By the time the sun had been risen about an hour, Cunningham and I
became aware that it needed something more than a mere shipwreck to rob
us of our appetite, for we found ourselves rapidly developing a good,
wholesome hunger; but, alas! there were no means of appeasing it, for
the schooner was full of water and everything in the nature of
provisions was quite un-get-at-able: we should therefore be obliged to
wait for a meal until we could get ashore, which, we decided, could
scarcely be until the afternoon, if even then. And we soon came to the
conclusion that our companions ashore were in like case with ourselves,
so far at least as hunger was concerned, for about half an hour later we
saw them rise to their feet, point first to their mouths and then to the
top of the cliff, and presently proceed to the cliff foot, evidently in
search of a spot at which it might be climbed. And although, viewed
from the wreck, the cliff appeared to be quite vertical, they soon found
such a spot; for, as we watched, they began to ascend the cliff,
zigzagging to right and left and apparently following something that by
courtesy might be called a path, for they walked rather than climbed it,
reaching the top in about five minutes. Then, with a wave of the hand
to us, they turned into the bushes and disappeared, returning about an
hour afterwards with what, as they held it up for us to see, looked like
a small bunch of bananas.
Meanwhile, the gale having broken, the wind rapidly dropped, until about
midday it fell stark calm. But it was not until nearly sunset that the
surf on the beach had abated sufficiently to render it at all safe for
us to attempt the swim from the wreck to the shore, by which time we
were both so ravenously hungry that we were prepared to take quite an
appreciable amount of risk, if by doing so we could procure the
wherewithal to appease our craving for food. And while waiting for the
sea to go down we employed our time usefully in cutting adrift the
rigging by which the broken masts remained attached to the wreck, thus
giving the wreckage a chance to drive ashore upon the beach, where we
should eventually want it.
At length, however, when the sun had dropped to within some fifteen
degrees of the western horizon, and was shining full into the bay where
the wreck lay, the sea had so far gone down and the surf on the beach
had so far abated as to render it possible for us to land without
incurring much risk of injury to our limbs; we therefore awoke Murdock--
who had passed most of the day in sleep--and, finding him in pretty good
form after his long rest, forthwith proceeded to make the attempt. The
distance which we had to traverse was a mere trifle of about fifty
fathoms or thereabouts, and we did perfectly well until we reached the
inner line of breakers; but there, as luck would have it, something went
wrong with the boatswain, and without saying a word to either of us he
suddenly flung up his hands and disappeared, at the precise moment when
the comber had us in its grip and was about to fling us up on the beach,
and when, consequently, it was most necessary that each of us should be
perfectly free to look after himself. Fortunately, however, we were all
swimming close together, and as Murdock disappeared, Cunningham and I
with one accord dived and made a grab at him, catching him just as the
breaker curled over and broke, hurling us all forward in a smothering
swirl of foam; and the next instant we were all being rolled over and
over upon the sand. Then, as we came to rest, I dug my toes and the
fingers of my disengaged hand deep into the sand, ready for the
backwash, while, as it afterward appeared, Cunningham did the same; and
after a severe struggle of a few seconds' duration the water receded,
leaving us stranded and gasping for breath, when Chips and Sails, who
had been on the watch, rushed down into the water, and, in obedience to
a gasped request from me, seized the boatswain's insensible body and
dragged it up out of reach of the next breaker, while Cunningham and I
scrambled to our feet and staggered after them.
Once ashore the boatswain soon recovered from his fainting fit, or
whatever it had been, whereupon we all seated ourselves in a circle upon
the sand and feasted upon bananas, afterwards slaking our thirst at a
little runnel of deliciously cool, sweet water that the carpenter had
discovered, earlier in the day, trickling out of the cliff at no great
distance from the point at which the wreck had come ashore. And while
we were eating, the carpenter informed us that he and the sailmaker had
been stretched out upon the schooner's cabin lockers, fast asleep, when
she struck upon the reef for the first time; and that, awakened by the
violence of the shock and the crash of the falling masts, they had
leaped to their feet, and, scarcely knowing what they did, rushed up on
deck, only to be swept overboard the next instant by a heavy sea which
broke over the ship. Neither of them knew, at the moment, what had
befallen the other; but from what they told us it was evident that the
same sea which washed them overboard swept the schooner's deck of
everything and carried away her bulwarks: for when, fighting for breath,
they rose to the surface, each of them found himself close to a mass of
floating wreckage, to which he clung desperately, and so was eventually
flung up on the beach, with the life so nearly battered out of him that
it was just as much as either of them could do to crawl far enough up
the beach to get beyond the reach of the deadly backwash, when they both
collapsed, and so lay senseless until they were revived by the rays of
the morning sun.
