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CHAPTER IX - A PACIFIC TRAVERSE
Sandwich Islands to Tahiti.--There is great difficulty in making
this passage across the trades. The whalers and all others speak
with great doubt of fetching Tahiti from the Sandwich islands.
Capt. Bruce says that a vessel should keep to the northward until
she gets a start of wind before bearing for her destination. In his
passage between them in November, 1837, he had no variables near the
line in coming south, and never could make easting on either tack,
though he endeavoured by every means to do so.
So say the sailing directions for the South Pacific Ocean; and that
is all they say. There is not a word more to help the weary voyager
in making this long traverse--nor is there any word at all
concerning the passage from Hawaii to the Marquesas, which lie some
eight hundred miles to the northeast of Tahiti and which are the
more difficult to reach by just that much. The reason for the lack
of directions is, I imagine, that no voyager is supposed to make
himself weary by attempting so impossible a traverse. But the
impossible did not deter the Snark,--principally because of the fact
that we did not read that particular little paragraph in the sailing
directions until after we had started. We sailed from Hilo, Hawaii,
on October 7, and arrived at Nuka-hiva, in the Marquesas, on
December 6. The distance was two thousand miles as the crow flies,
while we actually travelled at least four thousand miles to
accomplish it, thus proving for once and for ever that the shortest
distance between two points is not always a straight line. Had we
headed directly for the Marquesas, we might have travelled five or
six thousand miles.
Upon one thing we were resolved: we would not cross the Line west
of 130 degrees west longitude. For here was the problem. To cross
the Line to the west of that point, if the southeast trades were
well around to the southeast, would throw us so far to leeward of
the Marquesas that a head-beat would be maddeningly impossible.
Also, we had to remember the equatorial current, which moves west at
a rate of anywhere from twelve to seventy-five miles a day. A
pretty pickle, indeed, to be to leeward of our destination with such
a current in our teeth. No; not a minute, nor a second, west of 130
degrees west longitude would we cross the Line. But since the
southeast trades were to be expected five or six degrees north of
the Line (which, if they were well around to the southeast or south-
southeast, would necessitate our sliding off toward south-
southwest), we should have to hold to the eastward, north of the
Line, and north of the southeast trades, until we gained at least
128 degrees west longitude.
I have forgotten to mention that the seventy-horse-power gasolene
engine, as usual, was not working, and that we could depend upon
wind alone. Neither was the launch engine working. And while I am
about it, I may as well confess that the five-horse-power, which ran
the lights, fans, and pumps, was also on the sick-list. A striking
title for a book haunts me, waking and sleeping. I should like to
write that book some day and to call it "Around the World with Three
Gasolene Engines and a Wife." But I am afraid I shall not write it,
for fear of hurting the feelings of some of the young gentlemen of
San Francisco, Honolulu, and Hilo, who learned their trades at the
expense of the Snark's engines.
It looked easy on paper. Here was Hilo and there was our objective,
128 degrees west longitude. With the northeast trade blowing we
could travel a straight line between the two points, and even slack
our sheets off a goodly bit. But one of the chief troubles with the
trades is that one never knows just where he will pick them up and
just in what direction they will be blowing. We picked up the
northeast trade right outside of Hilo harbour, but the miserable
breeze was away around into the east. Then there was the north
equatorial current setting westward like a mighty river.
Furthermore, a small boat, by the wind and bucking into a big
headsea, does not work to advantage. She jogs up and down and gets
nowhere. Her sails are full and straining, every little while she
presses her lee-rail under, she flounders, and bumps, and splashes,
and that is all. Whenever she begins to gather way, she runs ker-
chug into a big mountain of water and is brought to a standstill.
