A slight current has got up. Drifting eastward, albeit slowly. Crew short-tempered. How we all depend on our tobacco!
10.00 p.m.
Another night with light from horizon to horizon. The sea is like glass and so reflective we appear to be floating through clouds of shifting colours. A marvellous but very unnerving effect.
Friday. 2nd day of September 1859.
8.00 a.m.
Still becalmed. No wind. No fire. Compass useless. Humidity tremendous, making sleep almost impossible. Second Officer Cowie reports the passengers are increasingly restless and quarrelsome. He broke up two disputes last night.
Noon
Indications that we’re still moved by a current in a generally easterly (perhaps NE) direction.
11.00 p.m.
No change. Again, the Northern Lights. Passengers rowdy. More fighting. A man named Samuel Grenfell (gold miner) stabbed another, William James Ferris (storekeeper) in the arm. Has been locked in his cabin.
Saturday. 3rd day of September 1859.
2.00 a.m.
Seaman William Draper reports he can “smell land.”
11.00 a.m.
Lack of sleep overtaking all. Thank God passengers too tired for troublemaking.
Midnight
The aurora has partially cleared, now being confined to a portion of sky to the east of us, and has taken on a most curious aspect, funnelling downward onto a mountainous island just visible on the horizon. We’re at 3°10′N 8°42′E. According to my charts, the island is Fernando Po. The current is pushing us toward it. Still no fire.
Sunday. 4th day of September 1859.
7.00 p.m.
No change in our circumstance. A deep lassitude creeping over all.
Monday. 5th day of September 1859.
Noon
Drawing close to Fernando Po. The island is dominated by a huge conical peak, clothed in tropical forest. We’re drifting toward a cove, Clarence Bay, by the charts. If we make land, we can at least lay up until the weather changes.
10.00 p.m.
Ashore. At 4.40 p.m., the Royal Charter touched ground just off a narrow beach, backed by steep banks of yellow clay. I led a landing party and a small crowd of people greeted us. We followed them up ladders and, beyond the top of the banks, discovered a row of buildings, newly erected by recently arrived Spanish colonists and christened Santa Isabel. Already, the dwellings are rotten and infested with vermin and their inhabitants are languid to the point of semi-consciousness, gripped by deadly ennui and disease.
After leaving the ship, we discovered that our matches were strike-able once more and we took to our tobacco with much enthusiasm, yet as soon as we stepped back aboard, no combustion was possible. Whatever the atmospheric disturbance is, it’s somehow clinging to the vessel, so other than a rotating watch of seven men, the crew and passengers have abandoned her and are all put up in filthy lodgings. I fear for the women and children. This is no kind of place for them.
Tuesday. 6th day of September 1859.
2.00 a.m.
Can’t sleep. There are drums thundering from somewhere inland. They’ve not let up for a single moment since the sun set.
11.30 a.m.
Humidity, sandflies, mosquitoes, prickly heat. This place is unbearable. The vegetation hangs limply beneath the blinding sky. Everything’s still, as in death.
Wednesday. 7th day of September 1859.
9.00 p.m.
The governor of Santa Isabel, a man named de Ruvigas, has advised us to move inland to a town called Santa Cecilia, which is some 1,300 feet above sea level and less dangerous to health. Tomorrow we’ll do so, remaining there until the weather improves, or until we can fire-up the ship’s engines.
Thursday. 8th day of September 1859.
2.00 a.m.
The drums. On and on. I feel I might lose my mind.
6.00 p.m.
Leaving the watch aboard ship, I today led the crew and passengers inland along a steeply ascending jungle trail until we arrived, exhausted, at Santa Cecilia. The village is little more than a huddle of shacks, all raised up on poles in the centre of a wide clearing, but the inhabitants willingly made room for us in return for gifts of alcohol, tobacco, pocket watches, rings, belts, and whatever else we could afford to give them. The female passengers have set about cleaning the place up.
Midnight
The air is fresher here. The mosquitoes less numerous. But the drums are just as insistent.
Saturday. 10th day of September 1859.
3.00 p.m.
I’m remiss in my log-keeping. The days are endless, the nights worse.
Monday. 12th day of September 1859.
8.00 p.m.
We feel we are being watched. The women grip each other, their faces taut with fear. The men have become strangely quiet. I find myself checking my pistol again and again.
Tuesday. 13th day of September 1859.
3.00 p.m.
Such torpor. Sleep evades us but we slip in and out of prolonged periods of dark reverie, almost a trance, wherein we are paralysed by a sense of being examined, like pinned insects.
5.30 p.m.
From 3.00 p.m. until 5.00 p.m. every day, clouds form with astonishing rapidity and rain falls in a solid sheet. The thunder is as violent as I’ve ever heard. Our huts leak, and after the downpour we crawl from them soaked to the skin to dry ourselves beneath the returned sun. It’s causing our clothes to rot from our backs. By all that’s Holy, I’ve never beheld such a ragged band of miserable souls.
Friday. 16th day of September 1859.
7.00 p.m.
I dread nightfall and the commencement of the drumming. There’s been so little sleep, I’m in a state of living dream. More difficult than ever to maintain this log.
Monday. 19th day of September 1859.
9.00 a.m.
Last night, I was roused by Seaman Joseph Rodgers, who was near hysterical and swearing blind that, “The devil himself is among us.” It took nigh on an hour to calm him.
Tuesday. 20th day of September 1859.
8.00 p.m.
Another day has passed like an opium dream and now the drums have begun their nightly torment. A terrible sense of menace pervades the village.
Tuesday. 27th day of September 1859.
11.00 a.m.
A week has gone by in a haze, with no attention paid to this record. I remember nothing of what’s passed, if anything has, beyond the repetitive torture of heat, rain, and drums, heat, rain, and drums. We’ve had twenty-seven days now without the merest hint of a breeze; twenty-two days on this loathsome lump of rock. Writing exhausts me.
3.00 p.m.
Something brought us here. Something is holding us captive. None of this is natural. God help us.
Wednesday. 5th day of October 1859.
11.30 a.m.
Joseph Rodgers and a passenger, John Judge, have suggested we investigate the source of the drumming. By Christ, we do something or we remain here and die of languor, so I’ve agreed, and will lead the expedition myself. I pray I can raise strength enough for it.
4.00 p.m.
It’ll be just the three of us. The rest lie limp and vacant-eyed. A stiff climb faces us, for our hosts insist that the drummers are located in a crater, called the Pico Santa Isabel, at the top of the central mountain, which is obviously an ancient and dormant volcano. We’ll set out at dawn.
Thursday. 6th day of October 1859.
7.00 p.m.
The climb is steep but not impossibly so. There’s a trail with steps cut into the sheerest stretches. John Judge is a giant, Herculean in strength and endurance, but Rodgers and I are all too mortal. The heat sucks out what little energy we’ve been able to muster. Frequent stops necessary. No progress at all when the rains came. Nevertheless, we’ve covered a good distance. We’ll reach the peak tomorrow. For now, Rodgers has made a little fire, which we’ll huddle around while we endure the night and the damnable drums.