Part 20

For the men, as was always the case in major ports, work on the boat came first. We made arrangements to haul out, to paint the bottom, and catch up on the many small jobs that had accumulated since Sydney. When we were put back in the water and the bill presented, we found there was no charge for the service and that all materials had been sold to us at cost (or “nett,” as the British have it). The bill was marked “Compliments of the Country.”

Jimmy Whittle, manager of the boatyard, and his wife Jean showed us many kindnesses, including inviting us for a memorable Christmas dinner along with all their visiting relatives from Griqualand East and Natal, a traditional English celebration with crepe paper hats, “crackers” to pull, and plenty of sixpenny bits in the flaming plum pudding for the young people to find.

Christmas shopping at the height of summer was an exhausting experience but full of interest and surprises in Durban. We found the big department stores in the center of town rather depressing than otherwise, with their mixed crowds of irritable Europeans and apologetic Africans (whose money was accepted graciously in any store, apartheid notwithstanding), but we never tired of browsing in the Indian and native markets, which somehow managed to remain off the beaten tourist track.

In the Indian market were hundreds of small stalls beneath one roof where importunate salesmen of curios tried to waylay the visitor with “cut rate” ebony or embroidered fans, while dark-skinned women in graceful saris measured out curry seasonings from brilliant piles of brown, yellow, orange, and saffron-colored powders.

Next door to the Indian market, on bare dirt behind a corrugated iron fence, was the native bazaar. Here tribesmen, just in from the hinterland, wandered barefooted, wrapped in bright blankets, to inspect racks of used city clothing. Women, their hair fashioned into elaborate headdresses held in place with red clay, their arms and necks and waists encircled with heavy ropes of magnificent beadwork, squatted beside a counter full of scrap metal and suckled their infants while searching for treasure: a usable flashlight, a rusty knife, a discarded kerosene stove. In the bazaar one could see lion or zebra skins being stretched and dried; could watch Zulus fashioning medicine wands with leopard-tail tassels or stringing necklaces and breastplates with thousands of tiny colored beads; could see Xosa and Basuto and Swazi and Zulu and hear the babel of their many tongues. And one could see the swiftly veiled glint of distrust and hatred when one of them looked up and recognized a white face.

We had been forced to give up our ambition to get to Kruger National Park, both because of travel restrictions for our entire group and because of finances. Nick and Moto, as I have mentioned, settled for a trip to Pretoria; Barbara and Jessica seemed quite content to relax at the Mollers’ farm. But Ted and I would not give up so easily and we looked about for a less-distant goal.

On the advice of Bill Sinclair, a wild-life photographer for the national parks service whose spectacular color shots had even further whetted our desires, we chose the Hluhluwe (shloo-shloo-way) Game Reserve in Zululand. The variety of game there, he assured us, was quite as impressive as at Kruger—if we didn’t mind missing the elephants and lions. We did mind, but we had long since learned that our trip was of necessity a long series of compromises, and we settled for Hluhluwe.

Actually, we were not at all disappointed, for we were able to see not only the African interior, with its characteristic highlands, its Zulu villages of kraals and beehive-shaped rondevals, but also a fine selection of native animal life. We saw, in their native state, wildebeest, zebra, kudu, impala, and warthog—and, the highlight of the trip, the ponderous but amazingly swift rhino.

We have reason to know how fast a rhino can move. We found out on the day we trotted down a narrow path through the bush, in hot pursuit of a white rhino lumbering on ahead. Suddenly he became aware that he was being trailed. Swinging around abruptly, he reversed his course and we had barely time to take to the trees before he crashed blindly past us through the undergrowth.

Two days after the New Year we left Durban, bound around the Cape of Good Hope to Cape Town. Although this was considered the best season for the trip, we had no guarantee that the passage would be quiet and I’m sure we all had mentally crossed our fingers. A number of yachts accompanied us through the harbor and the Sea Scouts, among whom Ted had made many friends, continued for a short distance outside in their launch. Then we were on our own.

On our own—but we did not lack for company, much of which we could well have done without. Because of the Suez blockade, there was scarcely an hour of the day or night when we did not have at least one ship in sight. On the very first day a freighter changed course and came bearing down on us, a frightening sight to one who is maneuvering under sail. We tacked and headed out, but the freighter too changed course. I was becoming more and more uneasy. Obviously, they were merely interested in looking us over, but what if they overestimated our maneuverability under sail? What if they came too close upwind and blanketed our sails so that we lost steerageway? What if—It is impossible to describe how small and vulnerable a yacht can feel when forced to play tag with a large and relentless freighter!

