At this point political conditions must be referred to for the due understanding of our story. Absurd though it be, the fact remains that, just as England meekly allows herself to be bamboozled, robbed, insulted, and defied by one petty sans-culotte province, so do the United States submit to like treatment from Mexico: the same small δελτα that represents mathematically the consideration in which an Irishman holds the British Government, may be said equally to symbolise the degree of respect in which the American Eagle is held by the patriots of Mexico. Therefore, argued we, as the noble Mexican does not hesitate to pluck the Eagle, whenever that fowl comes hopping on his ground, still less will he refrain from depilating the Lion, should he want some fur for fly-tying. No, we will give the coast of Mexico a good berth. A vessel like the Mana would, at the moment, have been an invaluable capture for the “patriots,” whose acquaintance we had no wish to cultivate. We thought of the many-oared row-boats of the Riff coast, and how they could come at speed over the smooth windless sea and board us on either quarter. Of course our motor would have been in our favour, but, all the same, discretion was perhaps better than valour, as we were unarmed. So we decided to keep 200 miles off the land in working down the coast of Lower California and Mexico, though it would have been better navigation, and more interesting, to have come close in.
The climate was now delightful: smooth water: gentle fair breezes. These conditions enabled us to capture all the turtle, and more than all, we wanted. They were asleep at the surface: the sea like glass, and heaving rhythmically. The undulations of a sea like this are so long, and wide, and gentle, that one somehow ceases to regard them as waves, and thinks of the movement of the water immediately around the craft as being only a local pulsation.
We had noticed, from time to time, isolated seagulls heaving into sight on the top of the swell. Sometimes there would be as many as three or four within calling distance from one another. Each seemed to stand on a separate piece of drift-wood, never two on the same piece. Some seemed occupied with affairs, swearing all the time, as seagulls always do; some stood silently on one leg, “a-staring into wacancy” and thinking on their past. Some preened and oiled their feathers. We could not understand why there should be drift-wood, all small, and all over the place like this, so bore down on a sleeping bird, when, to our great surprise, we found that his resting-place was the back of one of Nature’s U-boats—a turtle. Some may think then that all we had to do, if we wanted a turtle, was to approach a resting bird, but not a bit of it. If the bird, for reasons of his own, flew away from the back of the turtle, the turtle remained as before, nor did he ever seem to draw the line at the profanity with which his visitor argued some point with the nearest neighbours, but let a boat approach, however gently and innocently, and the gull decide to clear, because he did not like the look of it—even as the bird did so, did Master Turtle down with his head and up with his heels, and where he had been, he was not; without a splash, or a swirl, or a bubble. If any fail to understand this description, he should betake himself to Africa and stalk rhino in high grass whilst they have their red-billed birds in attendance scrambling all over the huge bodies hunting for ticks. Let but one bird spring up suddenly in alarm from a rhino’s back, forthwith will occur proceedings that shall not fail to leave a lasting impression on the observer.
When we wanted a turtle, however, we went to work in this way. The little 12 ft. dinghy, having two thwarts and a sternseat, was lowered from the starboard quarter and towed astern. A sharp look-out was kept ahead, and to leu’ard, for a turtle asleep on the surface. On one being sighted, the vessel was run off towards it. Simultaneously the dinghy was hauled up alongside, and two of us, barefooted, dropped into her: she was then passed astern again and towed. One man sat in the stern sheets and steered with a paddle, having handy a strong gaff hook lashed on the end of the staff of a six-foot boat-hook: the oarsman occupied the for’ard thwart with his paddles shipped in the rowlocks. The leather of the oars had been well greased previously, so as to make no sound. The dinghy silently sped after the ship. On the vessel arriving within some 50 yards of the turtle, an arm on the quarter-deck was waved: the dinghy slipped her tow line, the ship’s helm was put up, and she edged-off to leu’ard away from the fish, whilst the dinghy continued, under the way she carried, on the line of the vessel’s former course, and therefore straight towards the turtle. On the sitter catching sight of the fish, if the boat was carrying sufficient way to bring him up to it, he laid aside the steering oar, and at the right moment made a sign to his mate, who then gently dipped one of his paddles in the water. The boat in consequence made half a rotation, coming stern-on to the turtle, instead of bows-on as previously. The oarsman then saw the fish for the first time and commenced to back her down with gentle touches of his two paddles right on to the top of the fish. Meanwhile the sitter slid off the after seat, turned himself round so as to face the stern and knelt on the bottom of the boat with his knees placed well under the after seat, his chest resting on the transome, his arm outstretched over the water, rigidly holding the gaff extended like a bumpkin, with the point of the hook directed downwards towards the water, and about two inches above its surface.
