The St Ebba killed a few more whales in the seas between the Azores and
Madeira, but they were of no great value—seihvale and small sperm—and
the weather became tempestuous, so she proceeded southwards. The island
of Madeira is thirty-five miles long and six thousand feet high. It was
very hot on the south side amongst the sugar-cane crops and vineyards.
But on the north side, with wind off the sea, high up in the mountains
and riding through oak woods, bracken and heath and roaring burns, it was
delightful, and probably more healthy than the slack air and life you
have down at Funchal.
Funchal, the capital, is much the same as Ponta Delgada in the Azores, a
white town with red-tiled houses and green blinds round a blue bay. But
it is merely an open road-stead and has not nearly such a picturesque
inner harbour as Ponta Delgada. It is a very quiet town; the only sound
is the twittering canaries, and the occasional _Hush_ of the Atlantic
surge on the boulders.
There is quite a large contingent of British residents who have gone in
for gardening strongly at their quintas. So that Funchal, in almost every
month of the year, presents some astonishing flowery spectacular effect.
Geraniums are the least sensational. They pour over the walls of the
lanes everywhere. I noticed one evening a high white wall in shade lit
up with pink from the reflected scarlet of geraniums that hung over the
opposite wall.
The jackaranda is the most amusingly pretty flowering tree. One morning
you notice its bare indiarubber-like leafless branches, a few days
after the bare branches are covered all over with bunches of Neapolitan
violets—at least, they look exactly like them, and a day or two later the
street is carpeted with the fallen blossoms and the golden brown oxen
of the carros[12] go wading through them, leaving dark tracks where the
little polished pebbles of the cobbled road show through the violet.
I tried tunny-fishing off Madeira on several occasions. Perhaps this is a
subject more suitable to introduce in a whaler’s log than descriptions of
flowers and canaries.
On one occasion I persuaded a hotel visitor to accompany me, with a crew
of Portuguese.
The tunny, or tuna, is a mackerel; there are several kinds. Those I saw
ran from about twenty pounds to three hundred pounds.
You have to start before daybreak for the fishing from Madeira, which
is apt to put off intending tunny-fishers, but “41,” as I shall call my
friend at Reid’s Hotel, after the number of his room, agreed to risk the
briny and an early rise—I doubt if he will do it again—blue Atlantic
rollers and a sub-tropical sun are somewhat trying.
Here are notes from my sketch-book of our day’s proceedings, begun, I may
inform the sympathetic reader, in the Palace Hotel before daylight.
... All is still—it is only three hours past midnight, the people
in this caravanserai are all asleep—we alone are awake in the great
empty dining-room—the night waiter and the writer—the writer cross and
thirsting for an early cup of tea—the night porter does not understand
this, but—he comes from Las Palmas, that is all I can learn from him.
He is limp of figure and has black eyes and hair and his sallow face
only expresses dull resignation and an unfulfilled desire for sleep in a
corner: he is young, but I think no smile has ever passed over his chilly
countenance in this life. He does not even move a feature or express
the least remorse when I tell him it was No. 41, not 49, he should have
awakened—fancy “49’s” feelings! so, to make sure, we go together and
pull out No. 41—“41,” in pyjamas, and red-eyed, seems to have forgotten
altogether that he was to go fishing with me. Fishing at ten P.M., with a
pipe and a grog, and fishing at three in the morning are so different!
So the writer and the mirthless waiter sit down again in the vast empty
dining-room and wait whilst “41” gets into his clothes.... Now we are
ready—an hour later than the end of above paragraph, but still tea-less.
My fishermen and interpreter have been waiting under the palms in front
of the hotel, smoking cigarettes and talking quietly and with interest,
even at this dark hour of morning. We give them our thermos flasks, with
only cold coffee in them, and our provisions for two days, in baskets,
and with them we steal into the night round the hotel gardens and
terraces, trimmed with tenantless wicker-work chairs, under the palms,
pale in the faint moonlight, down the steps, over the cliffs with care,
through an iron gate, we must look like conspirators, but we only feel
sleepless; down and down, till we come to the bathing steps and dimly
discern our boat and men rising and falling in the grey foam. We embark
with difficulty, with our provisions, and row off. The moon in the
west breaks a little through the clouds and cheers us with its broken
reflections on the long swell. “41” is in the stern, the writer in the
bow, four rowers and the interpreter between us.
