On Board the Esmeralda Part 29

"ALL THE WAY ROUND."

The skipper was right in his prognostication about the weather; for, during the next few days, we experienced a terrible gale from the south- west, snow falling without intermission all the time, and making huge drifts to the windward of the island, while even in sheltered places it was over four feet deep, with the pile continually increasing as the flakes drove down in one steady stream.

Of course, it was bitterly cold, but, knowing what sort of climate the vicinity of Cape Horn rejoiced in, Captain Billings, before abandoning the ship, had ordered the men to bring all their warm clothes with them, he himself adding to the stock with all the spare blankets he could find in the cabin; and now, although these things were amongst the stores of the long-boat when she capsized, they fortunately escaped being thrown into the sea and lost on her "turning the turtle," for they were securely fastened below the thwarts, so when the boat was recovered they were still to the good all right--with the exception of their being thoroughly soaked in sea water, which an exposure before Pat Doolan's fire, and a hang-out in the fresh breezy air, soon remedied.

It was now the month of August, about the coldest time of the year on the coast of Tierra del Fuego, or "The Land of Fire," as this portion of the South American Continent was somewhat inappropriately christened by its original discoverer, the veteran navigator Magalhaens. He called it so, when he sailed round it in 1520, from the fact of the natives lighting watch-fires in every direction as soon as his ship was perceived nearing any of the channels transecting the archipelago, as if to give warning of his approach, a practice still pursued by the Tierra del Fuegans up to the time present, as all voyagers round Cape Horn well know.

However, in spite of the inclemency of the season, we made ourselves pretty comfortable. We had lost the greater portion of the three months' stock of provisions we had taken with us; but still we had enough to last for three or four weeks, and Captain Billings hoped to spin out our store by the aid of the different species of wild fowl which frequented the islands, in addition to the abundant supply of fish that the southern waters contain--that is, until, as we hoped, some pa.s.sing ship should pick us up and convey our little party to more civilised regions.

But, while the snowstorm lasted, we all suffered more or less from the severity of the weather, many of the men having their feet and hands frostbitten, and poor Mr Macdougall almost losing his nose!

"I say," said Sails to Pat Doolan, on seeing that worthy shivering while trying to re-light the fire--which an avalanche of snow, descending from a precipitous rise above the site of our tent, had suddenly buried, along with the cook's pots and pans, just as he was preparing our morning meal, on the fourth day of the storm--"how about that Manilla guernsey o' yourn now, old flick? Guess it would come in handy, eh!"

"Be jabers, an' it would that," replied the Irishman, with much heartiness; "I only wish I had it across me back now, and I was aboard that schooner ag'in; an' faix, I'd die happy!"

Pat's fire was soon lighted again; but the fall of snow from above, without any previous warning, might have caused serious injury to some of us if it had come down in the night. It quite broke down our tent, and it took us some hours' hard work, using broken oar-blades for shovels, to dig away the immense heap of frozen debris that the unexpected slip of the acc.u.mulation on the top of the cliff had caused.

Really, if the avalanche had fallen when we were all inside and asleep, perhaps not one of us would have escaped alive, as it must have been many tons in weight!

We thought, from the continuation of the snowstorm, that we would have to endure all the miseries of an antarctic winter; but, towards the evening of the fourth day, the south-westerly gale gradually lost its force, shifting round a bit more to the northwards. Strange to say, although the wind now came from what, in our northern lat.i.tudes, we esteem a colder quarter, it was ever so much warmer here, on account of its pa.s.sing over the warm pampas of the Plate before reaching us, the effect of which soon became apparent in the melting of the snow on the ground as rapidly as when a thaw takes place at home. Properly speaking, however, the snow rather may be said to have dried up than melted, for it was absorbed by the air, which was dry and bracing.