So, with the Snark, the resultant of her smallness, of the trade
around into the east, and of the strong equatorial current, was a
long sag south. Oh, she did not go quite south. But the easting
she made was distressing. On October 11, she made forty miles
easting; October 12, fifteen miles; October 13, no easting; October
14, thirty miles; October 15, twenty-three miles; October 16, eleven
miles; and on October 17, she actually went to the westward four
miles. Thus, in a week she made one hundred and fifteen miles
easting, which was equivalent to sixteen miles a day. But, between
the longitude of Hilo and 128 degrees west longitude is a difference
of twenty-seven degrees, or, roughly, sixteen hundred miles. At
sixteen miles a day, one hundred days would be required to
accomplish this distance. And even then, our objective, l28 degrees
west longitude, was five degrees north of the Line, while Nuka-hiva,
in the Marquesas, lay nine degrees south of the Line and twelve
degrees to the west!
There remained only one thing to do--to work south out of the trade
and into the variables. It is true that Captain Bruce found no
variables on his traverse, and that he "never could make easting on
either tack." It was the variables or nothing with us, and we
prayed for better luck than he had had. The variables constitute
the belt of ocean lying between the trades and the doldrums, and are
conjectured to be the draughts of heated air which rise in the
doldrums, flow high in the air counter to the trades, and gradually
sink down till they fan the surface of the ocean where they are
found. And they are found where they are found; for they are wedged
between the trades and the doldrums, which same shift their
territory from day to day and month to month.
We found the variables in 11 degrees north latitude, and 11 degrees
north latitude we hugged jealously. To the south lay the doldrums.
To the north lay the northeast trade that refused to blow from the
northeast. The days came and went, and always they found the Snark
somewhere near the eleventh parallel. The variables were truly
variable. A light head-wind would die away and leave us rolling in
a calm for forty-eight hours. Then a light head-wind would spring
up, blow for three hours, and leave us rolling in another calm for
forty-eight hours. Then--hurrah!--the wind would come out of the
west, fresh, beautifully fresh, and send the Snark along, wing and
wing, her wake bubbling, the log-line straight astern. At the end
of half an hour, while we were preparing to set the spinnaker, with
a few sickly gasps the wind would die away. And so it went. We
wagered optimistically on every favourable fan of air that lasted
over five minutes; but it never did any good. The fans faded out
just the same.
But there were exceptions. In the variables, if you wait long
enough, something is bound to happen, and we were so plentifully
stocked with food and water that we could afford to wait. On
October 26, we actually made one hundred and three miles of easting,
and we talked about it for days afterwards. Once we caught a
moderate gale from the south, which blew itself out in eight hours,
but it helped us to seventy-one miles of easting in that particular
twenty-four hours. And then, just as it was expiring, the wind came
straight out from the north (the directly opposite quarter), and
fanned us along over another degree of easting.
In years and years no sailing vessel has attempted this traverse,
and we found ourselves in the midst of one of the loneliest of the
Pacific solitudes. In the sixty days we were crossing it we sighted
no sail, lifted no steamer's smoke above the horizon. A disabled
vessel could drift in this deserted expanse for a dozen generations,
and there would be no rescue. The only chance of rescue would be
from a vessel like the Snark, and the Snark happened to be there
principally because of the fact that the traverse had been begun
before the particular paragraph in the sailing directions had been
read. Standing upright on deck, a straight line drawn from the eye
to the horizon would measure three miles and a half. Thus, seven
miles was the diameter of the circle of the sea in which we had our
centre. Since we remained always in the centre, and since we
constantly were moving in some direction, we looked upon many
circles. But all circles looked alike. No tufted islets, gray
headlands, nor glistening patches of white canvas ever marred the
symmetry of that unbroken curve. Clouds came and went, rising up
over the rim of the circle, flowing across the space of it, and
spilling away and down across the opposite rim.
The world faded as the procession of the weeks marched by. The
world faded until at last there ceased to be any world except the
little world of the Snark, freighted with her seven souls and
floating on the expanse of the waters. Our memories of the world,
the great world, became like dreams of former lives we had lived
somewhere before we came to be born on the Snark. After we had been
out of fresh vegetables for some time, we mentioned such things in
much the same way I have heard my father mention the vanished apples
of his boyhood. Man is a creature of habit, and we on the Snark had
got the habit of the Snark. Everything about her and aboard her was
as a matter of course, and anything different would have been an
irritation and an offence.
