Tierra del Fuego

by Francisco Coloane

  “No,” the skipper corrected him, “I’m talking about Villegas . . .”

  “When you said ‘man,’ I thought you were talking about men in general . . .”

  “No, I meant the cook. He’s left us without meat again. When the divers find out, there’ll be hell to pay . . .”

  “Didn’t he buy meat when we left Puerto Montt?”

  “No, he says the butchers were all closed by the time we weighed anchor.”

  “He just did it to annoy us. He must be in one of his moods again.”

  “That’s what I think. The man’s evil inside. If we don’t keep an eye on him, God knows what he’s capable of.”

  The Huamblín, a sixty-ton schooner, was sailing against the wind on its auxiliary engine, close to the Desertores. This group of six or seven islands at the very end of the Chiloé archipelago is the last inhabited place you encounter before you enter the desolate regions of the southern seas, and is located at the entrance to the Gulf of Corcovado, which always promises ships a rough ride as they pass through its tempestuous waters.

  A day and a half had passed since the schooner had left Puerto Montt and headed for Puerto Edén, a deep-set natural harbor on the other side of the Angostura Inglesa, in the middle of the Magallanes channels, and, whether through negligence or deliberate malice on the part of the cook, they found themselves at these latitudes without a single piece of meat for the four crew members and the three divers they had with them for fishing mussels in Puerto Edén. It was mid-autumn, and the schooner would be spending the whole winter plying the channels, coves and fjords near that remote spot.

  Her mission was to find the mussel boats scattered around the Puerto Edén area, put the mussels into sacks and transport them in her hold until they could be transferred to the coasters that put in at Puerto Edén on their way north.

  “There’s nothing we can do but sail straight to the Desertores,” Ramírez said, feeling the first big waves from the gulf. Then, changing the subject, “Tell me about the Taito!”

  “It happened years ago, skipper. It was a four-master, very well equipped. Not a piece of junk like this Huamblín. We ran aground on the rocks on the island of Huapi, near San Pedro. One of the sailors managed to swim to the coast with a rope tied to his belt and secured it to something there. The captain stood on a bare rock shaped like a table, held the other end of the rope tight and saved all of us. He knew that when his turn came, there’d be nobody on the rock to hold the rope, but he didn’t want anyone to replace him. He just stood there, holding it as tight as he could until the last of the men had gone across. I wasn’t one of the first to go, I can tell you that, but in the end I had to grab the rope like the others and save myself. When we were all on shore, we saw the captain throw himself in the water, in the middle of the storm, still hanging on to the rope. But a wave washed him back onto the side of the rock, and he couldn’t move. That was the last we saw of him.”

  “The man was a captain, a real captain, not a kitchen rat like this Villegas, who leaves the crew without meat!”

  “There are bad captains, too . . .”

  “But not cowards . . .”

  “I’ve seen a few captains run away in my time.”

  “What was the name of the captain of the Taitao?”

  “Antonio Oyarzo,” the seaman said in a loud voice, looking out to sea with a mixture of pride and scorn.

  At that moment, a bigger wave than the others came from the gulf and the schooner’s starboard bow lifted. The little compass in front of the ship’s wheel swung about. The skipper fixed his eyes on the compass card and at that moment the magnetic needle pointed toward his chest, indicating north. Dámaso Ramírez took advantage of the speed of the wave and headed for a rocky point at the southernmost tip of the island.

  “We’ll have to go into the Talcan estuary and see if we can find some sheep,” he said. “At this time of year, we don’t know how many days’ sailing we still have ahead of us.”

  The schooner sailed past the rocky point with its dirty-looking edges and into the mouth of the Talcan estuary, between large banks of gulfweed populated by groups of small seagulls, which screeched and flapped their wings, looking like strange white waves.

  The schooner dropped anchor at the end of the estuary, which is some seven miles long and lined with muddy beaches and wooded hills.

  They met two or three islanders who refused to sell them their sheep, saying they were very poor and the only animals they had left were those intended for breeding. But they pointed to the flatter area to the southeast, where the biggest landowner on the island lived. He had a larger flock, they said.

