Fritz and Eric Part 25

Fritz dropped his book on to the deck at once and Eric sprang up into the mizzen rigging, hurriedly scrambling up the ratlins to the masthead, whence he would have a better point of observation; the skipper meanwhile racing up the companion way with his s.e.xtant in his hand.

"Land--where away?" he sang out, hailing the man on the fore cross- trees.

"Dead away to leeward, two points off the beam," was the answer at once returned by the man on the look-out, who happened, strangely enough, to be Fritz's whilom acquaintance, the "deck hand!"

"Are you sure?" hailed the captain again to make certain.

"As sure as there's claws on a Rocky Mountain b'ar," replied the man in a tone of voice that showed he was a bit nettled at his judgment being questioned; for he next added, quite loud enough for all to hear, "I guess I oughter know land when I see it. I ain't a child put out to dry nurse, I ain't!"

"There, thet'll do; stow thet palaver!" said Captain Brown sharply, "else you'll find thet if Rocky Mountain b'ars hev claws, they ken use 'em, an' hug with a prutty good grip of their own too, when they mean bizness, I guess, Nat Slater; so, you'd better quiet down an' keep thet sa.s.s o' yourn for some un else!"

This stopped the fellow's grumbling at once; and Captain Brown, after proceeding aloft to have a look for himself and see how far the island was off, gave directions for having the ship's course altered, letting her fall off a point or two from the wind.

"I guess I wer standin' a bit too much to the northward," he said to Fritz, who was waiting on the p.o.o.p, longing to ask him a thousand questions as to when they would get in, and where they would land, and so on; "but thet don't matter much, as we are well to win'ard, an' ken fetch the land as we like."

The island, which at first appeared like a sort of low-lying cloud on the horizon, was now plainly perceptible, a faint mountain peak being noticeable, just rising in the centre of the dark patch of haze.

"Is it far off?" asked Fritz.

"'Bout fifty mile or so, I sh'u'd think, mister," answered the skipper--"thet is more or less, as the air down below the line is clearer than it is north, so folks ken see further, I guess. I don't kinder think it's more'n fifty mile, though, sou'-sou'-west o' whar the shep is now."

"Fifty miles!" repeated Fritz, somewhat disconcerted by the announcement; for, he would not have thought the object, which all could now see from the deck, more than half that distance away. "Why, we'll never get there to-day!"

"Won't we?" said the skipper. "Thet's all you know 'bout it, mister.

The _Pilot's Bride_ 'll walk over thet little bit o' water like a race hoss, an' 'ill arrive at Tristan 'fore dinner time, you bet!"

The skipper's prognostication as to the time of their arrival did not turn out quite correct, but Fritz's anxiety was allayed by their reaching the place the same night; for, the mountain peak, which had been noticed above the haze that hung over the lower part of the island, began to rise higher and higher as the ship approached, until its sharp ridges could be plainly seen beneath a covering of snow that enveloped the upper cone and which changed its colour from glistening white to a bright pink hue as it became lit up by the rays of the setting sun--the latter dipping beneath the western horizon at the same instant that the _Pilot's Bride_ cast anchor in a shallow bay some little distance off the land, close to Herald Point, where the English settlement on the island lies.

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE.

AN OCEAN COLONY.

Fritz and Eric wished to go ash.o.r.e the moment the anchor plunged into the water and the chain cable grated through the hawse hole; but, darkness setting in almost immediately after sunset, as is usual in such southerly lat.i.tudes, their landing had to be postponed until the next morning, when the skipper told them they would have plenty of time to inspect the little ocean colony of Tristan d'Acunha--that is, should not a westerly-wind set in, bringing with it a heavy swell, as it invariably did; for, this would cause them "to cut and run from their anchorage in a jiffy," if they did not desire to lay the ship's bones on the rocks by Herald Point, which he, "for one," he said, had no intention of doing.

However, the wind still remained in the same quarter, blowing steadily from the south-east, which made it calm where the _Pilot's Bride_ was lying--Captain Brown from previous experience knowing the safest berth to take up--so she did not have to shift her berth. When morning broke, too, the brothers had a better view of the place than on the evening before; for then, only a hasty peep at it could be obtained before it was hidden by night.

