The Land of Fire: A Tale of Adventure

Chapter Twenty Three.

The Dreaded Oensmen

From the information they have gained about the Yapoos, which shows them to be ferocious and treacherous, and hostile to white men, Captain Gancy decides upon running out to seaward through the Murray Narrow – a resolve in harmony with the advice given him by his Fuegian host and the trusted Seagriff as well. The inlet in which they are is just outside the entrance to the Narrow, on its western side, and once round a separating tongue of land, they will be in it. As if fortune favoured their taking this route instead of following the Beagle Channel, a fine breeze has set in from almost due north, and is still blowing when the spoil-laden hunters return.

To take advantage of it, immediate departure must be made, and is determined upon. Down comes the tent, and its component parts are transferred to the boat with all their other belongings. Enough, also, of the guanaco meal to last them for a much longer voyage than they hope to have the necessity of making.

What if they make no voyage at all? What if they are not even allowed to embark? But why should these questions occur to them? – for they do occur.

Because, just as they all have come down to the boat, and are preparing to step into it, something is seen on the water outside, near the opposite shore of the channel, which painfully suggests to them a fleet of canoes crowded with men, and evidently making across for the cove.

“The Yapoos!” exclaims Orundelico in a voice betokening great alarm.

But not so great as when, the instant after, he again cries out:

“O Lor’! The Oensmen ’long with them!”

Captain Gancy, quickly covering the canoes with his glass, makes out, what is yet undistinguishable by the naked eye of any other than a Fuegian, that there are two sorts of men in them, quite different in appearance; unlike in form, facial aspect, dress – everything. Above all, are they dissimilar in size, some being of gigantic stature; the others alongside of them appearing like pigmies! The latter are seated or bent down working the paddles; while the big men stand erect, each with an ample robe of skin hanging toga-like from his shoulders, cloaking him from neck to ankles.

It is seen, also, that the canoes are lashed two and two, like double-keeled catamarans, as though the heavy stalwart Oensmen dare not trust themselves to embark in the ordinary Fuegian craft.

“O Lor’, O Lor’!” repeats Orundelico, shivering from crown to toe. “The Oensmen, shoo’. The time of year they come plunder; now oosho (red leaf). They rob, kill, murder us all if we stay here. Too late now get pass um. They meet us yonner. We must run to hills; hide in woods.”

The course he counsels is already being taken by his compatriots; all of whom, men and women, on hearing the word “Oensmen” – the most terrifying bogey of their babyhood – have made a rush to the wigwams and hastily gathered up the most portable of their household goods. Nor do they stay for Jemmy; but all together, shouting and screaming, strike off into the woods – his own wife with them!

Orundelico, left alone with the boat’s people, remains by them but for a brief moment, urging them to flight also.

“Oensmen bad – very bad,” he keeps affirming. “They worse than Ailikoleep – more cruel. Kill you all if you stay here. Come hide in the woods – there you safe.”

“What’s to be done?” interrogates the captain, as usual appealing to Seagriff. “If we retreat inland, we shall lose the boat – even if we save ourselves.”

“Sartain, we’d lose her, and I don’t think thar’s need to. Let me hev another look through yer glass, capting.”

A hasty glance enables him to make a rough estimate of the distance between the cove’s mouth and the approaching canoes.

“I guess we kin do it,” he says, with a satisfied air.

“Do what?”

“Git out o’ this cove ’fore they shet us up in it. Ef we kin but make ’roun’ that p’int eastart we’ll be safe. Besides, it ain’t at all likely we could escape t’other way, seein’ how we’re hampered.”

This, with a side glance toward Mrs Gancy and Leoline:

“On land they’d soon overtake us, hide or no hide – sure to. Tharfer, our best, our only chance, air by the water,” he affirms.

“By the water be it, then,” calls out Captain Gancy, decisively. “We shall risk it!”

“Yes, yes!” agreed the late Calypso’s second and third officers. “Anything but lose our boat!”

Never did crew or passengers get more quickly on board a craft, nor was there ever a more unceremonious leave-taking between guests and host, than that between the castaways and Orundelico.

On his side, the hurry is even greater: he scarcely waits, as it were on the doorstep, to see them off. For as soon as he is convinced they are really going, he turns his back on them and hastily darts in among the trees like a chased squirrel.

The instant that everybody is in the boat it is shot out into the water like an arrow from a bow, and brought head around, like a teetotum. Then, with the four oars in the hands of four men who work them with strength and will, it goes gliding, ay, fairly bounding, on for the outside channel.

Again it is a pull for very life, and they know it. If they had any doubt of it before, there can be none now, for as they draw near to the entrance of the cove they see the canoes spreading out to intercept them. The big fierce-looking men, too, are in a state of wild excitement, evidently purposing an attack. They cast off their skin wraps from their shoulders, displaying their naked bronze bodies and arms, like those of a Colossus. Each has in his hand what appears to be a bit of cord uniting two balls, about the size of small oranges. It is the bolas, an innocent-looking thing, but in reality a missile weapon as deadly in practised hands as a grenade or bomb-shell. That the giant savages intend casting them is clear. Their gestures leave no room for doubting it; they are only waiting until the boat is near enough.

