The Unknown Shore (23 page)

‘What is the mark on a beef cask?’ asked Tobias, who, chewing a piece of sea-tangle, had been watching an iridescent holothurian creeping over the touch-hole of one of the guns far below him in the cold clear green water.

‘Broad arrow in red,’ said the quartermaster. ‘Lovely great red broad arrow, and then a number.’

The holothurian crossed the touch-hole and proceeded along the encrusted barrel towards a mass of kelp, into which it vanished. Five minutes later Tobias said, ‘Well then, there are three beef-casks under the ledge of rock down there. You can see them if you follow the pointing gun and look sideways under the kelp.’

It is a curious fact that everybody contradicted him at once – there were no casks there – it was an illusion – they were empty, staved – and that at the same time everybody trampled upon him mercilessly in order to prod the kelp with the oars and the boat-hook.

But they were barrels of salt beef, heavy, sound, unstaved barrels that loaded the yawl until it was almost level with the water. It called for the most finished seamanship to get them to the landing-place, prodigies of strength and address, but no one was going to trust the beef to the rising tide for another hour, no, not even for the time that it would take to return with the barge and the other men. They brought the beef ashore and willing hands – Lord, how willing – rolled the casks up to the store house.

‘So long as you have enough to eat,’ said Jack, that evening, ‘you
have little to grumble at: and if you have a fire and a roof over your head you have nothing to murmur at at all, but are an ungrateful dog.’

This recruitment of their stores raised the spirits of the men to a high degree: they began to agitate for their departure, and on a day when the captain’s temper seemed unusually mild, Campbell ventured to tell him that the people were growing restless. Strangely enough, Captain Cheap did not resent this, but desired Rose and Noble, as representatives of the men, to accompany him to the top of Mount Misery; he bade Jack and Campbell come too. From the height they surveyed the sea to the northward and the huge distant arm of the mainland that reached out into the west – the cape that seemed to form the upper limit of the gulf that contained Wager Island and a hundred more. The captain, having looked long and hard with his glass, observed that the sea was very high outside, and passed his telescope round. But the wind was fair for the far-off cape, being for once a little east of south, and the general opinion was that they should try for it – that they should try to run straight across the whole width of the gulf and pass the western headland in one determined effort.

‘Very well,’ said the captain. ‘Mr Byron, take the bearing of the cape. Mr Campbell, run down and see that the boats are launched directly, or we shall have to wait on the tide.’

‘You haven’t any money on you, sir, I do suppose?’ asked Noble in a hoarse whisper, as he and Jack climbed down behind the captain.

‘I have not had a penny in my pocket these six months past,’ said Jack, ‘or you should have it. Would it be any good to you?’

‘It is John Allen over there. I thought I would put a couple of pieces on his eyes. For to tell you the truth we never did bury him fit and proper, and a couple of pieces might serve, for want of better – I doubt we shan’t have time to do rightly by him now.’ Allen had been murdered in a drunken quarrel by one of the earliest deserters, a violent brute nicknamed Execution Dock, who had thrown him down in a chaos of rocks just off the path they were now following: the burial-party, battered by the wind and the snow, had not done its duty. But still the idea that a man should be decently laid away was strong in his shipmates’ minds, and had it not been for the procrastination that afflicts seamen ashore, Allen would have had a
proper tomb long ago. Yet, as Noble said, it was too late to do rightly by him now, for an enthusiastic noise from the beach showed that Campbell had set about the launching of the boats.

Twelve in the barge; eight in the yawl. With their precious sea-store, three half-barrels of powder, their weapons and their very few personal belongings they were tightly packed and deeply laden. Jack steered the barge while the captain conned it: Campbell steered the yawl. The wind, a stiff breeze, was almost astern, and the miles slipped by. The dreadful coast of Wager Island sank down and down until only Mount Misery was to be seen, while beyond it, on the mainland the far peaks of the Cordillera reared up snowy against the sky. Tobias, sitting in the stern sheets opposite the captain, went to sleep.

He woke up with a feeling of horrible nausea, and collecting his wits he saw that they were no longer running before the wind, but had hauled the sheet aft. In fact the wind had veered right out of the east and it was now blowing in increasing gusts from the west-south-west. They were holding their course, but they were now reaching the edge of the unsheltered high-running sea, and it was a question how long they could keep the head of the barge to the cape, with the wind blowing more and more with the swell, working it up into an ugly hollow sea, with white water flying.