The small bay in which the ship was moored opened to the westward; and, on the right, a slope of rough pasture land, about a quarter of a mile in width, ran up from the beach to an almost precipitous wall of rock, a thousand feet or more in height--although a sort of misty vapour hung over it, which prevented Fritz from gauging its right alt.i.tude. On the left-hand side, the wall of rock came sheer down into the sea, leaving only a few yards of narrow shingle, on which the surf noisily broke. A stream leaped down from the high ground, nearly opposite the vessel, and the low fall with which it tumbled into the bay at this point indicated that there would be found the best landing-place, an opinion which Captain Brown confirmed as soon as he came on deck.

"I guess, though," said the skipper, pointing out a red flag which Fritz could notice just being hoisted on one of the cottage chimneys in the distance, "we needn't hurry 'bout launchin' a boat, fur some o' them islanders are comin' off to pay us a visit an' will take you ash.o.r.e.

Thet's their signal for communicatin' with any vessel thet calls in here. Run up our ensign, Mr Dort," he added to Eric, who stood at his station on the lee side of the mizzen mast; "an' tell 'em to fire the gun forrud, jest to give 'em a kinder sort o' salute, you know. Uncle Sam likes to do the civil, the same as other men-o'-war when they goes to foreign ports!"

These orders were obeyed; and no sooner were the "Stars and Stripes" run up to the masthead and the report of the little gun on the topgallant fo'c's'le heard reverberating through the distant mountain tops--the sound of the discharge being caught up and echoed between the narrow arms of the bay--than a smart whale-boat, pulled by eight men and with a white-bearded, venerable-looking individual seated in the stern-sheets, was seen coming out from the very spot which Fritz had determined to be the landing-place.

They were soon alongside the _Pilot's Bride_; when the old man--who introduced himself as Green, the oldest inhabitant of the island and with whom Captain Brown had already had an acquaintance of some years'

duration--cordially invited Fritz to land, the skipper having explained that he wished to see the place and hear all about it. He told the brothers aside, however, that perhaps they'd better not mention their intention of settling on Inaccessible Island, for the inhabitants of Tristan, who sent expeditions every year on sealing excursions there, might not like to hear this news.

While on their way to the sh.o.r.e with the old man and four of the islanders--the other Tristaners remaining on board the ship to select certain articles they required from her stores and arrange for the barter of fresh meat and potatoes with Captain Brown in exchange--Fritz observed that, some distance out from the land, there was a sort of natural breakwater, composed of the long, flat leaves of a giant species of seaweed which grew up from the bottom, where its roots extended to the depth of fifteen fathoms. This, old Green pointed out, prevented the rollers, when the wind was from the westward, from breaking too violently on the sh.o.r.e, between which and the floating weed was a belt of calm water, as undisturbed as the surface of a mountain tarn.

The landing-place was of fine black sand, showing the volcanic character of the mountain peak above, which Green said was over eight thousand feet high and had an extinct crater on the top; and, when Fritz and his brother had jumped out of the boat, they proceeded up to the little settlement of the islanders, which was called "Edinburgh" out of compliment to his Royal Highness Prince Alfred, who had visited the place when cruising in HMS _Galatea_, just four years before their landing.

The village consisted of some dozen cottages or so, roughly built of square blocks of hewn stone dovetailed into each other, without mortar, and thatched with tussock-gra.s.s. The houses were scattered about, each in its own little garden, enclosed by walls of loosely piled stones about four feet high; but, as it was now the early spring of Tristan, these had very little growing in them. One of the enclosures, Fritz noticed, had a lot of marigolds in flower, another, several dwarf strawberry plants just budding, while a third was filled with young onions; but the majority displayed only the same coa.r.s.e, long tussock- gra.s.s with which the cottages were thatched.

When the brothers came to examine the houses more closely, they were particularly struck with the neatness with which they were constructed and the extreme labour that must have been expended on them.

