by Craig Cliff
14 March 1891
I worked my clew talon across the pitch pine to complete another tally of five days. I considered making that day’s mark in advance but decided against it. There was no guarantee I would see out day one hundred and twenty-six as a castaway, not with the channel crossing I had ahead of me.
When I had first glimpsed the big island back in November, I considered building a raft, but my resources seemed so meagre, the channel so broad, that it was not worth the risk, especially as there was no guarantee this new island would be any more hospitable. As the days and weeks passed I returned to this scheme and abandoned it a dozen times until—three days ago—I saw the steamer.
I’d been up at the ridgeline, foraging for Hell’s Cabbage, my name for the large flowering plant that was dotted around Lemon Wedge. I often lay awake at night craving the runnelled green leaves or the sugary root that I chewed raw, in small rationed chunks so that I could enjoy it over several sweet days. I’d found another patch and was digging at the earth with Tim’s trusty spoon to reach the roots when I noticed a puff of steam floating across the sky. It was one of those rare days when neither mist nor fog clung to the island. The wind blew from the west with unceasing glee and the weak sun barely registered through the steady sheet of clouds, but it was a glorious day by island standards. A day on which white puffs between sea and sky were not easily explained.
I stood and saw the steamer easing towards the big island. It was close enough that I could make out the white hull, the two bare, raking masts and the yellow cylinder belching steam at the centre of the ship. I squinted, trying to make out any men on deck, but the distance was too great. If I were to be seen, I needed to act and act quickly. A fire would be best, but I still had no way of lighting one. I made my way back down to the beach, juggling speed and safety, and gathered up all the canvas and wood I could carry. On the way back up I needed to stop several times.
When I made the ridgeline I couldn’t see the steamer or its steam. I walked south along the crest, dragging my bundle of canvas and spars like a tiller. When I reached the southern cliffs I saw the ship, a white speck just off the northern edge of the big island. Its chimney was no longer chuffing steam and the ship appeared motionless, suggesting it was at anchor.
Terns and smaller albatross flew across the face of the cliffs and overhead as I set to work lashing the lengths of pitch pine and white spruce together with blades of tussock and precious rope to form a pole some ten feet high.
Oh, Avis, what I would have given for a nail!
I stopped often to poke my head up and check the steamer’s position. It remained anchored for the hour, perhaps longer, that it took to attach the largest run of sailcloth I had to my flagpole. The wind had almost dropped away by the time I managed to hoist my flag. The canvas seemed impossibly heavy and my hopes of it striking out into a broad, rippling banner seemed foolish. I held the pole and its limp flag aloft for several minutes but when the steamer showed no sign of making way I laid it back down.
The sun passed across the sky in its ever more oblique orbit. The wind continued to lie low. From time to time I would hear the hollow knocking sound of albatross clapping their beaks together as a pair changed places on the ledges below, one moving onto the nest, the other taking to the sky.
In late afternoon the ship began to send steam into the air once more. I lifted my flagpole and watched the ship wheel around. ‘Please head north,’ I muttered. ‘There’s nocht south but ice. That’s the way. Aye, there you are. Aye, here I am.’
The ship seemed to be heading directly to me. I worked the flagpole back and forth to spread the sail, lifting up the soil at its base. About a third of the way across the channel the steamer suddenly beat to the north-east, a path that would take it close to Lemon Wedge but, ultimately, past it. They hadn’t spotted me yet. Surely they would as they drew nearer. I continued to work the flag, which seemed happier to tangle around the makeshift pole, its edges snagging where the pieces of wood were lashed together.
‘Would it be too much trouble for a gust of wind?’ I asked. ‘You can blow till kingdom come for all I care, but you’d better start now.’
The steamer continued to carve its wake across the calm channel. For the first and last time, this part of the world reminded me of the time in the doldrums before my accident.
