So we progressed, until we reached what we decided must be Braithwaite Bay, at the S.W. corner of the island. The Sailing Directions gave this as the only anchorage. Mr. Gillam jumped into the dinghy and pulled in to examine it, whilst we followed her in very slowly with the ship. A couple of whales seemed to find the floor of the bay quite to their taste as a dressing-room. The huge fellows quietly spouted and wallowed, “a-cleaning of themselves,” and took no notice of us. The dinghy did not like the look of things for either landing or anchorage, so held up an oar. Thereupon we put the ship round, and went out on the same track as that on which we had entered. Nightfall was now approaching. We picked up the dinghy and stood off a bit, and then hove to.
Now, immediately before reaching Braithwaite Bay, we had noticed in the coast-line, from the mast-head, an indentation or small inlet, across which there was no line of breakers. Also we had observed a remarkable white patch set deeply into the land apparently at the head of this indentation. Of these points presently. During the night, whilst hove to some distance off, the watch picked up a beautifully modelled painted and weighted decoy duck, with the initials “H. T.” cut into it. This wooden fowl, we concluded, had drifted down from San Francisco, for there they are largely used in duck shooting. It had broken its anchoring line, been swept through the Golden Gate, and then by the prevailing winds and currents carried to the point where we had picked it up. The find was interesting as showing that our navigation was correctly based for current.
With the daylight we again stood in, this time towards the inlet, and after an early breakfast, the cutter was swung out. A breaker of water, a cooking-pot or two, a watertight box of food, another containing ammunition, the photographic and botanical outfits, and a Mauser rifle in its watertight bag, were put into her and, with five hands, we started off.
As we approached the break in the cliffs we again met our two friends of yesterday—the whales. They had shifted their ground and were now right in the entrance to the cove, so we had to lay on our oars for quite a while, until they gradually moved away. It was most interesting to watch the great brutes comparatively close alongside, yet absolutely indifferent to, or unaware of, the boat’s presence. Certainly we kept quiet, and did not allow objects in the boat to rattle or roll. Sound waves are transmitted through the water just as they are through the air. Each of these fish would have been worth £1,000 at least at pre-war prices. “Life is full of vain regrets.”
Our break in the cliff proved the entrance to a fissure in the land-mass comparatively far extending. On either hand it had nearly vertical cliff walls, and these again had steep ground above and behind them. It had a regular, gradually rising bottom, deep water at the entrance, and at the head a shelving beach of sand and small stones, yet steep-to enough to allow the cutter to float with only her nose aground. Not a trace of swell: an ideal boat harbour. As it had no name, and is to-day undefined in the Admiralty plan of Braithwaite Bay (cf. inset on Chart No. 1936), we christened it Cruising Club Cove—dropping the “Royal” for the gain of alliteration.
As we lay off the entrance, waiting for the whales to shift, many, and varied, were our speculations as to what the white object, previously referred to as situated at the head of the cove, could possibly be. Not till we were close up did we make it out. It then proved to be a red-painted boat, covered with a white sail. Now a dry torrent bed forms the head of our little fiord. The detritus brought down by the torrent is spread out as a small, flat, channel-cut plain, that meets the sea with a fan-shaped border. On to this flat the mystery boat was hauled up, but only to just above high-water mark. Close to her side was a grave with wooden cross. From her bows hung a bottle closed with a wooden plug and sealed with red paint. Keenly interested in it all we disturbed nothing, so that we might the better be able to piece together the evidence, after gathering all we could. She was evidently laid up: practically new: amateur built: her material new deal house-flooring boards: flat-bottomed: sharp at both ends (dory type). Left as she was, the surf of the first gale from the South would lift her. They must have been either weak handed to leave her close to the water’s edge like that, or else they had been in a great hurry to get away. No painter and anchor was laid out to prevent her floating off: no seaman would leave a boat thus unsecured. (For there was cordage in her.) Her sail was cut out of an old sail of heavy canvas belonging to some big ship. They had ship’s stores to draw upon.
Casting around, we soon found a track running through the sage-bush scrub. Following this trail for a few yards, we came to a large flat-topped rock beside which it ran. On this rock stood conspicuously another bottle—sealed. The path now began to rise sharply, wending betwixt large rock masses: then it suddenly terminated in a rift in the cliff face, which formed a high, but shallow, cave or grotto. Rough plank seats and bunks were rigged up around, fitted under or betwixt the great rocks, some berths being made more snug by having screens of worn canvas. In the middle of the floor was a table, and in the middle of the table stood a sealed bottle and a box. The box was a small, square, round-cornered, highly ornamented biscuit-tin of American make: it was three parts full of loose salt, bone dry, and on the top of the salt was a wooden box of matches, bone dry and striking immediately. We emptied the salt on to the table—nothing amidst it: we broke the bottle and we found in it a scrap of paper. On this was written in ink, a surname, the day of the month and year, the full initials of the writer and these words, “Look at our Post Office here.”[[90]] We then returned to the flat rock and broke that bottle—the message was the same; then to the boat, to find the message in its bottle was identical in terms, but written in pencil.
“Look at our Post Office”—But where was the Post Office? or what was the Post Office? The fragments of the broken bottle lay glittering on the grave at our feet. Was the grave the Post Office?
We had most carefully examined and sounded the cave, and, after our long experience of this class of work on Easter Island, felt fairly satisfied that the Post Office was not there. Every fire site we had suspected and inspected: every sinkage of the surface. Now we had to decide about the grave. The character of the vegetation showed that it was old, and had not been disturbed within the date stated on the letters. A Spanish inscription in customary form, cut very neatly into the arms of the wooden cross, gave simply the name of the dead man, and the date. At one time the cross had been painted black. The point however that determined us to accept the burial as bona fide, and not to exhume it as a possible cache, was the fact that the sharp edges of the carving of the inscription were smoothly rasped away by the driving sand of the shore, in the direction of the prevailing wind, and to a degree commensurate with the date incised. And we were right in our surmises. Sufficient now to say that he whom the writing told to go to the Post Office, was already lying in his own grave elsewhere, with his boots on, and no cross at his head. Life is held cheap in Mexico.
The island is said to possess no fresh water. We found no provision made in the cave for conserving a supply. Scrambling through the sage-bush we made for the dry torrent. Here we found one of the channels had been diverted, and in it sunk a well or shaft, some ten feet deep, with fine soil at its bottom. The end of a rope just showed for about one foot above the surface of the silt at the bottom of the shaft. Near by was a rough cradle and makeshift gear for gold washing. They had been here during the rains, and the torrent had supplied the washing water. Thinking of a possible sealed bottle placed in the shaft bucket at the end of the rope, we left two hands there with orders to follow the rope carefully down to its termination and see what was on the end of it. The cutter with two hands we sent back to the ship.