Survivor: The Autobiography Part 10

We were now twenty yards away from that devilish step up on the reef, and it was there and beyond it that the breakers came rolling after one another in long lines. The coral polyps had taken care to build the atoll so high that only the very top of the breakers was able to send a fresh stream of sea water past us and into the lagoon, which abounded in fish. Here inside was the corals' own world, and they disported themselves in the strangest shapes and colours.

A long way in on the reef the others found the rubber raft, lying drifting and quite waterlogged. They emptied it and dragged it back to the wreck, and we loaded it to the full with the most important equipment, like the radio set, provisions, and water-bottles. We dragged all this across the reef and piled it up on the top of a huge block of coral which lay alone on the inside of the reef like a large meteorite. Then we went back to the wreck for fresh loads. We could never know what the sea would be up to when the tidal currents got to work around us.

In the shallow water inside the reef we saw something bright s.h.i.+ning in the sun. When we waded over to pick it up, to our astonishment we saw two empty tins. This was not exactly what we had expected to find there, and we were still more surprised when we saw that the little boxes were quite bright and newly-opened and stamped 'pineapple', with the same inscription as that on the new field rations we ourselves were testing for the quartermaster. They were indeed two of our own pineapple tins which we had thrown overboard after our last meal on board the Kon-Tiki. We had followed close behind them up on to the reef.

We were standing on sharp, rugged coral blocks, and on the uneven bottom we waded now ankle-deep, now chest-deep, according to the channels and stream beds in the reef. Anemones and corals gave the whole reef the appearance of a rock garden covered with mosses and cactus and fossilized plants, red and green and yellow and white. There was no colour that was not represented, either in corals or in algae, or in sh.e.l.ls and sea slugs and fantastic fish which were wriggling about everywhere. In the deeper channels small sharks about four feet long came sneaking up to us in the crystal-clear water. But we had only to smack the water with the palms of our hands for them to turn about and keep at a distance.

Where we had stranded we had only pools of water and wet patches of coral about us, and farther in lay the calm blue lagoon. The tide was going out, and we continually saw more corals sticking up out of the water round us, while the surf which thundered without interruption along the reef sank down, as it were, a floor lower. What would happen there on the narrow reef when the tide began to flow again was uncertain. We must get away.

The reef stretched like a half-submerged fortress wall up to the north and down to the south. In the extreme south was a long island densely covered with palm forest. And just above us to the north, only 600 or 700 yards away, lay another but considerably smaller palm island. It lay inside the reef, with palm-tops rising into the sky and snow-white sandy beaches running out into the still lagoon. The whole island looked like a bulging green basket of flowers, or a little bit of concentrated paradise.

This island we chose.

Herman stood beside me beaming all over his bearded face. He did not say a word, only stretched out his hand and laughed quietly. The Kon-Tiki still lay far out on the reef with the spray flying over her. She was a wreck, but an honourable wreck. Everything above deck was smashed up, but the nine balsa logs from the Quivedo forest in Ecuador were as intact as ever. They had saved our lives. The sea had claimed but little of the cargo, and none of what we had stowed inside the cabin. We ourselves had stripped the raft of everything of real value, which now lay in safety on the top of the great sun-smitten rock inside the reef.

Since I had jumped off the raft, I had genuinely missed the sight of all the pilot fish wriggling in front of our bows. Now the great balsa logs lay right up on the reef in six inches of water, and brown sea slugs lay writhing under the bows. The pilot fish were gone. The dolphins were gone. Only unknown flat fish with peac.o.c.k patterns and blunt tails wriggled inquisitively in and out between the logs. We had arrived in a new world. Johannes had left his hole. He had doubtless found another lurking-place here.

I took a last look round on board the wreck, and caught sight of a little baby palm in a flattened basket. It projected from an eye in a coconut to a length of eighteen inches, and two roots stuck out below. I waded in towards the island with the nut in my hand. A little way ahead I saw Knut wading happily landwards with a model of the raft, which he had made with much labour on the voyage, under his arm. We soon pa.s.sed Bengt. He was a splendid steward. With a lump on his forehead and sea water dripping from his beard, he was walking bent double pus.h.i.+ng a box, which danced along before him every time the breakers outside sent a stream over into the lagoon. He lifted the lid proudly. It was the kitchen box, and in it were the Primus and cooking utensils in good order.

I shall never forget that wade across the reef towards the heavenly palm island that grew larger as it came to meet us. When I reached the sunny sand beach, I slipped off my shoes and thrust my bare toes down into the warm, bone-dry sand. It was as though I enjoyed the sight of every footprint which dug itself into the virgin sand beach that led up to the palm trunks. Soon the palm-tops closed over my head, and I went on, right in towards the centre of the tiny island. Green coconuts hung under the palm-tufts, and some luxuriant bushes were thickly covered with snow-white blossoms, which smelt so sweet and seductive that I felt quite faint. In the interior of the island two quite tame terns flew about my shoulders. They were as white and light as wisps of cloud. Small lizards shot away from my feet, and the most important inhabitants of the island were large blood-red hermit crabs; which lumbered along in every direction with stolen snail-sh.e.l.ls as large as eggs adhering to their soft hinder-parts.

I was completely overwhelmed. I sank down on my knees and thrust my fingers deep down into the dry warm sand.

The voyage was over. We were all alive. We had run ash.o.r.e on a small uninhabited South Sea island. And what an island! Torstein came in, flung away a sack, threw himself flat on his back and looked up at the palm-tops and the white birds, light as down, which circled noiselessly just above us. Soon we were all six lying there. Herman, always energetic, climbed up a small palm and pulled down a cl.u.s.ter of large green coconuts. We cut off their soft tops, as if they were eggs, with our machete knives, and poured down our throats the most delicious refres.h.i.+ng drink in the world sweet, cold milk from young and seedless palm fruit. On the reef outside resounded the monotonous drumbeats from the guard at the gates of paradise.

