Island of the Lost (2 page)

ONE

I
t was October 1863, early springtime in Sydney, Australia. The sun was bright, but a chilly wind whisked up the broad surface of the harbor, dashing reflections to pieces. Distant waves rushed against islands and rocky beaches, tossing up sprays of seabirds that cried out a raucous challenge as they circled the tall masts of ships. Wood-burning steam ferries chugged across the harbor from the terminus on Circular Quay, their whistles competing with the nearer rattle of the many horse-drawn trams in the city.

Close by, brigs, ketches, and schooners were tied up to quays, discharging sugarcane, coffee, tropical fruits, and coal, and loading ore and locally made machinery. Because of all this activity, the two men who searched the docks were forced to step around piles of sacks and stacks of barrels, and dodge stevedores who were bent low under heavy loads as they hurried in and out of the gaping doors of pitch-roofed warehouses. The cold wind whistled in the passages and alleys, bringing a smell of soot, dust, and eucalyptus trees, and the two men had their collars turned up, and their cold hands thrust deeply into their pockets. Still, however, they doggedly trudged from wharf to
wharf, their eyes moving assessingly from one moored vessel to another.

Though as weatherbeaten as seamen, it was obvious that these two had come in from town. Both were well-groomed, handsome men, wearing city clothes; their good hats were set squarely on their heads, and their boots were decently shined. While they were about the same age, in their early thirties, the dark spade beard of the taller one was peppered with gray, in contrast to the slighter man's luxuriant moustache and whiskers, which were glossy brown beneath a strongly hooked nose. When they talked, it was evident that this latter fellow was French, because of his marked accent, while the taller man's voice held a burr that betrayed his northern England origins. However, they spoke seldom, because they had conferred already, and knew exactly what they wanted.

Everywhere there were notices nailed to walls, doors, bowsprits, and masts, announcing departures, advertising for men, or putting craft up for sale. It was these last that the men inspected, but so far without success, because it was so hard to find a vessel that met their specifications. They were hunting for a schooner that was small enough to be handled by four seamen, but strongly built as well. She had to be cheap, because they had not much funding for the ambitious venture they planned, but it was essential that she be sound. They intended to sail one thousand, five hundred miles sou'sou'east of Australia, as far as the Antarctic convergence, where immense billows rise up before the hurtling winds of latitude fifty, lifting taller than the highest mast before crashing down on ice-sheathed decks. Then they would turn their course to sail six hundred miles northeast and find an anchorage at tempest-swept Campbell
Island. Naturally, then, they were most particular about the ship they had in mind.

All at once, the gray-bearded man spied a likely candidate. He stopped and pointed it out to the other, and then their steps quickened as they approached the vessel. Together, they eagerly read the notice tacked to the post where she was moored. Her name, they found, was
Grafton
. They stood back and studied her, assessing her lines and rigging, and watching the way her short, broad hull rocked heavily in the glossy harbor water. A two-masted craft, she was a topsail schooner, having one square sail set across the upper part of the foremast, and sails that ran fore and aft in the rest of the rigging. This helped make her easy for a small crew to handle, meeting the first of their specifications. What made her particularly attractive, however, were her sturdy build and her workmanlike, seaworthy air.

Again they studied the notice. According to the text, the
Grafton
had freighted coal from Newcastle, New South Wales, to Sydney, and was capable of carrying about seventy-five tons in her hold. It pleased them that she had been a coal carrier. In the tradition of Captain Cook's
Endeavour
, which had also been a collier, she was designed to carry heavy cargoes through gales and wicked seas. She was a little more expensive than they might have wished, but for the adventure the two men had in mind the schooner
Grafton
looked ideal. They turned and went in search of the agent.

N
EITHER OF THE MEN
was a stranger to adventure. The Frenchman, François Raynal, had spent the past eleven years prospecting in the goldfields of New South Wales and Victoria, until he had had to give it up because of poor health.
First, he had suffered severe bouts of the two diseases that ravaged the Australian goldfields, dysentery and ophthalmia. Though he'd cured the dysentery with a glassful of brandy mixed with pepper, the ophthalmia had involved nine days of blindness so painful and terrifying that a friend had taken his guns away from him, fearing that he would commit suicide. Then he had suffered a near-fatal accident when a tunnel had collapsed on him. No bones were broken, but there had been so much internal damage that back in February he'd been forced to come to Sydney to seek treatment from one of the 118 medicos who practiced here at the time. Now, eight months later, the doctor had pronounced that he was cured, but, while he was free to go back to seeking his fortune, François Raynal was determined not to try the goldfields again.

The taller man, Thomas Musgrave, was a master mariner with the reputation of being a steady captain and a gifted navigator. Fifteen years ago, at the age of sixteen, he had started sailing the Liverpool-Australia route, rising rapidly through the ranks until he was given command. Sometime in 1857, probably because he had an uncle who had successfully set up a drapery business in the city, he had made the decision to settle in Sydney. After finding a house, he had sent for his wife and their children, and for a while he had captained ships on the Australia–New Zealand run. Then his luck had run out, along with his job. Like Raynal, he was ready for another stab at making a fortune. Together, they were pursuing a wild venture that had been proposed by two men they both thought they knew well.

