The Unknown Shore (27 page)

In Jack’s absence Tobias and the others had done very poorly. The cacique’s wife was a woman entirely unlike Jack’s friends, and she had given them no more than a few sea-urchins, and those bitterly grudged. Sea-urchins are delicious appetisers, but as they are almost all hollow, they cannot satisfy except in enormous quantities. Jack’s fish, therefore – the fish that he had carried in his bosom, having no other container and being unable to trust his companions – was more welcome than can easily be expressed, although it was pink with the dye of his waistcoat and only just good enough to be eaten, even by the standards of extreme hunger.

‘How I wish you had been there, Toby,’ said Jack. ‘It would have set you up for a week, the smell alone. No, I assure you,’ he said, turning his head away from the offered piece, ‘I ate very well before coming ashore. Gormandise while you may, for Heaven knows when we shall have a bellyful again.’

This was sound enough, for in the days that passed before the other Indians joined them everybody went short of food, even the cacique. Like most people who live on the edge of starvation, the Indian and his family were capable of eating huge amounts at a sitting: they ate the whole of the seal, apart from a little that they gave to Captain Cheap, in a very short time, and then in spite of the unpropitious weather they took to the sea again.

It was upon his return from one of these fishing expeditions that the cacique gave an almost perfect exhibition of savagery and the cult of toughness carried to its logical extremity: he and his wife had one basket of urchins, no more, from a whole day’s work, and on
reaching the shore the cacique passed this basket to the smallest child, who, not having yet learnt caution, had come down to meet the canoe. The child slipped, let the basket fall in the surf, and the urchins were lost. The cacique leaped out, seized the child by an arm and a leg and hurled it with all his force against the naked rock.

The killing of this child was the most shocking thing that Jack had ever seen in a life not rare in terrible sights, and it left a weight of horror on his mind that would not go. It was scarcely alleviated by the coming of the other Indians, with the canoes that were to take them northwards and, for a time, his two kind women, with their cheerful faces. But even though they were there, within a few yards of the wretched wigwam that Mr Hamilton, Campbell and Tobias had botched together, they might almost have been in Asia, for the blue chief was as jealous as a Turk – the women were either at work on the sea or they were kept rigorously within. They nevertheless, and at the risk of their lives, contrived to pass some victuals out through the back of the tent to Jack – a boiled cormorant, a seal’s head, two half-eaten flippers – and it was with strong regret that he and Tobias saw them go: several of the women were sent off, with most of the fishing dogs, some days before the main body began their journey.

This voyage was begun neither happily nor with any good omen. The whole movement seemed to be part of a tribal migration: these Indians, who were called Min-Taitao, were travelling upwards to their northern limits with the approach of mid-winter; they were not going on account of the
Wager’s
people, whom they regarded as nuisances, very much in the way, hangers-on who were too contemptibly soft to feed themselves, incompetent fools; and the taking of the white men was an irritating hindrance to their progress. They put them into separate canoes so that they would be less trouble, and on a lowering morning, with a strong west wind, they set out on a rising, angry sea and began to work along the coast towards the remote, miserably barren country of Marine Bay.

In time, and after drenching and freezing days at sea, they reached a place where, in a maze of sand-bars and subdivided channels, a river seeped into the head of a deep, wide bay. The barge had been here before, but they had taken no notice of the fresh water; it had not seemed practicable for the boat, and indeed it was not. The
Indians unloaded the canoes, carried them over the sand and launched them again in a fresh-water lake, or wide swelling of the river. Paddling across this, they came to a stream with various branches; the branch they took grew narrower all day long, and far stronger. Towards the evening it seemed to Jack that this was to be a repetition of the appalling time when John Bosman died, and in fact it was so hard that even the comparatively well-fed Indians were drawn to the utmost of their endurance. They lay that night under the pouring rain in a naked swamp, without putting up their wigwams, because there was not a single pole to be found, and these Indians never carried poles with them but only the pieces of bark.