'Purgatory was a bit damp,' said Bengt, 'but heaven was more or less as I'd imagined it.'

We stretched ourselves luxuriously on the ground and smiled up at the white trade wind clouds drifting by westward up above the palm-tops. Now we were no longer following them helplessly; now we lay on a fixed, motionless island, really in Polynesia.

And as we lay and stretched ourselves, the breakers outside us rumbled like a train, to and fro, to and fro all along the horizon.

Bengt was right; this was heaven.

French scientist who sailed across the Atlantic in a rubber dingy to test his theory that castaways could survive in an open boat by obtaining food in the shape of fish and plankton from the sea itself, and drinking sea water in limited quant.i.ties.

'Land! Land!' is the cry of the castaway when he sights the first coast. My cry on 11 November was 'Rain! Rain!'

I had noticed for some time that the surface of the sea had become strangely calm, exactly as if it were sleeked down with oil, and suddenly I realised why: 'Rain! Here comes the rain,' I cried aloud.

I stripped ready for it, so that I could wash all the salt off my body, and then sat down on one of the floats. I stretched out the tent on my knees, and held between my legs an inflatable rubber mattress, capable of holding some fifteen gallons of water. I waited. Like the sound of a soda syphon, monstrously magnified, I heard advancing from far away the noise of water beating on water. I must have waited nearly twenty minutes, watching the slow approach of this manna from heaven. The waves were flattened under the weight of the rain and the wind buffeted me as the squall hit the boat. The cloud pa.s.sed over slowly, writhing with the vertical turbulence of a small cyclone. I was drenched in a tropical downpour, which rapidly filled the tent sheet and made it sag with the weight between my knees. I plunged my head in it and as quickly spat the water out again. It was impregnated with salt from the tent and I let it all spill overboard. At the second fill, although the water tasted strongly of rubber, it was like nectar. I washed myself voluptuously. The squall did not last long, but the rainfall was tremendous. Not only did I drink my fill that day, but I was able to store three or four gallons in my rubber mattress. I was going to have a gurgling pillow, but each night my reserve of water was going to renew my hopes for the next day. Even if I had nothing to eat, even if I caught no fish, I at least had something to drink.

For three weeks I had not had a drop of fresh water, only the liquid I pressed from my fish, but my reactions were perfectly normal, just the marvellous sensation of swallowing a real drink at last. My skin was still in good order, although much affected by the salt, my mucous membranes had not dried, and my urine had remained normal in quant.i.ty, smell and colour. I had proved conclusively that a castaway could live for three weeks (and even longer, because I could have continued perfectly well) without fresh water. It is true that Providence was to spare me the ordeal of having to rely again on the flat, insipid fish juice. From that day on I always had enough rainwater to slake my thirst. It sometimes seemed as if my stock was about to run out, but a shower always came in time.

I found that it was impossible to wash the salt out of my clothes and bedding, and I had to remain until the end 'a man of salt water' (as the Polynesians say of people who live off the sea) completely encrusted with it until the day of my arrival.

The day of the rain brought me both pleasure and perturbation. The pleasure consisted in a new sort of bird, an attractive creature called, in English, I believe, a white-tailed tropic bird, and which the French call a paille-cul. It looks like a white dove with a black beak and has a long quill in its tail, which, with an impertinent air, it uses as an elevator. I rummaged quickly for my raft book, written for the use of castaways, and read that the appearance of this bird did not necessarily mean that one was near land. But as it could only come from the American continent, being completely unknown in the Old World, it was a good sign. For the first time, I had met a bird which came, without a shadow of doubt, from my destination.

This pleasant interlude was succeeded at about two o'clock in the afternoon by twelve hours of terror, which lasted until two the next morning. Just as I was peacefully reading a little Aeschylus, there was a violent blow on the rudder: 'That's another shark,' I thought, and looked up. What I saw was a large swordfish of undeniably menacing aspect. He was following the dinghy at a distance of about twenty feet, seemingly in a rage, his dorsal fin raised like hackles. In one of his feints round the boat, he had collided with my rudder oar. I found I had a determined enemy. If I only succeeded in wounding him he would surely attack again, and that would be the end of L'Heretique. What was worse, as I was hurriedly getting my harpoon ready, a clumsy movement knocked it into the sea. It was my last one. Now I was disarmed. I fixed my pocket knife on to my underwater gun as a makes.h.i.+ft bayonet, determined to sell my life dearly if he attacked in earnest.

This intolerable anxiety lasted twelve long hours. As night fell I could follow the swordfish's movements by his luminous wake and the noise his dorsal fin made cutting the water. Several times his back b.u.mped the underside of the dinghy, but he still seemed a little afraid of me. He never approached from ahead, and every time he came at me he changed course at the last moment before striking the floats. I came to believe that he was frightened, probably as frightened as I was. Every living creature possesses some means of defence, but it must perturb an attacker not to know what it is. In the early hours of the morning his wake disappeared, but I spent a sleepless night.

One of the lulls in this encounter brought a minor relief, which I interpreted as a message from the land. It was one of those little gla.s.s floats used on fis.h.i.+ng nets, encrusted with little sh.e.l.lfish, cirripedia and other sorts of barnacle. It had clearly been in the water a long time, but it was a sign of human life.

It was an exhausting day, and by the time it was over I was utterly miserable. It rained so hard during the night that I thought I was going to have too much fresh water, after having gone without it for so long. I wrote: 'It would really be too much if I drowned in fresh water, but that is what is going to happen if this downpour goes on. I have enough for a month. My G.o.d, what a cloudburst! What is more, the sea is rising. A pale sun poked through this morning, but it is still raining.'

