HONOLULU, HAWAIIAN ISLANDS,
February, 1889.
MY DEAR BOB [STEVENSON],—My extremely foolhardy venture is practically
over. How foolhardy it was I don't think I realized. We had a very small
schooner, and, like most yachts over-rigged and over-sparred, and like
many American yachts on a very dangerous sail plan....
The waters we sailed in are, of course, entirely unlighted, and very
badly charted; in the Dangerous Archipelago through which we were fools
enough to go, we were perfectly in ignorance of where we were for a
whole night and half the next day, and this in the midst of invisible
islands and rapid and variable currents; and we were lucky when we
found our whereabouts at last. We have twice had all we wanted in the
way of squalls; once, as I came on deck, I found the green sea over the
cockpit coamings and running down the companion like a brook to meet
me; at that same moment the foresail sheet jammed and the captain had
no knife; this was the only occasion on the cruise that ever I set a
hand to a rope, but I worked like a Trojan, judging the possibility
of hæmorrhage better than the certainty of drowning. Another time I
saw a rather singular thing: our whole ship's company as pale as paper
from the captain to the cook; we had a black squall astern on the port
and a white squall ahead to starboard; the complication passed off
innocuous, the black squall only fetching us with its tail, and the
white one slewing off somewhere else. Twice we were a long while (days)
in the close vicinity of hurricane weather, but again luck prevailed,
and we saw none of it. These are dangers incident to these seas and
small craft. What was an amazement, and at the same time a powerful
stroke of luck, both our masts were rotten, and we found it out—I was
going to say in time, but it was stranger and luckier than that. The
head of the mainmast hung over so that hands were afraid to go to the
helm; and less than three weeks before—I am not sure it was more than a
fortnight—we had been nearly twelve hours beating off the lee shore of
Eimeo (or Moorea, next island to Tahiti) in half a gale of wind with a
violent head sea; she would neither tack nor wear once, and had to be
boxed off with the mainsail; you can imagine what an ungodly show of
kites we carried—and yet the mast stood. The very day after that, in
the southern bight of Tahiti, we had a near squeak, the wind suddenly
coming calm; the reefs were close in, with, my eye! what a surf! The
pilot thought we were gone, and the captain had a boat cleared, when a
lucky squall came to our rescue. My wife, hearing the order given about
the boats, remarked to my mother, 'Isn't that nice? we shall soon be
ashore!' Thus does the female mind unconsciously skirt along the verge
of eternity. Our voyage up here was most disastrous—calms, squalls,
head sea, waterspouts of rain, hurricane weather all about, and we in
the midst of the hurricane season, when even the hopeful builder and
owner of the yacht had pronounced these seas unfit for her. We ran out
of food, and were quite given up for lost in Honolulu: people had ceased
to speak to Belle[N] about the Casco, as a deadly object.
But the perils of the deep were part of the programme; and though I
am very glad to be done with them for a while and comfortably ashore,
where a squall does not matter a snuff to any one, I feel pretty sure
I shall want to get to sea again ere long. The dreadful risk I took was
financial, and double-headed. First, I had to sink a lot of money in the
cruise, and if I didn't get health, how was I to get it back? I have
got health to a wonderful extent; and as I have the most interesting
matter for my book, bar accidents, I ought to get all I have laid out
and a profit. But second (what I own I never considered till too late),
there was the danger of collisions, of damages and heavy repairs, of
disablement, towing, and salvage; indeed, the cruise might have turned
round and cost me double. Nor will this danger be quite over till I hear
the yacht is in San Francisco; for though I have shaken the dust of her
deck from my feet, I fear (as a point of law) she is still mine till
she gets there.
From my point of view, up to now the cruise has been a wonderful
success. I never knew the world was so amusing. On the last voyage we
had grown so used to sea-life that no one wearied, though it lasted a
full month, except Fanny, who is always ill. All the time our visits to
the islands have been more like dreams than realities: the people, the
life, the beach-combers, the old stories and songs I have picked up, so
interesting; the climate, the scenery, and (in some places) the women so
beautiful. The women are handsomest in Tahiti; the men in the Marquesas,
both as fine types as can be imagined. Lloyd reminds me, I have not told
you one characteristic incident of the cruise from a semi-naval point of
view. One night we were going ashore in Anaho Bay; the most awful noise
on deck; the breakers distinctly audible in the cabin; and there I had
to sit below, entertaining in my best style a negroid native chieftain,
much the worse for rum! You can imagine the evening's pleasure.
This naval report on cruising in the South Seas would be incomplete
without one other trait. On our voyage up here I came one day into the
dining-room, the hatch in the floor was open, the ship's boy was below
with a baler, and two of the hands were carrying buckets as for a fire;
this meant that the pumps had ceased working.
One stirring day was that in which we sighted Hawaii. It blew fair, but
very strong; we carried jib, foresail, and mainsail, all single-reefed,
and she carried her lee rail under water and flew. The swell, the
heaviest I have ever been out in—I tried in vain to estimate the height,
_at least_ fifteen feet—came tearing after us about a point and a half
off the wind. We had the best hand—old Louis—at the wheel; and, really,
he did nobly, and had noble luck, for it never caught us once. At times
it seemed we must have it; Louis would look over his shoulder with the
queerest look and dive down his neck into his shoulders; and then it
missed us somehow, and only sprays came over our quarter, turning the
little outside lane of deck into a mill race as deep as to the cockpit
coamings. I never remember anything more delightful and exciting. Pretty
soon after we were lying absolutely becalmed under the lee of Hawaii, of
which we had been warned; and the captain never confessed he had done it
on purpose, but when accused, he smiled. Really, I suppose he did quite
right, for we stood committed to a dangerous race, and to bring her to
the wind would have been rather a heart-sickening manœuvre.