AMSTERDAM ISLAND.
I had hoped to make the Island of Amsterdam next day; had the wind
prospered we should have sighted it according to my reckoning; but in
the morning watch, a little after daybreak, the breeze fell, shifted,
and came on to blow ahead in hard rain squalls.
Yan Bol aroused me. I was sleeping soundly. I had been busy throughout
the long night--busy after a manner of secrecy that had rendered my toil
not less exhausting to my mind than to my body. Throughout the night I
had been occupied with the boy Jimmy in paying furtive visits to the
magazine, and with the help of the lad I had stowed away in a cabin
locker a few round shot, cartridges for the long gun aft, some canister,
pistols which I had loaded, and to whose primings I had carefully
looked, a few brace of handcuffs, and some bilboes or legirons, such as
Greaves had obliged Mr. Van Laar to sit in.
This work had run into hours, because I had to await opportunities to
carry it on--the changes of the watch, men’s movements above--and
throughout it was the same as though a musket had been leveled at my
head, so frightful was the peril, so deadly the consequences of
detection. For besides the risk of my movements aft exciting attention,
there was the chance of Jimmy being missed forward. Luckily he was what
is termed at sea “an idler,” and an idler at sea has “all night in.” No
man can tell by merely looking at a hammock whether it is occupied or
not, and I counted upon such of the men as might give the lad a thought
believing that he lay buried in his canvas bag in the eyes of the brig.
Yan Bol aroused me. I went on deck and found a sallow, roaring, wet
morning. The brig was heading points off her course, bursting in smoke
through the headlong leap of the surge, with the topsail yards on the
caps, reef tackles hauled out, a number of men rolling up the mainsail,
and two on the main and two on the fore struggling with the wet,
bladder-like topgallant sails.
I was bitterly vexed. Postponement might mean frustration. My scheme was
ready for instant execution; my heart was hot as a madman’s to _have_ at
the project and accomplish it; and now I might be obliged to wait a
month and perhaps as long again as a month! For here was just the sort
of wind to blow us half-way back the distance we had already measured;
and I could do nothing until the brig was off Amsterdam Island, the
weather quiet, the main topsail to the mast, and Bol and the longboat
ashore.
There was nothing, however, to be done beyond heaving the brig to under
a rag of main staysail, and letting her lie with no more way than she
would get from the hurl of the seas and the gale up aloft.
And yet, in one sense, this foul weather was as fortunate a thing as
could have happened; I’ll tell you why. I had taken care to persuade Yan
Bol that I had turned over the crew’s scheme of burying the money, had
thought better of it, was, indeed, now thinking well of it as, on the
whole, the easiest way to secure the treasure for a method of
distribution to be afterward considered; but I had never flattered
myself that he believed me fully sincere. In fact, I had shown too much
amazement at the start, reasoned against the imbecile project too
vehemently afterward. But now, when this change of weather came, my
disappointment was so great, my mortification so keen, that even Yan
Bol, with his slow eyes, and heavy, dull, ruminant intellect could not
look me in the face and mistake.
We stood together while the men rolled the canvas up, their hoarse
cries, as they triced up the bunts, going down the gale like the yells
of gulls. The rain swept us in horizontal lines; the water smoked the
length of the brig as though her metal sheathing were red hot; the
Dutchman’s cap of fur clung to his big head like a huge, over-ripe fig.
The mist of the sudden gale boiled round the sea line, and we labored in
the commotion of our horizon, whose semi-diameter could have been
measured by a twenty-four pounder.
“Holy Sacrament!” roared Yan Bol in Dutch. “Dis vhas der vindt to make
anchells of men!” and he shook his immense fist at the windward ocean,
and thundered out, “Nimin dich der Teufel, as der Schermans say!”
“Han’t I had enough of this?” I shouted, sweeping my hand round the
dirty, freckled green of the seas, which were beginning to heap
themselves with true oceanic weight out of the granite shadow of the
wet. “I’d had months of it when I was picked up off the oar, and I’ve
had months of it since, and months of it remain.” And I bawled to him
that we wanted no more hindrances from the weather, that it was time the
dollars were buried, that it was time, indeed, we were thrashing the
brig to that part of the Australian coast where we should agree to wreck
her. “I want my money,” I cried. “I want to settle down ashore.”
