Island of the Lost (24 page)

Then he set to work. First, he made three wooden panels out of narrow planks that he pegged together and caulked with tow, “which I procured from untwisted ropes.” With his knife, he shaped these panels so that they were semicircular on one side and came to a point on the other. The middle plank, the longest, was fitted with a copper tube, which narrowed at the far end, and which he rolled himself, joining the long edges by folding and doubling them over each other, “just as tinmen do.” He enclosed the base of this tube with “two little pieces of wood hollow in the middle, which, when brought close together, formed
une sorte de virole
”—a ferrule, or collar. “This I fastened with pegs to the extremity of the panels.”

The pointed sides of the two other panels were joined to this middle panel by hinges made of sealskin, so one panel was above the central one, and the other below. “In this way,” he went on, “they were movable, could rise or sink, as wanted, on the middle piece, which remained immovable, when the bellows were fixed in their place between two posts erected in the rear of the fire.” Holes were bored in the middle of two of the panels, and fitted with leather valves. “Finally, I completed this wonderful instrument by covering the sides with seal skin of a suitable shape, nailed to the edges of each of the three panels.”

The men were now the proud owners of a double-action forge bellows capable of furnishing a continuous jet of air, and were suitably admiring. When Raynal asked his comrades whether they had changed their minds about building a boat, a “unanimous
shout of assent was the reply,” and all three sailors immediately offered to help out with the work.

T
HE SUCCESS OF THIS
project posed yet another problem, however. As Raynal pointed out, back in the early days they had been able to devote most of their time to house building, because they had had the provisions saved from the wreck. Now they were almost entirely dependent on sea lion meat, and if the boat was to be built, two of the men would have to take over the whole of the hunt, which up to now had been the job of them all. The challenge was “bravely accepted by George and Harry, the two youngest,” Raynal wrote. “Upon them alone fell the heavy labour of hunting and fishing, as well as of cooking and washing, the repair of our clothing, and the management of our household affairs.”

Alick took on the task of supplying the forge with fuel, a responsibility that used up close to twenty-four hours of each day. Not only did he have to cut firewood, but he had to turn it into charcoal. This involved making a pile of wood from seven to nine yards thick and then overlaying it with turf so that it would smolder in the middle. The wetness of the peat was a problem, because it either extinguished the fire by dampening it, or else dried into an airtight shell, which had the same effect by blocking the supply of oxygen to the embers. Consequently, Alick had to lay the turf very thinly, watch it for cracks, and, if any chinks appeared, block them with a pellet of fresh peat. This meant he had to check the fire a score of times in the night—“Yet he laboured to the very end without a single complaint. Such absolute self-denial is above all praise,” as Raynal declared.

The Frenchman's description of Musgrave's contribution was somewhat more muted. “As for Musgrave, he assisted me in building the boat, as well as in the labours of the forge,” he wrote. Musgrave himself displayed very little enthusiasm, saying, “We shall shortly commence to pull the schooner to pieces, and I have no doubt but we shall feel truly interested in the work of trying to get away. I hope we may succeed,” he added on a dubious note. “It is quite true that by energetic perseverance men may perform wonders.” The men were all “very sanguine,” but he did not feel “quite ready to commence yet.”

Instead, according to his own account, he was deeply involved in a different project, that of building a substantial lookout hut—so he and Raynal could live apart from the men. “Raynal and I have not finished our new place, where we intend to live,” he wrote. Raynal himself made no mention of this. Back in November, after he and Musgrave searched for a suitable site for a lookout hut on Musgrave Peninsula, he had dismissed the project as unworkable. “One of us being necessarily kept at home to attend to our various domestic cares, three only would be left to go in search of food, and to carry provisions to our sentinel. This would never suffice. And when the bad weather rendered navigation impossible, what then?” The plan was nothing but “a chimera conceived in a moment of illusion,” he said, and decided emphatically, with no further ado, “We would abandon it.”

So Musgrave's idea that he and Raynal should live in splendid isolation in the lookout hut had never been discussed with Raynal himself. Certainly, the Frenchman would have dismissed the notion out of hand. Not only was it physically impossible for Alick, George, and Harry to build a boat by themselves, as well
as hunt for game, look after Epigwaitt, and get provisions to the lookout hut, but he was utterly firm in his conviction that they could only survive if they worked and lived as a close group. Also, he was far too busy at the forge to spare the time to work on another house, let alone argue about it. However, Musgrave clung to this private fantasy for some weeks, which indicates that he had become delusional.

He was extremely depressed, commemorating the New Year by glumly noting that it marked the one-year anniversary of their arrival in the Auckland Islands, “and in all probability another will at least pass before I get away, unless by chance of some sealers coming in the meantime.” He had given up the last dim hope that Uncle Musgrave and Sarpy would meet their responsibilities, and was in very poor health. His hair, which had gone quite gray, was falling out, and he was afflicted with a plague of boils.

