Chapter VII: Part 7

First you try to _find_ the entrance to the overnight accommodations.
(The façade of any Australian hotel is all Pub and every visible
entrance leads to one bar or another.) Finally we were rescued by
“Miss Marie”—pronounced Mahry—the manageress, and escorted up a
creaking stairway which led from the lower side veranda to a wide
upper one, off which opened all of the bedrooms. Every door was wide
open for ventilation and most of the guests seemed to be sprawled on
their beds in full view, in various states of _deshabille_.

Our own room was at the extreme end of the front porch, next to a room
marked “Ladies’ Bath.” How very convenient, I thought, looking forward
to an extra dividend in the form of a Hot Bath.

Jessica and I waited on the porch until we saw the masthead light wink
on out in the harbor. Then, knowing the men had made it safely to the
boat, we prepared ourselves for bed: a simple job, since we had
brought no nightclothes and not even a toothbrush.

The Ladies’ Bath turned out to be nothing _but_ bath—and with cold
water, at that. No soap, either. And there were no other facilities
visible, so I had to go downstairs and seek out Miss Marie again to
ask about the W.C. Greatly embarrassed, she led me back up the stairs,
along the two sides of the upper porch to our own room and
there—presto!—she crawled under my bed and produced a porcelain
chamber pot, child’s size!

My night ashore, to which I had looked forward for many weeks at sea,
turned out to be anything but a restful one. The bed was considerably
harder than my bunk on the _Phoenix_, and the snowy mosquito netting
which we were driven to drape around us shut off most of the air.
Since the “Ladies’ Bath” was the only room beyond ours, I left the
door open at first, but after two or three very raucous males had
wandered past and spent varying lengths of time in the Ladies’ Bath, I
pulled the half-curtains across the opening, even at the risk of
losing what feeble breeze there was.

The night was hot and stifling, although we had been assured that this
season is _pleasant_ compared to the summer months (November to
March), when the wind blows from the other direction and puts this
side of the island in the lee. Every time someone walked across the
porch—or even when Jessica turned over in her sleep—the floor shook as
though an elephant were doing a fandango. I couldn’t help thinking how
ironic it would be if we had sailed thousands of miles and survived
the North Pacific and the Great Barrier Reef, only to die in the
shambles of the Royal Hotel in T.I., on the night the upstairs
sleeping porch collapsed into the Pub below.

In the morning, we were awakened with cups of tea at an ungodly hour.
Some forty-five minutes later, a little girl of about seven—who was
entranced with our American accents—came up to lead us down the stairs
and through a rabbit warren of interconnected parlors, dining rooms,
halls, and porches to a small breakfast room where we and the nine
other guests of the hotel had breakfast en famille. All along the way
we kept stumbling over cats which our guide told us belonged to the
establishment, but the five fat dogs who sat about the breakfast table
and waited for scraps were, she insisted, “only strays.” Better fed
strays I never hope to see.

Our anchorage continued uneasy. The trades funneled through, the oceans held a daily tidal tug of war, and the holding ground was slick. Twice in the first three days we dragged and had to sweat mightily to keep off the shore. Finally, room was found for us at the dock. There was some confusion as we approached about how they wanted us to lie and, while we were still maneuvering in the channel, we were caught by the change of the tide and swept against the pilings and were pinned there for over an hour. Finally we were able to work free and tie alongside _Cora_, a small coastal vessel trading between T.I. and the Gulf of Carpentaria.

Safely berthed at last, we checked the damage: four bent lifeline stanchions, a big dent in the deck water tank, paint worn off the stern sprit, and a very ruffled skipper. At that we were lucky, for a broken section of the pier was pointed out as testimony that, only a few weeks earlier, a much larger boat had been caught by the tide and current and pushed straight through the dock, carrying all before it.

Provisioning with fresh supplies in T.I. was a bit of a problem. Vegetables and fruits were brought in once a month, on the supply boat from Brisbane. The cost was high and the selection limited. Any number of people bemoaned the fact that they “used to have” plenty of fresh vegetables, grown locally, before the war but that nothing seemed to grow any more. They seemed to think that the climate or the soil must have changed as a result of the hostilities and no one drew any conclusion from the fact that the Japanese, who had made up a part of the T.I. population, had been repatriated after the war.

On the night before our departure we were invited to a church supper where the pièce de résistance was turtle, served up in its own enormous shell. It was a gay party, but midway in the proceedings I grew so restless that I excused myself and returned alone to the boat. The next day’s departure was very much on my mind and I wanted to go over the charts once more. Before entering or leaving ports Ted and I made it a practice to familiarize ourselves with the layout in advance, for when an emergency arises it’s too late to run below and start reviewing.

In addition, I needed leisure to go over my list of Things to Do Before Sailing, a written check list of more than thirty items which experience had taught me was the only way to avoid overlooking some perhaps vital detail. It ranged all the way from checking such items as radiotelephone and engine to making sure that everyone, including the cats, was aboard at take-off.

The next day, June 27, I signed the last of several hundred forms which had been shoved at me during our stay in Australia, we took on our final supplies and the farewell gifts of pearl shell, magazines, and cake (always welcome!) that were put into our hands by friends of whose very existence we had been unaware two weeks before. Then, with the beginning of the west-going tide, we made an easy exit. By midafternoon we had passed the Carpentaria Light Boat and were well underway in the Arafura Sea.

