MEN OF PEACE.
Naval Life in Peace Times-A Grand Exploring Voyage-The Cruise of the _Challenger_-Its Work-Deep-sea Soundings-Five Miles Down-Apparatus Employed-Ocean Treasures-A Gigantic Sea-monster-Tristan d"Acunha-A Discovery Interesting to the Discovered-The Two Crusoes-The Inaccessible Island-Solitary Life-The Sea-cart-Swimming Pigs-Rescued at Last-The Real Crusoe Island to Let-Down South-The Land of Desolation-Kerguelen-The Sealers" Dreary Life-In the Antarctic-Among the Icebergs.
No form of life presents greater contrasts than that of the sailor. Storm and calm alternate; to-day in the thick of the fight-battling man or the elements-to-morrow we find him tranquilly pursuing some peaceful scheme of discovery or exploration, or calmly cruising from one station to another, protecting by moral influence alone the interests of his country. His deeds may be none the less heroic because his conquests are peaceful, and because Neptune rather than Mars is challenged to cede his treasures.
Anson, Cook, and Vancouver, Parry, Franklin, M"Clintock, and M"Clure, among a host of others, stand worthily by the side of our fighting sailors, because made of the same stuff. Let us also, then, for a time, leave behind the smoke and din, the glories and horrors of war, and cool our fevered imaginations by descending, in spirit at least, to the depths of the great sea. The records of the famous voyage of the _Challenger_(24) will afford a capital opportunity of contrasting the deeds of the men of peace with those of men of war.
We may commence by saying that no such voyage has in truth ever been undertaken before.(25) Nearly 70,000 miles of the earth"s watery surface were traversed, and the Atlantic and Pacific crossed and recrossed several times. It was a veritable _voyage en zigzag_. Apart from ordinary soundings innumerable, 374 deep-sea soundings, when the progress of the vessel had to be stopped, and which occupied an hour or two apiece, were made, and at least two-thirds as many successful dredgings and trawlings.
The greatest depth of ocean reached was 4,575 fathoms (27,450 feet), or _over five miles_. This was in the Pacific, about 1,400 miles S.E. of j.a.pan. We all know that this ocean derives its name from its generally calmer weather and less tempestuous seas; and the researches of the officers of the _Challenger_, and of the United States vessel _Tuscarora_, show that the bottom slopes to its greatest depths very evenly and gradually, little broken by submarine mountain ranges, except off volcanic islands and coasts like those of the Hawaiian (Sandwich) Islands. Off the latter there are mountains in the sea ranging to as high as 12,000 feet.
The general evenness of the bottom helps to account for the long, sweeping waves of the Pacific, so distinguishable from the short, cut-up, and "choppy" waves of the Atlantic. In the Atlantic, on the voyage of the _Challenger_ from Teneriffe to St. Thomas, a pretty level bottom off the African coast gradually deepened till it reached 3,125 fathoms (over three and a half miles), at about one-third of the way across to the West Indies. If the Alps, Mont Blanc and all, were submerged at this spot, there would still be more than half a mile of water above them! Five hundred miles further west there is a comparatively shallow part-two miles or so deep-which afterwards deepens to three miles, and continues at the same depth nearly as far as the West Indies.
[Ill.u.s.tration: EXAMINING A "HAUL" ON BOARD THE "CHALLENGER."]
A few words as to the work laid out for the _Challenger_, and how she did it. She is a 2,000-ton corvette, of moderate steam-power, and was put into commission, with a reduced complement of officers and men, Captain (now Sir) George S. Nares, later the commander of the Arctic expedition, having complete charge and control. Her work was to include soundings, thermometric and magnetic observations, dredgings and chemical examinations of sea-water, the surveying of unsurveyed harbours and coasts, and the resurveying, where practicable, of partially surveyed coasts. The (civil) scientific corps, under the charge of Professor Wyville Thomson, comprised three naturalists, a chemist and physicist, and a photographer. The naturalists had their special rooms, the chemist his laboratory, the photographer his "dark-room," and the surveyors their chart-room, to make room for which all the guns were removed except two.
