"What's that astern, Sandy?" The old darky, who had been gently soothed
into slumber by the friction of the main sheet that served as a pillow,
raised his grizzly head, gave one look in the direction indicated, and
sprang to his feet, shouting wildly, "On deck der! man yo' wedder fo'
an' main, lee clew garnets an' buntlines, topsail halyards an'
down-hauls, jib down-haul, let go an' haul!" his voice fairly rising in
a shriek that, with the rattling of the jib as it came down, might have
been heard a mile away.
The occasion of all this turmoil was a pillar of inky blackness, which,
when observed by the writer, who had the tiller, seemed fifty feet high
and about ten feet wide. Now it was a hundred feet wide, and growing
with ominous speed. The easy quarter breeze that had been fanning us
along mysteriously crept away, as if awed by the strange apparition. The
laughing gulls that had hovered above the water rose high in air,
uttering piercing cries while standing out in vivid silvery brightness
against the wall of night. The sea assumed a bright metallic tint and
rose and fell in uneasy measure, while the booming of the breakers on
the distant reef, and the swash of the waves as our craft rolled to and
fro, were painfully distinct.
"Cotch suthin'!" shouted Sandy, taking a round turn about the tiller
with the slack end of the dingy's painter. Delicate furrows for a moment
cut their way here and there over the glassy surface, and then with a
roar the black squall was upon us, keeling our craft almost upon her
beam-ends. The water seemed torn from its bed, flung by some unseen
power high into the air, and borne hissing and roaring away. It cut and
lashed our faces as we crouched flat upon the deck, clinging where we
could. The sea rose as if by magic, and, with the wind astern, was
driving us upon the reef which we had been encircling in search of a
harbor. After ten minutes of the wild race with the squall, which now
was as quickly lighting up, we heard the roar of the breakers near at
hand.
"Put her up in de win', or we'se gone, sho'!" shrieked young Rastus, who
had crawled aft.
"Gone where?" cried Sandy, his grim visage, dripping with water, now
visible braced against the tiller.
Rastus's white eyeballs, standing out in terror, rolled ominously up and
then down in answer, leaving a doubt to be inferred.
"How old is yo', son?" asked the old man fiercely, bracing hard as the
craft yawed heavily.
"I ain't gwine to git any older, dat's sho'," replied the boy.
"W'y, yo' poor coon," retorted Sandy. "ef yu'se ole as Jehos'phat, I'se
wu'ked disher reef fo' yu'se bo'n."
So quickly had the squall passed that its power was now well over, and
the lighting up showed us to be only a few hundred yards from the mass
of breakers pounding upon the outer reef.
"Yo' 'spec' to jump dat reef?" asked Rastus, fairly shaking with fear.
"Start dat jib," thundered the old man. "Give her de bonnet an' de
ma'nsail up to dat fastest patch."
The boys jumped to the halyards, and the boat sprang forward with
renewed speed, careening over until she was half under, and slightly
hauling on the wind.
"Ef I kin keep her offen de reef twill hit lightens up, we'se all
right," whispered Sandy; and suddenly, looking after the retreating
cloud, out of which in the gloom now appeared the tops of the
mangrove-trees, he shouted exultantly, "Give her de jib," and, with a
lunge at the tiller, the vessel fell away and dashed onward at the wall
of rock and foam.
"For de Lawd's sake, yo' ain't gwine to jump dat reef, is yo'?" cried
Rastus, in an agony of terror.
But it was too late to question the old man's intentions: we were
already in the back swash of the breakers. "Cotch suthin!" he shouted
again, as our craft on the crest of a mighty roller shot onward to
seeming destruction.
On either side the bare coral rock was visible, as the waves gathered
for another onward rush; yet we did not strike. A second roller raised
us high in air, and, hurled forward with the speed of the wind, we were
buried in the seething foam; but the next moment our craft shook off the
sea, and we glided away on the smooth waters of the inner reef. A few
minutes later the sun was out again, and one of the strangest phases of
life on the reef had come and gone.