There were, however, two still missing, namely, the cook and the cabin
boy. The former of these we found, quite dead, shut up in the stranded
galley; but exactly what became of the cabin boy we never knew, for we
never found a trace of him, alive or dead. We buried the body of the
cook that same evening in the sand, using fragments of splintered
planking wherewith to dig the grave, after which we flung ourselves down
upon the dry sand above high-water mark, and, completely worn out, slept
soundly until the following morning.
We awoke shortly after sunrise, to find the weather gloriously fine, the
Trade wind again blowing briskly, and, to our very great surprise, the
wreck but a few yards from the shore, in very little over two feet of
water. But a single glance around us at the greatly altered appearance
of the beach, as compared with what we had seen of it on the previous
day, sufficed to explain the apparent mystery. The tide had something
to do with it, of course, for it chanced that the schooner had come
ashore on the very top of the highest spring tide: but it was perfectly
evident that, apart from this, the water in the bay had been piled up to
quite an unusual height by the gale; hence when the storm had subsided
and the ocean had once more found its normal level the wreck was left
little short of high and dry. This was quite a stroke of good luck for
us; for we subsequently discovered that the range of tide in that
particular part of the ocean was so exceedingly small that, even at
high-water, we were able to wade right out to the wreck, while the
wreckage which had been cast ashore on the previous day was now lying
high and dry far up the beach, and quite beyond the reach of the
ordinary tides. We were thus saved a vast amount of trouble, for
although, when we began salvage operations, it was still necessary to do
a certain amount of rafting in order to convey heavy articles ashore,
light articles, such as we could carry, could be taken thither by the
simple process of lowering them over the side to one of our companions,
who then carried them ashore in his arms or on his shoulders.
But there were one or two matters demanding our immediate attention, the
first being breakfast, while the next was the settlement of the very
important question whether or not the island happened to possess other
inhabitants than ourselves, and, incidentally, if so, what would be
their attitude toward us. And this last was a matter of the most vital
importance to us; for our experience, gained during the collection of
our cargo of sandalwood, was that while the natives of certain of the
islands were gentle, kindly disposed toward strangers, and perfectly
harmless, those of others were exceedingly jealous and suspicious,
fierce, treacherous, bloodthirsty, and in some cases actually cannibals.
Of course if it should so chance that we had been cast away upon an
island inhabited by natives possessing the last-named characteristics,
our prospects of ultimate escape with our lives were what poor old
Skipper Brown would have designated as "purty slim", and until the point
could be determined it behoved us to be exceedingly careful. Therefore,
after discussing the matter at a sort of council of war, it was decided
that, important as it might be to explore the island and ascertain its
capabilities and limitations without delay, it was still more important
and urgent to provide ourselves with the means of self-defence.
Accordingly, while Chips and Sails again undertook to climb the cliff
and procure some bananas for breakfast, Cunningham and I, accompanied by
the boatswain--who seemed, after a good night's rest, to be little the
worse for the happenings of the previous day--agreed to wade off and
board the wreck, with the view of securing such weapons and ammunition
as were come-at-able, and had not been spoiled by sea water.
The arms chest, although actually under water, was secured without
difficulty and carried ashore, together with several bottles of oil
which we were able to rescue from the lazarette; and, this done,
Cunningham and I set to work, immediately after breakfast, thoroughly to
dry, clean, and oil all the weapons and put them in perfect working
order, although such ammunition as we had been able to find was
completely ruined by sea water. But I seemed to remember having heard
our late skipper say that there was a reserve stock, packed in
waterproof zinc-lined cases, stowed away somewhere in the ship;
therefore, while Cunningham and I were engaged upon the task of cleaning
the arms, the other three men went aboard the wreck and proceeded
systematically to salve the entire contents of the lazarette, with the
result that, before the day's work was ended, they had found cases
yielding no less than one thousand rounds of gun ammunition and two
thousand revolver cartridges, all of which proved to be in perfect
condition. We were thus pretty well provided with the means of
self-defence, and, given something in the nature of a fairly strong
defensive position, ought to be able to render a reasonably good account
of ourselves.