[Illustration]
We pass under the cliffs to the west of Funchal Bay, rowing steadily with
two long sweeps, two men to a sweep, close to the surf on the rocks, and
pass a blow-hole in the rocks, where the rising surge makes a fountain
of fine spray through a hole in the rocks, very like a whale’s blast. It
is blowing intermittently, dimly seen in the moonlight. As we pass the
outstanding rocky island opposite it we catch a faint land breeze and
step our mast and set the mainsail and slip along in absolute silence.
It is a long sail, we have nearly twenty miles before we get to the place
the tunny frequent.
We pass the fishing village of Camara da Lobos (place of the seals),
several miles to starboard. It nestles round the head of a bay—the deep
glen behind it in shadow, the white houses in moonlight—a few yellow
lights move about, our crew live there.
Under the cliff of Cabo Girao we closed our eyes for, it seemed, a
minute, and opened them to find a change. The sadness of night was gone
and it was all hilarious blue day.
How quickly the night goes, even in the sub-tropics; as fast as it falls,
almost in a minute, the moon’s sheen on the swell is gone, and the
glorious sun shines again, from behind us over the east end of Madeira.
Due west there is a lapis lazuli blue sky over a bank of pink cumuli, the
full, golden moon seems to stay one moment in the blue before it sets
behind the bank of cloud; then all the sea and sky is the blue of the
tropics again, as it was yesterday and the day before—great swells of a
rippling blue sea, and a blue sky, and that is all, excepting our little
selves and our green, red and yellow boat in the immensity.
The features of our crew are now clear to us, and they unwind the cloths
they wore round their heads for protection against the moonlight and
night air. Alas, “41” still tries to sleep, and so does the interpreter;
I fear the motion is the cause—the rise and send of a small boat in
the Atlantic is very trying. Ahead of us there is one sail like our
own; we see it now and then as it rises on a blue swell; now the top of
the white sail catches the golden light of the sunrise, then far away
beyond it something, a mere speck, appears for an instant, then another,
there are boats out there fishing; it comes quite as a surprise to find
fellow-creatures out so far from shore in small craft. We cannot count
them, for we only see three or four at a time, as they appear in turn on
the top of the swell. Now the sail in front drops, and the boat is like
the others, with the mast down, and oars out, and little figures standing
out silhouetted against the sky for a second, then lost to sight. In
another ten minutes we have joined the fleet, and dip our sail and stow
our mast away.
[Illustration: A SLEEPING BEAR AND CUBS]
And the colour of these mariners! We can hardly begin to fish, so great
is our desire to gloat on the appearance of each boat—its weathered
brilliant colours and its crew as it appears in its turn over the back
of a blue glittering swell. Camara da Lobos men all wear wide straw
hats, with a broad black ribbon round them, so their brown faces are in
shadow; their shirts, originally white, are tinted like old ivory by
many washings and voyages, so were their cotton trousers, and tattered
and patched most wonderfully. The boats are striped yellow and blue,
with perhaps magenta, and blue oars; coarse enough colours they would
look under a northern sun, but here, with the complementary tints from
the strong light, and all repeated by reflections in the blue sea, they
become a sight to rejoice anyone with half an eye. The fishing, however,
soon engrossed our attention.
As a preliminary to tunny-fishing you have to catch large mackerel as
bait and smaller mackerel to throw out into the sea when the tunny comes
along in order to keep them in your neighbourhood. For the small fry we
fished with a yard of cane and a yard of line and a small hook baited
with little cubes of mackerel. The captain chopped up some of these into
a fine paste on a board with a machete and put the paste into the water
to draw more fish; as it faded away down into the clear green depths,
swarms of these little fish, about four to the pound, dashed to and fro,
eating it, and every now and then one would take our bait, when there was
a flash of silver in the water, and out he came to join his neighbours in
a bucket.
Another of our crew, “Bow,” we will call him, rigged a longer hand-line
and fished deep, and soon pulled up some magnificent spotted mackerel.
This bait-catching was apparently the object of the early morning
start—large mackerel for bait for the tunny, and small fish to catch
the mackerel. The small fish, when they are let loose, are supposed to
hug the shadow of the boat and so keep the tunny in the neighbourhood:
besides this purpose, they form our principal food at midday.