Another excitement was what I took to be my first clump of Sarga.s.so seaweed. In fact, it was a magnificent jellyfish, the float blue and violet, of the type known as a Portuguese man-of-war. Its long treacherous filaments, hanging to a considerable depth, can cause dangerous stings, which often develop into ulcers.

I realised after one or two wakeful nights, how essential it was to get a good sleep: 'Forty-eight hours without sleep, and I am utterly depressed; the ordeal is really beginning to get me down. Moreover, the sea is infested with tunny and swordfish. I can see them leaping all round me. I do not mind the tunny and the birds so much, but the swordfish are a real menace. Am making good speed, but would willingly add another five or six days to the voyage if I could rest up in comparative calm. This dark, forbidding sea has a depressing effect.' It really seemed as if the sea was in mourning. It was as black as ink, flecked from time to time by a white crest, which the plankton made luminous by night. It looked like an evening dress with occasional white flowers, or a j.a.panese mourning robe. Not a star to be seen and the low sky seemed about to crush me. I realised the full meaning of the term 'heavy weather'; it felt like a physical weight on my shoulders.

At five o'clock on 12 November I noted: 'Rain and yet more rain, this is more than I can stand. But I wonder if I am not nearer the coast than I think, as there are several more birds. There are ten round me at the same time, and my bird book says that more than six mean that one is not more than a hundred or two hundred miles from the coast.' Little did I think that I was only just over a hundred miles away from the Cape Verde Islands.

During the night of 12 and 13 November, I had another visit from a shark, or at least so I hoped. There was no way of telling whether it was a shark or a swordfish. Every time a shark appeared during the day, I felt perfectly safe. I gave it the ritual clout on the nose and off it went. But during the night, fearing that one of those devilish creatures might spear me with his sword, I was no longer able to be so bold. I had to remain watchfully awake, trying to identify the intruder, and waiting wide-eyed for it to make off. Sleep was effectively banished. And often it seemed that sharks or other creatures were playing some sort of ball-game during the night with my dinghy, without my daring to interfere.

It was still raining in torrents. Under such a deluge I was obliged to stretch the tent right over my head, but it formed great pockets of water which trickled down through the gaps. After a certain time, the weight threatened to break the guy ropes, and I had to push from underneath to spill the water overboard. It must be difficult to realise the sacrifice involved for a castaway in thus jettisoning his reserve of fresh water. Even without sharks and swordfish, sleep had become practically impossible. The rain thundered down and every quarter of an hour or so I had to heave it overboard. An unbelievable quant.i.ty of water fell on the tent and trickled through every crevice.

I began to believe, in a confused sort of way, in the active hostility of certain inanimate objects. I might decide to write up the log or work out some calculations. I would sit down, with a pencil ready at hand. I only needed to turn round for ten seconds, and it found some means of disappearing. It was like a mild form of persecution mania, although up till then I had always been able to meet such annoyances with good humour, thinking of the similar misfortunes suffered by the Three Men in a Boat.

'Friday, 14 November The last forty-eight hours have been the worst of the voyage. I am covered with little spots and my tongue is coated. I do not like the look of things at all. The storm has been short and violent. Was obliged to put out the sea anchor for several hours, but hoisted sail again at about 9.30. Raining in sheets and everything soaked through. Morale still fairly good, but I am starting to get physically tired of the perpetual wetness, which there is no sun to dry. I do not think I have lost a great deal of time, but it is impossible to determine my lat.i.tude as I can see neither sun nor stars, and another of these confounded rainstorms is blowing up from the horizon. The sea is calmer, but yesterday I s.h.i.+pped plenty. They say, "fine weather follows rain". I can hardly wait for it.'

During the night a tremendous wave, catching me by the stern, carried me along at great speed and then flooded L'Heretique, at the same time breaking my rudder oar. The dinghy immediately turned broadside on and my sail started to flap in a sinister manner, straining at my rough st.i.tches. I plunged forward to gather it in, but stumbled against the tent and tore a great rent near the top of one of the poles. There would be no way of mending it properly and it happened just as I had to battle for life with the waves. I threw out both my sea anchors. Docilely, L'Heretique turned her stern to my normal course and faced up to her a.s.sailants. By this time I was at the end of my strength and, accepting all the risks, I decided that sleep was the first necessity. I fastened up the tent as close as I could and made up my mind to sleep for twenty-four hours, whatever the weather did and whatever happened.

The squalls continued for another ten hours, during which my eggsh.e.l.l craft behaved admirably. But the danger was not yet pa.s.sed. The worst moments came after the wind had dropped, while the sea continued to rage. The wind seemed to enforce a sort of discipline on the sea, propelling the waves without giving them time to break: left to themselves, they were much less disciplined. They broke with all their force in every direction, overwhelming everything in their path.

'Sat.u.r.day, 15 November, 13.30 Taking advantage of the rain to do a little writing. Have only two rudder oars left. Hope they will hold out. Rain has been coming down in torrents since ten o'clock yesterday evening, no sign of the sun; am wet through. Everything is soaked and I have no means of drying a thing, my sleeping-bag looks like a wet sack. No hope of taking my position. The weather was so bad during the night that I wondered for a time if I had not drifted into the Doldrums. Fortunately there is no doubt that the trade wind is still with me. Making good time, almost too fast for comfort. Still worried about the sail. When will the weather clear up? There was one patch of blue sky in the west, but the wind is from the east. Perhaps tomorrow will be better, but I am going to have another thick night. About seven o'clock this morning an aircraft flew over me quite low. Tried to signal it, but my torch would not work. First sign of human life since 3 November, hope there will be more. Sky to the west now clearing rapidly, difficult to understand why.'

