I
Took With Me My Bornean Lad Ali, Who Was Now Very Useful To Me;
Lahagi, A Native Of Ternate,
A very good steady man, and a fair
shooter, who had been with me to New Guinea; Lahi, a native
Of
Gilolo, who could speak Malay, as woodcutter and general
assistant; and Garo, a boy who was to act as cook. As the boat
was so small that we had hardly room to stow ourselves away when
all my stores were on board, I only took one other man named
Latchi, as pilot. He was a Papuan slave, a tall, strong black
fellow, but very civil and careful. The boat I had hired from a
Chinaman named Lau Keng Tong, for five guilders a month.
We started on the morning of October 9th, but had not got a
hundred yards from land, when a strong head wind sprung up,
against which we could not row, so we crept along shore to below
the town, and waited till the turn of the tide should enable us
to cross over to the coast of Tidore. About three in the
afternoon we got off, and found that our boat sailed well, and
would keep pretty close to the wind. We got on a good way before
the wind fell and we had to take to our oars again. We landed on
a nice sandy beach to cook our suppers, just as the sun set
behind the rugged volcanic hills, to the south of the great cone
of Tidore, and soon after beheld the planet Venus shining in the
twilight with the brilliancy of a new moon, and casting a very
distinct shadow. We left again a little before seven, and as we
got out from the shadow of the mountain I observed a bright light
over one part of the edge, and soon after, what seemed a fire of
remarkable whiteness on the very summit of the hill. I called the
attention of my men to it, and they too thought it merely a fire;
but a few minutes afterwards, as we got farther off shore, the
light rose clear up above the ridge of the hill, and some faint
clouds clearing away from it, discovered the magnificent comet
which was at the same time, astonishing all Europe. The nucleus
presented to the naked eye a distinct disc of brilliant white
light, from which the tail rose at an angle of about 30° or 35°
with the horizon, curving slightly downwards, and terminating in
a broad brush of faint light, the curvature of which diminished
till it was nearly straight at the end. The portion of the tail
next the comet appeared three or four tunes as bright as the most
luminous portion of the milky way, and what struck me as a
singular feature was that its upper margin, from the nucleus to
very near the extremity, was clearly and almost sharply defined,
while the lower side gradually shaded off into obscurity.
Directly it rose above the ridge of the hill, I said to my men,
"See, it's not a fire, it's a bintang ber-ekor" ("tailed-star,"
the Malay idiom for a comet). "So it is," said they; and all
declared that they had often heard tell of such, but had never
seen one till now.
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