I SAT IN THE COCKPIT searching my rough-drawn map of the Southwest Pacific. I was pondering the sea stretches I would be crossing and guessing upon the advisability of what I was doing. There were still a few birds from land beating about. I was still sure that land was close, but to go on searching over a trackless sea when Pagan’s speed was nil, and with food gone, water dwindling, and the next land 600 miles away—no, I couldn’t afford to risk another day in vain search. The broad Fijian chain of islands was findable. My only safe recourse was to go there, and take that lesser of two risks.
I had a predominant guide, since the Dog Star Sirius, in its east–west march across the heavens, drives directly over the center of the Fijis. It was my plan to go south till I was under Sirius, then west till I struck land.
There was a beam wind from the east casting up a light chop. Pagan sailed easily; now and then she slopped a little water over the rail. The spray for the most part kept me below in the dark cabin.
Toward late afternoon, I remembered a mosslike growth on Pagan’s leeward side that had grown during the long traverse from the Galápagos. I would have eaten it before now but I was in doubt as to its effects.
I went on deck and examined it closely. Its color varied between light and dark green, and it was hairlike, growing about an inch long in several spots. I scraped off a fistful of it and squeezed out its salt water. I pushed a part of the salty grasslike wad into my mouth and chewed and swallowed it. It tasted the way grass should taste, sprinkled with salt. It didn’t ease the hunger but it eased the mind.
I thought of the half bottle of hair oil and took the weedy stuff below. With a light sprinkling of the oil—and a stretch of the imagination—it had a saladlike taste. But when I had eaten the grassy bit, I found the hunger still gnawing. It wouldn’t be quieted.
There was nothing more to eat except the moss. I scraped some more of it from the hull, dripped the last of the hair oil over it, and chewed it down. Pagan was foodless. I sipped the last of my ration of water for the day, pumped the bilges, and settled in for the night.
I waked with the worst hunger pangs yet. The moss, without hair oil, was unbearable, but I ate enough of it to quiet my hunger callings. However, in a while they came again and devils tormented me all morning. By afternoon I couldn’t stand it longer. I wanted just a bite, just a chew of something to cheat hunger of its grip.
There was a last pair of shoes, but when I chewed on a corner of leather the taste and smell of dye sickened me. I turned to my belt. I took it off and sat holding it in my hands. It was genuine cowhide; I had owned it for years, had worn it in college and all through the war, had worn it through four shipwrecks. Sentimental attachments swelled within me, and I put it back on. There was only my wallet: of kangaroo hide, a gift of Mary’s father. Starvation overcame sentiment in its case, and I emptied its contents into my shirt pocket. As with the army shoe, I boiled it, pounded it, cut it into strips—they lasted through the day and the night.
I was sitting on deck just at dawn watching as always for that point on the horizon from which the first birds would come. A small white sea bird, flailing the air with long wings and shrieking loudly, slanted across the bow from what could have been any direction and circled in for a close view of Pagan.
I flipped a single cement chunk toward him, more as an afterthought than a serious intent. Bird and rock miraculously converged. A puff of feathers flew up, and the victim plummeted into the sea like a crippled plane, a bare thirty feet from where I stood.
Unlashing its lines, I threw the helm hard down. Pagan rounded to, veering into the wind and bearing down on the wad of white. I scooped the downy creature inward.
What I did next has been unbelievable to me ever since. Crazed by the thought of food, but more crazed because I had food in my hands, I tore the head from the body in one motion. Thrusting the pulsing stump into my mouth, I drank every particle of its life-giving blood. I was an animal who had made a kill; and as the animal will, I went at it tooth and claw. When it no longer yielded a drop, I bit the delicate neck off and chewed it up, bone and all.
Before I could stop myself, the greater part of the bird was gone. Even then I couldn’t stop. I bit wolfishly into the mass of feathers, tearing at what met the tooth; whether it was bone or feathers didn’t matter. Not one bone of the fowl’s body escaped the mill of my teeth. Each one I smashed to fine splinters and ground to pulp and swallowed.
