Slag-heaps we saw now, and the buildings began to find individuality from the jumble that we had seen in the distance. As we closed the shore we began to see tawdry lines of shacks, miners’ cottages we supposed, on sunbaked grassless earth, and stacks of coal, and a long loading wharf below. Beyond it was a wooden wharf, and we sailed in the evening slowly towards it. From the wooden wharf a low shore ran round to an untidy little town and the whole was topped by a vast cemetery, the most striking landmark from the sea.
Near the wharf and on the shore there was a row of huts with yellow fish-boats drawn up on the beach. As we drew near there was a rush to launch them and the fishermen and boys rowed out around us, laughing and chattering in Spanish. They showed us where to anchor and they gripped the bulwark with their hands. Their boats bumped against Tzu Hang’s sides and they swarmed on board at any unprotected point. Beryl was the only one of us who could speak any Spanish. After a time with many ‘Por favor Señor’s we persuaded them to leave us because we wanted to eat, and they rowed off again to their village.
That night we lay rocking gently at our anchor as we had done at Dromana, nearly three months ago and over 6,000 miles away. I thought before I went to sleep of the path that we had followed and of how Tzu Hang had sailed her devious way, with so little help from us. And I thought of Slocum and the Pilot of the Pinta. It almost seemed as if Tzu Hang had had a Pilot too.
CHAPTER TEN
FIRST DAYS IN CHILE
Tzu Hang lay that night pulling lightly at her chain, easing forward and lying back again, and rolling gently in the moonlight. She seemed at ease and resting, satisfied that for the time being her work was done. I awoke many times to wonder at the stillness and stayed awake to marvel that we were at anchor once again, finding it almost impossible to believe that we were really in port, in a safe harbour. Daylight came, and soon afterwards a chattering outside, like sparrows in the ivy. The chorus grew and closed around us and then there was a ponderous thump against Tzu Hang’s side.
I had been lying in a torpor of relaxation, thinking comfortably of going ashore and of visiting a new land, but the thump brought me jumping to my feet. Beryl had given John and me a short lecture on the necessity for the courteous forms of address, no matter what the stress, while we were in South America, and now she hissed a warning to me as I left the cabin. I had a false and twisted smile by the time my head was out of the hatch. There was a crowd of little yellow-painted fish-boats round the ship, and men and boys in ragged clothes, with laughing sunburnt faces. The leader of those who had helped us to the anchorage, and who had told us that his name was Oscar, had his hands on the rail and was grinning across the deck at me; a long knife scar showed livid across his cheek. His heavy boat, its bow shod with a piece of rusty iron, was pounding against Tzu Hang, but he was quite unaware that it might do her any damage.
‘Buenos días,’ I said, and at this example of my fluency he skipped nimbly on board, flooding me in a torrent of Spanish. The last thing that we wanted before breakfast was a visit from these laughing, inquisitive, and nimble-fingered fisherfolk, for a quick look round the deck showed that anything loose had already vanished during the night. With Oscar as the advance guard, the other boats began to close in rapidly.
‘No Señor,’ I cried, ‘abhi khana khaenge,’ suddenly afflicted with Hindustani. ‘Beryl, for God’s sake come and talk to these people or we’ll have the whole ship full of them.’
Beryl came up on deck and John put his head out of the hatch; we watched her as children watch a conjuror and his hat. ‘Buenos días,’ she said, and there was a polite reply from the boats around. ‘Por favor, Señores, ahora no queremos más hombres auf dem bâteau. Queremos desayuno, más tarde ustedes.’ She accompanied this multilingual effort with vigorous signs. Oscar’s mobile and scar-divided face lit with greeting, went blank at the foreign words, brightened again with understanding, and finally flushed with anger, which he turned on his compatriots in our defence. They took themselves off to their fishing with some salty remarks at Oscar’s expense, and he settled himself on Tzu Hang’s deck, talking lazily to his companion in the boat, who fended it off from Tzu Hang with a negligent bare foot, and sometimes let it bump against her side.