Throughout most of our trip the breezes were light and the seas moderate. By night we were treated to a breath-taking spectacle of that phosphorescence for which the Arafura Sea is famous: sheets of gleaming silver covered vast areas of the ocean, while in others the dark surface was broken with eerie patches of light that danced on the slow swells like reflected moonbeams, though there was no moon. Sometimes the bow pushed aside only black water, but again we would enter a stretch where the entire ocean would be broken into shimmering patterns of cold radiance and the bow wave would become a sparkling, foaming crest of light.

Mi-ke and her all-black daughter, Manuia, also were fascinated by the phosphorescence and spent hours sitting near the bulwarks and staring into the depths. On July 2 my log gives brief mention of an event which we all felt deeply:

0700. Mi-ke is missing. Jessica saw her last, yesterday afternoon,
sitting on an oil drum on deck. No sign since. Did not report for
supper last night. Did not show up for breakfast.

1200. _No sign._

This was the obituary of a companion who had signed on with us the day the _Phoenix_ was launched. How she came to go over the side we’ll never know. Perhaps the block of the genoa sheet, alternately slacking off and jerking upward in the light airs had snapped up and caught her unawares, stunning her and flipping her over the side.

Jessica, consoling herself with Manuia, said little, but it was obvious that this break in our security had affected her. In fact, the event served to bring home to us all most forcefully how vulnerable we were. We had begun to regard the _Phoenix_ as a safe little world in the midst of the vast ocean, a kind of magic circle within which we were safe, where nothing could touch us. Yet now one of our group had slipped out of that world and was gone—quietly, irrevocably, and without even the man on watch being aware of her leaving.

As we moved slowly westward, it was both fascinating and frustrating to study the charts and to realize that to each side of us lay great areas that begged for exploration, areas we would never see, since we knew we were not likely to pass that way again. To the south lay the Northern Territory of Australia, of which very little is known even today, with Melville and Bathurst islands still the home of Stone Age man. To our north, past the wilds of New Guinea, stretched islands we knew only from their bewitching names: Aru, Tanimbar, Sermata, Damar, Watubela, Ceram, Misol.... It made us wish that time were never-ending. We could only mutter, with no real conviction, “We’ll see ’em next time around.”

Finally, on July 6, the island of Timor rose out of the haze off the starboard bow—a birthday present for Mickey, this time, but not one he could pack away under his bunk with his other trophies.

All the next day we cruised westward, with the land growing more distinct. By late afternoon we were sailing just off the southern shore, but it was obvious that we could not reach Kupang that night. The coasts of islands in the Indonesian archipelago are not marked with coastal beacons as was the case along even the most deserted stretches of the Australian shores and I had no desire to feel my way along a dark and unknown coast by night and then grope through an unlighted channel on the way to Kupang. Telok Bay, Sakala, seemed to offer a protected anchorage, so we dropped the hook there in eight fathoms, half a mile offshore. It was a restless night, with considerable swell, so I insisted on keeping anchor watch once more.

This time Barbara, who had been sharing the extra daytime hour at the tiller with Jessica whenever we set the clocks back, volunteered to take an hour of night duty. Later, she confessed that the experience had given her a new respect for the job of the man on watch!

Every time we pitched, the anchor chain jerked, making the most
frightful noise—as if it were going to break or rip out of its
fastenings at any moment. I kept studying the points of land on each
side of the bay, trying to decide whether or not we’d shifted
position, which would mean the anchor was dragging and I ought to call
Skipper. What a burden of responsibility! There’s nothing like
darkness—and being on duty all alone—to magnify one’s fear!

At 0500 the next morning, we got underway and continued along the coast. This was supposed to be the “dry season,” but the visibility was consistently poor and at times rain blotted out the land. Several times we passed sails—Indonesian praus—the first signs of humanity we had seen since leaving Carpentaria Light Boat behind.

We flew our colors and the Indonesian flag, which Jessica had made during the trip, straightened up the deck, readied the anchor, and put on clean shirts. After we had dropped anchor in the harbor of Kupang, I even celebrated by going below for a quick—and necessary—shave.

Two immigration officers in neatly pressed tans were the first to board us. Both were very young and slight in build, looking like neat, precocious, and well-scrubbed schoolboys. Once again, the dire predictions of “informed sources” failed to materialize, for no one threw our passports on the floor. Instead, they examined them carefully and then handed them back with a smile. One of them, indeed, wished us “Well come!” in two understandable English words.

We spent an enjoyable hour while Barbara served coffee and opened a tin of Australian “sweet biscuits” and I filled out the necessary forms—which were printed in both Indonesian and English.

That, the officials then indicated, was all. There were no further requirements. We were quite free to go ashore.

Thank you very much, we said. And where could we get our American money changed?

Communications took a bit of time, because our pronunciation of English words was obviously unintelligible, but we were all patient and determined—and we were able to invoke the additional assistance of _Teach Yourself Dutch_ and _Teach Yourself Malay_ which I had prudently bought back in Sydney.

American—money—changed? The officials looked at each other. They consulted. They examined a proffered $10 bill with great interest.

