The night is down; but, although it is very dark, the boat-voyagers do
not bring in to land. They are still far from confident that the
pursuit has been relinquished; and, until it is abandoned, they are
still in danger.
Ere long, they have sure evidence that it is not. Along the shores of
the sound flash up fires, which, like the smoke seen in the daylight,
are surely signals. Some are down upon the beaches, others high up
against the hill-sides--just such lights as Magalhaens beheld three and
a half centuries before, while passing through the strait which now
bears his name. [Note 1.] Hence, too, the name he bestowed on the
unknown country lying south of them, "Tierra del Fuego"--"Land of Fire."
The fugitives in the gig see fires on both shores--fifty or more--the
lurid flames symbolising the fierce implacable hostility of the savages
who have set them alight.
"We're boun' to keep on till we've got 'em all astarn," says Seagriff.
"So long's thar's a spark ahead, it'll be dangersome to put in. They'd
be for headin' us off jest the same to-morrer, ez thar's another long
narrer to pass atween this an' Darwin Soun'. 'Tair a bit lucky the
night bein' so dark that they can't sight us from the shore. If they
could, we'd 'a' had 'em out arter us now."
Under ordinary circumstances, the darkness would have made it difficult
for them to proceed. But, oddly enough, the very thing which forces
them to continue their retreat assists them in making it good, the fires
on either side being like so many beacon-lights, enabling them to hold a
course in mid-water. Thus guided, they run on as between two rows of
street lamps, fortunately so far from either that the spread sail
escapes being illumined by them. Fortunately, also, on reaching the
next narrow, where it would be otherwise seen, there is a mist over the
water. Screened by this, they succeed in passing through it
unperceived, and enter Darwin Sound just as day is breaking. Here
neither fires nor smokes are observed, a proof that they have passed out
of the territory of the tribe which had attacked them.
Still, they do not yet seek the shore; the wind is too temptingly in
their favour, and with sail up all day they run on into the north-west
arm of the Beagle Channel, at length bringing to in a small cove on its
southern side.
It is late afternoon when they make a landing; yet they have time to
choose a camping-place ere darkness comes on. Not much choice is there,
the only available spot being at the inner end of the cove. There a
niche in the rocky beach forms a sort of natural boat-dock, large enough
to admit the gig to moorings. And on the shore adjacent is the only
patch of bare ground visible; at all other points the trees grow to the
water's edge, with overhanging branches.
Confident now that their late pursuers have been shaken off, they
determine on making a stay here of at least a day or two. After this
long spell of laborious work, with the excitement which accompanied it,
they greatly need rest. Besides, all are now very hungry, having had no
opportunity of cooking aught since they left the landing-place on the
isle.
Where they are now there is no difficulty about fire, fuel being
plentiful all about. And while Caesar is preparing the repast, the
others transform the boat-sail into a tent, by setting up the oars,
trestle-fashion, and resting the mast on them as a ridge-pole.
Having satisfied the cravings of appetite, and completed their
arrangements for passing the night, it still lacks an hour of sunset,
and with nothing better to be done, they sit by the fire and contemplate
the landscape, at which hitherto they have but glanced. A remarkable
landscape it is--picturesque beyond description, and altogether unlike
the idea generally entertained of Fuegian scenery. That portion of it
which an artist would term the "foreground" is the cove itself, which is
somewhat like the shoe of a mule--running about a hundred yards into the
land, while less than fifty feet across the mouth. Its shores, rising
abruptly from the beach, are wooded with a thick forest, which covers
the steep sides of the encircling hills as far as can be seen, and to
the water's edge. The trees, tall and grand, are of three kinds, almost
peculiar to Tierra del Fuego. One is a true beech; another, as much
birch as beech; the third, an aromatic evergreen of world-wide
celebrity--the "Winter's-bark." [Note 2.] But there is also a growth
of buried underwood, consisting of arbutus, barberry, fuchsias,
flowering currants, and a singular fern, also occurring in the island of
Juan Fernandez, and resembling the _zamia_ of Australia.
