Island of the Lost (5 page)

Then, as Raynal went on to relate, Musgrave started visibly, lowered his spyglass, swerved around with an elated expression, and exclaimed, “Good news!”

“Good news?” Raynal echoed.

“Aye—here are the seals that we couldn't find at Campbell Island, I think. Look yourself, and tell me—do you see seals on the rocks over there?”

Raynal took over the telescope, while the schooner worked closer to the shore. Within moments, seals—or sea lions—were plain to be seen, some sleeping on the rocks, others at various vantage points on the beach or on the slopes high above the shingle, while the heads of more seals bobbed about in the water. The animals seemed unaware of the
Grafton
, but then the schooner came about, and the noise of the sails shaken by the wind roused their attention. They reared up and stared, and then plunged into the sea. “In a moment a crowd of them surrounded the schooner, which they regarded evidently with astonishment and terror,” Raynal recorded. Instead of coming close, they ranged about the vessel in a big circle, barking and squealing as they swam.

When Musgrave put the
Grafton
about again, and steered toward the southern shore, it was to see a multitude of seal life there too. All five men were elated, Musgrave and Raynal in particular. Conferring animatedly, they came to the decision to stop at the island for a few days, just long enough to fill their few empty water casks with oil and salt down a few furs. After that, they would raise anchor and set all sail to make a speedy return to Sydney. Then, as fast as possible, they would reprovision the ship, and return with about thirty men to pitch a camp and stage a proper hunt.

In this high mood of optimisim, they rounded an outthrust of land that they called Musgrave Peninsula, and entered the north arm of the harbor. Musgrave's aim was to find a safe anchorage, but the water was still too deep for the two anchors, limited as they were by the length of chain, to hold on to the bottom and keep the
Grafton
safely away from the rocks. Slowly they sailed on, while Alick stood in the channels swinging the sounding line and counting off the fathoms, but still the sea was too deep for the anchors to find a grip on the bottom.

Silence descended as the feeling of ebullience faded and anxiety took its place. Musgrave was frowning. The wind had fallen, and a dead calm threatened, which meant that the schooner was at the mercy of the tide. When the sun descended behind the mountains they were still without an anchorage, and the stars and moon were blotted out by a flood of brooding clouds. All Musgrave could do was keep to the middle of the bay, judging his position by the sound of the surf, and hope for the best. Raynal lay in his berth listening to the echoes of their captain pacing back and forth, back and forth, then finally went to sleep.

The Frenchman was wakened again by the thunder of rain falling in torrents, and the sound of Musgrave shouting out urgent orders, so he deduced that the wind had risen. When day broke, they were still off the peninsula, however, and the breeze had dropped away, though still the rain poured down. At 6
A.M
., after ordering the small boat manned, Musgrave sent it off to look for an anchorage. However, Alick and George came back with no good news at all, and the wind was again beginning to rise.

It quickly became apparent that another storm was looming. Impelled by the gusting gale, Musgrave steered up the long harbor, choosing a northern route each time the bay forked. About three in the afternoon, to the great relief of all, the rain stopped, just as the
Grafton
sailed into a magnificent basin rimmed with precipitous cliffs. At long last the sounding line hit bottom, and Musgrave was able to note that they had “brought up on the N.E. side of the harbour, in 6 fathoms of water, close in shore, about 10 or 12 miles from the sea.”

Though the anchors were finally down, he was still very worried. The schooner was much closer to the rocks of the northeast shore than was comfortable, “as there is hardly room for her to swing clear of the rocks should the wind come from the S.W. There is a swell on, and she strains very much at her anchors,” he worried. But, it was the best he could manage in the circumstances. Cliffs loomed all around, dangerously close to the limit of their anchor chain, rocks snarling with surf at their feet. Thick, leathery kelp surged back and forth in the foam.

By late afternoon the sky was the color of steel, and a gale was gathering. In Raynal's berth it was very dark, and the night was full of noise—bootsteps hurrying back and forth on the
deck above, the drumming of rain almost drowning out the creak and groan of the heavy wooden hull. Added to that, there was a deep, regular, ominous booming. As the men were to find out later, a westerly wind sent great breakers crashing against the western cliffs with such enormous force that each concussion created a roar, setting up echoes in the primeval rock that resounded throughout the land. With each gust the schooner shuddered and pitched her head down. Then back she would rear, to be caught up short by her anchors while the wind wailed through her rigging.

Saturday, January 2, 1864, dawned with constant rain and heavy squalls. “There is a considerable swell running, and the ship has been jerking and straining at her chains,” wrote Musgrave in his logbook. Every now and then the gale would let up a little, raising their hopes, but then it would blow with renewed violence. And so the dreadful day wore on.

At seven in the evening there was a sudden uncanny silence—“one of those intervals in which the genius of the storm seems to rest a moment only to take breath,” as Raynal described. Then a gust of solid wind and rain slammed the ship; she shuddered hard in response—and the starboard chain snapped.

It broke close to the hawse pipe. The
Grafton
lurched out to the extent of the remaining anchor—which dragged, so that the schooner began to creep toward the rocks, propelled by the wind and the relentless shoreward current. On deck, Captain Musgrave watched in terrible distress, unable to do anything to stop the dreadful progression of events: “She is lying almost parallel with the shore, and should the wind come from the S.W. she must most inevitably go into the rocks, and I have now made up my mind for the worst. I see no hope of her keeping clear.
Barom. 28:99, and falling at 10
P.M.
The wind is so that, should I slip the cable with a spring, she would not clear the point, or I would slip and run out to sea. At every heave of the swell she is dragging the anchor home, and getting nearer the shore.”