While we were still eating our breakfast Oscar took himself off in response to a hail from the shore and was soon back again with another agonising bump and a young sailor, smartly turned out in what we came to recognise later as the fatigue dress of the Chilean Navy, blue jeans, and an American sailor’s cap. Oscar had established himself and his boat, to his considerable profit, as handyman and tender to Tzu Hang. Our new visitor represented, as far as we could make out, the Customs Officer, the Quarantine Officer, and the Harbour Master, all of whom were waiting for me in the offices of the Port Authority in Coronel. I finished my breakfast, collected what remained of the ship’s papers, and went ashore.
We tied up at an old wooden wharf on twisted and worn piles, and walked along it avoiding the numerous holes in the decking, and out through some battered gates on to a narrow dusty street. It was warm and bright on shore and a fresh clean wind was already blowing in from the sea, tossing some paper in the gutter, eddying round a warehouse at the end of the wharf, and blowing a wisp of dust across the road. With a loud blare on its horn, a fat white-topped bus came rushing round the corner, and just missed a long-bodied and short-legged dog, which ran out from under a fruit stall at the side of the road. On the top of the bus, above the windscreen, the word Microbus was printed, and on the window, ‘Coronel—Concepcion’. We found that Microbus, or colloquially Micro or Gondola, was the generic term for all motor buses in Chile, but this one had a personal name also, painted on its broad, blue, and dusty behind. It was called La Estrellita or little star. La Estrellita sent a cloud of dust over some great clusters of grapes in the fruit store, and a broad-hipped, red-faced woman leant over the counter and blew the dust away with gusty blasts. As she did so she talked, in between blasts, to a man with a wooden leg and a brown poncho thrown over his shoulder. A wine bottle poked its head out of his pocket.
It was my first impression of Chile, and the country seemed warm and welcoming, as did some of the dark-eyed bold-looking girls I noticed, as we walked up the street of little shops and stores. Oscar followed close behind, explaining to anyone who cared to listen the object of our journey, and giving the latest reports on the new arrival in the bay. As we approached the harbour offices he began to lag behind, and by the time that we entered, he had disappeared.
If there was any reason for him to have avoided the offices, he need have had no fear, for there was no one there. In the main office there was a table and two chairs, and against the wall on a small table, a old typewriter with ivory keys, but none of the officers that I had understood were waiting. In the adjoining room, which was also empty, there was a fine looking radio-telephone apparatus and a large wall clock with no glass, and the minute hand bent out 2 inches from its face. The sailor offered me a cigarette and a chair, said to me ‘Un momento’ and went into the radio room, where he started to read a paper that had been tucked underneath the set. I noticed that the clock had stopped.
After twenty minutes a man in civilian clothes came in. He bowed to me and wished me good day, and went in to join the sailor. After a time he went to the radio-telephone and began to turn the dials. ‘Alo, alo, alo,’ he called several times without any response, and then switched off the set without any sign of annoyance, and continued his talk with the sailor. After another twenty minutes and another attempt by the radio operator to establish communication, without any apparent result, I thought of John and Beryl, impatient to come ashore, and decided that I would wait no longer for any authority. I made the sailor understand that I must go and speak to the Consul.
‘Very well,’ he said, ‘we will go and see Don Santiago.’
We found Don Santiago sitting in the inner office of an agency representing various firms, and looking after the interests of the Pacific Steam N
avigation Company, in one of whose ships he had sailed fifty years before, as assistant purser. As young James Monks, from Liverpool, he had come ashore, and he had stayed on to become Don Santiago, known and respected by everyone in Coronel, with the manners of a Spanish hidalgo, and an ever-growing brood of attractive grandchildren. It turned out that Don Santiago was not the Consul, but an honorary assistant in Coronel, and that the real Consul was in Concepcion. With a vague grasp of our story he rang up Concepcion, and passed on a surprisingly new version of our doings.
The Consul took it all in his stride, and when I was able to prise Don Santiago off the telephone, and speak to him myself, he said that he would get into touch with Admiral Young, a retired officer of the Chilean Navy, and find out how best we could be repaired. He said also that he would be out in the afternoon, and that he’d take us all back to Concepcion, for dinner and a bath.
Over the mantelpiece in Don Santiago’s office was the picture of a full-rigged ship, and before I hurried off to give John and Beryl the news, I asked him about it.
