Island of the Lost (7 page)

Musgrave and the three sailors sprang dazedly to their feet. Arming themselves with a pickax and cudgels of firewood, they dashed out of the tent. Then, just as precipitously, they stopped short, because just yards away two sea lion bulls were ferociously battling.

Both were formidable beasts, about eight feet long and more than six feet broad at the shoulders, their massive bodies covered with short dark hair. Their jaws gaped to reveal huge tusks, and their great moustaches and shaggy iron-gray manes bristled with rage. The sight of the men didn't distract them in the slightest. “Every moment they flung themselves upon one another, and bit and gnawed, tearing away great shreds of flesh, or inflicting gashes where the blood flowed in abundant streams,” Raynal wrote with awe. Finally George and Harry,
afraid that the beasts would blunder over the tent and demolish it, threw flaming torches at them, and the two bulls roared off, to recommence their battle a few hundred yards away.

T
HE SECOND DAY
after the wreck, Tuesday, January 5, 1864, was a memorable one. Not only was it fine but the sailors held the first of the many hunting parties to come. While Raynal was again left at the camp to make sure the fire did not burn out, Musgrave and the others took up six-foot cudgels and set off into the forest.

Raynal watched them disappear; after about a half hour he heard shouts and exclamations, and realized that the chase had been successful. Later still, the men reappeared, each loaded down with a quarter of a sea lion carcass, the animal being far too big for one man to carry alone. They were scratched, insect-bitten, weary, and bloodstained, but no one had been hurt, and they had enough meat to get them through the next few days. Considering that none of them had been sealing before, and they had only followed the instructions that some old sealer had given them in Sydney—that the efficient way to kill a seal was to club it over the root of the nose, between the eyes, where the bones of the skull were thinnest—they had done very well. It was a triumph.

Revitalized, Captain Musgrave, George, and Alick returned to the wreck to retrieve the three chests and the big iron pot, along with the rest of the provisions, including the potatoes and pumpkins—considered particularly important, because these might provide the seed for a vegetable garden. At the same time, Raynal and Harry, the Azorean cook, took advantage of the dry weather to improve the damp, uncomfortable accommodations.
After taking everything out, they unpitched the tent and lit a big fire where it had stood, to dry and harden the earth, and also scorch and sanitize it, in yet another attempt to rid themselves of the scourge of insects.

There were two kinds of these terrible flying creatures, each carrying its own special torment. The sand flies,
Austrosimulium vexans
, were horrid enough, clinging to every inch of exposed skin and biting viciously, but more revolting were the huge bluebottle blowflies that obstinately burrowed into clothing and blankets, leaving clumps of writhing maggots in their path. These were
Calliphora quadrimaculata
, a sturdily built fly with metallic coloring, that can grow as long as an inch and pollutes everything it touches, because the female has to feed on decomposing organic matter—such as sea lion dung—for the proteins necessary to mature her eggs.

Once the smoke from the fire had sent these insects whirling off in confused clouds, Raynal and Harry directed their attentions to the carcass the hunting party had brought in. Raynal—mistakenly, as the reproductive organs had evidently been discarded with the rest of the entrails when the three hunters had butchered it—estimated it to be from a young female seal, as it weighed about one hundred pounds. Harry hung a quarter from the branch of a tree, and after lighting a fire underneath, Raynal kept it revolving so that it was well roasted by the time the others returned from the wreck.

The salvagers were tired but elated, because they had managed to retrieve the ship's compass, some more sails, and a number of empty bottles, in addition to the pot and chests. The sight of the black meat carved off the roast sobered them somewhat, however, and the first taste was not reassuring, either, being revoltingly
coarse and oily. If the meat from a one-year-old was so disgusting to eat, what would it be like when they were forced to kill whatever old sea lions they could find? As Raynal meditated, it was an ominous prospect.

This dubious banquet eaten, they overhauled the chests. Raynal's gun was covered with rust, so he applied himself to cleaning and oiling it while the others took out instruments and clothes, and set them out to dry. Happily, the gunpowder had not gotten wet, being sealed in a tin. Miraculously, too, not only was the chronometer safe in its padded box but it hadn't stopped, so they now knew the exact time of day. “The other instruments,” Raynal wrote, “were our sextant, a metal barometer, and a Fahrenheit thermometer.” Everything else—books, charts, the small stock of spare clothing—was sodden with seawater. They got it all dried out and stowed in the reerected tent before dark, luckily, because that night the rain came back to make life as miserable as it had been before the sun had come out.

That second night in the tent was very rough, Raynal writing that “on our hard, wet planks, we tasted but a fitful slumber, disturbed by constant nightmares.” In the morning the men rose “with stiffened limbs, feverish, and more fatigued than before we went to sleep.” It made them all the more determined to build a weatherproof cabin as soon as humanly possible, and so straight after breakfast they went out in search of a suitable site.

This was by no means easy, the coastal forest being “very dense, in fact almost impenetrable,” as Raynal described. Because of the constant howling winds, the tree trunks were “twisted in the most fantastic fashion.” Every attempt to grow
upright was doomed—no sooner had a tree trunk straightened, than “comes the buffeting wind again, and beaten down anew, it bows, and writhes, and humiliates itself, to shoot aloft once more for a foot or so, until soon it falls back vanquished, and is bent towards the ground. Sometimes these trees,” he poetically meditated, “being wholly unsuccessful in their attempts to rise, crawl, as it were, along the earth, disappearing every now and then under hillocks of verdant turf, while the portions visible are coated with mosses of every description.”

Because he was feeling a little stronger, Raynal went with the others to the mouth of the little brook that rippled near the tent and emptied into the sea nearly opposite the wreck of the
Grafton
. The beach there was reasonably level, so the men cleared a place to draw up the precious small boat and keep it safe from high tides and storms. They then decided to build their cabin on a hillock nearby, about forty feet above sea level, and conveniently close to the tent, the brook, the beach, and the wreck.