When the steamer was five or six hundred yards off the tip of Lemon Wedge Island, I could see the entire length of the port side. I could see men moving about the deck, ducking their heads to avoid the hanging lifeboats as they moved aft. ‘Ahoy!’ I shouted, letting the flag drop and waving out my free hand. I could even see the captain standing atop the T-shaped upper deck, staring straight at me, or so it seemed, a pipe in his mouth, while another officer manned the wheel.
‘Ahoy! Up here! Ahoy!’ I shouted, feeling myself grow hoarse but ignoring the pain, pushing for more volume with every shout. I beat the pole back and forth but the steamer continued on its course, moving further east until it was clear that it had passed as close as it would come. I saw the captain release his hands from the rail, take his pipe from his mouth as if emerging from deep contemplation and walk to the opposite side of the wee deck.
I continued to scream, louder than the skua gulls, louder than the yellow-brows, louder than the strongest gale, but the ship carried on, puffing its jolly clouds of steam as it slipped further and further away.
I woke the next morning with a throat so raw I might have guzzled boric acid. The wind was up, of course, and the rain came in heavy sweeps. I disassembled my failed flagpole, wrapped myself in canvas and started working on the thick section of mast marooned on the beach. I traced a line around the middle of the log with the sharp tip of a gull’s beak and began sawing it with a piece of seal jaw studded with teeth. I’d found the beast washed up on the shore, a small wound on its belly being excavated by the seabirds. Its decaying flesh had been difficult to eat raw, but I’d managed to make use of the creature in other ways.
After several hours of hard labour I had cut a groove two inches deep and worn the teeth away to pearly nubs. I placed a wedge-shaped rock in the furrow and struck it over and over with a section of spar that had become my favourite cudgel.
At the end of the day I had managed to turn this section of topmast into two five-foot lengths. These would be the pontoons for my raft.
The next day I dragged everything to a spot on the beach where the kelp was at its sparsest. I used every piece of wood at my disposal, first fixing a block to the end of my cudgel to form an oar, then using the rest to brace the two pontoons. I strung lengths of canvas across the pontoons to form a taut platform. That night I had to make my bed beneath the raft to ensure it did not drift away with the tide, though I did not sleep a wink.
It was moulting season at the yellow-brow colony and the shiftless morning wind lifted thousands of soft white feathers into the air. Two weeks ago the adults had grown blurry at the edges and stopped going down to the water, stopped feeding. The stench grew worse than ever. The rocky slope rang with ever more impatient squawks as the birds fluffed up and became helpless. The bumps and scrapes of colony life—and the constant nuisance of the nellies and skuas—gave them a mottled, almost rabid, appearance. The chicks had grown into stouter, disgruntled-looking juveniles. Their only remaining fuzz was a rough mane stretching across their haunches. They continued to gather in their nurseries, groups of five or six brown-black birds around a foetid puddle. To me it always looked as if these youngsters were organising a mutiny.
The wind shifted and the soft, white blizzard descended on me as I worked on the beach. Tiny feathers found their way up my nostrils and between my eyelashes.
I would not miss this island.
I retrieved Tim’s pocket watch, which I had managed to repair at a cost of three weeks. The brass cover of the timepiece was scratched and dull, but I could still make out my reflection: my matted hair and coarse ginger beard appeared newly bleached, as if I had aged overnigh
t. Then I remembered the feathers and swept both cheeks angrily with my free hand. I flicked the watch open. Nearly eight in the morning. It promised to be a long day, but there was no time to dally.
I returned to my grotto—it had developed its own stench, a melange of penguin blubber and my own musky scent that my nose seemed unable to ignore—retrieved the bladder I had fashioned from seal hide and trekked up through the yellow-brows to collect water from the freshest point, a trickle between the pedestals of tussock far above the nesting bowls.