‘It is the picture of a ship that was wrecked on Santa Maria Island in a fog, while trying to come into Arauco Bay. Many ships were lost that way,’ he said. ‘I got it from the captain’s cabin after she was wrecked. I was a young lad then.’ As I left he called to me to tell me not to worry about the Customs, and to say that he would speak to them for me.
On the way back to the ship Oscar joined me suddenly at a corner carrying a bunch of grapes for Beryl. I wondered who had paid for them: and when we passed the harbour offices an unruffled voice was still calling ‘Alo, alo, alo.’
The yellow fish-boats were clustered round Tzu Hang like wasps round a jam-pot at afternoon tea in the garden.
‘It’s no good,’ said Beryl, ‘we just can’t keep them away. We’ll have to leave Oscar in charge when we go ashore. Poor Tzu Hang. When the boats bump her like this it’s like kicking her when she’s down. It’s driving John crazy too. He’s not used to this sort of people.
John and I went ashore again to get our hair cut. Mine had been trimmed by Beryl just before the smash, but John had a luxuriant growth, and the irrepressible Oscar kept patting himself behind the ears, in an effeminate gesture, and laughing slyly at John. After the losses from the deck and the continuous bumping of the small boats, John was in no mood for such trivialities, and I could see that his temper was rising, but Oscar, the ape, was quite unaware of the tornado that was threatening to engulf him.
After lunch we all three went up to Don Santiago’s office leaving Oscar and his mate, like wolves to guard a lamb, in charge of poor Tzu Hang. Don Santiago was very doubtful about our choice of a watchman, as well he might be, but we thought that Tzu Hang was in such poor condition that no one would think of despoiling her further, and that setting a thief to catch a thief was perhaps the best procedure. In fact, after being so long at sea, we didn’t think too ill of anyone: we were suckers on shore.
Leslie Pountney, the kindly and urbane British Consul from Concepcion, was waiting for us with Don Santiago, and we set off in his car on our way to Concepcion, twenty miles away along a straight flat road, through burnt grasslands, and young plantations of New Zealand pine. The old indigenous trees had long ago gone from the surrounding country. On our left the flat pasture ran down to the sea, and on our right the foothills rose in careless disarrangement to the distant central plain, and beyond again, the white tooth of an Andean peak showed above the shoulders of a nearer hill.
There was not much traffic on the road, but what there was was varied. Two small barefooted boys, riding bareback, galloped down the verge. We passed a number of trucks and lorries, one or two microbuses, a couple of oxcarts, and a horseman dressed in a short embroidered poncho, a flat black and wide-brimmed hat, wooden box stirrups, and vast silver spurs. As we neared Concepcion, the road crossed on a long bridge the dry bed of the Bio Bio River, dry now because it was the end of the summer, but in winter a wide brown flood, which took its annual toll of drowned from country ferries and overloaded little boats.
During the drive the Consul told us the impressive story of what he had been doing on our behalf. He had spoken to Admiral Young, who considered that the only possible place to get the yacht repaired was in the Navy Yard at Talcahuano. He had also spoken to Captain Wilson, who was Chief of Staff in Talcahuano, who was coming to see us on the following day to let us know what they would be able to do for us. Meanwhile we would have to arrange a tow round to Talcahuano. The Navy couldn’t do this as they would have to send an ocean-going tug at quite prohibitive cost, but the Consul thought that we could arrange this tow with Señor Querello, who owned a fish-meal factory and some ocean-going fish-boats which kept the factory supplied.
We went in search of Señor Querello, who arrived at his house at about the same time as we did. He was just back from his farm in the country, and the back of his truck was loaded with grapes. He was sunburnt, vigorous, and gay, and he swept us all into his house, where a lovely dark girl, his wife, poured out wine for us. After a time the Consul told him our story and we were able to follow the conversation.
‘Do you think you could help them?’ the Consul asked.
‘¿Cómo no?’
‘Would you be able to send one of your boats round to Coronel to tow them to Talcahuano?’
‘¿Cómo no?’
Beryl and I looked at each other. It seemed as if the first obstacle was going to be overcome.
‘They would like to pay for the tow of course.’
‘Nada, nada,’ said Señor Querello, ‘it is nothing. We are people of the sea, and would like to help them.’
