutes I climbed aboard, refreshed, and dried in the sun and wind.
As yet I had eaten nothing during the day. An intermittent gnawing walked hobnailed around my stomach. I decided to open the ketchup and have a taste—enough to take the edge off hunger. Working the cap loose, I took a strong suck from the bottle. I replaced the cap and leaned the bottle against the curve of the ribbing. The sight of it tormented me, set my juices to working, so I shoved it beneath my bunk.
By dark, I hadn’t caught a fish. I drew in my line. I pumped the bilges and lay down. My system for working the pump varied in the day and night. During the day I came up to pump out every hour. This gave me a chance to search the horizon a dozen times a day. At night I pumped out as often as the noise or splash of rising water awakened me, which was every few hours.
When I arose to greet the sun and found my belly gnawing I went seeking another swallow of ketchup. I found the ketchup bottle empty. I remembered taking a suck in the deep of the night, and that’s all I could remember. It must have been deeper than I realized, and it was regrettable, but the ketchup was gone. . . . I didn’t worry about it. For breakfast I rinsed out the bottle with a part of my morning’s water ration.
My hook was over the transom as soon as I could put it there. I sat reading on my bunk, jiggling the line tied to my finger. I dwelt constantly on the remaining can of food and the coconut. I wondered about the can. I guessed at what it could contain, and the more I guessed the emptier my stomach grew.
Hunger pains irked me all morning. Finally I thought, “Why be hungry when there’s food around?” I grabbed the hatchet; and in a few minutes I was downing a can of sauerkraut. I thought as I ate, What an unreasonable thing to be hungry when there’s food around.
The coconut lay on the foot of my bunk.
I was still hungry. My stomach was squeezing and unsqueezing itself. I put the coconut out of sight. But I thought of it constantly. I brought it out, smelled it, shook it, and heard the teasing rustle of coconut milk. I put it back. My throat and mouth turned wet with the possibilities of a bite of the soft white coconut meat. I went on deck, but soon concluded the sun was too hot.
Down below I got the coconut out and sat staring at it, fascinated. “Don’t eat it,” I said, “be reasonable.” “Reasonable my eye,” I replied, “if I were reasonable, I wouldn’t be here.” “It’s all the food you’ve got for eighteen days.” “So what.”
Ten minutes later I was smacking over the last white morsels of the exquisite coconut meat. My careful plans for apportioning out my food had gone glimmering. What did it matter; I was full and happy. I had no worries. If there was no food, there was no food . . . and that was that. Better to eat and be at peace than stalk and fret over a morsel. My spirits rose. “Tomorrow I’ll catch a fish.”
I went on deck and basked in the cool afternoon sun. In a while I dropped over the stern and rinsed my body in the fresh sea. After, I went below and read till dark. About seven o’clock I pumped the bilges for the last time that day, had my nightcap—a bare sip of water—and turned in.
All the next day I sat expectantly at the end of my line. Noon came; I had a small drink. It tasted sweet. Dusk came on, dark closed around. I pumped out, went below, and had a small drink that I called dinner. I turned in sorely disgusted. I didn’t even bother to haul the fishline aboard: it lay strung out through the hatchway and over the transom dragging in the sea astern, still twined about my finger.
In the middle of the night, I was raised from sleep by something nearly jerking my finger off. Instantly I realized it was a fish and went bounding to the deck, hauling on the line as I ran. From under the transom I pulled a rather lifeless-looking fish. When I took the hook from him, he just lay there breathing heavily. Suddenly he flipped himself about with quick snaps and, because there was no rail, splashed into the sea and swam merrily away.
I was stupefied. I turned my light onto the black water but could see nothing. The excitement of possible food had restirred the hunger movements; the sudden disappointment made me sick. I called myself onto the carpet and raked myself over the coals. When I realized that cursing and fuming was using up my reserves of energy I went below and fell into a miserable sleep that lasted through the night to the dawn.
