CHAPTER XXI
The St Ebba killed a few more whales in the seas between the Azores and Madeira, but they were of no great value—seihvale and small sperm—and the weather became tempestuous, so she proceeded southwards. The island of Madeira is thirty-five miles long and six thousand feet high. It was very hot on the south side amongst the sugar-cane crops and vineyards. But on the north side, with wind off the sea, high up in the mountains and riding through oak woods, bracken and heath and roaring burns, it was delightful, and probably more healthy than the slack air and life you have down at Funchal.
Funchal, the capital, is much the same as Ponta Delgada in the Azores, a white town with red-tiled houses and green blinds round a blue bay. But it is merely an open road-stead and has not nearly such a picturesque inner harbour as Ponta Delgada. It is a very quiet town; the only sound is the twittering canaries, and the occasional Hush of the Atlantic surge on the boulders.
There is quite a large contingent of British residents who have gone in for gardening strongly at their quintas. So that Funchal, in almost every month of the year, presents some astonishing flowery spectacular effect.
Geraniums are the least sensational. They pour over the walls of the lanes everywhere. I noticed one evening a high white wall in shade lit up with pink from the reflected scarlet of geraniums that hung over the opposite wall.
The jackaranda is the most amusingly pretty flowering tree. One morning you notice its bare indiarubber-like leafless branches, a few days after the bare branches are covered all over with bunches of Neapolitan violets—at least, they look exactly like them, and a day or two later the street is carpeted with the fallen blossoms and the golden brown oxen of the carros[12] go wading through them, leaving dark tracks where the little polished pebbles of the cobbled road show through the violet.
I tried tunny-fishing off Madeira on several occasions. Perhaps this is a subject more suitable to introduce in a whaler’s log than descriptions of flowers and canaries.
On one occasion I persuaded a hotel visitor to accompany me, with a crew of Portuguese.
The tunny, or tuna, is a mackerel; there are several kinds. Those I saw ran from about twenty pounds to three hundred pounds.
You have to start before daybreak for the fishing from Madeira, which is apt to put off intending tunny-fishers, but “41,” as I shall call my friend at Reid’s Hotel, after the number of his room, agreed to risk the briny and an early rise—I doubt if he will do it again—blue Atlantic rollers and a sub-tropical sun are somewhat trying.
Here are notes from my sketch-book of our day’s proceedings, begun, I may inform the sympathetic reader, in the Palace Hotel before daylight.
... All is still—it is only three hours past midnight, the people in this caravanserai are all asleep—we alone are awake in the great empty dining-room—the night waiter and the writer—the writer cross and thirsting for an early cup of tea—the night porter does not understand this, but—he comes from Las Palmas, that is all I can learn from him. He is limp of figure and has black eyes and hair and his sallow face only expresses dull resignation and an unfulfilled desire for sleep in a corner: he is young, but I think no smile has ever passed over his chilly countenance in this life. He does not even move a feature or express the least remorse when I tell him it was No. 41, not 49, he should have awakened—fancy “49’s” feelings! so, to make sure, we go together and pull out No. 41—“41,” in pyjamas, and red-eyed, seems to have forgotten altogether that he was to go fishing with me. Fishing at ten P.M., with a pipe and a grog, and fishing at three in the morning are so different! So the writer and the mirthless waiter sit down again in the vast empty dining-room and wait whilst “41” gets into his clothes.... Now we are ready—an hour later than the end of above paragraph, but still tea-less. My fishermen and interpreter have been waiting under the palms in front of the hotel, smoking cigarettes and talking quietly and with interest, even at this dark hour of morning. We give them our thermos flasks, with only cold coffee in them, and our provisions for two days, in baskets, and with them we steal into the night round the hotel gardens and terraces, trimmed with tenantless wicker-work chairs, under the palms, pale in the faint moonlight, down the steps, over the cliffs with care, through an iron gate, we must look like conspirators, but we only feel sleepless; down and down, till we come to the bathing steps and dimly discern our boat and men rising and falling in the grey foam. We embark with difficulty, with our provisions, and row off. The moon in the west breaks a little through the clouds and cheers us with its broken reflections on the long swell. “41” is in the stern, the writer in the bow, four rowers and the interpreter between us.
