CHAPTER XIX
I see I have gushed a little about the blue sea in the last chapter. This begins with storm, and gale, and courage running into water in the grip of the elements.
Just now we are rolling in a loppy swell, high and irregular, but there’s no wind to speak of. We are right round to W. and S. of St Michael and we see the island faintly to north to windward, distant some eight miles; it gives us shelter from the remains of a north-east gale that sprang up last night, and is only now dying away this afternoon.
Between the time it rose and fell we had too much time to think and little enough to act.
As I said over the page, we were last night drifting north, with a land wind from the island south of us; and at about ten, I and Captain Henriksen had turned in, planning and hoping for fine weather and whales in the morning; at one-fifteen I heard the whistle in his cabin blown from the bridge and guessed a change had come—the wind had gone round—he was on deck at once, I waited a little and followed. And sure enough, without the least warning, the wind had gone right round to north-east and was rapidly rising, driving us towards these beautiful villages and cliffs and bay and volcanic mountain dead to leeward in pitch dark. Only the village lights and a small shore light could we see, bidding us anything but a welcome.
The half-hour we spent drifting towards the cliffs, speculating whether our so far rather tricky motor would start, was memorable. The waves rapidly grew large and fierce in their sweep, the phosphorescent crests in the blackness repeated the lines of lights of the villages.
... Fortunately the engine started all right, or these notes would have to have been continued about mermaids under the surf; I suppose all hands knew that if the engine didn’t start we would be drowned under the steep cliffs. They have failed us once or twice lately, but this time Hansen did his possible, and poked about, heating the cylinders with the hand furnace, whilst we grew a little cold drifting to the surf and rocks. In half-an-hour he turned on the air and they went off with a welcome clash. All hands must have felt as I did, a great sense of relief when they started, but there wasn’t time to speak. The writer took the wheel, whilst Henriksen and his brother made a rapid note in the cabin of the course and position, and we swung round into the rapidly rising sea, heading north to get weathering to round the mountainous west end of the island, and plugged into wind and sea, completely smothering ourselves in foam. The writer, struggling at the wheel on the bridge, had an unconscious impression of the crew below busied in making fast the main-hatch, and stowing away movable objects as best they could in the darkness, and seas that broke over us in wide white bursts, sometimes hiding everything from the bridge except the upper part of our foremast, its shrouds standing out black above the foam, through which we saw faintly the gleam of the galley ports.
What wild waves broke over us, leaving our deck full of seething foam, with balls of light running about in the form of lumps of phosphorus. The north-east wind and rain tearing past was a little cold, and got down one’s back, but every slop of sea on our faces was almost alarmingly hot in contrast to the wind.
It seems to me that a higher, quicker sea rises in these warm latitudes than in the colder northern or southern high latitudes, in the same time and with same force of wind. Possibly the greater density of the cold water may account for this.
Not till four-thirty did we make our weathering, and got clear of the island, and safe from what seemed at first to be quite probable destruction.
By six-thirty A.M. we were past the light on the west end of San Miguel, at least we believed we were—it was not visible; being at an elevation of three hundred feet, it was, of course, obscured by the low clouds; it is no use putting lighthouses very high, as witness Sumburgh Head, south of Shetland; I have been within two miles of it in clear water, and it was invisible in the clouds above, and we only heard its bray!
Then our guiding angel, to play with us, stopped our engine. But in spite of her, we got it to go again, and crept into the lee of San Miguel, on one or two groggy cylinders, and rolled about in the downpour of rain, and the poor engineers are now sweating again to get even one cylinder to take us back to Delgada, where we will have an overhaul; and Henriksen and I, poring over our sodden chart and the well-washed cabin amongst sea-boots and oilskins cast aside this morning, decide that the weather of the Azores is not suited for whaling at this time of the year. If there were harbours or bays or lochs such as we have in Shetland we would stick here, but long, black nights to windward of islands, with strong gales starting from anywhere, and only one day in five smooth enough for even our St Ebba to whale in, “is not good enough.”