There was no way by which the great world could intrude. Our bell
rang the hours, but no caller ever rang it. There were no guests to
dinner, no telegrams, no insistent telephone jangles invading our
privacy. We had no engagements to keep, no trains to catch, and
there were no morning newspapers over which to waste time in
learning what was happening to our fifteen hundred million other
fellow-creatures.
But it was not dull. The affairs of our little world had to be
regulated, and, unlike the great world, our world had to be steered
in its journey through space. Also, there were cosmic disturbances
to be encountered and baffled, such as do not afflict the big earth
in its frictionless orbit through the windless void. And we never
knew, from moment to moment, what was going to happen next. There
were spice and variety enough and to spare. Thus, at four in the
morning, I relieve Hermann at the wheel.
"East-northeast," he gives me the course. "She's eight points off,
but she ain't steering."
Small wonder. The vessel does not exist that can be steered in so
absolute a calm.
"I had a breeze a little while ago--maybe it will come back again,"
Hermann says hopefully, ere he starts forward to the cabin and his
bunk.
The mizzen is in and fast furled. In the night, what of the roll
and the absence of wind, it had made life too hideous to be
permitted to go on rasping at the mast, smashing at the tackles, and
buffeting the empty air into hollow outbursts of sound. But the big
mainsail is still on, and the staysail, jib, and flying-jib are
snapping and slashing at their sheets with every roll. Every star
is out. Just for luck I put the wheel hard over in the opposite
direction to which it had been left by Hermann, and I lean back and
gaze up at the stars. There is nothing else for me to do. There is
nothing to be done with a sailing vessel rolling in a stark calm.
Then I feel a fan on my cheek, faint, so faint, that I can just
sense it ere it is gone. But another comes, and another, until a
real and just perceptible breeze is blowing. How the Snark's sails
manage to feel it is beyond me, but feel it they do, as she does as
well, for the compass card begins slowly to revolve in the binnacle.
In reality, it is not revolving at all. It is held by terrestrial
magnetism in one place, and it is the Snark that is revolving,
pivoted upon that delicate cardboard device that floats in a closed
vessel of alcohol.
So the Snark comes back on her course. The breath increases to a
tiny puff. The Snark feels the weight of it and actually heels over
a trifle. There is flying scud overhead, and I notice the stars
being blotted out. Walls of darkness close in upon me, so that,
when the last star is gone, the darkness is so near that it seems I
can reach out and touch it on every side. When I lean toward it, I
can feel it loom against my face. Puff follows puff, and I am glad
the mizzen is furled. Phew! that was a stiff one! The Snark goes
over and down until her lee-rail is buried and the whole Pacific
Ocean is pouring in. Four or five of these gusts make me wish that
the jib and flying-jib were in. The sea is picking up, the gusts
are growing stronger and more frequent, and there is a splatter of
wet in the air. There is no use in attempting to gaze to windward.
The wall of blackness is within arm's length. Yet I cannot help
attempting to see and gauge the blows that are being struck at the
Snark. There is something ominous and menacing up there to
windward, and I have a feeling that if I look long enough and strong
enough, I shall divine it. Futile feeling. Between two gusts I
leave the wheel and run forward to the cabin companionway, where I
light matches and consult the barometer. "29-90" it reads. That
sensitive instrument refuses to take notice of the disturbance which
is humming with a deep, throaty voice in the rigging. I get back to
the wheel just in time to meet another gust, the strongest yet.
Well, anyway, the wind is abeam and the Snark is on her course,
eating up easting. That at least is well.
The jib and flying-jib bother me, and I wish they were in. She
would make easier weather of it, and less risky weather likewise.
The wind snorts, and stray raindrops pelt like birdshot. I shall
certainly have to call all hands, I conclude; then conclude the next
instant to hang on a little longer. Maybe this is the end of it,
and I shall have called them for nothing. It is better to let them
sleep. I hold the Snark down to her task, and from out of the
darkness, at right angles, comes a deluge of rain accompanied by
shrieking wind. Then everything eases except the blackness, and I
rejoice in that I have not called the men.
