forest are everywhere and their
existence unexplained, though Lillie had many ingenious theories.
The island has been in our hands, the Germans', and is now
Brazilian. Nobody has been able to settle there permanently,
owing to the land-crabs. These also exclude mammal life. Captain
Kidd made a treasure depôt there, and some five years ago a chap
named Knight lived on the island for six months with a party of
Newcastle miners—trying to get at it. He had the place all
right, but a huge landslide has covered up three-quarters of a
million of the pirate's gold. The land-crabs are little short of
a nightmare. They peep out at you from every nook and boulder.
Their dead staring eyes follow your every step as if to say, 'If
only you will drop down we will do the rest.' To lie down and
sleep on any part of the island would be suicidal. Of course,
Knight had a specially cleared place with all sorts of
precautions, otherwise he would never have survived these beasts,
which even tried to nibble your boots as you stood—staring hard
at you the whole time. One feature that would soon send a lonely
man off his chump is that no matter how many are in sight they
are all looking at you, and they follow step by step with a
sickly deliberation. They are all yellow and pink, and next to
spiders seem the most loathsome creatures on God's earth. Talking
about spiders
(Bowers always had the greatest horror of
spiders)
—I have to collect them as well as insects. Needless to
say I caught them with a butterfly net, and never touched one.
Only five species were known before, and I found fifteen or
more—at any rate I have fifteen for certain. Others helped me to
catch them, of course. Another interesting item to science is the
fact that I caught a moth hitherto unknown to exist on the
island, also various flies, ants, etc. Altogether it was a most
successful day. Wilson got dozens of birds, and Lillie plants,
etc. On our return to the landing-place we found to our horror
that a southerly swell was rolling in, and great breakers were
bursting on the beach. About five P.M. we all collected and
looked at the whaler and pram on one side of the rollers and
ourselves on the other. First it was impossible to take off the
guns and specimens, so we made them all up to leave for the
morrow. Second, a sick man had come ashore for exercise, and he
could not be got off: finally, Atkinson stayed ashore with him.
The breakers made the most awe-inspiring cauldron in our little
nook, and it meant a tough swim for all of us. Three of us swam
out first and took a line to the pram, and finally we got a good
rope from the whaler, which had anchored well out, to the shore.
I then manoeuvred the pram, and everybody plunged into the surf
and hauled himself out with the rope. All well, but minus our
belongings, and got back to the ship; very wet and ravenous was a
mild way to put it. During my 12 to 4 watch that night the surf
roared like thunder, and the ship herself was rolling like
anything, and looked horribly close to the shore. Of course she
was quite safe really. It transpired that Atkinson and the seaman
had a horrible night with salt water soaked food, and the crabs
and white terns which sat and watched them all night, squawking
in chorus whenever they moved. It must have been horrible, though
I would like to have stayed, and had I known anybody was staying
would have volunteered. This with the noise of the surf and the
cold made it pretty rotten for them. In the morning, Evans,
Rennick, Oates and I, with two seamen and Gran, took the whaler
and pram in to rescue the maroons. At first we thought we would
do it by a rocket line to the end of the sheer cliff. The
impossibility of such an idea was at once evident, so Gran and I
went in close in the pram, and hove them lines to get off the
gear first. I found the spoon-shaped pram a wonderful boat to
handle. You could go in to the very edge of the
authors_sort
Jessa Slade
Pat Cunningham
Katheryn Lane
Kathleen Royce
John Burdett
Simon R. Green
Joan Jonker
In The Kings Service
Lela Gwenn