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Into the Frozen South

<h2> CHAPTER XVII A Spell on Tristan da Cunha </h2> Our passage across to Tristan da Cunha was in the main uneventful to men who had endured the rigours and inclemencies of the more southern waters. True, there were episodes. The Quest was as dirty as ever, if not dirtier, when she met the long run of the seas; and Gubbins Alley was deeply awash with the water we took aboard over our swinging rails. Gubbins Alley, let me explain, is the name given to the port alleyway, where by some strange process of maritime luck and forces all the litter of a ship—the dirt or, as it is called, the “gubbins”—manages to accumulate. No one is to blame for this accumulation; it is merely chance that collects it, for the alleyway is religiously scrubbed out every morning; but the cook works a lot here, and the stokers empty the ashes from below on this side, so these activities may have something to do with it. But, whatever the reason, it is always just “Gubbins Alley.” Down below was also very damp and ungenial, for despite all our defences the water insisted on penetrating into the wardroom, whilst Commander Wild’s cabin was clean swept more than once. The ship seemed determined to show what she could do. She tried to roll the surf-boat out of its davits, and almost succeeded—would have done, if Mac had not raised the alarm and called us to his aid in the nick of time. She tried with success to roll us out of our bunks just at the hour of deepest sleep, when things of that sort appear anything but humorous. Sometimes we thought she possessed the temperament of an elf, but mostly she 199 was diabolical. She flung breakfasts, lunches and dinners off the tables into the scuppers; she shifted carefully-stowed stores; she scalded the stokers and half-buried the trimmers. A very lively packet. Storms beset her with monotonous regularity; but one storm is so like another to the lay mind that it is not necessary to enter into intricate details. One outstanding feature of these restless days was the souring of certain of our stores. When diving into the storerooms to make preparations for the supplies for landing parties at Tristan and the adjacent islands, we discovered that several bags of flour and beans were going wrong, due, no doubt, to the constant dampness and lack of ventilation. The stench was appalling as we hoisted up the rotting stuff to open air for drying and disinfecting. But at last, after a boisterous passage, we sighted Inaccessible Island on May 19, and this island we passed about four bells in the middle watch. The morning was dank and misty and but little could be seen, but when our watch came on deck at 4 a.m., Commander Wild had already sighted Tristan ahead, though it was now obscured by a dense black cloud. Shortly afterwards the weather cleared, and we, too, saw the island looming black and lonely out of the fog some three points on the starboard bow. By half-past seven, being within half a mile of the shore, we fired a rocket to attract the attention of the islanders, or, what was perhaps as likely, to arouse them from slumber. It was raining heavily by this time. Presently three boats put out, and, pulled by eager hands, swiftly came alongside. The islanders clambered aboard in a great hurry, and were all over the ship in a moment, crying to each other in high-pitched, squeaky voices. Queer though their intonation was, however, their English was quite good. They were but poorly clad, clothes being one 200 of their greatest wants. In a few of these people the dark strain is very apparent, but the majority are pale of face and not at all unpleasant to look upon. On the sandy beach a bevy of women and children and dogs turned out to give us greeting. From where we lay the island presented a very massive front, the land rising precipitously a thousand feet or more all along the water’s edge, and then sloping away to the summit, some six thousand feet or so higher. At the north-west end there is a stretch of low land like a raised beach, where the settlement of thatched cottages lies. These, with their vegetable gardens in front, look very like the cottages found in the Highlands of Scotland. The whole place is very green, especially where the houses are, and on the steeper slopes the bare earth shows a reddish colour, and small shrub-like “island trees” grow quite abundantly. A little to the left of the settlement is the sandy spit where the boats are beached. These boats are commodious, if not particularly elegant, and are made on the island, being constructed of a stout wooden framework and a covering of waterproofed canvas. Once aboard, our friends were not at all slow in asking for what they wanted, offering to barter goods of their own creation in exchange, for there is no money in the island. To them calling ships are fabulous storehouses of wealth, sent specially to them by a beneficent Providence—to be emptied of everything they contain for the islanders’ immediate benefit. More insistently even than the St. Vincent cadgers they pester one mercilessly for gifts—gifts of any and every sort; and if any member sternly refuses to part with his most cherished belongings they seem hurt and somewhat aggrieved. Not that the islanders ask for things for the mere sake of asking; I give them credit for better instincts. They are deplorably