Just before daybreak, as the yacht, driven by the newfound Trade-wind, was settling contentedly down to an easy eight knots, the excited hail of "Breakers on the lee bow!" brought every one rushing on deck, and presently, out of the dissolving mist ahead, we saw long lines of surf tumbling over a submerged reef, and beyond low drifts of sand scantily covered with scrubby coconuts and pandanus. There was no need of altering our course. Still heading in a direction which we had figured would carry us twenty miles to the north of Bellinghausen Island, we slipped quietly by, a mile off its sinister southern line, before hauling up again for Tutuila. Every point we had altered our course had only brought us nearer to the danger we had sought to avoid, and the chances are, if we had made assurance a bit surer, that, with the added speed of the incidental slant of wind, the yacht would have sailed into the breakers before daylight.
There was nothing wrong with our reckoning on this occasion except the allowance made for the current, and this was figured according to the only authority available. Probably not an average of one ship a year makes the voyage from the Societies to the Samoas, and only the occasional government vessel keeps a record that is likely to be reflected on the charts. The southerly set of the current past the western end of the Societies is, at least in the Fall months, certainly much greater than Findlay estimates it.
With mainsail and foresail wing-and-wing and both gaff topsails set, good speed was made all day of the 18th. Morning of the 19th found the wind dead astern, however, and this, in combination with an exasperating swell which set in from the south for no apparent reason whatever and made it impossible to run wing-and-wing, compelled us to steer a point wide of our course of due west. It was our original intention to rig up a square foresail for this run before the Trade from Tahiti to Samoa, but the baffling headwinds of the first few days made the use of such a sail impossible, and the advantage was deemed hardly worth the trouble for the few days that remained.
We learned later that the heavy seas from the south were the result of a tremendous gale which swept the Pacific beyond the Tropic of Capricorn a few days previously. Beam seas and a strong following wind make about the most uncomfortable combination a fore-and-after can encounter, and the next four days were lively ones aboard Lurline. A sea would come rolling up out of the south in a great sky-scraping ridge of pea green and heel the yacht to starboard until the mainboom dipped into the water and buckled under the strain like a rod before the first rush of a ten-pound salmon. Then it would pass on, leaving the yacht to tumble off its back and roll her port rail under just in time to dip a deckful out of the next wave. Much of the time the foresail was lowered with the boom hauled amidships, and the mainsail, double-reefed, carried to starboard. The jib and forestay-sail were usually set but rendered little service, most of such wind as they caught being shaken out in the roll.
Under these circumstances very creditable speed was made. The run to noon of the 19th was 195 miles, and for the three following days 193, 174 and 175 miles, respectively. The wear and tear on sails and sheets and halyards was very great, however. On the 21st the fore peak halyard chafed through at noon, and at ten P. M. of the same day the forestay-sail sheet came to similar grief. Nothing else carried away before we reached port, but the steady banging of these four days made a general overhauling of the rigging necessary before we were in shape to put to sea again from Pago Pago.
The several small islands which constitute the Manua division of the Samoan group were sighted to the N.E. at daybreak of the 23rd. The peaks of Tutuila, distant forty miles, came above the horizon at four in the afternoon of the same day, but as there was no hope of reaching Pago Pago before dark in the light airs then prevailing, canvas was shortened to mainsail and forestay-sail and the night was spent in standing off and on. Morning of the 24th found us twenty miles off shore, and for several hours the yacht scarcely made steerageway in an almost dead calm. Toward noon a light easterly breeze sprang up, and taking advantage of every puff we managed to worry in through the cliff-walled entrance of the remarkable bay of Pago Pago by three o'clock.
The port doctor met us as we came abreast of the quarantine station and piloted the yacht up the bay to an anchorage, but through a faulty diagnosis of the lay of the bottom, combined with a faulty prescription when his original mistake was discovered, missed only by the narrowest of margins leaving his patient a subject for the marine hospital. A few of the details may be worth recording in their bearing on the much-mooted question of the advisability of placing surgeons in command of the government hospital ships.
The doctor boarded the yacht as she came gliding up before the gentle evening breeze, and after satisfying himself that she bore no evidences of plague or yellow fever in cabin or forecastle, kindly volunteered, in the absence of a harbour master (which functionary the port did not boast), to show us the way to the safest and most convenient anchorage available for a visiting craft. We accepted his well-meant offer without misgivings, and the quarantine boat, its gaily-turbaned fita-fitas leaning lazily on their oars, was soon trailing astern, while the doctor, clearing his throat, began "piloting."
"Straight down the middle," was his first order; and "Straight down middl', Sir," muttered Perkins at the wheel, holding the yacht to her even course up the bay in apparently correct interpretation of the direction as meaning something akin to the regulation "Steady as she goes."
"Now in past the Wheeling," was the next command; and when we had swept smartly in past the U. S. S. Wheeling, "Now edge in a bit toward the shore," carried the yacht under the shadow of the towering southwestern harbour walls.