he had learnt to drive during the dinner hour the previous day. Out
into the moonlight we sped, or rather zigzagged, at the rate of forty,
while between Peter and myself a youth named Bill--I shall never forget
Bill--kept up a running flow of informative rhetoric: "_On_ the left we
have the famous Isthmus of Panama, intersected by the still more famous
canal, a miracle of modern engineering, as it has been aptly termed.
Fear not, lady!" [this in an aside to Peter] "the man at the wheel
values his life as much as yours, perhaps more. _And now_ we approach
the historic city of Panama, passing on our left the Union Club,
otherwise known as the Onion Club, frequented solely by the nobility and
gentry of the neighbourhood, hence our exclusion. _And on the
right_----"
On the right was the blazing portico of a cabaret, and the car had come
to a jarring full stop.
In vain we pleaded our costume, the hour of night the utter degradation
of exposing ourselves to the public gaze in such a condition. We
literally found ourselves at a table drinking imitation lager beer and
grape juice, and listening to raucous-voiced imported ladies rendering
washy ballads to the accompaniment of tinkling ice and tobacco smoke.
It all sounds sordid enough, but it was vastly amusing to sea-weary
wanderers, and will remain with us a memory of kindness and
good-fellowship.
So, at last, we lay at anchor off Balboa on the Pacific Ocean. We had
come far adown the vista of our dream, and hoped to go a great deal
farther. To do so, we came to the conclusion that it would be necessary
to make some money. How? Well, we had a dream ship, a group of
pearling islands lay thirty miles to the eastward, and----
A strange life, my masters, but one that I would not exchange with any
man on earth.
*THE GALAPAGOS ISLANDS*
_The ash heap_
[Illustration: Chapter VIII headpiece]
*CHAPTER VIII*
_The ash heap_
When Balboa came to Balboa, it is safe to say that no ice cream awaited
him there. Indeed, according to history the place was little more than
a mosquito-infested swamp, and that is where we of the dream ship had
the pull over Senor Balboa.
The town is in the Canal Zone, which is United States territory, though
cutting clean through the Republic of Panama, and in this particular
sample of United States territory, though founded upon a swamp, you will
encounter--among other such amazing things as an entire absence of
mosquitoes, charming residences set in park-like surroundings, and a
well-conducted club free to all--an assortment of ice-cream creations
warranted to hypnotize the uninitiated.
I have to mention this seemingly trivial detail because our lives at
Balboa appeared to consist in rowing ashore to transact important
business in Panama, and being waylaid en route and held captive by
insidious messes.
Besides, it was over a Something Sundae that I met the man who came very
near to shaping our destiny. True, there were pearling islands to the
eastward, he informed me; he had fished there himself in the past with
varying success, and would like nothing better than to try again aboard
the dream ship. He would make enquiries.
The fruits of these were imparted the next day over a Peach Something
Else. The group had been done to death, and was "closed" for a term of
three years, but--this over an Orange Orangoutang--if we cared to go a
little farther afield, and divert our attention from pearl shell to
gold, he knew of a spot not far south where the natives were in the
habit of washing the stuff out of clods of earth from their backyards,
held under the eaves of the houses during a rain storm. What about it?
The answer at the moment, and as far as I can remember, was a Strawberry
Slush.
But we had decided to go. Preparations for making the wherewithal we so
sorely needed were already afoot when a miracle intervened. On
succeeding one afternoon in getting clean past temptation and into the
city of Panama, I found a letter awaiting me from a certain magician who
dwells in a place called New York. To hide the truth no longer, he had
sold a story of mine to the "movies" at a figure that to our starved
gaze looked like the war indemnity, and inside of a week the amount, in
beautiful, round, twenty-dollar gold pieces, littered the cabin table of
the dream ship.
I am aware that in most accounts of travel such sordid details as the
financial difficulties encountered are invariably omitted, either
because there were none, or because the writer considers it in the light
of bad form to mention them. In our particular case they certainly
existed, and personally I am not very strong on form. After all, money
is a means to an end--even to the realization of a dream, and I can only
say that ours would have evaporated into thin air at Balboa but for the
miracle performed by the magician in New York.