We pass under the cliffs to the west of Funchal Bay, rowing steadily with two long sweeps, two men to a sweep, close to the surf on the rocks, and pass a blow-hole in the rocks, where the rising surge makes a fountain of fine spray through a hole in the rocks, very like a whale’s blast. It is blowing intermittently, dimly seen in the moonlight. As we pass the outstanding rocky island opposite it we catch a faint land breeze and step our mast and set the mainsail and slip along in absolute silence.
It is a long sail, we have nearly twenty miles before we get to the place the tunny frequent.
We pass the fishing village of Camara da Lobos (place of the seals), several miles to starboard. It nestles round the head of a bay—the deep glen behind it in shadow, the white houses in moonlight—a few yellow lights move about, our crew live there.
Under the cliff of Cabo Girao we closed our eyes for, it seemed, a minute, and opened them to find a change. The sadness of night was gone and it was all hilarious blue day.
How quickly the night goes, even in the sub-tropics; as fast as it falls, almost in a minute, the moon’s sheen on the swell is gone, and the glorious sun shines again, from behind us over the east end of Madeira. Due west there is a lapis lazuli blue sky over a bank of pink cumuli, the full, golden moon seems to stay one moment in the blue before it sets behind the bank of cloud; then all the sea and sky is the blue of the tropics again, as it was yesterday and the day before—great swells of a rippling blue sea, and a blue sky, and that is all, excepting our little selves and our green, red and yellow boat in the immensity.
The features of our crew are now clear to us, and they unwind the cloths they wore round their heads for protection against the moonlight and night air. Alas, “41” still tries to sleep, and so does the interpreter; I fear the motion is the cause—the rise and send of a small boat in the Atlantic is very trying. Ahead of us there is one sail like our own; we see it now and then as it rises on a blue swell; now the top of the white sail catches the golden light of the sunrise, then far away beyond it something, a mere speck, appears for an instant, then another, there are boats out there fishing; it comes quite as a surprise to find fellow-creatures out so far from shore in small craft. We cannot count them, for we only see three or four at a time, as they appear in turn on the top of the swell. Now the sail in front drops, and the boat is like the others, with the mast down, and oars out, and little figures standing out silhouetted against the sky for a second, then lost to sight. In another ten minutes we have joined the fleet, and dip our sail and stow our mast away.
A Sleeping Bear and Cubs
And the colour of these mariners! We can hardly begin to fish, so great is our desire to gloat on the appearance of each boat—its weathered brilliant colours and its crew as it appears in its turn over the back of a blue glittering swell. Camara da Lobos men all wear wide straw hats, with a broad black ribbon round them, so their brown faces are in shadow; their shirts, originally white, are tinted like old ivory by many washings and voyages, so were their cotton trousers, and tattered and patched most wonderfully. The boats are striped yellow and blue, with perhaps magenta, and blue oars; coarse enough colours they would look under a northern sun, but here, with the complementary tints from the strong light, and all repeated by reflections in the blue sea, they become a sight to rejoice anyone with half an eye. The fishing, however, soon engrossed our attention.
As a preliminary to tunny-fishing you have to catch large mackerel as bait and smaller mackerel to throw out into the sea when the tunny comes along in order to keep them in your neighbourhood. For the small fry we fished with a yard of cane and a yard of line and a small hook baited with little cubes of mackerel. The captain chopped up some of these into a fine paste on a board with a machete and put the paste into the water to draw more fish; as it faded away down into the clear green depths, swarms of these little fish, about four to the pound, dashed to and fro, eating it, and every now and then one would take our bait, when there was a flash of silver in the water, and out he came to join his neighbours in a bucket.
Another of our crew, “Bow,” we will call him, rigged a longer hand-line and fished deep, and soon pulled up some magnificent spotted mackerel. This bait-catching was apparently the object of the early morning start—large mackerel for bait for the tunny, and small fish to catch the mackerel. The small fish, when they are let loose, are supposed to hug the shadow of the boat and so keep the tunny in the neighbourhood: besides this purpose, they form our principal food at midday.