The sea-arm on which the cove opens is but little over a mile in width,
the shore on its farther side being a sheer cliff, rising hundreds of
feet above the water, and indented here and there by deep gorges with
thickly-wooded sides. Above the cliff's crest the slope continues on
upward to a mountain ridge of many peaks, one of them a grand cone
towering thousands of feet above all the others. That is Mount Darwin,
wrapped in a mantle of never-melting snow. Along the intermediate space
between the cliff's crest and the snow-line is a belt of woodland,
intersected by what might be taken for streams of water, were it not for
their colour. But they are too blue, too noiseless, to be water. Yet,
in a way, they are water, for they are glaciers, some of them abutting
upon the sea-arm, and filling up the gorges that open upon it with
facades as precipitous as that of the cliff itself. There are streams
of water also which proceed from the melting of the snow above;
cataracts that spout out from the wooded sides of the ravines, their
glistening sheen vividly conspicuous amid the greenery of the trees.
Two of these curving jets, projected from walls of verdure on opposite
sides of a gorge, meet midway, and mingling, fall thence perpendicularly
down, changing, long ere they reach the water below, to a column of
white spray.
Such is the magnificent panorama spread before the eyes of our
castaways, who, despite their forlorn lot, cannot help regarding it with
wonder and admiration. Nor is their wonder diminished by what they see
and hear close at hand. Little did they expect to find parrots and
humming-birds in that high southern latitude; yet a flock of the former
chatter above their heads, feeding on the berries of the Winter's-bark;
while numbers of the latter are seen, flitting to and fro, or poised on
whirring wings before the bell-shaped blossoms of the fuchsias. [Note
3.] From the deeper recesses of the wood at intervals comes a loud,
cackling cry, resembling the laugh of an idiot. It is the call-note of
the black woodpecker. And, as if in response to it, a kingfisher,
perched on the limb of a dead tree by the beach, now and then utters its
shrill, ear-piercing scream.
Other fishing-birds of different species fly hither and thither over the
water, now quite tranquil, the wind having died away.
A flock of white pelicans, in pursuit of finny prey, swim about the
cove, their eyes looking into the depths, their long pick-axe beaks held
ready for a plunge. Then, as a fish is sighted underneath, down go head
and neck in a quick dart, soon to be drawn up with the victim writhing
between the tips of the mandibles. But the prey is not secured yet. On
each pelican attends a number of predatory gulls, wheeling over it in
flight, and watching its every movement with a foregone and well-studied
intent. For as soon as the fish is brought up, they swoop at it from
all points with wild screams and flapping wings; and as the pelican
cannot swallow the fish without first tossing it upward, the toss often
proves fatal to its purpose. The prey let go, instead of falling back
into the water, or down the pouch-like gullet held agape for it, is
caught by one or more of the gulls, and those greedy birds continue the
fight among themselves, leaving the pelican they have robbed to go
diving again.
Night comes on, but not with the darkness anticipated. For still
another wonder is revealed to them ere closing their eyes in sleep--the
long continuance of twilight, far beyond anything of the kind they have
ever experienced, Seagriff excepted. But its cause is known to them;
the strange phenomenon being due to the fact that the sun, for some time
after it has sunk below the horizon, continues to shine on the
glistening ice of the glaciers and the snow of the mountain summits,
thus producing a weird luminosity in the heavens, somewhat resembling
the Aurora Borealis.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Note 1. He discovered the Straits, or, more properly, Strait, in 1519.
His name is usually given as "Magellan" by French and English writers,
the Spaniards making it "Magallanes." But, as he was a native of
Portugal, and Magalhaens is the Portuguese orthography, it should be the
one preferred. By sealers and others, Tierra del Fuego is often called
"Fireland." Lady Brassey heard it so called by the settlers at "Sandy
Point," in the Strait.
Note 2. The beeches are the _Fagus Betuloides_ and _Fagus Antarchia_.
The former partakes also of the character of a birch. It is an
evergreen, while the leaves of the other fall off in the autumn. The
"Winter's-bark" (_Drimys Winletii_) is a laurel-like evergreen, which
produces an aromatic bark, somewhat resembling cinnamon. It derives its
name, not from the season, but from a Captain Winter, who first carried
the bark to England in 1579.
Note 3. The Fuegian parrot, or paroquet, is known to naturalists as
_Psittacus Imaragdinus_,--the humming-bird as _Melisuga Kingii_. It was
long believed that neither parrots nor humming-birds existed in Tierra
del Fuego; Buffon, with his usual incorrectness, alleging that the
specimens brought from it were taken elsewhere; other learned closet
naturalists insisted on the parrots reported to exist there being
"sea-parrots" (auks).