"I 'spec' dat was a narrer 'scape," said old Sandy, "but I tuk de only
chance. We was boun' to strike somewhere, an' de squall jes' got off in
time for me to take bearin's of disher five-foot channel; an', it's a
fac', I'se been fru a heap o' times, but dat was de wustest, sho'
'nuff."
From Sandy's orders given at the approach of the squall, the reader
might possibly infer that the sable mariner was commander of a
ninety-gun frigate, while in point of fact he was only skipper of a very
disreputable fishing-smack. But he had been nearly all his life a "boy"
on a government vessel, and now, having retired, from either habit or
fancy he still kept up the man-of-war discipline, and when under more
than ordinary excitement roared out a flood of orders that savored of
both navy and merchant marine, uttering them with all the enjoyment of a
ranking officer on his own quarter-deck. They were, however, well
understood by Sandy's sons, who constituted the port and starboard
watches of the smack, and who were in constant awe of the old
man-of-war's-man, who did not hesitate to enforce his orders with any
missile that came handy.
"Dis ship's on a war-footin', dat's sho'," he said, after one of these
characteristic scenes, and then, in a stage whisper, "so's de crew.
Dey's bofe cou'tin' de same gal in Key Wes'."
The Bull Pup, for such was her name, kept up her war-footing as long as
we knew her, and the dignity invested in her hulk, which had a strong
predisposition toward bilge, was, to say the least, extraordinary. Never
was better craft for the purpose; and during a long cruise among the
small keys that form the extreme end of the Florida peninsula, she
always showed a dogged determination, as indicated by her name, to
surmount all difficulties.
We had sailed down during the night from Marquesas across the Rebecca
shoals, and when caught by the squall were off Bush Key, one of the most
easterly of the group, which enjoys the distinction of possessing Dry
Tortugas,--why "dry" we know not. Our extraordinary entrance, almost
instantaneous, from rough to comparatively smooth water can only be
explained by a casual reference to the great reef. The group of
keys--Loggerhead, Bird, Long, Middle, East, North, Bush, Sand, and
Garden--are all within seven miles of each other, Garden, Bird, Bush,
and Long being in close proximity,--within swimming-distance, if the
swimmer be not nervous in regard to sharks. From these central keys a
great sandy shoal spreads away on all sides, cut up, however, by several
deep channels admitting vessels of the largest draught. To the east and
south the reef is two miles wide and rarely over four feet deep, covered
at intervals with great fields of branch corals, while here and there
clusters of enormous heads of astrea, porites, etc., have collected. The
edge of the reef is formed of dead coral rock, often beaten up by the
waves into a continuous wall several miles in extent, and a few steps
beyond this the water deepens quickly, until at the length of a vessel
from it no bottom is visible.
The one opening in this barrier on the side of our approach, so
formidable in a gale, is the passage through which the skill of Sandy
had safely brought us, being, as its name explains, five feet deep and
not many more in width, and used only at odd times by the few pilots and
fishermen of the reef who know the secret of its approach. But how old
Sandy found it when completely covered by the waves, with only the tops
of certain trees to steer by, is one of the mysteries.
Our object in visiting this desolate part of the country was to capture
turtles. Here is the ground of the green and loggerhead turtles, and,
according to Sandy, the hawksbill, from which the shell of commerce is
taken, is also occasionally found.
The squall was now a fast-disappearing pillar in the west. The
anchor-chain ran merrily out, and we rounded to in the narrow harbor of
Garden Key. The boys manned the pump, while Sandy and the writer pulled
for the shore, and the dingy soon crunched into the white, sandy beach
of the coral island which during the war was the Botany Bay of America.
Surely Dry Tortugas has been maligned: instead of dry we find it very
wet, a key of sand thirteen acres in extent, hardly one foot above the
tide, and entirely occupied by probably the largest brick fort in the
world.