“May be Jakarta!” they suggested helpfully. (Jakarta, the capital of the far-flung republic was a thousand miles to the west.)

“No—_before_ Jakarta. We want to buy food—here!”

“No. Here impossible,” they insisted, although with regret. They climbed into their launch—an open dory with American outboard—and chugged off.

Armed with our language books, we set off for shore in Flatty—Barbara, Ted, Jessica, and I. We had anchored out farther than we had realized and found it a long haul to the beach past dozens of large sailing praus and a few motorized fishing boats. People seemed to be living on all of them. We could see them gathered around open fires on the raised poop decks, cooking, eating, hanging out clothes. They watched us curiously and when we waved they shouted back a friendly greeting.

It was already dusk, but the beach was a ferment of activity. A Dutch freighter had arrived, lighters were plying back and forth, and hundreds of Timorese were wading out beyond the shallow water to unload the boats and carry boxes, barrels, and bales up to the customs shed. Drums of oil were simply dumped overboard and floated to shore, where they were rolled up the sloping beach by a number of wiry men. The scene was one of frenetic bustling, a startling contrast to the deserted quiet of the evening waterfront in New Zealand or Australia, where the eight-hour day is King.

As we neared the shore, a crowd surrounded us and willing hands helped to pull us in. No sooner had we stepped out of the dinghy than a dozen men seized it and rushed it up far beyond the high-water mark. No one spoke a word of English, so we could only assume that Flatty was in the hands of friends and would be well cared for until our return.

Out of the darkness a roly-poly Indonesian approached. “Dr. Reynolds?” he asked, in carefully enunciated syllables. He handed me his card: Mr. Ndonoe, Customs Office. He wanted to go out to the boat.

“Tomorrow morning all right?”

“No, please. Now.”

A word from Mr. Ndonoe and the dinghy was rushed back down the beach and refloated. We climbed in. Mr. Ndonoe, as I mentioned, was hefty and there seemed no point in overloading the boat, so I suggested that Ted, Barbara, and Jessica remain ashore until our return. We gained nothing by this maneuver, however, as their places were promptly taken by three young Timorese, two of whom seized an oar apiece and began to row mightily in opposite directions, while the third shouted orders. Finally we got partially squared away and began an erratic course out across the harbor. Looking shoreward I could see that the rest of my family were being herded up the beach under escort—evidently someone had been delegated to look after them. I could only hope that Mr. Ndonoe’s business would not keep them waiting too long.

When we finally reached the _Phoenix_ it developed that Mr. Ndonoe’s visit was by no means an official one. His curiosity stimulated by the reports of the two young immigration officers, he simply wanted to see for himself the small refrigerator that made ice by means of a kerosene flame! And, having shown him the ice, which had hardly begun to solidify around the edges, since we had used it for our earlier guests, I had to mix him a drink to prove the usefulness of the six small cubes.

By the time we got back to shore Barbara and the youngsters, who had been shown to Mr. Ndonoe’s office in the customs shed, had practically memorized the customs forms, written in Indonesian, which was all they had found to entertain themselves. They had almost convinced themselves that our amateur oarsmen had sunk us in the bay and were so relieved to see us that nobody minded that it was too late to shop for the bread and fresh vegetables we had hoped to take back for supper.

I was able to assure them that Nick, Mickey, and Moto were not waiting for any problematical fresh produce but had already started philosophically to cook rice and open cans.

“Then why can’t we go to a restaurant?” A longing for someone else’s cooking—anything, in fact, that they themselves hadn’t prepared—seemed to be an occupational disease with the women.

“I doubt if there’s a restaurant here—and anyway we haven’t any money, remember?”

Mr. Ndonoe confirmed my doubt. Yes, there was no restaurant and there was no place to get our American money changed.

“There is American family, though,” he volunteered.

“_Where?_”

A guide was sent to lead us through dark, narrow, teeming streets to the large and rambling house (a Japanese hospital during the war), where the Kingsleys, Mennonite agricultural consultants, were living with their seven children and a couple of missionaries from Australia. They took us in at once and, when they learned we had not eaten, placed us around their kitchen table and filled us with home-baked bread, butter and jam, hot chocolate, and bananas—green in color and about the size of a hot dog, but ripe and very good.

While we were still eating, another official dropped by. He spoke no English, but told us—through our hosts—that our Japanese men would _not_, after all, be allowed ashore. Also, in spite of our earlier understanding that we had satisfied all requirements, it now developed that Mr. Ndonoe wished to see all of our ship’s papers in the morning; the “polisi” wished me to report to them first thing; and it would also be necessary to pay calls on the harbormaster and the port doctor. The next day, it appeared, would be a busy one.

In the morning, with the Australian, Mr. Dicker, to translate, I went to plead with the headman. He was polite but adamant. He had no intention of permitting any Japanese to set foot in Kupang. He gave no reason, but I assumed it was a personal matter. Perhaps he had unpleasant memories of the Japanese occupation. He acknowledged that all our visas were in order, but managed to bring out the fact that it is a long way from Jakarta, where such permission is given, to Kupang, where _he_ was in charge. A long way, both in miles and in authority.