These large mackerel were kept alive alongside on tethers, hooked by the
nose—with a rather clever rustic swivel on the line—kept alive to be
used for the tunny. But usually a big basket is kept floating alongside,
into which are put the live bait, large and small. There was so much
going on; so many little fishing dodges new to me that I must have missed
much; what held my attention were the great coils of strong hand-line,
thirty fathoms in each, thick as the average man’s little finger, with
brass-twisted wire trace, fifteen plies, each with thick iron hook at its
end.
After we had caught enough mackerel we went several miles farther out
to sea, and the two men in the stern each made fast a large mackerel to
his line—put the big iron hook through its nose and a fine wire twisted
lightly, from the shank to the neck of the barb to prevent the fish
working off.
Finally we had four of these live baits and strong lines at different
depths, drifting astern; and two men at the oar gently paddled to keep
the boat in position and the lines up and down. For hours we sat so, and
thought tunny-fishing uncommonly dull.
If one could speak Portuguese it would help to pass the time. What fun
it would have been to get the local “clash” from these pleasant-looking
men, all in tatters, miraculously stitched together. How curious would
have been their views of life and their experiences and traditions, but
my interpreter was sick as could be, and made neither moan nor attempt at
translation, so the crew chatted and better chatted between themselves,
and laughed occasionally, and so passed the time, whilst the writer
patiently and silently held a line for hours, waiting for the huge tug
that seemed never going to come.
But the next boat to us soon got one—a whacking big fellow; he fought
them for an hour and a half and they gave him twenty strokes of a
bludgeon on the head in a smother of foam alongside the boat, and
pulled him over the side with two huge gaffs and ropes, and then sat
down exhausted. He was about two-thirds of the length of the boat and
must have weighed well over three hundred pounds, and was worth £3 at
the market, to the two men and two boys who got it. Lucky fellows! They
lifted the boat seats to show it to us, and there it lay, a silver and
blue torpedo-shaped fish with huge deep shoulders. The natives call the
tunny albicore. We congratulated them and gazed at it, and listened to
their gasping description of the fight, how it had sounded seven times
and taken out a desperate number of lines. Then other two boats lost one
each—that is, they got into fish that were too big for them, and made
their lines fast, and the fish broke away. Time was their consideration;
they prefer several smaller fish of, say, one or two hundred pounds to a
bigger one that may weigh five hundred pounds but will take the whole day
to play it.
[Illustration]
It got tiresome as the hours went by with never a soul to speak to, for
“41” and the interpreter were both still ill, and the sun got very hot,
so we decided that after midday meal we would up stick and make sail.
A flat hearth of charred wood was laid amidships. Three small boulders
were laid on it and sticks between, and these were lit and a great tin
can of sea-water was set on the stones to boil, with the fish, and sweet
potatoes, in it, and a right hearty meal we made, with fingers for
knives, and the blue Atlantic for a finger-bowl, and the appetising
meal was washed down with water from a barrel and some ruby red vino
pasto wine fit for the gods.... Ah, well, better luck next time, we were
saying, as we were about to haul in our line, when the tug came, a most
tremendous tug!
We are fast in a tunny at last! and a pulley-haul fight begins—what
a weight it is! You feel as if you were pulling up the bottom of the
ocean for a second, and then that it is pulling you, willy-nilly, into
its depths, therefore you let go line, and jam it down on the gunwale
to check it, and it runs, squeaking, out, cutting a groove in the wood.
I cannot tell you how much stout line went out—there were many lines
the thickness of flag halyards of thirty fathoms each, attached to each
other—but the whole stern of the boat seemed filled with wet coiled-down
line when we had been pulling in for a few minutes, and then, in a
minute, it was almost gone, and then wearisomely two of us pulled it
in again, hand over hand, with much gasping and tugging, more and more
line is coiled up in our stern sheet, but still no sign of the fish.