The fugitives are well-nigh despairing, for she is almost near enough now. Less than two cables’ lengths are between her and the foremost of the canoes, each holding a course straight toward the other. It seems as though they must meet. Forty strokes more, and the boat will be among the canoes. Twenty will bring her within reach of the bolas.

And the strokes are given; but no longer to propel it in that direction, for the point of the land spit is now on her beam, the helm is put hard-a-port, bringing the boat’s head round with a sharp sheer to starboard, and she is clear of the cove!

The mast being already stepped, Ned and Henry now drop their oars and hasten to hoist sail. But ere the yard can be run up to the masthead, there comes a whizzing, booming sound – and it is caught in the bolas! The mast is struck too, and the balls, whirling around and around, lash it and the yard together, with the frumpled canvas between, as tight as a spliced spar!

And now dismay fills the hearts of the boat’s people: all chance of escape seems gone. Two of their oars for the time are idle, and the sail, as it were, fast furled. But no: it is loose again! for, quick as thought, Harry Chester has drawn his knife, and, springing forward, cut the lapping cord with one rapid slash. With equal promptness Ned Gancy, having the halyards still in hand, hoists away, the sheet is hauled taut aft, the sail instantly fills, and off goes the boat, like an impatient steed under loosened rein and deep-driven spurs – off and away, in gay careering dance over the water, quickly leaving the foiled, furious giants far – hopelessly far – in the wake!

This was the last peril encountered by the castaways that claims record here. What came after were but the ordinary dangers to which an open boat is exposed when skirting along a rock-bound storm-beaten coast, such as that which forms the southern and western borders of Tierra del Fuego. But still favoured by the protecting hand of Heaven, they passed unharmed through all, reaching Good Success Bay by noon of the third day after.

There were their hearts made glad by the sight of a ship at anchor inshore, Seagriff still further rejoicing on recognising it as a sealing vessel, the very one on which, years before, he had cruised while chasing the fur-coated amphibia through the waters of Fireland.

Yet another and greater joy is in store for them all – a very thrill of delight – as, pulling up nearer to the ship, they see a large boat – a pinnace – swinging by its painter at her side, with the name Calypso lettered on its stern. Over the ship’s rail, too, is seen a row of familiar faces – those of their old shipmates, whom they feared they might never see again. There are they all – Lyons and nine others – and all uniting in a chorus of joyous salutation.

Now hands are being shaken warmly on both sides, and mutual accounts rendered of what had happened to each party since their forced separation. As it turns out, the tale of peril and adventure is nearly all on the side of those who took to the gig, the crew of the pinnace having encountered but little incident or accident. They had kept to the outside coast and circumnavigated it from the Milky Way to the Straits of Le Maire. They had fallen in with some natives, but luckily had not been troubled by them.

They who had been troubled by them more than once, and whose lives had been endangered and almost lost, might well be thankful to Captain Fitzroy, one of whose objects in carrying the four Fuegians to England and back to their own country is thus told by himself: —

“Perhaps a shipwrecked seaman may hereafter receive help and kind treatment from Jemmy Button’s children, prompted, as they can hardly fail to be, by the traditions they will have heard of men of other lands, and by the idea, however faint, of their duty to God, as well as to their neighbours.”

The hopeful prediction has borne good fruit, even sooner than Captain Fitzroy looked for. But for his humane act Captain Gancy and all dear to him would have doubtless left their bones, unburied, on some lone spot in the Land of Fire.

notes

1

The Sir Charles Napier known to history as the “hero of Saint Jean d’Acre,” but better known to sailors in the British navy as “Old Sharpen Your Cutlasses!” This quaint soubriquet he obtained from an order issued by him when he commanded a fleet in the Baltic, anticipating an engagement with the Russians.

2

The Fucus giganteus of Solander. The stem of this remarkable seaweed, though but the thickness of a man’s thumb, is often over one hundred and thirty yards in length, perhaps the longest of any known plant. It grows on every rock in Fuegian waters, from low-water mark to a depth of fifty or sixty fathoms, and among the most violent breakers. Often loose stones are raised up by it, and carried about, when the weed gets adrift. Some of these are so large and heavy that they can with difficulty be lifted into a boat. The reader will learn more of it further on.

3

Dactylis caespitosa. The leaves of this singular grass are often eight feet in length, and an inch broad at the base, the flower-stalks being as long as the leaves. It bears much resemblance to the “pampas grass,” now well known as an ornamental shrub.

4

Aptenodytes Patachonica. This singular bird has been christened “Jackass penguin” by sailors, on account of its curious note, which bears an odd resemblance to the bray of an ass. “King penguin” is another of its names, from its superior size, as it is the largest of the auk or penguin family.

5