I sent off a cable of protest to both the American and the Japanese Embassy, but the Kingsleys warned me that even a cable exchange between the islands would take at least three days at best. This effectually killed any desire we had to linger in Timor, for we felt keenly how infuriating it would be to have to stay aboard, in full view of such a colorful port. Moreover, I had a strong hunch that no matter what cabled instructions were received, there would be no change in local policy.

I decided to accept Mr. Kingsley’s offer to cash one of our stateside checks for Indonesian rupiah so that we could lay in a few fresh provisions and push on at once for Bali, where we hoped our cabled protests would assure us of a friendlier reception.

Mrs. Kingsley sent her cook to help Barbara and Jessica shop. Ted and I made the rounds of the port authorities to announce our change of plans and clear for sea again. The cook was tiny—not just short, like Japanese women, but small and fragile looking. She wore a white blouse and a figured sarong and, like most women in Timor, even the poorest, she wore dangling gold earrings through her pierced ears. She spoke almost no English, but with the help of an Indonesian phrase book borrowed from the Kingsleys, Barbara managed to do very well.

Off they went, along the street that curves beside the harbor, past the bombed-out shells of what had once been substantial brick buildings, to the market—a miscellaneous collection of mats beneath a single thatched roof. The stallkeepers squatted cross-legged on the ground or, if they boasted counters, on the counters behind their wares. In neat piles arranged upon banana leaves were chunks of meat, hands of tiny green bananas, fish, eggs, Chinese cabbage, bean sprouts, and bright red chili peppers. Barbara’s guide seemed to know the going price of everything without asking. Eggs—all tiny and without any guarantee of freshness—were six rupiah for eight—one rupiah being worth about nine American cents on the official exchange. Potatoes, sold in heaps of ten or twelve, cost one rupiah per pile, the catch being that each potato is, literally, the size of a marble! Tomatoes were the same size and about as costly. Bananas, however, were cheap—only five rupiah for a good-sized stalk—and oranges were one rupiah for four.

The final purchase, and one for which the phrase book had to be called into play and a special expedition made, was bread. The bakery, at a considerable distance from the market, had a complete stock of ten loaves of bread, each loaf consisting of a length of five to eight bun-sized segments which sold for a half rupiah apiece. The very idea of any one customer buying the lot was staggering, but once Barbara had managed to persuade the cook—and the cook had reassured the baker—he became very businesslike. He wrapped each loaf separately in a fresh green banana leaf and laid it on the counter, where it promptly unwrapped itself while he worked on the next one. The individual segments began to come apart as he worked, but the baker, nothing daunted, produced more leaves and showed a willingness to wrap each bun if necessary. The market basket was already overflowing and the cook’s arms were full, so Barbara scooped up the whole lot, leaves, buns, and all, and made her way back to the beach where we were waiting by the dinghy.

Ted and I, for our part, had been enjoying another aspect of Kupang. Our official business disposed of, we had wandered up and down the streets of the city trying to register everything in a short time so that we could share it with the others on board. For the first time since leaving Japan we had the impression in Kupang of teeming life, of countless people, of bustle, color, movement—and above all poverty, grinding poverty. Many people were clothed in nothing but patches, one upon another. Faces were gaunt, arms and legs were nothing but sinewy muscle laid upon bone. Most noticeable of all were the toothless, gaping maws of the betel chewers, men and women alike, their mouths stained red and drooling fungus-like shreds as they chewed. It was a sight, we felt, that would take a bit of getting used to.

There was wide variety in the costumes of Timor. The most common form of dress seemed to be a tubular length of bright cloth which served equally as a skirt, a shawl, or a complete costume à la Gandhi. Fierce-looking banditti from the hills strolled around with bright scarf turbans on their heads and sheathed knives stuck in their sashes; Muslim in black-velvet fez worked side by side with nearly naked Malays whose headgear dress was an amazing replica in woven pandanus of the fifteenth-century flat-crowned velvet hats worn by the early Portuguese explorers.

This latter style, in fact, had for centuries been the traditional headgear of the Timorese but when Ted, who has few wants, demanded excitedly to know where he could buy such a hat, Mr. Kingsley assured him that none were ever offered for sale. Any man who needed a new hat would design and create his own and there is no tourist trade in Kupang to create a demand for mass merchandising.

Nothing daunted, Ted borrowed a phrase book, memorized a few words, touched me for a handful of rupiah, and began to scan every hat that passed with a critical and speculative eye. In the end he succeeded in buying an almost new hat right off the head of its surprised—and delighted—wearer.

A few more enterprising visitors like Ted, and mass production of Timorese hats will revolutionize the economy of Kupang!

At the waterfront there was plenty to see while we waited. The freighter was loading with passengers for its return trip to Jakarta and the beach was turbulent. Bedrolls, bundles of goods wrapped in matting, fighting cocks in bamboo cages, and eating chickens tied by their feet into bundles were all being carried down to the shore and loaded onto the backs of porters, who waded out with them into deeper water where the lighters were waiting, followed by the passengers themselves. Just beyond the shallows, the boats would stand by while the oarsmen held them steady and passengers scrambled over the gunwales and helped to load the cargo aboard. At last, with only inches of freeboard, the lighter would move off ponderously in the direction of the freighter.