No sooner does the wind ease than the sea picks up. The combers are
breaking now, and the boat is tossing like a cork. Then out of the
blackness the gusts come harder and faster than before. If only I
knew what was up there to windward in the blackness! The Snark is
making heavy weather of it, and her lee-rail is buried oftener than
not. More shrieks and snorts of wind. Now, if ever, is the time to
call the men. I WILL call them, I resolve. Then there is a burst
of rain, a slackening of the wind, and I do not call. But it is
rather lonely, there at the wheel, steering a little world through
howling blackness. It is quite a responsibility to be all alone on
the surface of a little world in time of stress, doing the thinking
for its sleeping inhabitants. I recoil from the responsibility as
more gusts begin to strike and as a sea licks along the weather rail
and splashes over into the cockpit. The salt water seems strangely
warm to my body and is shot through with ghostly nodules of
phosphorescent light. I shall surely call all hands to shorten
sail. Why should they sleep? I am a fool to have any compunctions
in the matter. My intellect is arrayed against my heart. It was my
heart that said, "Let them sleep." Yes, but it was my intellect
that backed up my heart in that judgment. Let my intellect then
reverse the judgment; and, while I am speculating as to what
particular entity issued that command to my intellect, the gusts die
away. Solicitude for mere bodily comfort has no place in practical
seamanship, I conclude sagely; but study the feel of the next series
of gusts and do not call the men. After all, it IS my intellect,
behind everything, procrastinating, measuring its knowledge of what
the Snark can endure against the blows being struck at her, and
waiting the call of all hands against the striking of still severer
blows.
Daylight, gray and violent, steals through the cloud-pall and shows
a foaming sea that flattens under the weight of recurrent and
increasing squalls. Then comes the rain, filling the windy valleys
of the sea with milky smoke and further flattening the waves, which
but wait for the easement of wind and rain to leap more wildly than
before. Come the men on deck, their sleep out, and among them
Hermann, his face on the broad grin in appreciation of the breeze of
wind I have picked up. I turn the wheel over to Warren and start to
go below, pausing on the way to rescue the galley stovepipe which
has gone adrift. I am barefooted, and my toes have had an excellent
education in the art of clinging; but, as the rail buries itself in
a green sea, I suddenly sit down on the streaming deck. Hermann
good-naturedly elects to question my selection of such a spot. Then
comes the next roll, and he sits down, suddenly, and without
premeditation. The Snark heels over and down, the rail takes it
green, and Hermann and I, clutching the precious stove-pipe, are
swept down into the lee-scuppers. After that I finish my journey
below, and while changing my clothes grin with satisfaction--the
Snark is making easting.
No, it is not all monotony. When we had worried along our easting
to 126 degrees west longitude, we left the variables and headed
south through the doldrums, where was much calm weather and where,
taking advantage of every fan of air, we were often glad to make a
score of miles in as many hours. And yet, on such a day, we might
pass through a dozen squalls and be surrounded by dozens more. And
every squall was to be regarded as a bludgeon capable of crushing
the Snark. We were struck sometimes by the centres and sometimes by
the sides of these squalls, and we never knew just where or how we
were to be hit. The squall that rose up, covering half the heavens,
and swept down upon us, as likely as not split into two squalls
which passed us harmlessly on either side while the tiny, innocent
looking squall that appeared to carry no more than a hogshead of
water and a pound of wind, would abruptly assume cyclopean
proportions, deluging us with rain and overwhelming us with wind.
Then there were treacherous squalls that went boldly astern and
sneaked back upon us from a mile to leeward. Again, two squalls
would tear along, one on each side of us, and we would get a fillip
from each of them. Now a gale certainly grows tiresome after a few
hours, but squalls never. The thousandth squall in one's experience
is as interesting as the first one, and perhaps a bit more so. It
is the tyro who has no apprehension of them. The man of a thousand
squalls respects a squall. He knows what they are.