I think that there can be no one, who has built or repaired a boat anywhere, who has not been astounded at the cost, frustrated at the delays, and exasperated at all kinds of unforeseen difficulties. We went through it all in the next few months, but the experience was softened by this kind of generosity and undemanding kindness, that we met with everywhere in Chile. As for Señor Querello, I think that we remembered him every day with gratitude, during the rest of our stay in Chile, as the smell of his fish-meal factory wafted across the road to us, on our daily journey from Concepcion to Talcahuano.
Before returning to Tzu Hang we revelled in a hot bath and a good dinner at the Consul’s comfortable flat, and we sent a twenty-one word cable to Clio telling her as much as we could of the story.
Captain Wilson and his Señora arrived on board next morning. They looked as if they had just stepped out of a fashion-plate, but they both squeezed down through the forehatch and into the damp and musty-smelling cabin. As Señora Wilson looked around her at the mildewed teak, the scarred deckhead blackened with smoke from the fire, the stripped ceiling and the missing doorposts, she exclaimed with charming courtesy, ‘¡Qué linda, que preciosa!’ Captain Wilson had been on the staff of the naval attaché in London and spoke English well. He had also commanded the Esmeralda, the sail training-ship of the Chilean Navy. The command of the training-ship seemed to be one of the best appointments in the Chilean Navy, and this sail training opened an easy door for us in our relations with the Navy officers, all of whom went through it, and were as a result particularly interested in Tzu Hang and her voyage.
‘The Admiral says,’ Captain Wilson told us now, ‘that he will be very glad for your yacht to be repaired in the Navy Yard. Of course there will be charges, but as in Chile we like to encourage sport we will try and keep them down.’
‘Will we be able to work on her ourselves?’
‘Oh yes, of course. The only thing is that because it is a private yacht, you will have to buy all the materials outside the Arsenale, as it’s called. We have to conform with the regulations, you know. But as for assistance, I’m sure that we will be able to give you a lot of assistance, and it’s only the specialised labour that we will have to charge you for.’
As soon as Captain Wilson and his trim Señora had left us, I turned to John.
‘Well what do you think of it?’
> ‘Sounds all right, sounds pretty good. We’ll have to rustle up some wood, and I suppose they’ll let us have a place to work in. I wonder what sort of machines they’ve got.’
‘Does that mean you’re really going to be able to stay on and help us fix her up?’
‘Well I’ve been thinking. I really could stay on for a month or so, but as you won’t be going round the Horn now, I think I’ll have to leave you then. I’ve got to get to South Africa, and then I’ve got to go back to Trekka in New Zealand, but I sure would like to fix her up again for you. I feel I owe it to her. I’ll build the doghouse and the skylights and the masts, and you ought to be able to manage the rest.’
‘Good man.’
I think Beryl had known all the time that he would stay on, but it was a tremendous relief to me to know that we were going to have his skill and knowledge for the refitting, and as for the Horn. … I thought that we’d had a good shot, and soon it would be winter. I thought that Beryl and I would take Tzu Hang the easier way home, by way of Panama.
Next morning before six o’clock we heard the noise of an engine and the thud of bare feet on the deck. I looked out to find a beamy powerful fish-boat already making fast its towrope, and two stalwart seamen preparing to get up our anchor. The captain of the fish-boat was young and athletic, with a clear-cut aquiline face, and he was wearing a black shirt and a black Spanish hat, so that he looked as if he should be riding in the Feria at Seville, rather than on the deck of a fishboat. He came on board for a time during the tow and we offered him some breakfast, but he refused, saying that he never ate at sea but only drank wine, and sometimes he was at sea for three days.
The morning mist was hanging low about us when we started off, but it soon began to rise and thin, and the sun burst through and shredded it into faint vanishing streamers. Away to port we could see Santa Maria Island and the Farallones, where big ships had been lost, groping their way into Arauco Bay in a fog, but which Tzu Hang had providentially avoided. Soon the blue outline of the Bio Bio Hills showed to starboard, and ahead was Punta Gualpen, the southern end of the Tumbez Peninsula, round which we would go to enter Talcahuano. In three hours we were well out of the bay, and into the ocean swell, rolling up the indented coastline of the peninsula.
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