Page 38 - Exile-ebook

38 AN EXILE OF THE MIND THE FLYING PRIEST OF CAMIGUIN 39

The flying priest of Camiguin

Evading pirates. An embarrassing lunch aboard a warship.
Troppo priests on Camiguin Island. The last bottle
of the Consul’s wine for Shrimpy.

he bowsprit genuflected wildly, impatient to flee the Colony.
TThe weather no less turbulent as the bow sliced choppy water
and listed mole-blind into the fray. The crew, green and unproven,
unfurled the small storm jib and our spirits soared as it billowed
and cracked into life. Free at last, the yacht heeled perilously to
greet the horizon hidden by black grey clouds.

Storm-churned stomachs ejected breakfast, undigested, over
the gunnels to become fish food. Le Voyageur leapt from wave to
wave under reefed sail for two gut-wrenched days. And I, staring
miserably at the waves, lay prone to starboard and thought of
Spike Milligan’s handy cure for seasickness ─ to sit under a tree. It
would be many days before his advice could be taken.
The unwelcome shores of Vietnam lay to the south-west and
with no sun to navigate by, dead-reckoning proved impossible
without a smidgen of land to set our compass. On the third day,
the yacht was doldrummed on a smooth-glassed sea with horizons
all around us. The South China Sea gave up its quest to send us
to watery depths of Davy Jones’ Locker waiting patiently below.
Sails flapped broken winged and halyards pinged their irritating
chimes along the mast.
This aimless speck was cork-joggled amongst emerald jungles
of rafting seaweed. Bog-eyed seafarers, sultry with heat under the
shimmering blaze of a scorching sun, were exhausted with mind-

Cooling off in the Spice Islands, Indonesia.