Dire sight it is to see some silken beast long dally with a golden
lizard ere she devour. More terrible, to see how feline Fate will
sometimes dally with a human soul, and by a nameless magic make it
repulse a sane despair with a hope which is but mad. Unwittingly I imp
this cat-like thing, sporting with the heart of him who reads; for if
he feel not he reads in vain.
—“The ship sails this day, to-day,” at last said Hunilla to herself;
“this gives me certain time to stand on; without certainty I go mad. In
loose ignorance I have hoped and hoped; now in firm knowledge I will
but wait. Now I live and no longer perish in bewilderings. Holy Virgin,
aid me! Thou wilt waft back the ship. Oh, past length of weary
weeks—all to be dragged over—to buy the certainty of to-day, I freely
give ye, though I tear ye from me!”
As mariners, tost in tempest on some desolate ledge, patch them a boat
out of the remnants of their vessel’s wreck, and launch it in the
self-same waves, see here Hunilla, this lone shipwrecked soul, out of
treachery invoking trust. Humanity, thou strong thing, I worship thee,
not in the laureled victor, but in this vanquished one.
Truly Hunilla leaned upon a reed, a real one; no metaphor; a real
Eastern reed. A piece of hollow cane, drifted from unknown isles, and
found upon the beach, its once jagged ends rubbed smoothly even as by
sand-paper; its golden glazing gone. Long ground between the sea and
land, upper and nether stone, the unvarnished substance was filed bare,
and wore another polish now, one with itself, the polish of its agony.
Circular lines at intervals cut all round this surface, divided it into
six panels of unequal length. In the first were scored the days, each
tenth one marked by a longer and deeper notch; the second was scored
for the number of sea-fowl eggs for sustenance, picked out from the
rocky nests; the third, how many fish had been caught from the shore;
the fourth, how many small tortoises found inland; the fifth, how many
days of sun; the sixth, of clouds; which last, of the two, was the
greater one. Long night of busy numbering, misery’s mathematics, to
weary her too-wakeful soul to sleep; yet sleep for that was none.
The panel of the days was deeply worn—the long tenth notches half
effaced, as alphabets of the blind. Ten thousand times the longing
widow had traced her finger over the bamboo—dull flute, which played,
on, gave no sound—as if counting birds flown by in air would hasten
tortoises creeping through the woods.
After the one hundred and eightieth day no further mark was seen; that
last one was the faintest, as the first the deepest.
“There were more days,” said our Captain; “many, many more; why did you
not go on and notch them, too, Hunilla?”
“Señor, ask me not.”
“And meantime, did no other vessel pass the isle?”
“Nay, Señor;—but—”
“You do not speak; but _what_, Hunilla?”
“Ask me not, Señor.”
“You saw ships pass, far away; you waved to them; they passed on;—was
that it, Hunilla?”
“Señor, be it as you say.”
Braced against her woe, Hunilla would not, durst not trust the weakness
of her tongue. Then when our Captain asked whether any whale-boats had—
But no, I will not file this thing complete for scoffing souls to
quote, and call it firm proof upon their side. The half shall here
remain untold. Those two unnamed events which befell Hunilla on this
isle, let them abide between her and her God. In nature, as in law, it
may be libelous to speak some truths.
Still, how it was that, although our vessel had lain three days
anchored nigh the isle, its one human tenant should not have discovered
us till just upon the point of sailing, never to revisit so lone and
far a spot, this needs explaining ere the sequel come.
The place where the French captain had landed the little party was on
the further and opposite end of the isle. There, too, it was that they
had afterwards built their hut. Nor did the widow in her solitude
desert the spot where her loved ones had dwelt with her, and where the
dearest of the twain now slept his last long sleep, and all her plaints
awaked him not, and he of husbands the most faithful during life.
Now, high, broken land rises between the opposite extremities of the
isle. A ship anchored at one side is invisible from the other. Neither
is the isle so small, but a considerable company might wander for days
through the wilderness of one side, and never be seen, or their halloos
heard, by any stranger holding aloof on the other. Hence Hunilla, who
naturally associated the possible coming of ships with her own part of
the isle, might to the end have remained quite ignorant of the presence
of our vessel, were it not for a mysterious presentiment, borne to her,
so our mariners averred, by this isle’s enchanted air. Nor did the
widow’s answer undo the thought.
“How did you come to cross the isle this morning, then, Hunilla?” said
our Captain.
“Señor, something came flitting by me. It touched my cheek, my heart,
Señor.”
“What do you say, Hunilla?”
“I have said, Señor, something came through the air.”