Apart from the difficulty of procuring wood, which they could only get from stray whaling ships, the islanders are obliged to build their dwellings of stone, in order to prevent their being demolished by the fierce and frequent hurricanes that a.s.sail the isolated little spot, exposed as it is to all the rude bl.u.s.tering blasts that career over the expanse of the Atlantic. The cottages are, therefore, put together with a dark-brown, soft sort of stone, which is hewn out in great blocks from the cliffs above the settlement and afterwards shaped with great accuracy and care with the axe. Many of these ma.s.ses of stone are upwards of a ton in weight; but, still, they are cut so as to lock into one another in a double row to form the main wall, which is some eighteen inches thick, with smaller pieces of stone, selected with equal care as to their fitting, placed in between. There is no lime on the island, so that the blocks are put together on the cyclopean plan, without cement. They are also raised into their places in the same primitive fashion, strong spars being used for inclined planes, up which these monoliths are pushed by manual labour in a similar way to that described in the old hieroglyphics of the Nineveh marbles. With all these precautions as to strength, however, the sou'-westers blow with such fierceness into the little bay where the colony is situated, that many of these ma.s.sive buildings, Green said, were constantly blown down, the huge blocks being tumbled about like pieces of cork!

The roofs were thatched with the long gra.s.s that Fritz had seen growing in the gardens and with which he had later on a closer and more painful acquaintance, the tussock fibres being fastened inside to light poles that were attached to rafters placed horizontally, while the ridges outside were covered with bands of green turf, firmly fixed on.

As for the colony, which numbered some eighty souls in all, it consisted of fifteen families, who possessed from five to six hundred head of cattle and about an equal supply of sheep, with lots of pigs and poultry, each family having its own stock in the same way that each cultivated its own garden; but, there was a common grazing ground, where also large quant.i.ties of potatoes were raised--the trade of the island being princ.i.p.ally with the American whalers, who take supplies of fresh meat and vegetables, for which they barter manufactured goods, household stuffs, and "notions."

During their visit, Fritz and Eric were hospitably entertained by the old man Green at his cottage, which had three large rooms and was the best in the place; and the roast pig which furnished the main dish of the banquet was all the more toothsome, by reason of the long time the brothers had been at sea and so deprived of fresh meat and those good things of the land, to which they had grown somewhat accustomed during their stay at the comfortable shanty on Narraganset Bay under Mrs Brown's auspices.

Indirectly, too, Fritz found out a great deal about Inaccessible Island; and, the more he heard, the more firmly rooted became his determination to settle there. The seals, old Green said, were numerous enough; but, he added that the islanders were only able to pay a short visit in December every year, and so lost considerable chances of taking more of them.

"Aha," thought Fritz, "we'll be there altogether, and so will have opportunities for taking them all the year round. Tristaners, my good people, look out for your sealskins and oil in future; we, crusoes, are going into the business wholesale!"

When the brothers were rowed back to the ship in the evening--having spent the entire day on the island in noticing what would be most useful to themselves subsequently for the new life they were about to adopt-- the other Tristaners who had remained on board choosing goods returned to the sh.o.r.e, promising to send the value of the articles they had selected in beef and potatoes on the following morning. Before turning in for the night, however, Captain Brown gave Fritz to read a newspaper extract which he had posted into his logbook. This detailed the early history of the little colony, and the gist of it was as follows:--

Although discovered as early as the year 1506 by d'Acunha, the first comparatively modern navigator who visited the island was the captain of an American ship--the _Industry_, a whaler sailing from Philadelphia-- who remained at Tristan from August, 1790, to April, 1791, his people pitching their tents on almost the precise spot now occupied by the settlement. At the time of this vessel's visit, it was mentioned that there was plenty of wood of a small growth excellent for firewood; but this Fritz noticed was not the case when he inspected the place during the day, hardly anything but slight brush being apparent beyond the tussock-gra.s.s. The American captain also stated that the amount of sea animals of all kinds on the island--whales, seals, and penguins--was almost inexhaustible, his party having procured over six thousand sealskins during their stay of seven months, besides killing more whales than they could find room for the oil from them in their ship! This, too, had become altered during the years which had elapsed, the seals getting scarcer at Tristan now, through the wholesale war carried on against them by the islanders, who latterly, with the exception of the visits they paid to Inaccessible Island and Nightingale Islet--according to old Green's account--had almost abandoned the pursuit for sheer want of sport.

The next mention of Tristan d'Acunha, as related in the printed chronicle Fritz read, was in the year after the American captain's sojourn there, when two British ships of war, the _Lion_ and _Hindostan_, which were probably East Indiamen, with the English emba.s.sy to China on board, anch.o.r.ed off the north side of the island under the cliff of the mountain peak; but, a sudden squall coming on, these vessels had to leave without investigating the place thoroughly, although their commanders described it as being uninhabited at that time.