While the bladder filled I kept an eye out for parakeets. I’d learnt that the red patch on the heads of some of these birds was formed from a crest of bright red feathers rather than the blood of another creature. At one time it had been of great importance to prove that these beautiful birds were not carnivorous. I had brought hunks of penguin flesh up to the tussock, placed them on the ground and waited to see if the parakeets would take my bait. They never did, probably because there was nowhere to properly conceal myself and still keep sight of the meat. Weeks later I observed one of the completely green parakeets picking at the corpse of a penguin chick at the edge of the colony. Needs must, I told myself, but the fact these beautiful birds were scavengers like the rest of the island’s inhabitants had been a great disappointment.
On my way back down to the foreshore with a bladder full of fresh water, I stopped to pluck two gloomy-looking juveniles from their nursery so that I might have something to eat, either on my crossing or once I had made it to the big island. I didn’t know what sort of life it harboured, or how far I’d have to trek to find fresh water or shelter. Whatever the answers, I was better off there than on this fingernail. The steamer was anchored in that bay long enough to suggest there was work on the island. Perhaps they were trading with the inhabitants, or were hunting wild pigs to fill their larder. That particular ship might not return, but others must. I would be there to greet them. I would not be overlooked this time.
I carried the last of my possessions from my grotto: the woven tussock mats, the sailcloth sack containing my spare clothes, bone needles, fish hooks and other improvised tools. I laid the mats across the canvas platform of the raft and lashed the sack next to the sealskin bladder and my boots, each of which contained the carcass of a penguin chick.
The tide was now lapping at the rough tips of my pontoons. I stood alongside in my bare feet, my trousers rolled up to my knees, waiting for the first big wave that would allow me to push the raft out into the breakers. I looked out at the sea, beaten into thousands of small white peaks by the wind. The leathery blades of kelp throbbed on the surface, crowding into the wee gap through which I intended to launch before pulling back to show the cool green water and the rocks beneath. The hardest part would be this first section, paddling through the breakers, against the current and the wind, to get to the southern tip of Lemon Wedge. Once I had rounded the headland, I would have sight of my destination and could make my way into the channel in the lee of the smaller island.
A large wave broke over my shins and I felt the raft lift slightly before it settled back on the rocky shore. I moved around the rear of the raft and placed a hand on each pontoon, my arms nearly at full stretch. Another wave was rolling in. I took a deep breath. The water rushed up to me, lifting the raft, and I pushed. The effort made my shredded throat sizzle. The raft was moving, I was moving, the water to my knees, my crotch. I felt a slimy arm of kelp brush against my bare calf. I jumped. My hands grasped the rope that ran around the midsection of the raft and I hauled myself aboard. I pulled the oar from where it had been lashed and began to paddle madly. The wind cut into me but the low profile of my craft meant I was able to make way. The waves broke over and through the raft but it remained upright, remained intact. I lost a tussock mat, then another, but it was no bother. Big jaups of sea water sloshed into my face, my open mouth, but I didn’t stop. I couldn’t stop.
Finally I was clear of the breakers and dug my oar into the water at the back of the raft, turning it southwards, making for the headland.
The sun was at its sheepish apex by the time I rounded the point and caught that day’s first glimpse of the big island, though the name seemed to overstate its size. From my vantage, a few feet above the water and a mile or so to the north, it was little more than a dark mound. Water plashed over the pontoons and settled on the canvas in pools which I scooped out from time to time with my oar. I didn’t know how I would cope if rain arrived.
After what seemed a long time, but could not have been more than twenty minutes, I noticed myself being pulled off course. Whether by the wind or the current, I was being taken to the east. If I continued to steer straight for the big island I would be taken past it so I shifted my position on the raft and began paddling towards a spot just to the west of the island.
The raft was constantly jostled by the whitecaps, the spray fizzing against the canvas deck and my own flushed face. In moments when the wind dropped, I could hear the spars rubbing against the pontoons but holding, holding.
I was parched, but needed to paddle due west for ten minutes to buy myself the time for a drink of water and to check the pocket watch. Half-past two. I plunged my oar into the water again, turning my head with the stroke to look back at Lemon Wedge, then forward to the big island. Perhaps another hour and a half, if I had the strength.