It also had the advantage that they would not have to go far to replenish the larder during the busy weeks of constructing the hut, because the sea lions were so numerous in the surrounding bush—“they go roaring about the woods like wild cattle,” wrote Musgrave six days later. “Indeed, we expect they will come and storm the tent some night. We live chiefly on seal meat, as we have to be very frugal with our own little stock; we kill them at the door of the tent as we require them.”

With more experience in preparing and eating seal meat, they had learned to pick and choose their game. The animal they had killed and eaten first must certainly have been a bull, because they had found the meat so rank and oily. “We cannot
use the old bulls,” wrote Musgrave. The females and the calves, they found, could be very good eating. “We got one young one which had never been in the water,” Musgrave went on; “this was delicious—exactly like lamb.”

They had salted down two carcasses for future use, though it didn't seem likely that they would be short of game for quite a while—“we have no occasion to go far after them, as they come close to the tent; indeed we were very much annoyed with them in the night.” On one occasion he had been forced to take up the gun and put a bullet through the tail of one invader. “We have not been troubled with them since,” Musgrave added grimly.

This was also, though, a mocking reminder of the riches he could have made if only the
Grafton
had not been lost. “If we had been fortunate enough to have kept the vessel afloat, I have no doubt but in two months or less we should have loaded her,” he wrote, going on to despair yet again about the hardness of his fate: “After getting to where I might have made up for what has been lost, I lose the means of doing so. The vessel leaves her bones here, and God only knows whether we are all to leave our bones here also. And what is to become of my poor unprovided-for family? It drives me mad to think of it. I can write no more.”

The best remedy for despondency was to keep busy, François Raynal recording that Musgrave, George, and Alick were busy felling trees, cutting them into eight-foot lengths, and piling them on the hillside ready for further use. “As for myself, being too feeble for any hard work, I mended the torn clothing of my companions,” he wrote. He also cooked and tended the fire, all the time waving away the insects, which continued to
plague them horribly. However, “For every ill there is a good,” he quoted, going on to describe the abundant, charming birdlife that was attracted to the campsite by the flies. “Never having been alarmed by man, they hovered round about us, and perched themselves on the branches, within easy reach of our hands.”

The first to pay a call was a species of little blue robin (probably the Auckland Island pipit,
Anthus novaeseelandiae
), which was so very partial to flies that the men used to catch the insects on the wing for the fun of hand-feeding them to these little birds, which were so tame they would perch on their arms and legs to pick the flies off their clothes.

“We had also for neighbours, in the wood, some small, green, red-headed parrots,” Raynal continued. All five men found these astonishing, as they associated parakeets with the tropics: “Ours, however, seemed very well pleased and fully satisfied with their lot.”

Known by its Maori name
kakariki
—“green”—in its native New Zealand because of its spectacular coloring, this parrot, a member of the
Cyanoramphus
species, has an emerald body, blue feathers mixed with green and black in the wings, and a bright red top to its head. The bird seen most frequently was “brownish-green, slightly yellow underneath, insectivorous like the robin, and not less partial to flies.” This visitor's character was one of “an inexhaustible gaiety,” Raynal commented admiringly. “Whether the weather is bad or good, it matters little to him; he sings with a full heart.” When the men were pushing their way through the trees flocks of these bellbirds (
Anthornis melanura
, a New Zealand native that feeds on nectar as well
as on insects) would accompany them, so that it was as if they “marched to the music of a concert.” To Raynal's amusement, if he whistled a cadenza, any bellbirds nearby would puff up their chests and open their beaks—“Then would occur an explosion of harmony!”

Less often, they were visited by another tuneful honey eater, the tui,
Prosthemadera novaeseelandiae
, which the pioneers in New Zealand called the “parson bird” because of its white neck ruff, which forms a fine contrast to its jet black plumage. “Above and on the breast he has two large, white, floating feathers, which give him a very curious appearance, and add to the gravity of his mien.”

Despite the commotion Musgrave, George, and Alick created while clearing the hillock, the birds flocked about the site—for protection, as well as company. “Upon these inoffensive passerines a bird of prey wages the deadliest war,” Raynal went on, and added, “We frequently saw these birds perched in couples on the dead trees of the shore—motionless, silent, their head half hidden under their wings, their large fixed eyes exploring space.” This was the New Zealand falcon,
Falco novaeseelandiae
, a magnificent bird of prey known for its utter fearlessness and disdain of man. It hunts in an unnerving silence, and then streaks in on its prey at speeds of up to one hundred fifty miles per hour, uttering a short, terrifying scream before falling on a hapless small bird in mid flight. Tuis often defend themselves by counterattacking in a flock. The castaways had a simpler ploy: One of the men would take the gun and shoot the falcon dead.

“B
UT WE HAVE
other work on our hands at present,” wrote Musgrave; shooting hawks was a waste of time and energy as well as precious ammunition. “We must get a place to live in, for the tent we are now living in is a beastly place. I expect we shall all get our death of cold before we get out of it yet; and the blow-flies blow our blankets and clothes, and make everything in the most disgusting state imaginable.”

This sentiment was fervently echoed by the men: “We have all worked very hard,” Musgrave recorded toward the end of the first week of their stranding; he himself had been so busy that he had not had time to keep up the ship's log or his journal, and so “Mr. Raynal, who is improving fast, keeps the diary. Indeed,” he added, “he is so much better that he talks of going to work tomorrow”—and that despite the weather, which was unremittingly foul, “blowing a perfect hurricane from N. to S. all the time,” accompanied by torrential rain. “And yet it was the middle of summer!” Raynal expostulated later.