At Rarotonga, another island of the Cook group, we had a fright. By
Joe, we were scared. It was night. We suddenly saw, right before
us, in the shadow of the shore, a big steamer. She had no lights.
She must be an auxiliary cruiser. Hard on the helm and every stitch
of canvas up. We turned and sailed the other way as fast as the wind
would carry us. We expected every moment to be spotted by their
lookout and then see the ghostlike searchlight beam fingering toward
us through the dark.
"Our luck is with us," I said to Leudemann, when finally we were far
enough out at sea to consider ourselves past danger.
Months later, while discussing our adventures with a group of ship's
officers, I was told by one of them that the supposed auxiliary
cruiser that had frightened us at Rarotonga was really nothing more
than a wreck. Several months before our approach to the island, a
steamer had gone aground on a reef just offshore, and had been
abandoned. The position of the wreck was such that at night it might
readily be taken for a ship lying at anchor.
But we had decided when we got well away from Rarotonga that the Cook
group of islands was no place for us. At Atiu we had found no ship
to capture. At Aitutaki no ship either, only a lot of trouble,
including the misfortune of being recognized as Germans. And now at
Rarotonga we had nearly sailed into what we supposed to be an
auxiliary cruiser in the dark.
"By Joe," I said to the boys, "we'd better clear out of here and try
our luck in other waters."
"Aye, but where? The Fijis?"
"The Fijis," I responded. "We'll find plenty of ships there."
We had all along figured that we might have to go to the Fiji
Islands, where a constant stream of sailing ships was always taking
aboard copra for the munition factories in the United States. But we
also were fully aware that sailing in a little open boat from the
Cook Islands to the Fijis might easily be a perilous venture. Our
voyage so far had gone fairly smoothly. There had been no
hurricanes, and we thanked God for that. Our itinerary from our
starting point at Mopelia in the Society group to the adjoining Cook
group and among the islands of the latter represented jumps of
several hundred miles each and quite a few days at sea. On to the
Fijis, however, meant a sail across twenty degrees of longitude. The
first half of the jaunt, or about a thousand miles, was over a vast
open space of sea where there were no islands on which to find fresh
food or on which to take refuge in case of need. In fact, we were to
sail for thirteen days out of sight of land. We had expected, when
we left Mopelia, that the leg to the Fijis would be a hard one, even
if we had fair weather all the way. But now the weather turned
against us for a whole week, and we began to think we had run across
St. Swithin's day. We had forgotten--if we had ever known it--that
this was the time when the equinoctial storms broke in those waters.
Had we known it, we never would have headed for the Fijis.
For ten days we sailed through a drenching downpour, the rainy
season. The sea was choppy. The wind whipped the spray and the
crests of waves over us in driving sheets. In our cockleshell,
things were afloat, and it was bitter cold o' nights. We threw our
mattresses overboard. In their soaked condition they were far worse
to sleep on than the wet planks, and there was no use keeping them
any longer. When the sun occasionally shone, our drenched clothes
would dry quickly and stiffen like boards of salt. They rubbed and
scratched the skin off our bodies. When they got wet again, which
they promptly did, the salt would soak into the raw flesh and inflame
it. Our bodies felt as though they were on fire. We had no regular
sleep. Instead, a man would doze away suddenly at almost any time.
Even the helmsman would drowse off like that, and, with a free
rudder, the boat would veer around crazily.
One morning, when dawn came, we could hardly believe our eyes. The
sea had turned from its normal blue to yellow. On scooping up a pail
of it we found a scum that we concluded must be brimstone and ash.
We were sailing through a field of brimstone. For three days we saw
from horizon to horizon this yellowish expanse of volcanic dust. It
no doubt came from some submarine eruption, perhaps the one we could
thank for the tidal wave that had wrecked the _Seeadler_. The waves
carried the gritty dust into the boat. It penetrated everything.
Every surface became like sandpaper. Our skin grew rough and caked
with it. Our blankets were like sandpaper, and so were our clothes.
