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READER'S DIGEST
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READER'S DICES!
CONDENSED BOOKS
VOLUME 4 -1973
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READER'S DIGEST CONDENSED BOOKS
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Editor: John T. Beaudouin
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ac Editor: Joseph W. Hotchkiss ac
k e r -Executive
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Managing Editors: Walter W. Meade, Anthony Wethered
Senior Editors: Ann Berryman, Doris E. Dewey (Copy
John S. Zinsser, Jr
Jr.
Robert L. Reynolds, Jane Siepmann, Jean N. Willcox, _
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Research Editor: L.inn Carl
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,i
The condensations in this volume have been created by The Readers Di f[est
Association, Inc., and are used by permission of and special arrangement
wrtn
the publishers and the holders of the respective copyrights.
With the exception of actual personages identified as such, the characters and
incidents in the fictional selections in this volume are entirely the products
of the
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life.
The original editions of the books in this volume are published and
copyrighted as follows:
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CONTENTS
W( II 'km\
{Vi V
'
^rjly ,'3j6
LA BALSA
The Longest Raft Voyage in History
by Vital Alsar
with Enrique Hank Lopez
PUBLISHED BY READER'S DIGEST PRESS
93
. THE SUNBIRD
by Wilbur Smith
PUBLISHED BY DOUBLEDAY & COMPANY
*
263
STATE TROOPER
by Noel B. Gerson
PUBLISHED SY DOUBLEDAY & COMPANY
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were many
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La Balsa
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We did know that the equatorial
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would be both blisteringly hot and chill-
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ingly cold, that there were untold numbers of treacherous reefs,
that sharks would trail us almost daily, that we might fight among
ourselves, be crushed by a ship on a fog-shrouded night, or die of
But we never spoke of these possibilities.
starvation or thirst.
That morning the sun rose behind us, revealing the tropical
beauty of the Ecuador coast. The Gulf of Guayaquil was rougher
than we had expected. In the excitement of the previous night I
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word language. An industrial designer with a lifelong love of sail-
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ing Normand had built his own oceangoing sloop and was study-
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ac ac
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k e ing k e r- s o ft w a
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8600 miles, twice as far as Thor Heyerdahls Kon-Tiki? Although
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Heyerdahls voyage had proved the seaworthiness of balsa rafts
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built to ancient Indian designs, there were still many people whoe r - s o f t
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The Huancavilcas, he writes, thought of the ocean as a
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rafts.
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forest of rivers, with predictable currents to and from the Poly-
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nesian They also knew about friendly and unfriendly ar
e
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ac islands.
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winds and the use of astronomy in navigation.
Unlike our friends, my wife, Denise, never tried to dissuade me
from the voyage. Sometimes her mother would try to provoke an
objection, asking such questions as: Why must Vital desert his
two children? Has he no concern for them? Doesnt he love you?
Denise would simply shrug her shoulders. Well be all right,
Mother. You dont understand Vital. Hes got to prove whatever
hes got to prove, and he wont rest until he does. Nor will I. So
please dont interfere. But I knew that the prospect of becoming
a young widow was never far from her mind.
Preoccupied by thoughts of my family, I hardly noticed that the
Gulf of Guayaquil had been receding and the water had turned
from a murky brown to a clear bright green. The Pacific stretched
before us.
Were here! yelled Gabriel.
We
all cupped handfuls of water and joyously splashed it on
our faces. With a ceremonial blast of its foghorn tire tugboat cast
us adrift on the open sea. We felt a mixture of optimism and awe.
We would be alone now on this giant body of water that would
feed us, wash us, carry us toward our goal or perhaps kill us at any
moment. In our enthusiasm we almost forgot to thank the captain
of the tugboat He had cast off the heavy manila towline at his
end, yelling that he was donating it to La Balsa as he circled ,
*3
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La Balsa
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expedition had begun weeks before in Quito, the
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Our logging
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of Ecuador, nearly two miles above sea level Our Indian
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guides, following the precepts of their ancestors, had advised us
never to cut down a balsa tree until there is a crescent moon, when
the sap has drained from the trunk. Such sap-drained trees are
called female, while the heavier sap-filled ones are male. So we
had waited patiently for a waning moon, determined to find
seven female trees that would resound with a hollow thooong when
slapped with the heel of the hand.
It was a bright cool morning when we left Quito, crowded into
the car in a small village and proceeded on foot, with all our camp-
ing and woodcutting gear perched on the backs of three sturdy
mules. As we made our way slowly down the mountainside, ulti-
mately descending some ten thousand feet, I was dazzled by the
dramatic landscape. Here the western slope of the Andean range
dipped abruptly to the jungle far below, with paths that teetered
on the edge of deep gorges. Progressing single file along the wind-
we hugged the walls for safety.
ing precipices,
With each downward loop of the path the air grew warmer and
damper. Clouds of rising vapor obscured the way ahead. It was
like walking into a hothouse. As we neared the jungle floor, the soft
clay banks of streams, lush with moss, yielded a bewildering array
of ferns and giant plants with leaves like elephant ears. Lizards
and snakes slithered in and out, vibrating the leaves behind them.
