The Cruise of the Alerte quotes

… work was done more promptly and smoothly, the old friction disappeared, a cloud seemed to have been lifted from the vessel, cheerfulness prevailed, and when we sailed to Trinidad and the real business and difficulties commenced all was got through in a most satisfactory fashion.

Grumbling is the Englishman’s privilege on land, still more so at sea, where some growling is absolutely necessary to relieve the monotony of ship-life

; after leaving Bahia an unusually small amount of this privilege was enjoyed on the Alerte.

We had come to the conclusion, I know not for what reason, that we should find an island consisting for the most part of great sand-hills; but there was not the smallest patch of sandy beach to be seen anywhere.

Sheer from the sea rose great rocks of volcanic formation, dark and rugged

;

They need not apply to me for an early allotment of shares in the great syndicate. We have not made our fortunes just yet. I will anticipate by giving the assayist’s report. It ran thus:—

“Volcanic hornblende. Commercial value⁠—nil.”

But we did not waste much time in building our castles in the air, and returned to business.

With the exercise of a very little imagination one could distinguish on that wonderful equatorial sky oceans and continents, mountains of snow and glowing volcanoes, and immense plains of indescribable beauty.

One of the characteristics of the atmosphere of the doldrums is the opaque appearance of the lower banks of clouds.

At night they often look like solid black walls close to one; so much so that I was twice called up by our absurd second mate, who had been terrified by the sudden discovery that a large, hitherto unknown island was just under our lee.

On the summit of the island there floats almost constantly, even on the clearest day, a wreath of dense vapour, never still, but rolling and twisting into strange shapes as the wind eddies among the crags.

And above this cloud-wreath rise mighty pinnacles of coal-black rock, like the spires of some gigantic Gothic cathedral piercing the blue southern sky.

The loftiest peak is about three thousand feet above the sea, but on account of the extreme precipitousness of the island it appears much higher.

… had expected, from what I had told them, to find this islet a strange, uncanny place, barren, torn by volcanic action and generally forbidding, and now they gazed at the shore with amazement, and confessed that my description of its scenery was anything but exaggerated.

It would be impossible to convey in words a just idea of the mystery of Trinidad.

The very colouring seems unearthly—in places dismal black, and in others the fire-consumed crags are of strange metallic hues, vermilion red and copper yellow. When one lands on its shores this uncanny impression is enhanced.

We were on a dangerous part of the mountain, and had it struck me it must have impelled me over a precipice several hundred feet in height. After this we followed parallel tracks wherever this was feasible.

The unstableness of Trinidad causes a perpetual sense of insecurity while one is on the mountains.

One knows not when some overhanging pinnacle may topple down. One great source of danger is that there are many declivities which can be descended but not ascended, and it would be easy to get hopelessly imprisoned at the foot of one of these.

This slope became steeper as we advanced and very dangerous, but it was impossible to retrace our steps. When we attempted to ascend, the mountain slid away under our feet, crumbling into ashes.

It was like climbing a treadmill.

So we had to abandon this hope and go still further down, lying on our backs, progressing inch by inch carefully, one of us occasionally sliding down a few yards and sending an avalanche before him.

Even when we were exploring remote districts we at last found that they fled in terror, instead of menacing us with their claws.

But the great mystery of this mysterious island is the forest of dead trees which covers it and which astonishes every visitor.

The following account of this wood is taken from the Cruise of the Falcon, and as it was nine years ago, so is it now:—

A coarse grass grew here and there between the rocks by the waterside, but there was no other vegetation on the bleak crags, though of course the mysterious dead trees, as everywhere else on this island, were lying thickly all around.

The foul birds and the land-crabs were the sole inhabitants of this solitude.

We now proceeded to make ourselves at home for the night. I collected the branches and trunks of the dead trees and built up a goodly pile of firewood, while the doctor prepared our supper.

I have, in The Cruise of the Falcon, described the peculiarly uncanny way in which a land-crab eats his food. I saw this night, as I kept watch, at least twenty of them at a time devouring the carcasses of their slain friends.

Each stood quite still, looking me straight in the face with his fixed outstarting eyes, and with an expression absolutely diabolical.

