Part 14

“You can’t come up here in your underwear!” I spoke hotly, furious at what I considered an insult to the ship and family.

Immediately Nick, as hot-tempered as I, flung himself into the fray. “Not your business what Mickey wears!” he challenged.

My own problems with Nick had been many—open insurrection, like the one in the North Pacific, or simply sullen withdrawal, when he disapproved one of my decisions. Since he was, technically, first mate, and at most times a good and responsible shipmate, I felt the need of his cooperation. I decided that now was as good a time as any to have it out, so I called a conference of all the men in the hope that, somehow, we could achieve a meeting of minds.

We began with the immediate source of irritation, Mickey’s underpants. As was so often the case, the whole incident turned out to be the result of a misunderstanding. Mickey, who had had little experience in Western dress, had been given the briefs in Hawaii, along with various other articles of clothing: socks, shirts, bathing trunks, and neckties. Mistakenly assuming them to be sportswear, he had donned them for the first time that morning as being more presentable than the patched khaki shorts he’d been wearing at sea.

This was finally settled and, with the ice broken, a great many other grievances came out. Primarily, they stemmed from two sources: the Japanese interpretation of quite innocent actions as slights (as when we had once or twice omitted introductions all around when some quite casual visitor came aboard); and their continued feeling, in spite of everything we did to combat it, that we did not treat them as “equals,” as fellow yachtsmen. Nick showed us a local newspaper report which referred to the “Reynolds family with crew of three Japanese,” and seemed to feel it was my fault because I had not properly briefed the newsman responsible. In this instance, as in many, it was Ted who quietly stepped into the breach, pointing out that the reporter in question had come aboard when only the three Japanese were there and that any information he had or had deduced must have come through them. Ted, I might add, was a very important member of our conferences if only for his rare ability to remain objective, aware of all points of view and partisan to none. More than once, after a more than usually acrimonious debate, he would manage to sum up the entire controversy in a simple and direct restatement of viewpoints which often had the effect of soothing and pointing the way to agreement at the same time.

So it was in Cairns. Gradually our various points of disagreement were dredged up and disposed of, the air was cleared, and good relations were re-established—or so we liked to believe. Now we could hope for smooth sailing, for a time at least, until the next accumulation of resentments boiled over.

Two days after leaving Cairns we reached Cooktown, a veritable ghost town, whose glory, like its gold, has long since played out. From the days when it was the third largest city in Australia, with some 30,000 population, Cooktown has dropped to 400 individuals, who live quietly amid the ruins of the past.

We tied up at a dilapidated dock and walked to town along wide streets lined with deserted mansions and tumbledown hotels with rotting floors and elaborate wrought-iron balconies. The few existing shops close during the heat of the day, so we wandered the streets until four o’clock, inspecting the inevitable monument to Captain Cook (he had been _everywhere_ before us, from Hawaii on through the South Seas) and musing over the memorial drinking fountain (dry) which commemorated the heroism of a woman who had died of thirst in 1883.

When the shops reopened, we located an enterprising baker who regretted his almost-empty shelves—“Hardly ever get strangers here, and Cooktown people know what _they_ want!”—but who agreed to bake whatever we cared to order. It was our last chance to get fresh supplies until we reached Thursday Island, beyond the still-extensive reef, so we ordered a dozen loaves. The baker also suggested a couple of pies and I, thinking to surprise Barbara at her birthday dinner that evening, slipped back to close the deal in secret.

“What kind do you have?” I asked, my mouth watering at the possible choice between apple, cherry, and lemon meringue.

The baker greeted my question with stupefaction. “_Meat_,” he answered, implying, Natch—what else?

For Barbara’s birthday dinner we had a pie apiece—meat.

With our departure from Cooktown began the serious part of our trip through the reef. Above this point, the coral closes in, the channel narrows day by day, the trade winds sharpen, the tides and current strengthen. We would have to thread our way with great care during the next 400 miles for, unlike the larger ships that ply up and down, we could not follow a radar course from one beacon to the next.

Ted and I consulted the charts and laid out anchorages in advance for each night: Lizard, Bewick, Hannah, and Night islands; all uninhabited, of course. The last 200 miles we planned to do in a final stretch from morning of one day until afternoon or evening of the next.

Back of our planning was the knowledge that better men than we had come to grief in this treacherous region, including Captain Cook himself. Even the old master, Slocum, had nicked a coral reef with the _Spray_, “while going full speed.” He was a lucky man, in that a six-inch difference in the tide would have put a sudden end to his voyage.

