Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
could see columns of nasty, brown cockroaches ascending the bed-
posts, crawling along the top of the curtains, dropping with a thud
onto the bed, and then descending over the side to the ground. At last I
could stand it no longer, and, opening the curtains cautiously, I seized
my slippers, knocked half a dozen brown beasts out of each, wrapped
myself in a poncho - previously well shaken - gathered my garments
around me, surmounted a barricade I had constructed to keep the pigs
and chickens out of our doorless room, and fled to the garden.
18
Christmas and New Year were spent at Honolulu and on 4 Janu-
ary 1877
Sunbeam
headed for Japan - and sailed into the worst
weather of the voyage. Days of tall seas and shrieking winds threw
the yacht around. One wave tore away the fore gig. Another snapped
off the jib-boom. Several times
Sunbeam
bottomed out with a jud-
dering thud which convinced the crew that she had struck rock. She
lost the top of her foremast with the topgallant spars and yards. The
crew, some of whom were weakened with influenza, coped expertly
with the crises. Annie was seasick:
Nothing annoys me more than to find that, after having sailed
tens and tens of thousands of miles, I cannot cure myself of sea-sickness
. . . many are the days when nothing but the firmest determination not
to think about it, but to find something to do, and to do it with all my
might keeps me on my feet at all. Fewer, happily, are the days when
struggling is of no avail, when I am utterly and hopelessly incapacit-
ated . . . and when no effort of will can enable me to do what I most
wish to accomplish.'
19
Mrs Brassey was certainly a tough lady, as adventurous and
emancipated as Victorian convention permitted. She was determin-
ed that her sex would deny her no experience throughout the voy-
age. She hitched up her skirt to tramp mountains, daringly divested