When the family finally assembled at the waterfront, I loaded our purchases and the girls into the dinghy and then shook hands with everybody, including Mr. Ndonoe, who had come down to see us off. Mr. Ndonoe, however, simply kept hold of my hand and used it to steady himself as he climbed into the dinghy and settled himself comfortably. I tried to explain that we were ready to sail as soon as we got to the _Phoenix_, but he indicated that he would go along. Mr. Dicker had the impression that the visit was official, so there was nothing to do but make the best of it.

Once on board, however, it appeared that Mr. Ndonoe had come with us for the same reason a pup jumps onto the seat of a car—because he enjoys the ride. I’m afraid we were a bit abrupt as we packed him into Flatty again, since Moto had to row him all the way to shore and return before we could load our dinghy aboard and get underway.

Boatwise, it is a pleasure to leave Kupang: just up anchor, drift slowly seaward as you make sail at your leisure, and you are on your way. No tricky channels, no coral, no adverse tides, no shifting winds, no held breath.

Much as we had looked forward to a leisurely trip up the Indonesian archipelago, we decided to make no more stops until Bali, where we felt more certain of our welcome. We had no desire to cause incidents, and were afraid that the feeling against the Japanese which had been evidenced in such a relatively large port as Kupang might cause even more trouble in remote spots, even farther removed from central control.

Accordingly, we set our course for Benoa, the port of entry to Bali, 500 miles to the west. On this hop there was much leisure for reading and relaxation. Books were always a special joy at sea, partly because we had time to think about what we read and partly because, in the hours when we gathered in the cockpit, we found pleasure in sharing what we had been reading through discussion or by reading bits aloud. Life at sea was teaching us the joys of conversation, of propounding a theory, of following an idea to its logical conclusion. We all increased our knowledge painlessly and almost unconsciously as we compared impressions of the people and places we had left behind or tried to learn a bit about the ports that lay ahead.

In route to Bali we talked, among other things, about our brief experience in Timor, about Mr. Ndonoe and his almost childlike eagerness, about the unreasonably prejudiced and stubborn senior immigration officer; about the very young immigration officials; and about the Italian port doctor who had come out for a two-year term “because not enough doctor for all the place they need.”

For the first time, as we read something of the history of this very new republic, we realized what terrible obstacles Indonesia was facing in her struggle to achieve a place in the community of nations. She had no background of gradual education and preparation for self-rule, as had the Philippines. Having thrown off a very paternalistic colonial rule by sudden revolution, she found herself without enough experienced leaders, professional men, and trained government officials. No wonder so many of the officers we met had seemed young. They were! And as for the older ones, like our senior official in Kupang, he had perhaps worked in a minor capacity under the Dutch and, on the basis of such slight experience, had been quickly kicked upstairs. Perhaps his overbearing and dogmatic attitude was simply a reflection of the treatment he himself had received or observed under the hated colonial rulers whom he had replaced.

Our periods of companionship in the cockpit were never scheduled and sometimes burgeoned at an hour that would have been unthinkable ashore. For example, from Barbara’s diary:

July 13. Woke up about 3 A.M. and realized by the wallowing of the
ship, the slatting of sails, and the banging of blocks that the wind
had left us. Went up to sit with Ted on watch. The wind was beginning
to tease us, coming in little puffs and then falling off—but each time
returning a little more strongly, until gradually we began to move and
the water aft began to gurgle a bit. The phosphorescence of our wake
was spectacular—we could trace the curve of the rudder deep down and
bubbles of light like sparkling champagne were kicked up behind.

At four, when Earle came on watch, Jessica heard us talking and she,
too, came up and joined us, just in time for a thrilling display of
phosphorescent dolphins! They gamboled and disported about us in
luminous streaks and splashes. We could follow them beneath the
surface, a moving river of cold, greenish light, until they broke the
surface in a shower of spangles accompanied by the characteristic
“whoof” of expelled air.

Our entrance into Bali was one of the most trying and difficult that we had yet experienced. The currents that sweep down between the islands are fierce in these areas and the monsoon wind pours down through the passes. The year previous, a yacht larger than the _Phoenix_ had been blown down the strait while attempting to reach Bali and it had taken her a month to work her way back against the winds. We had no desire to emulate that experience!

The log tells of some of our difficulties:

Last night set course to reach Bali—allowed 1 knot westerly current.

When estimated distance run at 0500, sailed N and at dawn saw outlines
of land. Rainy, misty, visibility poor.

Thought this point of land was S.E. Bali and set course to run up
coast to Benoa. No visibility in frequent showers. Lost land, picked
up _another_ point, and decided we were in the middle of Lombok
Strait. _Terribly_ rough—roughest we’ve had yet—high, steep waves,
from all directions. (Displaced all the boxes tied in the back of the
cockpit—first time _that_ ever happened.)

Finally saw small island S. of Nusa Besar, and thus positively
identified position. Cut south of island, across both Lombok and
Bandung Straits.

Very rough, tough trip. To cross straits logged about 25 miles to make
10 good.

Finally located Benoa, in a relatively clear moment, got the leading
marks in line, when a heavy shower washed out all sight. Since the
entrance involves a right-hand turn and various tricky meanderings, we
put about and lay off one hour until the weather cleared a bit.

When we entered, we found _buoys were completely changed_ from the
pilot book and our up-to-date chart. Had to put man at masthead and
con our way through the reef.