The ship approached closer and at last Barbara was able to make out the name on her hull: _Sulu_. It was a cargo ship from the Philippines, whose captain had visited us on board and had later taken us all out to dinner. _Sulu_ approached very close, far closer than I cared for, sounding her whistle repeatedly. We broke out our compressed-air hooter and returned the greeting, waving heartfelt permission for our jovial escort to go on his way. At last he did, and the _Sulu_ carried on out of sight.

For the first six days the breeze was light and the weather fair, but on January 8 things took a turn for the worse. The radio was giving out gale warnings, so we took down the main and were prepared when a thunderstorm hit in the early-morning hours, bringing heavy rain and strong winds at its peak. By dawn the breeze had fallen off enough so that we were banging around considerably in very heavy seas.

This was the worst spot in our rounding of the continent, however. We drifted past Cape Agulhas, the southernmost tip of Africa, in quiet seas and with the lightest of airs, as if on a sail in the bay. On our last afternoon, while under bare steerageway, we narrowly missed being run down by the tanker _Kongstank_, which passed us just to port, running at a good clip and with no one visible anywhere on the ship. So far as we could see, the bridge was quite empty and we could only assume that they had set the automatic controls and gone below for a cup of coffee or a nap. It was a sobering thought to realize that they might have sent us to the bottom without ever knowing what they’d hit!

Throughout that day, as we cruised slowly northward, we were skirting the Cape Peninsula, which well deserves its reputation as one of the most beautiful sights in the world. The dramatically eroded pinnacles, rather like a cross section of the Grand Canyon taken out of context, run down to the sea, with deep-purple gorges between. The Twelve Apostles, the Lion, and, finally, Table Mountain were all formations we had seen in photographs, but now we were seeing them for the first time in full color. Dusk settled over the sea. A pale moon gradually deepened to rich yellow as we drew closer to Cape Town and, behind the mountain peaks, the sky grew dark. Lights of the city began to flicker on around the base of the hills, sparkling like fireflies. The air grew colder. We were in the Atlantic now, and the water in this new ocean was frigid to the touch. For the first time since 1954 in the North Pacific I could see my breath, and the fur-lined parkas were dug out.

During the night we lay off, merely keeping our position. With an almost constant movement of shipping in and out, we had no desire to attempt a strange and crowded harbor after dark.

Next morning, finding ourselves blanketed by Table Mountain, we turned on the engine and motored in. Following the chart, we proceeded down the entire length of the harbor, inside the breakwater, past several dozen freighters and tankers and passenger ships, until we reached the area marked “Small Boat Harbor” at the extreme end. A number of frolicking seals came out to greet us and Jessica was enchanted when two little penguins drifted by, sitting demurely side by side on a floating board.

Near the inner entrance we were met by a motorboat filled with members of the Royal Cape Yacht Club, who showed us to the mooring that had been reserved for us. By midmorning all was secure, we had been cleared, and Cape Town lay before us.

Cape Town, spread out at the foot of Table Mountain, has a spectacular setting, but the city itself, from the narrow viewpoint of the yachtsman, is somewhat less than easily accessible. The small-boat anchorage is at the far end of a long, unfinished, and unshaded road within the commercial dock area where no public transportation is available. Going out and coming back it is necessary to check with guards at the customs gate, some of whom were pleasant and some of whom, like human beings everywhere, were officious. It was at this gate that another of those incidents occurred, during our stay in Cape Town, which had far-reaching consequences in terms of misunderstanding. I recount it merely to illustrate from what a small scratch a festering sore can develop, particularly if the scratch occurs when poisons are in the very air.

One evening we were driving out of the dock area in a friend’s car. Barbara and I were in front with our host; Nick, Mickey, and Moto, in the back.

As always, we stopped and made the usual report to the guard: “We’re from the yacht _Phoenix_.”

Usually this was enough to give us clearance, but this time the guard came over and peered in the rear window. “What about those chaps?” he demanded.

“They’re from the yacht, too.”

“Seamen?”

“No, yachtsmen.”

There was a pause—and then the guard waved us on. I thought nothing more of the incident, but many months later Moto rather sadly brought the incident up.

“You never on our side,” he accused us. “Never—really.”

“What do you mean?”

“Like Cape Town—you let policeman call us Japs.”

Only one who knows the fierce pride of the Japanese can understand how they hate and resent being called Japs. I was completely in the dark.

“_When_ did anyone ever call you Japs—without my correcting them?”

Finally, after much digging and probing, we pieced the story together. Moto described the circumstances at the Cape Town docks and suddenly the scene came back to me. I recalled the guard, peering in the back window and asking, in quite neutral tones, “What about those chaps?”

The Japanese didn’t know the word “chaps” and had thought they were being insulted. Almost a year later I was given a chance to explain, but it was too late. The damage had been done.