On the upper deck was another a.n.a.lysing-room, "devoted to mud, fish, birds, and vertebrates generally;" a donkey-engine for hauling in the sounding, dredging, and other lines, and a broad bridge amidships, from which the officer for the day gave the necessary orders for the performance of the many duties connected with their scientific labours.
Thousands of fathoms of rope of all sizes, for dredging and sounding; tons of sounding-weights, from half to a whole hundredweight apiece; dozens of thermometers for deep-sea temperatures, and gallons of methylated spirits for preserving the specimens obtained, were carried on board.
[Ill.u.s.tration: THE "ACc.u.mULATOR."]
Steam-power is always very essential to deep-sea sounding. No trustworthy results can be obtained from a ship under sail; a perpendicular sounding is the one thing required, and, of course, with steam the vessel can be kept head to the wind, regulating her speed so that she remains nearly stationary. The sounding apparatus used needs some little description. A block was fixed to the main-yard, from which depended the "acc.u.mulator,"
consisting of strong india-rubber bands, each three-fourths of an inch in diameter and three feet long, which ran through circular discs of wood at either end. These are capable of stretching seventeen feet, and their object is to prevent sudden strain on the lead-line from the inevitable jerks and motion of the vessel. The sounding-rod used for great depths is, with its weights,(26) so arranged that on touching bottom a spring releases a wire sling, and the weights slip off and are left there. These rods were only employed when the depths were considered to be over 1,500 fathoms; for less depths a long, conical lead weight was used, with a "b.u.t.terfly valve," or trap, at its basis for securing specimens from the ocean bed. There are several kinds of "slip" water-bottles for securing samples of sea-water (and marine objects of small size floating in it) at great depths. One of the most ingenious is a bra.s.s tube, two and a half feet in length, fitted with easily-working stop-c.o.c.ks at each end, connected by means of a rod, on which is a movable float. As the bottle descends the stop-c.o.c.ks must remain open, but as it is hauled up again the flat float receives the opposing pressure of the water above it, and, acting by means of the connecting-rod, shuts both c.o.c.ks simultaneously, thus inclosing a specimen of the water at that particular depth.
Self-registering thermometers were employed, sometimes attached at intervals of 100 fathoms to the sounding-line, so as to test the temperatures at various depths. For dredging, bags or nets from three to five feet in depth, and nine to fifteen inches in width, attached to iron frames, were employed, whilst at the bottom of the bags a number of "swabs," similar to those used in cleaning decks, were attached, so as to sweep along the bottom, and bring up small specimens of animal life-coral, sponges, &c. These swabs were, however, always termed "hempen tangles"-so much does science dignify every object it touches! The dredges were afterwards set aside for the ordinary beam-trawls used in shallow water around our own coasts. Their open meshes allowed the mud and sand to filter through easily, and their adoption was a source of satisfaction to some of the officers who looked with horror on the state of their usually immaculate decks, when the dredges were emptied of their contents.
Not so very long ago, our knowledge of anything beneath the ocean"s surface was extremely indefinite; for even of the coasts and shallows we knew little, marine zoology and botany being the last, and not the earliest, branches of natural history investigated by men of science. It was a.s.serted that the specific gravity of water at great depths would cause the heaviest weights to remain suspended in mid-sea, and that animal existence was impossible at the bottom. When, some sixteen years ago, a few star-fish were brought up by a line from a depth of 1,200 fathoms, it was seriously considered that they had attached themselves at some midway point, and not at the bottom. In 1868-9-70, the Royal Society borrowed from the Admiralty two of Her Majesty"s vessels, the _Lightning_ and _Porcupine_; and in one of the latter"s trips, considerably to the south and west of Ireland, she sounded to a depth of 2,400 fathoms,(27) and was very successful in many dredging operations. As a result, it was then suggested that a vessel should be specially fitted out for a more important ocean voyage round the world, to occupy three or more years, and the cruise of the _Challenger_ was then determined upon.
