The beach extended for about three-quarters of a mile on either side of where we landed, the rock rising sheer and forbidding at the ends of the comparatively level stretch; but throughout the entire mile and a half ours was the only safe spot for getting ashore, as elsewhere the rocks were big and the surf very tumultuous. Behind this narrow strip of beach the rocks rose vertically all along to an average height of four hundred feet or thereabouts, and no doubt these conditions determined the first discoverers to give the place its name. Rank tussock was growing in the greatest abundance everywhere, and high up on the skyline “island trees” were faintly visible. But anything less like the desert island of romance it would be difficult to imagine. Half a mile to the left of the landing-place a narrow waterfall came tumbling over the edge of the cliff, three hundred and fifty feet up, and splashed and roared into a deep pool gouged from virgin rock by its own play. Beyond this the slope was slightly easier, and there Mr. Douglas and the two men from Tristan who accompanied him made the ascent with the greatest difficulty and no little daring. They followed the old Alpine plan of using the rope to overcome all obstacles.
As mountaineering was not in my own immediate programme, I assisted Mr. Wilkins with bird-shooting and photography—gentle sports compared with the efforts of the others. By 3 p.m. Mr. Douglas had returned, after having fixed the contours roughly and ascertained the greatest height for the purpose of the finished survey.
We arrived back on the Quest by four, anchor was weighed at seven; thereafter an exhaustive series of soundings were taken, and certain errors in earlier surveys were rectified. At breakfast time we anchored in Falmouth Bay, Tristan da Cunha, where we were promptly besieged, as before, by swarms of curious islanders, who gave us as much attention as though we were a strange ship arrived for the first time.
In order that the isolated denizens of this lonely isle should know in future what events progressed in the outer world, Mac and Watts went ashore to erect the mast for the Reverend Rogers’s wireless aerial. I busied myself with shipwork, though the pig hampered me greatly by an insistent determination to thrust her snout into my wash-bucket. Oompah dredged overside and caught a young octopus, surely the ugliest brute on earth, a veritable devil-fish, bright red in colour and with arms full three feet in length—an ugly customer to tackle even then; so what its great-grandfather could have been like is best left to the imagination. We had him crawling lopsidedly about the poop for a time, where he looked like some creature of an evil nightmare; and then, when we’d tired of his ugliness, he was handed over to Mr. Wilkins, who entombed him in a noble jar of methylated spirit.
In the afternoon Naisbitt, Oompah and I went ashore, to discover Mac and Watts, more or less assisted by a hundred or so of the islanders, trying, with the aid of tackles, ropes, improvised sheerpoles and Portuguese windlasses and the like, to raise a sixty-foot hollow steel pole into a vertical position. With a patch on a patch and a patch over all, as they say at sea, they promised to be successful. Amid a breathless suspense the structure was elevated—up and up, swaying like a fishing-rod; but at the critical juncture the principal contraption buckled and broke, the islanders flying like chaff before the wind; and as the damage was irreparable, the experts had to content themselves with erecting about two-thirds of the original length and hope for the best, though I doubt if even now the Tristan da Cunha wireless station is functioning to any epoch-making extent; for Mr. Rogers admitted that he had not mastered the Morse code and was ignorant of not a few technical details.
We three holiday makers continued on our journey, after suitable jeers at the mechanics, in the direction of the island’s potato patch; but as we failed to discover this historical spot we made the best of it, caught three donkeys and rode triumphantly back to the settlement, named after a nobler city—Edinburgh. John Glass met us, bidding us welcome to his home with tea and pumpkin pie, which were joyously received and rapidly consumed. He is by nature a very fine gentleman, this islander. He entreated me not to be shy. I am rather shy, as a matter of fact, but never until John Glass, himself a shy man, perceived it, did I realize quite how shy.
CHAPTER XVIII
Among the Islands
A rising swell and indications of increasing bad weather caused us to hurry our departure from Tristan da Cunha; and when the whistle was blown in warning the able-bodied population flocked aboard in a last desperate determination to rid us of all our surplus gear. Perhaps they were not to be blamed—they were mentally half-grown children, no more—but by their behaviour on this occasion they undid any good impressions we had formed of them. Greedy? That wasn’t the name for it! Unashamedly, with clutching fingers, they started in to scrounge whatever they could see. It was rather disappointing, I must confess. Of gratitude for our earlier bounty they betrayed no trace whatsoever. They had promised us fresh supplies in return for the enormous amount of stores we had freely given them, but only at the very last did they reluctantly disgorge two skinny sheep which were hardly worth taking aboard.
One party of the steadier elders brought off mail-bags and oddments of parcels for us to convey to Cape Town. They had forgotten to address the parcels, and, when told of it, seemed to think we possessed sufficient second sight to deliver the goods at the required addresses. So active did they become at last that Commander Wild was compelled to order them back into their boats, where they went sulkily, like whipped children; but the narrow conditions of their lives, the hardships they everlastingly endure, may cause these weaknesses of character. Anyhow, we left them to their drear isolation, and in drenching rain, with the ship’s decks woefully littered with the gear the islanders had disdained to convey below, we put to sea on the next lap of our journey—towards Gough Island.