The Cruise of the Snark Part 13

But this was my eight o'clock longitude. Since then, and up till noon, I had made 23.7 miles of westing. What was my noon longitude? I followed the rule, turning to Traverse Table No. II. Entering the table, according to rule, and going through every detail, according to rule, I found the difference of longitude for the four hours to be 25 miles. I was aghast. I entered the table again, according to rule; I entered the table half a dozen times, according to rule, and every time found that my difference of longitude was 25 miles. I leave it to you, gentle reader.

Suppose you had sailed 24 miles and that you had covered 3.5 miles of lat.i.tude, then how could you have covered 25 miles of longitude? Even if you had sailed due west 24 miles, and not changed your lat.i.tude, how could you have changed your longitude 25 miles? In the name of human reason, how could you cover one mile more of longitude than the total number of miles you had sailed?

It was a reputable traverse table, being none other than Bowditch's. The rule was simple (as navigators' rules go); I had made no error. I spent an hour over it, and at the end still faced the glaring impossibility of having sailed 24 miles, in the course of which I changed my lat.i.tude 3.5 miles and my longitude 25 miles. The worst of it was that there was n.o.body to help me out. Neither Charmian nor Martin knew as much as I knew about navigation. And all the time the _Snark_ was rushing madly along toward Tanna, in the New Hebrides. Something had to be done.

How it came to me I know not-call it an inspiration if you will; but the thought arose in me: if southing is lat.i.tude, why isn't westing longitude? Why should I have to change westing into longitude? And then the whole beautiful situation dawned upon me. The meridians of longitude are 60 miles (nautical) apart at the equator. At the poles they run together. Thus, if I should travel up the 180 meridian of longitude until I reached the North Pole, and if the astronomer at Greenwich travelled up the 0 meridian of longitude to the North Pole, then, at the North Pole, we could shake hands with each other, though before we started for the North Pole we had been some thousands of miles apart.

Again: if a degree of longitude was 60 miles wide at the equator, and if the same degree, at the point of the Pole, had no width, then somewhere between the Pole and the equator that degree would be half a mile wide, and at other places a mile wide, two miles wide, ten miles wide, thirty miles wide, ay, and sixty miles wide.

All was plain again. The _Snark_ was in 19 south lat.i.tude. The world wasn't as big around there as at the equator. Therefore, every mile of westing at 19 south was more than a minute of longitude; for sixty miles were sixty miles, but sixty minutes are sixty miles only at the equator.

George Francis Train broke Jules Verne's record of around the world. But any man that wants can break George Francis Train's record. Such a man would need only to go, in a fast steamer, to the lat.i.tude of Cape Horn, and sail due east all the way around. The world is very small in that lat.i.tude, and there is no land in the way to turn him out of his course.

If his steamer maintained sixteen knots, he would circ.u.mnavigate the globe in just about forty days.

But there are compensations. On Wednesday evening, June 10, I brought up my noon position by dead reckoning to eight P.M. Then I projected the _Snark's_ course and saw that she would strike Futuna, one of the easternmost of the New Hebrides, a volcanic cone two thousand feet high that rose out of the deep ocean. I altered the course so that the _Snark_ would pa.s.s ten miles to the northward. Then I spoke to Wada, the cook, who had the wheel every morning from four to six.

"Wada San, to-morrow morning, your watch, you look sharp on weather-bow you see land."

And then I went to bed. The die was cast. I had staked my reputation as a navigator. Suppose, just suppose, that at daybreak there was no land.

Then, where would my navigation be? And where would we be? And how would we ever find ourselves? or find any land? I caught ghastly visions of the _Snark_ sailing for months through ocean solitudes and seeking vainly for land while we consumed our provisions and sat down with haggard faces to stare cannibalism in the face.

I confess my sleep was not

" . . . like a summer sky That held the music of a lark."

Rather did "I waken to the voiceless dark," and listen to the creaking of the bulkheads and the rippling of the sea alongside as the _Snark_ logged steadily her six knots an hour. I went over my calculations again and again, striving to find some mistake, until my brain was in such fever that it discovered dozens of mistakes. Suppose, instead of being sixty miles off Futuna, that my navigation was all wrong and that I was only six miles off? In which case my course would be wrong, too, and for all I knew the _Snark_ might be running straight at Futuna. For all I knew the _Snark_ might strike Futuna the next moment. I almost sprang from the bunk at that thought; and, though I restrained myself, I know that I lay for a moment, nervous and tense, waiting for the shock.