The village of Benoa turned out to be a picturesque cluster of houses and brightly painted fishing boats drawn up on a spit of land to the left of the harbor, but the port of Benoa, on the other side of the water, was less interesting. It consisted of a few large and, at this hour, quite deserted buildings beside a large dock. We drifted in, tied alongside just at dusk, and gathered on the deck wondering what to do next and whether anyone from the village should be notified of our arrival.

Across the water a few early fires flickered in the town. On the dock, high above, a half dozen men began to congregate, squatting to look down at us with friendly curiosity. I decided to see what I could find out, but when I climbed up the ratlines and so to the dock, I met with no success. Phrases I had memorized in Dutch—in Indonesian—in Malay—nothing seemed to arouse any understanding. At last, in desperation, I tried a few words of Japanese—and suddenly we were off! Only then did I remember that Bali had been held by the Japanese from 1942 until the end of the war. Their Japanese was not much better than mine—but different. Anyway, it served and through an exchange of very halting questions-and-answers I learned that all the officials had gone for the day, that it was quite all right for us to remain at the dock overnight, and that Den Pasar, the main city of Bali, was 11 kilometers away and could be reached by bus.

I returned to the deck, where we had a leisurely supper and turned in early. To tell the truth, I was utterly exhausted. The family took a short walk, but came back to report nothing of interest on our side of the harbor except the dock buildings, a long, deserted causeway stretching into the distance across tidal flats, and a stack of long wicker baskets like porous sausages, each of which contained—a real, live pig!

Even this news failed to arouse me. However the Balinese arranged to package and store their bacon for export, it could wait, I decided, until morning.

10 BALI, JAVA,
THE KEELING-COCOS

“A sense of uneasy anticipation....”

Bali was worth all the trouble it took to get there. Not only is it spectacularly beautiful, with its rugged mountains, its misty vales, its crumbling temples, and the glossy green of its rice paddies, but the people are beautiful too. Outside of Den Pasar, where the tourists congregate and create understandable disruptions and where it is considered “rude” for women to go about unclothed above the waist, the Balinese serenely follow their age-old customs, practice the Hindu religion, which is the hard core of their society, and preserve their independence and integrity.

In contrast to other countries we had visited, even the more remote islands, we saw little influence of the West in Bali. No American movies, not even in Den Pasar; no Cokes or chewing gum. Music could be heard as one strolled the streets of a village at night, and it was not rock and roll but the hauntingly compelling music of Bali, played on drum and gamelin.

Our first act, after officially entering the next morning, was to take the bus to Den Pasar to meet Barbara’s mother. Minnetta herself was on a trip around the world, traveling by a somewhat faster means and at a bit higher altitude, but the motivating aim of her entire junket had been to meet us in Indonesia!

No one seemed to know the bus schedule, but all were happy to show us where to wait for it. Eventually, a dilapidated bus pulled up, so we climbed on and waited. And waited. And _waited_.

Several praus with wishbone sails pulled up to the sea wall and willing hands began to unload. Stalks of bananas, bunches of coconuts, matting bundles were all unloaded, carried up the sloping sea wall to the road and thence up a narrow ladder to the top of the bus.

The driver returned, carrying a woven banana leaf tray on which were a few carefully arranged yellow flowers and a few leaves. He placed this in a niche above the driver’s seat and stuck a stick of burning incense into a holder on the dashboard. (There’s an extra that American models don’t have!) We wondered if he was exorcising whatever demons may have gotten aboard with us.

A little later the people began to get on. Soon the bus was full, but still we waited. Down at the waterfront another prau came in. This one was loaded to the gunwales with large turtles and Barbara scrambled out with her camera.

“Don’t let them go without me!” she warned, stalking her photographic prey.

She didn’t have to go to the shore for her pictures, however. Her subjects were being brought to her, each turtle borne upside down on the shoulders of a man who walked with it easily up the sloping ladder to the top of the bus and there deposited it neatly.

The last two turtles were too large to be carried by a single man. These were slung from poles and brought up to the road by two men each, who shoved them inside the bus where they just filled the aisle and made an excellent footrest for the passengers, who sat in long seats facing one another. At last we started.

Once we were rolling, we passed beautifully irrigated rice fields, villages with walled compounds, and temples which looked centuries old, with carved elephants or boars guarding their narrow gates. Everywhere we saw evidences of the rice harvest: rows of workers in the fields, seemingly bowed over beneath the weight of huge mushroom-shaped hats as they cut the ripened grain; men and women carrying sheaves to be threshed, the men with two full shocks swinging from each end of a pole across the shoulders, the women with a single, larger bundle balanced on the head.

Throughout the Balinese countryside women apparently have not heard of the regulation, promulgated in Java, that they must be “properly clothed” or, if they have heard of it, they pay it the same attention that the Balinese, through the centuries, traditionally have paid to the directives of their alien rulers: they ignore it. In the dooryards the lovely bodies of the women, clothed only in a sarong of patterned batik, moved in graceful rhythm as they bounced an upright pole first with one hand, then with the other, to thresh the grain which had been spread on mats to dry.

