Day followed day. We gradually gnawed into our 1,834 miles. The Russian Finn came to the fore as a keen sportsman: from tea-time to dusk he was generally to be found somewhere outside the vessel’s bows: sometimes on the bowsprit end, sometimes standing on the bob-stay, regardless of the fact that a shark was very frequently in attendance on us in the eddy water under our counter. Looking over the taffrail you could see the brute weaving from side to side as does a plum-pudding carriage dog at his horses’ heels. One experienced a sort of fascination in watching these great fish at night, their every movement displayed by the luminosity of the water, until they themselves, on occasion, seemed to glow with the phosphoric light. Mana in these waters generally had shoals or companies of small fish in attendance on her, amongst which were always a few larger ones. We got to know individuals by sight. We thought they kept to her for protection. It certainly was not for what they could get off her copper. With that we never had any trouble: it kept as bright as gold.
One night we were asleep on the locker in the deck-house companion, and were awakened by an unholy struggle and crash. Nipping out, we found the Russian on look-out for’ard, regardless of the sleepers below him, had leant over her bows and had actually hoiked out with a gaff hook a large porpoise. It seemed impossible to believe that a man could have had the physical strength to hoist such a mass bodily out of the water, up her high bow, and over the rail. He seems to have fairly lifted it out, by the scruff of its neck, as it rushed alongside after the fish.
He only fell overboard once: that was on the voyage from the Sandwich Islands, when we were not aboard. On reaching San Francisco he brought a note from Mr. Gillam to us at our hotel to report arrival. We of course inquired as to their voyage. The Russian said it had been quite the usual thing: nothing had happened out of the common. Long afterwards he casually informed us that on that run, when he went forward one night from the quarter-deck to the galley to make the coffee for the change of watch at midnight, he went first to do some job on the top-gallant-fo’c’s’le head, and got knocked overboard. En route to the land of never-never he found the weather jib-sheet in his hand, and by it was able to haul himself aboard again. As he was supposed to be in the galley, he would never have been expected to show for half an hour, and therefore would not have been missed until the watch mustered. It did not seem to occur to him that he had had a bit of a squeak. He did not get wet, so nobody knew, for he told no one. As an angel, perhaps there was a certain amount of black down underneath his white plumage, but as an A.B. one wished for no better. He was the second of Mana’s company to be killed by the Huns after our return.
After heaving-to like this, to let the reader into some of the little humours of our domestic life, we must get under way again. Well, everybody seemed quite happy and contented “on this ’ere run”: fish, birds, weird ocean currents and their slack water areas with accumulated drift, sail-mending, turning out and painting the fo’c’s’le, with life on deck, instead of below, for a few days, a threatened blow that never reached us, but only sent along its swell to justify the actions of the glass, and the ever-varying incidents associated with life on a small craft in unfrequented tropical seas, for we never saw another sail, made us so forgetful of the flight of time, that it seemed that we had but left Socorro, before we found ourselves off Hicaron Island, our prearranged landfall. Thirty-one days had faded away like a dream (map, facing p. 359).
Now, close to the Island of Hicaron lies another one much larger. We had a plan of it, Coiba or Quibo Island. The Sailing Directions said “turtles abound, but they are hard to catch.” (We didn’t want any more turtle!) “Crabs, cockles, and oysters are plentiful. In the woods monkeys and parrots abound, and in Anson’s time, 1741, there were deer, but the interior is nearly inaccessible, from the steepness of the cliffs and the tangled vegetation: explorers should beware of alligators and snakes.” The chart showed an excellent anchorage and indicated fresh water. It seemed promising: we would see what it was like. We were particularly desirous of now making good our expenditure of water, as we did not know what were the conditions we might find prevailing at Panama both as regards its quality and the facilities for getting it.
We had sighted Hicaron Island at daylight on Monday, the 6th of March, 1916, but calms, baffling airs, and currents prevented our making our proposed anchorage by daylight. At dusk, therefore, we hove to for the night. Festina lentiter was ever our motto. We had the most recent chart certainly, but its last correction was in 1865 and coral patches grow quickly. Not until noon next day did we get abreast of Negada Point, the S.E. extremity of Quibo Island. As the coast was charted free from dangers, we came fairly close in, and starting the motor about one o’clock, ran along the shore under power, with a look-out in the fore-top.