The next day resembled the first, but the day after that brought them far up into a dripping forest, where the river turned away to the east: in these three days they had nothing whatever to eat, except for some bitter yellowish roots. Here they hauled out, and in the morning the Indians took the canoes to pieces; it was simply done, by cutting the creeper that sewed the planks together, and in theory it was then simple to carry the canoes, thus divided into convenient loads, across the country until another river, flowing northwards, should take them in the right direction. But this was a wicked country, the deepest forest that they had ever seen, and the trees stood in ground so interspersed with bogs and half-hidden pools of mud that it was difficult to understand how so many could find enough firm ground to hold themselves upright. A great many did not, and were either supported, slanting, by their neighbours, or lay flat along, sometimes growing in that position, but more often dead; and these falling trees in their crash broke many others, and their stumps stood long after, often covered by undergrowth, jagged, splintered stumbling-blocks every few yards along the miles and miles of march. Everywhere there were wind-fallen branches, white and rotting, and in the windless bottom of the forest cold fungus stood dying under the winter frosts.

By this time Captain Cheap was growing very weak: Mr Hamilton was sadly reduced too, but he could still walk and manage his load, which was a plank. Captain Cheap could scarcely get along at all, however, even at the beginning of the day, and he was obliged to be helped by Tobias and Campbell, who also carried a full burden each. Jack, who was in the last canoe to be dismantled, had a putrid
lump of seal wrapped in the captain’s piece of canvas. It had been given to the captain by an Indian who did not think it worth carrying over the long portage, and the understanding was that it would be shared in the evening, when a fire would make it edible.

The canoe was very long in taking apart, because these Indians preferred to clear the holes of the caulking now rather than when they came to sew the planks together again – the more usual practice – and by the time it was ready the others were far ahead. The planks were delicate objects; a fall would break their perforated edges; and the Indians, having weighed Jack’s load, added nothing to it, but set off after their companions, carrying the whole of the canoe.

‘It is just as well,’ thought Jack, scrambling up a muddy slope behind them, ‘for I do not believe that I could carry so much as a paddle more.’ The canvas was an awkward burden, painfully heavy and apt to slide; he carried it on his neck and shoulders, with a line across his forehead, after the example of the Indians, because he needed both hands to get along and to keep up with them. They made their way through a long valley, which must have become dammed at its lower end within the last few years, for although the mud and swamp lay waist-deep in places, yet the broken stumps still stood in the firmer ground below. Jack had no shoes (he had eaten them long ago), and although his feet were quite hard they were not as hard as the Indians', and soon the blood was running under the black ooze that covered his legs.

Hour after hour they went through the forest, and the Indians, full of meat and born to the country, kept drawing ahead. Sometimes they were slipping away through close-packed saplings, which waved above them; sometimes he could hear them pushing through tall undergrowth; sometimes as he emerged at one edge of a yellow-scummed mire he would see them disappearing at the far side of it, the open black mud showing where they had passed. They had no intention of waiting for him. With ever-increasing anxiety he hurried after the Indians through the gloom; his legs would scarcely bear him, and the pace was killing: he dreaded losing them – dreaded it beyond words.

Now there was a long slough between tall trees; there was no trace of the Indians, no marks in the mud, but he could hear them in front of him, in the trees beyond the slough. A very tall beech
had fallen, and it lay out across the surface of the standing water; his way probably lay along its trunk, he thought, and he hurried out along this natural bridge. Half-way over his feet slipped on rotten wood, the trunk gave a turn, and in a moment he was in the slough, struggling wildly, with his head under the surface, pressed down by his burden. There was no ground under his feet, and his clawing hands met only mud. With a tearing effort he wrenched his head back and, turning, snatched a breath of air; there was a branch within reach, and before it broke he managed to pull himself upright. He could not reach the trunk again, however, and he stood there for some moments, with only his head above the water and his feet in yielding mud. His weight was pressing him deeper: he was forced to move, and with a heavy, floundering, swimming motion he urged himself forward. The slough was shallower; the mud was only up to his chest. With each step it was less, and in ten minutes he was on solid ground on the far side.

