WE ANCHORED OUTSIDE the reef off Nayau, a near-by island, the first of the two to be visited, at noon. I went ashore to see the copra weighed, but as soon as the local chief heard of my sea venture, I was ushered off to an impromptu Yangona. First a chicken was hastily boiled, a stalk of bananas was brought in, and I ate before the large circle of smiling faces.
I told my boat story by pantomime and the addition of a growing Fiji vocabulary. Once wasn’t enough so I labored through it a second time. I was told that the schooner would be shoving off soon for another village down the coast. There was time for a drink of the ceremonial kava. I took it on the run. After thanking them all for their generosity I went to the boat.
The next village was a repeat performance of the first. The worst part was eating another chicken, and more bananas.
Nayau was the island from which Itchy and Una emigrated to find their happiness. I was now in the village where they had formerly lived. I met Una’s worn and aged parents, a venerable old couple married forty-two years. Itchy’s father was dead but I was taken to his blind old mother. She was told that Itchy had been kind to the kai vavalage (white man). She nodded, smiled, and sat quiet.
That night I slept in the hut of Una’s parents. Before daylight, as arranged, I was awakened and hustled off to the rattling, trembling schooner. When the sun had been up little more than an hour, we were swinging to anchor off the little island of Thithia, the last step before going on to Vanuambalavu. Off to the southwest, on the horizon, I could see the gray crater top of Tuvutha.
It appears to be the bounden duty of Fijians to be hospitable. I was hardly ashore at Thithia before the “key” to the village was given me. In part payment for the food and comfortable chair that was brought me, I told my boat story twice. There wasn’t time for a Yangona, so I shook hands with those nearest and was rowed out to the smoking schooner.
We pulled away from the reef making a course of north for the long, twisted island of Vanuambalavu.
There is a radio station there from which I intended to send an immediate message to Mary and to my mother. Also, ships often pass there bound for Suva, main city of the Fijis, I was told. It seemed incredible that in a few hours I would be in radio contact with my wife.
We nosed our way through a perplexing maze of coral reefs and coral heads. The Fiji islands abound in them. Coming up to the anchorage before the white trading post, we let go the anchor, and it rumbled down in a wide bay active with outriggers under sail. A large village, nestling among tall palms, lined the shore.
I went off with the first boat to meet the vavalage, Mr. Stockwell. I found him in the warehouse under a wide-brimmed hat, in island shorts and sandals. He was weighing flowing sacks of copra boated in from the outlying isles.
I stepped up and stood leaning on my cane, watching him in the midst of his dickerings with barefoot, stolid natives. He was tanned golden, had a sturdy laugh, and though grayed at the temples he hefted the great sacks to the scales. He saw me with a jolt: it was seldom he saw strange white men.
I introduced myself, clasped his hand, and tried briefly to account for my presence. He smiled quizzically as I talked. On his face was a creeping disbelief of what I was saying. The old sea dog broke in and told of what he had heard at Tuvutha. The young Tongan mate backed him strongly.
In a widening grin of appreciation, and with an occasional “blimey” whispered hoarsely forth as I recounted my siege on the sea, Stockwell listened. At the end of the part about the hurricane he said, “Stone the crows, lad!”
I could tell he was finding it difficult to believe. But he had to believe. There I stood, my bones still prominent from the rigors of my five months’ cruise; and the old sea dog and the young Tongan mate pointing out that parts of Pagan, from her masthead to keelson, littered the beaches and the village of Tuvutha.
Stockwell sat down and bade me be comfortable. I talked on. He sat with lips apart, his eyes never leaving my face. Suddenly he stood, and taking my arm led me into the trading post and out back to his family quarters. We sat there long hours as I went on with the account of my voyage. When I finished, his first reaction was a lengthy minute of wordless appraisal. He shook his head, smiled, then launched into a series of questions covering the whole voyage. He was keen to know about the hurricane and my prolonged search for land. Finally he said, “You’ve probably set a record for one man under a jury rig, if it’s true you sailed a crippled boat from the Suvorovs to here.”
He went on to comment on my luck in slipping into Tuvutha past the offshore reefs. Then suddenly he said, “This wife of yours, what’s she like? I want to see the woman a bloke would sail the Pacific for.” Mary is always a topic of easy discussion for me; a topic of especial fluency, and one which at that moment I was able to expand upon.
