At 10 p.m. we sent up a rocket, and waited at the entrance to the narrow Straits of Baly for the pilot to come off from Banjoewangi. We passed through the narrow passage at midnight, not seeing the tropical jungle, which here touches the water's edge, nor hearing the roar of the leopards and panthers who infest the shores.
Friday, December 19th.—We are in the Sea of Java. Numerous kattamarangs and canoes, with their outrigged frames that keep them steady in the water, tell us we are within reach of busy life again. Bamboo rods, with several lines attached for fishing, protrude out of the water, and speak of hungry humanity once more. In the afternoon we lose sight of Java, going on the outside of the island of Madura, as the water is not deep enough for us inside.
On the last evening of our voyage we went down to the engine-room. The two cylinders sliding up and down as fast as the eye can follow them are wonderful, but more interesting is the tunnel, running quite aft, containing the revolving cylinder of the screw. None but Orientals could stand the intense heat of the furnaces, the normal temperature being never less than 120°.
We went half-speed towards evening, so as not to arrive at Batavia before daylight to-morrow morning; and we shall be able to leave the ship immediately after breakfast.
There are voyages in which one is sorry when the journey is nearing an end, but this may not be counted as one of them.
The advantage of the Torres Straits route is that you may insure a calm sea usually as far as Aden, whereas in that by South Australia it is always as rough as in the Bay of Biscay in the Australian Bight; but the heat in the Torres Straits is intensely great, travelling as you are for days on a line with the Equator, and but few degrees removed from it.
CHAPTER XIII.
NETHERLANDS INDIA.
Our first voyage across the Atlantic began the fate which has since pursued us, of arriving at our destination on Sunday. We have landed at New York, at Auckland, at Wellington on Sunday, and now, after our three weeks' voyage through the Torres Straits, the Arafura Sea, and Indian Ocean, we find ourselves at anchor early on a Sunday morning inside the little breakwater of Tandjong Priok, the harbour of Batavia.
The scene which greets me as I go up on deck is truly Dutch. I see low stretches of flat, marshy land, barely redeemed from the ocean, with a group of red-tiled roofs, hidden among some tall, straight trees in the foreground, and the peculiar watery-grey sky so dear to the Dutch landscape painters.