I put fresh bait on the hook. The old bait, of course, I ate. It was pork rind processed chemically. It was tough and salty and had a peculiar ironlike flavor. But it was delicious. It set my digestive juices to flowing and soon all the devils of hunger were tormenting me. For hours I sat brooding over the packet of bait, saying no, and denying the growing call of my emptiness. And I knew there would be no respite from it as long as there was a crumb of food aboard. I decided to have just one of the thin strips of bait. “Just to suck on,” I said. By noon, not unstrangely, all but one of the strippings of bait was gone.
I sat and stared at it. It was beautiful to my eyes—I put it aside and tried to forget it. Soon I was back, fawning over it, pondering its destiny. As bait on the hook its value was inestimable; yet, on the other hand, it could just happen that a fish might steal it, and I would have neither fish nor bait. The fate of the strip of rind became of huge proportion. I carefully weighed its future, thinking deeply on every possibility. Then . . . saying to myself, “a bird in the hand. . . .” I placed the rind on my tongue, and soon I was sucking on it happily. That settled that problem.
But it made me feel better to eat. When the food was gone I relaxed, read, and thought of the good time I would have in Samoa. Water, not food, is the important thing in starvation. This I knew. As long as I had a few sips of water each day, I knew I could survive to Samoa. I was rigorous with my water, knowing that my very life depended on it. I never drank more than a pint a day and I always staggered my drinking through the day and night so that I received its maximum benefit. But eatables . . . I gulped them on sight.
During my life I have achieved ideal health. I knew my body could stand any physical rigor within reason. To go without food for long periods isn’t a great test for the human body. So I didn’t worry if my impulsiveness resulted in a temporary hardship. The thought of Samoa only two weeks away braced me up.
I caught the same fish again. The moment he tugged at my finger, I bolted to the deck, bristling with sudden hunger. I pulled him quickly over the stern and dropped him in the cockpit. Before he could take a first breath I was on him.
I fell chest first over him, smothering him with my weight. Very gradually I eased off and clutched him with both hands. I felt as the lion feels with a fawn under his claws. The fish’s baleful eyes watched me as I beat the life out of him.
I fetched him below; and less than five minutes after being hauled from the deep he was cleaned and scaled. With his insides gone there wasn’t much to him. He was a common variety of triggerfish, blackish brown, about eight inches long and half as wide; his head made about third of his body. Under my bunk was the faithful little Primus stove, and miraculously enough it fired up. I scraped the rust out of the skillet.
I was at a loss as to how to cook my catch. I couldn’t afford the water to boil him, and I couldn’t use salt water for its effect on my thirst. There was no grease for frying. Then I remembered the jar of vaseline in the medicine kit.
After drying the fish, I coated him liberally with vaseline and dropped him into the hot frying pan. As he sizzled and popped beneath a cloud of smoke, I rolled him over. When he grew seared looking and soft, I cut the fire and pinched at him with my fingers. In a few minutes there were only a few bones to identify what had twenty minutes before been a fish cavorting in the sea. I kept the bones for breakfast.
The next day dragged by with nothing more exciting than the hauling of the wind from south to southeast. My line was still dragging astern, but there had been no bites. Hunger ravaged my stomach like tank treads. I had been saving the vaseline in case I caught another fish. As dark closed in, and my stomach cried out, I cleaned the jar with my finger and licked it dry. It was greasy and probably contained little or no nutritional value as fat; but at least it quieted the hunger call.
A morning soon after I wakened with greediest hunger because all night I had dreamed of feasting and gorging. I sipped my morning water ration, which only tormented me. I went to the medicine chest, and before I could caution myself I ate the only jar of Vicks. And that afternoon when the devil harried me again, I squeezed one of the two tubes of boric acid down my throat. I saved the other tube and a can of tooth powder for the next day.
I spent the afternoon thumbing through the only magazine aboard—one that had lodged on the bookshelf. As I turned over each page it was the same thing—food. Mammoth advertisements showing food in its most toothsome manner. Great roasts and salads, sandwiches and desserts, stews and cocktails. Hunger cramps started. Each page tortured me. I jumped up and with one sweep tossed the magazine far out on the green water. I felt better.
