The Penang Pirate / and, The Lost Pinnace

by John C. Hutcheson

“‘Let her drive,’ said I to the men, whom I kept baling out the occasional seas that came in over the weather gunwale. ‘As long as she keeps on running like this we can come to no harm, but you mustn’t stop baling, for if she once gets waterlogged she’ll founder and then we’ll all be lost.’

“This made them stick to it, although most of them were tired out with the long pull they had had in the afternoon after the dhow, and when morning broke we were still all right and buoyant, although the tornado showed no appearance of slackening, and we were quite out of sight of land, nothing but sky and sea being around us, and the waves rolling that high as they followed in our wake that if we had not scudded on we would have been swamped in an instant.

“All that day we continued driving ahead, for we could not stop, or wear the boat round, or do anything but simply let her go where the wind chose to take her. We could not even lower the mainsail, as if we had done so it might have capsized her, besides which, as long as it held out without being blown away, although it almost made the pinnace bury her nose in the waves in front, it prevented the following rollers behind from coming too close, just keeping way enough on her to be out of their reach. But, it was a perilous run of it, and every big comber that raced after us looked as if it would overtake our tiny craft and swamp her!

“By about four o’clock in the afternoon, as near as we could reckon, we sighted the highlands of Madagascar, for it couldn’t be any other coast from the direction we had been sailing in ever since midnight. The land was right ahead and some distance off yet; but approaching it rapidly as we did, it made us tremble, for unless we could manage to steer inside the reef that lay outside the shore of the island, the same as at Saint Juan, we must be dashed against the cliffs. It was wonderful to think we had run all that distance in less than twenty-four hours.

“How we did it I’m sure I can’t tell, but I believe in addition to the force of the wind, that must have driven us at the rate of twenty knots an hour, more or less, there was a strong easterly current in the Mozambique Channel with the south-west monsoon, and this must have carried us so speedily across from the Comoro Islands. I can’t account for it otherwise.

“Be that as it may, sir, there was Madagascar now before us, with the pinnace closing in with the land every second, seeming as if she were flying towards it rather than sailing; soon, too, we could distinguish the noise of breakers, which grew every minute more distinct. We were rushing rapidly to destruction, and it looked as if no earthly power could save the boat from being dashed to pieces.

“However, there was a power above watching over us.

“Presently I noticed from the contour of the land that we were near Cape Tangan, which I well knew from a coasting voyage I had made round the island in a cruiser the year before when I came out to join the London, and I recollected that this headland ran out into the sea in a north-westerly point, so that, if we could contrive to get the boat to leeward of the cape, we would soon be in comparatively still water and protected alike from the force of the wind and the rolling waves.

“I sang out to the men therefore to get their oars out ready, and, watching my opportunity when we were just almost abreast of Cape Tangan, I told Adams, who was in the centre of the boat now, to lower away the mainsail, directing the others at the same time to pull with a will, as their lives depended on our rounding the promontory, against which it looked as if we were going to be hurled as we came up to it—it was so terribly near and frowning over us!

“This plan fortunately succeeded, for in another minute, during which I held my breath in suspense, we were round the cape and in still water, although close to a coral reef that girdled the land, which was still some three miles off. We really were safe for the time and dropped our anchor, glad enough at our escape; but I saw that the haven could only be of temporary assistance to us, for should the wind shift more to the northwards we would even be in a worse position than when scudding before the gale, as the reef would then be immediately to leeward of us and the gale in our face.