“Vhere vhas ve bound to now?”
“Dead west and all the way back again.”
“Vy zyn al verdom’d! Vere vhas der island?”
“Somewhere close. The brig must be kept thus while it blows on end. I
may have overshot the mark, and the island may be leeward of us now--so
keep your weather eye lifting.”
Together we stormed at the disappointment awhile in this fashion, I more
hotly than he, and with more sincerity, perhaps, for I was maddened by
the weather. The brig was reduced, as I have said, to a fragment of
staysail, but she was light, and blew to leeward like a cask. I threw
the log-ship over the weather quarter, and the line stood out to
windward like the warp of a fisherman’s trawl. For three days and three
nights it continued to blow, and we to drift. The flying sky blackened
low down over the sea, and the surges came out like cliffs from the
windward shadow. I obtained no sights, and knew not our situation. I
never could at any time have been cocksure of the position of the brig;
the mariner, in those times, went to sea but poorly equipped with
nautical instruments. His Hadley’s quadrant was indeed an improvement
upon the cross-staff of his forefathers, and he had a chronometer or
watch which those who went before him were not so fortunate as to
possess; not because watches of exquisite workmanship were not to be
procured, but because nobody had thought of Greenwich time. But the
sailor of 1815 was nevertheless not equipped as the sailor of to-day is.
Charts were misleading; the ocean current worked its own sweet will with
a man; consequently, I am not ashamed to own that I never could have
been cocksure of the brig in reference to land, and more particularly to
such a speck of land as Amsterdam Island makes, as you shall observe by
casting your eye on the chart. The fear that the vast lump of rock might
be to leeward in the thickness kept me terribly anxious. I was hour
after hour on deck. My anxiety went infinitely deeper than the possible
adjacency of the island; but the crew believed that I was only worried
for the safety of the brig; and this, as I had reason to know, raised me
high in their opinion.
So that, as I say, the foul weather blew for a useful purpose; but, by
delaying me, it involved risks. Jimmy had my secret; he was exactly
acquainted with my scheme. Suppose the half-witted fellow should babble;
nay, suppose he should talk in his sleep! When I had explained my
project to him I believed that the brig would be off the island next
day. It was wonderful that my hair should have retained its color; that
the machinery of my brain should have worked with its established
nimbleness. _That_, I say, was wonderful, considering the bitter
anxieties of the navigation, the fear of Jimmy involuntarily or
unconsciously betraying me, the conviction that I was a dead man if that
happened, and that the lady Aurora would be barbarously used through
rage and the spirit of revenge and brutal wantonness.
Fine weather came at last. It was the fifth day of our westerly drift.
The sea flattened and opened, the sky cleared, the wind fell dead, and
then, over the green rounds of the swell, there blew a draught of air
from the northwest. The sun shone brightly before noon. I got a good
observation, and calculated our distance at about two hundred miles from
the island. All sail was heaped upon the brig, every studding sail boom
run out, everything that would draw mast-headed; and, at four o’clock of
that afternoon, the little ship was sweeping through it at twelve knots,
roaring to the drag of a huge lower studding sail, every tack and sheet,
every backstay and halliard taut as a harp-string and shrill with the
song of the wind; with all hands standing by watching for something to
blow away, and ready to shorten sail, should the yawning hurl of the
fabric grow too fierce for spars and spokes.
You know the month; the date I forget. The day, I recollect, was a
Friday. It had been a very dark night, blowing fresh down to about the
hour of eleven, during which time we had given the brig all her legs,
forcing her to her best with large reefless breasts of canvas. Not a
star showed all through the night. An eager lookout was kept for the
Island of New Amsterdam, which, I guessed, should be visible, were there
daylight to disclose it.
It is a lofty mass of land, rising amidships to an altitude of near
three thousand feet; and a frequent heave of the log had assured me that
already, in these hours of darkness, we were within its horizon. I swept
the sea line. It was all black, smoky gloom. No deeper dye than that of
the universal shadow of the night was visible. Toward midnight the wind
slackened. We rolled on a deep-breasted heave of swell, which, I
reckoned, would be raising a mighty smother of yeast at those points and
bases of iron terraces which confronted this long lift of ocean. The
swollen sails dropped; the brig flapped along like a homeward-bound crow
at sunset. Amid intervals of silence I strained my ears, but not the
most distant noise of breakers did I catch.
