At this time I had drifted down South America way, and was master of a
combination whaling and sealing steamer sailing out of Punta 'renas for
the firm of Amundsen & Co.
Punta Arenas, if you don't happen to know, is at the tip end of
Patagonia, in the Magellan Straits. It is now a highly respectable place
under the Chilean flag, but there was a time it wasn't. All kinds of
human wreckage used to drift onto the west coast of South America in
those days, and when the Chilean Government couldn't take care of them
any other way they would ship them down through the straits to Punta
'renas. At the time I was there most of the bad ones had been run out,
but every now and then a few of the old crew would pop up and worry
people into thinking Punta 'renas must still be a hard place, which it
wasn't.
Mr. Amundsen lived in a big house up on the plaza where the bandstand
was, with a fine open-air veranda in front and a glassed-in
conservatory on the side, and aft of the house a garden with a waterfall
modelled after something he had left behind him in Norway. He designed
the waterfall himself, and over the grandpiano in the front room looking
out on the plaza was an oil-painting of it--a whale of a painting, done
by a stranded Scandinavian who told Mr. Amundsen he'd seen that
identical waterfall in Norway many a time, which perhaps he had.
We didn't like Mr. Amundsen any the less because of his collection of
old sagas which he used to spin out for hours on end. Whoppers, some of
them were, but we, his whaling and sealing captains, we'd sit there and
never let on, eating thin Norwegian bread and goats' cheese and dried
chips of ptarmigan, with Trondhjem beer, and none of us but would have
sat longer any time, so that after he got through there was a chance to
hear his daughter Hilda play the grandpiano--and sing, maybe, while she
played. And I tell you, the thought of that fine old Norwegian and Hilda
after months of banging around to the west'ard of Cape Horn in a little
whaling steamer--it was surely like coming home to be home-bound then.
Norwegian songs were they, and I, American-born, and only half
Scandinavian by blood, was probably the one man coming to Amundsen's
who didn't know every word of them by heart. But not much of the
sentiment of them I missed at that, because in other days I'd cruised
off Norway, too, and knew the places the songs told about--the
high-running fjords and the little white lighthouses; the fish drying on
the rocks and the night sun floating just above the edge of the gray
sea; and, again, the long black night of winter and the dead piled up to
wait till they could be buried when the snow went in the spring.
But shore time in Punta 'renas was holiday time. Wet days, hard days at
sea have their time, too; and Mr. Amundsen and Hilda and Punta 'renas
were a long way behind me. I was whaling and sealing in the South
Pacific, and had been doing pretty well, but nothing record-breaking
till one day I picked up a lot of ambergris.
Now I could have stocked a million dollars in a regular way and nobody
pay any great attention; but the tale of that find went through half the
South Pacific. A dozen whaling and sealing masters boarded me in one
month to see if it was so, and after I'd told them the story of it about
forty-five times, I began to see myself telling it to old Amundsen and
Hilda in the big front room looking out on the plaza, her father and I
having a late supper of flat bread and the goats' cheese and the dried
ptarmigan chips, with Trondhjem beer, and Hilda playing softly on the
piano with an eye and an ear maybe sidewise now and again to me.
And now we were truly homeward bound in old Magellan Straits, with the
hills back of Punta 'renas in sight from our masthead, when we spied a
Norwegian bark with a deckload of lumber ashore on the spit of Pouvenir
Bay, which is on the southerly--the Terra del Fuego--shore of the
straits. Her ensign was upside down in her rigging, and I headed in to
see if we could help her out. I thought it was queer no one showed up
aboard her to answer when I hailed, but no matter--I moored my steamer
just inside the spit and put off with half a dozen men in a boat and
went aboard.
Nobody on her deck, nobody in her below for-'ard. I went aft and dropped
into her cabin, my men behind me, and we were peeking here and there to
see what it was could be wrong, when slap! on goes the cabin hatch over
our heads. Then we hear the padlock slipped on and the lock sprung. We
are prisoners, without even a peek at who it was did it.
We heard them going off. Without waiting any longer, I began slashing
away with my pocket-knife, the only knife among us, and by and by I had
cut our way through the cabin door; but that took a lot of time. From
the bark's deck, when we were clear, there was nothing in sight except
our own steamer to anchor in the bay beyond the spit. The boat we had
come in was gone.
Well, we weren't worrying about the boat, only we had to take the time
to lash together twenty or thirty pine planks and some scantling from
the bark's deckload of lumber and raft ourselves around the spit and
into the little bay to get to our steamer. Everything about her looked
all right, except that none of the crew were in sight when we paddled
alongside. I hurried over the rail to see what was the matter. It didn't
take long to see. The hatches were off her hold and our sealskins and
our ambergris gone from below. A fortune it was, gone--s-st!--like that.