The next thing to be done was to find that defensive position; the
following day was therefore devoted to a thorough exploration of the
island by the entire party, the expedition setting out immediately after
breakfast, each of us being armed with cutlass, gun, and a brace of
revolvers, with a good supply of cartridges in our pockets. Thus far we
had observed nothing indicating that the island was inhabited by others
than ourselves: but it must be remembered that the schooner had been
wrecked in a bay hemmed in on the land side by cliffs, and that hitherto
our farthest excursion had been to the top of the cliffs and just the
few yards inland which were necessary to enable us to procure bananas
from the trees growing right up to the cliff edge; the remainder of the
island was therefore, so far, a _terra incognita_ to us all, and might,
for aught that we could tell to the contrary, be swarming with savages.
We therefore decided to proceed with caution, all keeping close
together.
To scale the cliff proved a very easy matter, for the carpenter and
sailmaker had, on their first day ashore, found what might be termed a
sort of natural stairway zigzagging up it, consisting of a series of
rock projections, or ledges, up and down which it was possible to pass
with little or no difficulty, and which served our purpose admirably.
Having climbed this stairway, we found ourselves at the top of the cliff
and confronted by a dense undergrowth of jungle, consisting for the most
part of an inextricable tangle of tough creepers, interspersed with
shrubs and trees of various kinds, many of which seemed to be fruit
bearers. Among these we recognised the plantain, banana, custard-apple,
loquat, granadilla, guava, pawpaw, and some others with which none of us
were acquainted; the fruit, however, was neither very plentiful nor very
fine, most of the trees being so completely smothered with creepers that
they could get neither sun, air, nor room enough to grow properly. We
pushed through this brake for about a mile, working steadily uphill all
the time, and frequently being compelled to cut a way for ourselves with
our cutlasses, finally emerging upon a kind of ridge, bare of scrub, but
richly carpeted with guinea grass, with a few tall trees of various
kinds scattered here and there about it. But although this ridge, or
plateau, was comparatively open, our view was still exceedingly
circumscribed, for we were hemmed in on every hand by the bush belt,
which seemed completely to cover the entire island, except the plateau
upon which we stood and the bald summit of the curious-looking hill or
mountain about two miles distant. The summit of this hill, which
appeared to be flat, and which we estimated to be about three thousand
feet higher than the ridge upon which we were then standing, promised to
afford us a perfect view of the whole island; therefore, as the day was
still young, we at once decided to make our way to and survey our domain
from it.
The crest of the ridge upon which we stood appeared to lead straight
toward the mountain, moreover it was not nearly so densely overgrown as
was the lower ground; our progress, therefore, was tolerably rapid, and
in the course of an hour we found ourselves clear of the bush and
standing upon the lower slopes of the mountain. And then we knew that
the towering mass in front of us could be nothing else than a volcano,
either dormant or extinct, for there was no sign of smoke rising from
its summit, although the nature of the soil around us, consisting as it
did of pumice stone, scoriae, and ancient lava, left no doubt as to the
character of the mountain.
And now began the really difficult part of our task. Although the
ground was entirely bare of vegetation the surface was so exceedingly
rough and broken, and so loose, that progress was very slow, becoming
more so with every forward step; for while the lower slopes of the
mountain were of quite an easy grade, they rapidly steepened as we
advanced, until the last five hundred feet or so approached so nearly to
the perpendicular that at length further progress seemed to be all but
impossible, and we could only advance a yard or two at a time, climbing
upon hands and knees, with short spells of rest between the spurts.