It was in the doldrums that our most exciting event occurred. On
November 20, we discovered that through an accident we had lost over
one-half of the supply of fresh water that remained to us. Since we
were at that time forty-three days out from Hilo, our supply of
fresh water was not large. To lose over half of it was a
catastrophe. On close allowance, the remnant of water we possessed
would last twenty days. But we were in the doldrums; there was no
telling where the southeast trades were, nor where we would pick
them up.
The handcuffs were promptly put upon the pump, and once a day the
water was portioned out. Each of us received a quart for personal
use, and eight quarts were given to the cook. Enters now the
psychology of the situation. No sooner had the discovery of the
water shortage been made than I, for one, was afflicted with a
burning thirst. It seemed to me that I had never been so thirsty in
my life. My little quart of water I could easily have drunk in one
draught, and to refrain from doing so required a severe exertion of
will. Nor was I alone in this. All of us talked water, thought
water, and dreamed water when we slept. We examined the charts for
possible islands to which to run in extremity, but there were no
such islands. The Marquesas were the nearest, and they were the
other side of the Line, and of the doldrums, too, which made it even
worse. We were in 3 degrees north latitude, while the Marquesas
were 9 degrees south latitude--a difference of over a thousand
miles. Furthermore, the Marquesas lay some fourteen degrees to the
west of our longitude. A pretty pickle for a handful of creatures
sweltering on the ocean in the heat of tropic calms.
We rigged lines on either side between the main and mizzen riggings.
To these we laced the big deck awning, hoisting it up aft with a
sailing pennant so that any rain it might collect would run forward
where it could be caught. Here and there squalls passed across the
circle of the sea. All day we watched them, now to port or
starboard, and again ahead or astern. But never one came near
enough to wet us. In the afternoon a big one bore down upon us. It
spread out across the ocean as it approached, and we could see it
emptying countless thousands of gallons into the salt sea. Extra
attention was paid to the awning and then we waited. Warren,
Martin, and Hermann made a vivid picture. Grouped together, holding
on to the rigging, swaying to the roll, they were gazing intently at
the squall. Strain, anxiety, and yearning were in every posture of
their bodies. Beside them was the dry and empty awning. But they
seemed to grow limp and to droop as the squall broke in half, one
part passing on ahead, the other drawing astern and going to
leeward.
But that night came rain. Martin, whose psychological thirst had
compelled him to drink his quart of water early, got his mouth down
to the lip of the awning and drank the deepest draught I ever have
seen drunk. The precious water came down in bucketfuls and tubfuls,
and in two hours we caught and stored away in the tanks one hundred
and twenty gallons. Strange to say, in all the rest of our voyage
to the Marquesas not another drop of rain fell on board. If that
squall had missed us, the handcuffs would have remained on the pump,
and we would have busied ourselves with utilizing our surplus
gasolene for distillation purposes.
Then there was the fishing. One did not have to go in search of it,
for it was there at the rail. A three-inch steel hook, on the end
of a stout line, with a piece of white rag for bait, was all that
was necessary to catch bonitas weighing from ten to twenty-five
pounds. Bonitas feed on flying-fish, wherefore they are
unaccustomed to nibbling at the hook. They strike as gamely as the
gamest fish in the sea, and their first run is something that no man
who has ever caught them will forget. Also, bonitas are the veriest
cannibals. The instant one is hooked he is attacked by his fellows.
Often and often we hauled them on board with fresh, clean-bitten
holes in them the size of teacups.
One school of bonitas, numbering many thousands, stayed with us day
and night for more than three weeks. Aided by the Snark, it was
great hunting; for they cut a swath of destruction through the ocean
half a mile wide and fifteen hundred miles in length. They ranged
along abreast of the Snark on either side, pouncing upon the flying-
fish her forefoot scared up. Since they were continually pursuing
astern the flying-fish that survived for several flights, they were
always overtaking the Snark, and at any time one could glance astern
and on the front of a breaking wave see scores of their silvery
forms coasting down just under the surface. When they had eaten
their fill, it was their delight to get in the shadow of the boat,
or of her sails, and a hundred or so were always to be seen lazily
sliding along and keeping cool.
