Island of the Lost (10 page)

B
ECAUSE
C
APTAIN
M
USGRAVE
did not have Raynal's engineering skills, he took on the responsibility of keeping the pantry replenished, occasionally taking the taciturn Norwegian, Alick, with him to help. Someone always had to venture out with a cudgel—or the gun, if there was any hope of varying the menu with poultry, widgeon being preferred. He and Alick tried fishing off the beach, but did not have much success, because they were competing with the sea lions in the sea lions' natural fishing ground. They had better luck in the creek that was their source of drinking and washing water, finding a small species that “resembled trout and were delicious eating,” according to Musgrave, “but were very small, the largest weighing scarcely a quarter of a pound.” This was
Galaxias brevipinnis
, a fish native to New Zealand and known to the Maori as
koaro
, an ancient species with just one dorsal fin and no scales, which is very agile, starting life in the sea, like salmon, and then in early adulthood leaping up rushing streams to reach the rocky pools where they breed.

About this time, too, Musgrave took up a habit of going off on long excursions, taking a cudgel and trekking for long distances on foot, sometimes with Alick, but often alone. This is a common phenomenon when people are stranded in desolate, remote places, exhibited by members of scientific discovery parties as well as shipwrecked seamen. Obsessive behavior is characteristic, too, and in Musgrave it took the form of a preoccupation with charts and barometer readings. He carried surveying tools with him, and made charts as he went, determined to map the harbor and the surrounding territory to the best of his ability; not only was it reassuring to have a picture of the terrain in his mind, but his journal and charts would be of use
to future travelers, even if rescue came too late to save him and his companions. He and Raynal had already made a grim pact that if they died before anyone came, they would be buried with their journals, so that the records they kept would be uncovered when their bodies were eventually disinterred.

On Sunday morning, January 24, Musgrave was alone when he set out to climb the mountain to the northeast of the camp, as Alick was sick, and Raynal was still not well enough to trudge long distances. To his surprise, there were many signs of sea lions—“In going up I found seal tracks nearly to the top of the mountain, which I reckon is about four miles from the water; and about three miles up I saw a seal.”

After reaching the summit he stood a long time, contemplating precipitous mountains stretching to the north and east, covered with long, coarse, dun-colored grass and the occasional patch of stunted scrub, and with a multitude of waterfalls dashing down granite ravines. It was a daunting landscape, far from the touch of man. He could hear a muffled boom every now and then as a large breaker thudded against the tall cliffs to the west. To the north and east of the island group a tumbled ocean extended as far as his eye could reach, unmarked by a single sail. With his head bent dejectedly, battling a fit of black depression, Musgrave turned and set off back to camp.

He returned down the face of the mountain instead of along the spur he had climbed to get to the top, and was forced to traverse a number of swamps to get to the band of thick forest that backed the cove where they camped. “The ‘big bush,' as we call it, is where the largest timber grows; it extends about a mile from the water all round the shores of the harbour, which, taking all the bays, is not less than sixty or seventy miles.” He
identified the trees as the “iron-bark” that grew in Australia, though the bark was different, being much thinner and harder, “as thin as brown paper.”

These trees (actually New Zealand rata,
Metrosideros umbellata
) made excellent firewood and were spectacular at this time of the year, midsummer in the south, as they blazed with scarlet flowers. Getting through the forest was a trial, though, because Musgrave was often forced to drop to hands and knees to crawl under the low, crooked branches and around the gnarled roots that rose above the bare, mossy ground. The emptiness of the space beneath the tortured branches was strangely haunted, a preternatural reminder of how far they were away from the lands where other men lived, and it was a relief to get out of it and back to the camp, where he could hear reassuring human voices.

Two days after that, on Tuesday, January 26, Musgrave went out on another such excursion, though not alone this time—which was lucky, because he very nearly shot himself. When he discharged the gun, one of the barrels hung fire; when he turned the gun butt-down to reload it, it went off, sending the ball whistling past his nose and through the rim of his hat. “I thank God, who has protected me thus far,” he prayed; “although in His wisdom He has chastised me severely lately, that He had again spared my life.”

On Monday, February 1, he was unlucky enough to be overtaken by a sudden storm while out in the small boat. He managed to get the boat back to the wreck, where he moored her, but she was damaged when a heavy wave smashed her bow against the
Grafton
's hull, and so getting her fixed was yet another job to be done—once the cabin was completed.

F
ILLING IN THE SIDES
of the structure proved a challenging problem, which they solved in a complicated and time-consuming fashion. First, the poles that Musgrave, George, and Alick had cut when they cleared the top of the hillock were stuck upright in the dirt to the depth of about a foot, all along each side save for the fireplace and the door, bound as tightly together as their twisted shapes allowed. Each one was tied at the top to the crossbeams, one after another, until the spaces between the upright posts were more or less closed in. The insides of the walls and roof were crosshatched with horizontal rows of thin laths, and the outside was covered with canvas, a double layer going onto the roof. The cabin was still by no means impervious to weather—as Musgrave commented, “it lets a great deal of wind through”—but the castaways moved into it the moment the last of the canvas was lashed into place.

