Ted and I were up most of the night, trying to plot a course that would keep us within a day’s sail of the islands without getting too close to the reef in the dark. The only navigational light mentioned on Keeling-Cocos is a “sometime thing” hung in a palm tree, so there was no question of coming in close and standing off and on as we had done on other occasions.
All night, with passing squalls and a high and confused sea, we worked our way south, but by daylight there was no land in sight. As soon as we could we got a sun shot, hasty and unsatisfactory though it was, and estimated our position as being south of the main group. We turned north.
At 0800 I sent Mickey up the mast, giving a specific order this time instead of asking for a volunteer. It was a very tough job and the first time he had ever done it, but the rest of us had taken our turns and I felt that, for the good of the ship, he must not shirk the assignment. He came down, looking green—reported nothing in sight.
I frankly didn’t know where we were, in spite of having had a good departure from North Keeling the day before. I decided to look for the islands one more day and then, unless the weather cleared so we could get a definitive position, to stop flirting with the low reefs of Cocos and carry on for the high island of Rodrigues.
It would not, I knew, be a popular decision.
However, by 1100 the welcome sight of palm trees shimmered dead ahead and during the afternoon, with the weather improving rapidly, we gradually closed the islands and rounded to the north entrance.
Never did water look so calm and clear and blue! Never did a beach gleam so white and welcoming! We were eleven days, a thousand miles of sailing, and one humdinger of a storm out of Java and very, very happy to be here.
11 ACROSS THE INDIAN OCEAN:
COCOS TO DURBAN
“You have seen people of all sorts. Makes my mouth water....”
The Keeling-Cocos Islands are the perfect model of a South Seas atoll. About twenty small, low-lying islets, of coral and sand topped with palm trees, form an oval about a lagoon of some 5 by 10 miles. Only three of the islands are inhabited: Direction Island, off which we had dropped anchor, which exists solely for the purpose of operating the British Cable and Wireless establishment; West Island, five miles away across the lagoon, where a colony of some 200 Australians maintains the Qantas airstrip and meteorological station; and Home Island, where some 500 natives live under the benign but feudal patronage of the Clunies-Ross family, hereditary owners of all the Keeling-Cocos Islands since the days of Queen Victoria.