But his strength was almost entirely gone and he scarcely had the energy to be glad of his escape. Indeed,
glad
was not a word to use in connection with him at all at that time. One can bear a great deal, but there is a limit to human endurance, and suddenly it seemed to Jack that he had reached his limit. He sat, bowed right down, and indulged in the weakness of despair. But in fact he had not reached the end of his powers, as he knew very well after a minute or two; and when he had collected himself a little the haunting fear of being left quite filled his mind again: he was carrying no part of the canoe, and there was no material reason why the Indians should wait for him.

‘It is no good,’ he said aloud, looking at his burden: and with a vague notion that it would be wrong to leave it lying there on the ground, he stowed it neatly in the crutch of a tree. Even without it he could barely get along at first, but presently he came to a small, clear stream, running in the direction that he should go – or thought he should go – and here, when he had washed the fetid mud from his mouth and face, he felt better; a few minutes later he saw the traces of the Indians, and, knowing that he was on the right track, he hurried on, leaving blood at every step, but less wretched than before.

For a good hour and more he followed this stream, and then quite
suddenly it flowed out into a vast lake, huge and grey, with the Cordilleras on the other side; and on its muddy shore there were the Indians, reassembling their canoes. The others sat at a little distance. They seemed to be completely done up, and for some time nobody said anything; they, knowing that the Indians were not yet ready, had felt no particular anxiety; and no one who had just made that march could be expected to care for anything but his own fatigue.

‘Where is my canvas and the seal?’ asked Captain Cheap at last.

Jack explained. He was exhausted, but he was not beyond the prick of shame, and the low-voiced, bitter, heartfelt reproaches that met his explanation pierced him.

‘I would not have believed it in
you,
Byron. I had conceived you more of a man – a braver man.’

‘I would have carried the seal myself,’ said Mr Hamilton, ‘but I thought it was in the best hands. It was a poor thing to do. It was poorly done.’

‘After all this, we are to have nothing to eat, because you left it in the wood,’ said Campbell. ‘Another night with nothing to eat’

Jack rose painfully, and turned back into the forest. ‘I will come with you,’ said Tobias; and when they had gone some way up the stream he said, ‘You must let me look at your feet, Jack. They are in a bad way.’ They sat down, and he searched the cuts and scratches for splinters. ‘Tell me where you left the bundle,’ he said, drawing out a jagged piece of wood, ‘and I will fetch it: I am remarkably fresh.’

‘I never could tell you for sure, Toby,’ said Jack, with a sort of smile. ‘Go back now, there’s a good fellow – it would oblige me most, upon my honour.’ But he made no protest when Tobias walked on with him, and it would have been useless if he had.

It took something more than an hour to reach the place where Jack had left the seal and the canvas: on the way they talked very little, and now that they sat down under the crutched tree they said little more, being too weary; but the feeling of companionship was there.

‘That was where I fell in,’ said Jack, showing the slough. Tobias nodded. ‘If we can find a sound branch,’ said Jack, ‘we can sling the load between us.’

‘There is a puma on the other side,’ said Tobias. Jack made no reply; Tobias had pointed out two dull little birds on the way up and as there was one flying about now, making a noise like the yapping of a small, silly dog, Jack thought (as far as he could think at all, through the dullness of exhaustion) that that was what he meant.

‘We must go,’ said Jack, ‘or it will be night before we get back.’

‘Allow me two minutes to walk to the other side.’ Tobias walked across the shallower mud, vanished into the bushes and then returned with a pleased look on his pale, thin face.

‘I believe you would creep out of your grave to look at a flaming bird,’ said Jack. ‘Come, take an end.’

‘A puma is not a bird,’ said Tobias, after a hundred paces. ‘It is a kind of cat – felis concolor. You may see it soon: it is moving along with us, on the right.’

The word
cat
brought nothing into Jack’s mind but a fleeting image of a shabby, brownish-black little creature called Tib that disgraced the drawing-room at home, and he plodded on in silence. Every hundred yards or so they changed shoulders, and during the third change there was a coughing noise to their right, a series of coughs, huge, deep, throaty coughs, that culminated in a shattering roar, unimaginably loud.