From Academy Bay, on February 13, we made a short hop around to the east side of Santa Cruz, where we anchored for the night between two tiny islands just offshore, the Plaza Islands. It was dusk when we arrived and we lost no time in launching the dinghy, in order to take a closer look at the multitude of seals that were crowding the banks and disporting in the water. As we drew closer to shore, more and more seals slid from the rocks and swam out to circle about us, yelping excitedly as though urging us to join them. Suddenly we heard a fearful roar and turned to see a large bull seal who had reared himself out of the water. With open mouth and a truly terrifying bellow, he came charging toward our cockleshell. Giving up our vague intention of perhaps landing and kidnaping a baby seal to take along as a pet, we turned and rowed a dignified retreat. We were allowed to depart in peace, but found that any attempt to return from any angle whatsoever would be violently challenged. Reluctantly we returned to the Phoenix, swinging gently at anchor in our tiny cove.
All night our sleep was interrupted by the continual bleating, barking, yelping, and roaring of the dozens of seal colonies, which seemed to keep the watch in turns.
The next morning we set out at dawn and sailed on up the coast and across to Bartholomew Island, just off James. The scenery here is rugged and grand. We anchored just off a most distinctive pinnacle of black rock, several hundred feet high, and went ashore to explore a completely arid, sandy, volcanic, cactus-strewn terrain. In a cave in a nearby hill, following directions given us by the Angermeyers, we found the tin can cache in which Robinson, in 1932, and a few others since, have left messages. We entered the Phoenix in the select company and, in the valley beyond, spelled out the name of our ship in rock letters, to add to the other names we found there, including Yankee, Inca, Thunderbird, Arthur Rogers, Nellie Brush, and Windjammer (soon to be wrecked on Easter Island).
From Sullivan Bay we sailed up the coast of James and around to the lee, in order to spend the night in Buccaneer Bay before proceeding on to James Bay and our rendezvous with Valinda. We dropped anchor right in the middle of the bay, in seven fathoms, and Ted and I went ashore with guns to try our luck at varying the diet of canned corn beef. There was no need to hunt for goats here, as we had done on the Barrier Reef—they came to us. A large herd on the beach merely looked curiously at us as we dragged the dinghy up on the land, while on the ridge above, about 200 yards away, a herd of cattle peered down. We walked over to the goats and murdered one. They were standing in shoulder-high grass, and it wasn’t until we had made the kill that we discovered that we now had an orphan on our hands, a very young kid which nevertheless gave Ted quite a run before he was able to chase it down. We carried the carcass to the boat and tethered the baby nearby, while we completed our explorations.
Up the large gully we found plenty of iguanas, so tame they had to be shooed aside. We knew how ubiquitous these creatures were—back at Academy Bay we had once counted twenty-one, sleeping on the porch of Angermeyer’s house, while a couple more had sneaked into the living room! In the shallow caves under the banks we flushed a mother goat and twin babies, who reluctantly rose and made a token retreat until we passed. When we got back to the dinghy, where the kid was tied up, we found a large hawk had alighted on a branch just a few feet away. I picked up a rock and tossed it at him. He shrugged. I tried again, this time from a range of six feet, and hit the branch on which he was sitting. He ruffled his feathers, gazing balefully at me. Then I went up and pushed him off his perch with a stick, at which indignity he squawked angrily and flew to another tree 50 feet away.
Buccaneer Bay is the site mentioned by Heyerdahl, of Kon-Tiki fame, in his monograph on the archaeology of the Galápagos, and it was our desire to get a surface collection of pottery shards to take back to the Bishop Museum in Honolulu. We got the collection, all right, and it was a fine one—but it never got out to the Phoenix. While we had been busy ashore, the surf had risen and was now breaking heavily. We loaded our knapsack of shards into the dinghy but left guns, goat and kid for a second trip. It was lucky we did, for our first attempt to launch the dinghy resulted in our prompt capsizing. Before we managed to get the boat and ourselves back to shore, we took a considerable beating and finally crawled up onto the sand exhausted. The knapsack full of pottery ended up on the bottom, as did my last pair of glasses—even though I had worn them on a cord around my neck in approved fashion.
The oars were eventually washed within reach and, after tying them in securely, we managed to get the boat launched. I kept it steady beyond the breakers while Ted waded out with the kid held high above his head. Before he was able to deposit it in the boat, a swell went over his head and even the baby was dunked, momentarily. However, Ted kept his feet—as well as his head—and soon we were on our way back to the Phoenix where the girls and Nick had been anxiously watching our activities through binoculars. The girls promptly took charge of the soaked kid, while Ted and I, this time with Nick following in the inflatable rubber lifeboat, returned to fetch the rest of our belongings. By keeping the dinghy out beyond the surf while we loaded goat and guns into the rubber boat and hauled it out on a long line, we were able to get everything safely aboard. We examined the beach several times during the evening and again the next morning before we sailed, but the pottery—and my glasses—were not returned from the sea.
The poor baby goat did not look long for this world. She spent the night, more dead than alive, in a corner of the cockpit, wheezing and gasping painfully for air. Barbara dribbled milk, with a few drops of brandy added, between her reluctant jaws with a medicine dropper, but very little seemed to go inside. We expected every moment to be her last, but she survived the night—and the next—and the next. In fact, she not only survived, but thrived, and eventually became (Skipper’s version) a blamed nuisance as time went on, as well as (ladies’ version) a novel and joyous little companion—named Goatie-Goat—for all of us on our long trip to the Marquesas.
The kid and the cats were not our only livestock at this stage. Before leaving Academy Bay we had taken aboard a living souvenir—and a family heirloom-to-be—in the form of a young Galápagos tortoise. Jonathan Junior, named after the venerable fellow who had supposedly hobnobbed with Napoleon back on St. Helena, had become ours by virtue of barter: six packages of instant powdered milk; one can of shortening; and two bottles of hot pepper sauce, which was apparently the going rate in the Ecuadorian settlement at Academy Bay. This, of course, was a comparatively small specimen, measuring only ten inches across the shell in each direction, but we had every confidence that a few hundred years would make a noticeable difference. Incidentally, we obtained him quite legally, as we had a permit, issued in Ecuador, which gave us the right to take “two of every kind” of animal.
We had one more reluctant passenger who was stowed in the bilge. Fritz and Carmen Angermeyer had returned from a successful sea turtle hunt with enough meat to provide the entire colony on “Angermeyer Point” with several good meals. When we left, they gave us not only a sizable hunk of fresh turtle meat, but a specimen “on the hoof.” This green turtle fitted neatly beneath the floor boards in a niche near the mainmast, and there we carried him for quite a while, sloshing him down frequently with a bucket of sea water, until we all felt the need for fresh turtleburger.