The Unknown Shore (28 page)

‘Not a bird, Jack, you see,’ said Tobias.

‘How big?’ cried Jack, vividly alive now, with terror coursing up and down his spine.

‘The size of an indifferent lion,’ said Tobias. ‘You can see him if you bend and look under the yellow bush. He is tearing up the earth, and biting it.’

‘Can he climb?’

‘Oh, admirably.’

‘Toby, what shall we do?’

‘Why, unless you wish to go and look at him, we had better go on. It is getting late. But do not hurry so, Jack, nor make jerking movements. If he should come out, take no notice of him, or look at him kindly – do not provoke him. He is not a froward puma, I believe.’

Naked fear is the keenest spur of all; in spite of Tobias’ placid assurance, Jack was terrified, and his fright carried him down the
long stream to the lake in such a state of nervous tension that he noticed neither his wounded feet nor his famished stomach. Fear enabled him to do what he could not have done unterrified, and it needed all Tobias’ fortitude and all his remaining strength to keep up with him.

They came out into the open at the beginning of the twilight, as the rain started to fall. Many of the canoes were already on the water, and as they hurried down several more were launched: the cacique was chattering with impatience, holding the stern of the canoe with Captain Cheap in it. They carried the bundle to the water’s edge; the captain and the cacique seized it and threw it in. There were three other Indians in the canoe.

‘Wait,’ said Captain Cheap, waving them back, and the cacique interrupted with a flow of words. The remaining canoes were launched on either side of them, and the cacique’s canoe floated out from the shore. The Indians began to paddle – all the canoes were paddling now, with the blades flashing and the water white behind.

Jack hailed: they both cried out together, and over the widening water came a confused, vague answer, half-heard and interrupted by the cacique. ‘You can wait …other Indians …no room …another canoe.’

They stood there silent on the bank. No shouting would bring back the boats; and they watched them over the water until they disappeared in the darkness and the rain.

‘T
OBY,’
said Jack, turning towards the deserted shore with a ghastly attempt at lightness, when his aching eyes could no longer see anything on the lake, ‘you said that we could not be worse off when the barge left us. Don’t you wish you had held your tongue now?’

‘It was a thoughtless thing to say,’ replied Tobias in a steady voice. ‘It smacked of hubris – of insolent security.’ And after a few minutes he said, ‘Let us go down the shore, where the trees are thicker, and see whether we cannot find a little shelter. If we can sleep, we shall be able to think more clearly in the morning, what to do.’

They wandered down the grey edge of the lake, and the sad waves came lapping in on the yielding mud; they looked for a tree with a thick enough trunk to give them a lee and tolerably even dry ground below it, but the darkness was coming on fast, and they could find nothing that protected them more than a very little. The roots of the tree which they had chosen (a kind of beech) would not allow them to lie down; they crouched, huddled together for warmth, in a half-sitting position, shivering with cold and hunger; nevertheless, they went to sleep – lapsed into a kind of stunned unconsciousness.

Jack awoke in the black night, cramped and twisted with hunger, still partly entangled with a vivid dream of those beautiful days in the women’s wigwam, the smoky wigwam, the warmth and the fish sizzling on the pink embers: when he had gathered his wits for a few minutes he said, ‘Toby? Are you awake? Do you smell it? There is a smell of fire; I swear it.’

The wind had died to a breeze that eddied along the edge of the forest, and from time to time it brought them a whiff of smoke. ‘Yes,’ said Tobias. ‘It is smoke.’ They set out towards it, often stopping like dogs to sniff: there was a little suffused light from the east, and the white frost helped them as they blundered through the trees. They
had not gone far into the most sheltered part before they saw a wigwam, lit from within and smoking at the top: there were loud, harsh, furious voices inside.

‘It sounds like one of their religious …’ began Tobias.

‘I don’t care if they are raising the Devil,’ said Jack. ‘Wait for me here.’

Tobias heard the noise redouble, and in a moment Jack returned. ‘They kicked me in the face as I tried to crawl in,’ he said, ‘but at least they know we are here.’

A triangle of light appeared in the low entrance of the wigwam and an old woman peered out, beckoning. Going into an assembly of unknown savages, defenceless, on hands and knees, might very well be a matter for some hesitation, and it was a measure of their desperate state that they hurried in at once. There were several Indians, men and women; and on the ground near the fire lay a naked chief, as thin as a man could be, and he was plainly dying.

Jack and Toby sat silent, motionless and inconspicuous: the shouting went on – it seemed to be ritual, for sometimes two men shouted together, with the same words. At dawn the old woman took a piece of seal, and holding it stretched between her teeth and her left hand, sliced off pieces with a shell; she passed it raw to the Indians, but for Jack and Tobias she put it to the fire, spitting liquid blubber from a piece she chewed upon the slices until they were done. They did not understand the significance of this, nor of many other things; but they ate the seal.