As I drew closer to the big island it began to look as inhospitable as the one I had left, simply larger. Above the cliffs it appeared that a high plateau of dead grass surrounded the peaks at the centre of the island. The beach I was aiming for began to take shape. It was rocky, but possibly sheltered, the slope up to the plateau manageable. No wonder the steamer chose this anchorage. Then I noticed something almost white on the north-eastern end of the island. Above the shore, about a hundred feet up, there: the first new straight lines in one hundred and twenty-six days. Yes, a pitched roof. From my low angle I couldn’t be sure if it was a house or some sort of storage shed. Part of me stood distant, noting that I was exhausted, had possibly been driven mad by my diet of raw penguin and loneliness. Books were full of stories of desert wanderers being fooled by mirages. I shouldn’t get my hopes up. But I stuffed this nay-saying down and paddled as furiously as I had when I first set out.
A few minutes later the wind shifted so that it blew from the north, which meant I needed only to fight the current. Every breath was another draught of acid, but I battled on, the island growing larger with every stroke. Soon I could make out grey birds flying around the cliffs, birds I had not encountered on Lemon Wedge. The occasional wave formed behind the raft and shunted me onward, closer and closer to the beach. My arms felt as though they had been stretched and stretched, that they would never assume their previous form, never regain what strength they had possessed. But I was in the breakers now. The hut had slipped from view, obscured by the bluff above which it sat. My faith in its existence was unshaken. I could have abandoned my raft at this point and bounded through the waves but could not be certain how easy it was to reach the hut from the shore, how much strength it would require. Light was draining from the sky and I might need the wood, ropes and canvas from my raft if I was to make shelter on the beach, just as I needed my bones unbroken and head clear if I was to get warm after being wet through for so long.
I made land with about an hour of light remaining, hauled my raft into the lee of a small bluff and stood for a moment, hands on hips, looking back at Lemon Wedge. How unremarkable, I thought. No wonder the steamer crew had paid it no attention. I drained the last drops of fresh water from my sealskin bladder and stuffed it into my drenched sailcloth sack and set off for the hut. A few yards up from the shore I came to a band of thick tussock. The crowns were up to four feet across and stood atop pedestals up to six feet high—much bigger than I had encountered on Lemon Wedge. I tried forcing my way between the clumps, but the balls of tussock were so tightly packed, their leaves knitted together so completely, that it was impenetrable unless I crawled on my hands and kne
es. A few feet into the thicket and it was completely black. After fifteen minutes, I came to a rock wall and decided it might be quicker to walk over the top of the tussock.
Bracing myself against the wall, I managed to shimmy up to the top of a crown of tussock. I could see now that I had made it only a dozen yards from the shore. I lunged forward to step onto the next crown, which swayed but held my weight. It was similar to crossing a stream via a series of stepping stones, except these stones did not stand still and they ran uphill. The light was fading fast. The hut remained hidden. I thought it a good thing that no one was around or else the whole business would be quite humiliating. After two more steps I could no longer be certain where to place my feet. I lowered myself down until I was lying prone on a bed of tussock several feet off the ground, my sack of meagre belongings still strung to my back, and began to crawl like a snail.
Dark had arrived, the day had ended and yet I was still on the move, still fighting for the clearing. I hadn’t eaten since daybreak. Hadn’t drunk since I’d left the shore. But there was a hut on this island.
At the edge of the clearing the crowns were half as high as elsewhere and I was able to roll onto the ground without injuring myself. I rose to my feet, looked to the sky in the hope that the moon, so seldom seen for all the clouds and mist, had deigned to appear on this night. I saw wisps of orange and violet light, as if I’d been closing my eyes shut too tightly, but no moon.
I kept the tussock to my left, running my hand through the coarse leaves as I edged towards where I thought the hut sat. I tried to call out, but my throat couldn’t manage a simple hello. Any sound I tried to produce came out as a mangled croak. I might have recovered my voice in a more hospitable climate, perhaps, but it was not to be.
