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The Land of Fire: A Tale of Adventure
Chapter Three.
Portsmouth Mud-Larks
The Hampshire youth sleeps soundly, dreaming of a ship manned by women, with a pretty childlike girl among the crew. But he seems scarcely to have closed his eyes before he is awakened by a clamour of voices, scolding and laughing in jarring contrast. Rubbing his eyes and looking about him, he sees the cause of the strange disturbance, which proceeds from some ragged boys, of the class commonly termed “wharf-rats” or “mud-larks.” Nearly a dozen are gathered together, and it is they who laugh; the angry voices come from others, around whom they have formed a ring and whom they are “badgering.”
Springing upon his feet, he hurries toward the scene of contention, or whatever it may be, not from curiosity, but impelled by a more generous motive – a suspicion that there is foul play going on. For among the mud-larks he recognises one who, early in the day, offered insult to himself, calling him a “country yokel.” Having other fish to fry, he did not at the time resent it; but now he will see.
Arriving at the spot, he sees, what he has already dimly suspected, that the mud-larks’ victims are the three odd individuals who lately stopped in front of him. But it is not they who are most angry; instead, they are giving the “rats” change in kind, returning their “chaff,” and even getting the better of them, so much so that some of their would-be tormentors have quite lost their tempers. One is already furious – a big hulking fellow, their leader and instigator, and the same who had cried, “country yokel.” As it chances, he is afflicted with an impediment of speech, in fact, stutters badly, making all sorts of twitching grimaces in the endeavour to speak correctly. Taking advantage of this, the boy Orundelico – “blackamoor,” as he is being called – has so turned the tables on him by successful mimicry of his speech as to elicit loud laughter from a party of sailors loitering near. This brings on a climax, the incensed bully, finally losing all restraint of himself, making a dash at his diminutive mocker, and felling him to the pavement with a vindictive blow.
“Tit-it-it-take that, ye ugly mim-m–monkey!” is its accompaniment in speech as spiteful as defective.
The girl sends up a shriek, crying out:
“Oh, Eleparu! Orundelico killed! He dead!”
“No, not dead,” answers the boy, instantly on his feet again like a rebounding ball, and apparently but little injured. “He take me foul. Let him try once more. Come on, big brute!”
And the pigmy places himself in a defiant attitude, fronting an adversary nearly twice his own size.
“Stan’ side!” shouts Eleparu, interposing. “Let me go at him!”
“Neither of you!” puts in a new and resolute voice, that of Henry Chester, who, pushing both aside, stands face to face with the aggressor, fists hard shut, and eyes flashing anger. “Now, you ruffian,” he adds, “I’m your man.”
“Wh–wh–who are yi-yi-you? an’ wh–wh–what’s it your bi-bib-business?”
“No matter who I am; but it’s my business to make you repent that cowardly blow. Come on and get your punishment!”
And he advances towards the stammerer, who has shrunk back.
This unlooked-for interference puts an end to the fun-making of the mud-larks, all of whom are now highly incensed, for in their new adversary they recognise a lad of country raising – not a town boy – which of itself challenges their antagonistic instincts.
On these they are about to act, one crying out, “Let’s pitch into the yokel and gie him a good trouncin’!” a second adding, “Hang his imperence!” while a third counsels teaching him “Portsmouth manners.”
Such a lesson he seems likely to receive, and it would probably have fared hardly with our young hero but for the sudden appearance on the scene of another figure – a young fellow in shirt-sleeves and wearing a Panama hat – he of the Calypso.
“Thunder and lightning!” he exclaimed, coming on with a rush. “What’s the rumpus about? Ha! a fisticuff fight, with odds – five to one! Well, Ned Gancy ain’t going to stand by an’ look on at that; he pitches in with the minority.”
And so saying, the young American placed himself in a pugilistic attitude by the side of Henry Chester.
This accession of strength to the assailed party put a different face on the matter, the assailants evidently being cowed, despite their superiority of numbers. They know their newest adversary to be an American, and at sight of the two intrepid-looking youths standing side by side, with the angry faces of Eleparu and Orundelico in the background, they become sullenly silent, most of them evidently inclined to steal away from the ground.
