Survivor: The Autobiography (30 page)

We were still under full sail in the hope of even now being able to steer clear. As we gradually drifted nearer, half sideways, we saw from the mast how the whole string of palm-clad isles was connected with a coral reef, part above and part under water, which lay like a mole where the sea was white with foam and leapt high into the air. The Raroia atoll is oval in shape and has a diameter of twenty-five miles, not counting the adjoining reefs of Takume. The whole of its longer side faces the sea to eastward where we came pitching in. The reef itself, which runs in one line from horizon to horizon, is only a few hundred yards clear, and behind it idyllic islets lie in a string round the still lagoon inside.

On board the
Kon-Tiki
all preparations for the end of the voyage were being made. Everything of value was carried into the cabin and lashed fast. Documents and papers were packed into watertight bags, along with films and other things which would not stand a dip in the sea. The whole bamboo cabin was covered with canvas, and specially strong ropes were lashed across it. When we saw that all hope was gone, we opened up the bamboo deck and cut off with machete knives all the ropes which held the centreboards down. It was a hard job to get the centreboards drawn up, because they were all thickly covered with stout barnacles. With the centreboards up the draught of our vessel was no deeper than to the bottom of the timber logs, and we would therefore be more easily washed in over the reef. With no centreboards and with the sail down the raft lay completely sideways on and was entirely at the mercy of wind and sea.

We tied the longest rope we had to the home-made anchor, and made it fast to the step of the port mast, so that the
Kon-Tiki
would go into the surf stern first when the anchor was thrown overboard. The anchor itself consisted of empty water cans filled with used wireless batteries and heavy scrap, and solid mangrove-wood sticks projected from it, set crosswise.

Order number one, which came first and last, was: Hold on to the raft! Whatever happened we must hang on tight on board and let the nine great logs take the pressure from the reef. We ourselves had more than enough to do to withstand the weight of the water. If we jumped overboard we should become helpless victims of the suction which would fling us in and out over the sharp corals. The rubber raft would capsize in the steep seas or, heavily loaded with us in it, it would be torn to ribbons against the reef. But the wooden logs would sooner or later be cast ashore, and we with them, if only we managed to hold fast.

Next, all hands were told to put on their shoes for the first time in a hundred days, and to have their lifebelts ready. The lastnamed, however, were not of much value, for if a man fell overboard he would be battered to death, not drowned. We had time too to put our passports, and such few dollars as we had left, into our pockets. But it was not lack of time that was troubling us.

Those were anxious hours in which we lay drifting helplessly sideways, step after step, in towards the reef. It was noticeably quiet on board; we all crept in and out from cabin to bamboo deck, silent or laconic, and carried on with our jobs. Our serious faces showed that no one was in doubt as to what awaited us, and the absence of nervousness showed that we had all gradually acquired an unshakeable confidence in the raft. If it had got across the sea, it would also manage to bring us ashore alive.

Inside the cabin there was a complete chaos of provision cartons and cargo lashed fast. Torstein had barely found room for himself in the wireless corner, where he had got the short wave transmitter working. We were now over 4,000 sea miles from our old base at Callao, where the Peruvian Naval War School had maintained regular contact with us, and still farther from Hal and Frank and the other radio amateurs in the United States. But as chance willed, we had on the previous day got into touch with a capable wireless fan who had a set on Rarotonga in the Cook Islands, and the operators, quite contrary to all our usual practice, had arranged for an extra contact with him early in the morning. And all the time we were drifting closer and closer in to the reef, Torstein was sitting tapping his key and calling Rarotonga.

Entries in the
Kon-Tiki
’s log ran:

As this was written the dull drone of the surf came near again; it came from the whole reef inside us and filled the air like thrilling rolls of drums, heralding the exciting last act of the
Kon-Tiki
.

A few minutes later the anchor rushed overboard and caught hold of the bottom, so that the
Kon-Tiki
swung round and turned her stern inwards towards the breakers. It held us for a few valuable minutes, while Torstein sat hammering like mad on the key. He had got Rarotonga now. The breakers thundered in the air and the sea rose and fell furiously. All hands were at work on deck, and now Torstein got his message through. He said we were drifting towards the Raroia reef. He asked Rarotonga to listen in on the same wavelength every hour. If we were silent for more than thirty-six hours Rarotonga must let the Norwegian Embassy in Washington know. Torstein’s last words were: ‘OK. 50 yards left. Here we go. Goodbye.’ Then he closed down the station. Knut sealed up the papers, and both crawled out on deck as fast as they could to join the rest of us, for it was clear now that the anchor was giving way.

The swell grew heavier and heavier, with deep troughs between the waves, and we felt the raft being swung up and down, up and down, higher and higher.

Again the order was shouted: ‘Hold on, never mind about the cargo, hold on!’

We were now so near the waterfall inside that we no longer heard the steady continuous roar from all along the reef. We now heard only a separate boom each time the nearest breaker crashed down on the rocks.

All hands stood in readiness, each clinging fast to the rope he thought the most secure. Only Erik crept into the cabin at the last moment; there was one part of the programme he had not yet carried out – he had not found his shoes!

No one stood aft, for it was there the shock from the reef would come. Nor were the two firm stays which ran from the masthead down to the stern safe. For if the mast fell they would be left hanging overboard, over the reef. Herman, Bengt and Torstein had climbed up on some boxes which were lashed fast forward of the cabin wall, and while Herman clung on to the guy ropes from the ridge of the roof, the other two held on to the ropes from the masthead by which the sail at other times was hauled up. Knut and I chose the stay running from the bows up to the masthead, for if mast and cabin and everything else went overboard, we thought the rope from the bows would nevertheless remain lying inboard, as we were now head on to the seas.