It was a narrow chance. For when in crossing the isle Hunilla gained
the high land in the centre, she must then for the first have perceived
our masts, and also marked that their sails were being loosed, perhaps
even heard the echoing chorus of the windlass song. The strange ship
was about to sail, and she behind. With all haste she now descends the
height on the hither side, but soon loses sight of the ship among the
sunken jungles at the mountain’s base. She struggles on through the
withered branches, which seek at every step to bar her path, till she
comes to the isolated rock, still some way from the water. This she
climbs, to reassure herself. The ship is still in plainest sight. But
now, worn out with over tension, Hunilla all but faints; she fears to
step down from her giddy perch; she is fain to pause, there where she
is, and as a last resort catches the turban from her head, unfurls and
waves it over the jungles towards us.
During the telling of her story the mariners formed a voiceless circle
round Hunilla and the Captain; and when at length the word was given to
man the fastest boat, and pull round to the isle’s thither side, to
bring away Hunilla’s chest and the tortoise-oil, such alacrity of both
cheery and sad obedience seldom before was seen. Little ado was made.
Already the anchor had been recommitted to the bottom, and the ship
swung calmly to it.
But Hunilla insisted upon accompanying the boat as indispensable pilot
to her hidden hut. So being refreshed with the best the steward could
supply, she started with us. Nor did ever any wife of the most famous
admiral, in her husband’s barge, receive more silent reverence of
respect than poor Hunilla from this boat’s crew.
Rounding many a vitreous cape and bluff, in two hours’ time we shot
inside the fatal reef; wound into a secret cove, looked up along a
green many-gabled lava wall, and saw the island’s solitary dwelling.
It hung upon an impending cliff, sheltered on two sides by tangled
thickets, and half-screened from view in front by juttings of the rude
stairway, which climbed the precipice from the sea. Built of canes, it
was thatched with long, mildewed grass. It seemed an abandoned
hay-rick, whose haymakers were now no more. The roof inclined but one
way; the eaves coming to within two feet of the ground. And here was a
simple apparatus to collect the dews, or rather doubly-distilled and
finest winnowed rains, which, in mercy or in mockery, the night-skies
sometimes drop upon these blighted Encantadas. All along beneath the
eaves, a spotted sheet, quite weather-stained, was spread, pinned to
short, upright stakes, set in the shallow sand. A small clinker, thrown
into the cloth, weighed its middle down, thereby straining all moisture
into a calabash placed below. This vessel supplied each drop of water
ever drunk upon the isle by the Cholos. Hunilla told us the calabash,
would sometimes, but not often, be half filled overnight. It held six
quarts, perhaps. “But,” said she, “we were used to thirst. At sandy
Payta, where I live, no shower from heaven ever fell; all the water
there is brought on mules from the inland vales.”
Tied among the thickets were some twenty moaning tortoises, supplying
Hunilla’s lonely larder; while hundreds of vast tableted black
bucklers, like displaced, shattered tomb-stones of dark slate, were
also scattered round. These were the skeleton backs of those great
tortoises from which Felipe and Truxill had made their precious oil.
Several large calabashes and two goodly kegs were filled with it. In a
pot near by were the caked crusts of a quantity which had been
permitted to evaporate. “They meant to have strained it off next day,”
said Hunilla, as she turned aside.
I forgot to mention the most singular sight of all, though the first
that greeted us after landing.
Some ten small, soft-haired, ringleted dogs, of a beautiful breed,
peculiar to Peru, set up a concert of glad welcomings when we gained
the beach, which was responded to by Hunilla. Some of these dogs had,
since her widowhood, been born upon the isle, the progeny of the two
brought from Payta. Owing to the jagged steeps and pitfalls, tortuous
thickets, sunken clefts and perilous intricacies of all sorts in the
interior, Hunilla, admonished by the loss of one favorite among them,
never allowed these delicate creatures to follow her in her occasional
birds’-nests climbs and other wanderings; so that, through long
habituation, they offered not to follow, when that morning she crossed
the land, and her own soul was then too full of other things to heed
their lingering behind. Yet, all along she had so clung to them, that,
besides what moisture they lapped up at early daybreak from the small
scoop-holes among the adjacent rocks, she had shared the dew of her
calabash among them; never laying by any considerable store against
those prolonged and utter droughts which, in some disastrous seasons,
warp these isles.
Having pointed out, at our desire, what few things she would like
transported to the ship—her chest, the oil, not omitting the live
tortoises which she intended for a grateful present to our Captain—we
immediately set to work, carrying them to the boat down the long,
sloping stair of deeply-shadowed rock. While my comrades were thus
employed, I looked and Hunilla had disappeared.
It was not curiosity alone, but, it seems to me, something different
mingled with it, which prompted me to drop my tortoise, and once more
gaze slowly around. I remembered the husband buried by Hunilla’s hands.
A narrow pathway led into a dense part of the thickets. Following it
through many mazes, I came out upon a small, round, open space, deeply
chambered there.