The affair seemed likely thus to end, when, to the surprise of all, Eleparu, hitherto held back by the girl, suddenly released himself and bounded forward, with hands and arms wide open. In another instant he had grasped the big bully in a tiger-like embrace, lifted him off his feet, and dashed him down upon the flags with a violence that threatened the breaking of every bone in his body.
Nor did his implacable little adversary, who seemed possessed of a giant’s strength, appear satisfied with this, for he afterwards sprang on top of him, with a paving-stone in his uplifted hands.
The affair might have terminated tragically had not the uplifted hand been caught by Henry Chester. While he was still holding it, a man came up, who brought the conflict to an abrupt close by seizing Eleparu’s collar, and dragging him off his prostrate foe.
“Ho! what’s this?” demands the newcomer, in a loud authoritative voice. “Why, York! Jemmy! Fuegia! what are you all doing here? You should have stayed on board the steamship, as I told you to do. Go back to her at once.”
By this time the mud-larks have scuttled off, the big one, who had recovered his feet, making after them, and all speedily disappearing. The three gipsy-looking creatures go too, leaving their protectors, Henry Chester and Ned Gancy, to explain things to him who has caused the stampede. He is an officer in uniform, wearing insignia which proclaim him a captain in the Royal Navy; and as he already more than half comprehends the situation, a few words suffice to make it all clear to him, when, thanking the two youths for their generous and courageous interference in behalf of his protégés, as he styles the odd trio whose part they had taken, he bows a courteous farewell, and continues his interrupted walk along the Hard.
“Guess you didn’t get much sleep,” observes the young American, with a knowing smile, to Henry Chester.
“Who told you I was asleep?” replies the latter in some surprise.
“Who? Nobody.”
“How came you to know it, then?”
“How? Wasn’t I up in the maintop, and didn’t I see everything you did? And you behaved particularly well, I must say. But come! Let’s aboard. The captain has come back. He’s my father, and maybe we can find a berth for you on the Calypso. Come along!”
That night Henry Chester eats supper at the Calypso’s cabin table, by invitation of the captain’s son, sleeps on board, and, better still, has his name entered on her books as an apprentice.
And he finds her just the sort of craft he was desirous to go to sea in – a general trader, bound for the Oriental Archipelago and the isles of the Pacific Ocean. To crown all, she has completed her cargo and is ready to put to sea.
Sail she does, early the next day, barely leaving him time to keep that promise, made by the Devil’s Punch Bowl, of writing to his mother.
Chapter Four.
Off the “Furies.”
A ship tempest-tossed, labouring amid the surges of an angry sea; her crew on the alert, doing their utmost to keep her off a lee-shore. And such a shore! None more dangerous on all ocean’s edge; for it is the west coast of Tierra del Fuego, abreast the Fury Isles and that long belt of seething breakers known to mariners as the “Milky Way,” the same of which the great naturalist, Darwin, has said: “One sight of such a coast is enough to make a landsman dream for a week about shipwreck, peril, and death.”
There is no landsman in the ship now exposed to its dangers. All on board are familiar with the sea – have spent years upon it. Yet is there fear in their hearts and pallor on their cheeks, as their eyes turn to that belt of white frothy water between them and the land, trending north and south beyond the range of vision.
Technically speaking, the endangered vessel is not a ship, but a barque, as betokened by the fore-and-aft rig of her mizenmast. Nor is she of large dimensions; only some six or seven hundred tons. But the reader knows this already, or will, after learning her name. As her stern swings up on the billow, there can be read upon it the Calypso; and she is that Calypso in which Henry Chester sailed out of Portsmouth Harbour to make his first acquaintance with a sea life.