The flakes, that had up to now continued coming down without cessation, also ceased to fall--much to our satisfaction, as I need hardly add; for, albeit it is very nice to look out from a warm, well-furnished room at the beautiful winter garb of Nature, and highly enjoyable to go out s...o...b..lling, when you can leave it off and go indoors to a jolly fire when you like, it was a very different matter to us now to experience all the discomforts of those dreadful, icy, spongy, little feathery nuisances penetrating beneath every loophole they could find entrance to, in the apology for a tent that we had, and to have our clothing sodden by it, our fire put out, and our blood congealed. Perhaps even the most ardent snow-lover would lose his taste for the soft molecules under such circ.u.mstances!

On the fifth day, the sun appeared again, when Captain Billings took advantage of the opportunity for getting an observation as to our position, using Mr Macdougall's s.e.xtant, his own and mine having gone to the bottom when the long-boat was upset. The skipper, I may add, had also to make use of the mate's watch--the chronometer that had been brought from the ship having shared the fate of the other instruments, standard compa.s.s and all having pa.s.sed into the safe keeping of old Neptune and his Tritons, who, if they cared about the study of meteorology, had a rare haul on this occasion!

The observation he now obtained only confirmed the skipper's previous impression that we were on Herschel Island, one of the Hermite, or Cape Horn group, the mountainous peaks of which are mainly composed of green stone, in which hornblende and feldspar are more or less conspicuous, and the presence of iron very apparent, some of the rocks being intensely magnetic, causing the needle of a little pocket compa.s.s I had to execute all sorts of strange freaks.

When the weather got fine, we took a walk round the island as far as the ridge that bisected it would allow, finding the elevated ground clothed with thickly growing trees, princ.i.p.ally a species of spruce fir called the antarctic beech, which runs to a height of some thirty or forty feet, with a girth of five or six feet. It is a magnificent evergreen, and would look well on an English lawn, for it has a splendid spreading head.

Beside this beech, there was a pretty little laurel tree, and the arbutus, which one of the sailors, who was from Devonshire, would persist in calling a myrtle bush, although the skipper showed him the berries to convince him to the contrary. There was also a sort of wild strawberry plant plentiful enough about, running like a vine over the rocks under the cliff; but there was nothing like what we call gra.s.s to be seen anywhere, only clumps or tussocks of a fibrous material like hemp, with long, ragged, straggling ends.

So much for the botany of the island; as for the living creatures, "barring ourselves," as Pat Doolan would have expressed it, there were "race horses," "steamer" ducks, and penguins, besides a species of wild goose that we had seen off the Falkland Islands, and which Sails described to me as being so tough that a shipmate of his, who was once trying to gnaw through the drumstick of one when in Stanley Harbour, had his eye knocked out by the bone "fetching back" sharply through the elasticity of the tendon which his teeth missed hold of--a tough morsel to chew away at, if the yarn be true, eh?

But, amongst all these specimens of animated nature, we did not see a trace of any of the natives--a fact which I took care to point out to the skipper, expressing my belief that he had only been romancing about the "cannibals," as he termed them.

He, however, denied this.

"No, my lad," he said. "The natives of this coast are a small, barbarous race of beings, whom one can hardly call men. They go about in the inclement climate without a rag of covering on, save a bit of raw sealskin which they shift from shoulder to shoulder as a protection against the wind, just as we get a vessel's sails round on the port or starboard tack.

"The inhabitants of one island are hostile to those of the next, killing them, and eating them too, whenever they have the chance! They have no sort of government, as most other islanders, even the most savage, have, and, of course, no laws--in which perhaps they are all the better off.

They never cultivate the soil, or do anything for a living, as we would say at home; and they mainly occupy the sea-sh.o.r.e, living on whatever mussels they can manage to pick up, and the blubber of any occasional fish they come across. I'm told they also eat that toad-stool we see growing on the beech trees; and if they'd do that, they'd eat anything!