The mound rose in the middle; a bare heap of finest sand, like that
unverdured heap found at the bottom of an hour-glass run out. At its
head stood the cross of withered sticks; the dry, peeled bark still
fraying from it; its transverse limb tied up with rope, and forlornly
adroop in the silent air.
Hunilla was partly prostrate upon the grave; her dark head bowed, and
lost in her long, loosened Indian hair; her hands extended to the
cross-foot, with a little brass crucifix clasped between; a crucifix
worn featureless, like an ancient graven knocker long plied in vain.
She did not see me, and I made no noise, but slid aside, and left the
spot.
A few moments ere all was ready for our going, she reappeared among us.
I looked into her eyes, but saw no tear. There was something which
seemed strangely haughty in her air, and yet it was the air of woe. A
Spanish and an Indian grief, which would not visibly lament. Pride’s
height in vain abased to proneness on the rack; nature’s pride subduing
nature’s torture.
Like pages the small and silken dogs surrounded her, as she slowly
descended towards the beach. She caught the two most eager creatures in
her arms:—“Mia Teeta! Mia Tomoteeta!” and fondling them, inquired how
many could we take on board.
The mate commanded the boat’s crew; not a hard-hearted man, but his way
of life had been such that in most things, even in the smallest, simple
utility was his leading motive.
“We cannot take them all, Hunilla; our supplies are short; the winds
are unreliable; we may be a good many days going to Tombez. So take
those you have, Hunilla; but no more.”
She was in the boat; the oarsmen, too, were seated; all save one, who
stood ready to push off and then spring himself. With the sagacity of
their race, the dogs now seemed aware that they were in the very
instant of being deserted upon a barren strand. The gunwales of the
boat were high; its prow—presented inland—was lifted; so owing to the
water, which they seemed instinctively to shun, the dogs could not well
leap into the little craft. But their busy paws hard scraped the prow,
as it had been some farmer’s door shutting them out from shelter in a
winter storm. A clamorous agony of alarm. They did not howl, or whine;
they all but spoke.
“Push off! Give way!” cried the mate. The boat gave one heavy drag and
lurch, and next moment shot swiftly from the beach, turned on her heel,
and sped. The dogs ran howling along the water’s marge; now pausing to
gaze at the flying boat, then motioning as if to leap in chase, but
mysteriously withheld themselves; and again ran howling along the
beach. Had they been human beings, hardly would they have more vividly
inspired the sense of desolation. The oars were plied as confederate
feathers of two wings. No one spoke. I looked back upon the beach, and
then upon Hunilla, but her face was set in a stern dusky calm. The dogs
crouching in her lap vainly licked her rigid hands. She never looked
behind her: but sat motionless, till we turned a promontory of the
coast and lost all sights and sounds astern. She seemed as one who,
having experienced the sharpest of mortal pangs, was henceforth content
to have all lesser heartstrings riven, one by one. To Hunilla, pain
seemed so necessary, that pain in other beings, though by love and
sympathy made her own, was unrepiningly to be borne. A heart of
yearning in a frame of steel. A heart of earthly yearning, frozen by
the frost which falleth from the sky.
The sequel is soon told. After a long passage, vexed by calms and
baffling winds, we made the little port of Tombez in Peru, there to
recruit the ship. Payta was not very distant. Our captain sold the
tortoise oil to a Tombez merchant; and adding to the silver a
contribution from all hands, gave it to our silent passenger, who knew
not what the mariners had done.
The last seen of lone Hunilla she was passing into Payta town, riding
upon a small gray ass; and before her on the ass’s shoulders, she eyed
the jointed workings of the beast’s armorial cross.
SKETCH NINTH.
HOOD’S ISLE AND THE HERMIT OBERLUS.
“That darkesome glen they enter, where they find
That cursed man low sitting on the ground,
Musing full sadly in his sullein mind;
His griesly lockes long gronen and unbound,
Disordered hong about his shoulders round,
And hid his face, through which his hollow eyne
Lookt deadly dull, and stared as astound;
His raw-bone cheekes, through penurie and pine,
Were shronke into the jawes, as he did never dine.
His garments nought but many ragged clouts,
With thornes together pind and patched reads,
The which his naked sides he wrapt abouts.”
Southeast of Crossman’s Isle lies Hood’s Isle, or McCain’s Beclouded
Isle; and upon its south side is a vitreous cove with a wide strand of
dark pounded black lava, called Black Beach, or Oberlus’s Landing. It
might fitly have been styled Charon’s.
It received its name from a wild white creature who spent many years
here; in the person of a European bringing into this savage region
qualities more diabolical than are to be found among any of the
surrounding cannibals.