Fort Jefferson was commenced long before the war, and is now a monument
of the ineffectual military methods of thirty years ago. The work is a
six-sided, two-tiered fort of majestic proportions, its faces pierced
with over five hundred guns. How many millions of dollars have been
expended in its erection it would be difficult to conjecture. The
question why so important a work was built here is often asked, and we
have heard the answer given that it was encouraged by the Key West
slave-owners, through their representatives, to give employment to their
slaves, who were engaged as laborers by the government. Garden Key,
however, is the key of the gulf, and, as a prospective coaling-station
in case of war, it was undoubtedly a spot to be held at all odds, and at
the outbreak of the war it formed a convenient spot for the confinement
of certain prisoners, as many as three thousand being kept there at one
time. Now the great fort figures as a picture of desolation and is
slowly falling to decay, deserted save by the memories of the great
conflict, a lighthouse-keeper, and a guard.
Once within the great enclosure, the reason for its having been called
Garden Key becomes apparent. The neighboring islands are covered with
prickly pear, mangroves, and bay-cedars, while here clumps of cocoanuts
rear their graceful forms, their long rustling leaves, which convey to
the distant listener the cooling impression of falling rain, reaching
high over the top of the fort. On the west side grows a small grove of
bananas, while against the cottage walls luxuriant vines climb in wild
confusion. What was once the parade-ground is covered by a thick growth
of wiry grass, in which gopher- and crab-holes lay traps for the unwary.
In fact, far from being the forbidding spot it has been painted, Dry
Tortugas seemed to us a veritable garden in the path of the great Gulf
Stream.
On the afternoon of our arrival the Bull Pup was got under way and
headed through a circuitous channel to East Key, off which we came to
anchor about dusk. Blankets and other articles indispensable for a night
on the beach were carried ashore, and camp formed on the edge of the
bay-cedars. East Key comprises about thirty acres of sand, thickly
covered with a low growth of bay-cedar, in which the rude nests of the
noddy are found, while here and there in the undergrowth are great
patches of cactus or prickly pear, affording lurking-places for
innumerable purple-backed crabs of ferocious mien.
"Turklin'," said old Sandy, as we lay stretched on the sand, waiting for
the moon, "is right in de line o' hard wu'k, an' I 'spec's yo' chillun
is a-hankerin' after yo' mudder."
The two children, both hard on thirty, indignantly denied that they had
anything but an extreme fondness for labor.
"Wu'k!" said old Sandy, appealing to us and reaching for a piece of
driftwood to fling at his progeny in case of necessity; "w'y, de coons
of disher generation don' know de meanin' of de word, da's a fac'. How
is it dat yo' don' see no mo' bandy chillun roun' now? Kase dey mammies
don' hev to wu'k. Dey ain't got no call to put de chilluns down. W'y,
chile, I pick cotton 'fore I leave de bre's', da's a fac'. De niggers is
gittin' too sumpchus fo' dar place. Dey try to make outen dey got sense
like white folks. Yo' Rastus, yo'se deacon in de Key Wes' Fustest
Bethel, ain't yo'?"
"'Deed I is," replied that person.
"An' Piffney too, I reckon," continued Sandy.
"Yas, sah," answered Piffney.
"Wal," said the old man, turning to us again, "dere it is. Chuck full o'
'ligion, but w'en dey git in de tight hole like de five-foot dey ain't
got no faith. Old-time l'arnin' say 'tain't no use buckin' 'genst de
debble less yo' full o' faith. All de old-time coons knows dey's coons,
but dese yere free-born darkies got to be white or nuthin'. Yander,"
nodding his head toward Key West, "a couple of dese yere black Conchs
drap in on me an' de ole woman, an' say, 'Uncle Sandy, we'se 'lected yo'
hon'ry member of de Anex Debatin' Soci'ty of de Young Men's Chrisshun
'Sociashun of de Fustest Bethel.' I reached fo' a chunk of scantlin',
and de ole woman stood by fo' to turn loose de coon, w'en dey hollered
out dey wasn't no 'spenses, no fees, no nuthin', only ten bits fo'
hevin' yo' name 'graved in de soci'ty's books. So I 'lowed I'd jine; an'
d'rectly dey sent me an inwite fo' de fustest meetin', an', fo' de Lawd,
mar's, w'at yo' s'pose hit was? Hit read kinder like disher," he
continued, with a groan: "'Reswolved, which is de butt end of a goat?
