He saw that his few men were safely embarked in an East Indiaman bound to London, and after a vacation in Canton he, too, went home as a passenger, completing a journey around the globe. Three and a half years had passed since he sailed from Plymouth in the Speedwell with a mutinous crew of landlubbers and high hopes of glittering fortune. Almost every officer had died, including the sailing-master, the first lieutenant, the gunner, the armorer, and the carpenter, and of the original company, a hundred strong, no more than a dozen saw England again. Nothing more is known of the seafaring career of Captain Shelvocke, but he was no man to idle on a quay or loaf in a tap-room, and it is safe to say that he lived other stories that would be vastly entertaining.
CHAPTER XVI
LUCKLESS SEAMEN LONG IN EXILE
Robinson Crusoe recoiling from the discovery of the footprint in the sand is what Stevenson calls one of the epoch-making scenes in all romantic literature, to be compared with Achilles shouting over against the Trojans, Ulysses bending the great bow, and Christian running with his fingers in his ears. There is, nevertheless, among the true stories of seafaring adventure at least one scene which is not unworthy of mention in the same breath with the culminating moment of Robinson Crusoe. This occurred when Peter Serrano encountered the other castaway on a desert island off the coast of Chile.
It was in the early days of Spanish exploration and settlement on the South American coasts when this sailor, Peter Serrano, was wrecked, and saved himself by swimming ashore while the rest of the crew were drowned. He crawled out upon an island so dismally barren that it had neither water, wood, nor grass, and not a bit of wreckage was washed ashore with him, no provisions, no timbers with which to build a boat. In short, Peter Serrano had absolutely none of the resources of the shipwrecks of fiction.
When the huge sea turtles crawled up on the sand he threw them over upon their backs and cut their throats with his sheath-knife. The blood he drank, and the flesh was eaten raw or dried in the blazing sun. Other distressed mariners have thanked God for this same food, and it may explain to the landsman why a ship is said to “turn turtle” when she capsizes. Peter Serrano, who was cast ashore with only his ready wits and his sheath-knife, scraped out the shells of these great turtles and used them to catch water when the heavy rains fell. He was therefore provided with food and drink, and shelter was the next essential.
There were fragments of plank from ships which had been lost among these shoals, but they were small and rotten and good for nothing but fire-wood. Peter made himself a little roof of turtle-shells large enough to crawl under, but the heat of the sun so tormented him that he had to take a cool dip in the salt water several times a day. However, he had organized himself for the struggle for existence and was now determined to find some method of making fire. How he succeeded was described by his biographer, Garcilasso de la Vega, and translated into English a hundred and fifty years ago.
Considering on this invention, (for seamen are much more ingenious in all times of extremity than men bred at land) he searched everywhere to find out a couple of hard pebbles, instead of flints, his knife serving in the place of a steel. But the island being covered all over with a dead sand and no stone appearing, he swam into the sea and diving often to the bottom he at length found a couple of stones fit for his purpose which he rubbed together until he got them to an edge, with which being able to strike fire, he drew some threads out of his shirt which he worked so small that it was like cotton, and served for tinder. So that having contrived a means to kindle fire, he gathered a great quantity of sea-weeds thrown up by the waves which, with the shells of fish and the splinters of old ships afforded nourishment for his fuel. And lest sudden showers should extinguish his fire he made a little covering for it, like a small hut, with the shells of the largest turtles, taking great care that his fire should not go out.
Peter Serrano lived alone for three years in this condition and saw several ships pass the island, but none turned in to investigate his signal smoke. It is easy to fancy that “being exposed to all weathers, the hair of his body grew in that manner that he was covered all over with bristles, and the hair of his head and beard reaching to his waist he appeared like some wild savage creature.”
Now for the scene which is extraordinary for its elements of romantic climax. Poor Peter Serrano did not know it, but he was living literature as defined by the masters. It is quaintly told in the original narrative and needs no embroidery of comment.
At the end of three years, Serrano was strangely surprised with the appearance of a man in his island, whose ship had, the night before, been cast away upon those sands, and who had saved himself on a plank of the vessel. As soon as it was day he espied the smoke and imagining whence it was, he made towards it.