This went on till a little while before the hour of daybreak. The
weather was now very quiet, and the brig floated stealthily through the
darkness, under small canvas. I had no mind to pass the island and find
it astern of me, and perhaps out of sight, at sunrise.
I went into the cabin, when dawn was close at hand, to drink a glass of
grog and puff at a pipe of tobacco. The lady Aurora was in her berth.
She had been about during the night; had once or twice joined me on
deck, and we had conversed cautiously as we walked. I sat upon the
locker in which, some nights before, I had stowed away the materials for
my scheme. How long was the execution of that scheme going to take?
Would the lady Aurora’s courage be equal to the part I had allotted to
her? Was Jimmy’s half-addled head to be depended upon in the instant of
a supremely tragic crisis, when action, saving or delaying time by a
minute or two, might make all the difference between life and death?
Thus thinking, I sat upon the desperately-charged locker, puffing at my
pipe and drinking from my glass. Suddenly the thunder of Yan Bol’s voice
resounded through the little interior:
“Landt on der starboardt bow!”
I sprang to my feet, and gained the deck in a heart-beat. Dawn was
breaking right ahead. A melancholy, faint green light lay spread low
down along the sky; against that light ran the horizon--a deep black
line; and on the right, or about three points on the starboard or lee
bow, there stood against that green light of dawn the pitch-black mass
of the Island of New Amsterdam, defined as clearly upon the growing
light as the fanciful edges of an ink-stain on white blotting-paper.
It was not the Island of St. Paul’s. _That_ I knew. It was, therefore,
Amsterdam Island; and, filled as I was with anxiety and distracted by
many contending passions, a momentary emotion of pride swelled my heart
when I beheld that island, scarcely five miles distant, within three
points under the bows of the little brig.
Yan Bol stood beside me with folded arms. The ear-flaps of his hair cap
helmeted his face; his skin was green with the faint light ahead; he
looked like a mariner of Tromp’s day in casque-like cap.
“So dot vhas der island? Dot vhas New Amsterdam, hey? _Potsblitz!_ Vhas
not der Doytch everywhere in her day? But dot day vhas gone. Und dot
vhas der island, hey? Vell, she vhas in good time, und I likes der look
of der vetter. Vhere vhas der landing-place, I fonders?”
I told him I couldn’t say; I was without a chart of the island. Its
configuration, to our approach, was that of a lofty mass of coal-black
rock southeast, with a down-like shelving of the stuff into the
interior, and a facing seaward of rugged, horribly precipitous cliff. I
should say it scarcely measured five miles north and south. The ocean
looked lonely with it, as a babe makes lonelier the figure of the lonely
woman who carries it; the melancholy picture of the deep at that
moment--of that picture of faint green dawn blackening out the forlorn
pile of island and the indigo sweep of the sea-line on either hand of
it, and all astern of us the thickness of the smoky shadows of the
departing night--is indescribable.
The sun rose right behind the island. It shot out a hundred beams of
splendor before lifting its flaming upper limb; it was then a fine
morning; the water of this Indian Ocean brimmed in a dark and
beautifully pure blue to the base of the iron-like steeps; the flash and
dazzle of rollers were visible at points, the sky was hard and high with
a delicate shading and interlacery of gray cloud, and the wind was small
and about northwest.
I looked south for the Island of St. Paul; it was invisible from the
altitude of our deck, though I dare say on a fine, clear day it may be
seen from the top of Amsterdam Island.
“Vere vhas the landing-places, I fonders,” said Bol.
I fetched the glass and carefully covered as much of the island as our
bearings commanded. While I kneeled I felt a hand upon my shoulder.
“_Qué tiempo hace?_” inquired the lady Aurora in a cool, collected
voice, looking down into my face.
I answered in Spanish that the weather was fine and promised to keep so.
“Good-morning, Mr. Bol,” said she.
“Goodt-morning, marm. I hope you vhas vell dis morning? Dot vhas der
island at last. She vhas a Doytchman’s discovery. I likes to tink of der
Doytchers all der way down here.”