When we realized that the seas had got hold of us; the anchor rope was cut, and we were off. A sea rose straight up under us, and we felt the
Kon-Tiki
being lifted up in the air. The great moment had come; we were riding on the wave-back at breathless speed, our ramshackle craft creaking and groaning as she quivered under us. The excitement made one’s blood boil. I remember that, having no other inspiration, I waved my arm and bellowed ‘hurrah!’ at the pitch of my lungs; it afforded a certain relief and could do no harm anyway. The others certainly thought I had gone mad, but they all beamed and grinned enthusiastically. On we ran with the seas rushing in behind us; this was the
Kon-Tiki
’s baptism of fire; all must and would go well.

But our elation was soon damped. A new sea rose high up astern of us like a glittering green glass wall; as we sank down it came rolling after us, and in the same second in which I saw it high above me I felt a violent blow and was submerged under floods of water. I felt the suction through my whole body, with such great strength that I had to strain every single muscle in my frame and think of one thing only – hold on, hold on! I think that in such a desperate situation the arms will be torn off before the brain consents to let go, evident as the outcome is. Then I felt that the mountain of water was passing on and relaxing its devilish grip of my body. When the whole mountain had rushed on, with an earsplitting roaring and crashing, I saw Knut again hanging on beside me, doubled up into a ball. Seen from behind the great sea was almost flat and grey; as it rushed on it swept just over the ridge of the cabin roof which projected from the water, and there hung the three others, pressed against the cabin roof as the water passed over them.

We were still afloat.

In an instant I renewed my hold, with arms and legs bent round the strong rope. Knut let himself down and with a tiger’s leap joined the others on the boxes, where the cabin took the strain. I heard reassuring exclamations from them, but at the same time I saw a new green wall rise up and come towering towards us. I shouted a warning and made myself as small and hard as I could where I hung. And in an instant hell was over us again, and the
Kon-Tiki
disappeared completely under the masses of water. The sea tugged and pulled with all the force it could bring to bear at the poor little bundle of a human body. The second sea rushed over it, and a third like it.

Then I heard a triumphant shout from Knut, who was now hanging on to the rope-ladder:

‘Look at the raft, she’s holding!’

After three seas only the double mast and the cabin had been knocked a bit crooked. Again we had a feeling of triumph over the elements, and the elation of victory gave us new strength.

Then I saw the next sea come towering up, higher than all the rest, and again I bellowed a warning aft to the others as I climbed up the stay as high as I could get in a hurry and hung on fast. Then I myself disappeared sideways into the midst of the green wall which towered high over us; the others, who were farther aft and saw me disappear first, estimated the height of the wall of water at twenty-five feet, while the foaming crest passed by fifteen feet above the part of the glassy wall into which I had vanished. Then the great wave reached them, and we had all one single thought – hold on, hold on, hold, hold, hold!

We must have hit the reef that time. I myself felt only the strain on the stay, which seemed to bend and slacken jerkily. But whether the bumps came from above or below I could not tell, hanging there. The whole submersion lasted only seconds, but it demanded more strength than we usually have in our bodies. There is greater strength in the human mechanism than that of the muscles alone. I determined that if I was to die, I would die in this position, like a knot on the stay. The sea thundered on, over and past, and as it roared by it revealed a hideous sight. The
Kon-Tiki
was wholly changed, as by the stroke of a magic wand. The vessel we knew from weeks and months at sea was no more; in a few seconds our pleasant world had become a shattered wreck.

I saw only one man on board besides myself. He lay pressed flat across the ridge of the cabin roof, face downwards, with his arms stretched out on both sides, while the cabin itself was crushed in like a house of cards, towards the stern and towards the starboard side. The motionless figure was Herman. There was no other sign of life, while the hill of water thundered by, in across the reef. The hardwood mast on the starboard side was broken like a match, and the upper stump, in its fall, had smashed right through the cabin roof, so that the mast and all its gear slanted at a low angle over the reef on the starboard side. Astern, the steering block was twisted round lengthways and the crossbeam broken, while the steering oar was smashed to splinters. The splashboards at the bows were broken like cigar boxes, and the whole deck was torn up and pasted like wet paper against the forward wall of the cabin, along with boxes, cans, canvas and other cargo. Bamboo sticks and rope-ends stuck up everywhere, and the general impression was of complete chaos.

I felt cold fear run through my whole body. What was the good of my holding on? If I lost one single man here, in the run in, the whole thing would be ruined, and for the moment there was only one human figure to be seen after the last buffet. In that second Torstein’s hunched-up figure appeared outside the raft. He was hanging like a monkey in the ropes from the masthead, and managed to get on to the logs again, where he crawled up on to the debris forward of the cabin. Herman too now turned his head and gave me a forced grin of encouragement, but did not move. I bellowed in the faint hope of locating the others, and heard Bengt’s calm voice call out that all hands were aboard. They were lying holding on to the ropes behind the tangled barricade which the tough plaiting from the bamboo deck had built up.

All this happened in the course of a few seconds, while the
Kon-Tiki
was being drawn out of the witches’ kitchen by the backwash, and a fresh sea came rolling over her. For the last time I bellowed ‘hang on!’ at the pitch of my lungs amid the uproar, and that was all I myself did; I hung on and disappeared in the masses of water which rushed over and past in those endless two or three seconds. That was enough for me. I saw the ends of the logs knocking and bumping against a sharp step in the coral reef without getting over it. Then we were sucked out again. I also saw the two men who lay stretched out across the ridge of the cabin roof, but none of us smiled any longer. Behind the chaos of bamboo I heard a calm voice call out: