I see I have gushed a little about the blue sea in the last chapter. This
begins with storm, and gale, and courage running into water in the grip
of the elements.
Just now we are rolling in a loppy swell, high and irregular, but there’s
no wind to speak of. We are right round to W. and S. of St Michael and we
see the island faintly to north to windward, distant some eight miles;
it gives us shelter from the remains of a north-east gale that sprang up
last night, and is only now dying away this afternoon.
Between the time it rose and fell we had too much time to think and
little enough to act.
As I said over the page, we were last night drifting north, with a
land wind from the island south of us; and at about ten, I and Captain
Henriksen had turned in, planning and hoping for fine weather and whales
in the morning; at one-fifteen I heard the whistle in his cabin blown
from the bridge and guessed a change had come—the wind had gone round—he
was on deck at once, I waited a little and followed. And sure enough,
without the least warning, the wind had gone right round to north-east
and was rapidly rising, driving us towards these beautiful villages and
cliffs and bay and volcanic mountain dead to leeward in pitch dark. Only
the village lights and a small shore light could we see, bidding us
anything but a welcome.
The half-hour we spent drifting towards the cliffs, speculating whether
our so far rather tricky motor would start, was memorable. The waves
rapidly grew large and fierce in their sweep, the phosphorescent crests
in the blackness repeated the lines of lights of the villages.
... Fortunately the engine started all right, or these notes would have
to have been continued about mermaids under the surf; I suppose all
hands knew that if the engine didn’t start we would be drowned under
the steep cliffs. They have failed us once or twice lately, but this
time Hansen did his possible, and poked about, heating the cylinders
with the hand furnace, whilst we grew a little cold drifting to the surf
and rocks. In half-an-hour he turned on the air and they went off with a
welcome clash. All hands must have felt as I did, a great sense of relief
when they started, but there wasn’t time to speak. The writer took the
wheel, whilst Henriksen and his brother made a rapid note in the cabin
of the course and position, and we swung round into the rapidly rising
sea, heading north to get weathering to round the mountainous west end
of the island, and plugged into wind and sea, completely smothering
ourselves in foam. The writer, struggling at the wheel on the bridge, had
an unconscious impression of the crew below busied in making fast the
main-hatch, and stowing away movable objects as best they could in the
darkness, and seas that broke over us in wide white bursts, sometimes
hiding everything from the bridge except the upper part of our foremast,
its shrouds standing out black above the foam, through which we saw
faintly the gleam of the galley ports.
What wild waves broke over us, leaving our deck full of seething foam,
with balls of light running about in the form of lumps of phosphorus. The
north-east wind and rain tearing past was a little cold, and got down
one’s back, but every slop of sea on our faces was almost alarmingly hot
in contrast to the wind.
It seems to me that a higher, quicker sea rises in these warm latitudes
than in the colder northern or southern high latitudes, in the same time
and with same force of wind. Possibly the greater density of the cold
water may account for this.
Not till four-thirty did we make our weathering, and got clear of
the island, and safe from what seemed at first to be quite probable
destruction.
By six-thirty A.M. we were past the light on the west end of San Miguel,
at least we believed we were—it was not visible; being at an elevation of
three hundred feet, it was, of course, obscured by the low clouds; it is
no use putting lighthouses very high, as witness Sumburgh Head, south of
Shetland; I have been within two miles of it in clear water, and it was
invisible in the clouds above, and we only heard its bray!
Then our guiding angel, to play with us, stopped our engine. But in spite
of her, we got it to go again, and crept into the lee of San Miguel, on
one or two groggy cylinders, and rolled about in the downpour of rain,
and the poor engineers are now sweating again to get even one cylinder to
take us back to Delgada, where we will have an overhaul; and Henriksen
and I, poring over our sodden chart and the well-washed cabin amongst
sea-boots and oilskins cast aside this morning, decide that the weather
of the Azores is not suited for whaling at this time of the year. If
there were harbours or bays or lochs such as we have in Shetland we would
stick here, but long, black nights to windward of islands, with strong
gales starting from anywhere, and only one day in five smooth enough for
even our St Ebba to whale in, “is not good enough.”
Now the engine is going; bravo, stick to it! Very, very slowly and
gingerly—with three cylinders—we crawl away with a fearful roll to
Delgada again.