The walk to town is long, even after one has left the dock area—and it is even longer coming back with supplies. And the wind! Here is one place where it _blows_—and rarely, it seems, in a direction to give the tired pedestrian a needed boost. One afternoon I was coming back from town, leaning against the wind at every step, with my eyes slitted to protect them from the grit that stung my face. Arriving at the club, I understandably felt the need of a rest and nourishment before attempting the trip by dinghy to my ship. The anemometer on the clubhouse wall was registering 60 knots, but no one seemed to be paying it any particular attention.

“Is your wind gauge accurate?” I asked a member.

He smiled sheepishly. “As a matter of fact, I’m awfully afraid it’s not. Underregisters a bit, you know—five or six knots, actually. Must have it fixed!”

In a wind such as this, just getting out to the _Phoenix_ became high adventure. The method was to drag Flatty around the harbor until well upwind of the _Phoenix_, then get in and take a sleighride down to the boat, making very certain not to miss! The approved method of rounding up into the wind and coming up alongside would have got one nowhere—except into the most remote corner of Duncan Dock at the other end of the harbor.

Cape Town, we were happy to find, was more relaxed than Durban. The Royal Cape Yacht Club extended a welcome to our whole party and gave us the freedom of their facilities, while the press also played up the interracial composition of our group and ran a story that resulted in bringing us many rewarding contacts we would not otherwise have had.

Among these visitors were three representatives of the African magazine _Drum_, who came down to judge for themselves an intercultural relationship that would be impossible in South Africa. Two of them were “Colored,” one Indian, and they stayed for several hours.

“How many of us can you squeeze in your sail locker?” one of them joked, with a serious undercurrent that was pathetic. “You could drop us off anywhere—Brazil—the United States—even Mississippi!”

“You wouldn’t like Mississippi,” I said, speaking with some knowledge, since I had spent much of my youth there.

“Man, just try me and see!” exclaimed one, a big Cape Colored. “I’d trade places with any Negro in any part of your ‘Solid South’! At least there I’d know my children and grandchildren would have a future.”

At last, with obvious reluctance, the Indian reminded them that they had a deadline to meet.

“Just a few minutes more!” the big fellow pleaded. “Let me stay here just a little longer—on free soil—and dream!”

On another occasion a South African—a Negro—came aboard after writing us a note. Obviously well educated, a born leader, he was polite but wary. When he came aboard I offered my hand as a matter of course. He hesitated, then took it briefly.

We went below and spent a long afternoon. He told us, vividly, quietly, and without ranting, of the situation that existed in South Africa—from the black man’s point of view—and tried to explain why it could not last.

I remember what he said: “A man who drives a truck can drive a tank; a man who handles a shovel can handle a gun; a man who can read the Bible can read a sign telling him to rise up in revolt. They cannot use us as their tools without giving us some education; they cannot educate us without losing us.”

“Will there be an uprising?”

“There will be. There will be killing and destruction. There will be a return to barbarism—on both sides—in spite of all we can do. For the moment,” he added in measured tones, “the barbarism is on only one side—the government’s.”

“What will you do when the day comes?” I asked.

He looked at us calmly. “I will kill as many white men as I can, before I am killed myself.”

I rowed him to shore and when he got out he paused a moment—and then offered his hand to me.

“Today,” he told me, “was the first time in my life that a white man has ever shaken hands with me! Thank you—and do not stay in this unhappy place.”

That same week at the home of the American representative of Coca-Cola, we met the Commissioner of Education—a white man, of course. We found Mr. De Plessis to be witty, urbane, and well informed, a delightful dinner companion but, like almost every other “European” we spoke to, defensive and uneasy on the subject of apartheid. He expressed sympathy for the condition of the natives and readily acknowledged the dangers and inequalities of the existing government policy. Nevertheless, he defended it, refusing to admit that there was any alternative. He emphasized (as did everyone else, as if it were a lesson they had learned by rote) that “South Africa’s problem is very different from yours in America,” and repeated the inevitable statistics: eight million nonwhites; only two million whites.

Of course, if one accepts his thesis that the white group is innately superior (citing, among other authorities, the Bible) and must maintain ascendancy, there does seem to be no alternative. De Plessis’s only hope seemed to be that during his tenure at least he would be able to maintain the status quo.

This philosophy, however urbanely expressed, seems to be prevalent in many countries today including, I am ashamed to say, our own. It can be expressed crudely as: “Get yours, keep the lid on, and leave the mess for your children to clean up.”

It is not a philosophy that tends to make for secure or stable children!

