The sun was shining brightly through the open scuttle of the fo'c's'le
and it was broad daylight.
It was not this that had roused me, though; for, habituated as I now was
to the ways of sailor-folk, it made little difference to me whether I
slept by day or night so long as I had a favourable opportunity for a
comfortable caulk. Indeed, my eyes might have been `scorched out,' as
the saying is, without awaking me.
It was something else that aroused me,--an unaccustomed sound which I
had not heard since I left home and ran away to sea.
It was the cooing of doves in the distance.
"Roo-coo-coo! Roo-coo-coo! Coo-coo! Roo-c-o-o!"
I heard it as plainly as possible, just as the plaintive sound used to
catch my ear from the wood at the back of the vicarage garden in the old
times, when I loved to listen to the bird's love call--those old times
that seemed so far off in the perspective of the past, and yet were only
two years at most agone!
Why, I must be dreaming, I thought.
But, no; there came the soft, sweet cooing of the doves again.
"Roo-coo-coo! Roo-coo-coo! Coo-coo! Roo-c-o-o!"
Thoroughly roused at last, I jumped out of the bunk I occupied next
Hiram, who was still fast asleep, with a lot of the other sailors round
him snoring in the fo'c's'le; and rubbing my eyes with both knuckles, to
further convince myself of being wide awake, I crawled out from the
fore-hatchway on to the open deck.
But, almost as soon as I stepped on my feet, I was startled, for all the
starboard side, which was higher than the other, from the list the ship
had to port, was covered, where the rain had not washed it away, with a
thick deposit of brown, sandy loam, like snuff; while the scuppers aft,
where everything had been washed by the deluge that had descended on the
decks, were choked up with a muddy mass of the same stuff, forming a big
heap over a foot high. I could see, too, that the snuffy dust had
penetrated everywhere, hanging on the ropes, and in places where the
rain had not wetted it, like powdery snow, although of a very different
colour.
Recollecting the earthquake of the previous evening, and all that I had
heard and read of similar phenomena, I ascribed this brown, dusty
deposit to some volcanic eruption in the near neighbourhood.
This, I thought, likewise, was probably the cause, as well, of the
unaccountable darkness that enveloped the ship at the time we
experienced the shock; but, just then, I caught, a sight of the land
over the lee bulwarks, and every other consideration was banished by
this outlook on the strange scene amidst which we were so wonderfully
placed.
If our surroundings appeared curious by the spectral light of the moon
last night, they seemed doubly so now.
The glaring tropical sun was blazing already high up in the heavens,
whose bright blue vault was unflecked by a scrap of cloud to temper the
solar rays, while a brisk breeze, blowing in from the south-west, gave a
feeling of freshness to the air and raised a little wave of surf, that
broke on the beach with a rippling splash far astern; the cooing of the
doves in the distance chiming in musically with the lisp of the surge's
lullaby.
But, the land!
It was stranger than any I had ever seen.
The high mountain on our left, looked quite as lofty by day as it had
done the night before, two thousand feet or more of it towering up into
the sky.
It was evidently the crater peak of an old extinct volcano; for, it was
shaped like a hollow vase, with the side next the sea washed away by the
south-west gales, which, as I subsequently learnt, blew during the rainy
season in the vicinity of this equatorial region.
At the base of the cliff was a mound of lava, interspersed with tufts of
tufa and grass, that spread out to where the sloping, sandy beach met
it; and this was laved further down by the transparent water of the
little sheltered harbour formed by the outer edge of the peak and the
other lower projecting cliff that extended out into the sea on the
starboard side of the ship--the two making a semicircle and almost
meeting by the lava mound at the base of the broken crater, there not
being more than a couple of cables length between them.
Most wonderful to me was the fact of the ship having been carried so
providentially through such a narrow opening, without coming to grief on
the Scylla on the one hand, or being dashed to pieces against the
Charybdis on the other.
More wonderful still, though, was the sight the shore presented, as I
moved closer to the gangway, and, looking down over the bulwarks,
inspected the foreground below.
It was like a stray vista of some antediluvian world.
Near the edge of the white sand--on which the ship was lying like a
stranded whale, with her prow propped up between two dunes, or hillocks,
that wore up to the level of her catheads--was a row of stunted trees
without a leaf on them, only bare, skeleton branches; while on the other
side of these was a wide expanse of barren brown earth, or lava, utterly
destitute of any sign of vegetation.
Then came a grove of huge cacti, whose fleshy, spiked branches had the
look of so many wooden hands, or glove stretchers, set up on end; and
beyond these again were the more naturally-wooded heights, leading up to
the summit of the mountain peak.
The trees, I noticed, grew more luxuriantly and freely here, appearing
to be of much larger size, as they increased their distance from the
sterile expanse of the lower plain; until, at the top of the ascent,
they formed a regular green crest covering the upper edge of the crater
and sloping side of the outstretching arm of cliff on our right, whose
mantle of verdure and emerald tone contrasted pleasantly with the bright
blue of the sky overhead and the equally blue sea below, the latter
fringed with a line of white surf and coral sand along the curve of the
shore.
This outer aspect of the scene, however, was not all.
Right under my eyes, waddling along the beach, and rearing themselves on
their hind legs to feed on the leaves of the cactus, which they nibbled
off in huge mouthfuls, were a lot of enormous tortoises, or land
turtles, of the terrapin tribe, that were really the most hideous
monsters I had ever seen in my life. Several large lizards also were
crawling about on the lava and basking in the sun, and a number of
insects and queer little birds of a kind I never heard of.
All was strange; for, although I could still catch the cooing of the
doves away in the woods in the distance, there was nothing familiar to
my sight near.
While I was reflecting on all these wonders, and puzzling my brains as
to where we could possibly be, the second-mate, whom I had noticed still
on the poop when I came out from the fo'c's'le, as if he had remained up
there on watch all night, came to my side and addressed me.
"Everyzing's sdrange, leedel boys, hey?"
"Yes, sir," said I. "I was wondering what part of the world we could be
in."
"Ze Galapagos," he replied laconically, answering my question off-hand,
in his solemn fashion and deep voice. "It vas call't ze Galapagos vrom
ze Spanish vort dat mean ze big toordles, zame dat yous zee dere."
"Then Captain Snaggs was right after all, sir, about the ship's course
yesterday, when he said that Mr Flinders would run us ashore if it was
altered?"
"Yase, dat vas zo," said Jan Steenbock. "Dat voorst-mate one big vool,
and he vas loose ze sheep! Dis vas ze Abingdon Islants, leedel boys--
one of ze Galapagos groups. I vas recollecks him. I vas here befores.
It vas Abingdon Islants; and ze voorst-mate is von big vool!"
As Jan Steenbock made this observation, a trifle louder than before, I
could see the face of Mr Flinders, all livid with passion, as he came
up the companion hatch behind the Dane.
"Who's thet durned cuss a-calling o' me names? I guess, I'll
spifflicate him when I sees him!" he yelled out at the pitch of his
voice; and then pretending to recognise Jan Steenbock for the first time
as his detractor, he added, still more significantly, "Oh, it air you,
me joker, air it?"