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Fred Rebell – Escape to the Sea

The biggest of these islands proved to be about a mile long. Vegetation was sparse, and there was no sign of human dwelling. Some of the smaller islets were mere rocks, that had been undermined by the surf until they resembled cabbage-heads---or mushrooms resting on short, stumpy stalks. Northward, as if growing out of water, could be seen the heads of palm-trees.

I felt disappointed, and began to give up any idea of landing. Had there been any sign of life, or had I known what a battle I should have before I reached Suva, I would have landed here at all costs, and rested till the weather changed. But instead, I decided to push on: to Suva, the capital of the Fiji  islands.

Before I left them I took the latitude of these islands by a noon sight of the sun. When I worked it out, I rubbed my eyes. There must be a big blunder somewhere. For they were more than one hundred and twenty miles south of the southernmost islands marked on my chart!

That was on the assumption, of course, that I was correct in my longitude: that it was the Fiji group which was concerned. But was it possible, I wondered, that my watch had gained fourteen minutes during that forty days at sea, and that in consequence I was on the longitude not of the Fiji, but of the Tonga Islands? Some of these, I knew, lay as far south as this. But if that was the case, I was seven hundred and fifty miles to the east of where I thought I was! And, what was worse, I had no chart of the Tonga group. Consequently, I could neither identify the islands I now saw, nor find my way through the group-if that in truth was where I was. In that case my position would be most hazardous, and it was impossible to tell when (if ever) I might reach Suva.

Nor could I keep sailing the ocean much longer: for my supply of drinking-water was getting low, and my running rigging was badly worn-the rope so full of knots and splices that it hardly looked like rope at all. To cap it all, the wind was dead against me.

With all these cares on my mind, I fell asleep: but barely had I dozed off when I heard a kindly but authoritative male voice say distinctly in English close to my ear, "Trust your instruments! There are islands in the Fiji group farther south than those shown on your chart."

It startled me. I woke, jumped out of the bunk: looked round, thinking that someone had come aboard, But my eyes beheld nothing but the murky blackness of night, and the tumbled ocean around me.

What voice could that have been, I wondered?

Anyhow I had little option but to trust it, and to sail on for where I believed Suva to be (and indeed, when I reached Suva I learned that the voice had been a true one:  for there were islands to the south of the Fiji group not marked in that old atlas from which my charts were copied)