He leant quietly over the side, cold and sick, and when he had recovered a little he watched the yawl, rising and falling, running diagonally along the trough of the swell and climbing its side slantwise. Beyond the yawl a giant petrel sailed as easily as an albatross, scarcely moving its wings, utterly indifferent to the growing menace of the sea below it.

Jack was having an increasingly difficult time: the barge had always been a pig to steer, and now that it was so heavy it would not answer the helm with anything but a ponderous deliberation that could not have been more out of place than on this afternoon. The sheet and the tiller were in perpetual movement as he calculated the thrust of each wave, the continually varying force of the wind and the slow reaction of the boat: his mind and body were so much taken up that he was the least concerned person aboard; he scarcely noticed the sheets of spray that flew across, nor the biting cold.

The gusts were growing more and more frequent; more and more they came from the west, heeling the barge so that the lee gunwale barely cleared the sea. In the yawl they were baling hard, and while Tobias watched them at their work the barge shipped a sea that half filled it: water swirled about shin-deep, and from that time on Tobias scooped it out as fast as he could.

Then quite suddenly the wind settled in the west, due west and a full gale. They already had three reefs in the sail and all the people who could be spared from baling were sitting close on the weather-side to keep the seas from breaking aboard and filling the boat: the sky had darkened with a more terrible darkness than the end of the day. A rip of violet lightning split the clouds from the south to the north, and at last the captain gave the order to run before the wind. It was clear to everybody now that they were in for a great western storm: they had seen too many to be mistaken.

By this time they had run some twenty miles of their course for the cape: they were about half-way across the gulf, and away to the leeward, perhaps fifteen, perhaps twenty miles, lay the unknown coast of the mainland, with islands and reefs between them and it.

At first the boat was very much eased and scudded happily enough under a little scrap of a foresail, steering east-north-east; but the wind grew, and the sea grew – the wind and the sea passed beyond all measure, and after an hour the barge was tearing through a roaring desert of water more appalling than anything they had ever seen. The waves were running now at the most terrifying height: when the boat was in the trough of the sea there was nothing to be seen but the great grey hill of water ahead half-way up the sky, and behind, racing towards them faster than they fled, a still greater mountain, green and curling towards them with its head torn away forwards by the wind, threatening to overwhelm them from the height of an enormous cliff. And when they were raised to the height of the roller, with the water, the live water boiling up to the gunwale and the great wind pressing the boat down into it, their horizon was jagged all round with the crests of innumerable monstrous waves.

Sometimes in the gathering darkness they caught a glimpse of the yawl, raised vertiginously up, or so far below them that they could see right down into it. More and more of the huge overgrown seas were curling over and breaking as they ran, now, because of the
movement of the tide below them; and Tobias could see no reason why an open boat should live much longer. He saw, with horror, that his shipmates, from the captain downwards, were of the same opinion. The boat laboured terribly: it had not buoyancy enough to recover from the blows it received, nor to bear the great weight of water that was perpetually flying in. They were so near to foundering, and they knew it so well, that they parted with everything – they were glad to be able to lighten the boat by any means. One after another the barrels, sacks and stores went over the side; each time the lightened barge responded, but each time the growing sea called for a new sacrifice. Tobias, with death in his soul, helped to throw out the last cask of beef: the very anchor itself went overboard, and as it went the rising wave showed them the shore, a broad zone of white breakers, a most prodigious surf.

They were in the white water: there was a line of tall black rock ahead, a cliff, with the waves breaking to its head. The wind and the sea were taking them against the cliff at the pace of a running horse – five minutes more, if that. Captain Cheap gripped Jack’s shoulder, pointed at an opening in the cliff: Jack nodded, and put down the helm. All the men without an order or a word leant out to windward: if anything gave they were lost; if the worn canvas split they were irretrievably lost. Through the breaking water and on the foam the boat raced straight through the gap, and it was over. They had passed through an opening not twenty yards across and they were floating on the calm water of a round, tranquil, pond-like cove: and there was the yawl, already lying there in the middle.

It was a very solemn moment: the quietness, immediately after the immeasurable roaring outside, was like a hallucination and the men sat there without speaking. They paddled quietly to the edge to find a landing-place, but finding none in this steep-sided crater they climbed on to a black rock, shining with the rain, secured the boats as well as they could, and composed themselves with thankful minds to take what rest the night afforded them.

