Mystic Isles of the South Seas.

issing ships-A singular coincidence-Arrival of three of crew o

the quay, the lagoon was a wild scene. Squall after squall had dashed the rain upon my verandas during the night, and I could faintly hear the v

ith branches and the crimson leaves of the flamboyants. The people were hurrying to and from market in vehicles and on foot, soaked and anxious-looking as they struggled against the wind and rain. I walked the lengt

ars. The William Olsen, a San Francisco barkentine, kedged out into the lagoon as fast as possible, and through the tearing sheets of rain I glimpsed other vessels reaching

Japan, yet every decade or two a tidal-wave sweeps the lowlands and does great injury. Though this occurs but seldom, when the barometer falls low, the hearts of the owners of property and of the people who have experienced a

es as a condition existing always. Another oddity of the tides is that they are almost inappreciable, the difference between high and low tide hardly ever exceeding two feet. But every six months or so a roaring tide rolls in from far at sea, and, sweeping page 160with violence over the reef, breaks on the beach. Now was due such a wave, and its possibili

ority, knowledge of wind and reef, and, most of all, his never-failing bonhommie, keeper of barometer, thermometer, telescopes, chart

ying Bill, explained to me that some ignorant landsmen stated that this tidal regul

jib, and right 'ere on the leeward side of the bloody island, sheltered from the breeze. How about it at night, too, when the trade quits? The bleedin' tide rises and fal

uarter of an hour any day in the year just by looking at the shore or the reef and seein' wher

is concern, for he can go upon the reef to look for its tr

d from Tahiti, and the skipper was a handsome fellow who thought his job well lost for love. He became enamored of the wife of another captain. One night when by desperate scheming he had gotten her aboard, he suddenly gave orders to up anchor and away. T

ved in the only cabin-a tiny corner of the cuddy walled off-and ate her meals with her lover while Pincher commanded on deck. At a port in Peru t

as a piaster. Bill was square then, as he is now, and he borrows enough money to buy grub, and he steers right back to Papeete. Gott im Himmel! Were the owners glad to see that schooner again? They had g

re was only one in the Pacific of recent date whose fate was utterly unknown. She was the schooner El Dorado, w

of possibility. Nevertheless she may still be afloat though in a waterlogged condition and drifting about in the trackless wastes of the South Pacific. Then again she may have struck one of the countless reefs that infest that porti

ain't likely to get in the track of any bloody steamer. I've heard of those derelic's wanderin' r

e signal station. There I examined the semaphore, which showed a great white ball when the mail-steamships appeared, and other symbols for the arrivals of different kinds of craft, men-of-war, barks, and schooners. There was a cozy house for the lookout and his family, and, as

lowering clouds on the horizon, her anchors a thousand fathoms deep. The sun was drinking water through luminous pipes. The harbor was a gleaming surface, and the reef from this heig

below t

om of the sea, the

lichens, strange

angle,... a

er-island cutter, and smaller than those do not venture beyond the reef. She was downing her single sail, and the sun glinted

Et ees a schmall ves

gh my mind, I hurried down the hill. Under the club balcony I called

n, a jury rig, and barrels and boxe

rs of the common concomitants of wrecks,-starvation and corpses-disappeared as we made out their faces through the glasses. They stood out bronzed and hearty. The boat came up along the embankment, one of the three

their feet bare. The one at the helm was evidently an officer,

hat line

ized their hands and pulled them up on the wall. They were as rugged as lions in the open, burned as brown

you from?" I in

turnly, "Schooner El Dorado." He said it almost angrily, as if he were for

who was in the crowd now gathered. "George

n of assent, but the retired

g a Doctor Funk when I looked toward the pa

ter. They were stiff in the legs. The two rowers smiled, and

mpty. We've come thirty-six hundr

ooner El Dorado." vouchsafed the th

e had a keen love of adventure, and twenty years in the tropics had not dimmed his interest in the marvelous sea.

ving it might be needed untouched as evidence of some sort. There are no wharf thieves and no fences in T

rank quarts of coffee, and ate a beefsteak each, dozens of eggs, and many slices of fried ham, with scores of hot biscuits. They never spoke during the meal. A customs-officer had accompanied them to the Tiare Hotel, for th

nds of blossoms, and then the sailors lighted their cigars. This pair were page 167Steve

Dorado?" I asked

ked at me, s

heir worn and torn clothes, their hairy chests, their faces framed in bushes of hair, their bronzed skins, and their general air of fighters who had won a battle in which it was pitch and toss if they would survive, made me proud of the race of seamen the world over. They are to-day almost the only followers of a primeval calling, tain

they would be sent as shipwrecked mariners by the American consulate. This vessel would not arrive for some weeks. The captain sat outside his door on the balcony, and expanded his log into a story page 168of his experiences. He had determined to turn author, and to recoup his

t, too. I've put down a hundred sheets already. I'm sorry, but I can't talk to any o

eness was now beyond restraint, I tried the sailors. T

nds, and so unbounded their hospitality, that M. Lontane laid him by the heels to rest him. Simoneau was wiry, talking the slang of the New York waterfront, swearing that he would "hike for Attleboro, and hoe potatoes until he died." I was forced to seek Steve Drinkwater. Short, pillow