  But even when he cast anchor on that side of the island, the skipper still could not get anyone to sell him a sheep.

  “I don’t need money,” the landowner said, adding scornfully, “What would I do with money on this island? I sure can’t eat it. A sheep, on the other hand, can feed a whole family if need be!”

  Hurling a torrent of curses at the selfishness of the islanders, the skipper gave the order to weigh anchor. As he left the Desertores, feeling disheartened, he could not help thinking that those islands had been given their name with good reason. The southern night had already fallen, made all the darker by a fine curtain of drizzle.

  Again they passed between the banks of gulfweed and the seagulls screeched farewell to them from out of the darkness. When the schooner was some distance from the coast, Seaman Alvarez went up onto the bridge, where the skipper was again at the helm, stood with his body half in and half out of the door, and in a slightly evasive tone, as if reluctant to speak, said, “What are you planning to do, skipper? . . . I’ve been in worse situations than this, and I’ve always pulled through . . .”

  “Hmm!” Ramírez said, in a kind of moan. “So what would you do, seeing how none of these people want to sell us a sheep?”

  “Do you think the only way to get a sheep is to buy it? When we want fish, do we go to the market? That’d be a fine thing, wouldn’t it?”

  “It isn’t the same.”

  “No? . . . I’d sail on a little way, until our engine is out of earshot. Then, with this southerly wind, I’d come back using only the sails!”

  “And then?”

  “Then we’d try our best to find something. As we were coming around the point I saw a whole flock up on the slope . . . They must belong to that rich islander . . . he’d never miss a couple of sheep.”

  “Thou shalt not kill . . . thou shalt not steal . . . remember the commandments . . .”

  “We can remember them when our bellies are full. But right now, with what’s ahead of us—the Corcovado, the Guaitecas, the Gulf of Penas—we need something in the pot!”

  “Who would do it?”

  “I would, skipper . . . Villegas can help me. It won’t be the first time I’ve done something like that . . . In Patagonia, as long as you leave the skin on the fence, they don’t consider you a thief . . . It’s a traveler’s right.”

  “We’re not in Patagonia now . . .”

  “I know we’re not,” said the seaman, smiling slyly beneath his black mustache. “It’d be pretty stupid to go ashore and skin a sheep here . . . You have to bring it with the skin and everything.”

  For a few moments, Ramírez said nothing, thinking about the act of piracy the seaman was suggesting . . . It was true the islanders had it coming to them for refusing to sell them a sheep in an emergency . . . But it was one thing to throw a hook over the side of the boat to catch a swordfish, quite another to land in the middle of nowhere to hunt for a sheep . . . The sea has its laws, and they aren’t the same as the ones on land.

  But his reflections were suddenly interrupted by the appearance of the three divers, who had just heard about the lack of meat. They told him they couldn’t go on like this, and asked him to turn around and go back to where he could find supplies of meat. Diving is a respectable trade, without which mussel fishing would be impossible. Ramírez replied by raising two fingers
to his mouth and letting out a shrill whistle. The engine stopped, and the schooner continued on its way in silence.

  “Tomorrow you’ll have roast and stew!” he said, and he ordered the sailor and the engineer to hoist the sails.

  Before long, there came the sound of the pulleys creaking, then the flapping of the jib and the foresail, and finally the mainsail and the spanker rose like two great wings in the darkness. The Huamblín turned with the southeasterly wind, and again set a course for the Desertores, in silence this time, and protected by the darkness and the increasingly thick curtain of drizzle.

  She sailed along the outside of the island, without entering the estuary, and cast her spare anchor, also silently, using a simple cable rope, on the edge of a sandbank covered by high tide.

  “I’m not a thief!” was the response of Villegas the cook, when the skipper sent for him and ordered him to go ashore with Alvarez.

  “It’s all your fault we have to do this!” Ramírez roared.

  “We have shellfish and edible seaweed on board,” the cook argued. “Why don’t we make do with them? What do you think this is, an ocean liner?”