I ate his feet as I found them. Skin and all went down. When I came to the head, I ate everything “but the eyebrows.” His bill chewed like gristle. I plucked the larger feathers from the skin and started gnawing at the down. It resisted like a blanket, but it filled the emptiness and cheated the devils of hunger. When it was gone I wished there had been more.
When I finished my cannibalistic meal, only a few feathers here and there, and among my teeth, showed that a bird had passed that way.
Two days crept tediously past as though they marched on minutes an hour long. I trolled my fishline as ever astern day and night but received no encouragement. The sparse patches of seamoss on the hull were beginning to thin bald in spots. Birds were around and I had a few opportunities to fling missiles at them, but somehow there was no longer the former spring in my arm: my shots fell short or went awry.
One morning as I came on deck I saw a ship. When first I sighted it, I thought it was a rowboat on the horizon. But on closer inspection I made out the top of the stack and the upper reaches of the masts and booms. She was hull down, knifing directly across my bow; a big freighter pitching gracefully into the long swells.
I had joyful visions of being towed to Samoa, to food and rest. I thought of the mast’s being restepped, and resuited with sails. I could see myself provisioned anew and setting out again for Sydney, and to Mary.
She was evidently Panama bound, probably out of Fiji or Brisbane. Her superstructure was barely floating on the rim of the horizon, and she was footing it fast. Close though she was I couldn’t make out her tonnage or nationality. She was still dressed in wartime gray. Any minute I expected to see her alter course and swing across wind to me.
I scaled the unsturdy mast and blinked my flashlight from the masthead. The mast labored under my weight; I climbed down. Then I raised and lowered the mainsail. All the time I shouted like a madman; I knew this couldn’t be heard, but I yelled just the same. But the big ship swept on with graceful deliberation.
Suddenly I thought of a fire. Fires on shipboard are signals of distress. I rushed below and threw a shirt and a dash of the shave lotion into the bucket. I lit it from the dwindling supply of matches and carried it onto the forepeak. The ship had passed from the starboard to the port bow. It hadn’t sighted me.
I grew frantic as I realized I wasn’t going to be seen. I jumped and waved and screamed, and in between I did everything but sink my boat for attention. I dashed astern and changed course so as to keep in sight of the ship. A thick gray cloud of smoke blew off Pagan’s decks from the bucket, rising about twenty feet. The mate on watch must have been figuring out his pay or telling the wheelsman what a great guy he was, because a blind man could have seen my signal. I watched helplessly as the ship grew blurry in the distance and dropped below the sea.
I stayed on the southeast course instead of reverting to south. It was midafternoon before I came across a slick indicating the passage of the ship. I changed course to east and beat upwind following in its track. There was one chance in a million that the vessel might stop or turn back. Also there was a chance the cook would dump his garbage.
When dark came on I luffed the bow into the wind and dropped off on the port tack to my former course. I wasn’t too discouraged. When you are lost, land is where you find it. I knew I would find it sooner or later; it was a matter of endurance.
The next morning early, I did something I should have done before. I painted SOS on both sides of all sails. There was no paint to do it with. I used the pitchy stagnant oil from the engine. I also painted it on the foredeck, the cabin top, and in the cockpit, in case a plane should happen over. There were only the haunting sharks or a lonely bird or two to see it, but it was there giving an international message to any craft which might pass in my absence from deck.
I studied the horizon in a slow sweep, pumped the bilges, and stepped through the hatchway.
It was a day of cancerous loneliness. I had long since finished reading the nine books aboard, and I had started through them a second time, but it was wearisome trying to read a mystery when I already knew the murderer. One of the books, however, the Bible, from which I read selections each day, became more purposeful as I reread it. It was the kind of mystery where you couldn’t know all the clues, and where the more you knew, the more mysterious rather than more clear became its significance—a mysteriousness which led me to the value of faith, that gift of the Bible. Out there I needed faith, it was the only thread left to cling to.