Looking further, we found the rest of the crew nicely locked up in the
fo'c's'le. They didn't know what happened, except that some men had come
rowing in from the direction of the lumber bark in our boat, and one of
them had sung out in English and another in Norwegian that they were the
crew of the bark, with a message from me.
My crew, of course, said: "Come aboard." But no sooner aboard than the
strangers out with revolvers, back my men into the fo'c's'le, and lock
them in. That was all they knew about that, except they heard the noise
of the hurrying of our cargo out of the hold, and then the sound of a
steamer making fast alongside and of shifting our cargo to her deck and
of her moving away. And then all quiet till we came back.
Well, whoever did it must have had us timed pretty well. They must have
had a gang hid in the lumber bark and a steamer hid somewhere in the
straits near by waiting for us. It looked as if there was nothing for us
to do but take our loss and keep on for Punta 'renas, but first I went
to the masthead and had a look out.
Opposite Pouvenir Bay the Straits of Magellan are at their widest. From
the crow's-nest there was a good stretch of sea to look at. To the
west'ard was a touch of smoke, which might be the steamer which looted
us; surely she didn't go to the east'ard, for there it was open water
with nothing in sight. To the northward, toward Patagonia, of course,
she would not go, because Punta 'renas was there. But I had a look that
way, and as I looked I could see what looked like an open boat heading
our way; and I wondered who she would be and what she would be after in
a place like Terra del Fuego.
They came skipping on at a great clip for an open boat. They were
running her to a long main-sheet, but keeping a tight hand on the
sheet.
[Illustration: The strangers out with revolvers, back my men into the
fo'c's'le, and lock them in.]
As they drew nearer I see she was white-painted, and pretty soon I see
she was too big to be anything but a navy sailing cutter, and soon again
I made out that they were a crew of American naval officers and
bluejackets.
They went out of their way some to sweep under the stern of the bark,
and I noticed they all took a look up at her and back at her, wondering,
as I thought, how she came to go ashore. They held on for the inside of
the bay and ran straight up onto a little reach of pebbly beach; and no
sooner grounded than most of them went tearing across the spit with
rifles and shotguns. I see what they were now--it was a hunting party.
Without wasting a second they began to blaze away at the wild ducks as
they came swooping down from the west. In that country the wild game
don't know what a man looks like, and as it was late in the afternoon,
with the ducks coming back for the night from the west'ard, the shooting
was good. Swooping along the shore they came, across the mouth of the
bay, flock after flock so close-set and low-lying that they didn't need
guns. They could have sat on the beach and hove up stones or drift-wood
and killed 'em as they went kiting by, sixty miles or more an hour to
the east'ard.
After twenty minutes or so they must have thought that kind of shooting
was too easy, for part of them went off into the brush and the others
came back to the spit of beach and, with some kindlings from their boat
and some drift-wood and brush, started a fire. It was a north wind, and
I could smell the ducks cooking and the coffee making, and I couldn't
hold off any longer. I rowed myself over in our second boat. The senior
line officer of the party, a lieutenant, invited me to join them, which
I did, and pretty soon I was eating broiled duck and drinking real
American coffee, with bacon and eggs, and forgetting my troubles.
After supper we sat around and talked, and they told me what had
happened to the lumber bark. She had been lured inshore by false lights
the night before and boarded by a gang under Red Dick, who had cleaned
her out of stores and what money they had, and had driven the crew off
in the morning after beating up most of them by way of diverting
himself. Then the bark's captain and his crew rowed across the Straits
of Punta Arenas in their quarter-boat, looking for satisfaction. Nobody
there could do anything for them, because nothing less than a war-ship
could have overcome Red Dick, and there was no Chilean war-ship nearer
than Valparaiso, and that was six days' steaming away.
"But how did that lumber captain know it was Red Dick?" I asked at this
point.
"He didn't know," answered the officer who'd been talking. "But when he
described him everybody in Punta Arenas said it was Red Dick. But aren't
you an American?"
I said I was and told them my experience, and they all said what a pity
my ship wasn't under the American flag so they could put it up to their
captain and be sure he would send a party after Red Dick. And they would
all like nothing better than to join that party, and an easy matter all
'round, as their ship was to be hanging around the straits for another
week.
By this time the others of the party, who'd gone into the brush for wild
geese, were coming back. They didn't get any geese, because geese, wild
geese, anyway, aren't near so foolish as a lot of people think. They
were hungry and sat right down to supper.