As the voyage grew longer, we had to be more and more sparing with
our drinking water. The supply began to run low. We could no longer
collect rain water in our sails. They were coated with salt. We
tried to wash them out in the rain, but then the spray and the waves
kept washing in and kept the sails salty and added a further salting
to any water we collected. Our supply of fruit that we had picked up
in the Cook Islands ran out now, and about all we had left was
hardtack, not in itself a thirst-quenching kind of food. We also had
a side of delicious bacon, but of course we dared not touch it for
fear of increasing our thirst. You have often heard of the torments
of thirst at sea? Well, they are not exaggerated, for exaggeration
is impossible. When the rains stopped and the blazing tropical sun
beat down on us all day and we still had days to sail on and on, then
the torments of the damned, the torments of thirst smote us with a
fiery agony. Our gums dried out and were like rough iron. We sucked
our fingers and gnawed at our knuckles to bring a flow of saliva and
refresh our burning mouths.
And then came the sailor's worst enemy, scurvy. Our diet of
hardtack, lack of exercise, and general hardships brought it on. Our
knees swelled up so badly that we had to cut our trousers. The
rocking of the boat knocked them together or against the wooden
sides, and then the pain was almost unendurable. Our lips were black
and broken. Our tongues were swollen and hard. It was as if you had
a stone in your mouth. Our gums became snow white and seemed to
recede. Our teeth felt as though they were sticking far out of our
jaws. They hurt constantly and were loose and felt as if they were
going to drop out. With these shaking teeth we ate our hardtack. I
never before knew how hard hardtack was. We had unending headaches,
and it seemed as if something were pressing our eyes right out of
their sockets. We got water in our legs, and could hardly stand any
more. We had to slide around the seats to do what had to be done in
navigating the boat. In scurvy, the blood turns to water, first in
the legs and then upward. When it reaches the heart you die. Where
the blood is water the flesh is white, and you can see the line of
the white creep slowly up. We wondered who would be the first--the
first to have the line of white rise to the heart. My boys made
marks to show the line clearly and mark its daily progress upward.
It was a kind of sport. It was keeping a daily log, a log of death.
Parmien was the youngest of us, but he seemed to be on his way to win
the race. The line was higher on him than on the others. He joked
about it. There was nothing terrible in it. We were all in a deep
apathy. Our brains were like balls of cotton. Nothing mattered,
certainly not death. Death would come, we thought, as a relief from
these sufferings. The prospect of its arrival became more and more
attractive.
"Boys," I said, "let us take pieces of ballast iron and tie them
around our necks. One plunge and in a few seconds all of our pains
will be gone."
"Yes. All right." There were mutterings of assent.
But Parmien, the youngest, the one who was nearest death, picked up
the comic volume, Fritz Reuter's _Trip to Constantinople_, and began
to read a funny story. We all laughed. That book had eased many a
hard hour before, on this ghastly voyage, and now, perhaps, it saved
our lives.
And so we continued on with but one instinct left in us, the sailor's
instinct to navigate his craft. Mechanically, without any particular
hope, without any particular thought, we trimmed the sails, guided
the helm, and calculated our position as best we could. Nautical
science was at a low ebb among us now. We were too far gone to
reckon exactly where we were, and were only vague in our steering.
All we knew was that we should steer to the west where the island
groups were.
You have read in many a sea story about the delight, the almost
insane ecstasy, of castaway men adrift in open boats who are dying of
hunger, thirst, and disease, when, at last, a rescuing ship
approaches or they see land. No matter how the writers describe it,
even the greatest of writers, they can tell you only a tiny bit, only
a grain of sand. So, I won't try to say how we felt when we saw a
speck on the horizon and the speck grew bigger and turned into the
familiar green of a tropical island. We had been so much like dead
men, who had thought that nothing could ever make us glad again. By
Joe, that sight gladdened our hearts, though. We grew even weaker,
but it was the weakness of happiness. As we drew near, we thought of
nothing but land, fresh water, and soft food, a soft banana, for our
loose, shaky teeth. Never mind ships or capturing ships. Never mind
being taken prisoners. We headed straight toward a crude pier that
stuck out into the water.