The next day I mixed half the tooth powder with water, and drank it as a potion. It had a pleasant aftertaste but it made me flinch when it went down. By nightfall, still no fish.
Prospects for the next day looked good. There was half the small can of tooth powder, and the other tube of boric acid compound. I bedded down that night unutterably hungry.
Then came the worst night of all. A night of food dreams. A night of ghosts in the form of chocolate cakes and steak dinners. Through the long hours I writhed between waking and sleeping, and at last I wakened finally and found myself champing at my blanket. I jumped up and fumbled hurriedly into my medicinal supplies. I came out with the last tube of boric acid, squeezed it into a blob on my fist, and smeared it into my mouth. Then I slept.
With morning I suddenly remembered my shipmate, Stowaway. I hadn’t seen him since the hurricane, and strangely, I hadn’t particularly thought of him. The little house I had built him was gone; it evidently went by the board during the storm.
I remembered Stowaway as I had seen him last, just before the hurricane, sleek, fat, and beady-eyed. I grew aquiver with the thought of the nice stew I could make of him. I began a detailed search of the boat, which took me into its every nook and cranny. For hours I crawled and squirmed into impossible places. By noon I found no trace of his recent existence aboard. I had torn away all the inside planking and ripped up what floor boards were left. I had also lowered myself into the watertight stern section and probed through it with my flashlight. I finally had to admit that my long-time buddy had been washed overboard.
But the search hadn’t been entirely fruitless. I found several articles that I could use. There were a chamois cloth, an army shoe, a box of pepper, a tube of lipstick and a jar of face cream left from the cosmetics I had planned to take to Mary, a small box of tea, a bottle of shaving lotion, a bottle of hair oil, and a tiny jar of fish eggs for bait.
I opened the fish eggs to put fresh bait on the hook. I baited it and intended to screw the cap on the jar. To explain what I did next is impossible; there is no explaining it, it just happened. Before I could get the lid on the jar, I had gulped the eggs. There was only the empty jar in my hand, but hopelessly little comfort for the valuable mouthful I had downed. . . . But they were gone; so I didn’t have to worry about how to resist them.
My hunger went unchecked. When I napped in the afternoon I fell into eerie food dreams. I had to get up, I couldn’t sleep. I turned to my limited food resources and experimented with them. I chopped the chamois cloth into tiny fragments, spilled them into a strong tea made from my ration of water and some of the tea I had found, and boiled them for ten minutes. This I seasoned heavily with pepper, a half can of tooth powder, and a generous dash of the shave lotion. To give it an interesting taste, I tossed in a fistful of salt water and a part of my can of machine oil.
The result was a stew that made my eyes burn and my nose revolt when I ate it. Since the chamois had been used to strain gasoline, it gave the brew a distinctive zip. I ate half of it that afternoon and deferred the rest till the next day.
I got up as on any other day and started out the battered companionway. What I saw on the sternpost paralyzed me. It was a sea bird. He sat there looking absent-minded and wriggling his tail feathers. I could sense his fatness and I was eager to have my hands on him in a death grip.
Instantly I was the primitive beast stalking his prey. I knew I couldn’t creep upon him, close enough to pounce on him, unseen. I thought of crawling near and clubbing him, but the mizzen was in the way. Then it occurred to me to spear him. There was my fish spear. Spear in hand, I eased into the cockpit and each time his eyes were away from me I slid a foot nearer. Six feet from him, I dared not go farther. I posed my weapon, took a deep breath, took nervous aim, and jabbed. It was a clean stroke impaling him at the breast.
The bird was one of the small variety of tern which tolerate the Pacific wastes. Defeathered and cleaned he weighed out something less than a pound. The vaseline was gone, so I coated him with machine oil and put him on the fire.
It was a wonderful breakfast. I smacked over the thought of it for the rest of the day. At night when I had failed to get a fish and no further birds had landed aboard, I brought forth the small handful of bones left from the morning feast. Each bone I gnawed and crushed and sucked, then sprinkled it over the side.
