Señor Martinez lent us a carpenter to help us in shaping the ends of the booms to take the fittings, and for drilling the holes through the masts, to take the bolts for the tangs. Neither of us could guarantee that the end of the drill would come out on the other side exactly opposite the point at which it had gone in, if we had tried to do it. The mast-track arrived at last, and we screwed it on and gave the masts another coat of paint, and while they were drying we started to get Tzu Hang ready to go into the water again.
After being so long ashore she needed completely recaulking. The caulking compound that we had ordered from America had been held for two months in the Customs, but it was released now, just in time, and we got a professional to do the job. Then we gave her a coat of anti-fouling paint and she was ready for the sea. But before all this happened there had been another change in the Arsenale, which affected our work, and even the surroundings that we had become so accustomed to.
One day, when Beryl and I got out of the car at Talcahuano, we looked across the edge of the bay to the dockyard, as we did every morning, hoping to see Tzu Hang’s small white hull perched up on the sea wall. We saw Tzu Hang, but we also saw, high above the drab buildings, high above the lines of minesweepers and corvettes moored to the mole, four tall masts. It was the Chilean training ship, Esmeralda, who had arrived in the inner harbour, and who now spread the mantle of her grace around her so that there was no one who entered the dockyard gates whose eyes were not lifted in admiration to her tall spars. From then on, when we walked to Tzu Hang, we always walked the length of the quay where she was moored. It was as if a relation had appeared in a foreign country, and we felt better for her presence.
She was square-rigged on the foremast only, and did not have all the beauty of a fully square-rigged ship, but she was the most beautiful thing in the harbour, tall and slender. Her arrogant bowsprit soared upwards, and a condor was her figurehead below.
That afternoon, while Beryl and I were working on Tzu Hang, we heard a hail from below. We looked over the rail and saw a tall broad-faced man, a captain in the Chilean Navy, calling up to us.
‘I’m Bonnafoss,’ he said, ‘commanding the Esmeralda. I wanted to know if there was anything I could do for you?’
He spoke in French. Beryl and I clambered down and shook hands.
‘We got in yesterday,’ he said, ‘and I’m just going off on leave. If you think of any way in which I can help you, I will arrange it before I go. I will see something of you when I come back, and anything else that I can do before you leave we can arrange then.’
‘I wonder,’ said Beryl, ‘if your sailmaker could sew up the mainsail for us. We have had to take out two cloths, and now the lower part of the leach has to be altered, and it all has to be sewn together again.’
‘Of course he can. I’ll send him along at once.’
Captain Bonnafoss always did exactly what he said he was going to do, and usually earlier than we expected, and a few minutes after his broad back had disappeared round the wharf shed on his way to Esmeralda, the sailmaker and his mate arrived. We showed him the pencilled markings that we had made on the sail, and as soon as he understood them, they bundled the sail up and took it away. We thought it very remarkable that the captain of a four-masted training ship should have taken the trouble to walk all the way over to Tzu Hang to ask if he could be of some assistance, so soon after coming in and just before going on leave, but Captain Bonnafoss was a very remarkable man.
As soon as Tzu Hang’s bottom was painted I went off to make arrangements for the crane to put her into the water.
‘At nine o’clock sharp,’ said Commandante Soulodre, and he was in a very affable mood. ‘At nine o’clock on Friday, and you must be ready then, because of the tide.’
‘And could we have some spreaders, so that the rail won’t be damaged by the slings.’
‘Of course.’
On Friday we were ready at nine o’clock sharp, in fact we were ready an hour before then, because we had persuaded Edward to drive us all the way down to the yacht at eight, but at nine o’clock there was still no crane in sight. I went round to the office in search of the hard-working and long-suffering Commandante, but found that he had been called away suddenly to Santiago, and no one in the office now knew anything about the crane. I was told that I would have to make out a formal application for the crane, which would have to be signed, and that the crane could not possibly be ready on that day. ‘But it was all done two days ago,’ I said, ‘it was all arranged.’
‘But never mind, it is quite easy to arrange again; only not today.’
‘But tomorrow’s Saturday, and then there’s Sunday.’
‘And after that Monday.’
It had become absurdly important for us to get Tzu Hang into the water on that day, it seemed almost symbolic of success. If only she could float again, we felt we would be nearly off. But as in the Chilean winter the sunshine follows the rain, and the flowers bloom at the most unlikely times, now Teniente Fernandez arrived, short and broad and beaming, to say that the crane was actually on its way.
‘Have you any spreaders?’ I asked him.
‘No, no spreaders.’