The lady Aurora made no reply, probably not having understood a syllable
of Bol’s speech. I put the telescope into the Dutchman’s hand, and bade
him look for himself. The lady arched her brows at the island, and
glanced interrogatively round the sea, fixing her eyes upon me full with
a look of meaning. I faintly inclined my head. Often had I read her
meaning in her face when I had failed to grasp her words, so facile and
fluent was the eloquence of her looks.
All the crew save Hals and Jimmy were collected on the forecastle-head,
staring at the island. The caboose chimney was smoking, and Hals’ head
frequently showed in the caboose doorway while he took a view of the
land. Galen constantly pointed and talked much, and was the center of a
little crowd. Bol stood up, and said he could see no signs of a
landing-place.
“There’ll be one on the eastern side, I dare say,” said I. “You’re bound
to have a landing-place somewhere. I wish I had a chart of the island.
The last survey I remember was D’Entrecasteaux’. It is enough, of such
an island as this, to know that it exists. Look at it!”
The sun was hanging over it now; its light revealed many slopes of the
land falling to the precipitous edge of the cliffs. A most horribly
barren rock did it seem--desolate beyond the dreams of the wildest fancy
of an uninhabited island. There may have been some sort of growth on
top; I know not; I saw no verdure. All was cold, naked, iron-hard cliff,
swelling centrally into a prodigious summit, around which even as I
watched dense white masses of mists were beginning to form and crawl,
reminding me of the magnificent growth and fall of lace-like vapor on
Table Mountain--the fairest and most marvelous of all the airy sights of
the world when viewed by moonlight.
I hauled the brig in to within a mile of the land, then, observing
discolored water, I ordered a cast of the hand-lead to be taken; no
bottom was reached. We shifted the helm, trimmed sail, and stood about
southeast, rounding the point which I have since ascertained is called
Vlaming Head, so named after the Dutch navigator who was off this island
in 1696. Here we found fifty fathoms of water, and black sand for a
bottom. The rollers broke very furiously against the base of Vlaming
Head. Foam was heaped in a vast cloud there, as though the sea was kept
boiling by a great volcanic flame just beneath.
We trimmed sail afresh and steered northeast. The land rose black and
horribly desolate; but the swell being from the west the sea was smooth,
and the tremble of surf small along the whole range this side. All this
while we eagerly gazed at the coast in search of a landing-place--of any
platform of sand and split of cliff by which the inland heights might be
gained. Bol’s round face grew long, and he swore often in Dutch. Many of
the men came aft to be within talking distance of the quarter-deck, and
hoarsely-uttered remarks and oaths fell from them, as they gazed at the
precipitous front of the island and beheld no spot to land on.
The wind was scarcely more than a light draught of air, owing to the
interposition of the land; it was off the bow, too, by this time, and we
were braced up sharp to it. I told Bol to send the crew to breakfast
while the brig made a board into the northeast to enable her to fetch
the northern parts of the island, where now lay our only chance of
finding a landing-place. Impatience worked like madness in me, and no
man of all our ship’s company could have been wilder to behold a
landing-place than I.
The breezes lightly freshened as we stood off from the island. I put
the brig into the hands of Galen, and went below to get some breakfast.
Miss Aurora and I conversed in subdued voices; she ate little, and was
pale, but I saw courage in her mouth and eyes. While Jimmy waited I told
him that, if we found a landing-place, our business might be settled
before sundown. “Before sundown,” said I to him, “we may, but I don’t
say we shall, be sailing along, the island astern, old England before
us, and a handsome promise of dollars for you, my lad, when we arrive.
Are ye all there?”
“All there, master,” said he, feeling his wrist.
“You’ve gone through your lessons o’er and o’er again?”
“O’er and o’er, master.”
“This job’ll make a fine man of you. You shall knock off the sea and
choose a calling ashore. What would you be? Oh, but don’t think of that
yet. Have nothing in your mind but this,” said I, holding up my hand and
twisting it as though I screwed a man by the throat. “Afterward turn to
and whistle and dance till you give in.”
His grin was deep and prolonged. The feeling that he was now being
enormously trusted by me bred a sort of manliness in him. Methought he
was a little less of a fool than he used to be; his gaze had gathered
something of steadfastness, his grin something of intelligence.