El Dorado's sinking and your great trip in the boat. He said he's going to write it up

orely. "Ve vas dere mit 'im, und vas ve in de museu

le good fortune. I transf

log? Pour yourself a considerable modicum

d vun hell of a time, und he make a long rest in de land, I do p

his ink and reap his gold harvest, and I must, by master or by man, hear and record for myself the wonderful incidents of the El Dorado's wreck. The insurance was doubtless long since paid on her, and masses said for the repose of the so

him comfortable in a deep-bottomed rocker, and I jotted down my understanding of the honest sailor's Rotterdam English as he himself translated his a

as sailors term sailing ships poorly equipped and undermanned. The crew were of all sorts, the usual waterfront unemployed, wretchedly paid and badly treated. The niggardliness of owners of ships caused them to pick up their crews at haphazard by paying crimps to herd them from l

ng crew and officers to one another, and to the routine of the overloaded schooner. When they were fifteen days out they spoke a vessel, which reported them, and after that the

fit of the southeast trades, and being far south of Antofagasta. That was the way of the wind, which forced a ship from Oregon to Chile to swing fa

th following, their real troubles began. Steve's diary, as interpreted by hi

s in a hurry to make a good run. The mate used to beat us, and it's a wonder we didn't kill him. We used to lie awake in our watch below and think of what we'd do to him when we got him ashore. All the men were sore on him. He cursed

ting up, and the call came for all hands on deck. We had watch and watch until then. That's four hours off and four hours on. When the watch below left their bunks, that was the last of our sleep on the El Dorado. A gale was b

ible load of big logs. These were to hold up the walls and roofs in the mines of Chile. Many of them were thirty-six feet long, and very big around. They were the trunks of very big trees. They were piled very high, and the whole of them was fastened by chains to keep them from rolling

ps for the ropes. We double-reefed the mizzen, and in the wind this was a terrible job. It nearly killed us. At eight o'clock to-night we could not see five feet ahead of us. It was black as hell, and the schooner rolled fearfu

auling, running along the great logs in danger always of being washed away. We had to lash the lumber, tightening the c

st much longer. The small boat that had been hanging over the stern was gone. It had been smashed by the combers. We should have had it inboard, and the mate was to b

page 174would be best to start the steam pump. The smokestack and the rest of the steam fittings were under the fo'c's'le head. It took a long time to get them out, and then the steam pump would not work. The water gained on us all the time now, and the c

d carry a mass of the logs away, and the next wave would bring them back, crashing into the vessel, catching in the rigging, and nearly pulling it down, and the masts with it. Dodging those big logs was awful work, and if you were hit by one, you were gone. They would come dancing over the side on the tops o

the fo'c's'le but water. The sea was now like mountains, but it stopped page 175breaking

a hard time to get this boat loose from the spanker-stay, and we lowered it with the spanker-tackle. Just while we were doing that, a tremendous wave sw

n a locker in his cabin, high up, where he had put it away from the flood. The cook and the boy were scared stiff, and when they went into the cabin, a sea came racing i

the logs and the sea. The old man went below to get his medicine-chest. He threw away the medicine, and put his log and the ship's papers in it. He took up his chronometer to bring it, when a wave l

did not fall in. We had to take a chance and jump when the boat came under us. Last came the old man, and took the tiller. He had the oars manned, and gave the order to let go. That was a terrible moment for all of us, to cast loose from the

ffering on her for weeks had been as much as we could bear. The last I saw of the schooner she was ju

e looked over the chart, and it shows that Easter Island is about nine hundred

The old man said that as we had both latitude and longitude to run, we would run out the latitude first, and then hope for a slant to the land. We were then, he said, in latitude 31° south, and longitude 121° west. That being so, we had about three hundred miles to go south and about six hundred ea

hunger, and we were barely able to keep from being thrown out of the boat by its terrible rocking and pitching, and yet we all felt like singing a song. All but the Japanese cook. Iwata had almost gone mad, and was praying to

sea as they were, we could not have seen the ship very far, and we had made some distance under oarpower page 178during the night. We put up our little sail at nine o'clock, though the wind was strong. The skipper said that we could not expect anything but roug