I ran off breathless in search of Señor Martinez, and the floating crane, a carpenter, and two long baulks of timber arrived at Tzu Hang all at the same time.
As soon as the floating crane was in position, with her kedge anchors out and made fast to the wall, Teniente Fernandez came up to us. ‘All ready now?’ he asked. He was wearing a pair of large leather work-gloves, like a badge of office. The crane swung its hook over Tzu Hang and two large wire slings were put into position under the keel. I noticed that one strand had frayed through on one of them, but Teniente Fernandez assured me confidently that they could still pick up twice the weight of Tzu Hang. When the slings were in position the carpenter started to fit the spreaders, and before he had finished the whistle blew, and everyone knocked off for lunch. Beryl and I were left once more in a state of fluttering suspension, hardly able to believe that having got so far, it had all stopped again.
During the lunch interval music was played as usual over the loudspeaker system and the tune that came floating across the football ground was Que será, será, whatever will be, will be.
‘Listen to that damned tune,’ I said to Beryl, ‘I wonder if we’ll have to pay for the extra time.’
After the interval Teniente Fernandez came up to us again. He was as relaxed and cheerful as ever. ‘The tide …’ he said.
‘No, don’t tell me.’
‘Yes. We’ve lost it. We will have to wait for a couple of hours.’
We waited for the tide to ebb and to flow, and at five in the evening it was thought to be high enough. Tzu Hang was hoisted up into the air, and the props and shores fell away from her hull, but as she went up the floating crane went down and we were soon hard aground.
‘Never mind,’ said the Teniente, ‘we must wait some more.’
The whistles blew again and the dockyard workers started hurrying along the sea wall on their way home, and as if in answer to the same signal the cormorants came flying in long lines out of the bay, on their way to the rocks where they would spend the night. As the men from the yard passed us they wished us a happy night, and Teniente Fernandez, still complacent and unruffled, lit a cigarette, while his crew sought what shelter they could behind the crane from the chilly south wind, which was splashing wave tops on to the deck. Tzu Hang remained hanging in her slings, and I thought of the frayed wire rope, and half expected to hear it crack before we got her into the water.
They tried again, and this time the crane began to slide away towards her anchors. For a panicky moment we saw that Tzu Hang’s keel was not going to clear an iron bollard on the wall, but she was lifted at the last moment and swung out over the sea, and then with a rush and a splash, in a burst of Chilean élan, she was lowered into the water, where she lay bobbing and bowing to the little waves like a Muscovy duck newly arrived in a p
ool. She was towed round and made fast near the Esmeralda, and when we got home that night, long after dinner-time, Edward had a special amount of Pisco sour ready for us, and we felt as if we needed it.
Now we were ready to put the masts in and again in need of a crane. Señor Martinez was interested in this, as the masts were in his workshop, and he wanted us to use the huge electrically operated crane, which ran on rails along the side of the big dry dock.
‘¿Es muy preciso,’ he said, holding up his hand, his little finger extended and his thumb and forefinger a fraction apart, as if he was drinking a cup of coffee in the most fragile and delicate of cups, ‘to the thickness of an eggshell, no es cierto?’
But the big crane wasn’t available, and I had to go to the donkey crane, at work in one of the smaller dry docks. It also was on rails and could get to us if we moored just outside the dry-dock gates. It didn’t look ‘muy preciso,’ as it puffed and snorted, heaving huge masses of ironmongery out of the hull of a ship in the dock, but we brought the ship round and made her fast.
In order to get the masts down to the dockside, we needed a trailer and tractor, which Señor Martinez had said that he would arrange, but by midday no masts had arrived. I began to wonder if the crane would be ready before the masts, and went in search of Señor Martinez. I can’t imagine what my own reaction would have been in my army days, if two foreigners with a broken-down car had appeared day after day in the regimental lines in search of something or other from the workshops. I suppose it might have been violent, but Señor Martinez and the others had now put up with us for months and their patience had far exceeded any liability that might be claimed as due to the brotherhood of the sea.
Now for the first time I saw him out of humour, but apparently not with me. He flung his arms out with an extravagant gesture and burst into English with a fluency that I had never even suspected. ‘It is remarkable,’ he said, ‘of all the tractors in this Arsenale, not one can I find … anywhere.’ I went off to try and find one myself, and when I returned riding triumphantly on its towing bar, tractors were converging on Señor Martinez from all directions. We got the masts down to the dockside undamaged, and there our relations with Señor Martinez ended, as they had already ended with Commandante Soulodre, no doubt to their relief, but to our lasting regret.