In Den Pasar we got off at the wide dirt lot which is the bus terminus and transferred to a doh-ka, the pony-cart-for-two which is the picturesque means of travel through the city streets. The driver whipped his tiny horse to a gallop, the plume of bells on its head jingled merrily, and in no time at all we were deposited in front of the Bali Hotel, where Minnetta was waiting on the porch.

She was far too travel-wise to be living at the Bali Hotel, however. Already she had found lodgings, at one-fifth the tourist rate, at a small Balinese hotel on a side street. That night Barbara stayed with her there and, on the way back from seeing the rest of us off at the bus terminal, she managed to get herself completely lost. Through this happy accident she made the acquaintance of Igusti Rai Suwandi, a charming young Indonesian of Ted’s age who had been studying English in school. Rai (Igusti, we learned, is a title of caste and not a proper name) was happy to show Barbara back to her hotel and practice his English.

“Tomorrow I come again,” he promised. “I will meet your son. I will show him many things. If he will come by me for two days I will show him fete of young girl who become big.”

This event, which took place _in_ two days, turned out to be the coming-of-age ceremony for a young cousin, and Rai invited our whole family to attend. At the appointed time he took us to the outer courtyard of his “oldest brother’s wife’s father’s home.” We found it overflowing with milling tourists from the Bali Hotel who were busily taking pictures of suckling pigs turning on a spit and lovely girls passing through from the street to the inner courtyard with trays of food on their heads.

Our hearts sank. We had hoped for more than this, colorful as it was. But we needn’t have worried. Rai led us through the crowd, up some stone steps, through a narrow doorway in the brick wall, and down to the inner courtyard—and another world. All about us were open buildings with thatched roofs, their floors raised above the ground. Each of them was gaily decorated with lengths of bright cloth, flowers, and woven palm leaves. The guests, sitting cross-legged upon the floor of each pavilion, were all wearing native Balinese costume—magnificent sarongs of red or green or blue cloth with designs of gold thread and turbans of batik. They eyed us with curiosity and reserve and, for one horrible second, I wondered if Rai had brashly invited us without consulting his elders. Almost immediately, however, we were greeted warmly by Rai’s brother, who told us to make his home our own and led us to one of the detached buildings which had been, apparently, assigned to us for our own use.

In one of the houses, discreetly curtained off with gay hangings, the young girl for whom the ceremony was being held was being adorned for the main event of the day: the ritual of filing down her canine teeth. The reason for this operation was cheerfully given us by Rai: “So she not be like animal.”

When all was ready the maiden—a pretty, frightened-looking girl of seventeen—was borne out on the shoulders of two men, for on this day her feet must never touch the ground. She was clothed in a sarong of green and gold lamé, with a gold scarf bound around her breasts and wearing a tall crown of beaten gold, heavy with ornaments.

In the center of the courtyard was the most gaily decorated pavilion of all and here she was deposited on a raised couch in full view of all the family and guests. Women attendants removed her headdress and helped her to lie down. A priest then took over, intoning prayers and throwing petals of flowers around and over her with a ceremonial gesture. Having induced at least semihypnosis, he began the task of filing down her teeth. Throughout the proceedings, the chants of a dozen handmaidens provided a moaning background, in which the girl herself joined at times as if in fear or pain. Several times she sat up long enough to rinse her mouth and spit into a yellow coconut shell. The business had just enough of a suggestion of the dentist’s chair to lend it a slightly incongruous note.

When all was over, she was again lifted to the shoulders of her bearers and carried, wan and red-eyed, back to the privacy of the dressing room.

“Soon,” Rai promised Jessica, who was visibly upset, “she be more happy, _you_ see. This afternoon, many food—everything play.”

For us, too, there was “many food”: trays heaped high with molded rice, both plain and highly seasoned; a wide variety of curries and condiments; succulent roast pork; sate—bits of spicy meat on thin skewers; bananas, mandarin oranges, and various other dishes that I preferred to eat without identifying.

In the afternoon, as Rai had promised, the girl—now a marriageable young lady—was again carried among us, glowingly triumphant. Dances and a Balinese puppet play were presented for the assembled guests.

Also thanks to Rai—and because it was an auspicious time on the Balinese lunar calendar for ceremonial occasions of any kind—we had the opportunity of viewing a cremation. The remains of a number of deceased persons had been “saved up” for months, waiting until the bereaved families could prepare, and afford, a properly grand celebration. I use the term “celebration” advisedly, for a cremation in Bali, coming many months after the sorrow of death has faded, is not a time of mourning but a joyous release: release of the soul of the departed and, one presumes, release of the family from a heavy burden of obligation.

The procession accompanying the crematory tower itself was long and colorful. It included groups of musicians who played on the melodious Balinese drums, gongs, cymbals, and flutes; men who carried bundles of rice straw and others with cords of firewood; and a lengthy file of women with offerings of all kinds which they bore upon their heads. Everyone, it seemed, contributed food or goods, according to his means or ambition, and everything was to be consumed—by fire.

The main attraction, naturally, was the tall and elaborately decorated cremation tower, which carried the mortal remains of the dozen or so individuals who were being honored. This was borne upon the shoulders of some eighteen or twenty men, who plunged it from one side of the road to the other, splashed it with water from the drainage ditches along the way, or spun it about in erratic, zigzag patterns. This, we were told, was to confuse the spirits of the dead so they could not find their way back to haunt the living.