Shortly after this three of the men, more brutal than any they had yet seen (their cheek-bones were slashed with parallel, raised scars, and their faces were scarcely human at all), went out, motioning Jack to go with them. Although they were not part of the tribe that had joined with the cacique, they too had carried their canoe over the watershed, and they now began putting it together. Tobias had picked up a certain amount of the Indians’ language by this time, but he found, when they would answer him at all, that these people spoke a different dialect: few of the words were the same, but at least it was clear that they were going to the north – that much could be learned by pointing – and it was probable from their manner that the Indians expected them and had been told about them. But this was not sure: the Indians’ lack of surprise might
come from mere indifference. The only certainty was that these Indians, even more than the last, looked upon Jack and Tobias as nuisances, if not worse.

The lowest savages have little curiosity. There are some who are unmoved by things outside their comprehension – metal, cloth and ships do not interest the most primitive of all. The survivors of the
Wager
were of consequence only to the cacique, whose comprehension was comparatively enlarged and to whom their remaining possessions were of value. These Indians knew nothing of firearms, had no notion of connecting whiteness with power and wealth and disbelieved what the cacique told them. They thought the cacique a fool and his protégés a troop of effeminate, uninteresting buffoons.

And what is more, men with different-coloured skins have different smells: the Indians (whose scent was very keen, which made it worse) thought the white smell perfectly disgusting. The white colour, too, was loathsomely ugly, in their opinion – corpse-like, and probably produced by a discreditable disease which might very well be infectious. Still more important, it was obvious to the dullest Indian intelligence that many powerful gods hated these people. Why otherwise should they be so driven up and down, despised and wretched? And some of this hatred might be transferred to anyone who befriended them: their ill-luck might rub off. Lastly, it was clear to the Indians that these wretched people had no religious sense, no sense of piety; they knew nothing about the various beings who were to be appeased by ritual words and gestures; they did not even understand the simplest propitiation of the earth and sky. They were best ignored.

Some faint notion of all this had been seeping into Tobias’ mind for a long while, and as they sat a little apart, watching the Indians at work (the Indians had angrily rejected Jack’s help, and when he brought them a fine length of supplejack they threw it into the water), he told Jack of his suspicions.

‘You may be right,’ said Jack, ‘particularly about the smell. I have always noticed how they hold their noses when we are by. I had thought it was the captain; but they do it still, I find.’

The Indians were ready. They renewed the ridges of their tribal scars with ash, and they stood there, dull blue with cold, shifting the little square of fur they wore to cover their windward sides; their
deep-sunk eyes were bloodshot and rimmed with scarlet from the night-long smoke in the wigwam, and they all seemed to be on the edge of a furious rage. An old woman came from the tent: she was a person of some distinction, it appeared, for they neither kicked nor struck her, and she wore an ample cloak made of vultures’ skins with the sparse feathers still on. Jack and Tobias stood in the most anxious hesitation: angry shouts asked them why they did not get in, the fools? And, half-comprehending, they scrambled aboard.

All day long they paddled over the lake, and all day long the snowy Cordilleras retreated from them: in the evening they came to the outflowing river that drained the lake northwards, a fast, white-flowing stream, and here the Indians put into the shore. They put up their wigwam, but they would not allow any blasphemous, smelly, unlucky lepers in it (who would?); nor would they feed them. Jack and Tobias understood the general purpose of their remarks – it could not have been mistaken – and withdrew to an overhanging rock, which, by a very happy chance, had a deep pile of dry drifted leaves under it for a bed, and, more than that, the leaves had protected the still-edible stalks of some plants of rhubarb. They slept so well here that the Indians were up before them – they saw to their horror that in another five minutes the canoe might have gone, leaving them in that desolation.

The night had been fair, but the day was as foul as could be: rain and snow from the north-west, a furious river to contend with, long, thundering cascades, whirlpools and spray that put out the pot of fire amidships. They hurtled down the river with destruction on either hand, at a terrifying, lurching speed that brought them to the sea that night. The Indians hauled up on a stony beach and vanished into the woods, no doubt to an encampment that they knew. It was too dark to look for any food, and as they dared not wander away from the canoe, Jack and Tobias lay by it, on the stones under the sheeting rain. At about three in the morning Jack made an attempt at joining the Indians by the fire that they had at last succeeded in lighting – it glowed through the trees – but this gave great offence, and they kicked and beat him away.

The dawn came, after a hideously protracted night, and the Indians put out into the northern sea. At last Jack and Tobias had come into the water that they had laboured for so long; but whether
they alone of all the
Wager’s
crew they could not tell; nor could they tell where they were going now, whether they would rejoin their friends or whether, perhaps, they might be kept as slaves. At low water they came in to a rocky cove and landed to gather shellfish; it was an excellent place, and it was a very great relief indeed to Jack and Tobias. But they were so afraid of being marooned that they dared not stop to eat; they filled their pockets, Jack’s hat and Tobias’ night-cap – in a vile condition now – and as soon as they saw the Indians turn towards the canoe they ran for it. Jack made as elegant a bow as the circumstances would allow (he was standing on slippery rock) and presented the handsomest of the mussels they had found to the old woman. She looked amazed, but she took it, and when she had washed it a great many times she ate it.