The story of that cruise is utterly unsensational; it is one simply of calm and unremitting scientific work, almost unaccompanied by peril. To some the treasures acquired will seem valueless. Among the earliest gains, obtained near Cape St. Vincent, with a common trawl, was a beautiful specimen of the Euplectella, "gla.s.s-rope sponge," or "Venus"s flower-basket," alive. This object of beauty and interest, sometimes seen in working naturalists" and conchologists" windows in London, had always previously been obtained from the seas of the Philippine Islands and j.a.pan, to which it was thought to be confined, and its discovery so much nearer home was hailed with delight. It has a most graceful form, consisting of a slightly curved conical tube, eight or ten inches in height, contracted beneath to a blunt point. The walls are of light tracery, resembling opaque spun gla.s.s, covered with a lace-work of delicate pattern. The lower end is surrounded by an upturned fringe of l.u.s.trous fibres, and the wider end is closed by a lid of open network.
These beautiful objects of nature make most charming ornaments for a drawing-room, but have to be kept under a gla.s.s case, as they are somewhat frail. In their native element they lie buried in the mud. They were afterwards found to be "the most characteristic inhabitants of the great depths all over the world." Early in the voyage, no lack of living things were brought up-strange-looking fish, with their eyes blown nearly out of their heads by the expansion of the air in their air-bladders, whilst entangled among the meshes were many star-fish and delicate zoophytes, shining with a vivid phosph.o.r.escent light. A rare specimen of the cl.u.s.tered sea-polyp, twelve gigantic polyps, each with eight long fringed arms, terminating in a close cl.u.s.ter on a stalk or stem three feet high, was obtained. "Two specimens of this fine species were brought from the coast of Greenland early in the last century; somehow these were lost, and for a century the animal was never seen." Two were brought home by one of the Swedish Arctic expeditions, and these are the only specimens ever obtained. One of the lions of the expedition was not "a rare sea-fowl,"
but a transparent lobster, while a new crustacean, perfectly blind, which feels its way with most beautifully delicate claws, was one of the greatest curiosities obtained. Of these wonders, and of some geological points determined, more anon. But they did not even sight the sea-serpent, much less attempt to catch it. Jules Verne"s twenty miles of inexhaustible pearl-meadows were evidently missed, nor did they even catch a glimpse of his gigantic oyster, with the pearl as big as a cocoa-nut, and worth 10,000,000 francs. They could not, with Captain Nemo, dive to the bottom and land amid submarine forests, where tigers and cobras have their counterparts in enormous sharks and vicious cephalopods. Victor Hugo"s "devil-fish" did not attack a single sailor, nor did, indeed, any formidable cuttle-fish take even a pa.s.sing peep at the _Challenger_, much less attempt to stop its progress. Does the reader remember the story recited both by Figuier and Moquin Tandon,(28) concerning one of these gigantic sea-monsters, which should have a strong basis of truth in it, as it was laid before the French Academie des Sciences by a lieutenant of their navy and a French consul?
[Ill.u.s.tration: OBJECTS OF INTEREST BROUGHT HOME BY THE "CHALLENGER."
Fig. 1.-Sh.e.l.l of _Globigerina_ (highly magnified). Fig. 2.-_Ophioglypha bullata_ (six times the size in nature). Fig. 3.-_Euplectella Suberea_ (popularly "Venus"s Flower-basket"). Fig. 4.-_Deidamia leptodactyla_ (a Blind Lobster).
(_From __"__The Voyage of the Challenger,__"__ by permission of Messrs.
Macmillan & Co._)]
The steam-corvette _Alecton_, when between Teneriffe and Madeira, fell in with a gigantic cuttle-fish, fifty feet long in the body, without counting its eight formidable arms covered with suckers. The head was of enormous size, out of all proportion to the body, and had eyes as large as plates.
The other extremity terminated in two fleshy lobes or fins of great size.