There was a sort of battle in the sky the whole day between the two fronts of good and bad weather. I called it the fight between the blue and the black. It started with the appearance in the west of a little patch of blue, no bigger than a gendarme's cap, as the French song has it, and there seemed little hope of it growing. The black clouds, impenetrable as ink, seemed fully conscious of their power, and marched in serried ranks to attack the tiny blue intruder, but the blue patch seemed to call up reinforcements on its wings, and in a few hours to the south and north, that is to say to my left and right, several more blue patches had appeared, all seemingly about to be engulfed in the great black flood advancing towards them. But where the clouds concentrated on frontal attacks, the blue of the sky used infiltration tactics, breaking up the ma.s.s of black until the good weather predominated. By four o'clock in the afternoon its victory was clear. 'Thank G.o.d for the sun! I am covered with little spots, but the sun is back.' Little did I know that the most troublesome part of my voyage was about to begin.

I had not the faintest idea where I was. With no sun for three days I was in a state of complete ignorance, and on Sunday the 16th when I got my s.e.xtant ready, I was in a fever of apprehension. By a miracle I had not drifted much to the south. I was still on lat.i.tude 16 59', which pa.s.ses to the north of Guadeloupe. That vital point was settled, but my boat looked like a battlefield. My hat had blown off in the storm and all I now had as protection for my head was a little white floppy thing, made out of waterproofed linen, quite inadequate in such a climate. The tent was torn in two places and although the dinghy seemed to have suffered no damage, everything in it was drenched. Even after the long sunny days which were now to come, the night dew continued to re-impregnate my warm clothes and sleeping-bag, so I was never again to know a dry night until I touched land.

A disturbing incident then showed that I could not afford to relax my vigilance for one moment. During the storm, I had tried to protect the after part of L'Heretique from the breaking waves by trailing a large piece of rubberised cloth fixed firmly to the ends of my two floats. This seemed to divert the force of the waves as they broke behind me. Even though the storm had died down, I saw no point in removing this protection. But the following night, a frightful noise brought me out of my sleeping-bag at one bound. My protective tail was no longer there. The piece of cloth had been torn away. I checked anxiously that the floats had not been damaged and that they were still firmly inflated. Some creature which I never saw, probably attracted by the vivid yellow colour of the cloth which hung down between the floats, had torn it off by jumping out of the water. This it had done with such precision that there was no other visible sign of its attack.

Like the boat, I too had taken a buffering. I was much weakened and every movement made me terribly tired, rather like the period after my long fast in the Mediterranean. I was much thinner, but was more worried about the state of my skin. My whole body was covered with tiny red spots. At first they were little more than surface discolorations, not perceptible to the touch, but in a day or two they became hard lumps that finally developed into pustules. I was mortally afraid of a bad attack of boils, which, in the condition I was in, would have had serious consequences. The pain alone would have proved unbearable and I would no longer have been able to sit or lie down.

The only medicament I had to treat such an outbreak was mercurochrome, which made me look as if I was covered in blood. During the night the pain became very bad and I could not bear anything in contact with my skin. The least little abrasion seemed to turn septic and I had to disinfect them all very carefully. The skin under my nails was all inflamed, and small pockets of pus, very painful, formed under half of them. I had to lance them without an anaesthetic. I could probably have used some of the penicillin I had on board, but I wanted to keep up my medical observations with a minimum of treatment for as long as I could stand it. My feet were peeling in great strips and in three days I lost the nails from four toes.

I would never have been able to hold out if the deck had not been made of wood, which I regard as an essential piece of equipment in a life raft. Without it I would have developed gangrene or, at the very least, serious arterial trouble.

For the time being my ailments were still localised. My blood pressure remained good and I was still perspiring normally. In spite of that, I greeted with relief the victorious sun which appeared on the 16th, expecting it to cure the effects of the constant humidity which I had endured. I did not know that the sun was to cause even worse ordeals during the cruel twenty-seven days which were to follow.

The castaway must never give way to despair, and should always remember, when things seem at their worst, that 'something will turn up' and his situation may be changed. But neither should he let himself become too hopeful; it never does to forget that however unbearable an ordeal may seem, there may be another to come which will efface the memory of the first. If a toothache becomes intolerable, it might almost seem a relief to exchange it for an earache. With a really bad pain in the ear, the memory of the toothache becomes a distinctly lesser evil. The best advice that I can give is that whether things go well or ill, the castaway must try to maintain a measure of detachment. The days of rain had been bad enough, but what followed, in spite of the rosy future the sun at first seemed to promise, was to seem much worse.

British soldier and explorer. During 19756 Blashford-Snell led the Zaire River Expedition, which marked the centenary of H. M. Stanley's historic trek through Central Africa.

Following my bout of malaria I was also struck with some pretty uncomfortable dysentery, but by New Year's Day I was fit again, the boats had been made ready, the engines tested, the crews briefed and a great crowd gathered on the Island of Mimosa near the capital to watch our fight with Kinsuka, first of the thirty-two cataracts of the Livingstone Falls that cover more than 200 miles between Kinshasa and the Atlantic. a.s.sisting us on much of the stretch were the two Hamilton water jet boats. They had been designed in New Zealand and built in Britain. These 220 horsepower, fast and highly manoeuvrable craft were to be a vital part of the forthcoming operation.

At 11.00 hours La Vision pa.s.sed easily through the narrows where the river had now been constricted from something like nine miles wide to one mile across. Running down a smooth tongue of water, the inflatables skirted the line of tossing twenty-foot waves that rose and fell in the centre of the river. Acting as rescue boats the jet craft lay in the lee of weed-covered boulders. Gerry Pa.s.s and Eric Rankin, the SurvivalAnglia television team, had been positioned on one of these tiny islands to get a really first-rate shot of the drama, which they did when David Gestetner appeared with her white ensign fluttering. On the sh.o.r.e an elderly English lady missionary, overcome with emotion, is said to have burst into tears and then fainted at the sight. However, I put this down to the fact that the Gestetner's crew were Royal Marines!

