ON A SUNNY AFTERNOON, I stood atop the deckhouse, leaning against the mast and peering at the northern tip of Chatham Island on the eastern rim of the Galápagos group. On Chatham lies Wreck Bay, the anchorage of the seat of the government. Ecuador owns the archipelago—the Enchanted Isles, as they are known. But I wasn’t making official calls. My desire originally had been to pull straight for Seymour; and at the Army Base give Pagan the once-over posthaste, store a few fresh supplies, and pass on my way. But the calms, the storms, the adverse currents, the loss of my engine had thrown my timetable off, and now, arriving in the Galápagos after July first, there was no Army Base to go to. According to my information it was to be moved out by July first. However, I could see no loss in going to the site on the off-chance that the move had not yet been made.
The wind was holding at south; but it had toned in strength. My interest was taken mainly with ascertaining my set to northward by the strong current sweeping up from southward. I watched the north tip of the island, and saw it, as I suspected, shifting to south of me.
I shifted the angle of rudder, turning the bow to southward, and set myself for a broad reach that would stem me into sight of Seymour late at night—and assure me of an early morning arrival. I passed Chatham before dusk. I noticed that my driftage to northward had been considerable despite course corrections. I reset the straining tiller and went below to read.
I had a few pages to go with the “Paradise” of the Divine Comedy, so I wandered a few hours among pleasant words, peering out occasionally into the black. At nine I ended the mystic tale and went on deck to ponder its soul-stirring aspects. I found that the wind had petered out and Pagan was jolting in a confused sea. The sails were slatting and the running gear was banging as the disjointed rollers jostled her. “Bolts and shackles,” a calm.
All through the night the flat air held, and the sea slapped and smacked along the bilges. I had no idea with what speed I was drifting north. Some places on the chart showed two knots; others three. There was no certainty. The chart was an issue of the British Admiralty—of excellent artisanship—but it was old, the only thing available on the Galápagos. I conjectured all the night on what my position was, on how long I had been drifting. North of my track somewhere were three small islands: Tower—Marchena—Pinta. According to the chart they were barren, waterless, seared lava. I cupped my hands to my ears, listening for the pounding of seas on rock face.
Deep in the night the sky clouded over and there were no more stellar reflections in the black water. Darkness closed down over me like a fog, and I began listening more intently. Another hour dragged past—several times I thought I heard something. Finally I shipped Pagan’s ungainly oars, fitted them into their rowlocks on the gunwale, seated myself in the cockpit . . . and waited. Pagan, because of her shallow draft and low tonnage, was movable under oars; in fact, to a degree she was maneuverable. An eerie silence pervaded everything, not a whisper escaped that massive pond of reflecting water. I placed the cats beside me in their abandon-ship box I had built them after Malpelo. It floated. In it were provisions to do them till they could reach land. We listened with ears strained to north.
Much later a puff of wind stirred out of the southwest for a few unsteady minutes. It fell to a void before I could trim the sails. Left again alone with my imagination and the dark night, I fell into a series of wild speculations. That wind from the southwest—what did that mean? Where had the wind sat when I was reading? From the southwest? I couldn’t remember having looked at the compass once during the time of reading. The lethargy of the past three days had led me to trust the wind in the south. Had it shifted? Had I actually been sailing northwest when I had thought I was sailing west?
I sat another hour, quieter than I had sat for days.
Hardly an hour later I was startled awake, by the unmistakable thunder of seas on a closed shore. I made the sound dead to west of north; about two miles off, as I could reckon. It was the din of water breaking against solid cliffs. I bent to the ungainly oars and brought Pagan’s bow off to the east and labored her into the black night. In a short while the roar had grown considerably.
The air was dead. Pagan’s sails slatted from side to side on each light swell, popping with a maddening persistence. Blocks rattled, sheets dragged in the sea and tossed water in discriminately across the decks.
I was thinking of the day at Malpelo, and wishing I had a fine gale on now.
The first streaks of the new day were overdue. So I leaned more heavily on the oars. Hard by to starboard, a ragged, towering shadow was making up. At its base a gray surf was surging to and fro like heartbeats.