On the strength of our sudden affluence, the dream ship received a sleek
and well-deserved coat of paint, a new main sheet of good manila, a
hundred gallons of kerosene, a fresh supply of provisions, and
incidentally a new lease of life.
She sailed in charge of a genial pilot who seemed as pleased as his
confrere of the canal at being under sail again, and sighed wistfully on
taking his leave at the last fairway buoy. There are many such men
engaged in the routine of life, who long to break away and answer the
call of the sea and adventure, but who rarely do, either because they
cannot or have not the courage of their dream.
We had been advised that Panama Bay was a promising trolling ground, and
for once report spoke true, for we caught a fine bonito within an hour
of our departure. We were doing about five knots at the time, and it
was a fine sight to see a fifteen-pound fish leaping and splashing
astern; and a still finer to see sections of him sizzling in the frying
pan.
A very different class of fish visited us a day or two later but,
spurning our spoon bait, gave his attention to the log. A large shark,
looking like a sinister shadow in the turmoil of our wake, investigated
the twinkling fan with interest. Five times he approached it and
withdrew, before risking indigestion and swallowing it whole.
As about a week later precisely the same thing occurred to our last
remaining fan, from then onward we were bereft of log and "dead
reckoning" at one fell swoop. However, as the sun is an almost constant
companion in these latitudes, and the chronometer, after a thorough
overhauling at Panama, appeared to be behaving itself, the loss was not
as serious as might be expected.
Each day now brought us appreciably nearer the Equator, and its presence
began to make itself felt in gasping moments at the tiller, a glare from
the water that caused blood-shot eyes until Peter the practical produced
a pair of smoked glasses, and deck seams running and bubbling marine
glue.
[Illustration: Sailboat, shark]
Peter's watch was a spectacle not to be missed, consisting as it did of
pyjamas, smoked glasses, and a parasol! I have often wondered what sort
of entertainment we should have provided for a passing steamer on
occasion, but as we never sighted one from the beginning to the end of
our cruise, I fear I shall never know.
"To-morrow," said Steve, after twelve days of fair though light winds,
"we ought to raise Tower Island."
We were approaching the ash heap of the world. At the time we had no
notion that it was an ash heap, but you shall judge. Throughout that
night we took our appointed four-hour single-handed watch, slept our
four hours as we had come mechanically so to do during the past four
months, and went on deck at dawn to see Tower Island.
It was not there.
Steve, who was at the tiller, looked vaguely troubled, but offered no
comment. Neither did we, by this time being used to such things.
Besides, "Leave a man to his job," had become our watch-word through
many vicissitudes. But when night followed day with customary
inexorableness, and without producing anything more tangible than the
same empty expanse of ocean, Steve was constrained to mutter, a sure
preliminary to coherent speech.
"One of three things has happened," he announced: "the chronometer's got
the jim-jams, the chart's wrong, or the blinking island has foundered."
As skipper of the dream ship, it devolved upon myself to verify these
surprising statements, which, after a superhuman struggle, I did. By
our respective observations and subsequent calculations the ship's
position proved identical. According to instruments we were at that
moment plumb in the middle of Tower Island. It was thoughtless of it to
have evaporated at the very moment when we so sorely needed it as a
landmark. We said so in strong terms. We were still saying something
of the sort when a small, high-pitched voice came from aloft:
"Land O!"
Peter, in striped white-and-green pyjamas, was astride the jaws of the
gaff. Steve and I exchanged relieved glances, and, with a lashed
tiller, we all went below for a "swizzle," the now inevitable
accompaniment to a landfall. We had reached the Galapagos Islands.
The southeast "trade" was blowing as steadily as a "trade" knows how,
and there was nothing between us and Cristobal, the only inhabited
island of the group; consequently, I slept the sleep of a mind at peace
until awakened by a well-known pressure on the arm.
"Come and take a look at this," whispered Steve so as not to wake Peter
in the opposite bunk.
"This" proved to be a solid wall of mist towering over the ship like a
precipice. The trade wind had fallen to a stark calm, and the dream
ship lay wallowing on an oily swell. A young moon rode clear overhead,
and myriads of monstrous stars glared down at us; yet still this ominous
gray wall lay fair in our path.