The estimated weight of the whole creature was 4,000 lbs., and the flesh was soft, glutinous, and of a reddish-brick colour. "The commandant, wishing, in the interests of science, to secure the monster, actually engaged it in battle. Numerous shots were aimed at it, but the b.a.l.l.s traversed its flaccid and glutinous ma.s.s without causing it any vital injury. But after one of these attacks, the waves were observed to be covered with foam and blood, and-singular thing-a strong odour of musk was inhaled by the spectators.... The musket-shots not having produced the desired results, harpoons were employed, but they took no hold on the soft, impalpable flesh of the marine monster. When it escaped from the harpoon, it dived under the ship and came up again at the other side. They succeeded, at last, in getting the harpoon to bite, and in pa.s.sing a bowling-hitch round the posterior part of the animal. But when they attempted to hoist it out of the water, the rope penetrated deeply into the flesh, and separated it into two parts, the head, with the arms and tentacles, dropping into the sea and making off, while the fins and posterior parts were brought on board; they weighed about forty pounds.
The crew were eager to pursue, and would have launched a boat, but the commander refused, fearing that the animal might capsize it. The object was not, in his opinion, one in which he could risk the lives of his crew." M. Moquin Tandon, commenting on M. Berthelot"s recital, considers "that this colossal mollusc was sick and exhausted at the time by some recent struggle with some other monster of the deep, which would account for its having quitted its native rocks in the depths of the ocean.
Otherwise it would have been more active in its movements, or it would have obscured the waves with the inky liquid which all the cephalopods have at command. Judging from its size, it would carry at least a barrel of this black liquid."
The _Challenger_ afterwards visited Juan Fernandez, the real Robinson Crusoe island where Alexander Selkirk pa.s.sed his enforced residence of four years. Thanks to Defoe, he lived to find himself so famous, that he could hardly have grudged the time spent in his solitary sojourn with his dumb companions and man Friday. Alas! the romance which enveloped Juan Fernandez has somewhat dimmed. For a brief time it was a Chilian penal colony, and after sundry vicissitudes, was a few years ago leased to a merchant, who kept cattle to sell to whalers and pa.s.sing ships, and also went seal-hunting on a neighbouring islet. He was "monarch of all he surveyed"-lord of an island over a dozen miles long and five or six broad, with cattle, and herds of wild goats, and capital fishing all round-all for two hundred a year! Fancy this, ye sportsmen, who pay as much or more for the privileges of a barren moor! Yet the merchant was not satisfied with his venture, and, at the time of the _Challenger"s_ visit, was on the point of abandoning it: by this time it is probably to let. Excepting the cattle dotted about the foot of the hills and a civilised house or two, the appearance of the island must be precisely the same now as when the piratical buccaneers of olden time made it their rendezvous and haunt wherefrom to dash out and harry the Spaniards; the same to-day as when Alexander Selkirk lived in it as its involuntary monarch; the same to-day as when Commodore Anson arrived with his scurvy-stricken "crazy ship, a great scarcity of water, and a crew so universally diseased that there were not above ten foremast-men in a watch capable of doing duty," and recruited them with fresh meat, vegetables, and wild fruits.
[Ill.u.s.tration: THE "CHALLENGER" AT JUAN FERNANDEZ.]
"The scenery," writes Lord George Campbell, "is grand: gloomy and wild enough on the dull, stormy day on which we arrived, clouds driving past and enveloping the highest ridge of the mountain, a dark-coloured sea pelting against the steep cliffs and sh.o.r.es, and clouds of sea-birds swaying in great flocks to and fro over the water; but cheerful and beautiful on the bright sunny morning which followed-so beautiful that I thought, "This beats Tahiti!"" The anchorage of the _Challenger_ was in c.u.mberland Bay, a deep-water inlet from which rises a semi-circle of high land, with two bold headlands, "sweeping brokenly up thence to the highest ridge-a square-shaped, craggy, precipitous ma.s.s of rock, with trees clinging to its sides to near the summit. The spurs of these hills are covered with coa.r.s.e gra.s.s or moss.... Down the beds of the small ravines run burns, overgrown by dock-leaves of enormous size, and the banks are clothed with a rich vegetation of dark-leaved myrtle, bignonia, and winter-bark, tree-shrubs, with tall gra.s.s, ferns, and flowering plants.
And as you lie there, humming-birds come darting and thrumming within reach of your stick, flitting from flower to flower, which dot blue and white the foliage of bignonias and myrtles. And on the steep gra.s.sy slopes above the sea-cliffs herds of wild goats are seen quietly browsing-quietly, that is, till they scent you, when they are off-as wild as chamois." This is indeed a description of a rugged paradise!