As the boat crossed the first fall, her stern engine struck a submerged rock which hurled it upwards off its wooden transom. The flaying propeller sliced through the neoprene fabric of the stern compartment, which deflated immediately. Aboard the jet we could not understand the cause of the trouble, but we could see the great raft was being swept out of control into the angry wave towers that we knew must be avoided at all costs. In a second Jon Hamilton, our skipper, had opened the throttle and driven the eighteen-foot boat straight into the pounding mounds of coffee-coloured water.

I could see Mike Gambier in the water; his white crash helmet and red life jacket showing clearly, he bobbed amongst the flying spray. Our sister jet, driven by Ralph Brown, was already making for him with a scramble-net down the side. Lieutenant Nigel Armitage-Smith was standing by to pull him in. The deafening roar of water and engines drowned all commands. Everyone was acting instinctively now. David Gestetner's skipper was trying to pa.s.s us a line, his face contorted as he yelled against the din.

Suddenly I heard Ken Mason yell, 'Watch out!' I looked up and saw an enormous wave had flung the crippled Gestetner forward and upward, straight towards us. For a moment she towered above, riding a fearsome wall of falling white water, and then came cras.h.i.+ng down with a great 'ponk' right across us. For a second we were locked together in the tempest, but then we managed to wriggle from beneath and circle our quarry once again. This time we succeeded in taking the line and were soon dragging the craft like a stricken whale towards Monkey Island, where we managed to do the necessary emergency repairs. In fact, we were probably the first men ever to reach this large jungle-covered island, isolated in the middle of the rapids.

The next day, with all well again, we set off downriver. Rapid followed rapid as we cautiously felt our way through the treacherous waters that gurgled and swirled between the banks of black rock. To get the necessary supplies into the boats meant relays of overland teams working outwards from the capital in our very tired Land-Rovers and a few Toyota trucks that had been kindly lent to us. Wildlife was not much in evidence but on 2 January we did come across some islands literally alive with huge bats. There were thousands of them festooning the trees, and when I fired a flare from my signal pistol, the hideous creatures took off and showered us with their excreta. It is interesting that Stanley reported great flocks of birds in this area; I think that in fact he saw these colonies of bats. They must have had a twelve-inch wing span, and were obviously of value to the Zairois because we could see nets set up on tall poles at the side of the river to catch them.

In the days that followed we shot more rapids and avoided the most ferocious waves and water I've ever met. For each the drill was the same: air reconnaissance by Beaver, then the jets would take the skippers ahead to examine the heaving inconsistent flood and the swirling whirlpools that went up to thirty yards across. On either side vertical cliffs of red rock rose for hundreds of feet and fish eagles shrieked their yodelling cries as we pa.s.sed. Meanwhile, our support teams worked day and night to get fuel and supplies into us over the deeply rutted tracks. In my log for Friday, 3 January I recorded a typical day's sailing: Major rapids navigated were Inkisi and then the dreaded Borboro. Later we navigated an unnamed rapid which was not too severe. The river continues to drop and has fallen approximately 30 centimetres in twenty-four hours. Borboro was the most formidable rapid we have yet tackled. I did not dare to take the Avon S400s through manned and so ordered them to be towed by jets into centre of current and released without crews. This did not work as there is such a strong counter-current going upstream that they were continuously driven back, but, after some skilful manoeuvring, we got them through. Went through myself in Jet I with Tac HQ; waves enormous, about nine metres high. Just as we left rapid a great boiling ma.s.s of water erupted with a deep rumbling sound right beside us; it was some two metres in height. When it subsided the water began to spin wildly and as it accelerated a vortex appeared in the centre and I gazed down into a horrific whirlpool some thirty metres across and three metres deep in the centre. The river around us had gone mad, waves breaking, rocks flas.h.i.+ng by and all the 220 horsepower of the jet's engine were called upon to drag us from the grip of this revolving cavern. As we left it the hole closed up again and the surface became a sheet of fast-moving water. Similarly, another giant whirlpool appeared on our right and another ahead. The river was wild and it was almost as if some unseen force was trying to pluck us downwards.

On 6 January we reached Isangila, the falls that had forced Stanley to abandon his boats and march over the mountains to the sea. Here I decided reluctantly to move the giant rafts overland as far as the Yalala Falls, leaving the jets and the Avon dinghies to tackle the ferocious stream alone. The giant craft simply hadn't got the power to manoeuvre in these rus.h.i.+ng currents and boiling water. In no time, one of the dinghies was ripped open from stem to stern on razor-sharp rocks and Jim Masters was injured. That night it took 900 st.i.tches and a gallon of Araldite adhesive to repair the damaged boat. Jim drank a little J & B and recovered!

It was late afternoon when our jets entered the relatively clear pa.s.sage that would take us through the terrible Isangila cataract. We were halfway down when I saw two gigantic waves converging on our bows. With a crash they struck simultaneously, hurling the 3,000-pound boat upwards. I fell across Jon Hamilton, knocking him momentarily from the wheel, and out of the corner of my eye I saw Pam almost go over the side. Then as we hit the water again there was another huge wave towering ahead of us. For a moment I thought we were done for. It was a monster. The wall of water smashed over us blotting out the daylight; somehow we were still afloat. There was a strange silence; the engine had died. Ahead a line of black rocks rose like dragon's teeth on the lip of a fall and we were being swept straight towards them. Jon tried desperately to start the engine, his face creased with concern. Fortunately on the third attempt it fired. It only stuttered for a minute, but it was long enough for us to get into an eddy behind a huge boulder, where we could hold position whilst the electric bilge pumps baled us out.