Among them, as I looked, was one I knew for Peter Lawson, an old
shipmate. A warrant officer I saw he was now, but when I knew him he was
a chief carpenter's mate on the old _Missalama_. We kept eying each
other, and by and by he remembered, and we stood up and shook hands
across the fire. In half a minute we were talking of old days in the
navy.
By this time it was late day, with the sun going down below the hills on
the other side of Pouvenir Bay. I remember it went down red as the heart
of the fire we were sitting by. Through the little thin whiffs of the
smoke of the fire it looked like that--all hot color and no flame.
Nothing to that, of course, only pictures like that do start your brain
to going. The little bay was there at our feet and the wide straits off
to our elbow, and the water of that bay was smooth green where it
shoaled on the pebbly spit; but the straits, as far as we could see
them, were one long roll of tossing ridges and scooping hollows, and
they were all black except where the williwaws, cutting across the tide,
would whip the ridges to a marble white.
I saw the sun set red through the thin blue smoke of the fire, and
almost in line with the sun and the smoke was the stranded bark with her
deckload of lumber. A little farther off was my own little _Svend Foyn_.
It was coming on dark by then and I could see them making ready the
anchor light on the _Svend Foyn_. And it was coming colder, too, for the
broad, warm north wind had changed to a thin little icy wind from the
south.
And now the fiery-red reflection of the sun was gone from above the
hills across the bay, and when that went all warmth went with it.
Everybody drew nearer to the fire except the two apprentice boys, who
were cleaning up the mess gear in water made hot at a little fire of
their own. One of them was singing to himself little jiggly, ragtime
songs while he wiped the dishes:
"Oh-h, ahm gwine down to Macon town
Ter buy mah 'Liza Jane a gown--
Ah feel so happy 'n' ah don' know why,
Mah bai-bie, mah hon-ie!"
Every time he stacked up a few plates he would stop to roll a few more
cake-walk steps.
"I wish I was feeling as good as you!" I said to myself while I watched
him.
And, watching him, I got to thinking of Hilda in the big front room in
what was home for me--and of having to tell her what a failure my cruise
had been. It did set me to thinking.
All at once it came to me, and "I've got it!" I said, not knowing I said
it out loud until I saw that everybody around the fire was looking at
me; and at last Peter said, "What's it you got?"
And I told them what I had in mind, and they all thought it was a great
scheme--if I could carry it out. And the lieutenant in charge of the
party said: "And we'll help you; but not to-night--the first thing in
the morning after a good night's sleep."
We had a good sleep that night, sleeping till sunrise on the pebbly
beach with the mainsail of the sailing cutter for a tent over us. And in
the morning the first thing after breakfast I pulled the lumber bark off
the beach and moored her in the bay. That was so she wouldn't break up
and go to pieces the first gale of wind came along; and, as after that
service I figured her owners wouldn't call it stealing, I helped myself
to a few thousand feet of lumber off her deck, and we all set to work to
make the _Svend Foyn_ over into what her builder back in Norway
certainly never intended her for.
First, we built up her topsides to make a superstructure, and then added
the other things a first-class battle-ship ought to have. The _Svend
Foyn_ had two masts and one smoke-stack. The two masts were all right.
We had only to set fighting-tops around them, but she would be a poor
class of a battle-ship with only one smoke-stack. So we gave her two
more. We painted her lower sides white and her topsides yellow-brown,
and for turrets we had one to each end with what was intended for
12-inch gun muzzles sticking out of them. And we allowed the ends of
what looked like twelve 7-inch black boys to peek through the sides of
what we called her gun-deck. Two of those 7-inch muzzles were real
muzzles, that is, black-tarred wood like the others, but they were
hollow so we could train a bomb-lance whaling-gun through them, one to
each side. When we got that far they said I would have to name her, and
I called her the _Cape Horn_, and there being no flag that any of us had
ever heard of for Terra del Fuego, we made one for her out of three
pieces of green, red, and purple cloth, and broke it out to her
main-peak.
And when that little round-bowed, fat-sterned whaler waddled out of
Pouvenir Bay that afternoon there wasn't a thing that one lieutenant,
one ensign, one doctor, a warrant carpenter, and sixteen enlisted men of
the United States Navy could see she was shy of, except a wireless
outfit, and we soon fixed that by stringing a stretch of old wire
between her masts, with half a dozen old barrel hoops for a wireless
plant, and for fear there was anybody of Red Dick's party who knew
battle-ships only from pictures, I had the stokers keep feeding her
fires with whale-oil. After that, with the clouds of smoke belching out
of her, I felt sure nobody could doubt us--especially at a distance.