One of these instigators was Musgrave's uncle, and the other was Uncle Musgrave's partner in the drapery business, a Frenchman by the name of Charles Sarpy, one of Raynal's
old acquaintances. According to what these two clothiers had told them, there was a rich mine of argentiferous tin on remote Campbell Island, which had not been located yet but was definitely there for the finding. On and on they had gossiped and persuaded, their information and arguments so intoxicating that it wasn't until much later that Raynal—who had been a prospector for the past decade and an engineer before that, and so definitely should have known better—realized that he should have thought much more deeply before going along with the plan.

Mostly made up of volcanic rock torn and dissected by glaciers, Campbell Island was indeed a possible source of mineral ore, but even if the party found this argentiferous tin, they would have to cope not just with the harsh remoteness of the locality, but with an unremittingly hostile climate, too. Both Raynal and Captain Musgrave must have been aware that the constant, bitter winds that burst out of the mountainous interior of the island were notorious. Not only were the primitive charts full of warnings about the dangers of anchoring at Campbell Island, but there were many old sealers in Sydney who knew the Subantarctic well. However, as Raynal ruefully ruminated in the grim months to come, they had both been seduced by the magic term
argentiferous
, which means “silver-bearing.” Because of that one enticing word, they had agreed to go along with a scheme that more sensible men would have turned down without hesitation.

At once, they set to the task of adapting the
Grafton
for the job. The first priority was to prepare her for the terrific seas she would be breasting by adding to the weight in her hull, so that she would sit as securely as possible in the water. As Musgrave
found, she had already been ballasted with about fifteen tons of old iron to keep her steady when her hold was empty on her return trips to Newcastle for more coal. This was not quite enough weight for what he had in mind, but putting in more was a problem, because above the old iron was a solid, immovable deck, which formed the floor of the hold. He purchased ten tons of sandstone blocks, but the stevedores were forced to pile them on top of this floor, where they were not as stable as the shipmaster would have liked.

Captain Musgrave couldn't do anything about it, so he turned to the task of provisioning the schooner for a voyage that was expected to last four months at the most, this being just a first, prospecting expedition. Twenty casks were stacked in the hold and filled with fresh water, and then he purchased and loaded about three hundred pounds of ship's bread (large round crackers of water and flour that were baked so hard they defied the teeth), two barrels of salt pork, about twenty gallons of molasses, a barrel of salt beef, two hundred pounds of ordinary flour, a few small cartons of sugar and butter, a bag of dried beans and peas, ten pounds of coffee and tea in tin boxes, and a couple of barrels of potatoes. Spare canvas, rope, and spars were also carried for running repairs if necessary.

It was then that the consortium ran short of funds. When Captain Musgrave went to the clothiers to ask for money to buy anchor chain, his uncle and Sarpy quibbled at the cost. Though they reluctantly produced some cash, it was only enough to provide sixty fathoms of chain—thirty fathoms (one hundred eighty feet) for each of the two anchors, and not very good chain at that. Anchoring the schooner close to a rocky shore would be courting disaster, because anchors can drag when the
hull is pushed by wind and tide. However, Musgrave was unwilling to complain, knowing that he could be fired and replaced, particularly after the
Grafton
passed the port surveyor's inspection with
fifteen
fathoms of chain—just ninety feet!—on her “best bower” anchor.

So, instead of backing out of an arrangement that looked increasingly dubious, he, with Raynal, turned to the job of finding and hiring two seamen and a cook. It wasn't difficult, because of the constant stream of disappointed gold miners trickling into town, many of them sailors. First to go on the crew list was a twenty-year-old Englishman, George Harris, an amiable fellow who had plenty of sailing experience. Then they found a taciturn twenty-eight-year-old Norwegian with the Scotch name of Alexander Maclaren, who briefly informed them that he was generally called “Alick,” and produced evidence of a very good seafaring record.

Once Alick had signed the ship's articles, Captain Musgrave had enough men to carry out the actual sailing of the schooner, because both he and Raynal would take a watch. However, he still needed a cook, and so a fifth was added to the remarkable mix. The recruit they chose was a Portuguese from the Azores who claimed that his name was Brown. However, it didn't take long at all for Musgrave to find that this was completely untrue, the real name being Henry Forgès. This indicated that the Azorean had run away from his last ship, but that did not worry Musgrave at all. He was used to shipping hands under false names, and he didn't expect to sail to any place where Forgès would be tempted to desert.

More notable was the new cook's appearance, which was ugly in the extreme, as some kind of leprosy had eaten off his
nose. Intrigued by this, Raynal inquired about his past, asking many questions, which the Azorean answered readily. He had first been shipped ten years ago, he said, at the age of thirteen; the master of an American whaleship had called at his island in need of a cabin boy, and he had grabbed the chance to see the world. At the time, he had been quite good-looking, but on a later voyage, he had fallen ill with the disfiguring disease. His shipmates had been so revolted by his appearance and so afraid of catching it themselves, he said, that he had begged his captain to put him on shore at the Samoan Islands. Luckily, the natives nursed him to health. In fact, as he went on to describe, they had made quite a pet of him, and had been so upset when he swam out to a passing ship that they had chased after him with axes, clubs, and spears. If the ship had not hastily lowered a boat, he might have been killed, but instead he escaped, while the natives roared in savage frustration. Quite a tale, as Raynal, very entertained, readily allowed.