Though nearly four years have elapsed since then, he is still on board of her. There stands he by the binnacle. No more a boy, but a young man, and in a garb that bespeaks him of the quarter-deck – not before the mast, for he is now the Calypso’s third officer. And her second is not far-off; he is the generous youth who was the means of getting him the berth. Also grown to manhood, he, too, is aft, lending a hand at the helm, the strength of one man being insufficient to keep it steady in that heavily rolling sea. On the poop-deck is Captain Gancy himself, consulting a small chart, and filled with anxiety as at intervals looking towards the companion-ladder he there sees his wife and daughter, for he knows his vessel to be in danger and his dear ones as well.
A glance at the barque reveals that she has been on a long voyage. Her paint is faded, her sails patched, and there is rust along the chains and around the hawse-holes. She might be mistaken for a whaler coming off a four years’ cruise. And nearly that length of time has she been cruising, but not after whales. Her cargo, a full one, consists of sandal-wood, spices, tortoise-shell, mother-of-pearl, and real pearls also – in short, a miscellaneous assortment of the commodities obtained by traffic in the islands and around the coasts of the great South Sea.
Her last call has been at Honolulu Harbour in the Sandwich Isles, and she is now homeward-bound for New York around the Horn. A succession of westerly winds, or rather continuation of them, has forced her too far on to the Fuegian coast, too near the Furies; and now tossed about on a billowy sea, with the breakers of the Milky Way in sight to leeward, no wonder that her crew are apprehensive for their safety.
Still, perilous as their situation, they might not so much regard it were the Calypso sound and in sailing trim. Unfortunately she is far from this, having a damaged rudder, and with both courses torn to shreds. She is lying-to under storm fore-staysail and close-reefed try-sails, wearing at intervals, whenever it can be done with advantage, to keep her away from those “white horses” a-lee. But even under the diminished spread of canvas the barque is distressed beyond what she can bear, and Captain Gancy is about to order a further reduction of canvas, when, looking westward – in which direction he has been all along anxiously on the watch – he sees what sends a shiver through his frame: three huge rollers, whose height and steepness tell him the Calypso is about to be tried to the very utmost of her strength. Good sea-boat though he knows her to be, he knows also that a crisis is near. There is but time for him to utter a warning shout ere the first roller comes surging upon them. By a lucky chance the barque, having good steerage-way, meets and rises over it unharmed. But her way being now checked, the second roller deadens it completely, and she is thrown off the wind. The third then taking her right abeam, she careens over so far that the whole of her lee-bulwark, from cat-head to stern-davit, is ducked under water.
It is a moment of doubt, with fear appalling – almost despair. Struck by another sea, she would surely go under; but, luckily, the third is the last of the series, and she rights herself, rolling back again like an empty cask. Then, as a steed shaking his mane after a shower, she throws the briny water off, through hawse-holes and scuppers, till her decks are clear again.
A cry of relief ascends from the crew, instinctive and simultaneous. Nor does the loss of her lee-quarter boat, dipped under and torn from the davits, hinder them from adding a triumphant hurrah, the skipper himself waving his wet tarpaulin and crying aloud:
“Well done, old Calypso! Boys, we may thank our stars for being on board such a seaworthy craft!”
Alas! both the feeling of triumph and security are short-lived, ending almost on the instant. Scarce has the joyous hurrah ceased reverberating along her decks, when a voice is heard calling out, in a tone very different:
“The ship’s sprung a leak! – and a big one too! The water’s coming into her like a sluice!”
There is a rush for the fore hatchway, whence the words of alarm proceed, the main one being battened down and covered with tarpaulin. Then a hurried descent to the “’tween-decks” and an anxious peering into the hold below. True – too true! It is already half full of water, which seems mounting higher and by inches to the minute! So fancy the more frightened ones!
“Though bad enuf, ’tain’t altogether so bad’s that,” pronounced Seagriff the carpenter, after a brief inspection. “There’s a hole in the bottom for sartin’; but mebbe we kin beat it by pumpin’.”
Thus encouraged, the captain bounds back on deck, calling out, “All hands to the pumps!”
There is no need to say that. All take hold and work them with a will: it is as if every one were working for his own life.
A struggle succeeds, triangular and unequal, being as two to one. For the storm still rages, needing helm and sails to be looked after, while the inflow must be kept under in the hold. A terrible conflict it is, between man’s strength and the elements, but short, and alas! to end in the defeat of the former.