About half a century ago, Oberlus deserted at the above-named island,
then, as now, a solitude. He built himself a den of lava and clinkers,
about a mile from the Landing, subsequently called after him, in a
vale, or expanded gulch, containing here and there among the rocks
about two acres of soil capable of rude cultivation; the only place on
the isle not too blasted for that purpose. Here he succeeded in raising
a sort of degenerate potatoes and pumpkins, which from time to time he
exchanged with needy whalemen passing, for spirits or dollars.
His appearance, from all accounts, was that of the victim of some
malignant sorceress; he seemed to have drunk of Circe’s cup;
beast-like; rags insufficient to hide his nakedness; his befreckled
skin blistered by continual exposure to the sun; nose flat; countenance
contorted, heavy, earthy; hair and beard unshorn, profuse, and of fiery
red. He struck strangers much as if he were a volcanic creature thrown
up by the same convulsion which exploded into sight the isle. All
bepatched and coiled asleep in his lonely lava den among the mountains,
he looked, they say, as a heaped drift of withered leaves, torn from
autumn trees, and so left in some hidden nook by the whirling halt for
an instant of a fierce night-wind, which then ruthlessly sweeps on,
somewhere else to repeat the capricious act. It is also reported to
have been the strangest sight, this same Oberlus, of a sultry, cloudy
morning, hidden under his shocking old black tarpaulin hat, hoeing
potatoes among the lava. So warped and crooked was his strange nature,
that the very handle of his hoe seemed gradually to have shrunk and
twisted in his grasp, being a wretched bent stick, elbowed more like a
savage’s war-sickle than a civilized hoe-handle. It was his mysterious
custom upon a first encounter with a stranger ever to present his back;
possibly, because that was his better side, since it revealed the
least. If the encounter chanced in his garden, as it sometimes did—the
new-landed strangers going from the sea-side straight through the
gorge, to hunt up the queer green-grocer reported doing business
here—Oberlus for a time hoed on, unmindful of all greeting, jovial or
bland; as the curious stranger would turn to face him, the recluse, hoe
in hand, as diligently would avert himself; bowed over, and sullenly
revolving round his murphy hill. Thus far for hoeing. When planting,
his whole aspect and all his gestures were so malevolently and
uselessly sinister and secret, that he seemed rather in act of dropping
poison into wells than potatoes into soil. But among his lesser and
more harmless marvels was an idea he ever had, that his visitors came
equally as well led by longings to behold the mighty hermit Oberlus in
his royal state of solitude, as simply, to obtain potatoes, or find
whatever company might be upon a barren isle. It seems incredible that
such a being should possess such vanity; a misanthrope be conceited;
but he really had his notion; and upon the strength of it, often gave
himself amusing airs to captains. But after all, this is somewhat of a
piece with the well-known eccentricity of some convicts, proud of that
very hatefulness which makes them notorious. At other times, another
unaccountable whim would seize him, and he would long dodge advancing
strangers round the clinkered corners of his hut; sometimes like a
stealthy bear, he would slink through the withered thickets up the
mountains, and refuse to see the human face.
Except his occasional visitors from the sea, for a long period, the
only companions of Oberlus were the crawling tortoises; and he seemed
more than degraded to their level, having no desires for a time beyond
theirs, unless it were for the stupor brought on by drunkenness. But
sufficiently debased as he appeared, there yet lurked in him, only
awaiting occasion for discovery, a still further proneness. Indeed, the
sole superiority of Oberlus over the tortoises was his possession of a
larger capacity of degradation; and along with that, something like an
intelligent will to it. Moreover, what is about to be revealed, perhaps
will show, that selfish ambition, or the love of rule for its own sake,
far from being the peculiar infirmity of noble minds, is shared by
beings which have no mind at all. No creatures are so selfishly
tyrannical as some brutes; as any one who has observed the tenants of
the pasture must occasionally have observed.
“This island’s mine by Sycorax my mother,” said Oberlus to himself,
glaring round upon his haggard solitude. By some means, barter or
theft—for in those days ships at intervals still kept touching at his
Landing—he obtained an old musket, with a few charges of powder and
ball. Possessed of arms, he was stimulated to enterprise, as a tiger
that first feels the coming of its claws. The long habit of sole
dominion over every object round him, his almost unbroken solitude, his
never encountering humanity except on terms of misanthropic
independence, or mercantile craftiness, and even such encounters being
comparatively but rare; all this must have gradually nourished in him a
vast idea of his own importance, together with a pure animal sort of
scorn for all the rest of the universe.
