by Joan Druett
Whenever the weather was favorable the men took out the boat to hunt for their prey about the shores and islets of Carnley Harbour. On March 3, George, Alick, and Musgrave discovered a small island, which Musgrave called Figure-of-Eight Island because of its shape; this became a favored hunting ground. At the time they first landed it poured with rain, but, as Musgrave commented, they had been out of fresh provisions for the past three days, and so they doggedly persevered.
To their great relief, they came across three mobs of sea lion females. There were thirty to forty cows in each flock, all fast asleep despite the conditions, “and there were a great many very young calves amongst them.” When the three men rushed in with their clubs, shouting and yelling, the females woke up abruptly, stared about in confusion, and then fled to the water, leaving their cubs behind, “and I suppose in ten seconds we had knocked down ten calves from two to three months old, and one two-year-old seal.”
This was the usual procedure, because once separated from their mothers, the pups were easy prey. “During the months of February, March, and April, the cows are on shore the greater part of the time, and lie in the bush in mobs of from twelve to twenty together, at the places where their calves are assembled,” remembered Musgrave afterward. “They do not appear to have any particular time for going into the water to feed; and they allow their young to suck whenever they please.” Once fed, the pups would leave their mothers to play with each other: “The mothers appear to take scarcely any notice whatever of their young,” he wrote. And, just as on this day on Figure-of-Eight Island, they would readily abandon their pups to seek safety in the water.
For quite a while the men had been shocked by this apparent lack of maternal feeling. Then they had a distressing experience with a cow whose cub had been killed near the house. She kept on returning and looking for her lost calf, “incessantly bellowing, and without going into the water—consequently going without food—for eight days,” Musgrave described. “After the first few days her voice gradually became weaker, and at last could scarcely be heard.” He was certain she was dying, but instead she returned to the sea to feed; “but for more than a month afterwards she paid a daily visit to the spot, bellowing in the most doleful manner.”
Also, however, there was the common sight of the cows biting their young so badly that the “poor little animals are very often seen with their skins pierced and lacerated in the most frightful manner,” as Musgrave commented another time. This usually happened during swimming lessons. The seal pups were not born with the instinct to swim, and indeed were so frightened of the water that they had to be prodded and persuaded before they would leave the safety of the beach and flop into the surf. Then the mothers had to teach them how to get along in what was supposed to be their natural element.
Musgrave found this amusing—“the mother gets it on to her back, and swims along very gently on the top of the water; but the poor little thing is bleating all the time, and continually falling from its slippery position, when it will splutter about in the water precisely like a little boy who gets beyond his depth and cannot swim.” The cow would repeat the performance patiently for a while, but after that she would become irritated, and use force where coercion hadn’t worked. To the men it looked callous, but it was for the pup’s own good.
Feeling sorry for the cubs did not make killing them any easier. After the cows had retreated to the safety of the water, their young would run into the bush, but then they betrayed their hiding places by bleating pathetically for their mothers. Raynal once found a pup huddled with two others who “peeped over his shoulder” from under a fallen tree, and wrote that their huge, terrified eyes “seemed to implore our pity and ask for mercy. We were much moved, and hesitated long; greatly tempted to spare them, yet forced by necessity to obey reason rather than sentiment.” As he went on to say, the poor innocents, slaughtered, “freed us for several days from all anxiety about our daily food.”
It was this same harsh philosophy that drove Musgrave, George, and Alick to rush into the mobs and pick out pups to kill on this rainy day in March. “We could have got more,” Musgrave continued, but at that juncture George was attacked by a gigantic bull. Taking one horrified look at the great beachmaster charging full speed toward him, the Englishman abandoned dignity, dropped his club, and scooted up a tree. Musgrave and Alick came to the rescue, and though they would have preferred to let the enraged sea lion go, they were forced to kill him—“we would have been quite willing to get out of his way, but he would not give us a chance,” wrote Musgrave, adding, “This was the greatest piece of excitement I have had for a long time.”
It was a profitable trip altogether, because they also bagged a lot of widgeons. The abundance continued. Just three days later, Musgrave went outside to find a seal pup, “not more than a month or six weeks old, sitting shivering at the end of the house. I took him in,” he related, “and some of them wanted to keep him; but this of course we could not do, as he would eat nothing but fish, and not even that yet, so we killed him. I think he had lost his mother, for he was very low in flesh and had nothing at all in his inside. So this is more fresh meat,” he added on a practical note. “God is certainly good in sending us plenty to eat.”
However, he was acutely conscious that the reprieve was only temporary. With the equinoctial gales the surf and tides were often too high to venture out in the boat, and he was terribly afraid that the wreck of the schooner was breaking up. Then March 12 dawned—an anniversary, which was always an occasion for gloom.
That evening Musgrave seated himself at his desk with his heart beating fast, as he described it, “somewhat similar to what it might do if I was about writing a love letter.” It was exactly four months since the Grafton had sailed from Sydney, and “I know that many a bitter tear has been shed for me by this time.” Would he and his adored one ever meet again? “Heaven only knows.” These were thoughts that maddened him—“I feel as if I was gradually consumed by an inward fire. I strive, by occupying my hands as much as possible, to dispel these sad feelings; but it is utterly impossible.”
