The Unknown Shore

  ‘It is John Allen over there. I thought I would put a couple of pieces on his eyes. For to tell you the truth we never did bury him fit and proper, and a couple of pieces might serve, for want of better – I doubt we shan’t have time to do rightly by him now.’ Allen had been murdered in a drunken quarrel by one of the earliest deserters, a violent brute nicknamed Execution Dock, who had thrown him down in a chaos of rocks just off the path they were now following: the burial-party, battered by the wind and the snow, had not done its duty. But still the idea that a man should be decently laid away was strong in his shipmates’ minds, and had it not been for the procrastination that afflicts seamen ashore, Allen would have had a proper tomb long ago. Yet, as Noble said, it was too late to do rightly by him now, for an enthusiastic noise from the beach showed that Campbell had set about the launching of the boats.

  Twelve in the barge; eight in the yawl. With their precious sea-store, three half-barrels of powder, their weapons and their very few personal belongings they were tightly packed and deeply laden. Jack steered the barge while the captain conned it: Campbell steered the yawl. The wind, a stiff breeze, was almost astern, and the miles slipped by. The dreadful coast of Wager Island sank down and down until only Mount Misery was to be seen, while beyond it, on the mainland the far peaks of the Cordillera reared up snowy against the sky. Tobias, sitting in the stern sheets opposite the captain, went to sleep.

  He woke up with a feeling of horrible nausea, and collecting his wits he saw that they were no longer running before the wind, but had hauled the sheet aft. In fact the wind had veered right out of the east and it was now blowing in increasing gusts from the west-south-west. They were holding their course, but they were now reaching the edge of the unsheltered high-running sea, and it was a question how long they could keep the head of the barge to the cape, with the wind blowing more and more with the swell, working it up into an ugly hollow sea, with white water flying.

  He leant quietly over the side, cold and sick, and when he had recovered a little he watched the yawl, rising and falling, running diagonally along the trough of the swell and climbing its side slantwise. Beyond the yawl a giant petrel sailed as easily as an albatross, scarcely moving its wings, utterly indifferent to the growing menace of the sea below it.

  Jack was having an increasingly difficult time: the barge had always been a pig to steer, and now that it was so heavy it would not answer the helm with anything but a ponderous deliberation that could not have been more out of place than on this afternoon. The sheet and the tiller were in perpetual movement as he calculated the thrust of each wave, the continually varying force of the wind and the slow reaction of the boat: his mind and body were so much taken up that he was the least concerned person aboard; he scarcely noticed the sheets of spray that flew across, nor the biting cold.

  The gusts were growing more and more frequent; more and more they came from the west, heeling the barge so that the lee gunwale barely cleared the sea. In the yawl they were baling hard, and while Tobias watched them at their work the barge shipped a sea that half filled it: water swirled about shin-deep, and from that time on Tobias scooped it out as fast as he could.

  Then quite suddenly the wind settled in the west, due west and a full gale. They already had three reefs in the sail and all the people who could be spared from baling were sitting close on the weather-side to keep the seas from breaking aboard and filling the boat: the sky had darkened with a more terrible darkness than the end of the day. A rip of violet lightning split the clouds from the south to the north, and at last the captain gave the order to run before the wind. It was clear to everybody now that they were in for a great western storm: they had seen too many to be mistaken.

  By this time they had run some twenty miles of their course for the cape: they were about half-way across the gulf, and away to the leeward, perhaps fifteen, perhaps twenty miles, lay the unknown coast of the mainland, with islands and reefs between them and it.

  At first the boat was very much eased and scudded happily enough under a little scrap of a foresail, steering east-north-east; but the wind grew, and the sea grew – the wind and the sea passed beyond all measure, and after an hour the barge was tearing through a roaring desert of water more appalling than anything they had ever seen. The waves were running now at the most terrifying height: when the boat was in the trough of the sea there was nothing to be seen but the great grey hill of water ahead half-way up the sky, and behind, racing towards them faster than they fled, a still greater mountain, green and curling towards them with its head torn away forwards by the wind, threatening to overwhelm them from the height of an enormous cliff. And when they were raised to the height of the roller, with the water, the live water boiling up to the gunwale and the great wind pressing the boat down into it, their horizon was jagged all round with the crests of innumerable monstrous waves.