  “Tell me, Villegas,” the skipper said, in a calmer voice, but one pregnant with threat, “why are you like this?”

  “What should I be like? Would you look at that, he asks me to steal, and because I’m not a thief he gets angry!”

  “What’s happening to you, why are so twisted inside? Why did you leave us without meat?”

  “I already told you, I couldn’t find any meat before we set sail.”

  “You should have informed me!”

  “You came back drunk, so there was no point.”

  “Well, you’re going to have to find me some meat right now.”

  “I’m not going, I’m not going!” he said sullenly, stamping with his foot on the floor of the bridge.

  The skipper stood looking at him, his patience ever thinner. The cook was a short, thin man with a pale, angular face, very small, watery eyes and a woolly blond mustache that made him look like a mouse that had wandered into a flour mill.

  “What do you mean, you’re not going?” Ramírez suddenly yelled, grabbing him by the neck and pulling him toward him.

  The cook swayed like a puppet, blinking rapidly as the skipper looked him in the eyes. Dámaso Ramírez was about to slap him, but his hand was still on the ship’s wheel, gripping it in his thick fingers as if trying to tear it apart.

  “Get out of here!” he said. “I don’t want to see you back on this ship without a sheep over your shoulder!”

  “I’ll go!” the cook said, breaking free. “But when we get back to Puerto Montt I’ll report you to the authorities! I’m no thief!”

  “Report me to your grandmother, but bring me back a sheep!”

  Meanwhile, Seaman Alvarez had lowered the lighter from the deck to the sea, and was waiting for the argument to finish, with a furtive smile under his trimmed mustache. Villegas got in, sitting down in the stern as if he were in charge. Alvarez took hold of both oars and rowed vigorously to the coast, which was shrouded in darkness and drizzle.

  “I had to run like a madman to grab the sheep.”

  It was days later, and Seaman Alvarez was speaking in the little cabin.

  “Whereas this bastard,” he went on, glancing at the cook, “found a ewe that had just given birth, and the lamb simply followed.”

  The Huamblín was already at the end of the Chonos archipelago, better known, except on maps, as the Guaitecas. It was night, and she had dropped anchor in the sheltered harbor of Balladares.

  It is impossible for any vessel to sail at night in that area—especially impossible for someone like Dámaso Ramírez. As a former whaling master, he was used to the open seas, and did not trust that dense tangle of islands and channels that make up the Guaitecas, where the channels are often obstructed by spits and islets covered with vegetation so luxuriant that the foliage hangs down into the water, and casts a shadow over it.

  In the middle of these channels is the harbor of Balladares, its muddy beach offering an excellent anchorage, and the Huamblín took advantage of it. She was protected here from the strong winds, which can rise suddenly and be very strong in that region.

  No sooner had they dropped anchor between the two leafy headlands of Copihue and Laurel than the men on the schooner set off in the lighter with a barrel, which they hoped to fill with water from a waterfall they could see at the end of a wooded ravine. As they brought the lighter into shore, the bottom almost smashed onto a mussel patch left exposed by low tide. The mussels were so abundant that all the men had to do was put their hands over the side and fill the lighter with them. There were sea urchins, too, swarming close to the surface, turning the crystalline waters green. The whole cove, lined with tall, leafy trees—coigue, tepa and laurel—their tops garlanded with small red bell flowers, was a natural, untouched breeding ground for mussels, sea urchins, oysters and spider crabs, which are found in abundance in the Guaitecas.

  That night there was a kind of party on board the Huamblín, to celebrate these gifts from the sea. Dámaso Ramírez was in a good mood and opened the demijohn of apple brandy he had brought for the journey. The passengers and crew usually gathered in the small cabin after supper, especially when they were well moored, but that night the gathering was particularly animated.

  And the strange thing was that even the cook, Villegas, was in a good mood that night and smiled cordially as Seaman Alvarez recalled how they had stolen the sheep on the Desertores islands.

