SIGHTS WHILE COOKING.
St. Bartholomew or Turtle Bay is a small, almost circular, sheet of
water and surrounded by some of the dreariest territory in the world.
The mountains which stand about it seem the cooled and hardened deposit
of a volcano. Vegetation there is none, save cactus and other spined,
horned, and stinging growths. Of fresh water, whether in springs,
rivulets, or brooks, there is none. Close by our boat-landing was the
grave of a mother and child, landed a few years previous from a wreck,
who had perished of thirst. Coyotes, hares, and birds must have relieved
thirst somewhere, possibly from the dews, which are very copious. Our
decks and rigging in the morning looked as though soaked by a heavy
shower. Regularly at night the coyotes came down and howled over that
lone grave, and the bass to their fiend-like yelping were furnished by
the boom of the Pacific surges on the reef outside. To these gloomy
sounds in the night stillness and blackness, there used for a time to be
added the incessant groaning of a wretched Sandwich Islander, who, dying
of consumption, would drag himself at night on deck to avoid disturbing
the sleep of the crowded forecastle. Small hope for help is there for
any thus afflicted on a whaler. There is no physician but the Captain,
and his practice dares not go much beyond a dose of salts or
castor-oil. The poor fellow was at last found dead, early one evening,
in his bunk, while his countrymen were singing, talking, laughing, and
smoking about him. It was a relief to all, for his case was hopeless,
and such misery, so impossible to relieve, is terrible to witness on a
mere fishing-schooner so crowded as ours. The dead man was buried at sea
without any service, much to the disgust of one of our coopers, who,
although not a “professor,” believed that such affairs should be
conducted in an orthodox, ship-shape fashion. Some one, after the corpse
had slid overboard, remarked, “Well, he’s dead and buried,” whereat the
cooper muttered, “He’s dead, but he ain’t what I call buried.” I don’t
think the Captain omitted the burial service through any indifference,
but rather from a sensitiveness to officiate in any such semi-clerical
fashion.
Some rocks not far from our anchorage were seen covered at early dawn
every morning with thousands of large black sea-birds. They were thickly
crowded together and all silent and immovable, until apparently they had
finished some Quaker form of morning devotion, when they commenced
flying off, not all at once, but in series of long straggling flocks. In
similar silence and order they would return at night from some far-off
locality. Never during all the months of our stay did we hear a sound
from them. Morning after morning with the earliest light this
raven-colored host were ever on their chosen rocks, brooding as it were
ere their flight over some solemnity peculiar to their existence.
The silent birds gone, there came regularly before sunrise a wonderful
mirage. Far away and low down in the distant seaward horizon there
seemed vaguely shadowed forth long lines one above and behind the other
of towers, walls, battlements, spires and the irregular outline of some
weird ancient city. These shapes, seemingly motionless, in reality
changed from minute to minute, yet the movement was not perceptible. Now
it was a long level wall with an occasional watch-tower. Then the walls
grew higher and higher, and there towered a lofty, round, cone-shaped
structure, with a suggestion of a flight of circular steps on the
outside, as in the old-fashioned Sunday-school books was seen pictured
the tower of Babel. It would reveal itself in varying degrees of
distinctness. But when the eye, attracted by some other feature of the
spectacle, turned again in its direction it was gone. A haze of purple
covered as with a gauzy veil these beautiful morning panoramas. Gazed at
steadily it seemed as a dream realized in one’s waking moments. It was
sometimes for me a sight fraught with dangerous fascination, and often
as I looked upon it, forgetting all else for the moment, have I been
recalled disagreeably to my mundane sphere of slops, soot, smoke and
dish-rags, as I heard the ominous sizzle and splutter of the coffee
boiling over, or scented on the morning air that peculiar odor, full of
alarm to the culinary soul, the odor of burning bread in the oven. ’Tis
ever thus that the fondest illusions of life are rudely broken in upon
by the vulgar necessities and accidents of earthly existence.
There were ten Sandwich Islanders in the forecastle of the _Henry_, one
big Jamaica negro, who acted as a sort of leader for them, and no white
men. These Kanakas were docile, well-behaved, could read in their own
language, had in their possession many books printed in their own
tongue, and all seemed to invest their spare cash in clothes. They liked
fish, very slightly salted, which they would eat without further
cooking, plenty of bread, and, above all things, molasses. Molasses
would tempt any of these Islanders from the path of rectitude. When not
at work they were either talking or singing. Singly or in groups of two
or three they would sit about the deck at night performing a monotonous
chant of a few notes. This they would keep up for hours. That chant got
into my head thirty-three years ago and it has never got out since.