Fo' de affermation (de on side), Rastus Pinckey; fo' de neggertive (de
off side), Piffney Pinckey.' Yas, sah, I done pay ten bits fo' to hear
my chillun 'scuss w'at's done been settled in disher fam'ly 'fore dey's
bo'n and sence! All comes o' apin' white folks," said the old man,
threatening the debaters with the scantling. "Dey's boun' to git up a
'batin'-soci'ty an' talk all de evening w'en dere was Paublo Johnson
standin' up all de evenin' from stiffness he cotched from ole man
Geiger's goat, an', hit's a fac', he stan' an' 'scuss de question,
tryin' to make outen how de goat kicked him, all kase he's on de _on_
side. But dat's de coon of it."
"Whish!" whispered Rastus, who, with Piffney, had been trying to look
supernaturally solemn during this tirade.
"Shoo!" repeated Sandy, leaning forward.
The moon had just cleared the mangrove-tops, and illuminated the silvery
sands, casting reflections upon the water, where there was now a perfect
calm. Far away was heard the lonely cry of a laughing gull. The gentle
break of the waves upon the sands gave out a soft, musical sound, and,
as we held our breath, a sharp hiss was heard, seemingly but a few feet
away.
"Turkle," hoarsely whispered Sandy; on which announcement we all
flattened upon the sand. So bright was the moon that every object was
distinctly visible for several hundred feet. A moment later the strange
hiss was repeated, and then a small, black object was seen glistening in
the moonlight a few feet from shore. Again came the penetrating hiss,
and the animal moved several feet farther in, as if cautiously looking
around. The moonbeams scintillated for a moment on its shell, as it
hesitated on the edge, and then the turtle commenced a clumsy scramble
up the beach, lifting itself along in a laborious manner. In ten minutes
it had reached the loose sand above tide-water, and kept its course
toward us until within thirty feet, when it began to excavate its nest.
The operation seemed to be performed mostly with the hind feet, and was
accomplished in a remarkably short time, considering the implements
used.
All the party were breathing hard, and, as Sandy afterward remarked,
"The only reason de turkle didn't go was it t'ought we'se porpuses."
The turtle was allowed to deposit its eggs, and when that operation was
supposed to be about over a concerted rush was made. As we rose from
the sand, the animal whirled clumsily around and made for the sea. It
was an enormous loggerhead, and, with its huge head and powerful
flippers, presented a decidedly aggressive appearance. The two boys were
first on the field, and, without waiting for the scantling which old
Sandy had grasped, seized the creature on the side, between the
flippers, and lifted it. But they had barely raised it from the sand
when the great fore flipper, being clear, struck the unfortunate Piffney
a sounding blow, knocking him against Rastus, who lost his hold, and
both went down in confusion. The turtle scrambled ahead, throwing sand
like a whirlwind. She seemed to have the faculty of lifting nearly a
quart and hurling it with unerring force, and old Sandy's mouth was soon
filled with it. Three of us again seized the animal and lifted, while
the old darky inserted the scantling as a lever.
"Now, den, clap on yere!" he cried, dodging the sand and flippers.
We lifted, and the monster was fairly on its side, when an ominous creak
was heard; the plank broke, and before a new hold could be taken the
turtle was but ten feet from the water. Active measures were evidently
necessary, and Sandy, taking the board, ran in front of the animal and
struck wildly at its head, yelling to us to lift. But the sand was soft,
and every lift was attended by a terrific beating to the man who stood
near the fore flipper. In vain we struck, lifted, and hauled: the turtle
was gaining slowly. Finally, in his war-dance about the animal's head,
Sandy stumbled, grasped wildly in the air, and went down backward into
the water with a sounding crash, the turtle fairly crawling over his
legs, and, despite the boys, who hung on to its hind flippers, it slid
into the water and disappeared behind a miniature tidal wave, leaving
the Pinckey family--father and sons--in a state of complete
demoralization.