He pulled the food to pieces with his two front claws, and then, with deliberate motion, brought the fragments of flesh to his mouth with one claw, and chewed them up with a slow automatic action, but still those horrible eyes never moved, but stared …

They also brought off a specimen of a land-crab, which did not seem at all at home on our deck. He was introduced to Master Jacko, our monkey, whose horror at the uncouth apparition was intense.

The wise monkey would not get within reach of the crab’s nippers, but, having cleverly driven him into a corner, tried to push his ugly visitor through a scupper into the sea with a bit of firewood.

I must now apologise to Jacko for not having before this introduced him to my readers. He was a delightful little creature that we had purchased on the Praya at Bahia.

These pirates are the frigate or man-of-war birds. They do not fish themselves, but attack the honest fishers in midair, and compel them to surrender what they have caught.

The frigate-bird is of the orthodox piratical colour⁠—black⁠—but has a vermilion beak and a few white patches on its throat.

It has a forked tail, and wings of extraordinary length in proportion to its body, their spread sometimes attaining, it is said, as much as fifteen feet.

for the wind and sea had greatly moderated, and the doctor was enabled to come off to us at midday, with four volunteers and paid hands. They had been labouring hard with pick and shovel, and looked like it too.

Digging into the volcanic soil of Trinidad soon takes all superfluous flesh off.

Indeed, led on by the energetic doctor, they had worked harder, perhaps, than white men should in such a climate, and had a stale overstrained appearance, while they admitted that they felt somewhat slack.

They said that the Sugarloaf presented a magnificent appearance after one of these showers, for then a cascade 700 feet in height would pour down its almost perpendicular sides.

They had been enabled to fill their tanks and breakers with rainwater

, and had only used the condensing apparatus on one or two occasions, and then more by way of experiment, to see how it worked, than from necessity.

But, whatever may have been thought, there was, so far as I can remember, no expression given to these doubts, and each worked on with the same cheery will as at the beginning, even as if he were confident of success.

These men were determined, in an almost literal sense, to leave no stone unturned, and not to abandon that ravine until they had satisfied themselves as to whether the treasure was or was not there.

On the Sunday after my arrival on shore, December 22, we went off in the whaleboat to see how Pollock was getting on.

They kept us in a state of mystification for some time before they revealed the source of this marvellous knowledge, and the only information that Powell would vouchsafe us on the subject was to the effect that:—

“We found it slow here without the newspapers at breakfast, and have established telegraphic communication with England. All the latest racing intelligence comes through the tape in the doctor’s tent.”

But, before asking any questions, we greeted our long-absent friends.

… than usually fall to their lot, I suppose it is only in novels that those convenient hulks drift ashore containing just the very things the belated mariners are in want of, for, though we kept a careful lookout, nothing of the kind came our way.

Powell, I believe, though naturally a most kindhearted fellow, would have cheerfully sacrificed a vessel for a few hundred Turkish cigarettes, and we should all have been glad of a change of literature.

The library we had brought with us was well thumbed and well read, even to the advertisements. We had a motley assortment. We all became Shakespearean scholars; Bret Harte’s poems and the “Bab Ballads” we almost knew by heart;

Cloete-Smith began to reckon up what forces he had at his disposal. There were the two Englishmen, more or less white: these he called his Light Brigade. He called the two coloured men the Black Watch.

There was the monkey too, who could serve as an irregular force to harass the enemy generally⁠—a sort of “gorilla warfare” as I put it

—a remark which called forth a severe reprimand from the commander-in-chief. In the armoury department we had three repeating-rifles, two revolvers, and a case of surgical instruments.

When the provisions ran short, they would have lived, had we allowed them, on nothing but a few handfuls of rice or cassava, saying:—

“You gentlemen eat the meat; me and George, we used to anything, even starving⁠—you gentlemen not. We don’t want meat⁠—you do.”

In saying this, I do not wish it to be thought that I am making any invidious comparison between these two men and the two white sailors whom Knight had with him on board at this time.

and it was sad to think that all the energy of these men had been spent in vain.

They well deserved to succeed, and all the more so because they bore their disappointment with such philosophic cheeriness.

It was, obviously, quite useless to persevere any further in this vain search, especially as the difficulties of landing had so increased of late that our operations could only be conducted at a great risk to life.