Sometimes they venture out long distances to sea in their rude canoes, like catamarans, which they contrive out of a couple of branches of a tree and sealskins sewn together with fish-gut, but they never go without their blessed fire, though--always carrying it along with them wherever they go, up the mountains, on the beach, in their frail boats, the live embers resting always in the latter on a bed of leaves--the reason for this solicitude being, not that they are followers of Zoroaster and worship the G.o.d of fire, but because they know the difficulty they would have in rekindling it again if they once allowed it to go out, as Pat Doolan suffered ours to do the other day, when you know the consequences, eh?"

"Yes, I remember well," I said, laughing. "We hadn't another match left, none of us having thought of bringing a supply from the ship, save a box which one of the men in the jolly-boat fortunately had in his pocket that first evening of our landing. Then we wanted a fire badly, and couldn't build one until he got ash.o.r.e, and this box was expended up to the last match; so, on the second occasion, Mr Macdougall had to snap off nearly all the caps he had for his gun before he could get a light, the snow having damped them. Oh, yes, I remember Pat's fire going out very well!"

A day or two after this conversation I had the chance of corroborating the skipper's statement about the natives.

We had now been on the island nearly a fortnight, and our stores were becoming rapidly diminished; for we were now only twenty-five in all, since Mr Ohlsen and the seaman Harmer had died, but still this was a large number to provide for out of the scanty stock we had left us through the loss of nearly two-thirds of our provisions by the upsetting of the long-boat--the few perishable articles saved when we righted her again being uneatable from the effects of the salt water, which turned the meat putrid and converted our flour and biscuit into the most unpalatable paste.

Captain Billings had hoped that some of the sealing schooners that rendezvous about the neighbourhood of Cape Horn, in search of the blubber and skins of the marine animals frequenting the shoals there, would have put in ere this and taken us off the inhospitable sh.o.r.e on which we had been forced to take refuge, or else that some pa.s.sing ship homeward bound or sailing west into the Pacific would have picked us up; but, never a sail hove in sight, and, as our provisions daily grew less, although the men had been rationed down to a couple of biscuits and an ounce of salt pork per day, something had to be done, or else starvation would quickly stare us in the face!

The skipper therefore summoned Mr Macdougall to a consultation, at which I also was allowed to be present, for our sad plight had united us all together on the most brotherly terms, if I may so speak of the relations both the mate and Captain Billings bore towards me--although the skipper had always remembered Sam Pengelly's exhortation on parting with me when he left me in his charge, to "remember the b'y!"

I think, too, I have already mentioned that since I had helped to save his life, Mr Macdougall had not only completely changed in his treatment towards me, but was an altogether different man in every respect. The men used to say, "That bath of salt water washed all the confounded b.u.mptiousness out of him!"

"I have determined--that is, if you agree with me, Macdougall," said the skipper, when we had a.s.sembled in the tent, pointing with his ringer to a spot on a chart of the coast that he had brought with him from the _Esmeralda_, and which the wetting it had received in our spill among the breakers had not damaged very materially, for it looked right enough now, spread out on top of Mr Macdougall's chest, he being lucky enough to get his safe on sh.o.r.e--"I have determined," repeated Captain Billings--"that is, if you agree with me--to make a tour of inspection of the neighbouring islands, to see if we can get any help or some provisions to keep us going until a ship pa.s.ses."

"That's weel, vara weel," said Mr Macdougall, with an approving cough.

"And if our quest should be unsuccessful, why, we must proceed to Good Success Bay--that point to the south-east of the mainland, opposite Staten Island--where there'll be more chance of our intercepting a vessel."

"Hech, mon, but it's a gude long deestance, I reecken?" replied the mate, in a questioning way.

"About a hundred miles I make it," said the skipper, measuring the s.p.a.ce on his chart with his fingers, for lack of a pair of callipers. "But, with the southerly and westerly wind that we nearly always have here, the boats ought to fetch the place in a couple of days at most."