A crowd of a hundred natives, perhaps less, were gathered at the
landing place watching our approach. They were ferocious-looking
black warriors. We had now passed from the region of the brown,
indolent Polynesians to those of the black, warlike Melanesians.
"What ugly customers," I said to Leudemann. "They look like
cannibals."
The forbidding battle array on shore stirred a new strength in us.
It certainly looked like a cannibal island, and miserable as we were,
still we could not escape the thought of our skin and bones being
fattened up in preparation for an old-time South Sea banquet.
"Clear the boat for action!" I ordered. Even in our present straits,
we could still remember our old naval ways.
The German flag went jerking to our masthead, and rifles and machine
guns were displayed.
A shout went up on shore and a babel of talk. Voices yelled in
pidgin English.
"You Germans? How you get here from way off? Come on. Germans
great warriors."
Still wary, we drew near the landing pier and talked with the
natives. They were unmistakably friendly, very cordial. From what
they told us they had, in the first place, grievances against their
masters, the British. Then quite a number had been recruited and
sent to the trenches in France. There some had been killed and some
wounded, and most who survived had contracted tuberculosis from the
unaccustomed climate and had been returned to the island worn-out
shells of men. One of their most influential chiefs was particularly
concerned about the war. He was on the pier, and he reasoned thus:
"White man send missionary. Missionary say we must not fight.
Because all men children of God. All men brothers. They say we can
have war no more. Then they say we must go fight. They have war.
We no fight for ourselves, they say, we fight for them. How, if men
are brothers? Our men killed. Our men come back sick with cough.
Cough never goes away."
These people were of a warrior race. What the British had told them
about how bad the Germans were had not made much impression. What
stuck in their minds was the fighting power of the Germans. They had
heard about it from the British, and those who had been in the
trenches of Flanders knew about it first-hand. The sudden appearance
of armed Germans at their remote island could but increase their
admiration. Morality among them had principally to do with a man's
fighting spirit.
They said there were no white men on the island, and we longed to go
ashore. With our scurvy-swollen legs we could hardly stand, however.
It wouldn't do to be hauled ashore as cripples. It would not
increase these warriors' respect for Germans as fighting men:
Cripples do not fare well among savage peoples, and we thought it
best not to reveal our impotence. So, we refused the natives'
invitations to partake of their hospitality, told them we must hurry
on to fight the British, and asked for fresh water and bananas. They
brought great gourds full of water and bunches of bananas. We drew
up to the dock and they handed these precious supplies down for us.
We had our fill of bananas and water, and, with shouts resounding
from the shore, set sail again. This lucky spot was Niue, an
outlying isle of the Fiji group. The sun blazed down upon us, but a
fair wind carried us along briskly. The first day after leaving Niue
we felt better. The second day we were on the road to high good
health. It is amazing the curative effect of fresh fruit, especially
bananas, when you are suffering from scurvy. They seem to put new
life and blood into you and draw the sickness right out of the body
as though some huge and marvellous poultice had been applied.
Our cure was completed at the isle of Katafanga. It is quite a large
isle and inhabited by more natives. But we hit upon a stretch of
shore that seemed permanently deserted. At any rate, we remained
there for five days and saw not a soul. When we went ashore, we all
walked with a comical staggering gait. You know the characteristic
rolling gait of the sailor accustomed to having a deck under his
feet? Ours was an exaggeration of it. After two weeks in our
constantly pitching boat and never a foot on land, we could not get
our legs used to solid, unmoving earth. Even after five days of
extensive pedestrianism on the beach we rolled along rather than
walked. There was plenty of fruit around, and many streams ran down
to the sea. We ate enough fruit to expel all the scurvy in the world
and bathed luxuriously in the clear water.