Then he betrayed the first hint that he had suffered from some kind of nervous indisposition in the past—“I have felt this before, but only on one particular occasion, and that is some time ago,” he wrote, going on to agonize, “Were it not for the hope that I shall yet again be of service to my family, I think my spirit, if not my health, would break down; although under my present afflictions my continual prayer is that God may soon deliver me out of them.” The thought that constantly nagged at him was that while he had the comfort of knowing that there was plenty of meat to be had on Figure-of-Eight Island for yet awhile, God alone knew if his family in Sydney had enough to eat.
Musgrave made another trip to the island on Friday, March 18, leaving George, whose turn it was to be cook and house-keeper, back at Epigwaitt, and taking Raynal, Alick, and Harry with him. Raynal, who had not been there before, explored the islet with interest. Penetrating the bush, he discovered “the traces of a small and ancient encampment,” evidently left by whalers who had stopped there for at least a couple of weeks, because there was a deep cavity in the peat where their fire had burned. Not only did this give hope that a whaling vessel might return one day, but Raynal, to his delight, glimpsed a small rusted file that had been discarded by that past party.
Pocketing this treasure, he returned to the others, who were attending to the main business of foraging for sea lions. Following the sounds of cows calling out to their cubs, they came out on a beach at one end of the islet, to find a large mob of females suckling their young, while standing in the middle, “an old male, probably the ruler of those parts, took his ease, eying calmly the youthful gaiety which went on around him,” as Raynal fancifully described. “He had the appearance of a venerable patriarch pleased with the games of his little children.”
This beachmaster was ancient indeed: “When he opened his enormous mouth to yawn, we could see that his jaws were almost tooth
less, a few black stumps projecting here and there from his gums.” Seconds later, however, the men found to their alarm that though this venerable fellow might be old, he still had a firm grasp of his responsibilities as lord and master of the harem. Scenting the interlopers, he rose up on his flippers, and “vented from the depth of his vast chest a resonant and prolonged growl, which attracted the attention of the females, and spread alarm among all the troop.”
As usual, while the females scattered toward the sea, the men plunged in and out of the panicked mob, killing seven cubs in the rush. Then, as Raynal described, “Musgrave, Alick, and I, handing our cudgels to Harry, seized each of us a couple of the victims,” while Harry grabbed the last with his free hand. Dragging their kill, the men dashed headlong for the boat, piled the carcasses inside, and pushed off from the shore.
To their horror, something happened that had never happened before. The cows furiously pursued the small boat, “accompanied by their patriarch.” Their speed in the water was terrifying. Some came close enough to grip the blades of the oars with their tusks, and the oars had to be frantically jerked free. One female repeatedly attempted to leap into the dinghy, hurling herself out of the sea and deluging them all with spray until Raynal, in panicky desperation, fired two volleys into her. She sank like a stone—as always happened when seals were killed in the water—and the rest gave up the chase, but it was a nightmare experience. Shaken, they rowed back to Epigwaitt, and such was their awe that they nicknamed the old beachmaster Royal Tom.
THE EXPEDITION OTHERWISE had been a success. They now had plenty of meat—much more, in fact, than they could eat before it went off. “We thought, therefore, of curing at least half of it,” wrote Raynal. To do this, they used up some of their store of salt. “Of our seven seals, four were cut up, and the pieces laid between layers of salt in an empty cask. Some days afterwards, when they were thoroughly saturated, we suspended them to the rafters of the roof in the interior of our hut.” It was a reassuring sight. As Musgrave commented, their fears “were comforted by looking upon our stock of meat hanging up in the house.” Unfortunately, they hadn’t found a way of storing Stilbocarpa rhizomes, but had to venture out to pull them up as needed.
The evidence of past visitors that Raynal had found on Figure-of-Eight Island was heartening too. “There is no doubt but that they were killing seals, as we found a number of bricks, which no doubt had been used for their tryworks,” Musgrave wrote. “There had been two tents pitched, and, from the appearance of the ground where they had their fire, I should judge that they had remained about a week.” Though it was impossible to tell how much time had elapsed since they had left, “I am delighted to see even this sign of ships coming here.”
Musgrave felt so buoyant that he decided it was high time they checked their signal on Musgrave Peninsula, so on the next clear morning they launched the boat and sailed off in that direction. They fished as they went, but every time they dropped a line the sea lions came around to snatch anything they caught before they could draw it into the boat: Sea lions, as the castaways were finding out, are very fast learners.
They pulled through surf and around rocks that seethed with kelp to the end of the peninsula, to learn something even more depressing—that the flagpole they had raised with such labor was leaning at a desperate angle. Worse still, the canvas flag had disappeared, evidently whipped away by a hostile gale, and the bottle with its carefully composed message was rolling around on the ground. No sooner had they absorbed the grim fact that their signal would have conveyed absolutely nothing about their plight or their location to would-be rescuers, than another north-northwest storm blew up. Hunched against the rain and blown spray, they rowed as hard and fast as possible—“and it was as much as we could do with three oars and me sculling to get across the bay,” wrote Musgrave. Several times they lost ground, but after a long struggle they got close to the head of the harbor. There, with numb, battered hands, they piled in some rocks for ballast, set their sail, and scudded back to the house, where they arrived at five, just as dusk was falling, “drenched with rain and spray, and fainting with hunger; for we had had nothing to eat since breakfast.”