I could faintly observe a clear alley of escape in the weakening dark, around a hump in a bulge on the eastern coast. I pulled to clear the stomach of rock and at daylight I sat fascinated, as barely two boat lengths away the escarpment, breasting the seas rolling out of the windy south, moved away. Fore and aft, the full length of the island, great beetling cliffs, underwashed by the bristling sea, glowered on me.
My chart showed that it was Marchena Island, cliff-bound and unreceptive. I was nudging along with the current. So far as I could tell, all ahead was clear. A little to the north was Pinta, as yet not in view—small and easily avoided, according to the chart. I had only to drift around the northern tip and await a wind.
Overhead the sky had become a grizzly curtain, the sea was as smooth as a dance floor. With daylight I expected wind; but as late as when the sun first showed I was still in a void. Shortly afterward, I drifted off the low end of Marchena, only to find Pinta, twelve miles distant, lying more or less in my track. The peculiar thing was that I couldn’t decide whether she was astride my path or not. One moment it appeared so, and the next it was questionable. The bowsprit, along which I was attempting to sight the island, was circling like a nervous finger.
I presently concluded that whether Pinta was in my line of drift or not, I should start rowing. The current was shifting me toward the little isle at two knots or better.
On her southern end was an active volcano at the water’s edge. It rose a hundred feet and from its blunt summit a broad column of thin smoke hung in the dour air. Its base lay in the sea; and I somehow felt that the water would be hot there. Beside it lay a shingled beach which ran onto a parched hill topped by another crater. The land everywhere had a naked, withered look. I thought of the word “dry” as I looked up the hostile slopes. Here and there was a cactuslike growth, seared gray-brown bushes, and stumpy, hungry-looking trees. Totally uninviting!
I started the rowing when I was yet a long way off, but soon wished I had started earlier. I was rowing to west because I felt it would succeed more easily than fighting the current east. There was easily eight miles of rowing to do, so I spent the first few hours at regulated long stroking. At first I judged that I would easily clear the island, and doubtless lost much valuable time when I relaxed to half-stroke.
As I drifted closer I saw a pack of seals sporting in the water. When they saw me, they stopped, with eyes showing above the water, staring from their shiny heads, looking first like boulders, then like apparitions.
One, not suspecting my dire straits, came up to offer friendship. He swam in unusually close, often ducking under the oars. I am sure we would have become great pals if I hadn’t been so frantically at work. I would have loved to catch him a fish and feed him by hand. And I’m sure he was all for it.
Suddenly, I found that I was closing at a quicker rate . . . an alarming rate! I was midway across the island, and no longer in the lee of Marchena; the full current had gripped me and was thrusting me as if I were in a millrace.
Though I was clear of the volcano, I could feel its hot breath and sense its hostility. I rowed the faster, not looking up, till my arms cramped.
I looked up to gauge my progress and what I saw actually refreshed me with the terror it held. I was less than a hundred yards offshore and it was easily several hundred yards to the point of the projecting land up the coast. An impossible contest. I stroked with such wild haste that, dipping short, I missed the water altogether and flopped heels skyward onto the hatchway step. The oars went flying beamward, out of reach.
I thought of plunging in to retrieve them, but on hearing the lapping of water licking over rocks I knew it would be in vain. There were still three oars in the cabin. My first thought was to break them out; before going down I took a look, and prospects looked so grim I didn’t bother to go below.
Ordinarily I’m not one to give up, but what I saw made me quit thinking of trying to save my boat. I was seventy-five yards from the pockmarked wall of lava, and hundreds of yards from the point. There was nothing to anchor on; nothing I could do. I gave up. I had to save myself.
I strained my faculties for the next thing to do. The cats. They were in their floating box; I tossed them into the rubber raft and pushed it off the rail. I made ready to cast it adrift and climb in.
Land was less than a hundred feet away. The sea was washing against it with subdued thuds, but with force nevertheless.
I stared quickly about for the last thing to do. I thought of water, food, clothes. But I thought of the fight back upcurrent with small oars to the shingled beach, and the need for an immediate start.
