commanders.
57
the only rough manuscript chart in my possession represented these Straits as extremely dangerous, from the extraordinary currents there prevailing. But it was too late to recede; the wind had almost at once fallen to a dead calm, and I found myself irresistibly drawn into this gulf, with a rapidity the most alarming. The vessel was now perfectly ungovernable, from the total stagnation of wind; and it is scarcely possible to describe the very extraordinary appearance and effects of the currents, which now acted upon us with the most capricious fury. At one moment, all was calm and smooth as a mirror, not a ripple to be seen or heard: in an instant after a mountainous wave rose at a short distance, and directed its course to the vessel, boiling and roaring with a noise and velocity the most appalling. It then broke over the ship on both sides, carrying on its course with the same wild appearance for a hundred fathoms more, when, suddenly, the surge ceased, and all was still again; but only for a moment. During the whole of this awful scene, the Hesper was turned round and round in the most alarming manner, appearing but as a plaything in the hands of the genii of this whirlpool. At one moment we found ourselves close to the breakers, which border the shore of the Straits, upon which we were driving with a rapidity that seemed scarcely to leave time to prepare for the catastrophe before us; and then, at the very moment when we had lost the hope of deliverance, a counter current caught us with the same violence, and hurried us over to the opposite shore, where a similar counteraction again preserved us. The chart before me was not particularly calculated to cheer us, as the Dutch navigators had marked a small island at the entrance of the Straits – “Banditti island,” another, “Murderer’s Point,” “Assassin’s Bay,” &c. I now observed with attention and satisfaction the progress of the vessel in this dreadful vortex, and found that, independently of the counter currents, the direction of the whole movement was to the northward, through the Straits, with such a velocity, that at the expiration of two hours we had opened the northern entrance; in the course of the same night we gained the entrance of the Java sea without any accident, and next morning again entered the Bali Straits by a northern passage. The weather was now for a day or two tolerably settled, so that notwithstanding the experience I had gained in my first attempt to remain at sea, I was induced to make a second experiment. Acordingly we started again by the same route. The morning was fine, and the easterly current outside did not appear too rapid to prevent us holding our ground; but towards the afternoon it grew black to the S.W., and in a short time a gale of wind came on with great fury. It blew a perfect hurricane all the night, and in the morning, when we stood in for the land, I discovered by observations of chronometer, that we were now opposite the coast of Sumbaya. The strength of the currents of course vary with the violence of the wind, and as it still continued to blow with unabated fury, I considered any attempt to return to our cruising ground as perfectly hopeless and impracticable,