It was about this time that the more noticeable effects of my starvation struck me fully. My wristbone I noticed first. It stood out like a Ping-pong ball. Veins which never before could be seen, but now were accentuated by shrinking arms and tightening flesh, stood out like miniature molehills. My elbows were gaunt, and my biceps like eggs. Hollows were showing in chest and shoulders; all my ribs could be counted with the eye and my stomach was a sloping valley between chest and thigh. My hips flared out sharply and a deepening cavity was evincing itself on the inside of my upper leg.
Large bony knots stood for my knees. But my feet and ankles had swelled to twice their normal size, probably from liquid seeping down from above. They were heavy, and movement about deck was laborious.
It was also at this time that the last of the moss gave out on Pagan’s hull. A thorough search of the boat showed that the only eatables aboard were the half box of tea and the half bottle of shaving lotion.
I put a pinch of tea in my mouth each time I pumped the bilges. It helped. The shaving lotion I was keeping in case the water should run short.
The next afternoon the wind changed from east to northeast and grew rapidly in strength. This sudden shift put me on the alert and I watched sky and sea critically. I slacked sheets and for a long time ran before it, making at least two knots. But time came when the danger of being pooped was imminent. I could see a storm was on me; a mild gale was already blowing.
I worked the little ship around to where she faced up to the wind and where she was breasting the onrolling seas. I lashed the helm, unbent the mainsail and stopped it to the boom and mast, and watched her as she stood before the rising weather. She lay comfortably under jib, staysail, and jigger. I pumped her out, had a look into the wild sky, and went below, where I lay in my bunk absorbing Pagan’s reaction to the making weather . . . and waiting.
After dark, judging from the noise in the rigging and the angle of heel, the wind came up to gale force. But so long as Pagan could carry sail she rode easily. I had to pump out every two hours; and it enabled me to keep a close eye on the condition of the sea and wind.
I kept my fingers crossed, hoping the wind wouldn’t rise. Pagan in her crippled condition, I was certain, could not have weathered another hurricane, even with a hardy crew.
The hours were a nervous and physical strain I could ill afford. I lay lashed in my bunk, straining to hear and interpret every new sound. In the dead of night the little mizzenmast collapsed; I heard it go down. I trudged out on deck not realizing how weak I was till I attempted to retrieve the spindly stick from the sea. In a dozen tries I was unable to grapple it in. The strength just wasn’t in my arms.
In the end I pulled it as close aboard as I could by the sheets and passed a double half hitch around the sternpost, securing it. With that effort I was overcome by fatigue. I could easily have slept in exhaustion where I lay, but for the danger of being licked off the railless deck by the sea.
I clawed my way on hand and knees into the cockpit. The bilges were in need of pumping. I could feel that need but I couldn’t respond to it. I lowered my tired legs into the confined cabin and flopped onto my pitching bunk. I remember fitting my lashings in place . . . then total blackout.
When I came to, water in the cabin was higher than at any time since the first hurricane—for now I was convinced that I was in another. I was completely drenched. The blanket which I used as a mattress was a sop pad. The cabin was a din of sounds that only water in a confined space can make.
How many hours I had slept I don’t know. It was dark. Pagan was pitching and rolling. I presumed that all sail had been torn down by winds and that heavy seas had crashed down upon the stern, flooding the cabin.
A sense of unmitigated futility swept over me, dominated me. I was ready to give up. Water was nearly washing me off the bunk. I knew I could never bail it out—I was too far gone. The hazard of going on deck to work the pump in hurricane winds was suicidal. I felt like lying back and waiting in desperation for the end.