The next morning I quaffed off the last of my devilish brew. It made my hair crawl to smell it. It had soured in the night, so I downed it quickly, not wanting to lose its liquid value. Later I became queasy, and lay hove-down with a fever that night, unable to bail out. By morning the water had risen to my bunk top. I realized I had better make some effort to get afoot and pump out, or the decks would soon be awash.
I got up and stood in the knee-deep water. There was nothing to eat. I looked up hoping there would be a bird as on the morning before. There was nothing—only the limitless whitecaps. I drank my ration of water for the day. It made me feel better. I pumped for an hour, lowering the water to the bilge. The growing morning heat was robbing me of my moisture. I lowered myself over the stern and dragged along in the gentle wake. It refreshed me and I came aboard strong again.
I finished the dreaded job. It left me so tired that I went below to bed. I slept several hours but awakened with fitful pangs of hunger. There were only the face cream, hair oil, shaving lotion, lipstick, and army shoes aboard. I sifted through them for something edible.
I took a nibble of the lipstick and found it not too bad. Cutting the red lump loose from its holder, I broke it in two and swallowed each lump. However, the lipstick didn’t relieve my hunger. I opened the jar of face cream, and before I knew it had crammed the unctuous mixture down my throat. It left an oil taste in my mouth for hours and made me slightly squeamish, but the inner twistings ended, and I was at peace.
I slept till past high noon and went on deck to work the pump. The effects of my semistarvation were beginning to tell. I began for the first time to labor at the pump. Also, I felt a greater inclination to sleep, and a general drowsiness, and I was aware of a slight fogginess in the head. I had lost some flesh, my arms were thinner, a few ribs showed, and my knees were somewhat knotty. My waistline grew more fashionable every day, it was smaller around than I would ever have had occasion to imagine it could be.
All I thought of was food. Every waking hour was dedicated to it, and every sleeping hour. I recalled great meals where I had sat to table in the past and eaten hugely. And I dreamed of tables in the future where I would sit for hours and glorify food.
While I was pumping I noticed splashes emanating from the life raft astern. It had a shallow layer of water in its bottom, and from there they came. When I took a close look I could see that some sort of fish was trapped inside and attempting to swim in the insufficient water.
Flipping about helplessly was a delicious looking flying fish. He had evidently leaped inside and now he was trapped. He was easily eight inches long. I picked him up and admired his shimmering beauty with drooling glances. I was estimating how tasty he would be fried in machine oil. “But first,” I thought, “I’ll just have a nibble of his tail.”
I bit his tail off and ground it up exuberantly, bones and all. It was savory beyond description. Before I quite understood what I was doing I had devoured the whole fish and was picking scales out of my teeth. All I could remember of the fish was the slightly bitter taste about halfway through.
The fresh meat put me in a scintillating mood. My spirits soared and I felt that I would come on land any minute. By my arithmetical calculations I was hard by Samoa. The Manua Islands should be appearing presently. Maybe in the night the loom of them would rear up on Pagan’s bow. I decided to rise as often as possible in the night to pump out—and look for them.
I rose often in the night and searched, but nothing broke the monotonous dim horizon.
Morning found me on deck at the crack of dawn, straining my eyes across the bows. I climbed the mast and peered ahead; but when the little spar groaned beneath my weight, I clambered down. The horizon offered up nothing to encourage me. But the ocean did.
Just under Pagan’s counter I espied three triggerfish—new arrivals from near-by land, I suppose. I broke out the spear and set to work. Kneeling on the stern, I sighted down the spear shaft and struck. My first thrust was awry. I tried again and again, but learned that striking at so small a target with a single barb isn’t easy. Eventually I nicked one of them and he limped off astern. I never saw him again.
The other two played wary and sought the protection of the keel. To draw them out I dropped bits of wood on the water which they sidled out to investigate. Peering over the stern, I stabbed them as they sauntered out, and again when they hurried back.
In time I nicked another of them and he too fled sternward, not to reappear. I realized if I was to get the last one I must make a spear with more than one barb.