Change of scene, of life, of association, increase of weight, more
morality, more regular habits, marriage, all have made no difference.
That Kanaka chant, so many thousand times heard on the Southern
Californian coast, will sometimes strike up of its own accord, until it
tires me out with its imagined ceaseless repetition. It’s there, a
permanent fixture. Recollection will wake it up.
So unceasing was the gabble of these Kanakas that one day I asked Jake,
the negro boat-steerer, who understood their language, what they found
to talk so much about. “Oh, dey talk about anyting,” said he; “dey talk
a whole day ’bout a pin.” Whereat I retired to my maritime scrubbery and
kitchen and varied my usual occupation midst my pots, pans, and
undeveloped plum duffs with wondering if the simpler, or, as we term
them, the inferior races of men are not more inclined to express their
thoughts audibly than the superior. I do not think an idea could present
itself to a Kanaka without his talking it out to somebody.
But some of these simple children of the Pacific isles used to pilfer
hot biscuits from my galley when I was absent. In vain I set hot stove
covers in front of the door for them to step on and burn their bare
feet. I burned myself on the iron I had prepared for my recently
civilized, if not converted, heathen brother. Both the superior and
inferior races often went barefooted on the _Henry_ while in the lower
latitudes.
At times, leaving a portion of the crew at the St. Bartholomew’s bay
station to collect and cure abalone, the schooner cruised about the
coast for sea-elephant. Not far from the bay are the islands of Cedros
(or Cedars), Natividad and some others. The first we saw of Cedros was
her tree-covered mountain-tops floating, as it were, in the air above us
on a sea of fog. This lifting, we were boarded by a boat containing two
men. They proved to be two Robinson Crusoes, by name Miller and Whitney,
who had been alone on the island nearly six months. They, with others,
had fitted out in San Francisco a joint-stock vessel and were left with
a supply of provisions on Cedros to seal. Their vessel was long overdue,
their provisions down to the last pound of biscuits, and they were
living largely on fish and venison, for though Cedros is many miles from
the main land, deer have got there somehow, as well as rattlesnakes.
Their vessel never did return, for their Captain ran away with her and
sold her in some South American port. Miller and Whitney joined our crew
and made the remainder of the voyage with us. They brought on board all
their worldly goods in two small trunks; also, a kettleful of boiled
venison, a treat which they were very glad to exchange for some
long-coveted salt pork. They reported that a “stinker” was lying among
the rocks ashore. A “stinker” in whaleman’s parlance is a dead whale. In
giving things names a whaleman is largely influenced by their most
prominent traits or qualities, and the odorous activity of a dead whale
can be felt for miles. They told us, also, that they had nineteen
barrels of seal oil stored on the island of Natividad. Natividad is but
a bleached-topped, guano-covered rock. We sailed thither but found no
oil. The Captain who had stolen their vessel also included the oil.
Miller and Whitney proved very useful men. Whitney was a powerful
talker. Miller never spoke unless under compulsion. Whether in their six
months of Cedros isolation such a pair had been well mated is a matter
on which there may be variance of opinion. Perhaps from a colloquial
standpoint some if not many long-married men can best tell. Miller was a
Vermonter, and had spent seventeen years of his life roaming about among
seldom-visited South Sea islands. Could his tongue have been permanently
loosened and his brain stimulated to conversational activity, his might
have been a most interesting story. Once in a great while there came
from him a slight shower of sentences and facts which fell gratefully on
our parched ears, but as a rule the verbal drought was chronic. He had
an irritating fashion also of intonating the first portions of his
sentences in an audible key and then dying away almost to a whisper.
This, when the tale was interesting, proved maddening to his hearers. He
spoke once of living on an island whose natives were almost white, and
the women well formed and finer looking than any of the Polynesian race
he had ever seen. Polygamy was not practised; they were devoted to one
wife; and their life, cleanliness and manners, as he described them,
made, with the addition of a little of one’s own imagination, a pleasing
picture. Miller’s greatest use to mankind lay in his hands, in which all
his brainpower concentrated instead of his tongue. From splicing a cable
to skinning a seal, he was an ultra proficient. Others might tell how
and tell well, but Miller did it. Talking seemed to fatigue him. Every
sentence ere completed fell in a sort of a swoon.