In complete defeat one rises above fear. The mouse will fight a lion when chased to the wall. Hurricane or no hurricane I was going to pump my bilges dry. I had to; my boat would founder if I didn’t. I took a heavy drink of precious water. A refreshed feeling coursed through me. Taking hold of the coamings I eased my eyes into the night to meet an amazing sight.
What I saw wasn’t one of the treacherous Fijian hurricanes but a mild tropical breeze of about force three soughing out of the south. However, a heavy cross sea was running which gave Pagan her antic behavior. My staysail and jib were intact and the little aftermast was still trailing from the sternpost.
Above me the skies were a patchwork of peaceful stars. Only the slowly abating rollers gave evidence that a tropical gale had passed. I took heart immediately and set to on the pump.
The new southern breeze compelled me for the night to lash the stub of a tiller with my bow jutting into the southwest.
As soon as I had offered up my morning supplications I asked the Good Captain that I be excused to tend my menial tasks on deck. I wanted to get the jigger rigged and holding a pressing sail again as soon as possible.
Seas had moderated. It was simple to pluck from the easy seaway the oar used for mast; and with decks steadied by the lush breeze, stepping the light spar wasn’t difficult. With my boat under full sail again, my time was my own. I pumped the bilges and went below to do my daily reading from the Bible.
With a south wind holding, the course stayed at southwest. I didn’t tack to maintain a beat into the south, though I needed to make as much southing as possible, for I was still a long way from being far enough south to be under Sirius. Effects of starvation were pronounced. I gave Pagan her lead into the southwest. I had to. Even the little work of tacking sail was rigorous labor to me and a drain on my body moisture. To me land was where I would find it: as always my wicked intuition indulged me; it said, “Go southwest.”
I hadn’t eaten for five days. Five days and no food . . . and I can remember when I bellyached if I missed a meal! The sustained fast enabled my stomach juices to partially hibernate and my nights were less harassed by frightful dreams.
But the quest for food went on. I occasionally got a shot at a bird, but my strength and judgment had ebbed till I couldn’t have hit the broad side of a barn if I had been leaning against it. The fishline was ever astern. But Old Death and his wary protégés snubbed it disdainfully. The sharks, now increased to some five or six in number, showed it even less attention. Their interest centered on the limping craft, and in a very strong way I felt they were particularly interested in me.
I was still navigating by the stars and sun, working ever south till I could look up the mast and sight Sirius dead overhead. When that day came I intended to probe westward for land . . . whatever reared above the sea.
I went on deck at daylight to be confronted with—of all things—an island. It was no cloud I saw this time. From the first glance there was no mistaking its identity as land.
It lay broad on the port bow: a low island, longer than it was wide. A volcano on the summit emitted a dark curtain of fast-flowing smoke. Its outlines were bleak because of overcast and a growing wind, which pushed a scud in from over the horizon.
The island looked prosperous, a sure sign of habitation. Rescue this time was certain, but I determined from the first not to be hasty and careless, remembering that infinitely more seamen have perished in getting ashore than have on the reaches of the open sea. On the sea a boat can float and it is safe. But in crossing the reefs to the lagoon or pounding through the surf to the beach, a boat can be dashed and its crew overwhelmed and drowned. Also, another manifest danger to the seaman is the often unconquerable distances necessary to travel once he is safe on shore—often over entangled, infested terrain—to find help and food. Then, too, the hungry, thirsty, exposed seaman must remember to nibble and sip his first food and water or run the risk of violent death when he is most safe.
All these things I thought of as I gazed on the dark green paradise that would soon be mine. I thought too of the huge joy of eating again. I saw myself racing into coconut groves, clawing down the green drinking nuts and fattening on their soft meat and cool milk. I visualized groves of bananas growing to the water’s edge and I languished on the thought of eating and sleeping at their roots. Delicious juices suddenly flowed in my mouth as the devils of hunger prodded me.
I changed course, beating as high on the wind as possible, and kept the island on the bow, so it bore directly southeast. I made for its closest point.