Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Sunrise on the 2d found us in the middle of the ten-mile channel between Kaióa and
Makian. Squalls and showers succeeded each other during the morning. At noon there was a
dead calm, after which a light westerly breeze enabled us to reach a village on Makian in the
evening. Here I bought some pumelos (Citrus decumana), kanary-nuts, and coffee, and let
my men have a night's sleep.
The morning of the 3d was fine, and we rowed slowly along the coast of Makian. The
captain of a small prau at anchor, seeing me on deck and guessing who I was, made signals
for us to stop, and brought me a letter from Charles Allen, who informed me he had been at
Ternate twenty days, and was anxiously waiting my arrival. This was good news, as I was
equally anxious about him, and it cheered up my spirits. A light southerly wind now sprung
up, and we thought we were going to have fine weather. It soon changed, however, to its old
quarter, the west; dense clouds gathered over the sky, and in less than half an hour we had
the severest squall we had experienced during our whole voyage. Luckily we got our great
mainsail down in time, or the consequences might have been serious. It was a regular little
hurricane, and my old Bugis steersman began shouting out to 'Allah! il Allah!' to preserve
us. We could only keep up our jib, which was almost blown to rags, but by careful handling
it kept us before the wind, and the prau behaved very well. Our small boat (purchased at
Gani) was towing astern, and soon got full of water, so that it broke away and we saw no
more of it. In about an hour the fury of the wind abated a little, and in two more we were
able to hoist our mainsail, reefed and half-mast high. Towards evening it cleared up and fell
calm, and the sea, which had been rather high, soon went down. Not being much of a sea-
man myself I had been considerably alarmed, and even the old steersman assured me he had
never been in a worse squall all his life. He was now more than ever confirmed in his opin-
ion of the unluckiness of the boat, and in the efficiency of the holy oil which all Bugis praus
had poured through their bottoms. As it was, he imputed our safety and the quick termina-
tion of the squall entirely to his own prayers, saying with a laugh, 'Yes, that's the way we al-
ways do on board our praus; when things are at the worst we stand up and shout out our
prayers as loud as we can, and then Tuwan Allah helps us.'
After this it took us two days more to reach Ternate, having our usual calms, squalls, and
head-winds to the very last; and once having to return back to our anchorage owing to viol-
ent gusts of wind just as we were close to the town. Looking at my whole voyage in this
vessel from the time when I left Goram in May, it will appear that my experiences of travel
in a native prau have not been encouraging. My first crew ran away; two men were lost for a
month on a desert island; we were ten times aground on coral reefs; we lost four anchors;
the sails were devoured by rats; the small boat was lost astern; we were thirty-eight days on
