Tower Island was our second landing. Early in the morning we had
sighted a low strip of green, and by the time breakfast was over at
half past seven we were already in the most protected little cove or
harbor. It was almost closed to the outside ocean and was calm without
any surf or big waves. At first when we came in we couldn’t see any
beach for landing on or swimming, but pretty soon we saw one, a
beautiful one hidden behind a small reef.
When we entered the harbor birds came and rested on the mast heads.
Many of them stayed there or came back to it on and off all day. The
whole rigging was full of boobies and frigate birds.
We saw three great rays too, at least fifteen feet across. Later on we
caught a huge ray. They seem to fly under the water just below the
surface. Every once in a while they flip themselves right out of the
water and turn a complete somersault. Sometimes they do this three
times in succession. One of the biggest ones we struck with our bow and
neatly turned it over.
When we landed on the little beach we saw many of these frigate birds
on their nests, boobies, gulls, and the cutest little doves. They
seemed so tame. They were always fighting for each other’s twigs in
their nests and as soon as a bird left her nest another bird came and
stole a twig and flew away with it.
I lifted a frigate bird right off his nest, and then put him back and
he never seemed to mind at all, just looked surprised. About the next
time I picked up a frigate bird, I wasn’t quite so lucky. I wanted to
lift him up to have a picture taken and he didn’t seem to like posing
much more than I did. Anyway, he pecked me and I suppose that’s why I
look so cross in the picture. They have big strong bills and this one
got hold right in the lower part of my left leg. All the time, I was
barelegged and wore shorts, which is the way everybody aboard dressed.
The frigate birds and boobies weigh about two and a half pounds. The
former have not webbed feet like the boobies and therefore they cannot
catch fish as easily for they only swoop down and dip them out of the
water; but the other dives right in and sometimes out of sight for
several feet underneath and swims with his webbed feet. Frigate birds
steal the other’s fish. Both birds have tremendously long wings and
sail in the sky with a long, long spread.
The male frigate has a queer pouch on his throat. He is dark brownish
in body, with a few greeny feathers on the top of his neck and then
this very strange balloon which is so distended he can rest his head
upon it and go to sleep. He can puff it up or have it empty. The male
sits on the nest in the mornings mostly while his mate goes out to sea
fishing. She is dark brown with a white breast. Of course you can see
these bright red pouches a long way off and they look like so many toy
balloons in among the bushes. All these birds, the boobies and
frigates, build rather foolish looking nests right on the bushes about
two feet from the ground so of course one can go right up to them and
see the eggs or young chicks.
The little doves and the mocking birds have their nests on the ground
often under a jutting out rock. The doves have bright red feet, soft
tan brown bodies and eyes as blue as forget-me-not flowers.
On Tower we saw amblyrhinchus, or the marine lizard. I really learned
to pronounce that word, although I can’t spell it yet. A lot of these
scientific names are awfully long and hard. It is black, about a foot
long or maybe fifteen inches, and swims in around the edges of the
rocks. All the specimens brought to the ship had seaweed in their
stomachs which they must have been way out to sea to get.
Some of the crew had seen goats at Seymour. They had been left there a
hundred years ago by a sea captain who had had some on his boat for
fresh milk; he took them ashore to give them a chance to eat grass.
Each day he took fresh water to them. Then one day they did not come
back for the water, and he guessed they had found some on the island
and sailed off leaving them there.
But there are no goats here, nor the land lizards which we had seen at
Seymour. The land is absolutely all lava rock and cactus and stiff
prickly bushes which makes climbing around very difficult. I made a
fine collection of shells that I found on the beach.
Several times I went ashore in the evening with the crew, and one night
two of the men had an awful fight. Just the few of us were on this
desert beach alone, and it reminded me of a story that Darwin told in
his Cruise of the Beagle nearly a hundred years ago. He went to a
little lake on one island and saw there the skull of a captain who had
been murdered by his crew there many years before.
Darwin was a very famous scientist about 100 years ago. This book, The
Cruise of the Beagle, describes a great voyage he took in the ship
Beagle around South America and mostly around the world. He stopped at
the Galápagos Islands. Mother read this book aloud to me. There were
too many things to see and do on the Arcturus for me to have much time
to read. Everything was too interesting and there was always something
exciting happening. I think the only book I read through was Ivanhoe.
Early one morning Dwight went off walking across the island. He did not
come back at four when the ship’s whistle blows to call us all to the
landing beach, nor later at bedtime, and not until midnight. He had
lost his way for a time and accidentally discovered a crater lake which
no one had ever seen before. Although it is in the middle of the island
it is salty and the water must come in with the tide. There are
mangroves around its edge, and green scum on it, but small fish live in
it.