The date was Tuesday, February 2, 1864. They had been stranded on this desolate and difficult coast for thirty-one long days and nights, and thankful indeed did they feel to be under a roomy shelter at last. Though the cabin was still not much more weatherproof than the tent they had made out of the mainsail, it was a great deal bigger. “The house is 24 feet by 16 feet; the chimney is 8 feet by 5 feet, built of stone,” wrote Musgrave. As usual, however, his satisfaction was blighted by dismal thoughts of the plight of his loved ones in Sydney. “We shall be able to have a roaring fire in it in the winter, if we are so unfortunate as to have to remain here till that time; and God help those at home, whom it almost drives me mad to think of. We have, as yet, had plenty to eat,” he went on, adding dolefully, “but whether they have or not, God only knows.”

By the last week of February not only did they have a
door—“a very good one, made of inch boards”—but they had a board floor. Raynal, Alick, and George had gone out into the forest to fell timber and cut it up into suitable lengths for joists, and had gotten the collection of lumber to the house just as the heavens opened. While they set up the joists that afternoon, the rain rattled on the roof in such torrents that they could hardly hear themselves speak. Within an hour this became a matter for worry, as the earth was getting wet and boggy.

Advised by Raynal's experience on the goldfields, where it was quite common for sudden cloudbursts to destroy miners' huts, they decided to dig a two-foot-deep ditch around the house to take off the water from the roof. For two days it was impossible to do this, as it rained too hard to leave the cabin for anything not absolutely urgent. Finally, however, it cleared, and Alick and George were able to commence digging. Then they found that the trench weakened the foundations of the chimney and the corner posts, so they braced them with still more poles, placed at an angle.

The fireplace was a huge success—which was lucky, because there were times when it was as cold inside the house as it was outside. The wind whistled through a thousand gaps in the walls, setting the canvas to rattling and lifting, and the flames to fluttering and roaring in the chimney. Obviously, something had to be done about it. After a great deal of discussion the party came to the conclusion that thatching the outside of the walls was the best way out of the problem. From then on they went out every day to gather up clumps of the long, coarse, strong tussock-grass that grew at the tops of the nearby cliffs.

“The reader may think that this occupation was rather amusing,” Raynal wrote wryly, going on to relate that it was very
much the opposite. The gatherers set out at dawn, each with a rope, and clambered to the top of the cliff to attack the tussock, which was “not only extremely hard, but jagged at the edges, and sharp as a knife.” As a result, when they trudged home, bowed down in the rain with three or four great bundles on their backs, their hands were dripping blood from dozens of tiny but agonizing cuts.

Then the straw had to be tied into bundles, each one about as thick as a man's arm, according to Raynal, and tied with thread unraveled from old sailcloth. After being trimmed square at the ends, they were bound upright to the sides of the house, starting at the bottom and with each row overlapping, so that the effect was like the thatching on the roof of an English cottage. As they went along, the men laid another network of laths over the outside of the thatch, and sewed the outside laths to the inside ones with twine and a wooden needle—“a wooden needle of the size of a sword blade!” Raynal exclaimed—so that the thatch would not be carried away by the next hard gale.

W
HEN IT WAS TOO DARK
, wet, or windy to thatch, the men built furniture, starting with something to sleep on. According to Musgrave, they made five stretchers out of poles and canvas, and slung them in the roof six feet above the floor, so that by day they could move freely beneath them. Raynal drew a different picture, describing plank beds like long boxes set on legs, which were filled with primitive mattresses of dried moss. These, according to him, were set about the walls, with his bed and Musgrave's at the corners of the northern end, and those belonging to the three sailors at the other extremity of the hut, one against each of the three walls there. While it is
impossible to tell which man's version was right, Musgrave's description seems more likely, as suspending the beds overhead would leave space to move around; otherwise, the house would have been very cramped.

A dining table measuring seven feet by three feet was built out of boards and placed in the center, with a long bench on either side, and a keg for the captain's seat at the end. Musgrave had a smaller table, made out of a chest that had come from the
Grafton
's cabin, to use as a desk, and this was placed at the northern end of the house. The chronometer box was set on this, and above it hung the barometer and thermometer. A shelf held what books they had—the Bible, Milton's
Paradise Lost
, and a couple of English novels, which lacked a few important pages. It was at this table that Musgrave wrote up his journal every Sunday, using seal blood once the little pot of ink he had saved from the wreck had run out.

“This, the north end of the hut, was occupied by Mr. Raynal and myself, the men's quarters being at the other end,” he penned. “A cook's table stood behind the door at the men's end. There were two or three shelves round the place, which, with a pair of bellows and a looking-glass, completed the furniture.” On these shelves, according to Raynal, pots, pans, and dishes were stored, along with the lamps that the men had made out of old preserved-meat tins, which had wicks spun out of sailcloth threads, and were fueled with sea lion oil.

For the storage of large items, triangular lofts had been erected in the four corners of the roof. Raynal, who had been appointed the group's medic, was in charge of the medicines they owned, of which there were only two. One was the remnant of their stock of ordinary flour, which could be rolled into
balls when dampened with water, and swallowed to combat diarrhea. The other was the last of their mustard, which could be used to raise blisters on the skin as a cure for aches and pains. It seems incredible now that anyone should try to cure a headache, for instance, by making a big blister on the nape of the neck, but perhaps it felt as if it worked because the pain of the blister would be so intense that the original pain would seem insignificant by comparison. For whatever reason, it was a popular remedy of the time. Both the mustard and the flour were kept in a bag that was hung above Raynal's bed.

As a finishing touch, openings had been cut in the upper walls, and panes of glass salvaged from the schooner were wedged into the gaps. “These,” Raynal continued on a note of pride, “were our windows.” Considering their circumstances, to have something so civilized as glass windows was a triumph.

EIGHT