"I 'low dat turkle's bo'n free," gasped Sandy, picking himself up and
shaking the water from his clothes.
"He ain't gwine to give up dat calapee yet, da's a fac'."
The boys having repaired damages and unloaded the sand received during
the _mêlée_, and the moon being now well up, the tramp around the key
was commenced. The approved method is to walk along as near the water as
possible, and on finding a recent track to follow it up on the run, and
thus head off the turtle. For a mile or more we strolled along the
sands, the boys humming in low tones some old plantation melody, and
Sandy occasionally venting his wrath at some real or imaginary fault in
the young and rising generation. In the midst of one of these tirades,
the boys, who had kept ahead, suddenly darted up toward the bushes. We
were soon after them, following up a broad track distinctly marked on
the white, sandy beach, and came upon a fine green turtle, which
immediately started for the water, making rapid headway. The honor of
turning her was reserved for the writer, who, grasping the shell beneath
the flippers, essayed the task. Her struggles, the flying flippers, and
the giving sand verified Sandy's statement that "turklin' was wu'k,"
and, after several ineffectual attempts, we were forced to cry for help.
The animal was soon upon her back, and proved to be one of the largest
size. "Old an' tuff," said Sandy; "but," he added, "hit'll be all the
same up No'th."
The boys now proceeeded to cut slits in the flippers and lash them
together with rope-yarn, the animal being thus placed _hors de combat_.
The march was again taken up, and soon another track was found, but the
eggs had been laid and the game was gone. An attempt to find this nest
showed the cunning displayed by these clumsy creatures. Naturally, the
nest would be looked for at the end of the incoming track, but at this
spot the writer searched fruitlessly, while Sandy looked on in grim
satisfaction at his own superior knowledge. Finally he pointed out the
nest forty feet away, and the boys soon produced the soft, crispy eggs
as proof of his wisdom.
"Ole turtle jes' as cunnin' as coon," said Sandy, as he nipped one of
the eggs and transferred its contents to his capacious mouth. And,
indeed, so it seemed. Instead of laying directly on reaching the soft
sand, the turtle had crawled down the beach and made several holes,
finally forming her real nest, smoothing it over so that it could never
be distinguished from the rest, and again crawling down the beach before
turning toward the water: thus the nest may be looked for anywhere
between the up and down tracks.
Having piled the eggs in a convenient place for transportation in the
morning, the march was renewed, and before dawn four turtles were
turned, with little or no discomfort, all being green and much lighter
than the cumbersome loggerhead that first escaped us.
In the morning the turtles were one by one placed in the dingy and taken
aboard the smack, when we set sail for Garden Key, arriving in the snug
harbor a few hours later. It is a curious fact that the long strip of
sand to the westward, called Loggerhead Key, is mostly frequented by the
turtle of that name, the green turtle rarely going ashore there,
preferring East, Sand, and Middle Keys.
The eggs of the turtle are perfectly oval, with the exception of one or
two depressions that may occur at any part. They are hatched probably
not by the direct heat of the sun, but by the general temperature of the
sand. The instinct of the young is remarkable. We have placed young
loggerheads barely a day old in a closed room facing away from the
water, and they invariably turned in that direction. During their young
life they fall a prey to many predaceous fishes, such as sharks, also to
the larger gulls, and only a small percentage of the original brood
attains its majority.
Besides turning turtles, which is of course confined strictly to a
certain season, the fishermen of the reef resort to another method,
called pegging. The instrument of capture is a three-sided peg, often
made by cutting off the end of a file. This is attached to a long line
and fitted into a copper cap on the end of a long pole, the whole
constituting an unbarbed spear. Thus armed, the turtler sculls over the
reef, striking the turtle either as it lies asleep on the bottom or as
it rises to breathe. The peg is hurled long distances with great skill
and accuracy: as soon as it strikes, the pole comes out, and the victim
is managed by the line, often towing the dingy for a considerable
distance. The peg holds by suction; and, as it only enters the hard
shell, and that only half an inch, the animal is not in the least
injured for transportation to the North.
