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. (Note 1.) 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.”
“Thet’s true, sir, ef we could move at oncet. But we can’t—leastways not to-day.”
“Why not?”
“It’s too nigh night; we wouldn’t hev time to git to the outer shore,” explained the carpenter.
“Why, there’s an hour of daylight yet, or more!”
“Thet’s cl’ar enough, Captin’. But ef thar were two hours o’ daylight, or twice thet, it wouldn’t be enough.”
“I don’t understand you, Chips. The distance can’t be more than two or three hundred yards.”
“Belike it aren’t more. But for all that, it’ll take us the half of a day, ef not longer, to cover it.”
“How so?” queried the skipper.
“Wal, the how is thet we can’t go by the beach; thar bein’ no beach. At the mouth o’ the cove it’s all cliff, right down to the water. I noticed thet as we war puttin’ inter it. Not a strip o’ strand at the bottom broad enough fur a seal to bask on. We’ll hev to track it up over the hills, an’ thet’ll take no end o’ time, an’ plenty o’ toilin’, too—ye’ll see, Captin’.”
“I suppose, then, we must wait for morning,” is the skipper’s rejoinder, after becoming satisfied that no practicable path leads out of the cove between land and water.
This constrains them to pass another night on the spot that has proved so disastrous, and the morning after, to eat another meal upon it—the last they intend tasting there. A meagre repast it is; but their appetites are now on keen edge, all the keener from the supply of food being stinted. For by one of nature’s perverse contrarieties, men feel hunger most when without the means of satisfying it, and most thirsty when no water can be had. It is the old story of distant skies looking brightest, and far-off fields showing greenest—the very difficulty of obtaining a thing whetting the desire to possess it, as a child craves some toy, that it soon ceases to care for when once in its possession. No such philosophic reflections occupy the thoughts of the castaways. All they think of, while at their scanty meal, is to get through with it as speedily as possible, and away from the scene of their disaster.
The breakfast over, the tent is taken down, the boat-sail folded into the most portable form, with mast, oars, and everything made ready for overland transport. They have even apportioned the bundles, and are about to begin the uphill climb, when, lo! the Fuegians!
Note 1. 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.