The Land of Fire: A Tale of Adventure

Chapter Twelve.

A Catastrophe Not Anticipated

Another day dawns upon the castaways, with again a bright sun on the horizon; and Ned Gancy and Henry Chester, who have risen early, as they look out over the water, become witnesses of the curious behaviour of another Fuegian fishing-bird – the cormorant.

One of these birds, seemingly regardless of their presence, has come close to the ledge where the boat is lying, and has there caught a fish. But instead of gobbling it up or tearing it to pieces, as might be expected, the captor lets it go again, not involuntarily, but, as soon appears, designedly. The fish, alive and apparently uninjured, makes away through the water; but only for a short distance, ere it is followed by the cormorant and caught afresh. Then it is dropped a second time, and a third time seized, and so on through a series of catchings and surrenderings, just like those of a cat playing with a mouse.

In this case, however, the cruel sport has a different termination, by the cormorant being deprived of the prey it seemed so sure of. Not through the efforts of the fish itself, which now, badly damaged, swims but feebly; nor do the gulls appropriate it, but a wingless biped – no other than Ned Gancy.

“Chester, we shall have that fish for breakfast,” he says, springing to his feet, and hastily stripping for a swim. Then, with a rush over the ledge, he plunges in, sending the cormorant off in affright, and taking possession of the prey it has left behind.

The fish proves to be a species of smelt, over two pounds in weight, and a welcome addition to their now greatly reduced larder.

As they have passed a restful night, all the members of the forlorn little party are up betimes; and soon “the doctor” is bestirring himself about their breakfast, in which the cormorant-caught fish is to play a conspicuous part.

The uprising sun reveals the landscape in a changed aspect, quite different from that seen at its setting, and even more surprisingly picturesque. The snowy mantle of Mount Darwin is no longer pure white, but of hues more attractive – a commingling of rose and gold; while the icicled cliffs on the opposite side of the cove, with the façades of glaciers, show every tint of blue from pale sky to deep beryl, darkening to indigo and purple in the deep sea-water at their bases. It is, or might be called, the iridescence of a land with rocks all opals, and trees all evergreens; for the dullest verdure here seems vivid by contrast with its icy and snowy surroundings.

“Oh, mamma! isn’t it glorious?” exclaims Leoline, as she looks around upon the wonderful landscape. “It beats Niagara! If I only had my box of colours, I’d make a sketch of it.”

To this outburst of enthusiastic admiration, the mother responds with but a faint smile. The late danger, from which they have had such a narrow escape, still gravely affects her spirits; and she dreads its recurrence, despite all assurances to the contrary. For she knows they are but founded on hope, and that there may be other tribes of cruel and hostile savages to be encountered. Even Seagriff still appears apprehensive, else why should he be looking so anxiously out over the water? Seated on the trunk of a fallen tree, pipe in mouth, he sends up wreathing curls of smoke among the branches of the Winter’s-bark overhead. But he is not smoking tranquilly, as is his wont, but in short, quick puffs, while the expression on his features, habitually firm, tells of troubled thought.

“What are you gazing at, Chips?” questions Captain Gancy, who has noticed his uneasy look.

“At that glasheer, Captin’. The big ’un derect in front of us.”

“Well, what of it?”

“Tears to me it bulges out beyond the line o’ the cliff more’n we mout like it to. Please let me have a squint at it through the glass. My eyes aren’t wuth much agin the dazzle o’ all that ice an’ snow.”

“By all means. Take the glass, if that will help you,” says the Captain, handing him the binocular, but secretly wondering why he wishes to examine the glacier so minutely, and what there is in the mass of blue congelation to be troubled about. But nothing further is said, he and all the rest remaining silent, so as not to interfere with Seagriffs observation. Not without apprehension, however, do they await the result, as the old sealer’s words and manner indicate plainly that something is amiss.

And their waiting is for a short while only. Almost on the instant of getting the glacier within his field of view, Seagriff cries out, “Jest as I surspected! The end o’ the ice air fur out from the rock, – ten or fifteen fathoms, I should say!”

“Well, and if it is,” rejoins the skipper, “what does that signify to us?”

“A mighty deal, Captin’. Thet air, surposin’ it should snap off jest now. An’ sech a thing wouldn’t be unusual. I wonder we haven’t seed the like afore now, runnin’ past so many glasheers ez we hev. Cewrus, too, our not comin’ acrost a berg yet. I guess the ice’s not melted sufficient for ’em to break away.”