But the day fades before we get opposite Ponta Delgada, a yellow sunset
and rain clouds and cumuli to west, the pin-point of light on W. of
the island beginning to show, and another pin-point on Delgada about
ten miles to windward, so we stop engines, hoist foresail, and drift,
rolling very gently and quietly, waiting for dawn, and the local pilot’s
awakening; we could go into the breakwater ourselves, but his services
are compulsory.
All is very quiet and peaceful to-night, and no references are made to
last night. Sailors have nerves as well as other folk, and I daresay
all on board will take a day or two to recover from the excitement and
drenching, and the bitter, nauseating feeling of being up against one’s
end on a storm-beaten coast in black night. I have a curious feeling
that even writing about such a recent and painful situation is almost
indelicate. To put in time Henriksen draws on his recollection of killers
or grampuses attacking a whale, and I help it with what I have seen of a
similar incident. He saw this particular incident off Korea; I have seen
several whales being attacked both in northern and southern latitudes
amongst the Antarctic ice; in fact, I once could have jumped on to the
back of one as it rose right under our stern and gave a huge blast or
sigh, with a pack of these black-and-white marauders surrounding it!
[Illustration]
That was a night in the Antarctic worth recalling. It was a still day,
far inside the pack ice. I remember being lost in admiration of the quiet
blue lanes of water, blue and violet, and the many pearl-like tints of
the ice, and as I looked northerly I was astonished to see penguins
jumping on to the floe ice in a great hurry, down the sides of one of
these long lanes. Penguins do not show themselves in the water, they
suddenly leap out like trout and disappear. In this case they remained
on the ice-floes, skedaddling to their centres in an agitated manner.
Then the cause of the emeute appeared—there were hurried blasts from two
whales coming down the lane towards us, and behind them the splashing of
a pack of black-and-white killers. On they came, the penguins popping
on to the ice edges, jumping two or three feet clear of water, and I
had time to get into our mizen rigging and get a fine view of the first
whale, a hundred feet long, as he sailed under our keel. The next one
rose to blow immediately under our counter, and anyone standing at our
wheel could have jumped on its back.
I did not see the end of the chase. I expect the whales were making a
flight into tightly packed ice, under which they could possibly go to
greater distance than the killers without breathing—at least that is our
explanation of their manœuvre.
These, of course, were finner whales, we were hunting for Right whales,
the difference between the two in shape, etc., I have referred to at the
beginning of this book.
* * * * *
Delgada again. Here are some oddments in this chapter. I notice I put
down in my log that I suffer from sore feet—sunburned insteps—and
see Portuguese doctor, you go bare-footed on such boats as ours in
sub-tropics, and this was the result.
[Illustration]
I met the captain of our wreck, the B—enido, a Welshman, in a tight
place, and almost as silent on shore as on his ship, but I felt sorry for
him.
The engines were thoroughly overhauled, and favourable was the verdict
of the engineers on them—which was satisfactory for all hands; the first
engineer, a Swede, would like to take three hundred shares in our Company
if he could get them. He is so confident about our engine, possibly he
may more correctly be described as sanguine.
We entertained British Consul Rumble to dinner, a return compliment for
several courtesies from him, to-night at eight P.M., and he is just
departing; my feet are very sore. We caught about fifteen good fish in
the trammel-net, and a lot of sardines in a fine bag-net which I bought
here for the ship; it is spread from an iron ring and catches a few of
the more foolish fish; we also caught a ray, or skate, yesterday, about
eight feet in width, in the trammel-net. Some people would venture to eat
it, we did not, it was so black and ugly.
Our engineers and officers have worked very hard all week, overhauling
the engine, taking it all to pieces, reassembling it, and working till
one o’clock each night. So we promised them a jaunt on shore to the Seven
Cities, the wonder of the island.
So this Sunday morning I saw six of our crew off for a drive over the
island, the captain on the box, a burly figure compared to the little
Portuguese driver beside him, two engineers, two mates, and the steward,
all in neat Sunday dress, inside an open antediluvian barouche held
together with string, the springs down on the axles, and a huge heap of
ragged maize tied behind to feed the scarecrow horses. I was to have
gone with them but there was not room, and I found it impossible to get
more than the one machine on this Sabbath morn. All the rest were laid
up or had gone off with Sunday parties. To get the one, I’d to run from
pillar to post, and use soft, persuasive language, and listen to infinite
reasons for there being no possibility of getting a trap at all.