Now the old turtle is roosting on the water with the edges of his shell just awash, his dome-shaped back rising just clear of it, and his head hanging downwards in order that he may keep his brains cool. At the opposite end to his head is his tail. This detail may seem unnecessary. But it is not so. It is an essential point. When a turtle is surprised he does not express it by throwing himself backward head uppermost on to his tail, and show his white waistcoat, and wave his arms in depreciation of the interview, but he downs with his head and ups with his heels and the tip of his tail, if you are able to recognise it, is the last you see of Master Turtle. And when he acts thus he shows much decision of character: there is no hesitation: in a moment of time he is absent. Hence, when you approach a turtle, you must first decide where away lies his tail, and so place your craft that her keel, and the turtle’s spine, shall lie in the same straight line. Then, as she is backed stern foremost towards him, the staff of the gaff is brought, by the movement of the boat, immediately above the length of his back. Now for it! the fisherman suddenly thrusts the gaff from him till the point of the hook is beyond the rim of the shell: raises his hand the least trifle, so as to depress the hook slightly, then savagely snatches the gaff backward, at the same time shortening his grasp on the shaft. The turtle awakes from his dreams to find that he is in a position in which he is helpless—standing on his tail, with his back against the boat’s transome, and his fore flippers out of water. But he is not given time to think. As his back touches the flat end of the boat, the fisherman springs from his knees to his feet and, with one lusty heave, hoicks Uncle up on to the edge of the transome and balances him there for the moment. Down goes the stern of the little boat, well towards water level under the combined weight of man and fish. Then the slightest further pull, and into the bottom of the dinghy the turtle slides with a crash, whilst the fisherman, whose only thought now is for the safety of his toes, gracefully sinks down upon the middle thwart, takes hold of the gunnel with either hand, and hangs one bare leg overboard to starboard, and the other to port, until the turtle has decided in which part of the boat he proposes permanently to place his head. Slowly he opens and closes his bill, shaped like the forceps of a dentist, and slowly he blinks his eyne, as much as to say, “Just put a foot in my neighbourhood or even one big toe.” Turtles have no charity.
The turtle and the fisherman have engrossed one another’s attention so far, but there are three other elements in the equation; they are (a) the boat, (b) the boatman, and (c) the shark. Each of these requires a word in passing. Now a 12 ft. dinghy, like any other of God’s creatures, has feelings: these it expresses amongst other ways, when treated unreasonably, by capsizing, and turtle catching it puts in the neighbourhood of the limit. Not infrequently it happens that the long black fin of a San Francisco pilot comes mouching around at a turtle hunt, as if to incite the long-suffering dinghy to show temper. Hence it is sometimes quite interesting to view, from the ship, the sympathetic way in which the oarsman exerts himself to humour every whim of the little boat, in order to induce it to maintain its centre of gravity during the scrimmage. He quite seems to have the idea in his head that, with the shark assisting at the ceremony, a capsize would be anything but a joke for him. Anyhow, it is all right this time, so we make for the vessel, now gently rising high on the top of the swell, anon slowly sinking until only her vane is visible.
“Lee-Oh!” Round she comes. “Let the staysail bide!”