The Calypso is water-logged, will no longer obey her helm, and must surely sink.
At length, convinced of this, Captain Gancy calls out, “Boys, it’s no use trying to keep her afloat. Drop the pumps, and let us take to the boats.”
But taking to the boats is neither an easy nor hopeful alternative, seeming little better than that of a drowning man catching at straws. Still, though desperate, it is their only chance, and with not a moment to be wasted in irresolution. Luckily the Calypso’s crew is a well-disciplined one, every hand on board having served in her for years. The only two boats left them – the gig and pinnace – are therefore let down to the water, without damage to either, and, by like dexterous management, everybody got safely into them. It is a quick embarkation, however – so hurried, indeed, that few effects can be taken along, only those that chance to be readiest to hand. Another moment’s delay might have cost them their lives, for scarce have they taken their seats and pushed the boats clear of the ship’s side, when, another sea striking her, she goes down head foremost like a lump of lead, carrying masts, spars, torn sails, and rigging – everything – along with her.
Captain Gancy groans at the sight. “My fine barque gone to the bottom of the sea, cargo and all – the gatherings of years. Hard, cruel luck!”
Mingling with his words of sorrow are cries that seem cruel too: the screams of seabirds, gannets, gulls, and the wide-winged albatross, that have been long hovering above the Calypso, as if knowing her to be doomed, and hoping to find a feast among the floating remnants of the wreck.
Chapter Five.
The Castaways
Not long does Captain Gancy lament the loss of his fine vessel and valuable cargo. In the face and fear of a far greater loss – his own life and the lives of his companions there is no time for vain regrets. The storm is still in full fury; the winds and the waves are as high as ever, and their boat is threatened with the fate of the barque.
The bulk of the Calypso’s crew, with Lyons, the chief mate, have taken to the pinnace; and the skipper is in his own gig, with his wife, daughter, son, young Chester, and two others – Seagriff, the carpenter, and the cook, a negro. In all only seven persons, but enough to bring the gunwale of the little craft dangerously near the water’s edge. The captain himself is in the stern-sheets, tiller-lines in hand. Mrs Gancy and her daughter crouch beside him, while the others are at the oars, in which occupation Ned and Chester occasionally pause to bale out, as showers of spray keep breaking over the boat, threatening to swamp it.
What point shall they steer for? This is a question that no one asks, nor thinks of asking as yet. Course and direction are as nothing now; all their energies are bent on keeping the boat above water. However, they naturally endeavour to remain in the company of the pinnace. But those in the larger craft, like themselves, are engaged in a life-and-death conflict with the sea, and both must fight it out in their own way, neither being able to give aid to the other. So, despite their efforts to keep near each other, the winds and waves soon separate them, and they only can catch glimpses of each other when buoyed up on the crest of a billow. When the night comes on – a night of dungeon darkness – they see each other no more.
But, dark as it is, there is still visible that which they have been long regarding with dread – the breakers known as the “Milky Way.” Snow-white during the day, these terrible rock-tortured billows now gleam like a belt of liquid fire, the breakers at every crest seeming to break into veritable flames. Well for the castaways that this is the case; else how, in such obscurity, could the dangerous lee-shore be shunned? To keep off that is, for the time, the chief care of those in the gig; and all their energies are exerted in holding their craft well to windward.
By good fortune the approach of night has brought about a shifting of the wind, which has veered around to the west-north-west, making it possible for them to “scud,” without nearer approach to the dreaded fire-like line. In their cockleshell of a boat, they know that to run before the wind is their safest plan, and so they speed on south-eastward. An ocean current setting from the north-west also helps them in this course.
Thus doubly driven, they make rapid progress, and before midnight the Milky Way is behind them and out of sight. But, though they breathe more freely, they are by no means out of danger – alone in a frail skiff on the still turbulent ocean, and groping in thick darkness, with neither moon nor star to guide them. They have no compass, that having been forgotten in their scramble out of the sinking ship. But even if they had one it would be of little assistance to them at present, as, for the time being, they have enough to do in keeping the boat baled out and above water.