The unfortunate Creole, who enjoyed his brief term of royalty at
Charles’s Isle was perhaps in some degree influenced by not unworthy
motives; such as prompt other adventurous spirits to lead colonists
into distant regions and assume political preeminence over them. His
summary execution of many of his Peruvians is quite pardonable,
considering the desperate characters he had to deal with; while his
offering canine battle to the banded rebels seems under the
circumstances altogether just. But for this King Oberlus and what
shortly follows, no shade of palliation can be given. He acted out of
mere delight in tyranny and cruelty, by virtue of a quality in him
inherited from Sycorax his mother. Armed now with that shocking
blunderbuss, strong in the thought of being master of that horrid isle,
he panted for a chance to prove his potency upon the first specimen of
humanity which should fall unbefriended into his hands.
Nor was he long without it. One day he spied a boat upon the beach,
with one man, a negro, standing by it. Some distance off was a ship,
and Oberlus immediately knew how matters stood. The vessel had put in
for wood, and the boat’s crew had gone into the thickets for it. From a
convenient spot he kept watch of the boat, till presently a straggling
company appeared loaded with billets. Throwing these on the beach, they
again went into the thickets, while the negro proceeded to load the
boat.
Oberlus now makes all haste and accosts the negro, who, aghast at
seeing any living being inhabiting such a solitude, and especially so
horrific a one, immediately falls into a panic, not at all lessened by
the ursine suavity of Oberlus, who begs the favor of assisting him in
his labors. The negro stands with several billets on his shoulder, in
act of shouldering others; and Oberlus, with a short cord concealed in
his bosom, kindly proceeds to lift those other billets to their place.
In so doing, he persists in keeping behind the negro, who, rightly
suspicious of this, in vain dodges about to gain the front of Oberlus;
but Oberlus dodges also; till at last, weary of this bootless attempt
at treachery, or fearful of being surprised by the remainder of the
party, Oberlus runs off a little space to a bush, and fetching his
blunderbuss, savagely commands the negro to desist work and follow him.
He refuses. Whereupon, presenting his piece, Oberlus snaps at him.
Luckily the blunderbuss misses fire; but by this time, frightened out
of his wits, the negro, upon a second intrepid summons, drops his
billets, surrenders at discretion, and follows on. By a narrow defile
familiar to him, Oberlus speedily removes out of sight of the water.
On their way up the mountains, he exultingly informs the negro, that
henceforth he is to work for him, and be his slave, and that his
treatment would entirely depend on his future conduct. But Oberlus,
deceived by the first impulsive cowardice of the black, in an evil
moment slackens his vigilance. Passing through a narrow way, and
perceiving his leader quite off his guard, the negro, a powerful
fellow, suddenly grasps him in his arms, throws him down, wrests his
musketoon from him, ties his hands with the monster’s own cord,
shoulders him, and returns with him down to the boat. When the rest of
the party arrive, Oberlus is carried on board the ship. This proved an
Englishman, and a smuggler; a sort of craft not apt to be
over-charitable. Oberlus is severely whipped, then handcuffed, taken
ashore, and compelled to make known his habitation and produce his
property. His potatoes, pumpkins, and tortoises, with a pile of dollars
he had hoarded from his mercantile operations were secured on the spot.
But while the too vindictive smugglers were busy destroying his hut and
garden, Oberlus makes his escape into the mountains, and conceals
himself there in impenetrable recesses, only known to himself, till the
ship sails, when he ventures back, and by means of an old file which he
sticks into a tree, contrives to free himself from his handcuffs.
Brooding among the ruins of his hut, and the desolate clinkers and
extinct volcanoes of this outcast isle, the insulted misanthrope now
meditates a signal revenge upon humanity, but conceals his purposes.
Vessels still touch the Landing at times; and by-and-by Oberlus is
enabled to supply them with some vegetables.
Warned by his former failure in kidnapping strangers, he now pursues a
quite different plan. When seamen come ashore, he makes up to them like
a free-and-easy comrade, invites them to his hut, and with whatever
affability his red-haired grimness may assume, entreats them to drink
his liquor and be merry. But his guests need little pressing; and so,
soon as rendered insensible, are tied hand and foot, and pitched among
the clinkers, are there concealed till the ship departs, when, finding
themselves entirely dependent upon Oberlus, alarmed at his changed
demeanor, his savage threats, and above all, that shocking blunderbuss,
they willingly enlist under him, becoming his humble slaves, and
Oberlus the most incredible of tyrants. So much so, that two or three
perish beneath his initiating process. He sets the remainder—four of
them—to breaking the caked soil; transporting upon their backs loads of
loamy earth, scooped up in moist clefts among the mountains; keeps them
on the roughest fare; presents his piece at the slightest hint of
insurrection; and in all respects converts them into reptiles at his
feet—plebeian garter-snakes to this Lord Anaconda.