lacking in many necessaries, and luxuries 201 are hardly known to them. Clothes, timber for building, implements wherewith to till a soil that is unquestionably fertile, tools of every kind, tea, sugar—these are the things they lack and seek. In the matter of exchange they displayed a naïve ignorance of relative values, and each individual established his own standards of value, urging one to be quick before the others came along and altered the market. “Mister,” one smooth-tongued islander said, “have you got a mouth-organ to give me, or a pipe, or some old clothes? I wish to be fair, and in return I will give you a penguin skin, or a skein of home-made wool, or a sheep, although some of our sheep are sorry specimens.” Dr. Macklin was actually offered a perfectly good sheep for a single stick of tobacco! Well, what can you do with such innocents? They seem as trusting and simple as the penguins themselves; a primitive people, unspoilt by intercourse with a prosaic, matter-of-fact world, betraying the natural qualities of untutored mankind. You give them everything you can spare, of course. In return they promised us a bullock, three sheep, a pig, a number of hens and geese, and two hundred eggs—if they could find them! After the boats came alongside we steamed closer inshore and dropped anchor in eight fathoms of water, in the middle of a thick field of kelp. After breakfast the rain ceased, and for the rest of the day the weather continued mild and warm, although the calendar told us it was officially winter down there. I’ve known many a summer’s day in Scotland that could have learned much from Tristan da Cunha weather! Our forenoon was spent in hoisting on deck the stores and the mail-bags and parcels we had brought out from England for these islanders. Oh, you who sit at home at ease, and grow fretful 202 if the postman is a minute late on his rounds, think of those who depend for news of the outer world on chance exploring expeditions which might call every two or three years or so! Imagine a land that concerns itself not at all with the sensational murder of yesterday nor the pending divorce case of to-morrow, but learns vaguely, long after the last echoes have ceased to ring in the ears of a staggered world, that there has been some sort of a war in Europe! But the seasickness of one of the visitors, due to the Quest’s rolling—we seasoned fellows did not notice it—was of infinitely greater importance. “‘Solid as ocean foam!’—quoth ocean foam!” Next day certain of us went ashore to have a good look round this far-flung patch of civilization. We had been warned to have a care; that, owing to the paucity of men, the women of the island had a husband-hunting look in their eyes; and so, naturally, we walked warily. There is an ancient deep-sea legend to the effect that a distressed sailor, sole survivor of a deplorable wreck, was washed ashore at Tristan da Cunha in a state of unconsciousness, and wakened to find himself firmly married to most of the eligible females of the island! Our first visit was to the graveyard. Most sailors, I notice, do visit graveyards first when they go ashore in foreign ports. I don’t know why, unless it is to envy those who lie comfortably asleep instead of being compelled to disturb their slumbers at every turn of the tide. Tristan da Cunha’s graveyard was not a picture to dazzle the sight. I thought it very dilapidated. Some few of the graves were indicated by crazy crosses, but the large majority were hardly to be distinguished from the surrounding earth. One, it is true, had a wooden slab at the head. The grave of John Glass, however, a native of Kelso, and the first settler—the Robinson 203 Crusoe of the place—was dignified by a marble memorial stone. Other nameless graves were defined meagrely by square-cut blocks. Tristan da Cunha boasts a good water supply, for it lies in a region of much cloud, and many small streams, born in the higher lands of the interior, flow noisily through the little settlement. Through the ages these streams have cut deep gorges in the rock and look like miniature cañons. All around are boulders, washed down from the hills by the torrential rains that lave the island in the wet seasons; and some of the houses are built crudely of these boulders, which lie ready to hand. The problem of acquiring a house here is a simple one. You carry a few stones to a selected site, pile them together, say the result is a house; a house it is within the meaning of the Act, and as there are no destructive critics to say, “It’s like a house, but is it a house? Where’s your visitors’ bathroom and the lounge hall?” Not that all the houses are so ambitiously built—small stones from the beach serve as building materials in many cases; but, even so, Robinson Crusoe would have envied these islanders their dwelling-places. Lying as the island does right in the track of storms, indoor embellishments are easily obtained. If you live there and have the desire to make an ornate home for yourself, you wait until the next ship is wrecked and collect such timbers as come ashore; with these you panel your pied-à-terre and look down tolerantly on your less fortunate neighbours. It is whispered that the prayer of the really ambitious Tristan da Cunha bride before marriage is: “God bless father, God bless mother, God send a mail steamer ashore before my wedding-day!” But, crude