A new land, new to us, only a faint tint above the horizon, but land it
is, we know; merely an outline of faint soft blue-grey mountains over the
sparkling morning sea.
All night we waited and watched for its lights, but not till daylight
did we have the pleasure of seeing “land”! Land rising out of the waters
after even a week at sea is very gratifying, like food after hunger, like
health after illness.
We have made a good land fall—we find ourselves heading straight to the
centre of San Miguel, the largest island of the Azores group, within a
few yards of the point we aimed at from Belfast; thanks to three skilled
navigators, for we would have passed the islands miles to W. if we had
not corrected compass by sun bearings, a procedure which demands very
scientific knowledge of navigation.
So it is a case of a shave to-day, and getting out thin land clothing,
with an occasional turn on deck between the operations to gloat on the
blue hazy mountains.
We must bring a harpoon or two on deck to show our real character, for
our queer craft, with its three guns forward, might make the Portuguese
wonder what our intentions might be, especially as our full papers are
being mailed out to Cape Town, and we must try to avoid any more red tape
entanglements.
Gradually the hazy land is lit by the rising sun; some rays penetrate
the veil of clouds that hangs over the mountains. We see greenish tints
and white specks, and with the glasses make out that these are houses,
apparently farms with a light and dark green tartan of fields and hedges
round them.
Above the little fields are peaks with scrub or trees up to the clouds,
below the cultivated land there is a steep coast like North Devon,
covered with shrubs and cliffs, on which the sea sends up white shoots of
foam.
As the sun rises the horizon becomes quickly blue—southern blue, but
towards the land the clouds still keep the light subdued over sea, hills,
glens, and peaks. The sea has awakened but the land seems still to sleep.
Dolphins come from seaward and welcome us, and alas, one poor fellow goes
away blazed with a harpoon mark; he was very nearly becoming food for the
poor human creatures on board St Ebba, but the harpoon drew!
This island, St Michael or San Miguel, is undoubtedly like Madeira,
without quite such extremely rugged peaks.
We plan staying one day in port to overhaul the engine, and there to get
a large-sized chart and local information about whales, then to patrol
round the islands for a week, and, if whales are here, perhaps longer. If
not, we go to Madeira, thence southwards with the advancing season.
How exquisite is the colouring of the white and pink houses against
the green and violet of the hills. Now the sun is in full blaze and
the sea intensely blue. We drop sail and fly a little white flag, with
blue square in centre for a pilot, and swing in from the south to Ponta
Delgada, and with the glass make out a pilot’s flag and a six-oared grey
pilot boat coming towards us over the little blue waves. The light grey
long-boat swings alongside; the crew are in pale blue uniforms, with dark
blue berries, their faces brown or sallow, eyes, hair, and moustaches
black as coal.
We got a slight shake after the pilot came aboard, we had stopped our
engine for him to come alongside, and in trying to start again found it
would not work. However, fifteen minutes of the little steam-engine we
rigged up in Belfast brought up enough air pressure to start them. In the
seven days’ run from Belfast some fouling must have collected somewhere,
possibly in the cylinders. The interval I put in usefully, talking to
the pilot by means of some half-a-dozen words of Spanish and Portuguese
and a good many English, plus sketch-book and pencil. With the last I
find, after years of practice, a great deal can be expressed—half-a-dozen
strokes gave an idea of the lie of the islands, and a dot or two from
the pilot showed where he knew whales are occasionally being killed by
local shores’ boats, so we feel that at last we are actually on fishing
ground. His pilotage was very simple—he merely guided us to buoys, to
which we made fast inside the breakwater.
PONTA DEL GADA SAN MIGUEL AZORES
I have read about and seen many places generally recognised as being of a
singular beauty and interest, but never of this jewel of a sea town. For
an artist it is a dream of delight of the most delicate colours reflected
in a sunny sea. The houses are such as one may see in Spain or Italy,
white, or of all the lighter variations of shades of pinks, white, pale
greens and cinnamons, and they are built up to the water’s edge with
only a margin of black volcanic rock showing between them and the sea.
Most of them have their backs to the sea and have picturesque balconies
and landing slips, but in the centre facing the harbour there is an open
plaza with a church and tall square tower, and at its foot bosky round
trees, dark green against the white walls, all reflected at the water’s
edge.
After being visited by port officials, doctors and Customs officer we
went to the plaza in our boat, and a Captain Pickford, of a neighbouring
vessel, who kindly had come on board to leave his card, as it were,
said, as we swung into a gap in the white sea wall into a small inner
harbour: “This is rather a pretty bit we are coming to”—and I looked, and
my breath almost went with the unexpected beauty. The dock or basin we
swung into in our boat is built of black stone whitewashed to the water’s
edge, with two flights of steps for people to land by. It is only about
ninety yards square—houses of a slightly Venetian style on the land side
rise from a double arcade, one arcade rising from the water with another
inside it at a higher level, windows look out from the shaded inner
arcade, white pillars of the arcades and arches support a house faced
with blue tiles, with pointed windows and adjoining houses of pale pink
and yellow tints. In the deep shadows of the alcoves and in the sun on
the steps there were figures, men, women, and boys, mostly resting, some
in brilliant colours, some in sombre tints; and these and white boats at
their moorings were reflected in the waving dark ripples of the basin.