We gave three whistles and dipped the ensign to our navy friends, and
for the rest of that day and night, and all next day and night, we
steamed through the straits toward the Pacific. And on the second
morning we turned north and ran in among the islands off the Chilean
coast; and pretty soon we ran into the place I was bound for--a
bottle-shaped passage with a narrow inlet to each end and the shadow of
the Andes Mountains darkening all. And, laying to moorings there, was a
cargo steamer of perhaps fifteen hundred tons. Even if she wasn't too
big a steamer to be loafing there, I knew her of old. Red Dick was
handy. I took a look around to the north'ard, and at the other end of
the passage and jam in to the high rocks was a whaling steamer about our
own tonnage. I also knew her of old.
I might as well say now that Red Dick and I weren't strangers. We used
to be sort of friends, but not since the day we walked up the long
timber pier in Punta 'renas together and met Hilda with her father. She
was straight from school in Norway then, and 'twas the first time we'd
seen her. We looked out together on the wonderful straits, and 'twas me
she walked home with.
But that was a year back, and it was other business now. I had now to
make an impression, and right away, to back up our battle-ship looks. So
we cut loose and gave them, port and starboard, one after the other,
twenty-one whaling bombs in good, regulation style. They made a
terrible racket against the Andes Mountains, which come down here to the
water's edge.
[Illustration: 'Twas me she walked home with.]
And Red Dick's gang must have thought we were some awful power, for
there was soon great doings on the deck of the whaling steamer. Smoke
began to come out of her, and pretty soon she began to move; but when we
bore down, with a great white wave ahead of us and rolls of smoke over
us, they quit. Two boats dropped over her side and headed for a bit of
beach, and twenty men scurried off and lost themselves in holes between
the rocks. We shot a few bombs over their heads just to let them know we
were a rich nation with ammunition to spare. The echoes coming back
sounded like a battle-fleet saluting port in foreign waters.
We boarded Red Dick's steamer, and there were our sealskins and
ambergris. There were also four or five thousand other fine sealskins
which weren't ours, but which we took along, knowing they weren't Red
Dick's. And with Red Dick's steamer in charge of six of my crew behind
us, we started back the way we came. In steaming past the cargo steamer
we counted four long glasses levelled at us.
The first likely place we came to we hauled to and shifted Red Dick's
cargo to the _Svend Foyn_. By this time, with the ambergris back and
five thousand extra sealskins below, all hands were willing to take a
moderate chance on almost anything. We swung away for the straits, but
not making great headway. The little old _Svend Foyn_ was never any
wonder for steaming. At her best she could do perhaps ten miles an hour.
Now, with all her battle-ship topgear and with the wind ahead, she was
doing perhaps six.
It began to breeze up, but nothing for us to worry over until we saw a
steamer's smoke coming up astern. We were then clear of the coast
islands and into the straits, with wind and sea fighting each other.
I had another good look at the steamer coming up astern, and took my
prize crew off Red Dick's whaler and turned her adrift. I hated to. Not
alone the prize money, but to see a good ship go to loss any time is
bad. I did it in hopes that the cargo steamer coming upon us would stop
to get her, and while they were getting her--what with the gale and the
dark coming--we would be able to slip away. But they didn't stop.
Perhaps the little whaler was too close in to the cliffs for the big
steamer to have a chance in the tide that was running. They let her pile
up against the cliffs, and came on and ranged up abreast of us. Red Dick
was on her bridge. She came so close to us that I could almost have
jumped aboard. It was blowing pretty hard at the time, but she was
making easy weather of it--a good sea-boat. We weren't. The williwaws,
which are what they call the hard squalls off the high hills down there,
were having a great time with out battle-ship topsides. She was
something of a roller on her own account at any time, the _Svend Foyn_,
but now she rolled her wooden turrets under and every once in a while
her bridge.
Red Dick leaned over the bridge rail and laughed. He looked the _Svend
Foyn's_ top gear over and laughed again. "Blank shells and wooden guns!"
he called out. "Fine! Any more left?"
"Oh," I said, "not all blanks and not all wooden, and a few left--yes."
"So?" he says, and gives an order. A man pulls a tarpaulin off a long
needle-gun amidships. "Got anything like that in your battery?" he calls
out.
I looked it over as if I was interested. At the same time I made a sign
to my mate behind me. I'd long before this loaded my two whaling
bomb-lance guns, but this time I put in them the lances, which were of
steel, weighed eighty pounds, and were four and a half feet long--not a
bad little projectile at all.
"What's it for?" I called out, pointing to his needle-gun.
"What's it for?" he mimics. "What d'y' think it's for?"