My sleep was broken by miserable nightmares. Earthquake seemed the favourite affliction, though there was one man, with a bill, who persisted in dunning me throughout the night. Also, he wanted to fight; and Charmian continually persuaded me to let him alone. Finally, however, the man with the everlasting dun ventured into a dream from which Charmian was absent. It was my opportunity, and we went at it, gloriously, all over the sidewalk and street, until he cried enough.

Then I said, "Now how about that bill?" Having conquered, I was willing to pay. But the man looked at me and groaned. "It was all a mistake,"

he said; "the bill is for the house next door."

That settled him, for he worried my dreams no more; and it settled me, too, for I woke up chuckling at the episode. It was three in the morning. I went up on deck. Henry, the Rapa islander, was steering. I looked at the log. It recorded forty-two miles. The _Snark_ had not abated her six-knot gait, and she had not struck Futuna yet. At half-past five I was again on deck. Wada, at the wheel, had seen no land. I sat on the c.o.c.kpit rail, a prey to morbid doubt for a quarter of an hour. Then I saw land, a small, high piece of land, just where it ought to be, rising from the water on the weather-bow. At six o'clock I could clearly make it out to be the beautiful volcanic cone of Futuna.

At eight o'clock, when it was abreast, I took its distance by the s.e.xtant and found it to be 9.3 miles away. And I had elected to pa.s.s it 10 miles away!

Then, to the south, Aneiteum rose out of the sea, to the north, Aniwa, and, dead ahead, Tanna. There was no mistaking Tanna, for the smoke of its volcano was towering high in the sky. It was forty miles away, and by afternoon, as we drew close, never ceasing to log our six knots, we saw that it was a mountainous, hazy land, with no apparent openings in its coast-line. I was looking for Port Resolution, though I was quite prepared to find that as an anchorage, it had been destroyed. Volcanic earthquakes had lifted its bottom during the last forty years, so that where once the largest ships rode at anchor there was now, by last reports, scarcely s.p.a.ce and depth sufficient for the _Snark_. And why should not another convulsion, since the last report, have closed the harbour completely?

I ran in close to the unbroken coast, fringed with rocks awash upon which the crashing trade-wind sea burst white and high. I searched with my gla.s.ses for miles, but could see no entrance. I took a compa.s.s bearing of Futuna, another of Aniwa, and laid them off on the chart. Where the two bearings crossed was bound to be the position of the _Snark_. Then, with my parallel rulers, I laid down a course from the _Snark's_ position to Port Resolution. Having corrected this course for variation and deviation, I went on deck, and lo, the course directed me towards that unbroken coast-line of bursting seas. To my Rapa islander's great concern, I held on till the rocks awash were an eighth of a mile away.

"No harbour this place," he announced, shaking his head ominously.

But I altered the course and ran along parallel with the coast. Charmian was at the wheel. Martin was at the engine, ready to throw on the propeller. A narrow silt of an opening showed up suddenly. Through the gla.s.ses I could see the seas breaking clear across. Henry, the Rapa man, looked with troubled eyes; so did Tehei, the Tahaa man.

"No pa.s.sage, there," said Henry. "We go there, we finish quick, sure."

I confess I thought so, too; but I ran on abreast, watching to see if the line of breakers from one side the entrance did not overlap the line from the other side. Sure enough, it did. A narrow place where the sea ran smooth appeared. Charmian put down the wheel and steadied for the entrance. Martin threw on the engine, while all hands and the cook sprang to take in sail.

A trader's house showed up in the bight of the bay. A geyser, on the sh.o.r.e, a hundred yards away; spouted a column of steam. To port, as we rounded a tiny point, the mission station appeared.

"Three fathoms," cried Wada at the lead-line. "Three fathoms," "two fathoms," came in quick succession.

Charmian put the wheel down, Martin stopped the engine, and the _Snark_ rounded to and the anchor rumbled down in three fathoms. Before we could catch our breaths a swarm of black Tannese was alongside and aboard-grinning, apelike creatures, with kinky hair and troubled eyes, wearing safety-pins and clay-pipes in their slitted ears: and as for the rest, wearing nothing behind and less than that before. And I don't mind telling that that night, when everybody was asleep, I sneaked up on deck, looked out over the quiet scene, and gloated-yes, gloated-over my navigation.

CHAPTER XV CRUISING IN THE SOLOMONS

"WHY not come along now?" said Captain Jansen to us, at Penduffryn, on the island of Guadalcanar.

Charmian and I looked at each other and debated silently for half a minute. Then we nodded our heads simultaneously. It is a way we have of making up our minds to do things; and a very good way it is when one has no temperamental tears to shed over the last tin-of condensed milk when it has capsized. (We are living on tinned goods these days, and since mind is rumoured to be an emanation of matter, our similes are naturally of the packing-house variety.)