While we were in the country, several hundred prominent citizens, including Alan Paton, were rounded up in a single night and thrown into jail on the blanket, undocumented charge of “treason.” Treason, in South Africa, can be attributed to anyone who disagrees with the Nationalist party or criticizes its policies, with the result that more and more troubled individuals are leaving the country or, against the dictates of conscience, letting themselves be lulled into doing nothing.

We met one very brave man, a professor at the university, and a group of his friends whom we would never have met if it had not been for the unusual composition of our crew. Professor Maxwell and his wife (that is _not_ their name) daily expected the ominous knock on the door, the summons to appear—or to disappear. And for what heinous crime? Only that they refused to choose or reject their friends on the basis of race. They have continued to entertain in their home men and women of whatever ancestry and by this personal defiance have cut themselves off from most of their “European” associates, who are afraid to continue a relationship with such dubious characters. Already the professor’s classes had been cut, his salary reduced, his membership canceled, in an effort to force him into line. The next step, of course, which he anticipated momentarily, was outright dismissal from the university—and jail.

The Maxwells’ courage was a revelation to us and a profound inspiration. Through them, for the first time, was brought home to us the realization that blind obedience to the laws of one’s country is not always the highest duty of a conscientious man. The actions taken by the Nationalists, such as the disenfranchisement of the Coloreds, restrictions on travel, the “pass laws” for Africans, curfews based on race, curtailment of job opportunities, and other encroachments on human rights have all been done quite legally—that is, in accord with the existing laws in South Africa. And yet the disparity between law and morality is so great that even those who have helped to make the laws seem to feel an impelling need to explain and justify.

What does a scientist do when confronted with such a situation as exists in South Africa? I saw one man’s adaptation, when I visited another university near Cape Town. My host was a fellow anthropologist, a specialist in early man, who very kindly spent the afternoon with me, showing me his laboratory and materials. Later, over tea, I commented, as one anthropologist to another, on the obviously erroneous racist policy of the government. My host froze instantly.

“That is not my field of interest,” he said coldly.

“But as an anthropologist—”

“That is not my field of interest,” he repeated, and the discussion was ended.

All of us were beginning to look forward almost desperately to setting sail again, as though we, too, were in danger of being imprisoned if we lingered. When the Brazilian Consulate stipulated that we must all present a doctor’s report from a complete physical examination before visas for that country would be issued, I felt a ridiculous premonition that something, some symptom, would be discovered which would make it necessary for us to linger. Let sleeping dogs lie was my feeling—but there was no way to secure our visas without the doctor’s report—and Brazil was a “must” on our itinerary because of our Japanese. They had had slim pickings in many ports, but in São Paulo or Belém, where there was a very large Japanese population, they could look forward to an overwhelming reception such as they had experienced in Hawaii. They had it coming to them—and so I made appointments for our physicals.

I needn’t have worried. The doctor did little more than fill out and sign the official forms, after asking such general questions as “Do you feel all right? Any complaints?”

The only complaint I had was the cost—a pretty stiff fee for such a cursory going over. (I carefully filed the expensive documents away with our other official forms, but no one in Brazil ever examined or even asked for them. Needless to say, however, had we neglected to get the papers, they would have been the first thing we had to produce upon arrival in Brazil.)

A few days before leaving we moved to Fisherman’s Harbor, where there was a commercial slip, and once more we hauled out to give the bottom a check and add an iron brace to the rudder, which had begun to work a bit. Two nights before our departure I was coming back from the Flying Angel Mission for Seamen, carrying an armload of books they had generously donated to the _Phoenix_. While crossing over a couple of boats to get to our own, I made a miscalculation in stepping from one to another. Instead of putting my foot on solid deck, I walked off into air, with the result that I fell heavily, knocked all the breath out of me, and injured my ribs.

Barbara, as ship’s medical officer, immediately attempted to invalid me, which I naturally resisted violently. She wound me around with an elastic bandage and begged me to delay departure until I was “out of danger,” but I had already announced the day and hour of leaving and, being a determined sort, I continued with preparations for departure.

(At this point Jessica has just reminded me of the conjugation of “I am determined.” According to her, it continues: “You are stubborn—he is a pigheaded fool!”)

In any event, I had no intention of letting South Africa keep us in her clutches.

Barbara’s diary has something to say about the last hectic day before sailing:

Usual rush of shopping, this time with the help and company of Mrs. Maxwell and Mr. T——. (Mr. T——, an African of the Xosa tribe, speaks flawless English and is highly educated and intelligent. He is a leader among his people—for which reason his pass has been confiscated. For five years he cannot leave Cape Town, nor attend any meetings or speak to any gathering. With dogged determination, he is trying to get his message across through the written word, but there is no outlet for his articles, no money to have his books privately published.)