This was the end of the first day of the voyage north. If the wind had held true, or if they had started one tide earlier, they might have passed the western headland; but now, as they judged it in the morning, they were at the eastward end of the great arm of land
that barred their way, and they must coast along it, all the way into the teeth of the prevailing wind, unless perhaps they could find a passage through to the other side – that is to say, unless what appeared to be continuous land should prove to be an island, or several islands, separated from the main by narrow strips of sea. On such a coast it was not impossible, and it was known that there were many such vast islands in Tierra del Fuego, all about Magellan’s Strait.

The wind dropped before the dawn, and the frost whitened their wet clothes, giving them a curiously piebald appearance. The sea was still running high outside their cove, but it was just possible to force a boat out through the breakers and into the smoother swell beyond: it was hard pulling and dangerous, but it was better than starving in the rock-bound cove, which had no food, no fuel and no way out but a climb of two or three hundred feet up sheer rock. All day they laboured at their oars, running along a broken, indented coast, mostly lined with sheer-to cliffs or great jagged reefs, and towards nightfall, the sky being full of evil promise, they hauled ashore on a little island, the only one of a group that had an accessible beach. It proved to be a mere swamp, but it was too late to find another place, and they passed a second night in the open, in the rain, with no fire, no food and with nothing dry about them but the powder in their powder-horns.

This was hard living: it could scarcely have been very much harder. But in the morning, in the first grey of dawn, Tobias, unable to sleep for the cold, wandered off with Jack’s fowling-piece in his hand, and he found both fuel and something to cook upon it. He had, deeply ingrained, the poacher’s and the naturalist’s habit of peering cautiously into any new field, dell, dune or clearing, and now, looking over a rock into a little sheltered place he saw a huge loggerheaded duck sitting upon a mound of driftwood. He had never been so well received in his life as when he returned with his burden, nor so much caressed by all hands: the race-horse, cut up, yielded a pound of solid meat for each man, besides its bones and skin; and it was as well that they had it, for the wind was roaring again, and by sunrise the sea had mounted so high that they could not leave. The storm lasted three full days, and the fourth day saw them rowing on a sea still so furious that nothing but extreme necessity could
explain their presence. It was a day that promised great things, however: over on the main the land ran down low to a sandy point, and between this point and a range of hills to the westward there appeared to be nothing but water. They pulled over to this opening and found that the water ran northwards out of sight: it was possible that this would be a passage right through the headland, and they rowed along the marshy shore until the afternoon. But then they found that they were only in a narrow bay: there was no way through. The swamps on either hand offered neither shelter nor the least promise of anything to eat, not even shellfish; and they were obliged to row back again, with the grey rain sweeping down.

At least their resting-place that night provided them with some mussels, limpets and a fire: they called it Redwood Cove, because their fuel was all as red as cedar or mahogany; and the next day, with a favourable wind, they set out in better spirits to follow the coast, which here trended away to the north. The wind held fair all day, and although it died to the faintest breeze in the evening, yet it brought them as far as an island where they could land; this island was covered with magnificent tall trees, mast-like and straight in spite of the terrible winds, and the captain named it after Montrose. They lay dry that night, for once, packed round a great driftwood fire, cedar that snapped and flew in sparks so that the whole circle smelt of singeing cloth; and in the morning – calm, but with a huge western swell – they pulled steadily along the coast, still northwards here. Clinch, one of the boatkeepers (two stayed in each boat at night, by turn), said that he had seen sea-lions by the moonlight, and they travelled in the liveliest expectation, with Mr Hamilton, the best shot among them, in the bows with a loaded musket. But their hopes were all disappointed; they saw no sea-lions, and they found that once again they had rowed to the marshy bottom of a bay. They were obliged to haul away to the west once more, following the coast in all its tedious windings; and when, towards the evening, an offshore breeze sprang up, tempting them to risk the crossing of the next bay they reached from headland to headland (for there were hills at the bottom and obviously no passage), they were very soon persuaded that in these latitudes such a thing was almost impossible. The tempting breeze turned into a growing storm, and they were glad to put back while there was yet time; they put into
the only sheltered place they could pitch upon, a very little cove with a safe anchorage, but with no more than a rocky ledge on one side of it with scarcely enough room for all of them; and here two of the men, who had moved off to a place under an overhanging cliff, were as nearly as possible killed by a landslide. A huge width of cliff came thundering down a few paces beyond them, half-burying them with earth. This weighed heavily upon the spirits of some of the people, particularly the crew of the yawl: they felt that both the land and the sea were against them now, and they were not to be saved, whatever they did.