At the cremation grounds all the carefully wrapped bundles of bones were removed from the tower and placed, each in its own wooden coffin, beneath a long shed. The offerings were piled, as if for lavish display, upon a low platform covered with mats, nearby, and then the whole was set ablaze.

Only one development marred our enjoyment of this happy island. This was an illness which laid Jessica low for several days. On the night after the cremation—which had been a swelteringly hot day filled with excitement and topped off by a meal of strange and exotic foods—Jessica complained that she “didn’t feel good.” I wasn’t too surprised, but we decided to spare her the long bus ride back to Benoa and arranged for Barbara and Jessica to take a room at Minnetta’s hotel for the night.

Gradually Jessica’s vague symptoms seemed to localize in a stiff neck and I set off for Benoa with Ted, sure that all she needed was a good night’s sleep to put her back on her feet.

Early the next morning, however, Barbara turned up at the boat, having left Jessica with her grandmother and caught the first bus from Den Pasar.

“She must be running a high fever,” she told me, with a slightly wild look in her eye. “It was like sleeping with a hot pad, but I didn’t have my thermometer or even aspirin with me!”

She dived below to consult her medical bible, _The Ship’s Medicine Chest at Sea_, which she had not, so far, been called upon to use. Now, however, she was in no way reassured to discover that both polio and meningitis may start with the symptoms of “stiff neck and fever.” Armed with thermometer, textbook, and an overnight case stuffed with every medication she thought she might need, Barbara set off again for the hotel.

By the time she got back Jessica’s fever had turned into a chill and Minnetta, finding no blankets available at the hotel, had commandeered every coat and sweater she could lay hands on and piled them all on top of her shivering charge. Jessica insisted that she had no headache, so Barbara gratefully scratched meningitis as a possibility but the dread of polio still lingered. Rai, as deeply concerned as the family, had been hovering around anxiously and Barbara now dispatched him on his bicycle to look for a qualified physician who could speak English.

Jessica, meanwhile, slept fitfully. Occasionally she woke up to report a new symptom or a change in one of her old ones, whereupon Barbara flew back to her “do-it-yourself” medical text and started her diagnosis all over. The stiff neck turned out to be “more of a sore throat, really” and the “buzzing in the head” was tracked down to a vagrant bluebottle fly.

The climax came when Jessica, her temperature soaring again, began to toss off sweaters and shawls and disclosed a stomach covered with bright red spots! “Sore throat ... fever ... and a rash!” At last Barbara felt that she had it pinned down. “Scarlet fever!”

She began the indicated medication. It was getting dark now, and Jessica, in delirium, began to talk wildly. Barbara’s nerve was just about to break when Rai returned to report that he had “heard of a doctor” who could speak English. The women bundled Jessica up, summoned a doh-ka, and off they started across town, escorted by Rai on his bicycle.

Dr. M. Muhamad Angsar Kartakusuma left his supper to see them. He listened gravely as Barbara outlined the symptoms. Then he took a tongue depressor (the one item Barbara hadn’t thought to bring) and made an easy diagnosis—tonsillitis.

“A shot of penicillin”—he administered it almost before Jessica had time to flinch; “and these pills every four hours”—he handed an envelope to Barbara—“and I think you have nothing more to worry!”

“But—what about the rash?” Barbara protested.

Dr. Kartakusuma examined it briefly. “From heat,” he said, and added a box of medicated powder to relieve the itch.

The charge: nothing!

As Dr. Kartakusuma expressed it, “You are strangers in my country—and in trouble.” He shook hands all around and returned to his supper.

After several days of medication—complicated by the discovery that she had a penicillin allergy—Jessica was recovered enough to pour into her Journal a hundred pages of impressions of Bali, which she has since epitomized in a single word: eerie! The street noises outside her hotel room; a flute and the weird cadence of a gamelin; an old sow who splashed her way up the drainage ditch every morning; the startling cry of a gekko lizard in the night—these apparently had merged in her delirium with distorted memories of ceremonies she had seen, such as the tooth filing and the cremation. Most haunting of all, she and her grandmother had had an experience the rest of us did not share. One night, escorted by a fellow guest at the hotel, they had ridden many miles into the country to witness a kris dance at a village temple. The dancers had gone into trance and ended by plunging the twisted blades of their daggers into their own bodies “right up to the handle!” as Jessica insisted. People near her had fallen to the ground, “invaded by spirits,” and Jessica could actually feel the ground shaking.

As she summed it up, “It was enough to make _anybody_ get tonsillitis—or something!”

We could have spent much longer in Bali, but if we were to get another sampling of Indonesia, the capital, we had to push on. In Jakarta, Marjorie Harris—a childhood friend of Barbara’s—and her husband Mike, of the Ford Foundation, were waiting for us, and Jessica was looking forward to meeting their thirteen-year-old Susan.

Remembering our violently rough entry into Benoa, I put my foot down firmly on Minnetta’s proposal that she return to Jakarta on the _Phoenix_. No matter how indomitable the spirit, the bones of a woman in her seventies are liable to be brittle and the ways of the sea, especially in interisland channels, can be rugged, as we had cause to know. And so, using my authority as captain, I sent her back to Java by plane, to wait for us there.