It was another two weeks before they could return to the flagstaff, haul it back upright, and put up a huge signboard, four feet long and two feet, six inches wide, with the letter N painted on it as a sign to passing ships that there were castaways to the north. “I also secured a bottle to the board, to notify to anyone where we are, and giving them some instructions for working up the harbour,” Musgrave wrote. “But should they not be able to send a boat on shore to get the bottle, the letter ‘N’ will indicate which way they are to turn; and when are round the point we shall see them, and I shall get on board as soon as possible.”
A few days afterward, however, with the renewed realization that even the hardiest whalers were not likely to arrive before October, the dawn of the subantarctic spring, depression returned. “The days are getting short,” Musgrave wrote on April 10; “and a long, stormy, dreary winter is before us, without the slightest prospect of getting away; and how those dear ones whom I left manage to battle with the misery in which my ambition and folly has plunged them, I dare not think. Oh!” he exclaimed in an agitated splash of seal-blood ink; “if they were only here with me, how happy would be my condition compared with what it is; for I am provided with a good shelter, and plenty to eat, and I should then think that they shared these blessings at least; but as it is, I know not to what extremities they may be reduced.”
Epigwaitt was indeed a cozy shelter, as at long last the cabin was completely thatched. It had been a tediously long drawn out job as well as a tough one, because it depended so much on the weather—thatching could not be done in the pouring rain, or when the wind blew hard. It had not been until Sunday, March 27, eight weeks after commencing the job, that Musgrave was able to gladly report in his journal that they had at last filled in the sides of the house. “It has taken 5000 bundles of thatch, each bundle weighing a pound,” he wrote, “so that the total weight of thatch on the sides and ends of the house is about two and a quarter tons.” They hadn’t thatched the roof, being satisfied with a double layer of canvas instead, but this did not detract from the final result, which he described as “very warm and comfortable.”
The timing was excellent, because from that day on the weather became very foul. Storm followed storm, accompanied by thunder, lightning, and sudden deafening avalanches as whole cliffs came down, the wild surf having loosened the rocky underpinnings. There were landslides inland, too, with complete slopes brought down by the torrential rain and the weight of snow, which made them fear for their house and thank God that they had built it on the top of a hill. While the forest around Epigwaitt was being rapidly cleared for firewood, they made sure to keep a screen of trees between the house and the shore, to shelter their trembling, rustling thatch from the worst of the prevailing gales. “The hurricane shook, and bent, and twisted the trees, tearing off their foliage, in spite of its tenacity, and carrying clouds of rent and faded leaves to the waters of the bay, which were covered with them,” wrote Raynal. At times the spray was blown so high and hard they could hear it hissing on their canvas roof.
Added to the roar of the tempest, the crash of thunder, and the cracking and splintering of branches, there were unearthly howls in the distance, sounds uncannily like the barking of dogs. For a while, the men wondered if it was some strange effect of the wind, but because of the weather it was impossible to investigate. By April 12, however, their stock of fresh meat was so low that they were forced to go out, despite the awful conditions.
Alick and Harry left the house first, but just as Raynal and Musgrave were getting ready to follow, Harry came rushing back. “Dogs,” he gasped. “Two dogs on the shore!”
“What?” they cried.
For a moment the Portuguese cook was too breathless for further speech, but then he described what he had seen. “One was a fine shepherd’s dog,” wrot
e Raynal, “white and black, with a long plume-like tail; the other, of smaller size, seemed a cross between a bull-dog and a mastiff.”
Alick had been left behind to keep an eye on them, and try to entice them closer, if he could. Grabbing a rope and a piece of salt meat for bait, Raynal and Musgrave hurried after Harry, but by the time they arrived on the beach, the dogs were gone. Alick said that he had tried to creep closer to them, but the instant he’d moved they had run off into the trees.
They were all terribly disappointed and downcast. As well as being good companions, the dogs, once trained, would have made the hunt much easier. “I saw their tracks,” Musgrave wrote, “and was satisfied that they had seen dogs; and, from the men’s description of them I think they were sheep dogs.”
Nearby, the men found the corpse of a seal calf which the dogs had evidently killed. After that, they still heard them baying far off in the trees, but the dogs were never seen again. And, though they often saw the tracks of pigs, they never saw pigs, either. It was as if both pigs and dogs were deliberately avoiding Epigwaitt and its inhabitants—as if, like the sea lions of Figure-of-Eight Island, they recognized the castaways as their enemy.
ELEVEN
The Jaws of Hell
Sunday, May 1, 1864,” wrote Captain Musgrave. “We now enter upon another month of imprisonment, which is commencing with bad weather.” Over the past three days there had been a tremendous gale with terrific squalls, hail, and rain, but before that it had been clear enough for a party of the men to revisit Figure-of-Eight Island, which now seemed to be the only place where the seals congregated.