  Sometimes in the gathering darkness they caught a glimpse of the yawl, raised vertiginously up, or so far below them that they could see right down into it. More and more of the huge overgrown seas were curling over and breaking as they ran, now, because of the movement of the tide below them; and Tobias could see no reason why an open boat should live much longer. He saw, with horror, that his shipmates, from the captain downwards, were of the same opinion. The boat laboured terribly: it had not buoyancy enough to recover from the blows it received, nor to bear the great weight of water that was perpetually flying in. They were so near to foundering, and they knew it so well, that they parted with everything – they were glad to be able to lighten the boat by any means. One after another the barrels, sacks and stores went over the side; each time the lightened barge responded, but each time the growing sea called for a new sacrifice. Tobias, with death in his soul, helped to throw out the last cask of beef: the very anchor itself went overboard, and as it went the rising wave showed them the shore, a broad zone of white breakers, a most prodigious surf.

  They were in the white water: there was a line of tall black rock ahead, a cliff, with the waves breaking to its head. The wind and the sea were taking them against the cliff at the pace of a running horse – five minutes more, if that. Captain Cheap gripped Jack’s shoulder, pointed at an opening in the cliff: Jack nodded, and put down the helm. All the men without an order or a word leant out to windward: if anything gave they were lost; if the worn canvas split they were irretrievably lost. Through the breaking water and on the foam the boat raced straight through the gap, and it was over. They had passed through an opening not twenty yards across and they were floating on the calm water of a round, tranquil, pond-like cove: and there was the yawl, already lying there in the middle.

  It was a very solemn moment: the quietness, immediately after the immeasurable roaring outside, was like a hallucination and the men sat there without speaking. They paddled quietly to the edge to find a landing-place, but finding none in this steep-sided crater they climbed on to a black rock, shining with the rain, secured the boats as well as they could, and composed themselves with thankful minds to take what rest the night afforded them.

  This was the end of the first day of the voyage north. If the wind had held true, or if they had started one tide earlier, they might have passed the western headland; but now, as they judged it in the morning, they were at the eastward end of the great arm of land that barred their way, and they must coast along it, all the way into the teeth of the prevailing wind, unless perhaps they could find a passage through to the other side – that is to say, unless what appeared to be continuous land should prove to be an island, or several islands, separated from the main by narrow strips of sea. On such a coast it was not impossible, and it was known that there were many such vast islands in Tierra del Fuego, all about Magellan’s Strait.

  The wind dropped before the dawn, and the frost whitened their wet clothes, giving them a curiously piebald appearance. The sea was still running high outside their cove, but it was just possible to force a boat out through the breakers and into the smoother sw
ell beyond: it was hard pulling and dangerous, but it was better than starving in the rock-bound cove, which had no food, no fuel and no way out but a climb of two or three hundred feet up sheer rock. All day they laboured at their oars, running along a broken, indented coast, mostly lined with sheer-to cliffs or great jagged reefs, and towards nightfall, the sky being full of evil promise, they hauled ashore on a little island, the only one of a group that had an accessible beach. It proved to be a mere swamp, but it was too late to find another place, and they passed a second night in the open, in the rain, with no fire, no food and with nothing dry about them but the powder in their powder-horns.