At last, Oberlus contrives to stock his arsenal with four rusty
cutlasses, and an added supply of powder and ball intended for his
blunderbuss. Remitting in good part the labor of his slaves, he now
approves himself a man, or rather devil, of great abilities in the way
of cajoling or coercing others into acquiescence with his own ulterior
designs, however at first abhorrent to them. But indeed, prepared for
almost any eventual evil by their previous lawless life, as a sort of
ranging Cow-Boys of the sea, which had dissolved within them the whole
moral man, so that they were ready to concrete in the first offered
mould of baseness now; rotted down from manhood by their hopeless
misery on the isle; wonted to cringe in all things to their lord,
himself the worst of slaves; these wretches were now become wholly
corrupted to his hands. He used them as creatures of an inferior race;
in short, he gaffles his four animals, and makes murderers of them; out
of cowards fitly manufacturing bravos.
Now, sword or dagger, human arms are but artificial claws and fangs,
tied on like false spurs to the fighting cock. So, we repeat, Oberlus,
czar of the isle, gaffles his four subjects; that is, with intent of
glory, puts four rusty cutlasses into their hands. Like any other
autocrat, he had a noble army now.
It might be thought a servile war would hereupon ensue. Arms in the
hands of trodden slaves? how indiscreet of Emperor Oberlus! Nay, they
had but cutlasses—sad old scythes enough—he a blunderbuss, which by its
blind scatterings of all sorts of boulders, clinkers, and other scoria
would annihilate all four mutineers, like four pigeons at one shot.
Besides, at first he did not sleep in his accustomed hut; every lurid
sunset, for a time, he might have been seen wending his way among the
riven mountains, there to secrete himself till dawn in some sulphurous
pitfall, undiscoverable to his gang; but finding this at last too
troublesome, he now each evening tied his slaves hand and foot, hid the
cutlasses, and thrusting them into his barracks, shut to the door, and
lying down before it, beneath a rude shed lately added, slept out the
night, blunderbuss in hand.
It is supposed that not content with daily parading over a cindery
solitude at the head of his fine army, Oberlus now meditated the most
active mischief; his probable object being to surprise some passing
ship touching at his dominions, massacre the crew, and run away with
her to parts unknown. While these plans were simmering in his head, two
ships touch in company at the isle, on the opposite side to his; when
his designs undergo a sudden change.
The ships are in want of vegetables, which Oberlus promises in great
abundance, provided they send their boats round to his landing, so that
the crews may bring the vegetables from his garden; informing the two
captains, at the same time, that his rascals—slaves and soldiers—had
become so abominably lazy and good-for-nothing of late, that he could
not make them work by ordinary inducements, and did not have the heart
to be severe with them.
The arrangement was agreed to, and the boats were sent and hauled upon
the beach. The crews went to the lava hut; but to their surprise nobody
was there. After waiting till their patience was exhausted, they
returned to the shore, when lo, some stranger—not the Good Samaritan
either—seems to have very recently passed that way. Three of the boats
were broken in a thousand pieces, and the fourth was missing. By hard
toil over the mountains and through the clinkers, some of the strangers
succeeded in returning to that side of the isle where the ships lay,
when fresh boats are sent to the relief of the rest of the hapless
party.
However amazed at the treachery of Oberlus, the two captains, afraid of
new and still more mysterious atrocities—and indeed, half imputing such
strange events to the enchantments associated with these isles—perceive
no security but in instant flight; leaving Oberlus and his army in
quiet possession of the stolen boat.
On the eve of sailing they put a letter in a keg, giving the Pacific
Ocean intelligence of the affair, and moored the keg in the bay. Some
time subsequent, the keg was opened by another captain chancing to
anchor there, but not until after he had dispatched a boat round to
Oberlus’s Landing. As may be readily surmised, he felt no little
inquietude till the boat’s return: when another letter was handed him,
giving Oberlus’s version of the affair. This precious document had been
found pinned half-mildewed to the clinker wall of the sulphurous and
deserted hut. It ran as follows: showing that Oberlus was at least an
accomplished writer, and no mere boor; and what is more, was capable of
the most tristful eloquence.
“Sir: I am the most unfortunate ill-treated gentleman that lives. I am
a patriot, exiled from my country by the cruel hand of tyranny.
“Banished to these Enchanted Isles, I have again and again besought
captains of ships to sell me a boat, but always have been refused,
though I offered the handsomest prices in Mexican dollars. At length an
opportunity presented of possessing myself of one, and I did not let it
slip.
“I have been long endeavoring, by hard labor and much solitary
suffering, to accumulate something to make myself comfortable in a
virtuous though unhappy old age; but at various times have been robbed
and beaten by men professing to be Christians.
“To-day I sail from the Enchanted group in the good boat Charity bound
to the Feejee Isles.
“FATHERLESS OBERLUS.
“_P.S._—Behind the clinkers, nigh the oven, you will find the old fowl.
Do not kill it; be patient; I leave it setting; if it shall have any
chicks, I hereby bequeath them to you, whoever you may be. But don’t
count your chicks before they are hatched.”