There was no settlement along this stretch, no emergency telephone or first-aid station, nor any outside help. To me, it seemed somehow more isolated than mid-ocean and many times more dangerous. The area offers fabulous beauty, endless variety, wonderful sailing, and just below the surface—treacherous, lurking danger. Even cloud shadows playing across the surface of the blue-green waters could be nerve-racking, suggesting the presence of underwater coral heads.

Our fears were not without justification. On the evening of June 15 we approached Hannah Island, whose automatic light had already begun to flash its signal through the dusk. Under mizzen and foresail, we came in slowly from the south, staying well west of the light and taking soundings. Suddenly events kaleidoscoped.

“Eight o!” called Moto, swinging the lead up forward. Almost immediately, on the next cast, his report changed urgently. “No! _Cannot! Yon dake!_—Four!”

“Hard to port!” I shouted. Ted, at the helm, pushed it hard over but before we could even begin to swing around there was a shock of impact. With an ominous crunch we ground to a stop.

“We’ve hit!”

No further words were needed. Barbara and Jessica huddled on the deck box, keeping out of the way while the men sprang to drop the sails. I went below and started the engine, but already the moment was past. Pushed by the current, the bow of the _Phoenix_ swung gradually and she drifted free astern. Unbelievably, we felt again the gentle rise and fall of the deck beneath our feet.

Hardly daring to credit our luck, I kept the engine going as we drifted and sounded until we had reached eight fathoms. Then we dropped the hook. We checked immediately and pumped out, but so far as we could tell only the keel had hit and we were taking no water.

In the morning—after a restless night in which treacherous coral heads intruded into my dreams—we checked our position and tried to estimate where we had been the previous night. As far as we could determine, we had been nowhere near the reef as indicated on the chart. It seemed likely that we had happened on an isolated coral head, as yet unmarked, and we made careful notes so that the maritime agency could check further.

In any event, the sound of our keel crunching on coral in that desolate section of the Great Barrier Reef is a sound none of us ever wishes to hear again!

More than ever I became convinced that in every successful round-the-world cruise a certain amount of luck—or, at least, the absence of bad luck at a critical moment—must play a part. Pidgeon, who twice sailed around the world singlehanded, went ashore while asleep, just after sailing from Cape Town. He landed on a small, sandy beach, the only such on a rocky coast that extended for scores of miles. Moreover, he had miraculously gone over a rocky ledge, passable only at high tide, in order to have landed there! Slocum himself, in addition to his brush with Moody Reef, went ashore on the coast of South America, but was fortunate enough to escape without damage to the _Spray_. Every voyager, I am sure, can recall some incident which could have meant the end of his trip had not good fortune—or Providence—intervened.

So intrigued did I become with these speculations that, during a stay in Cape Town, I gave a talk on the subject, calling it “The Fifth Ingredient”—the other four being a well-found ship; a good crew; adequate preparation and maintenance; and seamanship. Regardless of the other four essentials, it is my contention that a generous portion of this fifth ingredient is essential if success is to be achieved.

During the afternoon of June 17 we knew we were truly in the neck of the funnel. From deck level we could see the discolored water of the fringing reef closing in, mile by mile, as we sailed northward. Occasional blackish coral heads of the white mounds of sand shoals humped above the surface at low tide, only to disappear treacherously as the tide rose. Low-lying reef islands broke the surface of the waters ahead as the channel grew progressively narrower. We _knew_ there was a passage, but it was easy to understand how early voyagers, with square-rigged ships that were unable to beat back against the wind, must have trembled when they reached this spot!

The final approach to Thursday Island was a harrowing finale to a sleepless night, during which we had to pick our way from beacon to beacon. Our entry into Ellis Channel was complicated by brisk winds, a heavy tide, and a sharp rain squall which hit just as we started through and forced us to turn and head out again until it had passed. No one was in sight when we finally entered the harbor and drifted down on the Thursday Island dock, so we continued past and dropped anchor in three fathoms just beyond the wharf in the midst of a fleet of pearling luggers, sailing ships like ourselves.

Only then, as Jessica filled another red line on the map of our trip, did I dare to relax and draw a deep breath of relief. Another phase of our apprenticeship had been successfully completed: the passage of the treacherous and awe-inspiring Great Barrier Reef.

9 INTO INDONESIA: THURSDAY ISLAND TO BALI

“Our life at sea was teaching us....”