Now the engine is going; bravo, stick to it! Very, very slowly and gingerly—with three cylinders—we crawl away with a fearful roll to Delgada again.
But the day fades before we get opposite Ponta Delgada, a yellow sunset and rain clouds and cumuli to west, the pin-point of light on W. of the island beginning to show, and another pin-point on Delgada about ten miles to windward, so we stop engines, hoist foresail, and drift, rolling very gently and quietly, waiting for dawn, and the local pilot’s awakening; we could go into the breakwater ourselves, but his services are compulsory.
All is very quiet and peaceful to-night, and no references are made to last night. Sailors have nerves as well as other folk, and I daresay all on board will take a day or two to recover from the excitement and drenching, and the bitter, nauseating feeling of being up against one’s end on a storm-beaten coast in black night. I have a curious feeling that even writing about such a recent and painful situation is almost indelicate. To put in time Henriksen draws on his recollection of killers or grampuses attacking a whale, and I help it with what I have seen of a similar incident. He saw this particular incident off Korea; I have seen several whales being attacked both in northern and southern latitudes amongst the Antarctic ice; in fact, I once could have jumped on to the back of one as it rose right under our stern and gave a huge blast or sigh, with a pack of these black-and-white marauders surrounding it!
That was a night in the Antarctic worth recalling. It was a still day, far inside the pack ice. I remember being lost in admiration of the quiet blue lanes of water, blue and violet, and the many pearl-like tints of the ice, and as I looked northerly I was astonished to see penguins jumping on to the floe ice in a great hurry, down the sides of one of these long lanes. Penguins do not show themselves in the water, they suddenly leap out like trout and disappear. In this case they remained on the ice-floes, skedaddling to their centres in an agitated manner. Then the cause of the emeute appeared—there were hurried blasts from two whales coming down the lane towards us, and behind them the splashing of a pack of black-and-white killers. On they came, the penguins popping on to the ice edges, jumping two or three feet clear of water, and I had time to get into our mizen rigging and get a fine view of the first whale, a hundred feet long, as he sailed under our keel. The next one rose to blow immediately under our counter, and anyone standing at our wheel could have jumped on its back.
I did not see the end of the chase. I expect the whales were making a flight into tightly packed ice, under which they could possibly go to greater distance than the killers without breathing—at least that is our explanation of their manœuvre.
These, of course, were finner whales, we were hunting for Right whales, the difference between the two in shape, etc., I have referred to at the beginning of this book.
Delgada again. Here are some oddments in this chapter. I notice I put down in my log that I suffer from sore feet—sunburned insteps—and see Portuguese doctor, you go bare-footed on such boats as ours in sub-tropics, and this was the result.
I met the captain of our wreck, the B—enido, a Welshman, in a tight place, and almost as silent on shore as on his ship, but I felt sorry for him.
The engines were thoroughly overhauled, and favourable was the verdict of the engineers on them—which was satisfactory for all hands; the first engineer, a Swede, would like to take three hundred shares in our Company if he could get them. He is so confident about our engine, possibly he may more correctly be described as sanguine.
We entertained British Consul Rumble to dinner, a return compliment for several courtesies from him, to-night at eight P.M., and he is just departing; my feet are very sore. We caught about fifteen good fish in the trammel-net, and a lot of sardines in a fine bag-net which I bought here for the ship; it is spread from an iron ring and catches a few of the more foolish fish; we also caught a ray, or skate, yesterday, about eight feet in width, in the trammel-net. Some people would venture to eat it, we did not, it was so black and ugly.
Our engineers and officers have worked very hard all week, overhauling the engine, taking it all to pieces, reassembling it, and working till one o’clock each night. So we promised them a jaunt on shore to the Seven Cities, the wonder of the island.
So this Sunday morning I saw six of our crew off for a drive over the island, the captain on the box, a burly figure compared to the little Portuguese driver beside him, two engineers, two mates, and the steward, all in neat Sunday dress, inside an open antediluvian barouche held together with string, the springs down on the axles, and a huge heap of ragged maize tied behind to feed the scarecrow horses. I was to have gone with them but there was not room, and I found it impossible to get more than the one machine on this Sabbath morn. All the rest were laid up or had gone off with Sunday parties. To get the one, I’d to run from pillar to post, and use soft, persuasive language, and listen to infinite reasons for there being no possibility of getting a trap at all.