Near the ship they found splendid, but laborious, cod-fishing; laborious on account of sharks playing with the bait, and treating the stoutest lines as though made of single gut; also on account of the forty-fathom depth these cod-fish lived in. Cray-fish and conger-eels were hauled up in lobster-pots by dozens, while round the ship"s sides flashed shoals of cavalli, fish that are caught by a hook with a piece of worsted tied roughly on, swished over the surface, giving splendid play with a rod.
"And on sh.o.r.e, too, there was something to be seen and done. There was Selkirk"s "look-out" to clamber up the hill-side to-the spot where tradition says he watched day after day for a pa.s.sing sail, and from whence he could look down on both sides of his island home, over the wooded slopes, down to the cliff-fringed sh.o.r.e, on to the deserted ocean"s expanse."
The _Challenger_, in its cruise of over three years, naturally visited many oft-described ports and settlements with which we shall have nought to do. After a visit to Kerguelen"s Land-"the Land of Desolation," as Captain Cook called it-in the Southern Indian Ocean, for the purpose of selecting a spot for the erection of an observatory, from whence the transit of Venus should be later observed, they proceeded to Heard Island, the position of which required determining with more accuracy. They anch.o.r.ed, in the evening, in a bay of this most gloomy and utterly desolate place, where they found half-a-dozen wretched sealers living in two miserable huts near the beach, which were sunk into the ground for warmth and protection against the fierce winds. Their work is to kill and boil down sea-elephants. One of the men had been there for two years, and was going to stay another. They are left on the island every year by the schooners, which go sealing or whaling elsewhere. Some forty men were on the island, unable to communicate with each other by land, as the interior is entirely covered with glacier, like Greenland. They have barrels of salt pork, beef, and a small store of coals, and little else, and are wretchedly paid. "Books," says Lord Campbell, "tell us that these sea-elephants grow to the length of twenty-four feet; but the sealers did not confirm this at all. One of us tried hard to make the Scotch mate say he had seen one eighteen feet long; but "waull, he couldn"t say." Sixteen feet? "Waull, he couldn"t say." Fourteen feet? "Waull, yes, yes-something more like that;" but thirteen feet would seem a fair average size.... One of our fellows bought a clever little clay model of two men killing a sea-elephant, giving for it-he being an extravagant man-one pound and a bottle of rum. This pound was instantly offered to the servants outside in exchange for another bottle."
Crossing the Antarctic Circle, they were soon among the icebergs, keeping a sharp look-out for Termination Land, which has been marked on charts as a good stretch of coast seen by Wilkes, of the American expedition, thirty years before. To make a long story short, Captain Nares, after a careful search, _un-discovered_ this discovery, finding no traces of the land. It was probably a long stretch of ice, or possibly a _mirage_, which phenomenon has deceived many a sailor before. John Ross once thought that he had discovered some grand mountains in the Arctic regions, which he named after the then First Lord of the Admiralty, Croker. Next year Parry sailed over the site of the supposed range; and the "Croker" Mountains became a standing joke against Ross.
[Ill.u.s.tration: "THE CHALLENGER" IN ANTARCTIC ICE.]