But when at length, about midday, we finally reached the summit, it was
unanimously agreed that our toil was amply rewarded, for the entire
island lay stretched out at our feet like a map, with mile after mile of
the blue, foam-flecked ocean reaching far away to the horizon on every
hand, while away in the south-western quarter, a hundred miles distant
perhaps, there appeared a faint film of misty blue which indicated the
presence of other land. But this last was much too distant to interest
us in any way; it was our own particular domain that absorbed all our
attention, and the first thing that we observed about it was that its
length ran practically east and west. It was of very irregular shape,
the most graphic way of describing it being, perhaps, to say that in
general outline it somewhat resembled a rather acute-angled triangle,
with two large pieces bitten out of it near the base, one bite having
been taken out of the north side, while the other and larger had removed
the south-west angle and formed the bay in which lay the wreck. The
acute angle pointed toward the east, and the sides of the triangle were
much twisted and broken. The mountain, upon the summit of which we
stood, occupied the middle of the eastern half of the island, and proved
to be, as we had anticipated, the crater of an apparently extinct
volcano. The interior of the crater was elliptical in shape, about a
mile long by half a mile wide, and was a funnel-like opening about five
thousand feet deep, with practically perpendicular sides. It resembled,
as much as anything, an enormous well, for there was water at the bottom
of it, though probably of no great depth. Also at the bottom, all round
the edge of the water and for some distance up the sides, there were
enormous quantities of what we judged to be sulphur.
The top edge of the crater, which from below presented the appearance of
a flat-topped hill, was about thirty feet wide and tolerably level; we
therefore had no difficulty in walking right round it, and so obtaining
a complete view of the entire island, which was everywhere covered with
verdure, save immediately round the base of the volcano. But although
the outline of the island was very irregular, there were only two
indentations worthy of the name of bays in it, namely, the one in which
the wreck lay, and which we at once decided to name South-west Bay, and
another at the north-west extremity of the island, which we named North
Bay. These two bays were the only portions of the coastline possessing
anything in the nature of a beach; and, that fact once established, we
knew that if natives existed anywhere on the island, we should find
traces of them on one or the other of the bays. But we had already
learned that there were none on the shore of South-west Bay; and now,
carefully examining the other bay, we could see no trace of canoes on
its beach, or huts along its margin, neither could we detect the
slightest sign of a smoke wreath in any direction. We therefore finally
came to the conclusion that, excepting ourselves, the island was without
inhabitants, and one source of anxiety was thereupon removed from our
minds.
Standing upon the edge of the crater and looking westward, we obtained a
perfect view of the whole of the western half of the island, including
both bays; and, looking down upon the land below us from a great height,
as we now did, we were able to form a very accurate idea of its origin,
which we at once judged to be volcanic. The entire island, in fact, was
evidently the summit of a volcano projecting above the surface of the
ocean, the two bays above referred to having evidently been at one time
two craters or vents for the internal fires, since both were encircled
by reefs which had all the appearance of having been at one time part of
the lip of the respective craters.
As we stood up there, studying the conformation and general appearance
of the island, we fell to discussing our future prospects, and soon
arrived at the conclusion that, situated just where the island happened
to be, far away from all the regular ship tracks, its very existence
apparently unknown--since it was not marked upon the chart--it might be
months, or even years, before we should be rescued by being taken off by
a ship; and that therefore our wisest course would be, first, to save
everything possible from the wreck, and then carefully break her up,
using her timber to build some sort of a craft to convey us back to
civilisation. This would at all events keep us busy and our minds
occupied, giving us an object in life--something to strive for, think
about, and achieve--and thus preserve us all from falling into a low and
despondent frame of mind; and if in the end a ship should happen to
appear and take us off, why, so much the better, while if nothing of the
kind occurred we should in due time be able to effect our own escape.
Cunningham was particularly enthusiastic over the scheme; yacht
designing, it appeared, was a hobby of his, and he promised us that if
we would only give him a free hand he would design us something which
would not only be fairly easy to build, but would also be safe and
comfortable, and quite capable of conveying us all to any part of the
world we might choose as our destination. This struck me as a far too
ambitious project for five men to undertake; but when, later on, we
again discussed the matter, with a chart of the Pacific before us, and I
discovered that the Sandwich Islands, the nearest civilised land, lay
some fourteen hundred miles distant, I changed my opinion. I had
already done one ocean trip in an open boat, and had no desire to
attempt another.