At break of day matters look a little better. The storm has somewhat abated, and there is land in sight to leeward, with no visible breakers between. Still, they have a heavy swell to contend with, and an ugly cross sea.
But land to a castaway! His first thought and most anxious desire is to set foot on it. So in the case of our shipwrecked party: risking all reefs and surfs, they at once set the gig’s head shoreward.
Closing in upon the land, they perceive a high promontory on the port bow, and another on the starboard, separated by a wide reach of open water; and about half-way between these promontories and somewhat farther out lies what appears to be an island. Taking it for one, Seagriff counsels putting in there instead of running on for the more distant mainland, though that is not his real reason.
“But why should we put in upon the island?” asks the skipper. “Wouldn’t it be much better to keep on to the main?”
“No, Captain; there’s a reason agin it, the which I’ll make known to you as soon as we get safe ashore.”
Captain Gancy is aware that the late Calypso’s carpenter was for a long time a sealer, and in this capacity had spent more than one season in the sounds and channels of Tierra del Fuego. He knows also that the old sailor can be trusted, and so, without pressing for further explanation, he steers straight for the island.
When about half a mile from its shore, they come upon a bed of kelp2, growing so close and thick as to bar their farther advance. Were they still on board the barque, the weed would be given a wide berth, as giving warning of rocks underneath; but in the light-draught gig they have no fear of these, and with the swell still tossing them about, they might be even glad to get in among the kelp – certainly there would be but that between it and the shore. They can descry waveless water, seemingly as tranquil as a pond.
Luckily the weed-bed is not continuous, but traversed by an irregular sort of break, through which it seems practicable to make way. Into this the gig is directed, and pulled through with vigorous strokes. Five minutes afterward her keel grates upon a beach, against which, despite the tumbling swell outside, there is scarce so much as a ripple. There is no better breakwater than a bed of kelp.
The island proves to be a small one – less than a mile in diameter – rising in the centre to a rounded summit, three hundred feet above sea-level.
It is treeless, though in part overgrown with a rank vegetation, chiefly tussac-grass3, with its grand bunches of leaves, six feet in height, surrounded by plume-like flower-spikes, almost as much higher.
Little regard, however, do the castaways pay to the isle or its productions. After being so long tossed about on rough seas, in momentary peril of their lives, and eating scarcely a mouthful of food the while, they are now suffering from the pangs of hunger. On the water this was the last thing to be thought of; on land it is the first; so as soon as the boat is brought to her moorings, and they have set foot on shore, the services of Caesar the cook are called into requisition.
As yet they scarcely know what provisions they have with them, so confusedly were things flung into the gig. An examination of their stock proves that it is scant indeed: a barrel of biscuits, a ham, some corned beef, a small bag of coffee in the berry, a canister of tea, and a loaf of lump sugar, were all they had brought with them. The condition of these articles, too, is most disheartening. Much of the biscuit seems a mass of briny pulp; the beef is pickled for the second time (on this occasion with sea-water); the sugar is more than half melted; and the tea spoiled outright, from the canister not having been water-tight. The ham and coffee have received least damage; yet both will require a cleansing operation to make them fit for food.
Fortunately, some culinary utensils are found in the boat the most useful of them being a frying-pan, kettle, and coffeepot. And now for a fire! – ah, the fire!
Up to this moment no one has thought of a fire; but now needing it, they are met with the difficulty, if not impossibility, of making one. The mere work of kindling it were an easy enough task, the late occupant of the Calypso’s caboose being provided with flint, steel, and tinder. So, too, is Seagriff, who, an inveterate smoker, is never without igniting apparatus, carried in a pocket of his pilot-coat. But where are they to find firewood? There is none on the islet – not a stick, as no trees grow there; while the tussac and other plants are soaking wet, the very ground being a sodden spongy peat.