Icebergs of enormous size were encountered; several of three _miles_ in length and two hundred feet or more in height were seen one day, all close together. But bergs of this calibre were exceptional; they were, however, very often over half a mile in length. "There are few people now alive,"
says the author we have recently quoted, "who have seen such superb Antarctic iceberg scenery as we have. We are steaming towards the supposed position of land, only some thirty miles distant, over a gla.s.s-like sea, unruffled by a breath of wind; past great ma.s.ses of ice, grouped so close together in some cases as to form an unbroken wall of cliff several miles in length. Then, as we pa.s.s within a few hundred yards, the chain breaks up into two or three separate bergs, and one sees-and beautifully from the mast-head-the blue sea and distant horizon between perpendicular walls of glistening alabaster white, against which the long swell dashes, rearing up in great blue-green heaps, falling back in a torrent of rainbow-flashing spray, or goes roaring into the azure caverns, followed immediately by a thundering _thud_, as the compressed air within buffets it back again in a torrent of seething white foam." Neither words adequately describe the beauty of many of the icebergs seen. One had three high arched caverns penetrating far to its interior; another had a large tunnel through which they could see the horizon. The delicate colouring of these bergs is most lovely-sweeps of azure blue and pale sea-green with dazzling white; glittering, sparkling crystal merging into depths of indigo blue; stalact.i.te icicles hanging from the walls and roofs of cavernous openings. The reader will imagine the beauty of the scene at sunrise and sunset, when as many as eighty or ninety bergs were sometimes in sight. The sea was intensely green from the presence of minute algae, through belts of which the vessel pa.s.sed, while the sun, sinking in a golden blaze, tipped and lighted up the ice and snow, making them sparkle as with brightest gems. A large number of tabular icebergs, with quant.i.ties of snow on their level tops, were met. They amused themselves by firing a 9-pounder Armstrong at one, which brought the ice down with a rattling crash, the face of the berg cracking, splitting, and splashing down with a roar, making the water below white with foam and powdered ice.
These icebergs were all stratified, at more or less regular distances, with blue lines, which before they capsized or canted from displacement of their centres of gravity, were always horizontal. During a gale, the _Challenger_ came into collision with a berg, and lost her jibboom, "dolphin-striker," and other head-gear. An iceberg in a fog or gale of wind is not a desirable obstruction to meet at sea.
[Ill.u.s.tration: THE _CHALLENGER_ MADE FAST TO ST. PAUL"S ROCKS (SOUTH ATLANTIC).]
The observations made for deep-sea temperatures gave some remarkable results. Here, among the icebergs, a band or stratum of water was found, at a depth of eighty to 200 fathoms, _colder_ than the water either above or below it. Take one day as an example: on the 19th of February the surface temperature of the sea-water was 32; at 100 fathoms it was 292; while at 300 fathoms it had risen to 33. In the Atlantic, on the eastern side about the tropics, the _bottom_ temperature was found to be very uniform at 352, while it might be broiling hot on the surface. Further south, on the west side of the Atlantic below the equator, the bottom was found to be very nearly three degrees cooler. It is believed that the cold current enters the Atlantic from the Antarctic, and does not rise to within 1,700 fathoms of the surface. These, and many kindred points, belong more properly to another section of this work, to be hereafter discussed.
[Ill.u.s.tration: THE NATURALIST"S ROOM ON BOARD THE "CHALLENGER."]
The _Challenger_ had crossed, and sounded, and dredged the broad Atlantic from Madeira to the West Indies-finding their deepest water off the Virgin Islands; thence to Halifax, Nova Scotia; recrossed it to the Azores, Canary, and Cape de Verde Islands; recrossed it once more in a great zig-zag from the African coast, through the equatorial regions to Bahia, Brazil; and thence, if the expression may be used, by a great angular sweep through the Southern Ocean to Tristan d"Acunha _en route_ to the Cape, where they made an interesting discovery, one that, unlike their other findings, was most interesting to the _discovered_ also. It was that of _two_ modern Robinson Crusoes, who had been living by themselves a couple of years on a desolate rocky island, the name of which, "Inaccessible," rightly describes its character and position in mid ocean.