"Vara weel, Cap'en, I'm ae weelin' to agree to eenything; but I mis...o...b.. tak'ing to the sea since more in yon open boat. 'Twas only the grace o'

Proveedence that saved us in landin' here, and we didna get clear off then!"

"No, we didn't," said the skipper, with a chuckle. "But we won't essay that long trip yet awhile--at all events, not until we are forced to.

We will try the islands near us first; and then, if we meet with no luck there, why, we'll shape a course for Good Success Bay."

"All richt, I'm agree'ble," answered Mr Macdougall, quite satisfied that we were not going to put to sea again in a hurry in our frail craft, which were indeed not very staunch to brave the perils of the open sea; so it was decided, accordingly, that the jolly-boat, with a picked party, should proceed the next day on a surveying tour amongst the neighbouring islands.

The following morning, therefore, Captain Billings, Jorrocks, and I, with three of the sailors--Mr Macdougall being left behind at his own request in charge of the remainder of the crew--started on the investigating expedition, directing the boat first towards a small island lying-to the westwards, and the closest to us of all that we could distinguish from the beach where our camp was.

This island, however, we found to be uninhabited, and even more bare and sterile than the one we had landed on; so, hoisting the small lugsail which the jolly-boat carried, we made over more to the north-west, towards Wollaston Island, the largest in the archipelago, and about the same distance away from us that the Isle of Wight is from Selsea Bill.

On reaching this we found a couple of native families living on the sh.o.r.e in rude huts, composed of the branches of trees, and with mud and stones heaped over them. The people were the ugliest I had ever seen, being more like baboons than men and women. They were dwarfish in stature, the tallest of the party not exceeding five feet in height, and the majority of the others quite a foot shorter. I noticed also, as the skipper had told me, that their apparel was of the very scantiest possible, consisting only of a piece of sealskin, which was movable, so that it could be placed on the most convenient side for protecting them against the weather.

They were not able to help us much, looking miserably off; but they were hospitable enough, offering us some mussels and fish, and berries similar to those we had seen on the arbutus trees on our own island.

If they could not a.s.sist us materially, they put us up to one thing, and that was how to catch fish; for, although we had seen many of them jumping in the water, and swimming about the beach in front of our encampment, we had been unable to capture any, owing to there not being a single hook brought in the boats; and, sailors not being accustomed to use pins about their garments, we could not make use of these for a subst.i.tute.

The Tierra del Fuegans had a rare dodge to supply the deficiency. They fastened a limpet to the end of their lines, and, heaving it into deep water, the fish readily gorges it; when, before he can bring it up again, they pull him out, and thus they get their fish without losing their mussel.

"They're just like Turks!" cried Captain Billings, with a broad grin on his face.

"Why?" asked I, knowing that something funny was coming.

"Because they're regular musselmen!" said the skipper, laughing out loudly at the old joke, Jorrocks and I, of course, joining in.

The natives spoke some sort of gibberish of a language which we could not understand; nor could we make them comprehend what we wished to learn with reference to the sealing schooners, although the skipper shouted out the word "ship" to them as loudly as he could bawl, thinking thereby to make himself more intelligible.

Seeing, therefore, that we could do no good by remaining here, we started back for Herschel Island to rejoin our companions, getting there before it was dark--much to our own relief and to that of Mr Macdougall, who was anxiously looking out for us.

For another fortnight we remained here, experiencing the utmost privation, for our stock of provisions gradually dwindled down, our two- biscuit ration being reduced to one, then to half-a-one a day, and then to none at all, when all of us had to eat berries with the little piece of salt pork served out to us, and an occasional fish that we sometimes succeeded in catching in the native fashion.

At last, at the beginning of September, the skipper determined that all hands should put to sea again in the two boats, in order to make our way across the intervening gulf of water to Good Success Bay, at the extreme south-east point of Tierra del Fuego, opposite to Staten Island, on the other side of the Strait of Le Maire.