At length the topic turned to Stockwell and his existence as an islander. We continued for long hours as he reminisced over the more than thirty years he had been butting around Fiji as an island trader. He had seen the hulks of many fine craft that had met watery ends along Fiji’s iron-bound coasts. I wasn’t the first castaway to turn up at Vanuambalavu; and in many cases where the sea had taken a tragic toll there had been no castaways to turn up. He told of sudden hurricanes, shallow offshore coral heads, and treacherous currents. I felt fortunate to be alive, fortunate that there had been no hurricane, that somehow I had sailed past the jagged offshore reefs, and that the treacherous currents had not destroyed me.
The afternoon was wearing on to dusk, and I wanted to get word to Mary and to my people at home. Stockwell reported that the radio was broken down, that there would be no possibility of a message until I could reach Suva Bay on the main island of Viti Levu, some 180 miles to westward. But that was a problem that could wait till after dinner; he ushered me to his generous table.
Mrs. Stockwell, a charming Tongan woman, had prepared a doggoned good “Yankee” dinner for me. It was ham and eggs with real bread, coffee, and apple pie. I had eaten the native foods for so long that it was wonderful to eat the less healthful civilized concoctions again.
That night I slept on a soft mattress. I slept the more soundly because plans had been made as we talked far into the night to send me by launch to near-by Kanathea, where there lay a copra boat inbound to Suva.
After a Sunday breakfast of oatmeal, fried eggs, and pancakes, another welcome Yankee concession on the part of Mrs. Stockwell, I chatted with my genial host on his veranda. We awaited high tide so the launch could top the reef at a break in the island through which I was to pass en route to Kanathea. When the water was up sufficiently I made my adieus, and once again was on the move.
The little launch skirted a tropical coastline fringed with sleeping palms. The islets in the lagoon were misshapen, palm-grown and coral-bound; the breaking water from hidden reefs around them shot up from minute to minute like tiny explosions. Here was a harbor that in the old days had been a roadstead to tall whaling ships and pearlers. Now there were only a few petty copra schooners, and the likes of me, a broken-down twentieth-century castaway en route to his lady love. We passed over the shallow reef between two shoulders of land where the long island parted. Across an open stretch of reefy sea lay Kanathea. Suckling to it was the small copra ship.
A native conned us through the coral heads and soon we were tied alongside the copra boat. She was the Tui Cakou—“twee thakow.” All steel, about 700 tons, well appointed, and fast. I swung aboard and found the captain.
The little ship was loaded to her Plimsolls and ready to go for Suva. She was waiting for Monday; but first she had to stop at the island of Naitamba for a passenger and small cargo. We lazed away the afternoon fishing from the sun deck.
Before daylight of Monday morning the bow and stern anchors were drawn in and we moved out of the tight coral lagoon. To the right was Vanuambalavu; to the left, Hat Island; and dead ahead the gray dome of Naitamba.
There was no break in the reef through which to make entrance into the lagoon at Naitamba. The ship had to laze back and forth outside the reef and the goods were to be lightered out in longboats under oar. I went ashore with the first boat to the fatly vegetabled island to fetch the passenger and his cargo. Naitamba slopes away from its high rugged end to a low gentle end resting on the water. The low coastal slopes are rich in coconut growth.
We steered in to a short cement jetty built to accommodate copra loading. On its seaward end, greeting us, stood old Gus Henning, a veteran islander and mariner of the Southwest Pacific. I lit as soon as the craft was secured and strode with Henning off to his tropical paradise built up and developed over the years from a desert isle.
I met Mrs. Henning, active and benign, who took us to her capacious lounge where I saw combined the grace of Europe and the cool quiet of the South Pacific. A Fiji Mary, wrapped in her sulu and in customary bare feet, slipped in with tea. I told the Hennings the long story of my voyage, only this time I didn’t have the gnarled old sea dog to back me up when they questioned its parts.
A castaway’s story wasn’t a new one for the inhabitants of Naitamba. Many an adventurer down in his luck had passed through there. Yet, despite this, the Hennings were amazed with the difficulties I had encountered in my Pacific traverse; and they took a heartfelt interest in my trials and my predicament.