Finally even the jets were halted by shallows and reefs at the Inga Rapid, but with two more short portages and some excellent warping with long ropes, we got the amazing Avon recce boats through to the foot of the biggest obstacle in the entire river, Yalala. A mile of water boiling over terraces and through jagged rocks at frightening speed greeted us. Meanwhile our giant rafts had been carried by a Zaire army lorry to within two miles of the river. Here we regrouped. Some of us had marched over the crystal mountains just as Stanley's men had done. We experienced the same elephant gra.s.s, endless rolling hills, ridges and sharp, suet-coloured quartz rocks underfoot that give these highlands its name. We too stumbled and fell on the slippery boulders at the river's edge. Ken Mason suffered a badly ripped arm and I injured my back. Porters, descendants of the people who had helped Stanley, a.s.sisted us.

At last we all came to the Yalala Falls, where the sappers were already clearing a way for us to carry the giant boats down to the river. For three days we toiled in the blistering heat with pick, spade and crowbar, and even some highly unstable dynamite, to clear the boulders and get the giant rafts to the water. Supporting us during this operation was our American officer, Captain Tom Mabe. Tom and his colleague, Sergeant John Connor, had come with us throughout the journey. Both were in the US Special Forces and were useful members of our team, although I fear at times we must have driven them mad. Tom had managed to get hold of the explosive, but it was delivered at the Inga dam construction site and had to be driven to the river over a b.u.mpy track.

It was late at night when Pam, Ken and I set out in a Land-Rover with at least two broken springs. In the back were large boxes of sticky, sweating dynamite and one crate of whisky. The vehicle lights didn't work particularly well and as we motored along the rutted road in the night, Ken began to ask about the dangers of premature initiation. We soon convinced him that our journey was likened to that shown so graphically in the film, The Wages of Fear.

'Oh my G.o.d,' he said, seizing a bottle of J & B from the back and clutching it between his legs.

'What on earth are you doing?' asked Pam.

'Well, I may as well get drunk and protect my courting tackle at the same time,' rejoined our jovial photographer as we bounced along with our lethal cargo. The nervous tension made us roar with laughter and swig deep gulps of the bottle.

Pam at this point looked very much like a boy, with her hair covered in mud and her s.h.i.+rt in grease. In fact some Italian engineers whom we had met had referred to her as 'Fred the mechanic' and I don't think they really understood that she was a girl. Earlier in the expedition a chief had greeted her with 'Bonjour, monsieur', but her confidence was restored when we discovered he was almost blind!

Finally, with sixty porters beneath each huge boat, we moved them like giant caterpillars down a 1,000-foot slope to the river. Here we joined up with the Avon dinghies that had been portaged or controlled by lines through the surging white water towards us. Now only three rapids barred our way to the sea, but with up to sixteen million gallons per second pouring through a gorge which had narrowed the river to a bare 400 yards, the power can be imagined. Indeed the depth here was probably about 140 feet at high water. The river seemed to be alive with great boiling bubbles rus.h.i.+ng up from the depths and erupting on the surface. Then as quickly as they came they were replaced by whirlpools and swirling currents.

Our porters, many of them Angolan refugees and some almost certainly Freedom Fighters, came with gifts of sugarcane wine and fruit to see us off, but the river was not going to let us get away unscathed yet.

In the final rapid, La Vision, my flags.h.i.+p, was momentarily trapped in a whirlpool, like a cork in a washtub, being bent downwards and spun round and round with engines screaming. Before I could stop them coming down Alun Davies's Avon was capsized by a fifteen-foot wave. The upturned boat with its crew of three clinging to it was swept towards a yawning whirlpool. The jets at this point had been sent back to Kinshasa, and from where I was situated 1,000 yards downriver, I couldn't see what had happened. However the following recce boat saw the accident and its skipper, Neil Rickards, a Royal Marine corporal, decided to have a go. Taking his own small craft through the mountains of tossing water, he managed to get right into the whirlpool and circle around inside it, rather like a motorcyclist in a 'wall of death' at a fairground. In the centre of this swirling ma.s.s he could see Alun's capsized Avon with its crew of three still clinging on frantically to the lifeline. Eventually, by going the same way that the water was revolving, Neil managed to get his craft alongside the stricken boat so that Bob Powell and Somue, one of the ZLOs, could pull the three men to safety. Then he circled up again in the same direction that the water was turning and out of the top. As they left he looked back and was just in time to see the upturned craft disappear down the vortex. Downriver, I was surprised a few moments later when the capsized boat bobbed up from the river bed beside me. The engine was smashed to pieces, the floorboards wrecked and there appeared to be no survivors. But the crew had all been saved thanks to Neil's courage and skill, for which he was later awarded the Queen's Gallantry Medal and made one of Britain's 'Men of the Year'.

Two days later we reached the little seaport of Banana and at dusk our strange fleet, which had set out almost four months before in the centre of Africa, sailed into the setting sun. Basil, in ca.s.sock and surplice, held an improvised cross and beneath the flags of the nations represented in our team, he conducted a simple service. Under our hulls the water heaved gently. Strangely, it no longer tugged and pulled at us; there was no current, for we were now in the Atlantic.

English soldier-explorer. During 197982 he led the first circ.u.mpolar navigation of the earth.

With the outboards repaired and Bryn looking happier, we set out from Russian Mission [Alaska] on a bl.u.s.tery morning. I noticed with surprise that no boats were out or about, nor was there any other sign of life. This was especially strange since it was the middle of the salmon run, the short annual period when a healthy income could be made on the river.

I received some nasty little shocks during the morning and took quite a bit of water in the aluminium boat. The inflatables could happily fill to the brim with water and carry on floating high, but any water in my dinghy had to be removed at once. Draining was only possible when moving fast enough to tip the bows up, then a clumsy wooden bung could be removed from a hole near the base of the transom. Unless the plug was replaced after draining, this hole could cause the boat to leak rapidly as soon as she slowed down and returned to a level plane. Lose the bung and things could get tricky.