Dusk was coming on. I was exhausted and ravenous. There was nothing to eat except shaving lotion and hair oil, and an army shoe. I wasn’t desperate enough to stomach those, so I had a last look for land, pumped the bilges, and slipped below for the night—hungry.
The day’s exertions had been too much for a peaceful sleep. Food dreams haunted me . . . hamburgers, “Cokes,” hot dogs, chocolate sundaes whirled through my mind, causing me to pitch and toss. In the middle of the night I dreamed I was chewing a juicy chicken bone and shouting for more. I awakened, and there I sat bellowing into the black night for more chicken.
A foot of water covered the cabin floor. Outside was the persistent noise of the sea as it lapped against the planks. I got up to do the pumping—an hour’s work.
Before dawn I awoke with hunger’s sharp stitches in my stomach. I couldn’t sleep. The recurrent thought of the spear I had to make was badgering me. In the end I arose early, and began to work at it. I made it from one of the oars given me by the Perlas Indians. I cut the oar blade off square a foot from the tip and drove four nails up grain. Pounding the head of each nail flat, I filed them sharp and into some semblance of a barb. I pared down the oar blade to coincide with the handle, and my spear was ready.
At daybreak I was perched on the stern waiting for old “wobbly fins,” as I called him. The triggerfish swims very leisurely and with a lackadaisical flourish of his large fins. In a short time he sauntered out into the rising sun. My first strike missed cleanly. He reared back to note the cause of the disturbance around him, exposing himself broadside. It was a shot I couldn’t miss.
Soon he was frying on the fire, smoking like a coal burner. I had to fry him in hair oil since I had used the last of the machine oil on the bird. I ate him so fast it made little difference what he was fried in. And I ate him as I fried him, head, scales, fins, and all. Usually I saved the bones for the next meal, but when I finished there were no bones.
The policy on Pagan was rapidly becoming: when there is food, eat it; when there isn’t any, forget about it.
With the acquisition of food, I burst into liveliness again. I felt optimistic about land and expected to see it by noon. There were a few signs to indicate its presence. Flying fish were more in abundance than at any time since the hurricane, and Old Death and his boys were giving them a merry chase. Several sea and semi-land birds were in the air, hovering over the voracious dolphin, swooping on the flying fish. And astern, their wicked pointed fins jutting menacingly up from the dark water, was a school of leering sharks.
I stood before the mast all day watching each new cloud. Right up to dark there was a landless horizon. With the ship making so little way I wasn’t afraid of beaching myself in the night on something I couldn’t see before dark. I pumped the bilges and went below.
That night I had a bad case of “channel fever,” the nervous anxiety that plagues the seaman the night before arrival. I slept fitfully and, when I dreamed, I had nightmares. I wakened once shouting “Land ho,” and rushed out on deck expecting to see it. Before daybreak I was perched at the mast, watching for a sail or a cone of land.
Light of day brought no gray shadow that could be called land. There were the usual birds of the past few days—and more of them, it seemed.
Two in particular showed the keenest inquisitiveness about Pagan. They flew up within a dozen feet of the stern, hovered for a moment, then broke away into a slanting curve that brought them back again. I could see that if I had a weapon, I could knock one of them down as he poised in flight. A bow and arrow, it flashed across my mind, would be just the thing.
I crept below, and after a considerable search decided to rip out one of the oaken deckhouse beams for the bow. It was nearly an hour before I had broken the heavy timber out. Outside, the prying birds were still slanting across the stern, and in fact, now that I was below, they appeared to be easing in a little closer. In another hour I had sawed the beam, chopped it, and whittled it into something resembling a bow. The arrows were easier to fashion. I simply sawed strips from a pine plank, wired a nail to the tips, and prepared to shoot them untufted. I strung my bow with a strand of wire left over from the shrouds.
With an arrow fitted to the string I waited, and watched for the moment when I could shoot. I was standing just inside the cabin, prepared to fire through the companionway. When a bird soared in and hovered a moment, I let fly, but missed. I had many shots and was heartened by an occasional glancing blow or near miss.