Key West is the head quarters of the Florida turtling-trade, and on the
north shore of the island, where a shoal reef stretches away, a number
of crawls have been from time immemorial used, being merely fences or
enclosures in which the animals are penned until the time for shipment.
By far the greater number find their way to New York, being packed and
crowded, often brutally, in the common fish-cars at the Fulton Market
dock in such numbers that many are unable to rise, and consequently
drown. The greatest injustice, however, to the long-suffering turtle
comes when the miserable animal is propped up before some restaurant
door, bearing upon its broad carapace the grim assertion, "To be served
this day."
The green or loggerhead turtles are rarely seen north of Cape Florida.
The outer reef is their home, their range extending far to the south.
Old turtles, like fishes, often have strange companions. They are
covered with barnacles of various kinds; several remoras form their
body-guard, clinging here and there as if part and parcel of their huge
consort. Often small fish allied to the mackerel accompany them, as does
also the pilot-fish of the shark. One large loggerhead pegged by the
writer had its four flippers bitten off by the latter fishes so close to
the shell that it could barely move along, and would undoubtedly soon
have succumbed, although it is a common thing to find both green and
loggerhead turtles minus parts of their locomotive organs.
The great leather turtle (_Sphurgis coriacea_), the largest of the
tribe, is rarely seen, being seemingly a denizen of the high seas, and
more commonly observed in colder waters; though Gosse is authority for
the statement that they form their nests on the island of Jamaica. The
following account is from the Jamaica "Morning Journal" of April 13,
1846: "The anxiety of the fishermen in this little village was aroused
on the 30th of last month by the track of a huge sea-monster, called a
trunk-turtle, which came on the sea-beach for the purpose of laying her
eggs. A search was made, when a hole in the sand was discovered, about
four feet deep and as wide as the mouth of a half-barrel, whence five or
six dozen white eggs were taken out; the eggs were of different sizes,
the largest the size of a duck's egg. On the morning of the 10th of this
month, at half-past five o'clock, she was discovered by Mr. Crow, on the
beach, near the spot where she first came up; he gave the alarm, when
all the neighbors assembled and got her turned on her back. She took
twelve men to haul her about two hundred yards. I went and measured her,
and found her dimensions as follows: from head to tail, six feet six
inches; from the outer part of her fore fin to the other end" (to the
tip of the other?), "nine feet two inches; the circumference round her
back and chest, seven feet nine inches; circumference of her neck, three
feet three inches; the widest part of her fore fins, eighteen inches;
her hind fins, two feet four inches in length. Her back is formed like a
round top of a trunk, with small white bumps in straight lines,
resembling the nails on a trunk; her color is variegated like the
rainbow" (probably the living skin displayed opaline reflections);
"there is no shell on her back, but a thick skin, like pump-leather."
Some years since, a gigantic specimen came ashore at Lynn beach, where
for a long time it formed an object of the greatest curiosity. It was
over eight feet in length, and weighed nearly twenty-two hundred pounds.
Instead of definite scales, as in other turtles, it had a shell
composed of six plates, which formed longitudinal ridges extending from
the head to the tail; the eye-openings were up and down, instead of
lengthwise; the bill was hooked; and so many remarkable characteristics
did it possess that many believed it to be a strange nondescript, and
not a turtle.
It would not be surprising to find that such a creature was descended
from a remarkable ancestry; and, following it up, we are led far into
the early history of the later geological times, when all life seems to
have attained its maximum growth; in fact, it was an era of giants. The
map-maker of to-day would be astonished if confronted with the
coast-line of that early time. The coast-country from Nova Scotia to
Yucatan was all under water, and what are now our plains and prairies
was a vast sea, that commenced where Texas now is and extended far to
the northwest. Even now the old coast-line can be traced. We follow it
along from Arkansas to near Fort Riley, on the Kansas River, then,
extending eastward, it traverses Minnesota, extending into the British
possessions to the head of Lake Superior, while its western shores are
lost under the waters of the Pacific Ocean. Such was this great
Cretaceous sea, in whose waters, with hundreds of other strange
creatures, lived the ancestor of our leather tortoise. The ancient sea,
however, disappeared; the land rose and surrounded it; the great forms
died and became buried in the sediment, and finally the water all
evaporated, leaving the bottom high and dry,--an ancient grave-yard,
that can be visited on horseback or by the cars.