"You'd better bring your revolvers along, and a couple of rifles," said Captain Jansen. "I've got five rifles aboard, though the one Mauser is without ammunition. Have you a few rounds to spare?"

We brought our rifles on board, several handfuls of Mauser cartridges, and Wada and Nakata, the _Snark's_ cook and cabin-boy respectively. Wada and Nakata were in a bit of a funk. To say the least, they were not enthusiastic, though never did Nakata show the white feather in the face of danger. The Solomon Islands had not dealt kindly with them. In the first place, both had suffered from Solomon sores. So had the rest of us (at the time, I was nursing two fresh ones on a diet of corrosive sublimate); but the two j.a.panese had had more than their share. And the sores are not nice. They may be described as excessively active ulcers.

A mosquito bite, a cut, or the slightest abrasion, serves for lodgment of the poison with which the air seems to be filled. Immediately the ulcer commences to eat. It eats in every direction, consuming skin and muscle with astounding rapidity. The pin-point ulcer of the first day is the size of a dime by the second day, and by the end of the week a silver dollar will not cover it.

Worse than the sores, the two j.a.panese had been afflicted with Solomon Island fever. Each had been down repeatedly with it, and in their weak, convalescent moments they were wont to huddle together on the portion of the _Snark_ that happened to be nearest to faraway j.a.pan, and to gaze yearningly in that direction.

But worst of all, they were now brought on board the _Minota_ for a recruiting cruise along the savage coast of Malaita. Wada, who had the worse funk, was sure that he would never see j.a.pan again, and with bleak, lack-l.u.s.tre eyes he watched our rifles and ammunition going on board the _Minota_. He knew about the _Minota_ and her Malaita cruises. He knew that she had been captured six months before on the Malaita coast, that her captain had been chopped to pieces with tomahawks, and that, according to the barbarian sense of equity on that sweet isle, she owed two more heads. Also, a labourer on Penduffryn Plantation, a Malaita boy, had just died of dysentery, and Wada knew that Penduffryn had been put in the debt of Malaita by one more head. Furthermore, in stowing our luggage away in the skipper's tiny cabin, he saw the axe gashes on the door where the triumphant bushmen had cut their way in. And, finally, the galley stove was without a pipe-said pipe having been part of the loot.

The _Minota_ was a teak-built, Australian yacht, ketch-rigged, long and lean, with a deep fin-keel, and designed for harbour racing rather than for recruiting blacks. When Charmian and I came on board, we found her crowded. Her double boat's crew, including subst.i.tutes, was fifteen, and she had a score and more of "return" boys, whose time on the plantations was served and who were bound back to their bush villages. To look at, they were certainly true head-hunting cannibals. Their perforated nostrils were thrust through with bone and wooden bodkins the size of lead-pencils. Numbers of them had punctured the extreme meaty point of the nose, from which protruded, straight out, spikes of turtle-sh.e.l.l or of beads strung on stiff wire. A few had further punctured their noses with rows of holes following the curves of the nostrils from lip to point. Each ear of every man had from two to a dozen holes in it-holes large enough to carry wooden plugs three inches in diameter down to tiny holes in which were carried clay-pipes and similar trifles. In fact, so many holes did they possess that they lacked ornaments to fill them; and when, the following day, as we neared Malaita, we tried out our rifles to see that they were in working order, there was a general scramble for the empty cartridges, which were thrust forthwith into the many aching voids in our pa.s.sengers' ears.

At the time we tried out our rifles we put up our barbed wire railings.

The _Minota_, crown-decked, without any house, and with a rail six inches high, was too accessible to boarders. So bra.s.s stanchions were screwed into the rail and a double row of barbed wire stretched around her from stem to stern and back again. Which was all very well as a protection from savages, but it was mighty uncomfortable to those on board when the _Minota_ took to jumping and plunging in a sea-way. When one dislikes sliding down upon the lee-rail barbed wire, and when he dares not catch hold of the weather-rail barbed wire to save himself from sliding, and when, with these various disinclinations, he finds himself on a smooth flush-deck that is heeled over at an angle of forty-five degrees, some of the delights of Solomon Islands cruising may be comprehended. Also, it must be remembered, the penalty of a fall into the barbed wire is more than the mere scratches, for each scratch is practically certain to become a venomous ulcer. That caution will not save one from the wire was evidenced one fine morning when we were running along the Malaita coast with the breeze on our quarter. The wind was fresh, and a tidy sea was making. A black boy was at the wheel. Captain Jansen, Mr. Jacobsen (the mate), Charmian, and I had just sat down on deck to breakfast.