  Dámaso Ramírez, aware, as any good skipper should be, of everything that happened on his ship, had noticed that, since that night on the Desertores, the cook’s character had undergone a curious change. He had watched him over the five days they had been sailing, and found it hard to account for the way such an intractable personality had been transformed.

  Villegas was laughing now as Alvarez described their adventures on the Desertores, chasing sheep in the darkness and the drizzle. In spite of being sixty-three, he had run like a little boy and had cornered his animal in the quila bushes.

  Villegas, on the other hand, had walked a short distance and had almost stumbled over a ewe that had recently given birth. He had grabbed her and pushed her in the direction of the shore. The lamb started bleating and following its mother. Afraid that the bleating would give him away, Villegas had been about to kick it. But then he had stopped, and something had impelled him to take it in his arms. Then he had tied a rope to the ewe and pulled her to the lighter.

  In the lighter, he hobbled the ewe’s legs, and she stayed where she was, perfectly calm. Villegas sat down in the stern with the lamb in his arms, and waited for Alavrez. The night was pitch black, and the drizzle made it feel damp. The roar of the breakers occasionally subsided, and in the silence, the waves could be heard lapping against the side of the lighter, as if turning from curses to moans against the defenseless breakwaters. The lamb lifted its head in the darkness, trying to find its mother, and, not seeing her, started to shiver and bleat again. But this time, its bleating, no louder than that of a baby seal, was drowned by the noise of the breakers and could not be heard from a distance. Villegas held it close to his chest, wrapping it in the end of his woolen poncho. The lamb rested its muzzle in the man’s armpit and calmed down. From time to time he passed his hand over the newborn’s curly wool, and a kind of affectionate contact was established between the man and the little animal. He felt as if, in the middle of that dark, drizzly night, in the bleakness of that last rim of the Desertores archipelago, he had touched something soft and tremulous, weak and tender, and it was a sensation he had not felt for a long time.

  He remembered how, when he was a child, his mother had held him to her breast in the same way, and, as he cuddled the little animal, he could feel its breathing, throbbing gently like a warm heart.

  Once on board the schooner, he continued taking care of the lamb. First he fed it with its mother’s milk, and then, afte
r he had had to kill the mother before she lost weight due to the lack of grass and put out her meat to air on the rigging, he grated potatoes and extracted the liquid from them to replace her milk. Then the lamb started to eat other things, like mashed potatoes or dipped bread. Whenever they put in at a harbor, the first thing Villegas did was to take the lighter ashore in search of herbs, especially wild celery from the islands, in order to vary the food for his “orphan,” as he had taken to calling it affectionately.

  The little animal started to be seen as a kind of mascot of the Huamblín. An unusual mascot—while most of the other schooners and boats had dogs, the Huamblín would reach Puerto Edén with a lamb frolicking on deck.

  But the most remarkable thing of all was the change in the cook’s character. He stopped muttering to himself in his narrow kitchen in the forecastle, stopped slamming the iron plates down on the table when he was serving meals, even stopped throwing leftovers in the sea instead of keeping them in case anyone was hungry—now he would offer them to the men at odd times, just as he did to his “orphan.”

  Because the orphan was indeed his, and his alone. With his knife he had slit its mother’s throat, but, by feeding it, he had replaced her. The lamb was his, and he could not help feeling jealous whenever he saw one of the other men giving it something to eat and the lamb licking that man’s hands, the way it licked his.

  The little animal had virtually recognized him as its master, and returned his affection, picking him out from the others and running after him like a lapdog.

  That was why something like his old grim expression appeared on his face that night in Puerto Balladares, when Seaman Alvarez said, half in jest, finishing his story about the theft of the sheep, “We’d do better to barter that lamb to the Alakaluf Indians in Puerto Edén and get a good otter hunting dog in exchange . . . It isn’t such a good idea to keep a piece of evidence like that on board!”

  “We could have bought it!” Villegas replied promptly.

  “Oh, sure, someone’s going to sell us a sheep!” Alvarez said, with a mischievous look on his face.