Viewing page 165 of 185

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

-139-

September 18 -

All has gone well for days, except losing the larger of the Komodo dragons. The sea has been smooth and blue, and the air perfect. Working around the animals has been fun, just enough to keep us busy, and the gibbons have been holding up pretty well - not a loss since the little black boy.

Today, however, the weather changes, and the ship was rolling considerably at lunch time. As the afternoon wore on, the storm increased with alarming suddenness. Bill wouldn't let me go below to feed the gibbons at three o'clock, as the decks were awash, and the footing very treacherous, due to the decks having been painted with oil yesterday and being slippery even when they were not wet and rolling. In spite of being lashed together, many of the bird cages started to slide, and had all to be re-arranged and made doubly secure. Gaddi, of course, was sea-sick, which threw extra work on everybody.

All afternoon there was the sound of crashing and banging, as kitchen crockery, glasses and bottles, chairs and tables overturned and rolled about. Waves were breaking over the boat-deck by dinner time, and plenty of seas were coming regularly aboard. We had racks on the table for the first time on all the seas we have sailed since leaving home.

After dinner we sat, uncomfortably, in the little day-room, the settee there being built in, and about as secure a thing to hang on to as there is on board. I had just said, about eight-thirty, "I think I'll have one drink and go to bead," when I heard the telegraph from the bridge to the engine room, and the Captin dashed through our room, on his way to the bridge, putting on his coat as he went. Then of course we had to wait up until he came back, to get his report on what had happened. Secretly we hoped that the Endeavor had been sighted, for how we would love to have the opportunity of rescuing the famous yacht. However, when the Captain came back, he said that the engine was racing, due t the propeller being out of water, and we had slackened speed. That seemed to be all right, and we went out on deck for a while, to watch the moon sail crazily back and forth behind the big blue and white funnel, and to see the huge seas, their foaming crests made luminous by moonlight, come racing up to us. As we stood there, men were busily running about on the wet decks, all of them in oilskins, and with high rubber boots. The Captain said, "They are all going aft; I'll just take a look and see what is wrong." This time he came back to report that the wind had taken away most of the tarpaulin over the giraffe cages, and that in spite of the way in which these big crates (eleven feet high) had been lashed, they had slipped four inches. "I've given orders to tighten them up,"he said. "Now I must go on the bridge." He went up the ladder two steps at a time, and we heard the telegraph to the engine room ring again - this time it was "Dead slow". That means about two knots an hour, and at this speed the Captain turn the ship about, so that we had the sea dead ahead instead of on our beam, and we hove to for three and a half hours, while our live cargo was all made safe, and lashed and braced with ropes and lumber. It was amazing how easily the ship rode, once the engines slowed down and we headed south instead of northwest.