  This was hard living: it could scarcely have been very much harder. But in the morning, in the first grey of dawn, Tobias, unable to sleep for the cold, wandered off with Jack’s fowling-piece in his hand, and he found both fuel and something to cook upon it. He had, deeply ingrained, the poacher’s and the naturalist’s habit of peering cautiously into any new field, dell, dune or clearing, and now, looking over a rock into a little sheltered place he saw a huge loggerheaded duck sitting upon a mound of driftwood. He had never been so well received in his life as when he returned with his burden, nor so much caressed by all hands: the race-horse, cut up, yielded a pound of solid meat for each man, besides its bones and skin; and it was as well that they had it, for the wind was roaring again, and by sunrise the sea had mounted so high that they could not leave. The storm lasted three full days, and the fourth day saw them rowing on a sea still so furious that nothing but extreme necessity could explain their presence. It was a day that promised great things, however: over on the main the land ran down low to a sandy point, and between this point and a range of hills to the westward there appeared to be nothing but water. They pulled over to this opening and found that the water ran northwards out of sight: it was possible that this would be a passage right through the headland, and they rowed along the marshy shore until the afternoon. But then they found that they were only in a narrow bay: there was no way through. The swamps on either hand offered neither shelter nor the least promise of anything to eat, not even shellfish; and they were obliged to row back again, with the grey rain sweeping down.

  At least their resting-place that night provided them with some mussels, limpets and a fire: they called it Redwood Cove, because their fuel was all as red as cedar or mahogany; and the next day, with a favourable wind, they set out in better spirits to follow the coast, which here trended away to the north. The wind held fair all day, and although it died to the faintest breeze in the evening, yet it brought them as far as an island where they could land; this island was covered with magnificent tall trees, mast-like and straight in spite of the terrible winds, and the captain named it after Montrose. They lay dry that night, for once, packed round a great driftwood fire, cedar that snapped and flew in sparks so that the whole circle smelt of singeing cloth; and in the morning – calm, but with a huge western swell – they pulled steadily along the coast, still northwards here. Clinch, one of the boatkeepers (two stayed in each boat at night, by turn), said that he had seen sea-lions by the moonlight, and they travelled in the liveliest expectation, with Mr Hamilton, the best shot among them, in the bows with a loaded musket. But their hopes were all disappointed; they saw no sea-lions, and they found that once again they had rowed to the marshy bottom of a bay. They were obliged to haul away to the west once more, following the coast in all its tedious windings; and when, towards the evening, an offshore breeze sprang up, tempting them to risk the crossing of the next bay they reached from headland to headland (for there were hills at the bottom and obviously no passage), they were very soon persuaded that in these latitudes such a thing was almost impossible. The tempting breeze turned into a growing storm, and they were glad to put back while there was yet time; they put into the only sheltered place they could pitch upon, a very little cove with a safe anchorage, but with no more than a rocky ledge on one side of it with scarcely enough room for all of them; and here two of the men, who had moved off to a place under an overhanging cliff, were as nearly as possible killed by a landslide. A huge width of cliff came thundering down a few paces beyond them, half-burying them with earth. This weighed heavily upon the spirits of some of the people, particularly the crew of the yawl: they felt that both the land and the sea were against them now, and they were not to be saved, whatever they did.

  The whole of the next day they rowed into the eye of the wind across the bay, but when they came to the farther horn they could find no harbour, and they were forced to wear out the hours and hours of the black night lying on their oars, keeping the boats’ heads to the roaring wind and baling out the spray and the very heavy rain. It was in the course of this night that Jack and Tobias ate the shoes off Jack’s feet: they were shoes made from sealskin bought long ago from the first Indians to come to Wager Island.

  Some people said that the day after this was Christmas; it may have been the case, but for the boats’ crews it was a day of hard pulling, nightmarish hunger, exhaustion and continual danger from the sea; and that night again they could not land, but lay at sea, racked by the most extreme hunger they had yet known. But for all that they were in quite good heart, for in the evening they had had a sight of the western end of the land. It was lost again in the low clouds and rain of the next morning, but as the day cleared there it was, some ten miles to the west, a tall black promontory with no land beyond it. They found a bay with a sheltered beach and put ashore there for a while, to find shellfish and to mount their strength a little by a fire, and then they hurried, with a kind of despairing eagerness, to double this portentous cape. They were sure that once they were round it the wind and the sea would be less terrible: and in any case, round it they must, if ever they were to get away to the north.