What is now known as the State of Kansas is one of the most favored
spots, and here, embedded in the earth, have been found the remains of
these huge forms. The bones were first seen projecting from a bluff,
and, gradually worked out, proved to be those of a gigantic turtle that
must have measured across its back from flipper to flipper fifteen feet,
while its entire length must have been twenty feet or more. The name of
this giant is the _Protostega gigas_, a fitting forefather for the great
leather turtle of to-day. In some parts of the West the hardened shells
of other and smaller turtles are scattered about in great confusion.
Nearly all have been turned to stone, and, thus preserved, form a
monument of this past time.
A number of years ago some natives in Southern India were engaged in
making an excavation under the superintendence of an English officer,
when they discovered the remains of one of the largest fossil turtles
ever found. They had penetrated the soil for several feet, when their
implements struck against a hard substance which was at first supposed
to be solid rock, but a bar sank through it, showing it to be either
bone or wood. The earth being carefully removed, the remains of a
mound-shaped, adobe structure gradually appeared. The natives thought it
a house; but the Englishman saw that they had come upon the remains of
some gigantic creature of a past age. Every precaution was taken, and
finally the shell was fully exposed. The restoration shows it as
dome-shaped, nearly fourteen feet long, thirty-three feet in horizontal
circumference, and twenty feet in girth in a vertical direction. Its
length when alive must have been nearly thirty feet, and its feet were
as large as those of a rhinoceros. The capacity of the shell of this
ancient boatman was such that six or seven persons could have found
protection within it. Its name is _Colossochelys atlas_, a land-tortoise
of the Miocene time of geology. Its nearest representatives of to-day
are, if not so large, equally marvellous in their general appearance.
They are found in the Galapagos and Mascarene Islands, and some of them
are seven feet in length, with high domed and plated shells, presenting
the appearance of miniature houses moving along. A single shell would
form a perfect covering for a child. There are five distinct species
found here, each inhabiting a different island. Chatham Island, the home
of some, seems completely honeycombed with black truncated volcano
cones that spring up everywhere, while masses of lava cover the ground,
having been blown into weird and fantastic shapes when soft.
In among the cones low underbrush and cacti grow, and feeding upon these
are found the great tortoises, which at the approach of danger draw in
their heads with a loud hiss or move slowly and clumsily away. Their
strength is enormous. A small one, three feet long, carried the writer
along a hard floor with perfect ease, and one of the largest would
probably not be inconvenienced by a weight of five hundred pounds. They
attain a great age, often living, it is said, a hundred years or more.
While we have been digressing, the turtles have been dumped into the
great moat that surrounds the fort, and, stretched upon the deck, the
sable crew are fast asleep. The writer has been watching a large
three-master moving along two or three miles beyond Loggerhead Key. Our
attention is distracted for some time, and, upon looking again, we find
that she has not moved, and impart the fact to Sandy, who looks steadily
through his long spy-glass, evidently made up of several others; then,
gazing intently over the top, he brings all hands to their feet by the
cry of "Wrack!" For Sandy is a licensed "wracker."
The man-of-war orders now uttered find no place in any known code, and
in a moment the Bull Pup becomes a scene of unwonted excitement. The
jib, mainsail, and gaff topsail are hauled up to their very tautest;
finally, the cable is slipped, and then old Sandy for the first time
looks around. The boys fail to suppress a loud guffaw, and forthwith
dodge the flying tiller. The old man in the excitement had forgotten an
important factor in the navigation of sailing-craft,--namely, wind. It
was a dead calm, and had been all day, and there, almost within reach,
was a fortune,--hard and fast on the outer reef.