In the morning, we were awakened with cups of tea at an ungodly hour. Some forty-five minutes later, a little girl of about seven—who was entranced with our American accents—came up to lead us down the stairs and through a rabbit warren of interconnected parlors, dining rooms, halls, and porches to a small breakfast room where we and the nine other guests of the hotel had breakfast en famille. All along the way we kept stumbling over cats which our guide told us belonged to the establishment, but the five fat dogs who sat about the breakfast table and waited for scraps were, she insisted, “only strays.” Better fed strays I never hope to see.
Our anchorage continued uneasy. The trades funneled through, the oceans held a daily tidal tug of war, and the holding ground was slick. Twice in the first three days we dragged and had to sweat mightily to keep off the shore. Finally, room was found for us at the dock. There was some confusion as we approached about how they wanted us to lie and, while we were still maneuvering in the channel, we were caught by the change of the tide and swept against the pilings and were pinned there for over an hour. Finally we were able to work free and tie alongside Cora, a small coastal vessel trading between T.I. and the Gulf of Carpentaria.
Safely berthed at last, we checked the damage: four bent lifeline stanchions, a big dent in the deck water tank, paint worn off the stern sprit, and a very ruffled skipper. At that we were lucky, for a broken section of the pier was pointed out as testimony that, only a few weeks earlier, a much larger boat had been caught by the tide and current and pushed straight through the dock, carrying all before it.
Provisioning with fresh supplies in T.I. was a bit of a problem. Vegetables and fruits were brought in once a month, on the supply boat from Brisbane. The cost was high and the selection limited. Any number of people bemoaned the fact that they “used to have” plenty of fresh vegetables, grown locally, before the war but that nothing seemed to grow any more. They seemed to think that the climate or the soil must have changed as a result of the hostilities and no one drew any conclusion from the fact that the Japanese, who had made up a part of the T.I. population, had been repatriated after the war.
On the night before our departure we were invited to a church supper where the pièce de résistance was turtle, served up in its own enormous shell. It was a gay party, but midway in the proceedings I grew so restless that I excused myself and returned alone to the boat. The next day’s departure was very much on my mind and I wanted to go over the charts once more. Before entering or leaving ports Ted and I made it a practice to familiarize ourselves with the layout in advance, for when an emergency arises it’s too late to run below and start reviewing.
In addition, I needed leisure to go over my list of Things to Do Before Sailing, a written check list of more than thirty items which experience had taught me was the only way to avoid overlooking some perhaps vital detail. It ranged all the way from checking such items as radiotelephone and engine to making sure that everyone, including the cats, was aboard at take-off.
The next day, June 27, I signed the last of several hundred forms which had been shoved at me during our stay in Australia, we took on our final supplies and the farewell gifts of pearl shell, magazines, and cake (always welcome!) that were put into our hands by friends of whose very existence we had been unaware two weeks before. Then, with the beginning of the west-going tide, we made an easy exit. By midafternoon we had passed the Carpentaria Light Boat and were well underway in the Arafura Sea.
Throughout most of our trip the breezes were light and the seas moderate. By night we were treated to a breath-taking spectacle of that phosphorescence for which the Arafura Sea is famous: sheets of gleaming silver covered vast areas of the ocean, while in others the dark surface was broken with eerie patches of light that danced on the slow swells like reflected moonbeams, though there was no moon. Sometimes the bow pushed aside only black water, but again we would enter a stretch where the entire ocean would be broken into shimmering patterns of cold radiance and the bow wave would become a sparkling, foaming crest of light.
Mi-ke and her all-black daughter, Manuia, also were fascinated by the phosphorescence and spent hours sitting near the bulwarks and staring into the depths. On July 2 my log gives brief mention of an event which we all felt deeply:
0700. Mi-ke is missing. Jessica saw her last, yesterday afternoon, sitting on an oil drum on deck. No sign since. Did not report for supper last night. Did not show up for breakfast.