  They were quickly aboard, and they pulled out hour after hour until they were abreast of the cape and one mile to the south of it: they could actually see beyond it to the north. But the wind was rising, the incessant western gale, the men had very little strength left, not enough to make the extra mile or two of offing into the wind before they could dare to attempt the cape. They lay staring at it for a few minutes as the boats rose and fell on the rollers, and then with one accord turned for the bay they had left that morning. Before they could reach it darkness had fallen, however, and they spent another night lying on their oars, unable to get in until the morning.

  Now the weather grew very bad, so bad that they could not leave their bay for the open sea: but this had its advantages, for being confined to this bay they explored it in every direction and found lagoons at the far end – shallow lagoons, some muddy and brackish, with fresh water draining in from the interminably rain-soaked swampy land, some sandy, divided from one another and protected from the main sea by sand bars and long spits. Here there were clams, various fish (if only they could have caught them) and much more important, a number of very large and very fierce sea-lions.

  Mr Hamilton was the first to discover one. He fired upon it at short range as it lay upon a sand-bank, and it came straight for him, roaring, a beast fifteen feet long with a hairy mane, very nimble. But the soldier was not accustomed to give way: he fixed his bayonet with the utmost speed, and meeting the sea-lion with an equal ferocity he thrust the bayonet and a foot of the barrel down its throat. The sealion bit it through, turned and flung itself into the sea; it swam off, leaving the men in an amazement. This was a discouraging beginning, and indeed they never did have any success with the big maned creatures, but they shot several of the common small seals, and ate them with brutal eagerness.

  The sea abating, they put out again; and pulling much more strongly this time they reached the cape by the middle afternoon and continued westward until they could see that the cape was formed of three separate mountainous heads. Now they turned north, and with an hour’s hard rowing they passed the first of the three: the barge was steering strangely, and Jack, who by now felt the touch of the tiller as if it were part of his body, knew th
at there were some very strong currents setting in towards the chaotic mass of boulders that lay after the first head of the cape; but he was not prepared for the horrifying race that came southward round the second. It was narrowest just under the cape, a white-lined tide-rip that swirled out to sea, broadening as it went, and obviously of the most fantastic strength. A branch from the main current, clearly defined by lines of scum and drift-weed, curled in towards the tumbled reefs that edged the land. He looked nervously at the captain, who said, ‘We must try to edge across.’

  This was the only course; but when they came nearer to the rip the sight of it was quite appalling. The water ran sharply downhill from the edge towards the middle, and in the strongest central stream it rose again, a high, continually revolving whale-back of racing water. A tree-trunk came towards them, a huge tree-trunk running at an unbelievable speed, and as it came abreast of the barge it was swirled towards the middle of the rip, where it vanished entirely, sucked down and never seen again.

  ‘Pull now,’ cried the captain, and the barge slipped from the slack water down the side: instantly it was twirled about and hurried vehemently southwards. For a few minutes they were able to force it across the stream, but as soon as they came to the main strength there was no hope of doing more than escaping from it alive. The big heavy boat was tossed up and down, spun and twirled like a straw; and by the time it was over, when the tide was wholly ebbed and the tide-race had therefore stopped, they were far away below the first headland, far out to sea, and happy only in the prospect of a known shelter for the night, some hours’ toil away, in the place they had left at dawn.

  The wind had not been too troublesome that day, but the next day (which they spent hunting for seals and resting from their exhausting pull) it backed from the west into the south, and by night into the south-east; this was the one direction from which their anchorage was not sheltered, and the wind blew straight into the bay. It fell to Jack and Tobias to be boat-keepers that night: by the time they took their place the sea had not worked up to any extent, however, and they stepped in quite easily over the yawl, which lay inside of them, guarded by Rose and Buckley; Jack then hauled the barge out to where it should ride at anchor – for they had fashioned a kellick to replace the grapnel that they had lost the first day out – made all fast, and then, lying down between the thwarts, he went straight to sleep.