Of McGrath's voyage in an open boat from the Marquesas to Samoa, I will comment here no more than to say that, whether he was cast away or deliberately embarked upon it, it has gone on record as one of the most remarkable achievements of its kind in marine history. The Lurline encountered, between Samoa and Fiji, the same hurricane which McGrath refers to in his letter, and when I describe that stupendous disturbance as it appeared to us on one of the staunchest ninety-footers ever built, I will also call attention to the fact that, five hundred miles to the northeast, a white man and a Marquesan boy, half dead from lack of food and sleep, were pointing up the prow of a pitiful little thirty-foot open cutter to the same mountainous seas and roaring winds.
Clearing the harbour of Taio-haie, sheets were slacked off and, with a strong beam wind, we bowled away on a S.W. ½ S. course at a gait which presaged a lively passage if it could be kept up. At 3:15 we took our departure with the conspicuous Cape Maartens bearing N.E. and an unnamed point on the west end of the island N. by W. At this time the Nukahiva was already hull down astern.
Encouraged by the first prospect of a steady and favourable slant of wind since we left San Pedro, a good spread of sail was hoisted, which, as the barometer was high and the sky unthreatening, it was hoped could be carried all night. The sea was light, and in a gushingly fresh wind the yacht reeled off ten and eleven knots an hour all through the first watch. The breeze fell lighter after midnight, however, and squalls in the morning and early forenoon made it impossible to carry the light sails, considering which the run of 195 miles for the twenty-two hours ending at noon of the 16th was very creditable work.
By the afternoon of the 16th we were clear of the treacherous squall belt around the islands, and the strong, steady Trade from the E.S.E. drove the yacht along at an almost undeviating speed, the log varying scarcely two-tenths from ten knots for any hour. Toward evening the benefit of a strengthening wind was offset by a rising sea, and through the latter hours of the night we proceeded under shortened sail. At daybreak the light sails were clapped on again and for several hours of the forenoon but a shade under eleven knots was averaged. At noon the dead-reckoning showed close to 230 miles logged in the last twenty-four hours, and when the position by observation was figured it appeared that a favourable set of current had added enough to this to bring the day's run up to an even 240 miles. The temperature of the air was 86° this day—the highest recorded during the voyage—and that of the water was 82°.
At four o'clock on the afternoon of the 17th a ragtag of fringe was reported off to the S.S.W., and word went around that we were sighting the first of the dread Paumotos. This group—often down on the charts as the Tuamotu, Low or Dangerous Archipelago,—is a cluster of a hundred or more coral atolls covering several degrees of both latitude and longitude of the extreme southwest corner of Polynesia. They are noted for their treacherous currents and terrific hurricanes, and are reputed to have had more schooners piled up on their white coral beaches than any other half dozen groups in the South Pacific. The name is a byword for all that is bad with every skipper who has sailed among them, and "Aussi sâle que dans ces maudits Paumotos" is the last degree of superlative in describing desperate navigating conditions. Of harbours there is none save the lagoons of the atolls themselves, and the entrances to these are so narrow and so beset by currents that the passage of them is almost impossible except at the turn of the tide, and is highly dangerous even then. Once inside the lagoon, however, the protection from everything but hurricanes is perfect.
The average life of a trading or pearling schooner in the Paumotos is but four or five years, and so notoriously world-wide is their reputation as a marine graveyard that neither in Europe, Australia nor America can a ship be insured that is plying in their trade. It is even the custom to insert in the policy of a vessel running to adjacent islands a clause declaring that no insurance will be paid should the ship, by any chance, be lost in the Paumotos.
The island we had sighted turned out to be Ahii, one of the largest of the group, and by five o'clock it had grown from a colourless horizontal blur to a solid wall of white and brown and green, where the snowy beach ran up to the dark boles of the coco palms, and these in turn ran out in fringes of lacquered verdancy. At a distance of half a mile our course was altered slightly to parallel that of the shore line, and in a rapidly smoothing sea, but with an unabated breeze, we began running down the low, even leeward coast of the strange island. From the deck only the coco palm barrier, a tossing mass of up-ended feather dusters, met the eye to windward, but from the shrouds, through rifts in the line, could be seen great green gashes of the smooth lagoon. Farther still, in blended brown and olive, the windward rim of the island stood out sharply against a vivid turquoise ribbon of open sea, itself defined against a dusky mass of cumulo-nimbus that was rolling in before the Trade from the southeast.
Here followed a spell of the prettiest sailing that the good Lurline, sapient of the seas of many latitudes, ever did, or probably ever will do. We were sufficiently close to the steep-to lee shore of the great atoll to be sailing in a sea as smooth as the land-locked lagoon itself, yet at the same time were far enough beyond the barrier of the coco palms still to enjoy the full force of a moderately strong and remarkably steady breeze. We were anxious not to get too far in among the islands during the night, and for this reason no light sails were set; yet under mainsail, foresail, forestay-sail and jib the log was shortly spinning up mile after mile with six minutes and less of interval between each bell.