But now an appetising odour more agreeable to their nostrils than the perfume of the fuchsias, or the aromatic fragrance of the Winter’s-bark, admonishes them of breakfast being served; the doctor likewise soon proclaiming it. And so for a time the glacier is forgotten.

But after the meal has been dispatched, it again becomes the subject of discourse, as the old sealer once more begins to regard it through the glass with evident apprehension.

“It ’ud seem beyond the possibility of belief,” he says, “thet them conglomerations uv ice, hard froze an’ lookin’ ez tight fixed ez a mainstay, for all thet hev a downard slitherin’ motion, jest like a stream o’ water, tho’ in coorse thousands or millions o’ times slower.”

“Oh! that’s well understood,” asserts the skipper, acquainted with the latest theory of glacier movement.

“So it may be, Captin’,” pursues Seagriff; “but thar’s somethin’ ’bout these breakin’ off an’ becomin’ bergs ez ain’t so well understood, I reckin’; leastways, not by l’arned men. The cause of it air well enough know’d ’mong the seal-fishers ez frequent these soun’s an’ channels.”

“What is the cause, Chips?” asked young Gancy, like all the others, interested in the subject of conversation.

“Wall, it’s this, Mister Ned. The sea-water bein’ warmer than the ice, melts the glasheer when thar’s high-tide, an’ the eend of it dips under; then at low tide, – bein’, so to speak, undermined, an’ not havin’ the water to rest on, – it naterally sags down by its own weight, an’ snaps off, ez ye’ll all easily understan’.”

“Oh! we quite understand,” is the universal response, every one satisfied with the old sealer’s explanation as to the origin of icebergs.

“How I should like to see one launched,” exclaims Leoline; “that big one over there, for instance. It would make such a big plunge! Wouldn’t it, Mr Chips?”

“Yes, Miss, sech a plunge thet ef this child tho’t thar was any likelihood of it comin’ loose from its moorin’s while we’re hyar, he wouldn’t be smokin’ his pipe so contented. Jest look at thet boat.”

“The boat! what of her?” asks the skipper, in some apprehension, at length beginning to comprehend the cause of Seagriff’s uneasiness.

“Wall, Captin’, ef yon glasheer war to give off a berg, any sort of a big ’un, it mout be the means o’ leavin’ us ’ithout any boat at all.”

“But how?”

“How? Why, by swampin’ or smashin’ the only one we’ve got, the which – ”

“Thunder an’ airthquakes! See yonder! The very thing we’re talkin’ ’bout, I vow!”

No need for him to explain his words and excited exclamations. All know what has called them forth: the berg is snapping off. All see the breaking up and hear the crash, loud as the discharge of a ship’s broadside or a peal of thunder, till at length, though tardily, they comprehend the danger, as their eyes rest on a stupendous roller, as high as any sea the Calypso had ever encountered, coming toward them across the strait.

“To the boat!” shouts Seagriff, making down the bank, with all the men after him. They reach the landing before the roller breaks upon it, but, alas! to no purpose. Beach, to draw the boat up on, there is none, only the rough ledge of rocks; and the only way to raise it on this would be to lift it bodily out of the water, which cannot be done. For all that, they clutch hold of it, with determined grip, around the edge of the bow. But their united strength will prove as nothing against that threatening swell. For the roller, entering the confined water of the cove, has increased in height, and comes on with more tempestuous surge. Their effort proves futile, and nigh worse than futile to Henry Chester. For, as the boat is whisked out of their hands and swung up fathoms high, the English youth, heedless of Seagriff’s shout, “Let go!” hangs on, bulldog-like, and is carried up along with her.

The others have retreated up the slope, beyond reach of the wave which threatens to bear him off in its backward flow. Seeing his danger, all cry out in alarm; and the voice of Leoline is heard above, crying out to her mother, “Oh! Henry is lost.”

But no, Henry is not lost. Letting go before the boat comes down again, with a vigorous bound backward the agile youth heads the roller, getting well up the bank ere it washes over him. Wash over him it does, but only drenches him; for he has flung his arms around a barberry-bush, and holds it in firm embrace; so firm and fast that, when the water has surged back, he is still seen clinging to it – safe. But by the same subsidence the boat is dashed away, the keel striking on some rocks with a harsh sound, which tells of damage, if not total destruction. Still it floats, drifting outward, and for a while all seems well with it. Believing it to be so, the two youths rush to the tent, and each snatching an oar from it, prepare to swim out and bring the boat back. But before they can enter the water, a voice tells them their hope is vain, Captain Gancy himself calling out, “It’s no use, boys! The gig’s got a hole in its bottom, and is going down. Look!”