Nine years later, the captain of another ship that called there found three Americans settled on the island, preparing sealskins and boiling down oil. Goats and pigs had been set adrift by some of the earlier visitors, as well as vegetables planted, and these colonists appeared to be in a very flourishing condition, declaring themselves perfectly contented to pa.s.s their lives there. One of the men, indeed, had drawn up a proclamation, stating that he was the king of the country, a t.i.tle which the others acknowledged; and the three, the monarch and his two subjects, had cleared about fifty acres of land, which they had sown with various things, including coffee-trees and sugar-canes; but, whether this plantation turned out unsuccessful, or from some other notion, the "king" and his colleagues abandoned the settlement--the place remaining deserted until the year 1817, when, during Napoleon Buonaparte's captivity at Saint Helena, the island was formally taken possession of by the English Government, a guard of soldiers being especially drafted thither for its protection, selected from the Cape of Good Hope garrison.

This was, undoubtedly, the foundation of the present colony; for, although the military picket was withdrawn in the following year, a corporal of artillery with his wife and two brother soldiers, who expressed a desire to remain on the island, stayed behind. Since then, Tristan has always been inhabited--the original little colony of four souls having formed the nucleus of the present settlement of over eighty, men joining it at various times from pa.s.sing whalers, while women were imported from the Cape when wives were wanted. From the fact of these latter being mostly Hottentots, the complexion of the younger men, Fritz noticed, was somewhat darker than that of Europeans. This explained what the skipper meant, on first telling him about the island, when he said the inhabitants were "mulattoes"; although Fritz thought them only of a brunette tinge, for they were of much lighter hue than many Spaniards and Italians whom he had met on the Continent.

Gla.s.s, the ex-artilleryman and original founder of the English settlement, was a Scotchman, born at Kelso. He seems to have been a man of great principle and energy, these qualities gaining for him the complete confidence of the little community over which his authority was quite of a patriarchal character. For thirty-seven years he maintained his position as leader, representing the colony in all its transactions with pa.s.sing ships and showing himself just and honest in his dealings.

The islanders had always been English-speaking, and having strong British sympathies, "Governor Gla.s.s," as he was styled, received permission from one of the naval officers visiting the island to hoist the red ensign, as a signal to vessels going by. This slight official recognition was all the notice that the settlement has received from England ever since its establishment--that is, beyond the sending out of a chaplain there by the "Religious Tract Society," who remained for five years and when leaving spoke of the members of the little settlement as being so highly moral that they did not require any spiritual ministration, "there not being a vice in the colony to contend with!"

To this latter statement, Fritz found the skipper had appended an eccentric footnote:-- "'Cos why, there ain't no rum handier than the Cape, the little to be got from the whalers visiting the spot--an' they have little enough from me, you bet!--being speedily guzzled down by the old birds, an' the young uns never gettin' a taste o' the pizen!"

On Gla.s.s's death, he was succeeded in the leadership of the colony by Green, the next oldest man, who now lived in the house of the late founder of the settlement and hoisted the English ensign in his turn.

Green was a venerable-looking man, with a long white beard, and seemed, from what Fritz could gather in his different conversations with the islanders, to have successfully followed in his predecessor's footsteps.

Since the Duke of Edinburgh's visit in the _Galatea_, many other stray men-of-war have occasionally called to see how the islanders were getting on; but the princ.i.p.al trading communication they have has always been with American whalers, some round dozen of which call at Tristan yearly for the purposes of barter.

"An' I guess it's a downright shame," said Captain Brown, when mentioning this latter fact to Fritz, "thet they don't fly the star- spangled banner instead o' thet there rag of a British ensign! If it weren't for us whalers, they'd starve fur want of wood to warm themselves in winter; an', who'd buy their beef an' mutton an' fixins, if we didn't call in, hey?"

"That's a conundrum, and I give it up," answered Fritz with a laugh.

"Ah, you're a sly c.o.o.n," said the skipper, sailing away to his cabin.

"I guess it's 'bout time to bunk in, mister, so I'm off. Good-night!"

"Good-night!" returned Fritz, shutting up the log book and going his way likewise to the small state room set apart for the use of himself and his brother, where he found Eric asleep and snoring away soundly, the tramping about ash.o.r.e having completely tired out the lad.