Juan Fernandez, the _locale_ of Defoe"s immortal story, is nothing to it now-a-days, and is constantly visited. On arrival at the island of Tristan d"Acunha, itself a miserable settlement of about a dozen cottages, the people, mostly from the Cape and St. Helena, some of them mulattoes, informed the officers of the _Challenger_ that two Germans, brothers, had some time before settled, for the purpose of catching seals, on a small island about thirty miles off, and that, not having been over there or seen any signs of them for a long time, they feared that they had perished. It turned out afterwards that the Tristan d"Acunha people had not taken any trouble in the matter, looking on them as interlopers on their fishing-grounds. They had promised to send them some animals-a bull, cow, and heifer-but, although they had stock and fowls of all kinds, had left them to their fate. But first as to this little-known Tristan d"Acunha, of which Lord George Campbell(29) furnishes the following account:-"It is a circular-shaped island, some nine miles in diameter, a peak rising in the centre 8,300 feet high-a fine sight, snow-covered as it is two-thirds of the way down. In the time of Napoleon a guard of our marines was sent there from the Cape; but the connection between Nap"s being caged at St. Helena and a guard of marines occupying this island is not very obvious, is it? Any way, that was the commencement of a settlement which has continued with varying numbers to this day, the marines having long ago been withdrawn, and now eighty-six people-men, women, and children-live here.... A precipitous wall of cliff, rising abruptly from the sea, encircles the island, excepting where the settlement is, and there the cliff recedes and leaves a long gra.s.s slope of considerable extent, covered with grey boulders. The cottages, in number about a dozen, look very Scotch from the ship, with their white walls, straw roofs, and stone d.y.k.es around them. Sheep, cattle, pigs, geese, ducks, and fowls they have in plenty, also potatoes and other vegetables, all of which they sell to whalers, who give them flour or money in exchange. The appearance of the place makes one shudder; it looks so thoroughly as though it were always blowing there-which, indeed, it is, heavy storms continually sweeping over, killing their cattle right and left before they have time to drive them under shelter. They say that they have lost 100 head of cattle lately by these storms, which kill the animals, particularly the calves, from sheer fatigue." The men of the place often go whaling or sealing cruises with the ships that touch there.
[Ill.u.s.tration: DREDGING IMPLEMENTS USED BY THE "CHALLENGER."
Fig. 1, Sounding machines. Fig. 2, Slip water-bottles. Fig. 3, Deep-sea thermometer. Fig. 4, The dredge. Fig. 5, Cup sounding lead.]
The _Challenger_ steamed slowly over to Inaccessible Island during the night, and anch.o.r.ed next morning off its northern side, where rose a magnificent wall of black cliff, splashed green with moss and ferns, rising sheer 1,300 feet above the sea. Between two headlands a strip of stony beach, with a small hut on it, could be seen. This was the residence of our two Crusoes.
Their story, told when the first exuberance of joy at the prospect of being taken off the island had pa.s.sed away, was as follows:-One of the brothers had been cast away on Tristan d"Acunha some years before, in consequence of the burning of his ship. There he and his companions of the crew had been kindly treated by the settlers, and told that at one of the neighbouring islands 1,700 seals had been captured in one season. Telling this to a brother when he at last reached home in the Fatherland, the two of them, fired with the ambition of acquiring money quickly, determined to exile themselves for a while to the islands. By taking pa.s.sage on an outward-bound steamer from Southampton, and later transferring themselves to a whaler, they reached their destination in safety on the 27th of November, 1871. They had purchased an old whale-boat-mast, sails, and oars complete-and landed with a fair supply of flour, biscuit, coffee, tea, sugar, salt, and tobacco, sufficient for present needs. They had blankets and some covers, which were easily filled with bird"s feathers-a German could hardly forget his national luxury, his feather-bed. They had provided themselves with a wheelbarrow, sundry tools, pot and kettles; a short Enfield rifle, and an old fowling-piece, and a very limited supply of powder, bullets, and shot. They had also sensibly provided themselves with some seeds, so that, all in all, they started life on the island under favourable circ.u.mstances.
The west side of the island, on which they landed, consisted of a beach some three miles in length, with a bank of earth, covered with the strong long tussock gra.s.s, rising to the cliff, which it was just possible to scale. The walls of rock by which the island is bounded afforded few opportunities for reaching the comparatively level plateau at the top.
