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