Until noon the confused state of the river made me cautious but not alarmed. I noticed a pall of dust in the sky further upriver but when we reached the area where I thought I had seen it, there was nothing there. Just a trick of the light it seemed.

But some fifteen miles short of Holy Cross we entered a long narrow valley heavily forested on either side where the dust cloud effect was again evident. At the entrance to the valley an Eskimo fis.h.i.+ng village nestled on one bank, its river boats drawn well up above the s.h.i.+ngle bank. Two men watched us pa.s.s. I waved. There was no response but a slight shaking of the head from the older of the two.

The water began to careen about, striking with miniature breakers against the rock walls on the rim of each minor curve. But still I felt no undue threat beyond the normal swell and undulation of the great river's forces. As I nosed further out into the northerly-bearing valley, an unseen surge moved against the right side of my boat and almost tipped me off my plank seat by the tiller.

With little warning, waves unlike any I had seen except in sizeable rapids seemed to grow out of the water like boils erupting from the riverbed. Breaking into a sweat, for I have a healthy fear of rough water, I steered quickly for the nearest bank. This was unfortunately the 'cut' bank, indicating that side of the river where the faster current runs. 'Lee' banks are very often low and dressed with gentle sand slopes for there the water is quiet. Where the river flows down a straight stretch, cut and lee banks may alternate on either side depending on the configuration of the riverbed.

Dust clouds emanated from the cut bank as I made to escape the central turmoil. It was as though a dragon breathed there. As I closed with the bank, a pine tree toppled over and crashed into the river. Then another and, with it, a whole section of the bank itself collapsed. The roar of my outboard drowned all other sounds and the forces of destruction which gnawed at the river's banks operated in silence as far as I was concerned. This added to the sinister, almost slow-motion appearance of the phenomenon, for such it was to me. I could not at the time grasp what was happening. I had, after all, boated up or down thousands of miles of wild rivers in North America and never once experienced this. Also, my private, long-nurtured idea of the Yukon was of a slow wide river as gentle as the Thames.

Above the collapsed bank I saw that the forest, from undergrowth to the very tops of the giant pines, was bent over and alive with movement. A great wind was at work, although in my hooded suit on the boat I could feel nothing.

For a moment I hovered in indecision. The waves in the middle of the river, some 600 yards wide at this point, were totally uninviting yet any minute my boat was liable to disappear under a falling pine, should I remain close in. There was no question of landing. No question of trying to turn broadside on and then head back downstream. My boat climbed and fell like a wild thing; shook as though in a mastiff's jaws, then veered towards the crumbling cut bank in response to unseen suction.

Ahead the river narrowed into a bottleneck, the banks grew steeper and the chaotic waves of the river's spine here extended almost clear across our front. Between standing waves and crumbling bank, I glimpsed a sag in the water. It was fleetingly possible to see the river actually mounting in height the further away it was from the bank. I had often heard that the centre of a river can be several feet higher than at the edges given sufficient flow and force, but never before had I clearly viewed the effect. It was distinctly off-putting.

I pushed with both hands on the tiller and the boat, reluctantly, edged away from the cut bank and began to head obliquely across the river. Perhaps things were better on the far side. But to get there I had to pa.s.s through the middle of the river, where the turbulence was greatest and the hydraulic waves so close together that my boat no sooner fell down the face of one than the next raced curling above me. It needed just one brief error on the tiller and I would add critically to the ten inches of silt-laden water already swilling around my feet. I would sink within seconds.

From the corner of my eye I noticed Bryn had seen my dilemma and moved his inflatable as close as the turmoil allowed. When I sink, I thought, Bryn's boat will be my only chance. 'As big as houses' I remembered the state trooper's warning. I could see why such an exaggeration might come about. These waves were no more than four or five feet high yet their configuration, violence and closeness would make any local riverboat a death trap for its inmates.

Before another wave could swamp my wallowing craft I turned broadside on to the hydraulics, applied full throttle and headed straight into the maelstrom in the centre of the river. Whether sheer luck or the shape of the waves saved me I do not know, but no more water came inboard. Much of the time it was like surfriding along the forward face of a breaker, then a violent incline and sideways surge as the old wave pa.s.sed beneath and the next one thrust at the little tin hull.

An edge of exhilaration broke through the sticky fear which till then held me in thrall. For the first time since entering the turbulence I realised there was a chance of getting through and began to experience the old thrill of rapids riding from the days long past when we had tackled far greater waves from the comparative safety of unsinkable inflatables.

How long it took to cross the river was impossible to gauge but gradually the waves grew less fierce and less close and then there was quiet water but for the outwash from the rough stuff. Ahead I could see, between waves and lee bank, a lane of smooth water edged by sand. Bryn and then Charlie emerged from the waves like bucking broncos. Both were smiling for my narrow escape had not gone unnoticed.

There were other stretches where conditions were tricky but never a patch on that first windy valley. That night we stopped in Holy Cross and the keeper of the travellers' lodge, Luke Demientieff, told us we were lucky to be alive. We had been travelling north in the first big southerly blow of the year in winds exceeding seventy knots.

'Even paddle steamers,' he said, 'would not, in the old days, venture at such a time.'

We had covered the worst stretch of the river in the worst possible conditions and, as far as the riverside folk were concerned, we were quite mad. When I asked him how anyone should know or care that we had pa.s.sed, Luke said: 'It only needs one pair of eyes from one riverside shack to see you go by for the radio phones all along the river to start buzzing. When you pa.s.sed the old huts at Paimuit and entered the slough by Great Paimuit Island the word was about you were goners.' He paused and added with a chuckle, 'Still we're pleased you made it to the lodge after all. Business has been poor lately.'

