FIG. 7.
THE NATIVE CART, ACO COVE, PORTO BELLO.
The business of watering the ship being ended, we tried to continue our journey, only to find that a dead calm reigned outside, and there was nothing to do but to return. Two or three days of detention passed very pleasantly exploring hill-tracks, photographing, and sketching. We were able to buy poultry, eggs, and oranges, and the men were very successful with the seine, getting quantities of delightful mullet. One afternoon we took our tea in the launch to the other side of the bay, but here for the only time we found the people a little suspicious and not quite friendly.
Saturday, August 2nd, we again made our way out of Porto Bello. Our course lay in the direction of the island of Sta. Catharina, some twenty miles to the southwards, and the whole of the next day we drifted along in sight of its beautiful mountainous coast-line. This was the rendezvous appointed by Anson for his fleet on his outward voyage, as it possessed an excellent reputation for stores. He sailed there direct from Madeira, arriving in December 1740; his voyage took forty-five days, as against our forty-eight days at sea to Porto Bello, by Cape Verde Islands and Pernambuco. Anson was, however, disappointed in his reception, as the governor proved himself unfriendly, and sent a messenger to communicate the presence of the squadron to the Spanish admiral, who lay with his ships in the River Plate. We occupied the time in endeavouring to check from the yacht the sketches given of the coast in the contemporary account of his voyage. Later on we more than once found ourselves on Anson’s track.
The following days afforded great variety of weather, but it grew rapidly colder, and warm clothes which had been stowed since Madeira had to be brought out. The wind, which for a time was strong and fair, later veered round to the south-east and subsequently to the south-west. Our navigators were early anxious about the indications, fearing a pampero, the name by which the particular gales are known which sweep down from the Andes over the pampas or great plains of the mainland, and on Monday, August 4th, the mainsail was stowed. Thursday we had a strong wind, accompanied by a most extraordinary display of lightning; from midnight till 5 a.m. the place was lighted up almost without intermission, and there were reported to be at times as many as five to eight flashes visible at once; at first there was no thunder, but subsequently it became audible. The next two days we beat against a head wind.
On Saturday evening we were placidly seated at dinner when the cry came, “All hands on deck.” Suddenly, without at the last a moment’s warning, the pampero was upon us. A half-finished meal was left to hurry up the companion and join in stowing sails. All night long the gale raged, straining at the rigging, tossing the ship from side to side, rattling everything in her above and below. The waves swept over the deck until it seemed as if their force might at any moment carry away the boats or burst in the door of the deck-house; notwithstanding the heavy storm-boards with which it was always barricaded at such times. There was no sleep for anyone on board. The steward was up all night making cocoa for those on deck, for it was bitterly cold. As to the watch below, “a man,” as Mr. Gillam said, “who could care so little what was going on above as to be able to sleep on such a night, simply because he was off duty, was no sailor worth the name.” Four a.m. found two of us engaged in meditating on the “wet sea boy” who managed to have his eyelids sealed on the giddy mast during “the visitation of the wind,” wondering whether he was an Elizabethan product or if we only owe his creation to the fact that Shakespeare was a landsman. I believe, from continued observation, that a good crew really like a gale, it has the “joy of battle.” As to the Stewardess, her journal, which is not given to soliloquising, runs, I find, as follows in connection with the pampero: “It has been made painfully clear to me that my presence on deck when things are bad is an added anxiety; this is humiliating, and will not, I trust, apply to the next generation of females.”
When I came up next morning the wind was still raging fiercely, but there was a pale blue sky flecked with white clouds, and bright sunshine sparkled on the countless white crests of foam which covered a dark blue sea. I looked, with an instinct which during all these months had become second nature, to see who was at the wheel, and found, with a shock, that it was deserted—the helm was lashed! It felt for a moment as if the ship were some dead thing, with all power of spontaneous movement, all volition gone. For the time being she was vanquished by the elements, or at least reduced to armed truce; we were hove to and drifting slowly eastward, undoing all the work of the last two days. “Rough on us, ma’am,” as Light said with a jovial laugh. At noon we had lost ground by 24 miles, and were now 373 miles from Buenos Aires instead of 349.
Monday, 7 a.m., we began to sail, beating against the wind, but by midday we had lost still further, being now 402 miles away from the haven where we would be. We envied the cape pigeons, twenty or thirty of which followed the vessel, as she was towing bags of heavy oil to windward to prevent the waves from breaking, and the smoother water made it easier for them to see the small fish below. They seemed to enjoy the gale, and swept round the yacht gracefully, showing off their white bodies and dark wings barred with white. They trod the water at intervals as they ran along it on the tips of their feet, and rode in the troughs of the waves securely sheltered from the wind. On August 12th we signalised the day by making a bag, one gull, but it came as a guest and was entitled to hospitality. It was apparently tired out, and perched on one of the boats; but when S. began throwing some meat overboard, with the object of attracting and photographing the cape pigeons, it joined in the scramble. The pigeons, however, would have none of the stranger, and set upon it, whereupon, worsted in the fray, the gull again sought refuge on the vessel: there it stayed all night, sleeping quite low down in the folds of some canvas and allowing itself to be stroked and fed by any passer-by. With the morning, being rested and refreshed, it flew away.
CHAPTER IV
ARGENTINA
The River Plate—Buenos Aires, its Trade and People.