Then, for some unknown reason, but most likely because I was grasping for last threads, I raced to the bow and plopped my rustic anchor into the placid water. Bubbles trailed it where it plunged. It ran to its chain’s end. The chain hung up and down in water empty of a chance ledge. There was nothing for the anchor to snag against. I turned to run to my raft to make away while there was still time. Then a darkening line showed on the water, ruffling it and closing in on the port beam. I hardly had time to grab the tiller before a squall raced aboard Pagan, enclosing her sails in shrieking arms, pressing them flat, whipping them with a faint rain.
Pagan heeled sharply to the flurry. I whooped and hollered exultantly as she worked off the now roaring shore and bit into sea room. In a scant twenty minutes—well clear of the scorched land—I rounded up to the wind and dropped the mainsail. Before tying in a reef, I pulled the pneumatic raft to the counter and handed out my despondent cats. They strode stiffly below, disclaiming for the moment the sea and its abruptnesses. I massaged them briskly in a fuzzy towel and folded them into an army blanket. To smooth their outraged humors, I took my pole to the deck and cast a singing, well-baited line off the quarter.
Gawky returned to the cabin top after having deserted us in our moment of peril. I shoved him below, out of the weather.
I made the course southwesterly, to clear the threat of other northerly island groups. I forgot about Seymour since it was back to southeast, and pointed for Albemarle, the largest and westernmost island in the group. It was my intention to make for the leeward side of the great sprawling island to rest and collect myself, but mostly to sink into restful sleep for the night.
The wind was stout and Pagan stemmed the tide ideally, for now we were heading south fighting the current. At dusk I noticed a gray wash of sea along an extended ledge off the north of Albemarle. It jutted out a good mile. There is nothing more frightful to a seaman than shallow reefs kicking up a growling surf.
Halfway along the ledge I could make out the cold-looking bones of what looked to be two wrecked vessels. In a foot or two of water they sat, lonely and stark, awash and helpless. They were evidently incautious fishermen who had rounded the point too sharply, or had been swept there by the current, or by one of the frequent tidal waves native to the Galápagos. I gave the whole cape healthy clearance.
The sight of the tortured hulks made me jittery. I decided not to pull into the lee of the cliffs and anchor—instead to shape a course down the northwestern shore, tack around the western point, and beat into Tagus Cove, probably on the morrow.
By now Pagan was much fouled on the bottom with shellfish. I was wishing I had some high tides and sandy beaches as in the Perlas. I needed to careen her a tide or so, to scrape her and paint her. I thought of returning round to Seymour where the Army might be. But I chased the thought away because of the wrecks on the point. Too, I was afraid some unavoidable delay might crop up which would jeopardize the safety of my trip. Seymour wasn’t a necessity, so I decided against going there.
Floreana Island was about a hundred miles distant. I thought seriously of going there to do the hull work. The chart accredited her with a beach and sandy shore; also, there is a postbox there. In that way I could kill two birds with one stone, by doing the hull and mailing the ponderous letter I had written to Mary. Besides, doing the work alone, I could be done all the quicker and be sooner on my way.
Post Office Bay at Floreana, I had learned in Panama, is an ancient mailing station. It was created by whaling ships of old, outward bound to their hunting waters. In passing they dropped off letters to folks at home—at the same time procuring fresh water and fruits and vegetables as well as the great land tortoises (galápagos) for fresh meat.
If another ship happened in on the way home, she obligingly picked up and delivered the mail found staked on the beach in an old box. Today a barrel stands there. Occasionally, even now, a northeastern-bound fisherman, or in fact anyone clearing the island for the mainland, cleans it out and deposits the load in a post office in Panama or San Diego. Amazingly enough letters posted there—whether stamped or not—have been known to arrive as addressed . . . in time.
After a night of intermittent naps, and steering mostly by guess, I wound up at daybreak negotiating the strait between Narborough Island and Tagus Cove. I passed into the embayment and rounded up for the anchorage. An hour later I went below for a “nap.” I slept the day out and all that night.