For an artist I would say this hundred yards of light and shade and
colour is worth all Venice.
Perhaps the colour of the light is the charm of the Azores; it is
that Gulf Stream rich, colourful light that to me seems to increase
south-westerly as you follow it, say from the west of Kirkcudbright to
Spain, and westwards, till you come to the Saragossa Sea—a quality in the
atmosphere that makes the night here redundant with colour and the day
superlative.
Why do you not see quite such soft richness of colour in the air farther
east? There is greater velvetyness of colour here in the Azores than in
Madeira, or the west of Spain, or anywhere in the Mediterranean, or the
Far East.
I could sit here for weeks, day and night, watching the changing effects,
the queer parrot-coloured weathered boats, with their furled-up white
cotton sails coming alongside the steps; the steps are greenish black
volcanic stone, whitewashed, and the stone shows here and there, and the
white is of infinite variety of tints and the sunlight is so soft and
mellow that patches of colour, say a man’s pink shirt, or a patch of
emerald-green cloth, catch the eye with their soft intensity and your eye
goes back and forwards revelling in the pleasure of the soft clash of
battling colour, and tints.
The boats that come in from the blue are vivid in colouring, brilliant
emerald, yellow, and scarlet, with thick white cotton sails. The largest
are three-masted feluccas, long and narrow, with sails like swallows’
wings. Each has a crew of at least eleven men and boys, with brown faces
and black hair and beards. They go bare-footed, and wear a peaked pointed
knitted cap exactly the same as we have in the Fair Isle off Shetland;
and each figure is a joy for ever of sun-bitten, faded-coloured garments
of many colours. Then think of these figures in the blue night moving
noiselessly with bare feet, unloading short yellow planks for pineapple
boxes in half electric, half moonlight, the velvety shadows of the
tropics and all the vivid colours of the day still distinct, but softened
down to a mothlike texture, and the blue tiles on the house above the
arches glittering in the moon’s rays.
If you add to these sensations of colour, and the perfect stillness, the
scent of pinewood planks and the perfume of pineapples you have an air to
linger over, a delicious intoxication.
Both the people of Ponta Delgada and the town itself are very clean.
Living in the Portuguese Hotel costs five shillings per day, with
extremely good feeding—beef from oxen on the hills fed on wild geraniums,
heath, and hydrangeas, and fish of many kinds.
[Illustration]
I tried my trammel net for fish alongside in the bay. I set it with the
second mate’s help; it is forty fathoms in length, and by midday there
was quite a good catch of many-coloured bream, and those exquisite
silvery fish, about the size and shape of a saucer, that are such
excellent eating. The trammel net is quite new here, and is new to my
Norwegian companions and to the natives. I find it of much use on our
Berwickshire coast for supplying the house with fish. It consists of a
wall, as it were, of fine net hung between two nets of very large mesh;
with corks on top and leads below. It can be set either standing on the
bottom or hanging from the surface—the fish swim against it, make a bag
of the fine net through a mesh of either of the big nets, and in this
pocket they stay till you overhaul your net, possibly once a day.
Here we found a worm like one leg of a star-fish made such havoc with
our captive fish in the net that we had to overhaul it every four
hours or so. On the second evening I got three splendid fish, like
salmon, of about six pounds each, with large silvery scales and small
heads—cavallas, I hear them called.
Whatever their name may be, of one thing I am certain, they make splendid
eating, and taste like small mahseer—of course everyone knows their taste!
[Illustration]
I rigged up a bamboo rod, using cast of Loch Leven flies, with the wings
cut off, with small pieces of sardine for bait. We made quite good
baskets of young bonita, and tunny, and sardines: tunny fry, of course;
a two-year-old tunny would snap strong salmon gut and a full-grown tunny
takes a rope as thick as a stylo pen to pull it in; and lots of time. You
can even take them on a tarpon line if you think life is too long.
A thing I could not understand about this small-game hunting was the way
certain silvery fish eluded our efforts to catch them. Whilst other fish
ate the finely chopped sardine meat we threw over, and young mackerel
and herring, etc., calmly took our hooks baited with pieces of sardine,
these flat silvery fish like saucers on edge almost at once grasped our
idea—they eyed the bait and hook, sailed along the gut of the dropper,
examining it closely, sailed up the gut of the cast and said: “No, no,
we will take bait without a hook, but not this.” I wonder why their
perception should be so much keener than those of the other fish;
probably none of them had ever seen a hook in their lives.
But this writing about small fry is “wandering from the point,” as
the cook said to the eel; let us get back to whaling or at least to
whale-hunting.