But it was worth the trouble of hunting for the carriage to see my six good shipmates drive off in great form with a crack of the whip, rumbling over the cobbles, and waving hats to the writer, who suddenly felt somewhat lonely.
But to-day, Monday, there’s nothing to keep me on board, I have done my painful duty; I have drawn in best style our registered number on our sails above reef points, according to act, and on tin plates for stencils to paint the same on St Ebba’s side to port and starboard.
On our fore quarter, there is now L H, which signifies Leith, and 256, each letter the thickness—number of inches and fraction of an inch—ordered by the Board of Trade, with the distance between letters and figures all according to the law of the Medes and Persians.
It went decidedly against the grain to stamp our yacht-like craft with such vulgar herring-fisher’s symbols. And putting black paint by mistake on a white sail is enough to make a yachtsman weep. What benefit can be derived by anyone by the above procedure I have yet to learn.
So to-day I also must go and see these Seven Cities. No one knows the reason for the name; my messmates tell me it is a volcanic valley almost circular, with a double lake at the bottom, and round the lakes are smaller extinct volcanoes covered with foliage.
Arming ourselves, therefore, with a sandwich of goodly proportions, and a bottle of vino tinto from our friend Sancho at the Atlantico café, we sallied forth in solitary state in an old brougham, one artist whaler, three horses and a Portuguese driver, and a bundle of maize straws astern, and drove and drove, always uphill, through little whitewashed villages and narrow lanes, between low stone walls, and crops of Indian corn, rather dry-looking, with pumpkins and gourds on the stubbles; past many farm carts, loaded with golden maize or pumpkins, and with groaning, squeaking wooden discs for wheels, till high up we came to little grass fields and hedges of bramble, and loose stone dykes with bracken and canes on them, and where the air was fresh as in Perthshire, and there were very wide views of the blue Atlantic. The drive felt long, but a sketch-book going, helped to make the road feel tolerable, but it was quite an hour and a half before we came to our change place, Lomba da Cruze, and mounted a stirrupless pack-saddle on a donkey, and began an hour’s uphill climb through cuttings of lava deposit, overhung with brambles, many laurels, heath and ferns.
Killers Attacking a Finner Whale
Possibly this stylo sketch in sketch-book may be a sufficient description of the Seven Cities. Imagine two green absinth-coloured lakes, green foliage, and a few white houses at the bottom of a crater; with this sketch you have the scene, and you can fancy the charm of the fresh, keen air up the mountains combined with Sancho’s great ham sandwich and tinto, but heaven fend the reader from the pain of a wooden saddle on a donkey riding down such a hill again.
The road home was wearisome to a degree, hundreds of local squires or farmers, and everyone lifting hats, but why? Who knows? The effort to respond was quite ridiculous. Someone should invent an automatic hat-lifter for royalties, Norwegians, and natives of the Azores. Groups of women were on either side of the road shelling yellow maize, sitting like Indians; and at last and at length we got into Delgada, having had more than enough of cultivated maize lanes and lava dykes.
Then to Portuguese shipping agents and to business accounts, not a pleasing part of whaling. It is difficult to settle our affairs, on leaving port. For instance, the harbour trustees, or whatever they are called here, wanted to charge for the morning’s incoming pilotage after we had gone out to save a wreck, but we barred that. “You old mens sleeps here ashore,” said Henriksen. “We’s go out, slips anchor—dark night—risks our ship, you charges us! might have been Titanic and we save thousands’ lives. You say you haves many tow-boats! why nones go out? What about insurance, heh?” They quietly dropped the subject.
But now it’s time to go and put aside the above reflections and disappointments so far; we have hope, and months, possibly years, and certainly long seas in front of us, to gain or to lose in.
So we up anchor at night with a light air from the east, and several weeks’ sailing in front of us to Madeira and Cape Town, and whales on the road, we hope.