These large mackerel were kept alive alongside on tethers, hooked by the nose—with a rather clever rustic swivel on the line—kept alive to be used for the tunny. But usually a big basket is kept floating alongside, into which are put the live bait, large and small. There was so much going on; so many little fishing dodges new to me that I must have missed much; what held my attention were the great coils of strong hand-line, thirty fathoms in each, thick as the average man’s little finger, with brass-twisted wire trace, fifteen plies, each with thick iron hook at its end.
After we had caught enough mackerel we went several miles farther out to sea, and the two men in the stern each made fast a large mackerel to his line—put the big iron hook through its nose and a fine wire twisted lightly, from the shank to the neck of the barb to prevent the fish working off.
Finally we had four of these live baits and strong lines at different depths, drifting astern; and two men at the oar gently paddled to keep the boat in position and the lines up and down. For hours we sat so, and thought tunny-fishing uncommonly dull.
If one could speak Portuguese it would help to pass the time. What fun it would have been to get the local “clash” from these pleasant-looking men, all in tatters, miraculously stitched together. How curious would have been their views of life and their experiences and traditions, but my interpreter was sick as could be, and made neither moan nor attempt at translation, so the crew chatted and better chatted between themselves, and laughed occasionally, and so passed the time, whilst the writer patiently and silently held a line for hours, waiting for the huge tug that seemed never going to come.
But the next boat to us soon got one—a whacking big fellow; he fought them for an hour and a half and they gave him twenty strokes of a bludgeon on the head in a smother of foam alongside the boat, and pulled him over the side with two huge gaffs and ropes, and then sat down exhausted. He was about two-thirds of the length of the boat and must have weighed well over three hundred pounds, and was worth £3 at the market, to the two men and two boys who got it. Lucky fellows! They lifted the boat seats to show it to us, and there it lay, a silver and blue torpedo-shaped fish with huge deep shoulders. The natives call the tunny albicore. We congratulated them and gazed at it, and listened to their gasping description of the fight, how it had sounded seven times and taken out a desperate number of lines. Then other two boats lost one each—that is, they got into fish that were too big for them, and made their lines fast, and the fish broke away. Time was their consideration; they prefer several smaller fish of, say, one or two hundred pounds to a bigger one that may weigh five hundred pounds but will take the whole day to play it.
It got tiresome as the hours went by with never a soul to speak to, for “41” and the interpreter were both still ill, and the sun got very hot, so we decided that after midday meal we would up stick and make sail. A flat hearth of charred wood was laid amidships. Three small boulders were laid on it and sticks between, and these were lit and a great tin can of sea-water was set on the stones to boil, with the fish, and sweet potatoes, in it, and a right hearty meal we made, with fingers for knives, and the blue Atlantic for a finger-bowl, and the appetising meal was washed down with water from a barrel and some ruby red vino pasto wine fit for the gods.... Ah, well, better luck next time, we were saying, as we were about to haul in our line, when the tug came, a most tremendous tug!
We are fast in a tunny at last! and a pulley-haul fight begins—what a weight it is! You feel as if you were pulling up the bottom of the ocean for a second, and then that it is pulling you, willy-nilly, into its depths, therefore you let go line, and jam it down on the gunwale to check it, and it runs, squeaking, out, cutting a groove in the wood. I cannot tell you how much stout line went out—there were many lines the thickness of flag halyards of thirty fathoms each, attached to each other—but the whole stern of the boat seemed filled with wet coiled-down line when we had been pulling in for a few minutes, and then, in a minute, it was almost gone, and then wearisomely two of us pulled it in again, hand over hand, with much gasping and tugging, more and more line is coiled up in our stern sheet, but still no sign of the fish. As the fight—pull devil, pull baker—proceeded another man managed to pull in the other lines all in a heap, and we were able to devote our united attention to the fish. It seemed strong as a horse and took us practically all in charge, and we had to be nimble to let the whizzing loops of hard line get away clear of our feet and wrists. We were pretty well blown, cut and sore, by the time its efforts lessened. Then we got in coil after coil, six coils in hand then lost two, then eight and lost one, then set teeth and pulled steadily with both hands between times, and at last and at length, the silver glitter we expected showed deep down in the blue. Even then there were many more coils to bring in; the water being so intensely clear, the enormous mackerel showed many fathoms down, swinging round and round.... The latter part of the fray needed instantaneous photography to depict it—what with the tunny pulling and our weight all leaning to one side to get the line in, and then to gaff the fish, and the roll of the sea combined, too many things happened at one time to be very clearly remembered afterwards. We had two gaffs—huge affairs—and as the tunny dashed here and there we managed to get one into it, then the second, and we lurched half-seas over; the tunny was kicking up a smother of foam all the colours of the rainbow! Then with the gaffs we pulled its head out of the water up to the gunwale, and banged it twenty times with a wooden thing like an Indian club till it was still, or only quivered, then a lurch from a blue sea seemed to help to get half of it on board, and a big heave and it all came in, and we lifted a seat and put it along the bottom and raised ourselves and waved our hats. It was quite as good fun as any salmon-fishing I have ever had, and nearly as exciting as whaling; that is, during the actual playing, but the previous waiting was trying beyond words, you get roasted by the sun and bitten by salt spray and stiff and cramped—you “chuck and chance it,” and chuck but once in half-a-day and may have to wait days and days before you catch your first tunny.
