Chapter Twenty One.
Boat Ahoy!
The new boat behaves handsomely, even excelling in speed the lost gig, the oars and sailing-gear of which, luckily saved, have fitted it out complete. Under canvas, with a fair wind, they easily make ten knots an hour; and as they have such a wind for the remainder of the day, are carried into the Beagle Channel without need of wetting an oar.
At sunset they are opposite Devil Island, at the junction of the south-west and north-west arms of the channel; and as the night threatens to be dark, with a fog already over the water, they deem it prudent to put in upon the isle, despite its uncanny appellation.
Landing, they are surprised to see a square-built hut of large size, quite different from anything of Fuegian construction, and evidently the work of white men.
“I reck’n the crew o’ some sealin’ vessel hez put it up,” surmises Seagriff; in doubt adding, “Yit I can’t understan’ why they should a-squatted hyar, still less built a shanty, seein’ it ain’t much of a lay fer seal. I guess they must hev got wracked somewhar near, and war castaways, like ourselves.”
About the builders of the hut he has surmised wrongly. They were not sealers, nor had they been wrecked, but were a boat’s party of real sailors—man-of-war’s men from the very ship which gave the channel its name, and at the date of its discovery. Nor did the island deserve the harsh name bestowed upon it, and which originated in the following incident:
A screech-owl had perched above the head of one of the Beagle’s sailors who slept under a tree outside the hut, and awakened him with its lugubrious “whoo-woo-woah!” and so frightened the superstitious tar, that he believed himself hailed by one of the malevolent deities of weird Fireland!