Old Gus Henning, himself a veteran sailor of the Fijian group, and, in fact, a large portion of the Southwest Pacific, was sincerely disappointed that I had lost my brave little Pagan. Boats and the sea were an abiding love with Gus. He offered to return with me to Tuvutha to determine if Pagan could be salvaged. He wanted to see her alive again and before the wind. But I described Pagan as I had seen her last: her keel imprisoned in the sand, her lines broken and battered, her bones beginning to parch, and her few salvageable items prize possessions of the natives at Lomaloma.
Mrs. Henning was greatly concerned that Mary in all these months since my departure from the Perlas hadn’t received definite word of my whereabouts. Many times she had fretted patiently when Gus’s craft, overdue from a long passage, was making its way in. There were no radio facilities on the island or a message would have been readily sent to Australia.
The Hennings had come out from Europe after the First World War to take up plantationing. They reared a family and cultivated an island between the wars. The children left for the second war, and at its finish decided to stay on in England; the Hennings were left with an island full of memories.
Mrs. Henning offered to show me over the plantation. We toured the house. Nothing lacked that I could see. Comfortable ornamental bedrooms. A spacious lounge room; two porches—one glassed in, one open. A well-equipped kitchen. Soft overstuffed furniture; European rugs; radio; maid service by a bevy of Fiji belles. We stepped from the cool, five-room house onto a green sealike lawn which sprawled around it. Next to the house on the fringe of the lawn lay cultivated tropical gardens, towered over by imported shade trees and coconut palms.
Farther on the grounds were fenced and laid out in vegetable gardens. There were cows, horses, and pigs. In the fowl run I saw turkeys, geese, and chickens. A part of the warehouse was given over to a provisions store for the Hennings and the fifty natives who worked the island.
A world of men dream of such a hideaway: the Hennings told me it was very incomplete!
The Tui Cakou, with her markings in the water, was ready to sail in midafternoon. She headed out into the Koro Sea, making southwest for Suva. The Fijis are a lovely archipelago to sail through, blue islands to left and right. Through the night as I wakened in hunger and rose to have my customary nightly meals, I thought ahead and hoped for success in my quest for transport on to Australia.
Next morning the little ship was tied bow and stern to the copra wharf at Suva, and I was taking a last look at her. A tall decorative Fijian policeman came for me from the Immigration Department.
To one used as I was to our hard-boiled cops girt with revolvers or carrying clubs, the Fijian arm of the law is a study in contrasts. The weapon carried by the officer who came for me was a ready, jovial smile which completely disarmed me.
He wore the famous, well-groomed, bushy headdress. The navy-blue jacket was collarless and beautifully tailored, set off by polished golden buttons. It disappeared at the waist beneath a colorful crimson scarf, clasped by a thick leather belt buckled in front with a shining brass buckle. From under the bright scarf and reaching to the knees was a white sulu with a diamond-shaped hemline. From beneath the white skirt showed the powerful legs and customary bare feet. The result: the world’s most colorfully attired police force.
At police headquarters I was accepted and politely passed through with unbelievable facility. In this world where international travel without a visa is next to armed aggression, it was strange not to sign half my life away to the authorities. From the highest commissioner to the lowest barefoot private, I was very patiently handled and cared for.
I was anxious to get a cable, announcing my safe arrival, away to Mary. The commissioner very considerately hurried my papers along.
The cable I sent read: “Am safe and well in Fiji. Taking first ship to Australia. Will cable. I love you. Johnnie.”
Almost immediately, and even before Mary could possibly have received my cable, I received a cable from her. She had heard of my wrecking in a news flash, and had rushed a message whose very words showed that a heavy burden of dark uncertainty had been lifted from her mind.
Those words: I read them and reread them; they were a reprieve from doubt, a welcome home, an avenue to a whole new future.
The problem of where to stay while I was in Suva looking for transport was extremely perplexing, because I had six offers from people who earnestly wanted me to stay at their homes. I felt like a heel saying yes to one, since it meant saying no to five others.
Honestly, I don’t know why seamen persist in getting wrecked in some of the outlandish places they do, when they can do it in a nice place like Fiji.
I finally decided to stay with young Ernie Hurley, from Morris-Hedstrom Shipping. He was my age, married; we had much in common.
I was promptly taken in tow by the Fiji Times and escorted around town. They turned me up at the Yacht Club and introduced me to all the local helm talent. My picture was snapped with yachtsmen and members of the Fiji police force. I had a nice story in the paper; and I heard my name on the radio that night. But none of the publicity helped me get back to my wife, a project which was still as great a perplexity as it had been in New York—except that now I didn’t have a thousand dollars to buy a boat.