As she loses her way the dinghy shoots up towards her, a line comes flying in straightening coils from the bows of the ship and falls, with a whack, across the dinghy’s nose. The oarsman claps a turn with it around the for’ard thwart, and quickly gets his weight out of her bows, by shifting to the middle thwart, before the strain comes. At the same time the fisherman nips aft, whilst keeping an eye on Master Turtle’s jaws, squats on the after seat, picks up an oar and sheers her in towards the ship. Then a strop falls into the sternsheets: the oarsman slips it over a hind flipper, one of the dinghy’s falls is swayed to him, he hooks it into the strop, and up runs Baba Turtle, to be swung inboard the next moment into the arms of the Japanese cook, who receives him with a Japanese smile as he bares his sniggery-snee.
We had now been more than a fortnight at sea. After a run of this length we generally found it well to touch somewhere to refresh. The chart showed ahead of us the Island of Socorro which we could fetch by edging off a little. The Sailing Directions told us it was uninhabited, and rarely visited: that there was no fresh water on it, but nevertheless that sheep and goats were to be found, and that landing was possible. The early morning of February the 5th showed its single lofty peak standing out clearly above the lower mist, and in a line with our bowsprit, whilst a light breeze on our quarter made us raise it fairly fast. In the chart-room we pored over the only chart we had, a small-scale one, using it for what it was worth to elucidate the Sailing Directions. These indicated an anchorage and landing-place on its south-western side: poor, but possible: and no outlying dangers. We therefore decided to examine that coast, and see what we could find in the way of anchorage and landing facilities. At the same time the conversation turned on the apparent excellence of the place as a gun-running depot for the Mexican Revolutionaries, and the exceeding awkwardness of our position if we suddenly shoved our nose into any such hornets’ nest. The pow-wow finished, up the ladder we tumbled on to the quarter-deck, and turned to the island, and lo! round a point was emerging a something—first appearing as a boat with bare masts—then as a boat with sails—she has presumably come out under oars and is now getting the canvas on her. She has seen us making for the island and is clearing out! They are at the game, then, after all! Now she grows into a vessel under canvas: now she fades away. No ship had we seen since getting well clear of San Francisco. We could make nothing of her in the haze and the mirage, for the air was all a-quiver with the heat. The general opinion seemed to be that she was a small schooner sailing with her arms akimbo, which, with the wind as we had it, was impossible. Anyhow she was approaching us rapidly in the teeth of the wind—goose-winged; but anything seems to our mariners possible “in these ’ere fur’rin parts.” But alas for Romance! Gradually she revealed herself through the haze as a tramp steamer with a high deck cargo. Her black hull and black-painted mast tops, as she opened the land and partly showed her length, had made her the small boat with bare pole masts: afterwards, when she shifted her helm and came towards us bows on, she became the small schooner running before a fair wind off the land—her light-coloured deck cargo, high built up, and white-painted bridge formed the goose’s wings extended on either side of the black masts, that rose above them, and stood out distinctly against the sky. We kept our course. She passed us close to starboard. We ran up our ensign and number and asked her to report us, but she took no notice. Only one man was seen aboard her. We thought at the time she was from the Canal, but afterwards learnt that nothing had come through it for some months, also that a somewhat similar vessel had, in May last, lain for a month off Socorro to ... admire the Scenery.
We closed with the land, at its western extremity, about 3 p.m., and then slowly ranged along the south-western shore, examining it carefully with the glasses for indications of a landing-place. The water was smooth and crystal-clear, and the sun behind us, so that, comfortably ensconced in the fore-top, we could see well ahead in the line of the ship’s progress, and to a great depth. We were able therefore, without risk, to hug the shore, and to examine it with precision. Everywhere was the same low cliff: on its top, scrubby vegetation with a sheen like the foliage of the olive—(sage-bush). Immediately below this a broad scarlet band—(disintegrated lava)—then a greyish red, or black, cliff wall of igneous rock—at its foot a snow white girdle of foam from the ocean swell dashing against it.