They do look, and they see that the boat is doomed. Only for an instant are their eyes upon it, before it is seen no more, having “bilged” and gone under, leaving but bubbles to mark the place of its disappearance.

Chapter Thirteen.

A Change of Quarters determined on

No greater calamity than the loss of their boat could have overtaken the castaways, save losing life itself. It has made them castaways in the fullest sense of the word, as much as if left boatless on a desert isle in mid-ocean. Their situation is desperate, indeed, though for a time they scarce realise it. How can they, in so lovely a spot, teeming with animal life, and Nature, as it were, smiling around them? But the old sealer knows all that will soon be changed, experience reminding him that the brief bright summer will ere long be succeeded by dark dreary winter, with rain, sleet, and snow almost continuously. Then no food will be procurable, and to stay where they are would be to starve. Captain Gancy also recalls the attempts at colonising Tierra del Fuego, notably that made by Sarmiento at Port Famine in the Magellan Straits, where his whole colony, men, women, and children – nearly three hundred souls – miserably perished by starvation; and where, too, the lamented missionary, Gardner, with all his companions, succumbed to a similar fate.[16 - There is now a colony in the Straits of Magellan, not far from Port Famine, at Sandy Point – the “Punta de Arenas” of the old Spanish navigators. The colony is Chilian, and was established as a penal settlement, though it is now only nominally so. The population is about fourteen hundred.] The Captain remembers reading, too, that these colonists had at the start ample store of provisions, with arms and ammunition to defend themselves, and renew their stores. If they could not maintain life in Tierra del Fuego, what chance is there for a party of castaways, without weapons, and otherwise unfitted for prolonged sojourn in a savage land? Even the natives, supplied with perfect implements for fishery and the chase, and skilled in their use, have often a hard, and at times an unsuccessful struggle for existence. Darwin thus speaks of it:

“The inhabitants, living chiefly upon shell-fish, are obliged constantly to change their place of residence, but return at intervals to the same spot. – At night five or six of them, unprotected from the wind and rain of this tempestuous climate, sleep on the wet ground, coiled up like animals. Whenever it is low-water, they must rise to pick shell-fish from the rocks, and the women, winter and summer, either dive to collect sea-eggs, or sit patiently in their canoes, and with a baited hair-line jerk out small fish. If a seal is killed, or the floating carcase of a dead whale discovered, it is a feast. Such miserable food is assisted by a few tasteless berries and fungi. Nor are they exempt from famine, and, as a consequence, cannibalism, accompanied by parricide.”

The old seal-fisher, familiar with these facts, keeps them to himself, though knowing the truth will in time reveal itself to all.

They get an inkling of it that very day, when the “doctor,” proceeding to cook dinner, reports upon the state of the larder, in which there is barely the wherewithal for another meal. Nearly all the provisions brought away from the barque were in the gig, and are doubtless in it still – at the bottom of the sea. So the meal is eaten in a somewhat despondent mood, as after it little will remain for the morrow.

They get into better spirits soon after, however, on finding that Nature has furnished them with an ample store of provisions for the present, near at hand. Prospecting among the trees, they discover an edible fungus, known to sealers as the “beech-apple,” from its being a parasite of the beech. It is about the size and shape of a small orange, and is of a bright yellow colour. When ripe it becomes honeycombed over the surface, and has a slightly sweetish taste, with an odour somewhat like that of a morel mushroom, to which it is allied. It can be eaten raw, and is so eaten by the Fuegian natives, with whom, for a portion of the year, it is the staple article of subsistence.

The castaways find large numbers of this valuable plant adhering to the birch-beeches – more than enough for present needs; while two species of fruit are also available as food – the berries of the arbutus and barberry.

Still, notwithstanding this plentitude of supply, the castaways make up their minds to abandon their present encampment, for a reason that becomes apparent soon after they see themselves boatless.

“There’s no use in our stayin’ longer hyar,” says Seagriff, who first counsels a change of quarters. “Ef a vessel should chance to pass along outside, we couldn’t well be in a worse place fur signalling or gettin’ sighted by her. We’d hev but the ghost of a chance to be spied in sech a sercluded corner. Ther’fore we ought to cl’ar out of it, an’ camp somewhar on the edge o’ the open shore.”

“In that I agree with you, Chips,” responds the Captain, “and we may as well move at once.”