The fowl proved a starveling rooster, reduced to a sitting posture by
sheer debility.
Oberlus declares that he was bound to the Feejee Isles; but this was
only to throw pursuers on a false scent. For, after a long time, he
arrived, alone in his open boat, at Guayaquil. As his miscreants were
never again beheld on Hood’s Isle, it is supposed, either that they
perished for want of water on the passage to Guayaquil, or, what is
quite as probable, were thrown overboard by Oberlus, when he found the
water growing scarce.
From Guayaquil Oberlus proceeded to Payta; and there, with that
nameless witchery peculiar to some of the ugliest animals, wound
himself into the affections of a tawny damsel; prevailing upon her to
accompany him back to his Enchanted Isle; which doubtless he painted as
a Paradise of flowers, not a Tartarus of clinkers.
But unfortunately for the colonization of Hood’s Isle with a choice
variety of animated nature, the extraordinary and devilish aspect of
Oberlus made him to be regarded in Payta as a highly suspicious
character. So that being found concealed one night, with matches in his
pocket, under the hull of a small vessel just ready to be launched, he
was seized and thrown into jail.
The jails in most South American towns are generally of the least
wholesome sort. Built of huge cakes of sun-burnt brick, and containing
but one room, without windows or yard, and but one door heavily grated
with wooden bars, they present both within and without the grimmest
aspect. As public edifices they conspicuously stand upon the hot and
dusty Plaza, offering to view, through the gratings, their villainous
and hopeless inmates, burrowing in all sorts of tragic squalor. And
here, for a long time, Oberlus was seen; the central figure of a
mongrel and assassin band; a creature whom it is religion to detest,
since it is philanthropy to hate a misanthrope.
_Note_.—They who may be disposed to question the possibility of the
character above depicted, are referred to the 2d vol. of Porter’s
Voyage into the Pacific, where they will recognize many sentences, for
expedition’s sake derived verbatim from thence, and incorporated here;
the main difference—save a few passing reflections—between the two
accounts being, that the present writer has added to Porter’s facts
accessory ones picked up in the Pacific from reliable sources; and
where facts conflict, has naturally preferred his own authorities to
Porter’s. As, for instance, _his_ authorities place Oberlus on Hood’s
Isle: Porter’s, on Charles’s Isle. The letter found in the hut is also
somewhat different; for while at the Encantadas he was informed that,
not only did it evince a certain clerkliness, but was full of the
strangest satiric effrontery which does not adequately appear in
Porter’s version. I accordingly altered it to suit the general
character of its author.
SKETCH TENTH.
RUNAWAYS, CASTAWAYS, SOLITARIES, GRAVE-STONES, ETC.
“And all about old stocks and stubs of trees,
Whereon nor fruit nor leaf was ever seen,
Did hang upon ragged knotty knees,
On which had many wretches hanged been.”
Some relics of the hut of Oberlus partially remain to this day at the
head of the clinkered valley. Nor does the stranger, wandering among
other of the Enchanted Isles, fail to stumble upon still other solitary
abodes, long abandoned to the tortoise and the lizard. Probably few
parts of earth have, in modern times, sheltered so many solitaries. The
reason is, that these isles are situated in a distant sea, and the
vessels which occasionally visit them are mostly all whalers, or ships
bound on dreary and protracted voyages, exempting them in a good degree
from both the oversight and the memory of human law. Such is the
character of some commanders and some seamen, that under these untoward
circumstances, it is quite impossible but that scenes of unpleasantness
and discord should occur between them. A sullen hatred of the tyrannic
ship will seize the sailor, and he gladly exchanges it for isles,
which, though blighted as by a continual sirocco and burning breeze,
still offer him, in their labyrinthine interior, a retreat beyond the
possibility of capture. To flee the ship in any Peruvian or Chilian
port, even the smallest and most rustical, is not unattended with great
risk of apprehension, not to speak of jaguars. A reward of five pesos
sends fifty dastardly Spaniards into the wood, who, with long knives,
scour them day and night in eager hopes of securing their prey. Neither
is it, in general, much easier to escape pursuit at the isles of
Polynesia. Those of them which have felt a civilizing influence present
the same difficulty to the runaway with the Peruvian ports, the
advanced natives being quite as mercenary and keen of knife and scent
as the retrograde Spaniards; while, owing to the bad odor in which all
Europeans lie, in the minds of aboriginal savages who have chanced to
hear aught of them, to desert the ship among primitive Polynesians, is,
in most cases, a hope not unforlorn. Hence the Enchanted Isles become
the voluntary tarrying places of all sorts of refugees; some of whom
too sadly experience the fact, that flight from tyranny does not of
itself insure a safe asylum, far less a happy home.