They now headed straight out to sea, steering north-east with a moderate wind, and after a while Jack, putting his battered old hat beside him (it had once been a marine’s) began to copy the Indians in front – between the long, powerful strokes they held the paddle in one hand and took a limpet with the other and ate it.

‘Capital limpets, Toby,’ he said, over his shoulder, tossing the shell into the sea. But instead of a civil reply there was a shrieking Indian voice, screaming out in a terrible passion. In an instant the canoe was arock with violence. One Indian had Jack by the neckerchief, twisting it hard, another had him by the ankles, taking a grip to throw him overboard: Tobias hampered the rear man, and the old woman lashed about her with a spear, howling with fury. By some fantastic chance the canoe did not overset, and in a few moments the old woman quelled the tumult. She harangued them, and although they still looked very ugly, the men set to their paddling again, but not without turning from time to time to threaten Jack and to point to the bottom of the canoe. Jack, three-parts throttled and entirely at a loss, stared back at them stupidly.

‘I conceive,’ whispered Tobias, ‘that they had rather you did not throw the shells into the sea.’ It was quite true: each Indian had a little pile of shells by him – a simple act of politeness towards Plotho, the limpet-god, obvious to a child of three.

‘Damn your eyes,’ said Jack, loosening his neck-cloth and taking up his paddle, ‘I shall not eat anything until we are ashore and they cannot see me.’

In the late afternoon, when the canoe came in with the land again and they steered for a little, sheltered, tree-grown island, the Indians, as soon as they had hauled out the canoe, picked up their limpet-shells and carried them carefully beyond the high-water mark; Tobias and Jack meekly did the same. This met with a certain surly approval, and when, a little later, Jack was seen with a bunch of purple berries, on the point of eating them, an Indian dashed them out of his hand, and by a pantomime of death in agony, showed that they were poisonous.

This, however, marked the highest point of their good relations with the Indians. This tribe, like all the others, had an elaborate code of religious behaviour that governed all their waking moments; they were continually propitiating a host of malignant or at least very short-tempered spirits, and their guests were as continually offending them. It did not look as though a human sacrifice to the outraged deities could be long delayed: in the meantime the Indians drove them very hard and gave them nothing whatsoever from the two seals they killed.

It was some relief, therefore, when, at the end of a day of infernal hunger and toil, the canoe rounded a headland and suddenly opened a little cove all lined with other canoes and dotted with men. They could see Mr Hamilton’s red coat – pink rags now – at once, and this was obviously the meeting-place.

It was some relief, but not very much: they were too tired to feel any strong emotion. In this stormy, cold, wet, rocky world the chief idea was self-preservation, even among those born to it; among strangers there was little room for any other thought. Campbell and Captain Cheap were sitting wretchedly under the inadequate shelter of a streaming rock: neither side was particularly pleased by the encounter – nobody seemed pleased. They were, in fact, reduced to a state not far from the last indifference.

At this place the cacique had a very large canoe – how it came to be there no one asked or cared: they were as incurious as savages now – and as the Taitao Indians were at that time going no farther, except for one small canoe that would go some way on in a week’s time, he intended embarking the whole party in it and pursuing his journey alone. Mr Hamilton, however, was a man in whom proper pride had outlasted starvation and exposure, and he would not
consent to travel under the insolent rule of the cacique. He would take his chance in the Taitao canoe that would go next week, and he would make his own way after that, if he could; he hoped with all his heart that they would meet again, and he would pray for them each night, as he hoped they would pray for him. They left him, not alone, it is true, but among a tribe of brutish savages who scarcely came up to his shoulder as he stood there on the beach, an erect, soldierly figure in spite of his rags.

The big canoe was monstrously heavy: it was heavier than anything they had ever seen among the Indians, and it needed a strong crew, six or eight men at least; but all the crew it had was the cacique’s slave, Jack, Tobias and Campbell. The captain could not work, and the cacique would not; he squatted there, with his hideous wife and the surviving child, chattering sometimes, and grinning. His unbelievable vanity seemed stronger even than his desire to stay alive, for he would not bear a hand when for want of it they were almost sure to be lost, in overgrown seas, tide-rips and the thousand dangers of coasting the worst shore in the world. Still he sat, like a huge monkey. Yet in general the weather was not so extreme as it had been when the barge made its attempt: the cold grew stronger every day, but the full gales were rarer, and it was just possible for four paddles to work the canoe up towards Chiloe.