"It ought not to be land," said Steve, "but I don't like the look of
it."
Neither did I. We stood side by side, straining our eyes into the murk.
A soft barking, for all the world like that of a very old dog, sounded
somewhere to port. Splashes, as of giant bodies striking the water,
accompanied by flashes of phosphorescent light, came at intervals from
all sides, and presently the faint lap of water reached our ears.
"Mother of Mike!" breathed Steve. "We're _alongside_ something."
At that moment, and as though impelled by some silent mechanism, the
pall of mist lifted, revealing an inky black wall of rock not fifty
yards distant.
My frenzied efforts at the flywheel of the motor auxiliary were futile,
as I had more than half expected. Who has ever heard of these
atrocities answering in an emergency? We had no sweeps. To anchor was a
physical impossibility; the lead-line vanished as probably twenty other
lead-lines would have vanished after it in those fathomless waters. So
we stood, watching the dream ship drift to her doom.
What happened during the next hour is as hard to describe as I have no
doubt it will be to believe. The Galapagos Islands are threaded with
uncertain currents, and one was setting us now on to the rocky face of
an islet cut as clean and sheer to the sea as a slice of cheese. We
should have touched but for our fending off. There is no other way of
describing our antics than to say that we clawed our way along that
rocky wall until at the end of it a faint air caught the jib, the
foresail, the mainsail, and we stood away without so much as a scratch.
Sunrise that morning was the weirdest I have ever seen. There are over
two thousand volcano cones in the Galapagos Islands, and apparently we
were in the midst of them. On all hands and at all distances were
rugged peaks one hundred to two thousand feet high, rising sheer from a
rose-pink sea into a crimson sky. Sleek-headed seals broke water
alongside, peered at us for a space with their fawnlike eyes, barked
softly, and were gone. Pelicans soared above our truck, and fell like a
stone on their prey. Tiny birds, yellow and red, flitted about the deck
or flew through the skylights, and settled on the cabin fittings with
the utmost unconcern. And down under, in the crystal-clear depths, vague
shapes hovered constantly: sharks, dolphin, turtle, and ghastly devil
fish.
All life seemed confined to water and air; never was dry land so
desolate and sinister as those myriads of volcanic cones. Yet one of
them was peopled with human beings. Which? We were lost, if ever a
ship was lost, in the labyrinths of an ash heap.
All we knew was that Cristobal was the eastern-most of the group. We
sailed east, only to be becalmed inside of an hour and to lose by
current what we had gained by wind. Close to this same group a sailing
vessel has been known to have her insurance paid before she reached
port. The calms run in belts of varying widths, and unless a ship can
be towed or kedged to one side or the other there is nothing to prevent
her remaining in the same spot for six months. Our water would not last
that time, and there is none on any of the islands except Cristobal. We
began to think. We continued to think for four mortal days until the
fitful southeast "trade" revived as by a miracle, and we were bowling
along at a seven-knot clip. What a relief was the blessed motion of
air! We hardly dared breathe lest it should drop.
It held, and we made what we took to be Cristobal. The dinghy was
lowered, the ship cleaned up for port, and we began to discuss the
possibilities of fresh milk, eggs, and bread. But it was not Cristobal
Island. Neither were three others that we visited, all as alike as
peas--a chain of ash heaps, an iron-bound coast of volcanic rock broken
here and there by a dazzling coral beach.
I admit that to professional seafarers our inability to find Cristobal
must appear ridiculous. For their benefit I would point out that we
were not professional seafarers but a party of inconsequent and no doubt
over-optimistic landlubbers engaged in the materialization of a
dream--to cruise through the South Sea Islands in our own ship; that
what navigation we knew had been learnt in three weeks; and that I would
invite any one who fancies his bump of locality to test it in the
Galapagos Islands.
We had more than half decided to cut out Cristobal and its five hundred
inhabitants, and shape a course for the Society Islands, three thousand
miles to the southwest'ard, when Steve gave a yell like a wounded pup.
"I see Dalrymple Rock," he chanted as one in a trance, with the
binocular to his eyes. "I see Wreck Point, and a bay between 'em with
houses on the beach. What more do you want?"