It was very interesting and pleasant, after a month at sea, thus to coast along the fringe of a tropical island: sweeping round rocky points of the land, and peeping into lovely little coves fringed with white coral sand that merged into a dense tropical vegetation, with hills in the background. It soon becomes instinctive to keep the sharpest of look-outs ahead, i.e. into the clear water, for a change of colour indicating danger, and yet to see everything around. The most memorable feature of this particular afternoon was the large number of devil-fish that were seen springing into the air: as many as three or four might be observed within as many minutes. Suddenly, near or far, a large object, like a white-painted notice-board, shot vertically into the air to considerable height, to fall back again on its flat with resounding spank and high-flying spray, leaving a patch of milky foam on the smooth blue surface of the water. In British seas this family of fishes is represented by the skate. Here they attain the dimensions of a fair-sized room: a specimen in the British Museum from Jamaica measures 15 ft. by 15 ft. and is between three and four feet thick, hence the statement that “their capture is uncertain and sometimes attended with danger”[[92]] is probably not far from correct. Perched aloft, and thus having a large and unobstructed horizon, we saw one jump probably every ten minutes throughout the afternoon. The motor brought us to our anchorage, and at 5 o’clock we let go in 9 fathoms, sand and mud, the shore distant about 1½ miles.
We had seen hitherto no sign of the island being occupied, nor did we now. After dark, however, at two widely separated points, a fire blazed up and lights showed for a short while. Smoking on deck, when dinner was finished, we speculated as to the meaning of the different mysterious grunts and gurgles, sighs and plunges, that stole over the tepid oily water: the tropical sea after dark seemed to have voices as many and varied as the tropical forest has when the sun is gone. From 6 p.m. onward the thermometer read 87° F.: at 6 a.m. it had fallen to 83°—the cool of the morning!
With the daylight a single pirogue, with two men in her, came alongside. She was a small and roughly made dug out, very leaky. In the wet of her bottom lay a bunch of bananas, perched on which were a couple of large macaws. Each of these had a strip of bark some two feet long tied to its leg. The bunch of bananas lay like an island above the water in her: on to it as a refuge the parrots crawled. Their jesses entangled amongst the bananas—the boat rolled—so did the banana bunch—each bird would climb upwards, but he could not, the accursed thong held him down: he was being crushed, he was being drowned—he and his mate. And each said so. An American mining captain taking up his parable was not in it with those birds for language.
The two men were negroid in feature. One of them had only one leg, and seemed sad and ill. The other was more cheerful. We could get along together in Spanish. They invited us to come ashore. Hoisting out the cutter, we followed them in. Their lead was useful, as the water is so shoal. Though the rise and fall is but small feet, yet a large area of coral rock flats is dry at low water on either side of a boat channel. At the entrance to this channel an open sailing boat, some 25 feet long, their property, lay at anchor. As the tide was falling, we thought it best to leave our cutter at anchor in sufficiently deep water for her not to take the ground, and got our friends to ferry us from her, one by one, into shoal water in their canoe. It was most comic to see some of our big chaps kneeling on the bottom of the crazy little craft with a hand on either gunnel, whilst they bent forward, like devout Mussulmans on their carpets, endeavouring to get their centre of gravity as low as possible. We were the last of the passengers. When the water got to be only knee deep the native anchored his canoe, and we stepped overboard. So did our one-legged ferryman. His right hand controlled a crutch, in his left he held various treasures obtained from Mana; he also desired to take his two big parrots ashore, so, as the last item of all, he hooked his finger under the cord that tied them together, thus carrying them swinging heads downwards. But apparently he had not taken the cord fairly in the middle. One parrot was suspended by a short length of line: the other by a long: he of the short cord was able to twist himself round and get a hold with his beak on some package in his owner’s hand, and was thus reasonably happy. But parrots, like ourselves, can’t have it all ways in this world of woe. If his head be up, his tail must be down: hence this tale. He of the long string found himself draggling in the water with every stride of his one-legged owner. In his struggles to avoid drowning by a succession of dips, he managed at last to grasp, with beak and claw, the long dependent tail of his fellow prisoner, and quickly hauling himself up it, he at once proceeded to consolidate his position, by seizing in his beak the softest part of his colleague’s hinder anatomy with the vice-like grip of despair, and therefrom he continued to depend in placid comfort, regardless of the other’s piercing shrieks and protestations.