Into the Frozen South

by J. W. S. Marr

But at last, after a boisterous passage, we sighted Inaccessible Island on May 19, and this island we passed about four bells in the middle watch. The morning was dank and misty and but little could be seen, but when our watch came on deck at 4 a.m., Commander Wild had already sighted Tristan ahead, though it was now obscured by a dense black cloud. Shortly afterwards the weather cleared, and we, too, saw the island looming black and lonely out of the fog some three points on the starboard bow. By half-past seven, being within half a mile of the shore, we fired a rocket to attract the attention of the islanders, or, what was perhaps as likely, to arouse them from slumber. It was raining heavily by this time. Presently three boats put out, and, pulled by eager hands, swiftly came alongside. The islanders clambered aboard in a great hurry, and were all over the ship in a moment, crying to each other in high-pitched, squeaky voices. Queer though their intonation was, however, their English was quite good. They were but poorly clad, clothes being one of their greatest wants. In a few of these people the dark strain is very apparent, but the majority are pale of face and not at all unpleasant to look upon. On the sandy beach a bevy of women and children and dogs turned out to give us greeting.

From where we lay the island presented a very massive front, the land rising precipitously a thousand feet or more all along the water’s edge, and then sloping away to the summit, some six thousand feet or so higher. At the north-west end there is a stretch of low land like a raised beach, where the settlement of thatched cottages lies. These, with their vegetable gardens in front, look very like the cottages found in the Highlands of Scotland. The whole place is very green, especially where the houses are, and on the steeper slopes the bare earth shows a reddish colour, and small shrub-like “island trees” grow quite abundantly. A little to the left of the settlement is the sandy spit where the boats are beached. These boats are commodious, if not particularly elegant, and are made on the island, being constructed of a stout wooden framework and a covering of waterproofed canvas.

Once aboard, our friends were not at all slow in asking for what they wanted, offering to barter goods of their own creation in exchange, for there is no money in the island. To them calling ships are fabulous storehouses of wealth, sent specially to them by a beneficent Providence—to be emptied of everything they contain for the islanders’ immediate benefit. More insistently even than the St. Vincent cadgers they pester one mercilessly for gifts—gifts of any and every sort; and if any member sternly refuses to part with his most cherished belongings they seem hurt and somewhat aggrieved. Not that the islanders ask for things for the mere sake of asking; I give them credit for better instincts. They are deplorably lacking in many necessaries, and luxuries are hardly known to them. Clothes, timber for building, implements wherewith to till a soil that is unquestionably fertile, tools of every kind, tea, sugar—these are the things they lack and seek.

In the matter of exchange they displayed a naïve ignorance of relative values, and each individual established his own standards of value, urging one to be quick before the others came along and altered the market.

“Mister,” one smooth-tongued islander said, “have you got a mouth-organ to give me, or a pipe, or some old clothes? I wish to be fair, and in return I will give you a penguin skin, or a skein of home-made wool, or a sheep, although some of our sheep are sorry specimens.” Dr. Macklin was actually offered a perfectly good sheep for a single stick of tobacco! Well, what can you do with such innocents? They seem as trusting and simple as the penguins themselves; a primitive people, unspoilt by intercourse with a prosaic, matter-of-fact world, betraying the natural qualities of untutored mankind. You give them everything you can spare, of course. In return they promised us a bullock, three sheep, a pig, a number of hens and geese, and two hundred eggs—if they could find them!

After the boats came alongside we steamed closer inshore and dropped anchor in eight fathoms of water, in the middle of a thick field of kelp. After breakfast the rain ceased, and for the rest of the day the weather continued mild and warm, although the calendar told us it was officially winter down there. I’ve known many a summer’s day in Scotland that could have learned much from Tristan da Cunha weather!

Our forenoon was spent in hoisting on deck the stores and the mail-bags and parcels we had brought out from England for these islanders.

Oh, you who sit at home at ease, and grow fretful if the postman is a minute late on his rounds, think of those who depend for news of the outer world on chance exploring expeditions which might call every two or three years or so! Imagine a land that concerns itself not at all with the sensational murder of yesterday nor the pending divorce case of to-morrow, but learns vaguely, long after the last echoes have ceased to ring in the ears of a staggered world, that there has been some sort of a war in Europe! But the seasickness of one of the visitors, due to the Quest’s rolling—we seasoned fellows did not notice it—was of infinitely greater importance. “‘Solid as ocean foam!’—quoth ocean foam!”

Next day certain of us went ashore to have a good look round this far-flung patch of civilization. We had been warned to have a care; that, owing to the paucity of men, the women of the island had a husband-hunting look in their eyes; and so, naturally, we walked warily. There is an ancient deep-sea legend to the effect that a distressed sailor, sole survivor of a deplorable wreck, was washed ashore at Tristan da Cunha in a state of unconsciousness, and wakened to find himself firmly married to most of the eligible females of the island!

Our first visit was to the graveyard. Most sailors, I notice, do visit graveyards first when they go ashore in foreign ports. I don’t know why, unless it is to envy those who lie comfortably asleep instead of being compelled to disturb their slumbers at every turn of the tide.