As the fight—pull devil, pull baker—proceeded another man managed to
pull in the other lines all in a heap, and we were able to devote our
united attention to the fish. It seemed strong as a horse and took us
practically all in charge, and we had to be nimble to let the whizzing
loops of hard line get away clear of our feet and wrists. We were pretty
well blown, cut and sore, by the time its efforts lessened. Then we got
in coil after coil, six coils in hand then lost two, then eight and lost
one, then set teeth and pulled steadily with both hands between times,
and at last and at length, the silver glitter we expected showed deep
down in the blue. Even then there were many more coils to bring in; the
water being so intensely clear, the enormous mackerel showed many fathoms
down, swinging round and round.... The latter part of the fray needed
instantaneous photography to depict it—what with the tunny pulling and
our weight all leaning to one side to get the line in, and then to gaff
the fish, and the roll of the sea combined, too many things happened at
one time to be very clearly remembered afterwards. We had two gaffs—huge
affairs—and as the tunny dashed here and there we managed to get one
into it, then the second, and we lurched half-seas over; the tunny was
kicking up a smother of foam all the colours of the rainbow! Then with
the gaffs we pulled its head out of the water up to the gunwale, and
banged it twenty times with a wooden thing like an Indian club till it
was still, or only quivered, then a lurch from a blue sea seemed to help
to get half of it on board, and a big heave and it all came in, and we
lifted a seat and put it along the bottom and raised ourselves and waved
our hats. It was quite as good fun as any salmon-fishing I have ever had,
and nearly as exciting as whaling; that is, during the actual playing,
but the previous waiting was trying beyond words, you get roasted by the
sun and bitten by salt spray and stiff and cramped—you “chuck and chance
it,” and chuck but once in half-a-day and may have to wait days and days
before you catch your first tunny.
Getting all the lines clear again took a long time and neat and patient
handling; we did not help at that, we were rather tired. But we watched
the iridescent colours of the tunny fade; in half-an-hour its brightest
blues and shimmering pinks and silver were almost gone, and changed to
dark green on the back and dull silver below. Fifty-four kilos we made it
out to be—five feet three inches long, with enormous girth. Unfortunately
I lost its chest measurement, but think it was four feet three inches.
The three-hundred-pound tunny we saw caught close to us was worth £3 at
the present market value.
At four we gave up. The everlasting rolling in hot sun on tossing sea,
however beautifully blue, as you lie drifting, becomes very trying in
a small boat; besides, the native fishermen themselves all knock off
between three and four. But we must try again, and some day, when we
thoroughly know the ropes, we will get a small sailing craft and try the
business single-handed, for there is a lot of fun, in my opinion, to be
had fishing so, for trout or salmon—to play your own salmon and gaff it,
or manage your boat and trout and land it, say a five-pounder on fine
tackle, is excellent, but to land a tunny single-handed, doing your own
sailing and gaffing, would be—just sublime!
It was pleasant sailing back to land close-hauled with the fresh breeze,
which had risen with the sun and turned the smooth swell into crisp
waves with blue breaking tops, that soft and white breaking sea of the
Trades that is more caressing than threatening. Most of the other boats
gave up fishing at the same time, about three P.M. The skipper gave me
the tiller; neither of us could speak the other’s tongue, but there is
a quick understanding between all of us who sail small boats, and both
skipper and boat seemed to become old friends to me. They are better
sailing craft than I had fancied, though they do not draw much, for they
have to be beached; but they have two bilge keels, which make them sail
pretty close—they all sail closer and are “lighter in the mouth” than I
had expected. You notice in the drawing they have a high stem and stern
post, and the rudder ships just as it does in the boats of the north of
Norway. The sail is simple, a large square dipping lug—the canvas from
Dundee—the tack is made fast at the stem, or a little to either side, and
the sheet is simply rove through a hole in the gunwale of the sharp stern.
We got ashore at last and “41” and the Juan Fernado, the interpreter,
revived and spoke again as we got into smoother water.
We climbed up the cliffs in the late afternoon and “41” had to explain to
José, the major-domo of the hotel, why we did not stay out all night, as
we at first intended to do—“No room in boat,” etc., etc., he said, and
José smiled his genial smile and said: “Told you so, told you so, eet ees
dee same ding always, gentlemen do come back so; dey not like de smell of
de feesh, dey say.”
Now there is the moon again, I declare! I began this chapter by its
silvery light before dawn, and now it appears again as I wind up my notes
at night; it surely has done its round at an unusual pace; it seems to
me only a minute or two since it went down in the west, ruddy as a new
penny—it had only a small gallery then—mostly fisher folk; this evening
the hotel people are all watching it from a verandah; they will be late
for dinner, so beautiful is its yellow glory and its track across the sea
from the Disertas to the foot of our cliffs. I must make a study of it
to-morrow and will need a ruler to draw the black shadows of our masts,
so straight are they along the path of gold.
[Illustration]