English naturalist and explorer. He spent a decade from 1812 collecting specimens in South America.

The day was now declining apace, and the Indian had made his instrument to take the cayman. It was very simple. There were four pieces of tough hard wood, a foot long, and about as thick as your little finger, and barbed at both ends; they were tied round the end of the rope, in such a manner, that if you conceive the rope to be an arrow, these four sticks would form the arrow's head; so that one end of the four united sticks answered to the point of the arrowhead, while the other ends of the sticks expanded at equal distances round the rope. Now it is evident that, if the cayman swallowed this (the other end of the rope, which was thirty yards long, being fastened to a tree), the more he pulled, the faster the barbs would stick into his stomach. This wooden hook, if you may so call it, was well baited with the flesh of the acouri, and the entrails were twisted round the rope for about a foot above it.

Nearly a mile from where we had our hammocks, the sandbank was steep and abrupt, and the river very still and deep; there the Indian p.r.i.c.ked a stick into the sand. It was two feet long, and on its extremity was fixed the machine; it hung suspended about a foot from the water, and the end of the rope was made fast to a stake driven well into the sand.

The Indian then took the empty sh.e.l.l of a land tortoise and gave it some heavy blows with an axe. I asked him why he did that. He said it was to let the cayman hear that something was going on. In fact the Indian meant it as the cayman's dinner-bell. Having done this, we went back to the hammocks, not intending to visit it again till morning. During the night, the jaguars roared and grumbled in the forest, as though the world was going wrong with them, and at intervals we could hear the distant cayman. The roaring of the jaguars was awful; but it was music to the dismal noise of these hideous and malicious reptiles.

About half past five in the morning the Indian stole off silently to take a look at the bait. On arriving at the place he set up a tremendous shout. We all jumped out of our hammocks and ran to him. The Indians got there before me, for they had no clothes to put on, and I lost two minutes in looking for my trousers and in slipping into them.

We found a cayman, ten feet and a half long, fast to the end of the rope. Nothing now remained to do but to get him out of the water without injuring his scales hoc opus, hic labor. We mustered strong: there were three Indians from the creek; there were my own Indian Yan, Daddy Quas.h.i.+, the negro from Mrs Peterson's, James, Mr R. Edmonstone's man, whom I was instructing to preserve birds, and, lastly, myself.

I informed the Indians that it was my intention to draw him quietly out of the water, and then secure him. They looked and stared at each other, and said I might do it myself, but they would have no hand in it; the cayman would worry some of us. On saying this, consedere duces, they squatted on their hams with the most perfect indifference.

The Indians of these wilds have never been subject to the least restraint, and I knew enough of them to be aware that if I tried to force them against their will they would take off, and leave me and my presents unheeded, and never return.

Daddy Quas.h.i.+ was for applying to our guns, as usual, considering them our best and safest friends. I immediately offered to knock him down for his cowardice, and he shrank back, begging that I would be cautious, and not get myself worried, and apologizing for his own want of resolution. My Indian was now in conversation with the others, and they asked if I would allow them to shoot a dozen arrows into the cayman, and thus disable him. This would have ruined all. I had come above three hundred miles on purpose to get a cayman uninjured, and not to carry back a mutilated specimen. I rejected their proposition with firmness, and darted a disdainful eye upon the Indians.

Daddy Quas.h.i.+ was again beginning to remonstrate, and I chased him on the sandbank for a quarter of a mile. He told me afterwards, he thought he should have dropped down dead with fright; for he was firmly persuaded, if I had caught him, I should have bundled him into the cayman's jaws. Here, then, we stood in silence, like a calm before a thunderstorm. 'Hoc res summa loco. Scinditur in contraria vulgus.' They wanted to kill him, and I wanted to take him alive.

I now walked up and down the sand, revolving a dozen projects in my head. The canoe was at a considerable distance, and I ordered the people to bring it round to the place where we were. The mast was eight feet long, and not much thicker than my wrist. I took it out of the canoe, and wrapped the sail round the end of it. Now it appeared clear to me, that if I went down upon one knee, and held the mast in the same position as the soldier holds his bayonet when rus.h.i.+ng to the charge, I could force it down the cayman's throat, should he come open-mouthed at me. When this was told to the Indians, they brightened up, and said they would help me to pull him out of the river.

'Brave squad!' said I to myself, '"Audax omnia perpeti," now that you have got me betwixt yourselves and danger.' I then mustered all hands for the last time before the battle. We were, four South American savages, two negroes from Africa, a creole from Trinidad, and myself, a white man from Yorks.h.i.+re in fact, a little tower of Babel group, in dress, no dress, address and language.

Daddy Quas.h.i.+ hung in the rear. I showed him a large Spanish knife, which I always carried in the waistband of my trousers: it spoke volumes to him, and he shrugged up his shoulders in absolute despair. The sun was just peeping over the high forests on the eastern hills, as if coming to look on and bid us act with becoming fort.i.tude. I placed all the people at the end of the rope, and ordered them to pull till the cayman appeared on the surface of the water; and then, should he plunge, to slacken the rope and let him go again into the deep.

I now took the mast of the canoe in my hand (the sail being tied round the end of the mast) and sank down upon one knee, about four yards from the water's edge, determining to thrust it down his throat in case he gave me an opportunity. I certainly felt somewhat uncomfortable in this situation, and I thought of Cerberus on the other side of the Styx ferry. The people pulled the cayman to the surface; he plunged furiously as soon as he arrived in these upper regions, and immediately went below again on their slackening the rope. I saw enough not to fall in love at first sight. I now told them we would run all risks, and have him on land immediately. They pulled again, and out he came 'monstrum horrendum, informe'. This was an interesting moment. I kept my position firmly, with my eye fixed steadfast on him.