El Dorado, and God knows how much longer since we had had a whole meal, and now we didn't have much. The old man bossed it. He took a half-bucket of fresh water, and into this he put a can of soup. This he served, and gave each man t

ure we would drown. We made one by rolling four blankets together tightly and tying around them a long rope with which our boat was made fast to the ship when we embarked. This we let drag astern about ninety-feet. It held the boat fairly steady, page 179and kept the boat's head to t

ey were not so. We were always up and down on top of the swells, and our bodies ached so terribly from the sitting-down position and from the joggling of the motion that we would cry with pain. The salt water

us where we were. We made about a hundred miles a day, but very oft

, and the captain said that Easter Island was in the

next morning, we set part of the sail again, and at noon that day the captain took a sight and found that page 180we were in latitude 27° 8′ south. Easter Island is 27° 10′ south. And now we began to fear that we might run past Easter Island. If we did, we k

ce that any merchant ships ever went, as there was no trade there. Once we saw the land we could not get any nearer to it. We tried to row toward it, but the wind was against us. Two days we hung about the back of that island, just outside the line of breakers. We were afraid to risk a landing, for the coast was rocky. On the eleventh day we saw a sp

ded that the first and second mates should have a good feed and try to get up the precipice. We were taking risks, because we had very little grub left. It was about a hundred feet up, and we watched them closely as they went

out, and bananas and poi sent to us. The water just came in time, because we were all out. They brought horses for all of us then, and after we had started the people of the island went ahead and came back with water and milk, which did us a world of good. At the house o

*

lution on the El Dorado and in the boat, and seeking to find words to amplify his log by page 182his memories. I heard him sit down and get up more than once; while opposite me in an easy-chair, with his glass of Schiedam schnapps

s again, telling his wondrous epic of the main to the beach-combers in the parc de Bougain

schnapps dance in its heavy bottle. "My people in Massachusetts are all right, and like a crazy

t happy fate-penniless, jobless, family in mourning, but healthy, safe, and full-stomached, not to omit an ebullience of spiri

t, and that was that the

o of le't," commented Steve. "All dey care for is de havin' de yob.

e cottage, I gave the Dutchman t

ill from stuffing yourself with fresh

at over

men makin' luff und the kanakas glad mit it. Dere vas noding else to do. De manager he say no ship come for six months, und he vanted us to blant bodadoes, und ve had no tobacco. He say de bodadoes get ripe in eight months, und I dink if I shtay dere eight months I go grazy. Ve vas ragged, und efery day ve go und look for a vessel. Ve gould see dem a long vay ouid, und ve made sig

nd kept the bottom half. They then made a place for holding a pot, with pieces of scrap-iron fixed to the side of the drum, so that they could make a fire under the pot without setting fire to the boat. Then the captain set them to learning to make fire by rubbing sti

and had enough food for many days, rough as it was. In the latitude of Pitcairn, the island so famous because to it fled the mutineers of the Bounty, they all but perished. For two days a severe storm nearly overwhelmed them. The boat was more buoyant, and with the sea-anchor trailing, they came through the trial without injury. Steve said the lightning was "yoost like a leedle bid of hell." It circled them about, hissed in the water,

of blankets a-trail, and with helm a

er was expected in a fortnight, which might carry them to some port on their way home. But the old man said they must push on. He had to report to his owners the loss of the El Dorado; he had to see his family. They had come twenty-six hundred miles sin

their tiny craft in waters where boats were seldom seen, attacked them furiously. Five times a giant shark launched himself at their boat, head on, and drove them frantic with his menace of sinking them. They were s

a manner that they felt sure he was challenging the boat as a strange fish whose might he disputed. One thrust of his

and were glad that they had not stayed behind on Easter Island. Steve had only good words for the skipper's skill as a seaman, but now that they were there, he would like to be assured of his wages. The captain said he did not know what the owners would do about paying Steve for the time since the El Dorado sank. He was sure she had gone down imme

tures of opportunity. It is true Steve and Alex were picked of all the crew for their sea knowledge and experience, their nerve and willingness, by the sturdy captain, and that he, too, was a man big in the primitive qualities, a viking, a companion for a Columbus; but-they were peculiarly of their sept; types molded by the wind-swept spaces of the vasty deep, chiseled by the s

s I read them the diary of Steve Drinkwater. The seamen held opinions of the failure of Capt

a gang of them there. 'E was Père Roussel, and 'e ran away with 'em because Llewellyn's bloody crowd 'ere tried t

tenance as his, dark naturally with his Welsh and Tahitian blood, and sh

or forty years. I lived there several years and, as you know, I made that island what it is now, a cattle and sheep ranch. It is the strangest place, with the strangest h

no diggings in the Chincha Islands. Only those escaped death or capture who hid in the dark caverns. Nearly all those taken away died soon. We then made contracts with some of those left, and took them to

Some are three hundred feet long, and the walls thirty feet high. On these platforms there were huge stone gods that have been thrown page 189down; some were thirty-seven feet high, and they had redstone crowns, ten feet in diameter.

ris had in any of these islands, but they had plenty of stone, their lances were tipped with obsidian, and they were terrible fighters amo

was stowed carefully on the deck of the liner. I saw the skipper watching it as the deck-hands put chocks under it and made it fast against th

d man was full of his plan to exhibit the boat in a museum

land for emergency repairs, having broken down. The castaways left with page 190her for Sydney, Australia, and from there reached San Fr