the Wilhelmina in half.
For a half a second a white flame had appeared at the mainstay of the ship. It was a steamer, but that was all they were to know about it.
The Wilhelmina, bow on one side, stern on the other, sank immediately. The two passengers did not have time to rejoin the crew. They could scarcely see a few sailors tangled among the ropes. To use the lifeboats was impossible, for they were submerged. As for the second in command and the captain, no doubt they had been unable to leave their cabins.
The two brothers, half dressed, were already in the water up to their waists. They felt the remains of the Wilhelmina being sucked down into the sea and being dragged into the vortex that swirled about the ship.
“Let’s not get separated!” shouted Pieter.
“Count on me!” replied Karl.
Both were good swimmers. But was there any land nearby? What was the three-master’s position at the moment of collision in this part of the Pacific between Australia and New Zealand, below New Caledonia, which was observed toward the east forty-eight hours before, in the last ship’s log entry of Captain Roebok?
It goes without saying that the colliding steamer was probably far away already, unless it had stopped after the shock. If they had put lifeboats to sea, how, in the middle of a fog, would they find the survivors of this catastrophe?
Karl and Pieter thought they were lost. A profound darkness enveloped the sea. No whistle of machinery or siren indicated the presence of a ship, nor the howl that escaping steam would have emitted if it had remained in the area where the accident occurred. Not a single piece of wreckage was within reach of the two brothers.
For half an hour they tried to support each other, the older brother encouraging the younger, lending him the support of his arm when the younger grew weaker. But the moment approached when both would be at the end of their resources, and after one last clasp, one ultimate good-bye, they would slip down into the abyss …
It was around three in the morning when Karl Kip managed to seize an object floating near him. It was one of the chicken cages from the Wilhelmina.10 They both grabbed onto it.
Dawn finally pierced the yellowish banks of fog. The mist was not long in rising and a clapping of little waves began as the breeze blew harder.
Karl Kip turned his eye toward the horizon.
To the east, an empty sea. In the west there was a fairly high slope of land—that is what he was finally able to see.
That shore was less than three miles away. The current and the wind were going in that direction. There was every hope of reaching it, if the swell of the sea did not grow too strong.
Whatever type of land it was, island or continent, this coast assured the shipwrecked men a means of salvation.
The shore, stretching out to the west, was dominated by a peak, which the first rays of sunlight gilded at the very top.
“There! … There!” Karl Kip cried out.
There, indeed, for at sea they would have searched in vain for a sail or lanterns of a ship. No vestige of the Wilhelmina remained. It had been lost, with all hands and all cargo. Nor was there any sight of the fateful steamer, which, more fortunate no doubt in having survived the collision, was now out of sight.
Lifting himself up a bit, Karl Kip could perceive no debris of the hull or of the masts. The only surviving evidence was the chicken cage that they were clinging to.
Exhausted and stiff, Pieter would have slipped into the deep if his brother had not kept his head above water. Vigorously now, Karl swam on, pushing the cage toward a barely perceptible reef, where the surf whitened its irregular line.
This first fringe of the coral ring stretched out from the coast. It took a full hour to reach it. With the swell that swept them along, it would have been difficult to gain a footing. The shipwrecked men slipped through a narrow channel, and it was a little more than seven o’clock when they managed to pull themselves onto the outcropping of land where the dinghy from the James Cook had just rescued them.
It was on that unknown, uninhabited island that the two brothers, barely clad, with no tools, no instruments, no utensils, were going to spend fifteen days of a most miserable existence.
Such was the tale that Pieter Kip recounted, while his brother, listening in silence, confirmed it only with a nod.
It was now known why the Wilhelmina, long awaited in Wellington, would never arrive, and why the French ship Assumption had not found a wreck along its way. The three-master lay in the depths of the sea, unless the currents had brought some debris further north.
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