A damper as well as a disappointment this, and Captain Gancy turns to Seagriff and remarks, with some vexation, “Chips, (All ship-carpenters are called ‘Chips.’) I think ’t would have been better if we’d kept on to the main. There’s timber enough there, on either side,” he adds, after a look through his binocular. “The hills appear to be thickly-wooded half-way up on the land both north and south of us.”
His words are manifestly intended as a reflection upon the judgment of the quondam seal-hunter, who rejoins shortly, “It would have been a deal worse, sir. Ay, worse nor if we should have to eat our vittels raw.”
“I don’t comprehend you,” said the skipper: “you spoke of a reason for our not making the mainland. What is it?”
“Wal, Captain, there is a reason, as I said, an’ a good one. I didn’t like to tell you, wi’ the others listenin’.” He nods toward the rest of the party, who are out of earshot, and then continues, “’Specially the women folks, as ’tain’t a thing they ought to be told about.”
“Do you fear some danger?” queries the skipper, in a tone of apprehension.
“Jest that; an’ bad kind o’ danger. As fur’s I kin see, we’ve drifted onto a part of the Feweegin coast where the Ailikoleeps live; the which air the worst and cruellest o’ savages – some of ’em rank cannyballs! It isn’t but five or six years since they murdered, and what’s more, eat sev’ral men of a sealin’ vessel that was wrecked somewhere about here. For killin’ ’em, mebbe they might have had reason, seein’ as there had been blame on both sides, an’ some whites have behaved no better than the savages. But jest fur that, we, as are innocent, may hev to pay fur the misdeeds o’ the guilty! Now, Captain, you perceive the wharfor o’ my not wantin’ you to land over yonder. Ef we went now, like as not we’d have a crowd o’ the ugly critters yellin’ around us, hungering for our flesh.”
“But, if that’s so,” queried the captain, “shall we be any safer here?”
“Yes, we’re safe enough here – ’s long as the wind’s blowin’ as ’tis now, an’ I guess it allers does blow that way, round this speck of an island. It must be all o’ five mile to that land either side, an’ in their rickety canoes the Feweegins never venture fur out in anythin’ o’ a rough sea. I calculate, Captain, we needn’t trouble ourselves much about ’em – leastways, not jest yet.”
“Ay – but afterward?” murmurs Captain Gancy, in a desponding tone, as his eyes turn upon those by the boat.
“Wal, sir,” says the old sealer, encouragingly, “the arterwards ’ll have to take care o’ itself. An’ now I guess I’d better determine ef thar ain’t some way o’ helpin’ Caesar to a spark o’ fire. Don’t look like it, but looks are sometimes deceivin’.”
And, so saying, he strolls off among the bunches of tussac-grass, and is soon out of sight.
But it is not long before he is again making himself heard, by an exclamation, telling of some discovery – a joyful one, as evinced by the tone of his voice. The two youths hasten to his side, and find him bending over a small heath-like bush, from which he has torn a handful of branches.
“What is it, Chips?” ask both in a breath.
“The gum plant, sure,” he replies.
“Well, what then? What’s the good of it?” they further interrogate. “You don’t suppose that green thing will burn – wet as a fish, too?”
“That’s jest what I do suppose,” replied the old sailor, deliberately. “You young ones wait, an’ you’ll see. Mebbe you’ll lend a hand, an’ help me to gather some of it. We want armfuls; an’ there’s plenty o’ the plants growin’ all about, you see.”
They do see, and at once begin tearing at them, breaking off the branches of some, and plucking up others by the roots, till Seagriff cries, “Enough!” Then, with arms full, they return to the beach in high spirits and with joyful faces.
Arrived there, Seagriff selects some of the finest twigs, which he rubs between his hands till they are reduced to a fine fibre and nearly dry. Rolling these into a rounded shape, resembling a bird’s nest, click! goes his flint and steel – a piece of “punk” is ignited and slipped into the heart of the ball. This, held on high, and kept whirling around his head, is soon ablaze, when it is thrust in among the gathered heap of green plants. Green and wet as these are, they at once catch fire and flame up like kindling-wood.
All are astonished and pleased, and not the least delighted is Caesar, who dances over the ground in high glee as he prepares to resume his vocation.