But the poor flying-fish! Pursued and eaten alive by the bonitas
and dolphins, they sought flight in the air, where the swooping
seabirds drove them back into the water. Under heaven there was no
refuge for them. Flying-fish do not play when they essay the air.
It is a life-and-death affair with them. A thousand times a day we
could lift our eyes and see the tragedy played out. The swift,
broken circling of a guny might attract one's attention. A glance
beneath shows the back of a dolphin breaking the surface in a wild
rush. Just in front of its nose a shimmering palpitant streak of
silver shoots from the water into the air--a delicate, organic
mechanism of flight, endowed with sensation, power of direction, and
love of life. The guny swoops for it and misses, and the flying-
fish, gaining its altitude by rising, kite-like, against the wind,
turns in a half-circle and skims off to leeward, gliding on the
bosom of the wind. Beneath it, the wake of the dolphin shows in
churning foam. So he follows, gazing upward with large eyes at the
flashing breakfast that navigates an element other than his own. He
cannot rise to so lofty occasion, but he is a thorough-going
empiricist, and he knows, sooner or later, if not gobbled up by the
guny, that the flying-fish must return to the water. And then--
breakfast. We used to pity the poor winged fish. It was sad to see
such sordid and bloody slaughter. And then, in the night watches,
when a forlorn little flying-fish struck the mainsail and fell
gasping and splattering on the deck, we would rush for it just as
eagerly, just as greedily, just as voraciously, as the dolphins and
bonitas. For know that flying-fish are most toothsome for
breakfast. It is always a wonder to me that such dainty meat does
not build dainty tissue in the bodies of the devourers. Perhaps the
dolphins and bonitas are coarser-fibred because of the high speed at
which they drive their bodies in order to catch their prey. But
then again, the flying-fish drive their bodies at high speed, too.
Sharks we caught occasionally, on large hooks, with chain-swivels,
bent on a length of small rope. And sharks meant pilot-fish, and
remoras, and various sorts of parasitic creatures. Regular man-
eaters some of the sharks proved, tiger-eyed and with twelve rows of
teeth, razor-sharp. By the way, we of the Snark are agreed that we
have eaten many fish that will not compare with baked shark
smothered in tomato dressing. In the calms we occasionally caught a
fish called "hake" by the Japanese cook. And once, on a spoon-hook
trolling a hundred yards astern, we caught a snake-like fish, over
three feet in length and not more than three inches in diameter,
with four fangs in his jaw. He proved the most delicious fish--
delicious in meat and flavour--that we have ever eaten on board.
The most welcome addition to our larder was a green sea-turtle,
weighing a full hundred pounds and appearing on the table most
appetizingly in steaks, soups, and stews, and finally in a wonderful
curry which tempted all hands into eating more rice than was good
for them. The turtle was sighted to windward, calmly sleeping on
the surface in the midst of a huge school of curious dolphins. It
was a deep-sea turtle of a surety, for the nearest land was a
thousand miles away. We put the Snark about and went back for him,
Hermann driving the granes into his head and neck. When hauled
aboard, numerous remora were clinging to his shell, and out of the
hollows at the roots of his flippers crawled several large crabs.
It did not take the crew of the Snark longer than the next meal to
reach the unanimous conclusion that it would willingly put the Snark
about any time for a turtle.
But it is the dolphin that is the king of deep-sea fishes. Never is
his colour twice quite the same. Swimming in the sea, an ethereal
creature of palest azure, he displays in that one guise a miracle of
colour. But it is nothing compared with the displays of which he is
capable. At one time he will appear green--pale green, deep green,
phosphorescent green; at another time blue--deep blue, electric
blue, all the spectrum of blue. Catch him on a hook, and he turns
to gold, yellow gold, all gold. Haul him on deck, and he excels the
spectrum, passing through inconceivable shades of blues, greens, and
yellows, and then, suddenly, turning a ghostly white, in the midst
of which are bright blue spots, and you suddenly discover that he is
speckled like a trout. Then back from white he goes, through all
the range of colours, finally turning to a mother-of-pearl.