Three unusually large seas caught us. The boy at the wheel lost his head. Three times the _Minota_ was swept. The breakfast was rushed over the lee-rail. The knives and forks went through the scuppers; a boy aft went clean overboard and was dragged back; and our doughty skipper lay half inboard and half out, jammed in the barbed wire. After that, for the rest of the cruise, our joint use of the several remaining eating utensils was a splendid example of primitive communism. On the _Eugenie_, however, it was even worse, for we had but one teaspoon among four of us-but the _Eugenie_ is another story.

Our first port was Su'u on the west coast of Malaita. The Solomon Islands are on the fringe of things. It is difficult enough sailing on dark nights through reef-spiked channels and across erratic currents where there are no lights to guide (from northwest to southeast the Solomons extend across a thousand miles of sea, and on all the thousands of miles of coasts there is not one lighthouse); but the difficulty is seriously enhanced by the fact that the land itself is not correctly charted. Su'u is an example. On the Admiralty chart of Malaita the coast at this point runs a straight, unbroken line. Yet across this straight, unbroken line the _Minota_ sailed in twenty fathoms of water.

Where the land was alleged to be, was a deep indentation. Into this we sailed, the mangroves closing about us, till we dropped anchor in a mirrored pond. Captain Jansen did not like the anchorage. It was the first time he had been there, and Su'u had a bad reputation. There was no wind with which to get away in case of attack, while the crew could be bushwhacked to a man if they attempted to tow out in the whale-boat. It was a pretty trap, if trouble blew up.

"Suppose the _Minota_ went ash.o.r.e-what would you do?" I asked.

"She's not going ash.o.r.e," was Captain Jansen's answer.

"But just in case she did?" I insisted. He considered for a moment and shifted his glance from the mate buckling on a revolver to the boat's crew climbing into the whale-boat each man with a rifle.

"We'd get into the whale-boat, and get out of here as fast as G.o.d'd let us," came the skipper's delayed reply.

He explained at length that no white man was sure of his _Malaita_ crew in a tight place; that the bushmen looked upon all wrecks as their personal property; that the bushmen possessed plenty of Snider rifles; and that he had on board a dozen "return" boys for Su'u who were certain to join in with their friends and relatives ash.o.r.e when it came to looting the _Minota_.

The first work of the whale-boat was to take the "return" boys and their trade-boxes ash.o.r.e. Thus one danger was removed. While this was being done, a canoe came alongside manned by three naked savages. And when I say naked, I mean naked. Not one vestige of clothing did they have on, unless nose-rings, ear-plugs, and sh.e.l.l armlets be accounted clothing.

The head man in the canoe was an old chief, one-eyed, reputed to be friendly, and so dirty that a boat-sc.r.a.per would have lost its edge on him. His mission was to warn the skipper against allowing any of his people to go ash.o.r.e. The old fellow repeated the warning again that night.

In vain did the whale-boat ply about the sh.o.r.es of the bay in quest of recruits. The bush was full of armed natives; all willing enough to talk with the recruiter, but not one would engage to sign on for three years'

plantation labour at six pounds per year. Yet they were anxious enough to get our people ash.o.r.e. On the second day they raised a smoke on the beach at the head of the bay. This being the customary signal of men desiring to recruit, the boat was sent. But nothing resulted. No one recruited, nor were any of our men lured ash.o.r.e. A little later we caught glimpses of a number of armed natives moving about on the beach.

Outside of these rare glimpses, there was no telling how many might be lurking in the bush. There was no penetrating that primeval jungle with the eye. In the afternoon, Captain Jansen, Charmian, and I went dynamiting fish. Each one of the boat's crew carried a Lee-Enfield.

"Johnny," the native recruiter, had a Winchester beside him at the steering sweep. We rowed in close to a portion of the sh.o.r.e that looked deserted. Here the boat was turned around and backed in; in case of attack, the boat would be ready to dash away. In all the time I was on Malaita I never saw a boat land bow on. In fact, the recruiting vessels use two boats-one to go in on the beach, armed, of course, and the other to lie off several hundred feet and "cover" the first boat. The _Minota_, however, being a small vessel, did not carry a covering boat.

We were close in to the sh.o.r.e and working in closer, stern-first, when a school of fish was sighted. The fuse was ignited and the stick of dynamite thrown. With the explosion, the surface of the water was broken by the flash of leaping fish. At the same instant the woods broke into life. A score of naked savages, armed with bows and arrows, spears, and Sniders, burst out upon the sh.o.r.e. At the same moment our boat's crew, lifted their rifles. And thus the opposing parties faced each other, while our extra boys dived over after the stunned fish.

Three fruitless days were spent at Su'u. The _Minota_ got no recruits from the bush, and the bushmen got no heads from the _Minota_. In fact, the only one who got anything was Wade, and his was a nice dose of fever.