On our way back to the beach abreast the wreck, which now constituted
our temporary home, we took a look at North Bay. With this, as a place
of residence, we instantly became violently enamoured: because, in the
first place, it was open to the north-east Trade wind, and was therefore
far cooler and more pleasant than the beach of South-west Bay, shut in
as the latter was under the lee of high cliffs, and opposed to the
afternoon sun; next, there was a little stream of delicious fresh water
falling over a low cliff into a small rock basin, affording an ideal
freshwater bath; next, we discovered a fine large, perfectly dry cave,
close to the shore, with an entrance so narrow that it constituted of
itself a perfect rock fortress; and, lastly, a large and varied
assortment of very fine fruit trees was discovered growing quite close
to the beach, only needing to be cleared of the undergrowth to make a
splendid orchard. The one drawback to the bay was that it was about two
miles distant from the wreck, near which we should of necessity be
obliged to establish our shipyard; but its many advantages so far
outweighed this that we took possession of the cave there and then, and
slept in it that night.
And now ensued a particularly busy time for us all; for when we came to
consider the situation we found that there were several matters
demanding our attention, and they were all of so urgent a character that
it was rather difficult for us to determine offhand which should be the
first to receive it. For, to begin with, we were all agreed that unless
something quite unforeseen and unexpected, in the nature of a call at
the island by a ship, should occur in the meantime, we must be prepared
for a sojourn of at least a year in our present quarters; and that, of
course, meant that we should be obliged to give serious consideration to
the question of the maintenance of our health, which, in its turn, meant
that we must carefully regulate our diet, and alter it as much as
possible, not depending too much upon fruit, but varying it by a
frequent change to fish, our only possible alternative.
But we soon discovered that in order to catch fish, as well as for many
other purposes, it was not only very desirable, but also almost
imperatively necessary _that_ we should have something in the nature of
a boat, which, of course, remained to be built. Then there was the
salvage of everything contained in the wreck of the schooner, including
the timber and metal of which she was built; to say nothing of certain
gardening operations projected by Murdock, with the object of improving
the quality of the fruit growing in the immediate vicinity of our cave,
the cultivation of certain vegetables, and sundry other schemes having
for their object the betterment of our condition during the period of
our sojourn upon the island--Murdock's hobby happening to be gardening,
as Cunningham's happened to be yacht designing (and, as often happens
when men take up some useful occupation as an amusement, both soon
proved themselves to be exceptionally skilful in all matters relating to
their respective hobbies). Therefore, while Chips, Sails, and I went
strenuously to work upon the operation of salving everything that we
could find aboard the wreck, the boatswain, with the assistance of poor
Cooky's fire shovel, and a few other iron implements which he converted
into tools, devoted himself to the production of a fruit and vegetable
garden in the immediate neighbourhood of our cave dwelling, clearing
away all the scrub which grew around and choked some two dozen fruit
trees, digging and hoeing up the soil, and planting therein every
potato, onion, and bean that we could find for him among the cook's
stores aboard the ship. And while he and we were busy in the manner
described, Cunningham rescued a few sheets of paper and some lead
pencils from the skipper's cabin, carefully dried the former, sharpened
the latter, and, with an empty packing case for table, and a scale
constructed with the assistance of the carpenter's two-foot rule,
assiduously devoted himself to the task of designing what he called a
"catamaran" for immediate use, and then a small schooner by means of
which we were eventually to make our escape from the island and return
to civilisation.
The catamaran struck me as being a particularly simple and ingenious
affair, some of its many merits consisting in the facts that it needed
no moulds for its construction, that it could be built of any fragments
of wreckage that were too short and too much splintered and damaged to
be of use in the construction of the schooner, and that it needed no
very elaborate working or shaping. It consisted essentially of two
oblong tanks or boxes, each thirty feet long by two feet wide by two
feet six inches deep. These boxes were not unlike a Thames fishing punt
in shape, although they were, proportionately, much narrower and deeper.