The birds grew chary. By noon I had lost nine arrows and the birds were no longer coming quite so close.
Nails—especially after the extensive repairs I had made—were scarce. I made a few more arrows, and during the afternoon I fired twelve, my total supply. Hunger pains and exhaustion, the long hours of nervous anxiety, were beginning to tell. What was worse, there were only a few more nails for arrows, and these were in the foreward hatch where I had nailed it down in preparation for the hurricane. I pulled them and made more arrows. Soon I was shooting at the ungainly frigate birds again.
My aim was getting erratic. Then, unexpectedly, one of my shafts connected. A head shot: he folded limply and tumbled into the water a few feet off the beam. There were pointed fins just to sternward or I could have dived the short distance to retrieve my kill. I pulled the rubber dinghy up, hopped in, paddled to the limp feathery ball, and even as I was stepping aboard Pagan again, I was ripping out handfuls of feathers.
Food for two days in a row brought a Christmas-like spirit to Pagan. My optimism soared. I would sight land by the next morning; if not, by noon; and by nightfall enjoy dinner at the Naval Station in Tutuila. I also thought of a scheme for making a slingshot from rubber of the life raft. It would be simple enough to knock down a dozen birds in the time it had taken with the bow. That night I had a rosy dream instead of the usual nightmare.
The next morning, after looking fruitlessly for land, I set to work on my slingshot. I wanted to knock down a bird or two to sustain me through the day till land came. After extensive practice in making such boy’s weapons as a youngster, doing it now was a pushover. In little time I was ensconced in the cockpit with my new weapon and a small pile of nuts, unscrewed from the engine.
Soon I was getting an occasional shot, but not doing well, because I was overearnest. Moreover the large frigate birds which make easy targets were gone, only the smaller terns were around. They flew faster, were smaller. About eleven o’clock I winged one. He landed off a good way, too far to chance a retrieve in the dinghy; but when I came about and beat up toward him, he took off and limped along to eastward. It was tough luck, but there were plenty more around.
Sometime in the late afternoon I sent another plummeting into the green sea. I jibed ship and flew toward him; but he too got away.
Along about five o’clock I gave up. I poured a few pans of sea water over my body to moisten the dry, dying skin. I pumped the bilges, had a last look for land, and shuffled below. I was dead tired and thoroughly disgusted. The thought with which I went to sleep was, “Tomorrow there will be land, I hope.”
The next day was overcast and dull. Overhead, for the first time, floated white bosun birds, short-winged, long swallow-tailed, plummeting from time to time like falling bombs into the sea. They were new on the scene and they were land birds. I had seen them from the Perlas Islands all across the Pacific—and always I had seen them near land. It is said the bosun bird hovers within sight of his land. I watched them float, collapse their wings and tremble downward, and as I watched my hopes for a quick approach to land grew.
Somewhere close was land. The birds bespoke it. I followed them, studying their every movement for hours. Not a hint, not a clue did they drop of where land might be. And there was no trace of land on the horizons . . . until, in the afternoon, dead ahead, it welled up from the sea. I could barely distinguish it in the haze, but it was land, I knew it was land. I raced toward it exultantly. Land after sixteen days of near starvation! I found myself clinging to the mast, shouting and singing. Then it happened. What I had thought was land went racing away along the horizon, changing its shape as it went, and hiding itself in the thick air. I had been hoaxed by a cloud; but I wasn’t discouraged, land was near.
The bosun birds were still flying overhead “in sight of their land.” I wished I could see with their eyes. I wished I knew what they knew. Somewhere near was land. There were gannet birds in the air and varieties of land terns, besides the bosun birds and the ever-present sharks loafing patiently around the stern. But where was the land? How close, how far, in what direction?
I searched the horizon for hours, trying to penetrate the overcast air. Land was overdue; I should have sighted it two and even three days before. By calculation I had passed it. I consulted the figures of my guesswork navigation. If I were making thirty miles a day; I should be near, or past, land. The nail, marching to westward over my chart, was sticking up in the center of the Samoan group. On the bulkhead, above my bunk, a lengthening line of X’s leered at me. I changed my figures from thirty miles a day to twenty-five—and still I figured I should be near enough to sight land . . . if it were there. I decided to wait another day before taking action. I went out on deck.