For the next two hours the gale increased, until it was screaming with horrible force. Rolling and pitching, the schooner dragged closer to the waiting shoals. All at once, mercifully, the anchor caught in something on the bottom—“bringing up the vessel at last with her stem about half a cable's length from the shore,” as Raynal recorded. The
Grafton
wallowed there for perhaps an hour, and then, with an awful lurch, the anchor wrenched free.

Precisely at midnight on January 3, 1864, she struck on the rocks. “A shock more terrible than any of its predecessors made the vessel shiver from stem to stern,” wrote Raynal; “a frightful crash fell upon our ears—the disaster so much dreaded had come about!”

The raging sea swept the helpless schooner's decks, and the wind and rain howled through her rigging as her hull smashed onto the reefs.

FOUR

I
n a quarter of an hour the ship was full up to the top of the cabin table and the sea was breaking heavily over her,” Captain Musgrave recorded. With frantic haste the five men retrieved what provisions, tools, and personal possessions they could from the hold and cabin, handing them up to the highest part of the steeply pitched deck, and then covering them with the mainsail. Then they huddled there themselves and waited for whatever dreadful scene the dawn might reveal, while the rain lashed down and the wind raged with undiminished fury.

When day finally broke, the men crept out from under the dripping canvas to find that the sea was still high, the wild surf whipped into great clouds of foam. Even in death the schooner offered some protection, however, as the side that reared out from the sea took the brunt of the waves, so that the sixty-yard channel between the
Grafton
and the beach was relatively calm.

Providentially, the thirteen-foot ship's boat, which was lashed upside down above the main scuttle of the schooner, was undamaged. With a great struggle the seamen managed to launch her safely and make her fast under the lee of the wreck. While
they were piling as much as they could into her, Captain Musgrave found two long, stout ropes. The end of one of these was secured to an iron ring in the side of the wreck, and the other end to the stern of the boat. That done, the men clambered into the boat on top of the goods, and let her surge out to the end of the tether. Alick took the second rope, attached one end to the boat's bow, and then, while Raynal and the others tensely watched, “at the peril of his life he leaped into the waves,” carrying the slack of the second line with him.

“This was a moment of terrible anxiety,” Raynal continued. However, the Norwegian was a strong, intelligent swimmer. Instead of striking out blindly for the shore, he made for the nearest rock, and clung to it as the sea boiled around him. Then, judging his moment, he dropped back into the sea and swam for yet another rock, and thus, yard by arduous yard, stepping-stone by stepping-stone, he made his way to shore. With relief the men in the ship's boat saw him scramble out of the surf onto the shingle, and watched him clamber up the steep slope and secure the far end of his rope to a tree.

Now the little boat was secured midway in the channel, attached by one rope to the wreck of the schooner and by the other to the shore, like a bead in the middle of a string. Then, as Raynal went on to describe, they were faced with yet another problem, their lifeline being so steeply inclined. However, it was solved in seamanlike fashion—and a seaman can move just about anything, given two belaying points, a pulley, and a rope. “By means of a pulley, to which were fixed two ends of rope, one of which was thrown to Alick, and the other retained in our skiff, we first passed to our comrade the pitched canvas; this he arranged round the trunk of a tree, in the form of a tent,
and under it he deposited the various articles which we kept sending up to him.”

Then it was time for the men to follow. Raynal was too weak to hold on, so Captain Musgrave tied him onto his back, and, seizing the pulley, he jumped. For both, it was a terrifying experience. The double weight dragged the rope down so that Musgrave was forced to plow his way through the top of the surf, while Raynal desperately clung to him. A few yards from the beach Musgrave cried out that he could hold on no longer, but Alick dashed into the waves and manhandled them both out of the sea.

George and Harry followed, and at last the party of five was safe on shore. “As for the boat,” wrote Raynal, “we left it where it was, securely moored to the rope.” Glad to creep into the makeshift tent to escape the pouring rain, they overhauled the bags and barrels that had been so arduously winched up to Alick, and summed up their situation.

There was a cask containing about one hundred pounds of hard ship's bread. A staple at sea, it was usually rationed out at the rate of one pound and a half per man per day, so, with care, they had a good three weeks' worth of that. A smaller barrel held about fifty pounds of ordinary flour. There were two tin boxes, one holding two pounds of tea, and the other three pounds of coffee. A damp hempen bag held a dozen pounds of sugar. In addition, they had a few pieces of salt meat, with mustard and pepper for seasoning. A box holding six pounds of tobacco belonged to Musgrave and Raynal, but they immediately shared it out with the men.

Those were all the provisions they had been able to salvage. Back on board the wreck, secured in the place on the afterdeck
where they had waited out the night, were several bags of the salt that had been intended for curing furs, Musgrave's chest, which held navigation instruments, charts, and spare clothes, Raynal's chest with his gun and sextant, and a third chest filled with “useful domestic articles, such as plates, knives, and forks,” as Raynal recounted. As well as this, they had saved a big iron pot that had been intended for rendering the fat of the seals they had been so confident of killing. In addition, there were the last remains of the cask of potatoes, plus a couple of pumpkins. Right now, however, those articles were out of reach.