though some of the homesteads are, each one boasts its kail-yard at its front door, its extent 204 marked out by a fragmentary paling. There is good soil, and in skilled hands the land could be made lucratively fruitful. Locomotion is two or three hundred years behind the times. The strident “honk-honk” of the motor horn is unheard in the land. The name of Ford is unknown. I believe there are so-called savages in Moroccan deserts who fully appreciate the subtleties of the latest Ford car story; but the simple people of Tristan da Cunha have never seen a Ford. Could anything convey a more perfect impression of their remoteness? When an islander desires to transport himself or his belongings from one point to another he employs a rough wooden cart with solid wheels, rough-hewn from virgin timber, and drawn by placid oxen. There is no lack of livestock. They number their kine by the score and their sheep by the ten-score. Donkeys are there and dogs, cats in abundance, and thrifty, succulent geese. Women and children dress quaintly in an old-fashioned way, wearing long, loose garments that would either drive a Parisian modiste crazy or else make her famous as the creator of a new mode. All of them wear vivid red or yellow handkerchiefs tied about their heads, according to the fashion established by the buccaneers of the Spanish Main in 1680 or thereabouts. Talking to one of the inhabitants, whose name was Henry Green—a dark-complexioned man, whose short, curly black hair gave a hint of African blood—I learnt that the worst months on the island were August and September. <div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG src="images/i_204.jpg" alt="" /> <div class="caption"> Scout Marr presents Sir Robert Baden-Powell’s Flag to the Tristan da Cunha Troop. </div> </div> <div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG src="images/i_205a.jpg" alt="" /> <div class="caption"> We go in Search of Fresh Food: Scout Marr (left), McIlroy, Commander Wild, Dr. Macklin on the shores of Cooper’s Bay, South Georgia. </div> </div> <div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG src="images/i_205b.jpg" alt="" /> <div class="caption"> The Quest off Inaccessible Island. </div> </div> The cattle then become very poor and die off from exposure on the hills. There are no adequate shelters for them, though material to construct such shelters exists in abundance; so they stray abroad and die. 205 Further, the islanders have but few agricultural implements wherewith to develop the island’s resources. Given the advantages of civilization, I believe they would make Tristan da Cunha a blossoming garden; as it is, the place struck me as being derelict. Of wood worth while there is none; island wood, cut from the trees, is useless save for burning purposes; but occasionally the sea-gods are kind and throw up on the beaches masses of driftwood from sinking ships. There is turf in abundance, and a little honest hard work would enable the people to protect their cattle thoroughly. However, hard work and they seem to have had a quarrel some time ago, and, judging by the evidences, the quarrel does not yet appear to have been made up. Whatever else the island lacked, it boasted a troop of Scouts, inaugurated by the Rev. Martyn Rogers, who, with his wife, devotedly immured himself in this far-away wilderness with an idea of bettering the lot of the islander population. This troop promised well, and the honour was given me to present it with Sir Robert Baden Powell’s flag, especially sent out for the occasion. I accomplished the ceremony in due form, regretting that I lacked the ability to deliver an inspiring speech; and after it was all over—after I had inspected the Scouts and endeavoured to tell them what scouting really meant—I accompanied the parson and his wife to their vicarage and took tea and damper-bread with them. Mr. and Mrs. Rogers made light of the hardships, but it was given to me to realize how brave a work they were doing. Delicately nurtured, they had willingly sacrificed themselves in order that the work of God might progress. And only those who have actually seen with their own eyes the conditions of life in Tristan da Cunha can realize what these devoted Christians 206 undertook when voluntarily they cast themselves away on this isolated patch of wave-swept land. After dark we returned to the Quest and weighed anchor immediately, preparatory to starting for Inaccessible Island, taking with us three Tristan volunteers as guides. But first crack of dawn showed us that the weather conditions were entirely unfavourable for a landing on this island; accordingly we ran for shelter to Nightingale Island, about nine miles distant, and anchored there in a good lee. Nightingale Island is very much smaller than Tristan, though the latter is not enormous, measuring as it does only about twelve miles by eight. Our immediate destination was very little more than a single sharp peak rising some two thousand feet into the air, with lush vegetation of tussock grass and bracken. There is no lack of bird life; thrush-like birds, finches, skua gulls, mollymauks and petrels are abundant enough to please the most enthusiastic ornithologist; though save for the birds the island is uninhabited, being merely visited occasionally by Tristanites in search of driftwood, which is the most valuable harvest the sea gives them. Thus