A grizzly mantle completely censored the sun. The wind during the night had been steady from the northeast. Its habit, in this area, was to veer steadily from the south over a space of days to the northeast, then suddenly haul back to south and start the cycle anew. There was no way, with the sun blotted out, to know the set of the wind, whether it had changed or not. I certainly didn’t want to run before it, with it on my starboard quarter, if I didn’t know its direction, especially if it was out of the south. I last remembered it on the starboard quarter giving me a westerly course. According to the stars it had been—then—somewhere in the north quadrant.
The sea swell indicated no change in wind direction. I decided to play it safe, and doffed all sail but the tiny jib. The work tired me. I went below and slept an hour and came back.
Floating high up were the bosun birds. Their very presence teased me and tantalized me. Land for them was but an hour’s flight. I thought of the closeness of land, and of the possibilities of finding it soon, and thought on the deep dishes I would eat. It made my stomach crawl, and I forced it out of mind.
Pagan drifted under a heavy sky. It was painful to have a wind and not to be able to sail; it was worse than being in a calm. But midafternoon hunger was crucifying me. There were several shoes around, only one of which was of undyed leather—an army shoe. I stared at it dejectedly. It smelled like you-know-what; but it was food. I cut the upper part away from the sole, and started chewing its tongue. It was too tough even to be dented. Army shoes are tough customers. I soaked it awhile in salt water, taking it out occasionally to beat on the end of my bunk for “tenderizing.” Greasing one sizable piece with hair oil, I fried it, but it only turned black and stayed just as unchewable. Finally I boiled the whole shoe in my precious water ration. I didn’t boil it long; as soon as evaporation began to tell on the water content I cut the fire. The soup had an inspiring taste, but the leather was still unbearable. In the end, I cut it into strips, and though I still couldn’t chew it, at least I could get it down, and that’s all that mattered. I went to bed that night with something under my belt.
Don’t eat leather if you want pleasant dreams. For unending hours I writhed in the grip of nightmares about food. I was in a mammoth grocery store running berserk among corridors of food. I wakened in a labor of sweat only to drift back to my horror dreams.
Sometime late that night when I pumped the bilges I caught a glimpse of Canopus, and joyfully established the wind in the south. My hunch had been correct. The wind had shifted. Had I sailed with it on the starboard quarter, I would have been sailing northeast. I trudged to the deck and strung up all sail. Once again Pagan was making a beeline to the west.
A wan sun hidden intermittently by mountains of heavy clouds arose and flashed pale beams on a mass of land at the bowsprit end. I watched it closely for a suspicious minute, then I was sure it was land. When I saw it loom up, I nearly went crazy. I jumped up and down on the cabin top and giggled like a child. Grabbing my bucket I ran onto the stern and indulged in a hasty salt bath. The land was closing in at an amazing rate. I dried myself cursorily. Valleys in the land were visible. I went below to get dressed. I donned a suit of khakis, a hat, shoes, and combed my beard.
Coming on deck, I noticed that the land had changed not only its shape, but its direction—in fact, it wasn’t land at all, it was a cloud, it was going straight up. I watched it ascend in dejected silence. My heart slumped down to my shoe bottoms. If my body hadn’t needed the liquid so badly, I would have wept.
That afternoon, I ran out of nuts to use as ammunition. Everything had been stripped from the engine and its fittings. There was the thousand pounds of cement in the bilge used as ballast. I chipped out a dozen suitable pieces, but by dark had had no success with them.
That night was the grimmest aboard Pagan since the hurricane. Flashlight in hand I sat for hours in the cockpit studying my makeshift chart of South Sea waters scratched in the wood of the cockpit floor. According to my figures I had far overshot Samoa. The next land to westward was the Hoorn Islands, the exact position of which was unknown to me. But to the southwest about 600 miles lay Fiji—some three weeks’ sailing time.