The birds were highly visible in their brilliant plumage and
incredibly vocal.
They apparently dont like Spaniards and Frenchmen, said
Don Cesar Iglesias, our lumber expert, teasingly. Tve never heard
them act like this before.
Our guides, who were native to the region, could locate as if
by instinct the best balsa forests in Ecuador. Time and again, as
we came upon a cluster of balsas, they would slap a tree trunk and
listen. If it hadnt the precise hollowness they expected, one of
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Don Cesar winked. Your friend Vital knows all about the
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machos and hembras he said.
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old man was referring to my experimentation with male
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and female balsa wood after our unsuccessful Pacifica voyage.
The logs of that raft had rotted away in mid-ocean. To avoid
another such disaster, I had decided to learn more about balsa.
After reading all the literature I could find, I had gone to the
Institute National de Investigaciones Forestales in Mexico City to
talk with experts. I had also spent many hours studying the in-
through a high-powered micro-
tricate internal structure of balsa
scope, then floating numbered
wood in a tub of
pieces of the
water to register the degree of buoyancy of each one. Conse-
quently, when I met Don Cesar I was crammed full of infor-
mation about balsa. Annoyed by my arrogance, he had decided
to challenge me one night.
Okay, he had said, placing seven pieces of balsa wood on a
table. Tell me which are the best ones to use on a raft.
Weighing each one in my hand and examining the exposed
ends, I had said, This one's too macho this is in between this
. . . . . .
is two-thirds female this one macho
. . this a good female
. . . .
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shore, waving,
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Y Our woodcutters stood on the
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site at Guayaquil.
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and yelling Buena suerte! ( Good luck!
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The next afternoon we reached
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Consequently, one evening about a week after our arrival at
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I leaned back in my chair at the Hosteria Madrid, the
to
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the subject as casually as possible. Tve been thinking we should
have some guidelines, I said.
Like the division of work? asked Marc.
Well, that s important. But I mean our relationship to each
17
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joking-human nature dictates that he will end up hating you.
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You want us to become saints, said Marc.
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For about six monidis, until we get to Australia. Then we can be k e r- s o ft w a
humans again/'
The following morning I was up early to check the progress
on our raft. Marc had indeed performed the best marriage
between the seven logs, with the longest, a forty-two-foot trunk,
in the middle. Their for-
ward ends were cut on a
diagonal to form a pointed
bow. We then bound them
together with thick hemp
ropes, presoaked in water
for added pliancy, carefully
fitting the ropes into paral-
lel grooves we had carved
into the logs. To preserve
the logs, Marc coated their
undersides with crude oil.
_
The
, L
takes shape as heavy crossbeams
raft
Now we were ready to
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with the roof
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made from bamboo
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U slats and tough, pliable banana
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ac a of the cabin erected the 30-foot mast: two poles cke
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of hard, durable mangrove wood, tied at the top to form an in-
verted V. Atop this was a small crows nest and a flagpole from
which, in good weather, we would fly the Spanish colors.
The sail was a rectangle of strong canvas, 18 feet wide and 21
feet high. In a moment of
whimsy I decorated it with
a huge bright-red sun, in
the center of which I
painted a sketch of La
Balsa There wasnt room
.
19 t* 1 ;
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Several weeks later, our raft completed, we proudly inspected
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cable, or metal spike had been
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used. We wanted La Balsa to duplicate, as closely as possible,
those ancient craft that had been navigated across the Pacific
thousands of years before.
2
The day we left port, fifty or sixty friends and skeptics came
aboard our little raft at Guayaquil to wish us well or to shake
their heads with dismay. One optimist was Senora Paladines, the
wife of a local doctor. Wearing a floppy hat and a flowery dress,
she carried in her white-gloved hands a scrawny black and white
kitten. IPs a mascot, for good luck! she exclaimed.
But its only a baby, I protested. This is going to be a rough
journey.
Kittens are always good luck, she said.
One potbellied old sailor said, Two or three days is all I give
this thing before the logs start soaking up water like a sponge.
The doctors wife cut him short. Nonsense, she said. La Balsa
will go all the way to Australia.
Grateful as I was to her, I was not happy with the mascot she'd
given us. We already had four pets: a much older cat, Coco s; a
large parrot, Lorita; and two smaller parrots. I would have to give
this fragile little creature away before setting sail.
More pressing matters, however, demanded our immediate at-
tention. Our secondhand radio a patchwork of Japanese tubes,
German condensers, an American tuning device, and Ecuadorian
adhesive tape suddenly went dead. Joe Megan, an American
who happens be president of one of Ecuadors largest elec-
to
tronics companies, helped us fix it, warning us that it probably
wouldnt transmit anything beyond a few hundred miles.
We hardly listened to such talk as we loaded our storage area
with 5 2, gallons of fresh water, kerosene for our small stove, gaso-
line to run the radios generator, extra rope, a few books, medi-
cines, and fishing gear.
Marcs special concern was the food supply. In a wooden box
20