The importance of T.I., as it is called, is out of all proportion to its size and population, for it is the focal point for the thinly settled Cape York peninsula and for the many islands of Torres Strait. Its principal products are pearl shell, crocodile skin, and tall talk. Among other tale spinners we met a team of two young men who had made a tidy stake out in the bush, shooting crocs. They had started their venture with only a gun and a flashlight apiece, their method being to stand in a stream, with water up to their armpits, and shine their lights until they attracted a customer. The technique seemed to be to shoot the croc between the eyes before it got close enough to grab one of them, but not so soon that the valuable carcass would be swept away by the swift current before they could get to it.

After they had spent a season in this way and collected enough skins the enterprising hunters took their trophies to town and invested the proceeds in a boat. As one said, the hunting was drier that way.

Our location at anchor was well out from shore and had its drawbacks. Rowing in presented no difficulties, as tide and current set strongly toward the shore, but getting back was a different matter. The first night, when we went ashore for our celebration dinner, we met a genial old codger who was just full of anecdotes.

“Terrible current out there,” he told us proudly. “Hardly a month passes but what it puts some ship on the reef—or takes them off to sea. Wretched holding ground—slick—nothing for an anchor to grab. And as for getting out to your ship—why, just a couple of weeks ago two men were rowing out to their lugger—got caught by the current and swept off to the westward somewhere....” He gestured broadly. “They sent out a powerboat, but never caught up with them.... Yes, it’s a terrible current!”

I resolved to make arrangements as soon as possible to bring the _Phoenix_ up to the dock. Meantime I spoke to the proprietress of the Royal Hotel, where we were dining, and reserved a room for my womenfolk for that night. They deserved a night ashore—and I had no desire to risk getting them back to the ship after dark.

Barbara’s diary account of their accommodations was well worth the pound I paid for their one night’s lodging-with-breakfast:

First you try to _find_ the entrance to the overnight accommodations. (The façade of any Australian hotel is all Pub and every visible entrance leads to one bar or another.) Finally we were rescued by “Miss Marie”—pronounced Mahry—the manageress, and escorted up a creaking stairway which led from the lower side veranda to a wide upper one, off which opened all of the bedrooms. Every door was wide open for ventilation and most of the guests seemed to be sprawled on their beds in full view, in various states of _deshabille_.

Our own room was at the extreme end of the front porch, next to a room marked “Ladies’ Bath.” How very convenient, I thought, looking forward to an extra dividend in the form of a Hot Bath.

Jessica and I waited on the porch until we saw the masthead light wink on out in the harbor. Then, knowing the men had made it safely to the boat, we prepared ourselves for bed: a simple job, since we had brought no nightclothes and not even a toothbrush.

The Ladies’ Bath turned out to be nothing _but_ bath—and with cold water, at that. No soap, either. And there were no other facilities visible, so I had to go downstairs and seek out Miss Marie again to ask about the W.C. Greatly embarrassed, she led me back up the stairs, along the two sides of the upper porch to our own room and there—presto!—she crawled under my bed and produced a porcelain chamber pot, child’s size!

My night ashore, to which I had looked forward for many weeks at sea, turned out to be anything but a restful one. The bed was considerably harder than my bunk on the _Phoenix_, and the snowy mosquito netting which we were driven to drape around us shut off most of the air. Since the “Ladies’ Bath” was the only room beyond ours, I left the door open at first, but after two or three very raucous males had wandered past and spent varying lengths of time in the Ladies’ Bath, I pulled the half-curtains across the opening, even at the risk of losing what feeble breeze there was.

The night was hot and stifling, although we had been assured that this season is _pleasant_ compared to the summer months (November to March), when the wind blows from the other direction and puts this side of the island in the lee. Every time someone walked across the porch—or even when Jessica turned over in her sleep—the floor shook as though an elephant were doing a fandango. I couldn’t help thinking how ironic it would be if we had sailed thousands of miles and survived the North Pacific and the Great Barrier Reef, only to die in the shambles of the Royal Hotel in T.I., on the night the upstairs sleeping porch collapsed into the Pub below.

In the morning, we were awakened with cups of tea at an ungodly hour. Some forty-five minutes later, a little girl of about seven—who was entranced with our American accents—came up to lead us down the stairs and through a rabbit warren of interconnected parlors, dining rooms, halls, and porches to a small breakfast room where we and the nine other guests of the hotel had breakfast en famille. All along the way we kept stumbling over cats which our guide told us belonged to the establishment, but the five fat dogs who sat about the breakfast table and waited for scraps were, she insisted, “only strays.” Better fed strays I never hope to see.

Our anchorage continued uneasy. The trades funneled through, the oceans held a daily tidal tug of war, and the holding ground was slick. Twice in the first three days we dragged and had to sweat mightily to keep off the shore. Finally, room was found for us at the dock. There was some confusion as we approached about how they wanted us to lie and, while we were still maneuvering in the channel, we were caught by the change of the tide and swept against the pilings and were pinned there for over an hour. Finally we were able to work free and tie alongside _Cora_, a small coastal vessel trading between T.I. and the Gulf of Carpentaria.