It was two days since I had eaten anything substantial. A dread decision was in the balance: go on looking blindly for Samoa, or head south, while there was still time, and connect with the wider area of the Fijis. Covering a wide swath as they do they offered a broad front that would be easier to find than Samoa—but the big thing was to get there; to go for three weeks on two weeks’ supply of water, at a half pint a day. It was a decision to be weighed, to be thought on.
If my assumptions were correct, I was somewhere approximately northeast of the Fijis. Unless I headed south soon I would miss them altogether and have to struggle on to the next land, the New Hebrides Islands, over 500 miles from the Fijis. I pondered over the crude map, measuring distances, weighing possibilities. Finally I decided to look one more day for Samoa.
The sleep of that night was woefully unsound. I dreamed I was wrecked on a beach; and I was happy. There was a huge gray whale stranded there. I grabbed him by the tail and started devouring him alive as I had done the flying fish. And I awakened clawing and growling at my bunk boards. It was just as well, the bilges needed pumping.
Before daylight I was atop the deckhouse peering past the wind-filled jib to the landless horizon. It was my twenty-first day under the jury rig. All that day I sat on the fore scuttle, rising often to search across the bows. Overhead were the bosun birds, gannets, land terns, and man-o’-war birds, screaming down on the flying fish scared up by Old Death and his raiders. Land was somewhere, but where? The only times I went aft was to pump the bilges. I kept a daylong vigil that came to naught. As dusk, then dark, closed in I did what seemed the only reasonable thing to do. I stepped aft and changed the angle of rudder, by directing the splintered remains of the tiller to leeward. The bow hauled in upon the southeast breeze and stopped in the south. “Fiji or bust,” I said, as I lashed the splintered stub and trimmed the sails to hold me on a new course.
From that moment onward the tenor of my situation changed. I was no longer, as I had led myself to believe, temporarily under duress; I was in a position of extreme indefiniteness about everything. I wasn’t even certain that if I did head south I would be able to find the Fiji Islands. It all depended on how far west I had sailed in search of Samoa. It depended on whether I was sailing at a rate of twenty-five miles a day or thirty—or more or less than that—regarding which I had no way of knowing. It depended on the westerly set of the current—that is, its speed. It depended on whether or not I could face another twenty-one days of fast. It depended on whether there were any intervening reefs—and the Fijis are notorious for hidden offshore reefs. I could take a wild stab in the dark and hope for a safe landfall, and that was all.
My most burdensome concern was the weather. Like a sword of Damocles the threat of a destructive hurricane hovered in the offing, I was moving in a widely known cyclonic track, with the hurricane season under way at that!
Pagan couldn’t outlive another hurricane, and I hadn’t the strength to fight the ruinous winds or bail the boat out for prolonged hours. I closed my mind to the likelihood of any such event, and concentrated solely on the dubious trip ahead and the bout with starvation—the first round of which was over.
The bow of my boat was in the south; I worked the heavy bilge pump for the first time on the new course. I looked off across the stretch of hostile water, took account of my crawling speed, listened to the grumble of hunger in my stomach.
Then an urge struck me that penetrated to my very warp and weft, so I followed it. In such circumstances what else remains to a man but that last unfailing resource, the Great Captain—the Captain of all ships. I bent to my knees reluctantly; for in the last months my sins had been monsters.
From Perlas to Galápagos, and from Galápagos on west, I had uttered such curses as I doubt have ever been heard over the keel of a ship. In every squall, gale, calm, cloudburst, and contrary current, I had unloosed a flood of invective to shame a mule skinner. But more than that . . . in the height of my extremities I had profaned God Himself. On many an occasion I became so bold as to defy Him, deny Him, and swear I would profess atheism all the rest of my life. I even invited Him on deck—man to man—anything but the obstructing persecution of the elements, anything but the slow crawl when I wanted speed.
And now, lost, foodless, without instruments, I humbly bent my knees to the deck and laid my folded hands upon the cabin. With eyes raised I read off a most heartfelt forgiveness and piteous appeal to Pagan’s real Captain.