In St. Bartholomew’s, alias Turtle, Bay, we lay four months, taking
abalones. All hands were called every morning at four o’clock. Breakfast
was quickly dispatched, their noon lunch prepared, and everybody save
myself was away from the vessel by five. That was the last I saw of them
until sunset, and I was very glad to be rid of the whole gang and be
left alone with my own thoughts, pots, pans, and kettles. The abalone
clings to the surf-washed rocks by suction. It has but one outer shell.
San Francisco is very familiar with their prismatic hues inside, and the
same outside when ground and polished. Heaps of those shells, three feet
in height and bleached to a dead white by the sun, lay on the beaches
about us. Of unbleached and lively-hued shells we took on board several
tons. They were sent to Europe, and there used for inlaid work. The live
abalone must be pried off the rock with stout iron chisels or wedges. It
was rough work collecting them from the rocky ledges in a heavy surf.
Carried to the curing depot on shore, the entrails were cut away and the
round, solid chunk of meat left was first boiled and then dried in the
sun. An inferior pearl is often found within the body of the abalone.
Our one Chinaman, Ah Sam, was _chef_ of the abalone-curing kitchen on
shore. He was shipped for that purpose. One live abalone will cling to
the back of another too tightly to be pulled off easily by hand, and you
may in this way pile them on top of one another, and thus erect a column
of abalone as many feet in height as you choose to build. These fish
were intended for the Chinese market, and the projectors of the voyage
expected to get forty cents per pound for them in San Francisco. When
some forty tons had been cured we heard from a passing steamer that the
English had instituted another of their Christian wars with China, for
which reason abalones in San Francisco brought only ten cents per pound.
Then we stopped cooking abalones, hauled up our anchor and hunted the
sea-lion and the whale.
But while in St. Bartholomew’s Bay I was left alone on the vessel all
day with no companions save the gulls in the air and the sharks in the
water. Both were plentiful. The gulls made themselves especially
sociable. They would come boldly on board and feast on the quarters of
turtle-meat hung up in the rigging. Once I found one in the cabin
pecking away at the crumbs on the table. His gullible mind got into a
terrible state on seeing me. I whacked him to my heart’s content with
the table-cloth. He experienced great trouble in flying up the cabin
stairway. In fact, he couldn’t steer himself straight up stairs. His aim
on starting himself was correct enough, like that of many a young man or
woman in commencing life; but instead of going the straight and narrow
path up the companionway he would bring up against a deck beam. There is
no limit to the feeding capacity of those Pacific-coast gulls. The
wonder is where it all goes to. I have experimentally cut up and thrown
in small pieces to a gull as much fat pork as would make a meal for two
men, and the gull has promptly swallowed it all, waited for more, and
visibly got no bigger. They never get fat. Sometimes I tied two bits of
meat to either end of a long string and flung it overboard. Barely had
it touched the water when the meat at either end was swallowed by two of
these bottomless scavengers, and they would fly away, each pulling hard
at the latest received contents of the other’s stomach. The picture
reminded me of some married lives. They pulled together, but they didn’t
pull the right way.
At low tide the shore would be lined with these birds vainly trying to
fill themselves with shellfish and such carrion as the waters had left.
It couldn’t be called feeding; a Pacific-coast gull does not feed, it
seeks simply to fill up the vast, unfathomable space within. Eternity
is, of course, without end, but the nearest approach to eternity must be
the inside of a gull; I would say stomach, but a stomach implies metes
and bounds, and there is no proof that there are any metes and bounds
inside of a gull. It was good entertainment to see the coyotes come down
and manœuvre to catch the gulls. There was a plain hard beach, perhaps a
quarter of a mile wide, between coyote and gull. Of course coyote
couldn’t walk across this and eat gull up. So he went to work to create
an impression in gull’s mind that he was thereon other business, and was
quite indifferent, if not oblivious, to all gulls. He would commence
making long straight laps of half a mile on the beach. At the end of
each lap he would turn and run back a few feet nearer gull; back another
lap, another turn, and so on. But he wasn’t looking for a gull. He
didn’t know there was a gull in the world. He had some business straight
ahead of him which banished all the gulls in the world from his mind. He
kept forgetting something and had to run back for it. And the gull on
the water’s edge, trying to fill its void where men imagined a stomach
to be, had no fears of that coyote. It realized the momentous and
all-absorbing character of coyote’s business. There was no danger. So
coyote, getting a little nearer and a little nearer at each turn,
suddenly shot out of his lap at a tangent, and another gull was forever
relieved of the impossible task of trying to fill itself.