How supremely simple it was to recognize each feature by the chart--when
there was an unmistakable landmark to go by. What fools we had been
to---- But we left further recriminations till a later date. At the
present moment it was necessary to enter Wreck Bay through a channel
three hundred yards wide without a mark on either side in the teeth of a
snorting "trade," and with a lee tide.
At one time during the series of short tacks that were necessary to get
a "slant" for the anchorage we were not more than fifty yards from the
giant emerald-green rollers breaking on Lido Point to port with the roar
of thunder. To starboard one could see the fangs of the coral reef
waiting for us to miss stays to rip the bottom out of us. But the dream
ship did not miss stays, and finally we shot through the channel into
Wreck Bay, and anchored in three fathoms off a rickety landing-stage.
While the agony of removing a three-weeks' beard was in progress a crowd
had assembled on the beach, and presently a boatload of three put off to
us. Steve, with his smattering of Spanish, received them at the
companion with a new-born elegance that matched their own. They proved
to be the owner of the island, a good-looking youth of about
twenty-five; the chief of police (presumably "chief" because there is
only one representative of the law in the Galapagos), a swarthy
Ecuadorean in a becoming poncho; and a little, wrinkled old man with a
finely chiselled face and delicate hands.
The owner of Cristobal informed us in excellent French (he had been four
years in Paris previous to marooning himself on his equatorial
possession) that the island was ours, and the fulness thereof; that he
also was ours to command, and would we dine with him that evening at the
_hacienda_, it being New Year's eve?
The "chief" of police demanded our ship's papers, which, when placed in
his hands, he gracefully returned without attempting to read, and gave
his undivided attention to a rum "swizzle" and a cigar.
The little old man, whom we soon learnt to call "Dad," sat mum, with a
dazed expression on his face and his head at an angle after the fashion
of the deaf. When he spoke, which he presently did with an
unexpectedness that was startling, it was in a low, cultured voice, and
in English! "What about this Dutch war he had heard rumours of during
the last year or two? With Germany, was it? Well, now, and who was
winning? Over, eh?--and with the Allies on top? That was good, that
was good!" He rubbed his wrinkled hands and glared round on the
assembled company with an air of triumph, but without making any
appreciable impression on the owner of Cristobal or the "chief" of
police.
Dad was a type, if ever there was one, of the educated ne'er-do-well
hidden away in the farthest corner of the earth to avoid those things
which most of us deem so desirable. He had a split-bamboo house on the
beach, a wife who could cook, freedom, and God's sunlight. What more
did man desire? He had run away to sea at the age of seventeen, run away
from sea two years later at the Galapagos Islands, and remained there
ever since. This was the second time he had spoken English in fifty
years, so we must excuse his halting diction, but the tales he could
tell--the tales!
He was here when the pirates of the South American coast murdered for
money, even as they have a knack of doing to this day, and hid the loot
at their headquarters in the Galapagos Islands, silver and gold,
boatloads of it. He had built a cutter with his own hands, and sailed
in search of this same loot, only to encounter the sole owner, still
guarding his ill-gotten gains though reduced to nakedness and hair. At
a distance Dad had seen him first, and, mistaking him for a mountain
goat, had shot him through the heart. It was the first man he had
killed, and he could not stay on the island after that--especially at
night.
Afterward, I asked the owner of Cristobal if one might believe half the
old man said, and he nodded gravely.
"There is much, also, that he does not say," he added with a smile.
There is undoubtedly treasure still lying hidden in the Galapagos
Islands. Two caches have been unearthed, silver ingots and pieces of
eight respectively. The finder of one built himself a handsome hotel in
Ecuador, and the other drank himself to death in short order. But there
is definite proof that there is more.
As a field for the treasure hunter it is doubtful if any place in the
world offers better chances of success to-day than the Galapagos
Islands, but--and there is always a "but"--the uncertainty of wind and
current amongst the islands makes it impossible for a sailing ship to
undertake the search, a motor auxiliary is too unreliable, and a small
steamer is too large for the creeks and reef channels it would be
necessary to negotiate. With a full-powered launch and diving
apparatus, and a parent ship in attendance, and unlimited time, and
patience, and money--but these be dreams beyond the reach of the
penniless world-wanderer: dreams, nevertheless, that will assuredly one
day be realized.
