Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
And having once turned round walks on,
And turns no more his head;
Because he knows, a frightful fiend
Doth close behind him tread.
11
But there are many yachtsmen, mountaineers and explorers
who would not dismiss Slocum's story so readily. The strong sense of
another presence is one of the most familiar experiences of people
who undergo long periods of loneliness and hardship. Ann Davison,
solo yachtswoman, tells how, exhausted at the end of a transatlantic
crossing, she met with such a phenomenon off Gibraltar:
Life now simply resolved itself into one of imperative urges, and
the most imperative urge of all was sleep. I wanted oblivion with every
fibre of my being. And here we were right at the entrance to the Straits
where ships were crowding through like sheep at a gate. One might as
well pull up in the middle of Broadway for a quiet nap.
Extreme fatigue does strange things. As in a dream I became
aware of two other people aboard, and as in a dream it seemed per-
fectly natural that they should be there. One of them sat on the coa-
chroof and the other came aft holding on to the boom, quiescent in its
gallows. 'O.K.,' he said, 'You kip down. We'll keep watch.' Obediently I
went below and slept till morning.
Stretching and yawning and still weary, I climbed into the cockpit
in the light of day. 'Thank you,' I said. 'That was good . . .' but they had
gone. Never had the cockpit looked so empty.
12
Slocum, too, made for Gibraltar, intending to go by way of the
Suez Canal. But he was cautioned about Barbary pirates and, indeed,
had a brush with a Moroccan felucca as soon as he left the Rock.
Thus warned, Slocum changed his plans. In fact, he completely re-
versed them and decided to go west about. The man's nonchalance is