Safely berthed at last, we checked the damage: four bent lifeline stanchions, a big dent in the deck water tank, paint worn off the stern sprit, and a very ruffled skipper. At that we were lucky, for a broken section of the pier was pointed out as testimony that, only a few weeks earlier, a much larger boat had been caught by the tide and current and pushed straight through the dock, carrying all before it.

Provisioning with fresh supplies in T.I. was a bit of a problem. Vegetables and fruits were brought in once a month, on the supply boat from Brisbane. The cost was high and the selection limited. Any number of people bemoaned the fact that they “used to have” plenty of fresh vegetables, grown locally, before the war but that nothing seemed to grow any more. They seemed to think that the climate or the soil must have changed as a result of the hostilities and no one drew any conclusion from the fact that the Japanese, who had made up a part of the T.I. population, had been repatriated after the war.

On the night before our departure we were invited to a church supper where the pièce de résistance was turtle, served up in its own enormous shell. It was a gay party, but midway in the proceedings I grew so restless that I excused myself and returned alone to the boat. The next day’s departure was very much on my mind and I wanted to go over the charts once more. Before entering or leaving ports Ted and I made it a practice to familiarize ourselves with the layout in advance, for when an emergency arises it’s too late to run below and start reviewing.

In addition, I needed leisure to go over my list of Things to Do Before Sailing, a written check list of more than thirty items which experience had taught me was the only way to avoid overlooking some perhaps vital detail. It ranged all the way from checking such items as radiotelephone and engine to making sure that everyone, including the cats, was aboard at take-off.

The next day, June 27, I signed the last of several hundred forms which had been shoved at me during our stay in Australia, we took on our final supplies and the farewell gifts of pearl shell, magazines, and cake (always welcome!) that were put into our hands by friends of whose very existence we had been unaware two weeks before. Then, with the beginning of the west-going tide, we made an easy exit. By midafternoon we had passed the Carpentaria Light Boat and were well underway in the Arafura Sea.

Throughout most of our trip the breezes were light and the seas moderate. By night we were treated to a breath-taking spectacle of that phosphorescence for which the Arafura Sea is famous: sheets of gleaming silver covered vast areas of the ocean, while in others the dark surface was broken with eerie patches of light that danced on the slow swells like reflected moonbeams, though there was no moon. Sometimes the bow pushed aside only black water, but again we would enter a stretch where the entire ocean would be broken into shimmering patterns of cold radiance and the bow wave would become a sparkling, foaming crest of light.

Mi-ke and her all-black daughter, Manuia, also were fascinated by the phosphorescence and spent hours sitting near the bulwarks and staring into the depths. On July 2 my log gives brief mention of an event which we all felt deeply:

0700. Mi-ke is missing. Jessica saw her last, yesterday afternoon, sitting on an oil drum on deck. No sign since. Did not report for supper last night. Did not show up for breakfast.

1200. _No sign._

This was the obituary of a companion who had signed on with us the day the _Phoenix_ was launched. How she came to go over the side we’ll never know. Perhaps the block of the genoa sheet, alternately slacking off and jerking upward in the light airs had snapped up and caught her unawares, stunning her and flipping her over the side.

Jessica, consoling herself with Manuia, said little, but it was obvious that this break in our security had affected her. In fact, the event served to bring home to us all most forcefully how vulnerable we were. We had begun to regard the _Phoenix_ as a safe little world in the midst of the vast ocean, a kind of magic circle within which we were safe, where nothing could touch us. Yet now one of our group had slipped out of that world and was gone—quietly, irrevocably, and without even the man on watch being aware of her leaving.

As we moved slowly westward, it was both fascinating and frustrating to study the charts and to realize that to each side of us lay great areas that begged for exploration, areas we would never see, since we knew we were not likely to pass that way again. To the south lay the Northern Territory of Australia, of which very little is known even today, with Melville and Bathurst islands still the home of Stone Age man. To our north, past the wilds of New Guinea, stretched islands we knew only from their bewitching names: Aru, Tanimbar, Sermata, Damar, Watubela, Ceram, Misol.... It made us wish that time were never-ending. We could only mutter, with no real conviction, “We’ll see ’em next time around.”

Finally, on July 6, the island of Timor rose out of the haze off the starboard bow—a birthday present for Mickey, this time, but not one he could pack away under his bunk with his other trophies.