Though the rookeries were busy with calving cows as January drew on, Musgrave remained miserable—“I have never suffered as I do now; it is no use talking about what I have suffered—God alone knows that extent of that since I have been here,” he wrote. At last, however, he took an interest in the boat building. Together he and Raynal made a shed to house the forge, roofed with sheets of copper torn off the hull of the wreck. A brickwork furnace was constructed inside it, and the bellows set up horizontally between two stout posts at the rear of the hearth. A block of iron from the old ballast of the schooner served as an anvil, and Alick accumulated a good stock of charcoal for fuel.

“On the morning of 16 January,” wrote Raynal, “our forge was set to work for the first time. The charcoal glowed and crackled,”
he went on; “and the bellows, manoeuvred by Musgrave, gave forth a sonorous roaring, which to our ears seemed the sweetest music in the world.” The first job was to manufacture a pair of strong pincers out of two rust-corroded bolts, so that he would be able to manipulate red-hot pieces of metal without getting burned. Naturally, not having tongs to hold the bolts still, it was a tricky job—“what trouble I underwent before I succeeded in fashioning this simple tool!”

Every time Raynal despaired, however, Musgrave would tell him to take courage. “Try again,” he would say, according to Raynal's description. Then, when at last Raynal succeeded, “Bravo!” Musgrave cried; “victory is ours! Look at the master blacksmith, the most accomplished in his trade! To work! Let us beat the iron while it is hot!” As for Raynal himself, he was not ashamed to confess that he wept for joy.

By the end of January he had three pairs of pincers of different sizes, three punches, a mould for nails, a pair of tongs, a cold chisel for cutting iron, a large hammer for beating it, and a stock of carpenter's tools. According to Musgrave, the men, meantime, had been lightening the wreck of the schooner by taking down the lower masts and removing the last of the iron ballast. They then secured seventeen empty casks about her bows, hoping to get her higher on the beach, and make it easier to strip off her planking, as otherwise they had to work at low tide, waist-deep.

However, the remains of the
Grafton
proved to be impossible to shift, mainly because she was so weighty. “She is built of very heavy hard wood,” wrote Musgrave. Originally she had been constructed out of “the wreck of a Spanish man-of-war; but I am sorry to say they took care not to put any copper bolts
in her: but perhaps there were none in the original wreck. But they have not been sparing with the iron,” he added. “She has got any quantity of that about her.” The iron was very useful, but copper would have been easier to work, and not nearly so rusty.

The plan was to build a ten-ton cutter—a decked craft, perhaps thirty-five feet long, most probably rigged for a big gaff mainsail, a triangular staysail, and a jib set from a running bowsprit. By the end of the first week in February they had the blocks for this laid down, and curved timbers had been cut from suitable rata trees, ready for the framework of the hull. Now all they needed was the tools, the most important being an auger, a large drill used for boring holes in the heavy wood, into which strong wooden pegs called “tree-nails” would be inserted to join the pieces of the framework together. “Mr. Raynal is Vulcan; he has had some little experience in blacksmithing, which will now be of the greatest service to us,” wrote Musgrave. Raynal had produced a lot of tools already, but the job of twisting the biting bit of a big auger promised to be very taxing indeed.

Everyone “works cheerfully and well,” Musgrave went on; his best hope was that nothing would happen to dampen their ardor. He had not a notion how long the job would take, “having had no experience in shipbuilding. I must see how the work progresses before I can form any idea.” They all labored from six in the morning until six at night. By the beginning of March Musgrave's hands were “so stiff and swollen with hard work that I can scarcely guide my pen.” Within a week of writing this he had to stop working altogether, as his hands became so inflamed with boils that he had to wear a sling.

Worse still, Raynal, after many attempts to manufacture that critical auger, was forced to give up in despair. “We have got the keel, stem, and stern-post of the craft, and a number of timbers ready for bolting them together,” wrote Musgrave; “but also here we are stuck fast, and find ourselves unable to go any farther. Mr. Raynal has made a saw, chisels, gouges, and sundry other tools. His ingenuity and dexterity at the forge have indeed surpassed my expectation, but making augers has proved a hopeless failure.”

It almost broke Raynal's heart. He had done his absolute best, but turning the crucial spiral point at the end of the auger proved impossible with the tools and materials he had on hand—“For two whole days, I recommenced this operation again and yet again; each time I burned my iron, and, instead of finishing my work, destroyed it.” Worse still, he had come to the conclusion that the task of building a ten-ton vessel was beyond their resources. He had been vastly overoptimistic; he hadn't realized that it would require such “an enormous amount of material, both of wood and iron,” or that they “should be obliged to ‘create' every piece with infinite trouble, the timbers of the old
Grafton
having no longer the necessary suppleness.” It was no good going to the forest for the vast amount of planking that would be needed, the trees being so twisted.

In addition, he “had wholly failed to realise the immense number of nails, bolts, pegs, and the like, it would be requisite to manufacture.” The problem “was the time so great a work would demand; I could not, all things considered, estimate it at less than a year and a half, or perhaps two years!”

Raynal had to brace himself to make this awful pronouncement,
and, once he had spoken, the four others stood and stared at him in blank, disbelieving silence. For Musgrave the news “went like a shot to my heart.” Already they had faced the hard reality that they were never likely to be rescued, and now this last hope was dashed. It was no wonder, as Musgrave grimly noted, that every face betrayed utter despair.

SEVENTEEN