Getting all the lines clear again took a long time and neat and patient handling; we did not help at that, we were rather tired. But we watched the iridescent colours of the tunny fade; in half-an-hour its brightest blues and shimmering pinks and silver were almost gone, and changed to dark green on the back and dull silver below. Fifty-four kilos we made it out to be—five feet three inches long, with enormous girth. Unfortunately I lost its chest measurement, but think it was four feet three inches. The three-hundred-pound tunny we saw caught close to us was worth £3 at the present market value.
At four we gave up. The everlasting rolling in hot sun on tossing sea, however beautifully blue, as you lie drifting, becomes very trying in a small boat; besides, the native fishermen themselves all knock off between three and four. But we must try again, and some day, when we thoroughly know the ropes, we will get a small sailing craft and try the business single-handed, for there is a lot of fun, in my opinion, to be had fishing so, for trout or salmon—to play your own salmon and gaff it, or manage your boat and trout and land it, say a five-pounder on fine tackle, is excellent, but to land a tunny single-handed, doing your own sailing and gaffing, would be—just sublime!
It was pleasant sailing back to land close-hauled with the fresh breeze, which had risen with the sun and turned the smooth swell into crisp waves with blue breaking tops, that soft and white breaking sea of the Trades that is more caressing than threatening. Most of the other boats gave up fishing at the same time, about three P.M. The skipper gave me the tiller; neither of us could speak the other’s tongue, but there is a quick understanding between all of us who sail small boats, and both skipper and boat seemed to become old friends to me. They are better sailing craft than I had fancied, though they do not draw much, for they have to be beached; but they have two bilge keels, which make them sail pretty close—they all sail closer and are “lighter in the mouth” than I had expected. You notice in the drawing they have a high stem and stern post, and the rudder ships just as it does in the boats of the north of Norway. The sail is simple, a large square dipping lug—the canvas from Dundee—the tack is made fast at the stem, or a little to either side, and the sheet is simply rove through a hole in the gunwale of the sharp stern.
We got ashore at last and “41” and the Juan Fernado, the interpreter, revived and spoke again as we got into smoother water.
We climbed up the cliffs in the late afternoon and “41” had to explain to José, the major-domo of the hotel, why we did not stay out all night, as we at first intended to do—“No room in boat,” etc., etc., he said, and José smiled his genial smile and said: “Told you so, told you so, eet ees dee same ding always, gentlemen do come back so; dey not like de smell of de feesh, dey say.”
Now there is the moon again, I declare! I began this chapter by its silvery light before dawn, and now it appears again as I wind up my notes at night; it surely has done its round at an unusual pace; it seems to me only a minute or two since it went down in the west, ruddy as a new penny—it had only a small gallery then—mostly fisher folk; this evening the hotel people are all watching it from a verandah; they will be late for dinner, so beautiful is its yellow glory and its track across the sea from the Disertas to the foot of our cliffs. I must make a study of it to-morrow and will need a ruler to draw the black shadows of our masts, so straight are they along the path of gold.