Moreover, it has not seldom happened that hermits have been made upon
the isles by the accidents incident to tortoise-hunting. The interior
of most of them is tangled and difficult of passage beyond description;
the air is sultry and stifling; an intolerable thirst is provoked, for
which no running stream offers its kind relief. In a few hours, under
an equatorial sun, reduced by these causes to entire exhaustion, woe
betide the straggler at the Enchanted Isles! Their extent is such as to
forbid an adequate search, unless weeks are devoted to it. The
impatient ship waits a day or two; when, the missing man remaining
undiscovered, up goes a stake on the beach, with a letter of regret,
and a keg of crackers and another of water tied to it, and away sails
the craft.
Nor have there been wanting instances where the inhumanity of some
captains has led them to wreak a secure revenge upon seamen who have
given their caprice or pride some singular offense. Thrust ashore upon
the scorching marl, such mariners are abandoned to perish outright,
unless by solitary labors they succeed in discovering some precious
dribblets of moisture oozing from a rock or stagnant in a mountain
pool.
I was well acquainted with a man, who, lost upon the Isle of
Narborough, was brought to such extremes by thirst, that at last he
only saved his life by taking that of another being. A large hair-seal
came upon the beach. He rushed upon it, stabbed it in the neck, and
then throwing himself upon the panting body quaffed at the living
wound; the palpitations of the creature’s dying heart injected life
into the drinker.
Another seaman, thrust ashore in a boat upon an isle at which no ship
ever touched, owing to its peculiar sterility and the shoals about it,
and from which all other parts of the group were hidden—this man,
feeling that it was sure death to remain there, and that nothing worse
than death menaced him in quitting it, killed seals, and inflating
their skins, made a float, upon which he transported himself to
Charles’s Island, and joined the republic there.
But men, not endowed with courage equal to such desperate attempts,
find their only resource in forthwith seeking some watering-place,
however precarious or scanty; building a hut; catching tortoises and
birds; and in all respects preparing for a hermit life, till tide or
time, or a passing ship arrives to float them off.
At the foot of precipices on many of the isles, small rude basins in
the rocks are found, partly filled with rotted rubbish or vegetable
decay, or overgrown with thickets, and sometimes a little moist; which,
upon examination, reveal plain tokens of artificial instruments
employed in hollowing them out, by some poor castaway or still more
miserable runaway. These basins are made in places where it was
supposed some scanty drops of dew might exude into them from the upper
crevices.
The relics of hermitages and stone basins are not the only signs of
vanishing humanity to be found upon the isles. And, curious to say,
that spot which of all others in settled communities is most animated,
at the Enchanted Isles presents the most dreary of aspects. And though
it may seem very strange to talk of post-offices in this barren region,
yet post-offices are occasionally to be found there. They consist of a
stake and a bottle. The letters being not only sealed, but corked. They
are generally deposited by captains of Nantucketers for the benefit of
passing fishermen, and contain statements as to what luck they had in
whaling or tortoise-hunting. Frequently, however, long months and
months, whole years glide by and no applicant appears. The stake rots
and falls, presenting no very exhilarating object.
If now it be added that grave-stones, or rather grave-boards, are also
discovered upon some of the isles, the picture will be complete.
Upon the beach of James’s Isle, for many years, was to be seen a rude
finger-post, pointing inland. And, perhaps, taking it for some signal
of possible hospitality in this otherwise desolate spot—some good
hermit living there with his maple dish—the stranger would follow on in
the path thus indicated, till at last he would come out in a noiseless
nook, and find his only welcome, a dead man—his sole greeting the
inscription over a grave. Here, in 1813, fell, in a daybreak duel, a
lieutenant of the U.S. frigate Essex, aged twenty-one: attaining his
majority in death.
It is but fit that, like those old monastic institutions of Europe,
whose inmates go not out of their own walls to be inurned, but are
entombed there where they die, the Encantadas, too, should bury their
own dead, even as the great general monastery of earth does hers.
It is known that burial in the ocean is a pure necessity of sea-faring
life, and that it is only done when land is far astern, and not clearly
visible from the bow. Hence, to vessels cruising in the vicinity of the
Enchanted Isles, they afford a convenient Potter’s Field. The interment
over, some good-natured forecastle poet and artist seizes his
paint-brush, and inscribes a doggerel epitaph. When, after a long lapse
of time, other good-natured seamen chance to come upon the spot, they
usually make a table of the mound, and quaff a friendly can to the poor
soul’s repose.
As a specimen of these epitaphs, take the following, found in a bleak
gorge of Chatham Isle:—
“Oh, Brother Jack, as you pass by,
As you are now, so once was I.
Just so game, and just so gay,
But now, alack, they’ve stopped my pay.
No more I peep out of my blinkers,
Here I be—tucked in with clinkers!”