For those who are devoted to fishing, I can recommend no finer sport
than catching dolphin. Of course, it must be done on a thin line
with reel and pole. A No. 7, O'Shaughnessy tarpon hook is just the
thing, baited with an entire flying-fish. Like the bonita, the
dolphin's fare consists of flying-fish, and he strikes like
lightning at the bait. The first warning is when the reel screeches
and you see the line smoking out at right angles to the boat.
Before you have time to entertain anxiety concerning the length of
your line, the fish rises into the air in a succession of leaps.
Since he is quite certain to be four feet long or over, the sport of
landing so gamey a fish can be realized. When hooked, he invariably
turns golden. The idea of the series of leaps is to rid himself of
the hook, and the man who has made the strike must be of iron or
decadent if his heart does not beat with an extra flutter when he
beholds such gorgeous fish, glittering in golden mail and shaking
itself like a stallion in each mid-air leap. 'Ware slack! If you
don't, on one of those leaps the hook will be flung out and twenty
feet away. No slack, and away he will go on another run,
culminating in another series of leaps. About this time one begins
to worry over the line, and to wish that he had had nine hundred
feet on the reel originally instead of six hundred. With careful
playing the line can be saved, and after an hour of keen excitement
the fish can be brought to gaff. One such dolphin I landed on the
Snark measured four feet and seven inches.
Hermann caught dolphins more prosaically. A hand-line and a chunk
of shark-meat were all he needed. His hand-line was very thick, but
on more than one occasion it parted and lost the fish. One day a
dolphin got away with a lure of Hermann's manufacture, to which were
lashed four O'Shaughnessy hooks. Within an hour the same dolphin
was landed with the rod, and on dissecting him the four hooks were
recovered. The dolphins, which remained with us over a month,
deserted us north of the line, and not one was seen during the
remainder of the traverse.
So the days passed. There was so much to be done that time never
dragged. Had there been little to do, time could not have dragged
with such wonderful seascapes and cloudscapes--dawns that were like
burning imperial cities under rainbows that arched nearly to the
zenith; sunsets that bathed the purple sea in rivers of rose-
coloured light, flowing from a sun whose diverging, heaven-climbing
rays were of the purest blue. Overside, in the heat of the day, the
sea was an azure satiny fabric, in the depths of which the sunshine
focussed in funnels of light. Astern, deep down, when there was a
breeze, bubbled a procession of milky-turquoise ghosts--the foam
flung down by the hull of the Snark each time she floundered against
a sea. At night the wake was phosphorescent fire, where the medusa
slime resented our passing bulk, while far down could be observed
the unceasing flight of comets, with long, undulating, nebulous
tails--caused by the passage of the bonitas through the resentful
medusa slime. And now and again, from out of the darkness on either
hand, just under the surface, larger phosphorescent organisms
flashed up like electric lights, marking collisions with the
careless bonitas skurrying ahead to the good hunting just beyond our
bowsprit.
We made our easting, worked down through the doldrums, and caught a
fresh breeze out of south-by-west. Hauled up by the wind, on such a
slant, we would fetch past the Marquesas far away to the westward.
But the next day, on Tuesday, November 26, in the thick of a heavy
squall, the wind shifted suddenly to the southeast. It was the
trade at last. There were no more squalls, naught but fine weather,
a fair wind, and a whirling log, with sheets slacked off and with
spinnaker and mainsail swaying and bellying on either side. The
trade backed more and more, until it blew out of the northeast,
while we steered a steady course to the southwest. Ten days of
this, and on the morning of December 6, at five o'clock, we sighted
land "just where it ought to have been," dead ahead. We passed to
leeward of Ua-huka, skirted the southern edge of Nuka-hiva, and that
night, in driving squalls and inky darkness, fought our way in to an
anchorage in the narrow bay of Taiohae. The anchor rumbled down to
the blatting of wild goats on the cliffs, and the air we breathed
was heavy with the perfume of flowers. The traverse was
accomplished. Sixty days from land to land, across a lonely sea
above whose horizons never rise the straining sails of ships.
Content of CHAPTER IX - A PACIFIC TRAVERSE [Jack London's book: The Cruise of the Snark]
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