termination of the squall entirely to his own prayers, saying with a laugh, "Yes,
that's the way we always 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 violent 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 rely 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 the voyage home, which should not have taken twelve; we were many times
short of food and water; we had no compass-lamp, owing to there not being a
drop of oil in Waigiou when we left; and to crown all, during the whole of our
voyages from Goram by Ceram to Waigiou, and from Waigiou to Ternate,
occupying in all seventy-eight days, or only twelve days short of three months
(all in what was supposed to be the favourable season), we had not one single
day of fair wind. We were always close braced up, always struggling against
wind, tide, and leeway, and in a vessel that would scarcely sail nearer than eight
points from the wind. Every seaman will admit that my first voyage in my own
boat was a most unlucky one.
Charles Allen had obtained a tolerable collection of birds and insects at
Mysol, but far less than he would have done if I had not been so unfortunate as
to miss visiting him. After waiting another week or two till he was nearly
starved, he returned to Wahai in Ceram, and heard, much to his surprise, that I
had left a fortnight before. He was delayed there more than a month before he
could get back to the north side of Mysol, which he found a much better locality,
but it was not yet the season for the Paradise Birds; and before he had obtained
more than a few of the common sort, the last prau was ready to leave for
Ternate, and he was obliged to take the opportunity, as he expected I would be
waiting there for him.
This concludes the record of my wanderings. I next went to Timor, and
afterwards to Bourn, Java, and Sumatra, which places have already been
described. Charles Allen made a voyage to New Guinea, a short account of
which will be given in my next chapter on the Birds of Paradise. On his return he
went to the Sula Islands, and made a very interesting collection which served to
determine the limits of the zoological group of Celebes, as already explained in