* * * * *
We are off to the west end of San Miguel to go round it and beat about
the north side in search of the whales which everyone tells us are to
be found there, and the view of glens and woods and fields bathed in
sunshine under the cloud-capped hills is very sweetly refreshing. But
luxurious rolling on the blue seas and all the sweet scenery hardly
take away the unpleasing taste of last night. The engine overhaul was
only finished last night, so we intended to up anchor this morning at
daylight. Henriksen and I went ashore and waited for the Consul about
some affairs at Robert’s Café, a large, quiet café, with wide-open doors
facing the sea. As we sat there rather silently, away in the velvety
blue night, out to sea beyond the breakwater, several rockets rose and
burst in a golden shower and we heard the continuous blast of a ship’s
horn making signals of distress. We jumped! so did the other two or three
cigarette-smoking habitués of the café, and all got on to the sea-front,
and the horn continued.
“That’s a wreck,” said Henriksen.
“Yes,” said I.
“Wat we do?” said Henriksen.
I paused for half-a-second—I couldn’t advise—Henriksen is in command.
So I waited for this fraction of a second—it felt like a whole minute.
He thought and must have thought hard; for there are many things to put
together in such a moment—owners’ risks, personal risk, honour, risk of
fines or imprisonment for leaving a Portuguese port without clearance,
the chance of saving lives; and last and least—salvage.
“Yes,” said Henriksen, “we goes help—_we’s British ship!_” and we turned
and ran; he blew on his whistle as we ran, and our engineer and some of
the crew, who had just come on shore and were entering a café along the
promenade, recognised the whistle, and before we were up to them they
were back into our boat and we jumped in and pulled off. We got on board,
slipped our anchor and chain, marked with line and lifebelt for a buoy,
got out side lights and started the engine, and were round the outer end
of the breakwater within thirty minutes from the moment we left the café!
and I say we felt proud of St Ebba. The big town clock on the church was
striking eleven P.M.
No other vessel in harbour was under steam so we congratulated ourselves
on having a motor-engine and so being able to get under way so rapidly.
[Illustration: THE ARCADES AT THE INNER HARBOUR, PONTA DELGADA, AZORES]
[Illustration: TUNNY ON THE BEACH AT MADEIRA]
Till we came to the end of the breakwater, the distress foghorn signals
continued. As we swung round it they ceased!
Out to sea for a mile or so we steered, looking vainly for lights to the
horizon and the S.W. and saw nothing. Then looked behind us, and there,
on the most unlikely place in the world, were the lights of a ship, on
the breakwater rocks, close to the fixed shore light!
Round we turned, going our best speed, and stopped when we had got as
close as we thought advisable in the darkness, shoved over our flat dory
and rowed off with a lantern in the bow.
The steamer was rolling gently on the rocks; we rowed close and the
writer in the bow hailed them on board and offered a tow off into the
harbour. The crew we could see, and they preserved silence for some time.
“Hullo!” we shouted. “On board there, were you sending up distress
signals?” A reluctant “Yes” and “Who are you?” from the gloom on deck,
where there was a little light that showed some Dutch courage going
around. And we answered, and asked in turn: “Where’s your skipper?”
“Below with owners.”
“Well, tell him to speak”—pause—then came the skipper’s “Hullo! what do
you want?”
“What do we want!” we repeat very angrily. “Weren’t you firing rockets
and blowing yourself inside out with distress signals?”
No answer.
“Were those distress signals?” we ask again, and there’s a reluctant
“Yes” and still another “What do you want and who are you?”
“We’re St Ebba, whaler, motor ship, two hundred horse-power, and tons of
cable, come to tow you off into harbour—half-an-hour will do it—there’s
an hour of flood yet and you can float that distance.”
A long silence.... Then: “We don’t want help—you’ve come along for
salvage.” I was dumbfounded.
I need not prolong the interview; the crew said they’d like to be taken
off, they’d got their bags ready, but their skipper wouldn’t let them.
The lamp showed her name on the stern in fresh gold letters—the B—enido,
London—we knew a little about her, for a neighbouring steamer’s engineer
had been asked on board for engine trouble; and only a few hours before
the rockets went up he’d been speaking to us about her. He said she was a
new ship (two thousand tons?), Spanish-owned with British captain, on her
first voyage, engines made on Continent, hull in England, and she was all
wrong.
She had left the harbour only a few hours before she was wrecked. The
skipper set the course S.W., and a one-eyed nigger at the wheel steered
N.E.
So we pulled back to the ship and told Henriksen of our abortive
interview and he went off again with me and two men.
It would be pretty hard to put into words our very natural keenness and
the wrath at the unaccountable apathy of the British captain of the
Spanish-owned ship. But the result of the second interview was the same
as first. They were going to cling to the rocks—we were to mind our own
business.
We thought we ought to stand by all night for the sake of the crew on
board her, for I’ve seen a vessel go on to rocks in a similar position
and lie comfortably till the tide turned, and when the water receded heel
right over and go straight down in a second.
When daylight came her stern had sunk till the deck was level with the
water and lighters were coming off to take some of her cargo. We could
have towed her off at first without much trouble and long before her
plates were seriously damaged by the continuous rolling that followed and
the falling of the tide.