On Wednesday evening, June 10, I
brought up my noon position by dead reckoning to eight P.M. Then I
projected the Snark's course and saw that she would strike Futuna,
one of the easternmost of the New Hebrides, a volcanic cone two
thousand feet high that rose out of the deep ocean. I altered the
course so that the Snark would pass ten miles to the northward.
Then I spoke to Wada, the cook, who had the wheel every morning from
four to six.
"Wada San, to-morrow morning, your watch, you look sharp on weather-
bow you see land."
And then I went to bed. The die was cast. I had staked my
reputation as a navigator. Suppose, just suppose, that at daybreak
there was no land. Then, where would my navigation be? And where
would we be? And how would we ever find ourselves? or find any
land? I caught ghastly visions of the Snark sailing for months
through ocean solitudes and seeking vainly for land while we
consumed our provisions and sat down with haggard faces to stare
cannibalism in the face.
I confess my sleep was not
" . . . like a summer sky
That held the music of a lark."
Rather did "I waken to the voiceless dark," and listen to the
creaking of the bulkheads and the rippling of the sea alongside as
the Snark logged steadily her six knots an hour. I went over my
calculations again and again, striving to find some mistake, until
my brain was in such fever that it discovered dozens of mistakes.
Suppose, instead of being sixty miles off Futuna, that my navigation
was all wrong and that I was only six miles off? In which case my
course would be wrong, too, and for all I knew the Snark might be
running straight at Futuna. For all I knew the Snark might strike
Futuna the next moment. I almost sprang from the bunk at that
thought; and, though I restrained myself, I know that I lay for a
moment, nervous and tense, waiting for the shock.
My sleep was broken by miserable nightmares. Earthquake seemed the
favourite affliction, though there was one man, with a bill, who
persisted in dunning me throughout the night. Also, he wanted to
fight; and Charmian continually persuaded me to let him alone.
Finally, however, the man with the everlasting dun ventured into a
dream from which Charmian was absent. It was my opportunity, and we
went at it, gloriously, all over the sidewalk and street, until he
cried enough. Then I said, "Now how about that bill?" Having
conquered, I was willing to pay. But the man looked at me and
groaned. "It was all a mistake," he said; "the bill is for the
house next door."
That settled him, for he worried my dreams no more; and it settled
me, too, for I woke up chuckling at the episode. It was three in
the morning. I went up on deck. Henry, the Rapa islander, was
steering. I looked at the log. It recorded forty-two miles. The
Snark had not abated her six-knot gait, and she had not struck
Futuna yet. At half-past five I was again on deck. Wada, at the
wheel, had seen no land. I sat on the cockpit rail, a prey to
morbid doubt for a quarter of an hour. Then I saw land, a small,
high piece of land, just where it ought to be, rising from the water
on the weather-bow. At six o'clock I could clearly make it out to
be the beautiful volcanic cone of Futuna. At eight o'clock, when it
was abreast, I took its distance by the sextant and found it to be
9.3 miles away. And I had elected to pass it 10 miles away!
Then, to the south, Aneiteum rose out of the sea, to the north,
Aniwa, and, dead ahead, Tanna. There was no mistaking Tanna, for
the smoke of its volcano was towering high in the sky. It was forty
miles away, and by afternoon, as we drew close, never ceasing to log
our six knots, we saw that it was a mountainous, hazy land, with no
apparent openings in its coast-line. I was looking for Port
Resolution, though I was quite prepared to find that as an
anchorage, it had been destroyed. Volcanic earthquakes had lifted
its bottom during the last forty years, so that where once the
largest ships rode at anchor there was now, by last reports,
scarcely space and depth sufficient for the Snark. And why should
not another convulsion, since the last report, have closed the
harbour completely?
I ran in close to the unbroken coast, fringed with rocks awash upon
which the crashing trade-wind sea burst white and high. I searched
with my glasses for miles, but could see no entrance. I took a
compass bearing of Futuna, another of Aniwa, and laid them off on
the chart. Where the two bearings crossed was bound to be the
position of the Snark. Then, with my parallel rulers, I laid down a
course from the Snark's position to Port Resolution. Having
corrected this course for variation and deviation, I went on deck,
and lo, the course directed me towards that unbroken coast-line of
bursting seas. To my Rapa islander's great concern, I held on till
the rocks awash were an eighth of a mile away.
"No harbour this place," he announced, shaking his head ominously.
But I altered the course and ran along parallel with the coast.
Charmian was at the wheel. Martin was at the engine, ready to throw
on the propeller. A narrow silt of an opening showed up suddenly.
Through the glasses I could see the seas breaking clear across.
Henry, the Rapa man, looked with troubled eyes; so did Tehei, the
Tahaa man.