these inhabitants of the loneliest populated spot on all the earth’s surface benefit by the misfortunes and sufferings of others, for driftwood only results from wrecks; and the fragments of many a noble ship have gone to benefit these poverty-stricken outliers. A landing party of Wilkins, Douglas and Carr, together with myself, left the ship in the surf-boat; we got ashore with difficulty at a spot where the rocks rose sheer from the sea; but there was a narrow ledge at a negotiable height which gave us a chance of a rough, wet scramble to terra firma and enabled us to land our scientific and lethal equipment after a more or less breathless struggle. We climbed a short way along the jagged rocks with 207 our baggage, and came to a flat, table-like area backed by high cliffs, with gigantic boulders at their base. The geological party went right on up a narrow gully, with the intention of inspecting a guano patch at the farther side of the island; we others remained on our tableland for a while whilst Mr. Wilkins shot a few birds, then we followed up the hill. From the ship we had thought this would be easy going up a grassy slope. We were sadly disillusioned, however, for the grass was rank tussock and grew high above our heads, being some six to ten feet in length, and gave the effect of a miniature jungle, being extraordinarily difficult to break through. I was surprised at the activity of John Glass, one of the islanders who had accompanied us. He was a man of over fifty, and he climbed with the agility of a mountain goat. Under foot the ground was rotten and soaking, and at every second step it gave way, so that we sank knee deep and farther into the loathsome bogginess. Mr. Wilkins, scoffing at danger and discomfort, continued to shoot birds as we laboriously progressed; but though his aim was good the reward did not always follow, as by reason of the long, tangled grass his victims were not always found. By the time we reached the top we were drenched to the skin; but, having achieved, we looked breathlessly about us on an openland of small trees and loose rock, with a peculiar kind of round-bladed grass which grew in close tufts, very difficult to walk upon. Here more birds were shot, and then, all parties satisfied by the exploration, we returned, sliding down the soaking, rotten earth, stumbling blindly through the long tussock, and slipping with monotonous frequency into the gaping potholes, all of them full to the brim with water. We were glad to reach the ship again to get towelled and changed. For the night we lay off about a mile from the island 208 under easy steam, in order to keep clear of the rocks. At four o’clock, when I turned out on watch, it was raining very heavily; a depressing morning, the crash of surf on the near-by land dominating all other sounds. As soon as it was considered safe we put closer inshore again, feeling a very cautious way with the hand-lead, because of the indifferent surveys of these waters, and dropped anchor once more amongst the kelp in fifteen fathom water. Mr. Douglas and Henry Glass—another islander—we landed on Middle Island, a small rocky patch of land a hundred yards or so off the coast of Nightingale Island. We who remained on board had an exciting forenoon fishing for sharks—good sport. Our earliest intimation of their being in the neighbourhood was when the cook, fishing with ordinary line, brought a small shark to the surface; afterwards, with a good heaving line, we managed to haul a round dozen of the brutes aboard—not giants of the breed, but considerable fish of six to eight feet in length. We also caught shoals of other fish, edible and inedible, for the waters about these islands literally swarm with finny loot. After fishing my fill I helped Wilkins to skin and clean the birds he had shot, turning, as was my habit, from sailor to naturalist, enjoying the change immensely. A trip aboard the Quest ought to qualify any man to undertake any job known to civilization, and a few that aren’t! At eight bells in the afternoon the boat pushed off for the shore, and, as it was by now blowing a really stiff gale, it had a thin time in making the island. The shore party were taken off with enormous difficulty, at cost of thorough drenchings; but we were lucky in having the islanders with us during this operation, for their knowledge of the intricate channels and the really dangerous rocks enabled us to avoid catastrophe, which 209 threatened many times. They were excellent boatmen and seemed entire strangers to fear. At four o’clock next morning anchor was weighed for Inaccessible Island; and during this short passage the Quest outdid all previous rolling performances—thanks to the stern and unanswerable bidding of a high ground swell that ran heavily abeam. I thought I knew the length of the ship’s foot; I thought it was impossible for her to astonish me, but this time she did it; and a dozen times or more I was certain nothing could prevent her capsizing. As it was, she tossed me lightly out of my bunk—at least, I left it lightly, but gained the deck heavily—so I thought the best thing to do was to go on deck. Seen from a distance, the island well earns its name, for it looks inaccessible enough to deter the stoutest hearts. No low land is apparent, the whole rising sheer out of the fretting water; a green, more or less oblong mass with nothing inviting