My problem was still to find a ship bound for Australia. Nothing was expected for a month. Plane fare was exorbitant—besides, I was broke.
A British tramp had sailed for New Zealand two days before, bound to Melbourne via Hobart, Tasmania. I approached the Royal New Zealand Air Force, stationed at Suva, with the idea of hitchhiking a lift to Auckland. From there I could pick up the ship. Tough luck, I was told—there was no military traffic.
The American Consul suggested I contact the U.S. Army Air Corps, stationed across the big island of Viti Levu at Nandi. The next day I took passage over the dusty coastal, and partly inland, road aboard a rumbling native bus that rolled and pitched to outdo Pagan.
At the air base I gave the colonel in charge a sad account of my recent months. I appealed to his romanticism by bringing my wife into the story. Like all Americans in the face of misfortune, he grew softhearted. The Army can’t carry civilians, but, as he put it, “a shipwrecked seaman is different.”
At the moment he had nothing going to Australia until the first of the year. But there was a “kite” in three days for Tontoota, New Caledonia. Plenty of traffic, he said, dropped in from the States and Honolulu to Tontoota; and plenty went back. But nothing much went on west. I might get to Tontoota and find myself stuck there. It might be better to wait at Nandi till January.
I had three days to mull the pros and cons of the prospective flight to Tontoota. In the meantime I continued to search for transport to Australia. I jaunted back across the island by bus to the head offices of the Colonial Sugar Refining Company. Could they put me on one of their sugar boats crossing the Tasman? No soap. All space was chartered by employees voyaging home for Christmas holidays.
I decided to gamble on the plane to Tontoota. There was a possibility I would get stuck there, but my wicked intuition, telling me as ever all would come out right, pressed me to take it. It was known that craft were flying out of there to the Solomons and into New Guinea. Possibly I could follow that track and connect with Australia from one of the northern points. Anything to keep moving in the right direction.
On the morning of the twenty-eighth of November I boarded a medium army bomber. I had just finished breakfast at Nandi, and when I lunched it was my Thanksgiving dinner, in the army mess at Tontoota. After having sat around helplessly for a week at Nandi, I traveled a thousand miles in a few hours.
I reported to the colonel at the field with a letter of introduction from the colonel at Nandi, and told him the sad story of my life on the sea. He listened considerately, but told me there were no flights that could assist me just then. I was billeted and told to stand by.
More days of fretful waiting were to follow. The day after my arrival a special letter came from Mary. She had written it more than a week before, and it had followed me by air mail from Suva and Nandi.
Mary’s long months of patient waiting showed up between the lines. She had received my letter of July mail from Post Office Bay in the Galápagos. It had arrived in Sydney the first week in October, explaining my expected arrival before the last of September—in other words, I was always a week overdue when the letters had arrived! And here it was only a very few days from December!
At that time little or no shipping was leaving New Caledonia—nothing whatever bound for Australia. My only avenue of travel lay by air. I searched the flight schedules every day. After four days I was tempted to return to Fiji, and try from there again. The pilots dissuaded me. “Anything can happen,” they said. And it did.
A great four-motored transport slithered in from the sky unexpectedly. Aboard was an inspecting officer bound for Sydney via Brisbane. Five days of nerve-worn waiting was over—the next morning at daylight I would start the final lap.
At noon of December third I landed at Brisbane on the same field that nineteen months before I had taken off from to speed south to my wedding. It was impossible to believe that in less than three hours I would be with my wife again. A lot of water had flown beneath the keel since the last time.
Reporters from Brisbane papers took pictures and asked questions about my voyage. I sent a cable to Mary telling her of my arrival time in Sydney.
The giant plane lifted easily and roared over the rugged coastal terrain that was so familiar to me. We swooped on Sydney, crossing her sinuous harbor and beloved bridge, made a wide sweep of the city, and shaped up for the approach to the runway and angled down to it.
I was the most eager passenger aboard.
My gear was first to be unloaded and I was first passenger to alight. And then I saw Mary. I remember her coming toward me—and I believe I moved to meet her. For a second I saw her unfathomable blue eyes. . . . She was in my arms . . . a thousand dreams had come true . . . my trials on the sea were far away.
I can’t describe that moment any more than you could. At such a time you live too fast for description in mere words. What mattered then was that I was home from the sea . . . back again with the one person who counts in this world.