On the island was a deserted house. We inspected it and saw that it
had been owned by a German planter. We afterward learned that, at
the outbreak of the war, the planter fled to the interior of the
island, and an Englishman had taken possession of his house, then,
not liking the island, had left it pretty much to itself. Among the
rubbish in the house was a German mercantile magazine, and on the
first page that I turned to I saw an advertisement of the paint firm
of Erdmann and Kircheiss. One of our sailors was named Erdmann and
my lieutenant was named Kircheiss. No relations of the paint firm,
but we took it as a good omen. At any rate, coming upon the
planter's house was certainly good luck. It had gone to seed a bit,
but there still were Christian beds in it. For the first time since
sailing away from Mopelia, we slept comfortably, and between sheets,
too.
We were now getting near the larger islands of the Fiji group, where
the sailing ships loaded with copra would be encountered. If we did
not succeed in capturing a ship here, we never could hope to capture
one. We found a handsome little sailboat belonging to the Englishman
who had taken over the German's house, but we left her where she lay.
She was more comfortable than our battered old lifeboat--but the
latter was a last relic of our old _Seeadler_. She had brought us
this far, so we wanted to keep her until we had captured a ship. We
raised sail, knowing that, for better or for worse, we were on the
last leg of our voyage in the lifeboat.
We came to the main body of the Fijis, and sailed into a large gulf
surrounded by distant islands. It was night, and we decided to wait
till morning to see how many ships were passing and what island they
were bound for. We reefed our sails and threw out our sea anchor,
that sacklike drag of canvas that keeps a boat from turning broadside
to the wind and waves and from drifting too fast. We lay down for a
decent night's sleep. We would need all our energies for the morrow.
A sudden shout. I awakened. It was just daybreak. Straight ahead
was a wild white line of surf. It broke over a long, low coral reef,
and just behind it was a high cliff. We had run into a strong
current during the night. Krauss had awakened just in time to see
that it had carried us perilously near the reef. The wind was
sweeping us toward the breakers.
"Raise sail," I shouted.
We scrambled frantically and raised the canvas. The wind was
inshore. We could not head into it. We were being blown slowly,
inexorably on to the reef.
People accustomed to the surfs along ordinary coasts have no idea of
what breakers are like off the islands of the South Pacific. The
surf all over the Pacific is particularly strong. But when it breaks
over a mid-oceanic coral reef nothing can live in it. The strongest
swimmer is sure to be dashed to pieces against the jagged coral.
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[Illustration: The Sea Devil is caught again. With bayonets at his
back they strip him of his weapons.]
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[Illustration: The Sea Devil and Kircheiss as prisoners on the New
Zealand isle of Motuihi.
The New Zealand colonel in whose uniform Von Luckner made his
sensational escape]
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And there wasn't the slightest hope of our moving against the wind
and backing away from the reef. Slowly, slowly we were nearing it.
The breakers roared like thunder. In a few moments, we would be
flung into that death trap of water and coral.
Pistol in hand, I shouted something to the effect that I didn't
intend to be ground to death by the breakers on that jagged coral.
The others looked for their pistols. One could not find his.
Between the pull of the current and the power of our sails, we were
drifting along the reef, edging toward it. The wind gave us an extra
push. We were in the backwash, only a few yards away from the
breakers. And still one man could not find his pistol.
Instinctively, we all waited. And that was what saved our lives.
Suddenly we saw the reef drop away, slanting back at a sharp angle,
and a moment later we were drifting parallel to the coral.
It was then that I discovered there were two kinds of breathing. In
times of terrible danger, the breath comes in short, quick puffs.
The danger gone, you breathe deeply. By Joe, when we got clear of
that reef I breathed such a breath that it seemed to go right down to
my heels. I sat looking at my boys' faces. When we got our pistols
ready, their faces had set tense, as if cast from bronze. With the
danger past, their faces held the same set expression. It was an
hour before their old expressions came back again. Two of my fellows
found patches of gray in their hair afterward. (Maybe they had been
there for years only to be discovered now!) Another's leg was
absolutely blue in spots. In those frightful moments he had, without
knowing it, grasped his thigh in a clutch like a drowning man. I
tell you, by Joe, it was the hand of God that put the curve in that
reef! When one of the boys, I don't know which, said in surprise,
"We are clear!" I knew it was the hand of God.