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Updated: May 3, 2025
But we were more interested in the recesses of Comptroller Bay, where our eyes eagerly sought out the three bights of land and centred on the midmost one, where the gathering twilight showed the dim walls of a valley extending inland. How often we had pored over the chart and centred always on that midmost bight and on the valley it opened the Valley of Typee.
As I am under the impression that the trade of the West African Coast is its most important attribute, I hope I may be pardoned for entering into this subject. My chief excuse for so doing lies in the fact that independent travellers are rare in the Bights. The last one I remember hearing of was that unfortunate gentleman who went to the Coast for pleasure and lost a leg on Lagos Bar.
After careful tests it was found to have been caused by a submarine landslide which had crushed a part of the cable, laid by necessity on a steep hill under water. So for a whole day we grappled there near Iligan, "fishing for bights," as the punster on board called it, and surely even Izaak Walton's piscatorial patience would have been tried on this fishing trip.
"We had a spanking breeze all day, for a wonder, as it generally fails at noon; but towards the evening, when we had made some eighty miles or so from the Bights, it fell suddenly dead calm, as if the wind had been shut off slap without warning.
"Ay, I'm no sayin' ye may no be richt, sir," answered the first lieutenant; "but it'll be an unco strain upon the spars to set thae to'gallants'ls; our new rigging has stretched until it's all hangin' in bights, as ye may see for yoursel' by lookin' at it. Still, it may be worth the tryin': but will ye no see what we can do under whole topsails before settin' the to'gallants'ls?"
In his report to the Admiralty, dated May 11, 1802, Flinders related what Baudin told him on this point, in the following terms, which it is worth while to compare with those used by him in his book, quoted above: "Captain Baudin informed me that after parting with the Naturaliste in the Strait, in a heavy gale, he had had fine weather, and had kept the coast close on board from Westernport to the place of meeting, but that he had found no bay or place where a vessel could anchor, the coast having but few bights in it, and those affording nothing to interest."
Any one can understand how important it was that this part of the duty should be well performed, since bights of line running out of a boat, dragged by a whale, would prove so many snares to the men's legs, unless previously disposed of in a place proper to let it escape without this risk. For this reason it is, that the end of a line is never permitted to run out at the bow of a boat at all.
"The climate here is so very superior to that in the Bights of Benin and Biafra, that after Barbadoes, where shade is unknown, it really seems comparatively cold; I took a stroll of half a dozen miles to-day before breakfast, which I could not have done, without feeling languid afterwards, in the West Indies, but Tyrwhitt never could have borne the breathing oven of the Gold Coast.
I once endeavoured to make me a flannel. The stitches I must confess, were long and irregular; but worse than that, when attaching the sleeves to the main part, I misplaced end for end, so that when I came to try on this novel garment the wide part hung in bights around my wrist, the narrow part fitting tightly round my arm. So much for my reversed sleeves.
Indeed, it appeared that our fire had been fearfully destructive, for in addition to the damage that had been apparent from the Europa's decks, we now beheld dismounted guns, shattered, blood-splashed bulwarks, cut rigging hanging everywhere in bights, and shot-scored decks cumbered with dead and dying men a veritable shambles.
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