No one thinks of the Galapagos Islands. Situated a bare six hundred
miles from the American coastline in the direct trade route between the
South Pacific Islands and the United States of America, this group is
seldom visited more than twice a year, and then for the most part by
Ecuadorean schooners. The veriest atoll in the South Pacific receives
more attention, and with not a tithe of the cause. The cause? Well,
come with us to the _hacienda_ of the owner of Cristobal and you shall
see.
For this purpose it is necessary to transfer one's activities from the
heaving deck of the dream ship to the equally heaving back of a mountain
pony, and lope for an hour up a winding, boulder-strewn track through a
wilderness of low scrub and volcanic rock. "Still an ash heap," you
think, "nothing but an ash heap."
Then you surmount a ridge, the last of half a dozen, and rein in to
breathe your pony and incidentally to marvel. You remind yourself that
you are precisely on the Equator; yet it is positively chilly up here.
A green, gently undulating country, dotted with grazing cattle and
horses, patches of sugar-cane, coffee bushes, and lime trees, stretches
away to a cloud-capped range of mountains.
The soil is a rich red loam, almost stoneless, and scarcely touched with
the plough. There are three thousand five hundred head of cattle at
present on Cristobal Island, and it could support fifty thousand with
ease. There is no disease and no adverse climatic condition with which
to contend, and at three years old a steer brings one hundred dollars
(gold), live weight, at Guayaquil--when a steamer can be induced to call
and take it there.
There are a few hundred acres under cultivation when there ought to be
thousands, and two hundred bone-lazy peons do the work of fifty ordinary
farm hands.
Looking down on this fertile valley it is hard to realize that one is
standing on the lip of a long-extinct crater, that in reality Cristobal
is a series of these, dour and uninviting to a degree, viewed from
outside, but veritable gardens within. And there are four other islands
in the Galapagos Group--some smaller, some larger, than
Cristobal--uninhabited and exactly similar in character. Nominally,
they belong to Ecuador, which accounts for their tardy development; but
here, surely, is a new field for enterprise.
In the midst of the valley, situated on a hillock and surrounded by the
peons' grass houses, is the owner's _hacienda_. Here we met, at a
dinner of strange but appetizing dishes, the accountant and the
_comisario_, the former a rotund little gentleman with very long thumb
nails (the insignia of the brain worker), which he clicked together with
gusto when excited or amused; the latter a tall, handsome youth and
something of an exquisite, if one may judge by biscuit-coloured silk
socks and an esthetic tie.
It was a cheerful occasion, followed by the best coffee I have ever
tasted and songs to a guitar accompaniment.
Out in the compound, under the stars, the peons also indulged in a New
Year's _fiesta_; so that by midnight the place was a blur of tobacco
smoke, oil flares, thrumming guitars; gyrating, brightly hued ponchos,
with their owners somewhere inside them; dogs, chickens, and children.
Everyone seemed thoroughly happy and contented. And after all, what else
matters? That is the Ecuadorean point of view, and who shall say it is
a bad one?
A starlit ride to the beach, a few strokes of the oars that carve deep
caverns of phosphorescent light in the inky waters, and we are again
aboard. And herein lies one of the manifold joys of one's own ship. One
may travel at will over the highway of the earth, carrying his home and
his banal but treasured belongings with him. Like the hermit-crab, he
may emerge where and when he will, take a glimpse at life thereabouts,
and return to the comfort of accustomed surroundings--a pipe-rack ready
to hand, a favourite book or picture placed just so.
Sheltered by a coral reef that broke the force of the Pacific rollers,
and with holding-ground of firm white sand, we made up arrears of sleep
that night, and scattered after breakfast to explore the beach.
There was a lagoon swarming with duck, not half a mile inland, that
attracted Steve and his new twelve-bore gun like a magnet. Peter
interviewed the lighthouse-keeper's wife anent cooking for us during our
stay, and I--I lazed; it gives one time to notice things that escape the
attention of the industrious.