about it. The boat was got ready, stored with food and utensils and gear enough to last the landing party for several days, as the continued inclemency of the weather rather pointed to the fact that a return to the ship at our own sweet will might not be possible. Two alpine axes were added to the outfit, and a coil of rope, together with the complicated instruments necessary for biological and geological work. The landing was effected without mishap, although the beach was both steep and stony, and big, noisy rollers were breaking thereon with a stern determination and soul-curdling roars. Still, surf-bathing is a hobby with some people, so we managed to dodge the worst of the white-crested combers, running in between them, thus getting ashore with no serious wetting. The beach extended for about three-quarters of a mile on either side of where we landed, the rock rising 210 sheer and forbidding at the ends of the comparatively level stretch; but throughout the entire mile and a half ours was the only safe spot for getting ashore, as elsewhere the rocks were big and the surf very tumultuous. Behind this narrow strip of beach the rocks rose vertically all along to an average height of four hundred feet or thereabouts, and no doubt these conditions determined the first discoverers to give the place its name. Rank tussock was growing in the greatest abundance everywhere, and high up on the skyline “island trees” were faintly visible. But anything less like the desert island of romance it would be difficult to imagine. Half a mile to the left of the landing-place a narrow waterfall came tumbling over the edge of the cliff, three hundred and fifty feet up, and splashed and roared into a deep pool gouged from virgin rock by its own play. Beyond this the slope was slightly easier, and there Mr. Douglas and the two men from Tristan who accompanied him made the ascent with the greatest difficulty and no little daring. They followed the old Alpine plan of using the rope to overcome all obstacles. As mountaineering was not in my own immediate programme, I assisted Mr. Wilkins with bird-shooting and photography—gentle sports compared with the efforts of the others. By 3 p.m. Mr. Douglas had returned, after having fixed the contours roughly and ascertained the greatest height for the purpose of the finished survey. We arrived back on the Quest by four, anchor was weighed at seven; thereafter an exhaustive series of soundings were taken, and certain errors in earlier surveys were rectified. At breakfast time we anchored in Falmouth Bay, Tristan da Cunha, where we were promptly besieged, as before, by swarms of curious islanders, who gave us as much attention as though we were a strange ship arrived for the first time. 211 In order that the isolated denizens of this lonely isle should know in future what events progressed in the outer world, Mac and Watts went ashore to erect the mast for the Reverend Rogers’s wireless aerial. I busied myself with shipwork, though the pig hampered me greatly by an insistent determination to thrust her snout into my wash-bucket. Oompah dredged overside and caught a young octopus, surely the ugliest brute on earth, a veritable devil-fish, bright red in colour and with arms full three feet in length—an ugly customer to tackle even then; so what its great-grandfather could have been like is best left to the imagination. We had him crawling lopsidedly about the poop for a time, where he looked like some creature of an evil nightmare; and then, when we’d tired of his ugliness, he was handed over to Mr. Wilkins, who entombed him in a noble jar of methylated spirit. In the afternoon Naisbitt, Oompah and I went ashore, to discover Mac and Watts, more or less assisted by a hundred or so of the islanders, trying, with the aid of tackles, ropes, improvised sheerpoles and Portuguese windlasses and the like, to raise a sixty-foot hollow steel pole into a vertical position. With a patch on a patch and a patch over all, as they say at sea, they promised to be successful. Amid a breathless suspense the structure was elevated—up and up, swaying like a fishing-rod; but at the critical juncture the principal contraption buckled and broke, the islanders flying like chaff before the wind; and as the damage was irreparable, the experts had to content themselves with erecting about two-thirds of the original length and hope for the best, though I doubt if even now the Tristan da Cunha wireless station is functioning to any epoch-making extent; for Mr. Rogers admitted that he had not mastered the Morse code and was ignorant of not a few technical details. 212 We three holiday makers continued on our journey, after suitable jeers at the mechanics, in the direction of the island’s potato patch; but as we failed to discover this historical spot we made the best of it, caught three donkeys and rode triumphantly back to the settlement, named after a nobler city—Edinburgh. John Glass met us, bidding us welcome to his home with tea and pumpkin pie, which were joyously received and rapidly consumed. He is by nature a very fine gentleman, this islander. He entreated me not to be shy. I am rather shy, as a matter of fact, but never until John Glass, himself a shy man, perceived it, did I realize quite how shy. 213 <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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