Without the aid of the gra.s.s it was impossible, and in one place, which had to be climbed constantly, it took them an hour and a half of hard labour, holding on with hands and feet, and _even teeth_, to reach the summit. Meantime, they had found on the north side a suitable place for building their hut, near a waterfall that fell from the side of the mountain, and close to a wood, from which they could obtain all the firewood they required. Their humble dwelling was partly constructed of spars from the vessel that had brought them to the island, and was thatched with gra.s.s. About this time (December) the seals were landing in the coast, it being the pupping season, and they killed nineteen. In hunting them their whale-boat, which was too heavy for two men to handle, was seriously damaged in landing through the surf; but yet, with constant bailing, could be kept afloat. A little later they cut it in halves, and constructed from the best parts a smaller boat, which was christened the _Sea Cart_. During the summer rains their house became so leaky that they pulled it down, and shifted their quarters to another spot. At the beginning of April the tussock gra.s.s, by which they had ascended the cliff, caught fire, and their means of reaching game, in the shape of wild pigs and goats, was cut off. Winter (about our summer-time, as in Australia, &c.) was approaching, and it became imperative to think of laying in provisions. By means of the _Sea Cart_ they went round to the west side, and succeeded in killing two goats and a pig, the latter of which furnished a bucket of fat for frying potatoes. The wild boars there were found to be almost uneatable; but the sows were good eating. The goats" flesh was said to be very delicate. An English ship pa.s.sed them far out at sea, and they lighted a fire to attract attention, but in vain; while the surf was running too high, and their _Cart_ too shaky to attempt to reach it.
Hitherto they had experienced no greater hardships than they had expected, and were prepared for. But in June [mid-winter] their boat was, during a storm, washed off the beach, and broken up. This was to them a terrible disaster; their old supplies were exhausted, and they were practically cut off from not merely the world in general, but even the rest of the island.
They got weaker and weaker, and by August were little better than two skeletons.
The sea was too tempestuous, and the distance too great for them to attempt to swim round (as they afterwards did) to another part of the island. But succour was at hand; they were saved by the penguins, a very clumsy form of relief. The female birds came ash.o.r.e in August to lay their eggs in the nests already prepared by their lords and masters, the male birds, who had landed some two or three weeks previously. Our good Germans had divided their last potato, and were in a very weak and despondent condition when the pleasant fact stared them in the face that they might now fatten on eggs _ad libitum_. Their new diet soon put fresh heart and courage in them, and when, early in September, a French bark sent a boat ash.o.r.e, they determined still to remain on the island. They arranged with the captain for the sale of their seal-skins, and bartered a quant.i.ty of eggs for some biscuit and a couple of pounds of tobacco. Late in October a schooner from the Cape of Good Hope called at the island, and on leaving, promised to return for them, as they had decided to quit the island, not having had any success in obtaining peltries or anything else that is valuable; but she did not re-appear, and in November their supplies were again at starvation-point. Selecting a calm day, the two Crusoes determined to swim round the headland to the eastward, taking with them their rifles and blankets, and towing after them an empty oil-barrel containing their clothes, powder, matches, and kettle. This they repeated later on several occasions, and, climbing the cliffs by the tussock gra.s.s, were able to kill or secure on the plateau a few of the wild pigs.
Sometimes one of them only would mount, and after killing a pig would cut it up and lower the hams to his brother below. They caught three little sucking-pigs, and towed them alive through the waves, round the point of their landing-place, where they arrived half drowned. They were put in an enclosure, and fed on green stuff and penguin"s eggs-good feeding for a delicate little porker. Attempting on another occasion to tow a couple in the same way, the unfortunate pigs met a watery grave in the endeavour to weather the point, and one of the brothers barely escaped, with some few injuries, through a terrible surf which was beating on their part of the coast. Part of their time was pa.s.sed in a cave during the cold weather.
When the _Challenger_ arrived their only rifle had burst in two places, and was of little use, while their musket was completely burst in all directions, and was being used as a blow-pipe to freshen the fire when it got low. Their only knives had been made by themselves from an old saw.
Their library consisted of eight books and an atlas, and these, affording their only literary recreation for two years, they knew almost literally by heart. When they first landed they had a dog and two pups, which they, doubtless, hoped would prove something like companions. The dogs almost immediately left, and made for the penguin rookeries, where they killed and worried the birds by hundreds. One of them became mad, and the brothers thought it best to shoot the three of them. Captain Nares gave the two Crusoes a pa.s.sage to the Cape, where one of them obtained a good situation; the other returned to Germany, doubtless thinking that about a couple of dozen seal-skins-all they obtained-was hardly enough to reward them for their two years" dreary sojourn on Inaccessible Island.
[Ill.u.s.tration]
Chapter III.
THE MEN OF THE SEA.