Not Quite
Comprehending, I Made Him Repeat His Request, When, Seeing He Was
In Earnest, I Said, "Very Well, I
Suppose there are 'hantus'
(spirits) here." "Yes," said he, "and they don't like anything to
be thrown overboard; many a
Prau has been lost by doing it." Upon
which I promised to be very careful. At sunset the good
Mahometans on board all repeated a few words of prayer with a
general chorus, reminding me of the pleasing and impressive "Ave.
Maria" of Catholic countries.
Dec. 20th.-At sunrise we were opposite the Bontyne mountain, said
to be one of the highest in Celebes. In the afternoon we passed
the Salayer Straits and had a little squall, which obliged us to
lower our huge mast, sails, and heavy yards. The rest of the
evening we had a fine west wind, which carried us on at near five
knots an hour, as much as our lumbering old tub can possibly go.
Dec. 21st.-A heavy swell from the south-west rolling us about
most uncomfortably. A steady wind was blowing however, and we got
on very well.
Dec. 22d.-The swell had gone down. We passed Boutong, a large
island, high, woody, and populous, the native place of some of
our crew. A small prau returning from Bali to the, island of
Goram overtook us. The nakoda (captain) was known to our owner.
They had been two years away, but were full of people, with
several black Papuans on board. At 6 P.M. we passed Wangiwangi,
low but not flat, inhabited and subject to Boutong. We had now
fairly entered the Molucca Sea. After dark it was a beautiful
sight to look down on our rudders, from which rushed eddying
streams of phosphoric light gemmed with whirling sparks of fire.
It resembled (more nearly than anything else to which I can
compare it) one of the large irregular nebulous star-clusters
seen through a good telescope, with the additional attraction of
ever-changing form and dancing motion.
Dec. 23d.-Fine red sunrise; the island we left last evening
barely visible behind us. The Goram prau about a mile south of
us. They have no compass, yet they have kept a very true course
during the night. Our owner tells me they do it by the swell of
the sea, the direction of which they notice at sunset, and sail
by it during the night. In these seas they are never (in fine
weather) more than two days without seeing land. Of course
adverse winds or currents sometimes carry them away, but they
soon fall in with some island, and there are always some old
sailors on board who know it, and thence take a new course. Last
night a shark about five feet long was caught, and this morning
it was cut up and cooked. In the afternoon they got another, and
I had a little fried, and found it firm and dry, but very
palatable. In the evening the sun set in a heavy bank of clouds,
which, as darkness came on, assumed a fearfully black appearance.
According to custom, when strong wind or rain is expected, our
large sails -were furled, and with their yards let down on deck,
and a small square foresail alone kept up. The great mat sails
are most awkward things to manage in rough weather. The yards
which support them are seventy feet long, and of course very
heavy, and the only way to furl them being to roll up the sail on
the boom, it is a very dangerous thing to have them standing when
overtaken by a squall. Our crew; though numerous enough for a
vessel of 700 instead of one of 70 tons, have it very much their
own way, and there seems to be seldom more than a dozen at work
at a time. When anything important is to be done, however, all
start up willingly enough, but then all think themselves at
liberty to give their opinion, and half a dozen voices are heard
giving orders, and there is such a shrieking and confusion that
it seems wonderful anything gets done at all.
Considering we have fifty men of several tribes and tongues
onboard, wild, half-savage looking fellows, and few of them
feeling any of the restraints of morality or education, we get on
wonderfully well. There is no fighting or quarrelling, as there
would certainly be among the same number of Europeans with as
little restraint upon their actions, and there is scarcely any of
that noise and excitement which might be expected. In fine
weather the greater part of them are quietly enjoying themselves-
-some are sleeping under the shadow of the sails; others, in
little groups of three or four, are talking or chewing betel; one
is making a new handle to his chopping-knife, another is
stitching away at a new pair of trousers or a shirt, and all are
as quiet and well-conducted as on board the best-ordered English
merchantman. Two or three take it by turns to watch in the bows
and see after the braces and halyards of the great sails; the two
steersmen are below in the steerage; our captain, or the juragan,
gives the course, guided partly by the compass and partly by the
direction of the wind, and a watch of two or three on the poop
look after the trimming of the sails and call out the hours by
the water-clock. This is a very ingenious contrivance, which
measures time well in both rough weather and fine. It is simply a
bucket half filled with water, in which floats the half of a
well-scraped cocoa-nut shell. In the bottom of this shell is a
very small hole, so that when placed to float in the bucket a
fine thread of water squirts up into it. This gradually fills the
shell, and the size of the hole is so adjusted to the capacity of
the vessel that, exactly at the end of an hour, plump it goes to
the bottom.
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