But it was worth the trouble of hunting for the carriage to see my six
good shipmates drive off in great form with a crack of the whip, rumbling
over the cobbles, and waving hats to the writer, who suddenly felt
somewhat lonely.
But to-day, Monday, there’s nothing to keep me on board, I have done my
painful duty; I have drawn in best style our registered number on our
sails above reef points, according to act, and on tin plates for stencils
to paint the same on St Ebba’s side to port and starboard.
On our fore quarter, there is now L H, which signifies Leith, and
256, each letter the thickness—number of inches and fraction of an
inch—ordered by the Board of Trade, with the distance between letters and
figures all according to the law of the Medes and Persians.
It went decidedly against the grain to stamp our yacht-like craft with
such vulgar herring-fisher’s symbols. And putting black paint by mistake
on a white sail is enough to make a yachtsman weep. What benefit can be
derived by anyone by the above procedure I have yet to learn.
So to-day I also must go and see these Seven Cities. No one knows the
reason for the name; my messmates tell me it is a volcanic valley almost
circular, with a double lake at the bottom, and round the lakes are
smaller extinct volcanoes covered with foliage.
[Illustration]
Arming ourselves, therefore, with a sandwich of goodly proportions, and
a bottle of vino tinto from our friend Sancho at the Atlantico café, we
sallied forth in solitary state in an old brougham, one artist whaler,
three horses and a Portuguese driver, and a bundle of maize straws
astern, and drove and drove, always uphill, through little whitewashed
villages and narrow lanes, between low stone walls, and crops of Indian
corn, rather dry-looking, with pumpkins and gourds on the stubbles; past
many farm carts, loaded with golden maize or pumpkins, and with groaning,
squeaking wooden discs for wheels, till high up we came to little grass
fields and hedges of bramble, and loose stone dykes with bracken and
canes on them, and where the air was fresh as in Perthshire, and there
were very wide views of the blue Atlantic. The drive felt long, but a
sketch-book going, helped to make the road feel tolerable, but it was
quite an hour and a half before we came to our change place, Lomba da
Cruze, and mounted a stirrupless pack-saddle on a donkey, and began an
hour’s uphill climb through cuttings of lava deposit, overhung with
brambles, many laurels, heath and ferns.
[Illustration: KILLERS ATTACKING A FINNER WHALE]
Possibly this stylo sketch in sketch-book may be a sufficient description
of the Seven Cities. Imagine two green absinth-coloured lakes, green
foliage, and a few white houses at the bottom of a crater; with this
sketch you have the scene, and you can fancy the charm of the fresh, keen
air up the mountains combined with Sancho’s great ham sandwich and tinto,
but heaven fend the reader from the pain of a wooden saddle on a donkey
riding down such a hill again.
The road home was wearisome to a degree, hundreds of local squires or
farmers, and everyone lifting hats, but why? Who knows? The effort
to respond was quite ridiculous. Someone should invent an automatic
hat-lifter for royalties, Norwegians, and natives of the Azores. Groups
of women were on either side of the road shelling yellow maize, sitting
like Indians; and at last and at length we got into Delgada, having had
more than enough of cultivated maize lanes and lava dykes.
Then to Portuguese shipping agents and to business accounts, not a
pleasing part of whaling. It is difficult to settle our affairs, on
leaving port. For instance, the harbour trustees, or whatever they are
called here, wanted to charge for the morning’s incoming pilotage after
we had gone out to save a wreck, but we barred that. “You old mens sleeps
here ashore,” said Henriksen. “We’s go out, slips anchor—dark night—risks
our ship, you charges us! might have been Titanic and we save thousands’
lives. You say you haves many tow-boats! why nones go out? What about
insurance, heh?” They quietly dropped the subject.
But now it’s time to go and put aside the above reflections and
disappointments so far; we have hope, and months, possibly years, and
certainly long seas in front of us, to gain or to lose in.
So we up anchor at night with a light air from the east, and several
weeks’ sailing in front of us to Madeira and Cape Town, and whales on the
road, we hope.