‘That’s land all right,’ said I, the first of us all to say it.
‘Yes, so it is.’
In short, everybody agreed that they could see a dark line that must be land of some sort. All through the rest of the night I kept my bows pointed towards this shadow, which grew clearer and clearer. We were getting there. No clouds, a strong wind and tall but regular waves, and we were running in as fast as we could go. The dark mass did not rise high over the water, and there was no way of telling whether the coast was cliffs, rocks or beach. The moon was setting on the far side of the land, and it cast a shadow that prevented me from seeing anything except a line of lights at sea-level, continuous at first and then broken. I came closer and closer, and then, about half a mile from the shore, I dropped anchor. The wind was strong, the boat swung round and faced the waves, which it took head-on every time. It tossed us around a great deal and indeed it was very uncomfortable. The sails were lowered and furled, of course. We might have waited until daylight in this unpleasant but safe position, but unhappily the anchor suddenly lost its hold. To steer a boat, it has to be moving: otherwise the rudder has no bite. We hoisted the jib and stay-sail, but then a strange thing happened – the anchor would not get a grip again. The others hauled the rope aboard: it came in without any anchor. We had lost it. In spite of everything I could do the waves kept heaving us in towards the rocks of this land in such a dangerous way that I decided to hoist the mainsail and run in on purpose – run in fast. This I carried out so successfully that there we were, wedged between two rocks, with the boat absolutely shattered. No one bawled out in panic, but when the next wave came rolling in we all plunged into it and ended up on shore, battered, tumbled, soaked, but alive. Only Clousiot, with his plastered leg, had a worse time than the rest of us. His arm, face and hands were badly scraped. We others had a few bangs on the knees, hands and ankles. My ear had come up against a rock a little too hard, and it was dripping with blood.
Still, there we were, alive on dry land, out of the reach of the waves. When day broke we picked up the oilskin and I turned the boat over – it was beginning to go to pieces. I managed to wrench the compass from its place in the stern-sheets. There was no one where we had been cast up, nor anywhere around. We looked at the line of lights, and later we learned that they were there to warn fishermen that the place was dangerous. We walked away, going inland; and we saw nothing, only cactuses, huge cactuses, and donkeys. We reached a well, tired out, for we had had to carry Clousiot, taking turns with two of us making a kind of chair with joined hands. Round the well there were the dried carcasses of goats and asses. The well was empty, and the windmill that had once worked it was now turning idly, bringing nothing up. Not a soul; only these goats and donkeys.
We went on to a little house whose open doors invited us to walk in. We called out ‘Haloo! Haloo!’ Nobody. On the chimney-piece a canvas bag with its neck tied by a string; I took it and opened it. As I opened it the string broke – it was full of florins, the Dutch currency. So we were on Dutch territory: Bonaire, Curaçao or Aruba. We put the bag back without touching anything; we found water and each drank in turn out of a ladle. No one in the house, no one anywhere near. We left, and we were going along very slowly, because of Clousiot, when an old Ford blocked our path.
‘Are you Frenchmen?’
‘Yes, Monsieur.’
‘Get into the car, will you?’ Three got in behind and we settled Clousiot on their knees; I sat next to the driver and Maturette next to me.
‘You’ve been wrecked?’
‘Yes.’
‘Anyone drowned?’
‘No.’
‘Where do you come from?’
‘Trinidad.’
‘And before that?’
‘French Guiana.’
‘Convicts or relégués?’
‘Convicts.’
‘I’m Dr. Naal, the owner of this property; it’s a peninsula running out from Curaçao. They call it Ass’s Island. Goats and asses live here, feeding on the cactuses, in spite of the long thorns. The common nickname for those thorns is the young ladies of Curaçao.’
I said, ‘That’s not very flattering for the real young ladies of Curaçao.’ The big, heavy man laughed noisily. With an asthmatic gasp the worn-out Ford stopped of its own accord. I pointed to a herd of asses and said, ‘If the car can’t manage it any more, we can easily have ourselves pulled.’
‘I’ve got a sort of harness in the boot, but the great difficulty is to catch a couple and then put the harness on.’ The fat fellow opened the bonnet and found that a particularly heavy lurch had disconnected a plug. Before getting in he gazed all round, looking uneasy. We set off again, and having bumped along rough tracks we came to a white barrier across the road. Here there was a little white cottage. He spoke in Dutch to a very light-coloured, neatly-dressed Negro who kept saying, ‘Ya, master; ya, master.’ Then he said, ‘I’ve given this man orders to stay with you until I come back and give you something to drink if you’re thirsty. Will you get out?’ We got out and sat on the grass in the shade. The aged Ford went gasping away. It had scarcely gone fifty yards before the black, speaking papiamento – a Dutch West Indies patois made up of English, Dutch, French and Spanish words – told us that his boss, Dr. Naal, had gone to fetch the police, because he was very frightened of us: he had told him to look out for himself, we being escaped thieves. And the poor devil of a mulatto couldn’t do enough to try to please us. He made us some coffee: it was very weak, but in that heat it did us good. We waited for more than an hour and then there appeared a big van after the nature of a black maria with six policemen dressed in the German style, and an open car with a uniformed chauffeur and three gentlemen behind, one of them being Dr. Naal.
They got out, and the smallest, who looked like a new-shaven priest, said to us, ‘I am the superintendent in charge of security for the island of Curaçao. My position obliges me to place you under arrest. Have you committed any crimes since your arrival upon the island and if so what? And which of you?’
‘Monsieur, we are escaped prisoners. We have come from Trinidad, and only a few hours ago we wrecked our boat on your rocks. I am the leader of this little band and I can assure you not one of us has committed the slightest crime.’
The superintendent turned towards Dr. Naal and spoke to him in Dutch. They were both talking when a fellow hurried up on a bicycle. He talked loud and fast, as much to Dr. Naal as to the policeman.
‘Monsieur Naal,’ I said, ‘why did you tell this man we were thieves?’
‘Because before I met you this fellow told me he watched you from behind a cactus and he had seen you go into his house and then come out of it again. He’s an employee of mine – he looks after some of my asses.’
‘And just because we went into the house does that mean we’re thieves? What you say doesn’t make sense, Monsieur: all we did was to take some water – you don’t call that theft, do you?’
‘And what about the bag of florins?’
‘Yes, I did open that bag; and in fact I broke the string as I did so. But I most certainly didn’t do anything but look to see what kind of money it had in it, and so to find out what country we had reached. I scrupulously put the money and the bag back where they were, on the chimney-piece.’
The policeman looked me right in the eye, and then turning he spoke to the character on the bicycle very severely. Dr. Naal made as though to speak. Harshly, in the German style, the superintendent cut him short. Then he made the newcomer get into the open car next to the chauffeur, got in himself with two policemen and drove off. Naal and the other man who had come with him walked into the house with us.
‘I must explain,’ he said. ‘That man had told me the bag had vanished. Before having you searched, the superintendent questioned him,