When our stretch had brought the northern point of the island abeam, we
put the brig about and headed for the island on the starboard tack; and
now, after we had been sailing for some time, the telescope gave me a
sight of what we were all on the lookout for. The northern point of the
island sloped to the edge of the sea, in perhaps half a mile’s length of
surf-washed margin. The surf was but a delicate tremble. The climb to
the height was steep; but fair in the lenses lay the half-mile of
landing-place, whether sand or beach or rock I knew not.
“Yonder’s where you’ll be able to get ashore,” I cried, thrusting the
telescope into Yan Bol’s hands.
“What d’ye see?” bawled Teach, who overhung the bulwark rail.
“A landing-place, my ladts, und she vhas all right,” thundered Bol, with
his eye at the telescope.
“Anything alive ashore?” cried Teach.
“All vhas uninhabited,” answered Bol.
“Ne’er a hut?” shouted Teach.
“Vhas dot uninhabited, you tonkey? Dere vhas no shtir. Dot vhas der
country for my dollars until by um by. Hurrah!”
He rose slowly and heavily from his posture of leaning, and put the
glass down. I took another long look at the island we were approaching.
There was majesty in its loneliness; there was majesty in the altitude
its dark terraces and inland heights rose to. A crown of cloud was upon
the brow of its central height, and the sunshine whitened into silver
that similitude of regal right--as real and lasting, for all its being
vapor, as any earthly crown of gold!
“There’s your island, and there’s your landing-place,” said I, thrusting
my hands into my pockets. “What’s the next stroke, Yan Bol?”
“Vhat vhas der soundings here?” he answered, going to the side and
looking down.
“What do you want with the soundings?”
“Shall you not pring oop?”
“No, by thunder!” I cried. “What? Bring up off that island with four men
and a boy to man the capstan should it come on to blow a hurricane on a
sudden out of the eastward there, putting that black coast dead under
our lee? No, by thunder! If we are to bring up I’ll go ashore with you;
I’ll not stay with the brig; I’ll not risk my life. Oh, yes! It will
kill the time to hunt for the dollars at low water after the brig’s
stranded and gone to pieces, eh? Bring up?” I continued, shouting out
that all the men might hear me; “send plenty of victuals ashore if
that’s your intention. I’m no man-eater; and what but Dutch and English
flesh will there be to eat if it comes to anchoring?”
“Mr. Fielding knows what he’s talking about,” sung out Teach; “I’m to
stay aboard for one, and I guess he’s right. No good to talk of slipping
if it comes on to blow; we aren’t flush of anchors, and the end of this
here traverse is a blooming long way off yet.”
“How vhas she to be?” cried Bol, looking round the sea.
“How was she to be?” I exclaimed. “Why, heave to under topsails and a
topgallant sail.”
“Suppose she cooms on to blow und ve vhas still ashore?”
“Well?”
“Veil, der vetter obliges you to roon, und you lost sight of der island
und us. How vhas dot, mit noting to eat ashore, und der vetter tick und
beastly for dree veeks, say?”
“Look here, Bol,” said I, speaking loudly, “you are wasting valuable
time in talking damned nonsense. You’re all for supposing. _I_ choose to
suppose because I am to be left in charge of this brig, frightfully
short-handed, and don’t mean to depend upon her ground tackle. D’ye
understand me?” He gave one of his immensely heavy nods. “But
_you_--there are always chances and risks in a job of this sort, and
recollect ’tis your own bringing about--‘twas you and Teach yonder who
contrived it.”
“Vell?” he thundered impatiently.
“Get your boat over as smartly as may be when the time arrives. Load her
with as much silver as you may think proper to take for the first jaunt.
Stow a piece or two of beef and some barrels of bread--you say there is
fresh water ashore?”
“Blenty,” said the Dutchman.
“You can bring off the victuals when your job’s ended,” said I.
“Mr. Fielding, you’re right,” said Teach. “Yan, ’tis only agin the
chance of our being blowed off. If that’s to happen, ye must have enough
to eat till we tarns up agin. But what’s that chance?” cried he, with a
stare up aloft and around. “If the fear o’t’s to stop us, good-night to
the burying job.”
Bol trudged a little way forward; the men gathered about him and held a
debate. I marched aft with my hands in my pockets as though indifferent
to the issue of their council, having made up my mind. But for all that
it was a time of mortal anxiety with me.