The bottom of each was perfectly flat transversely, and also
longitudinally, except at the ends, where it curved up gradually in a
semi-parabola until it met the gunwale. These two boxes, or punts,
having been decked over and made perfectly watertight, were then joined
together--with a space of eight feet between them--by stout beams, over
the after part of which was laid the schooner's wheel grating, to serve
the purpose of a deck; a broad-bladed steering paddle was fitted
securely into a grommet attached to the aftermost beam; the punts were
simply rigged with an enormous lateen sail made out of the schooner's
tattered foresail, and there we had a nondescript kind of craft, thirty
feet long by twelve feet beam, drawing only about eight inches of water
when light and on an even keel, buoyant, unsinkable, and uncapsizable,
which, when we came to try her, developed a speed under sail that was
positively astounding, and went to windward like a racing cutter.
She was wet, of course, particularly when driven hard to windward, but
in such a climate as we now enjoyed, to be drenched with salt water was
a pleasure rather than otherwise, and, regarded as a drawback, was not
worth a moment's consideration. It took us a month almost to a day to
build and rig her complete; and after our first trial of her we almost
invariably used her to go to and fro between the two bays, although the
trip by water was about seven miles in length, as compared with the
short cut of two miles overland. Yet we did it either way in a little
over half an hour, while the sail home in the evening, after a hard
day's work, was much the more exhilarating mode of travelling of the
two. And what, perhaps, gratified us as much as anything in connection
with the construction of this exceedingly useful craft was that in
building her we had not been obliged to touch the schooner at all, but
had drawn for our material entirely upon the loose wreckage of bulwarks
and so on that we had found strewn about the beach on the day after the
wreck, together with four stout saplings which we cut down to serve as
beams, and which we found to be exceedingly tough and in many respects
to resemble elm.
And while the carpenter, the boatswain, Sails, and I had been
strenuously at work upon the construction of the catamaran, Cunningham
had been quite as industriously employed upon his design for the
proposed schooner, working alone, day after day, in our cave dwelling
round at North Bay, evolving his half-breadth and body plans, his
midship section, buttock lines, water lines, diagonals, and all the rest
of it; ruling in, rubbing out again, calculating, altering, modifying,
and patiently labouring to get his several drawings to agree accurately
with each other, and resolutely refusing to be satisfied until he had
got everything exactly to his liking: and at length he was able to
display to us, not altogether without pride, the completed draught of as
pretty a little ship as I think I ever set eyes upon. He had taken, as
the foundation of his design, the shape of the _Zenobia's_ gig, in which
we had made our memorable Atlantic voyage, and out of which we had been
taken by poor old Skipper Brown, that fine little craft having produced
a profound impression upon him, in consequence of the splendid qualities
as a sea boat which she had exhibited. But the new craft was of course
to be much bigger than the gig, for she was not only to be completely
decked from stem to stern, but was to be sufficiently roomy in her
interior to enable us to perform a voyage of over a thousand miles with
a very fair measure of comfort. Her principal dimensions, therefore,
were forty feet on the water line by ten feet beam; and, in order to
provide a reasonable amount of headroom below, as also to make her
weatherly, she was considerably deeper in proportion than the gig, and
much sharper in the floor, this providing her with plenty of power for
her size, by means of which she would be enabled to make good way even
in a heavy head sea. Her bow was an almost exact reproduction of that
of the gig, rather long and overhanging, with plenty of "flare" to lift
her over a head sea, and she was provided with an even longer counter,
which gave her after-body a remarkably smooth and easy delivery; while,
for the rest, her water lines were almost those of a racing yacht, so
that I concluded she would be exceedingly nimble under her canvas.
Altogether we were immensely pleased with, and not a little impressed by
Cunningham's effort; but I could not help reminding the others that it
was one thing to draught a smart little vessel on paper, and quite
another to build her with such resources as we had at our disposal.
Chips, however, who of course knew--or should have known--more about
such matters than any of the rest of us, while not exactly pooh-poohing
my reminder, was confident that--as he expressed it--we were men enough
to bring the scheme to fruition; and with that assertion I was obliged,
by no means unwillingly, to rest satisfied.
Meanwhile, however, a great deal still remained to be done before we
could start work upon the new schooner; for although we had by this time
salved everything from the wreck--and it was astonishing how much and
what a wide variety of things we found in her--she still remained to be
broken up; and we agreed that that should be our next job.