After ten minutes Bol came aft and told me that the crew were agreed the
brig should be hove to. There was no anchor at the bow, and precious
time would be wasted in making ready the ground tackle. Next, we should
have to haul in close to land to find anchorage, and the crew were of my
opinion that the brig was a perished thing with such a coast as _that_
close aboard under her lee, should it come on to blow a hard inshore
wind.
“Und besides,” he continued, “ve doan take no silver mit us to-day. Our
beesiness vhas to oxplore. Ve take provisions und shovels, und der like,
vhen ve goes ashore now, und ve begins to dig if ve findts a place dot
all vhas agreed vhas a goodt place for hiding der money.”
“Then turn to and get all ready with the boat,” said I; “we shall be in
with the land close enough in a few minutes. I want a mile and a half
of offing--nothing less--otherwise I go ashore in the boat and you stop
here.”
“Hov your way, sir; hov your way,” he rumbled in his deepest voice.
“Vhat should I do here? Soopose ve vhas blowned away out of sight of der
island; how vhas I to findt her?”
Saying this he left me, and in a few minutes all hands were in motion. I
stopped them, in the middle of their labors over the boat, to bring the
brig to a stand. We laid the main topsail aback, and since it was now
certain that I should not be able to put my scheme into execution that
day, I ordered them to reduce the ship to very easy canvas; the mainsail
was furled, the forecourse hauled up, the trysail brailed up, and other
sails were taken in, one or two furled, and one or two left to hang. The
fellows then got the longboat over. They swayed her out by tackles, and
when she was afloat and alongside they lowered some casks of beef and
pork and some barrels of bread and flour into her. We were handsomely
stocked with provisions, and I foresaw the loss of those tierces and
barrels without concern.
The señorita came to my side, and we stood together at the rail, looking
down into the boat and watching the proceedings of the men. It was a
very fine day; the hour about one. The island lay in lofty masses of
dark rock within two miles of us, bearing a little to the southward of
east. The great heap of land filled the sea that way. The searching
light of the sun revealed nothing that stirred. I saw not even a bird;
but that might have been because the sea-fowl of the island were too
distant for my sight. An awful bit of ocean solitude is Amsterdam
Island. The sight of it, the reality of it, makes shallow the bottom of
the deepest of your imaginations of loneliness. The roar of the surf, at
points where the flash of it was fierce, came along in a note of
cannonading. You’d have thought there were troops firing heavy guns
t’other side the island.
The men threw the fore-peak shovels into the boat, along with crowbars,
carpenter’s tools, and whatever else they could find that was good to
dig with. They handed down oars, mast, and sail. I particularly noticed
the sail. It was a big, square lug with a tall hoist. The biggest
galley-punts in the Downs carry such sails. The fellows lighted their
pipes to a man. They grinned and joked and put on holiday looks. It was
a jaunt--a fine change--a jolly run ashore for the rogues after our
prodigious term of imprisonment. Besides, every man possessed a great
fortune; every man might reckon himself up in thousands of dollars! I
could not wonder that they grinned and wore a jolly air.
The following men entered the boat: John Wirtz, William Galen, Frank
Hals, John Friend, William Street, and lastly, Yan Bol. Hals, as you
know, was the cook. They took him, nevertheless--perhaps because he was
suspicious, and wished to see for himself where the pit was dug; perhaps
because he was an immensely strong man--short, vast of breech, of weight
to sink, with his foot, a shovel through granite. And the following men
were left behind to help me to control the brig: James Meehan, Isaac
Travers, Henry Call, Jim Vinten, and Thomas Teach.
The men in the boat shoved off, hoisting the big lug as they did so. The
devils sent up a cheer, and Bol flourished his hair cap at me and the
lady. I returned the salute with a cordial wave of the hand, and the
lady bowed. They hauled the sheet of the lug flat aft, that the boat
might look a little to windward of the landing-place, where, so far as I
could distinguish, there was a sort of split, or ravine, which would
provide easy access to the inland heights and flats. I watched the
boat’s progress through the water with keen interest and anxiety.
Flattened in as the sheet was, the little fabric swam briskly. The wind
was small, yet the boat drove a pretty ripple from either bow and towed
some fathoms of wake astern of her.
“We’ll _chance_ it, all the same!” thought I, setting my teeth.