It was not till after the whistle had gone in the evening that the crane arrived, the driver working overtime for no pay on our behalf, and two carpenters had also stayed on, unasked, to help. The masts were picked up in the air while we steadied them, and then each in turn swooped down on the deck with a terrifying clanking, to stop a few inches above the aperture. We guided them in, and then there was another rush as if they were going to be dropped through the bottom of the boat. Then for the last few inches I steadied them into their steps, and with a little sigh from the donkey they were lowered as gently as a feather falls.
When we left the Arsenale that evening, we walked most of the way backwards, so that, while Tzu Hang was still in sight, we could see her in her new rig, with her masts once more in place.
Every day the web of stays and shrouds grew about Tzu Hang’s masts, and every afternoon now the south wind blew strongly, splashing the wave tops over the mole behind which we sheltered. High above us Esmeralda’s rigging gave out a full-throated roar, and now Tzu Hang began to pipe a shrill accompaniment. We had set up the rigging using bulldog grips to hold the wire round the thimbles at the lower ends. Now we adjusted the rigging-screws, marked and cut the lower ends, and spliced in the thimbles, so that our stays and shrouds were all the right length, leaving just sufficient for stretch.
Every day I spliced and served, and as usual we had someone to help us. This time it was the crew of a disabled tug which lay alongside us. One of the seamen came from the Island of Chiloe, which breeds seamen for Chile, as the Hebrides or Shetlands do for Britain. He helped me with the splicing, but he didn’t care for the stainless steel, and he preferred to cut rather than twist off his ends, so that when he was working, he started the splices and I finished them.
In the middle of October the ship which brought our stores from England arrived, and Beryl and I went down to the Company Offices only to find that two of the cases had been off-loaded in Valparaiso. Worse still the case that had arrived had been broken open and rifled, but we could not tell how much was lost until the other case arrived. We were spending so much in refitting Tzu Hang anyway, that for once we had ordered all that we really wanted for her, but up to now had managed to do without. It was a bitter blow, and we had little hope that the cases in Valparaiso would arrive intact. I arranged with the shipping company that when they arrived on the following boat, they would not be left for the night in lighters made fast to the quay. When the ship arrived we found them next day lying in the lighters, where they had spent the night. Both cases had been broken open and over a hundred pounds worth of stores had been stolen.
I do not know where the theft took place. It may not have taken place in Chile, but there is so much of it during the voyage, at any port of call, and even, it is said, before the start of a voyage, that the company with whom we were dealing seemed helpless and fatalistic about it. Perhaps it is one of those penalties that have to be accepted if one lives with the beauty of the Andes as a background.
But at least the sails, the rope, the compass, and some of the blocks had arrived, and there was nothing to stop us leaving, and if we needed something to help us recover from this blow, we soon had it. Captain Bonnafoss returned from leave. The same afternoon the mainsail arrived from Esmeralda, and as it was a calm afternoon we were able to bend it on and set it. It was a new sail, and now that we had altered it we were pleased to find that it fitted splendidly. We went over to thank Captain Bonnafoss.
‘Is there anything else that I can do for you?’ he asked.
Beryl never misses a chance. ‘We need some rawhide strips,’ she said, ‘for lashing slides and hanks on to the luff-ropes. We got some kangaroo-hide in Australia and found that it was far better for seizing them on with than marline, and better than shackles, which we always used before for the mainsail slides. We can’t find any rawhide here nearly strong enough.’
‘They use sea lion hide here for lashing the yokes on to the horns of the oxen, I don’t know whether that would do you?’
‘We were given a sea lion skin, but it smelt simply awful, and it was so thick and hard that we couldn’t cut it.’
‘Well, leave it to me,’ Captain Bonnafoss said, ‘I’m sure that I can manage something.’
A day or two later he turned up on board Tzu Hang with some long thin strips of rawhide in his hand. ‘Here you are,’ he said. ‘What do you think of these?’ He handed us the strips and when we tested them we found that we could not break them.
‘What are they?’
‘Well I’ll tell you,’ he said, ‘because you’ll never guess. They are cut from the hide of a female celibate puma.’
I thought of the several months that we had spent in Talcahuano. I though of the kindness that we had met with, and of the frustrations too, of the achievements and the disappointments, the delays and the successes. Many of them we might have experienced in other parts of the world; but nowhere else, I thought, could we ever have been given rawhide made from the skin of a female celibate puma.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
TO CORONEL AGAIN
ONE day after we were back in the water, we found the inner harbour full of fish-boats. The sardines had come in. The fish-boats were moving round in a circle as their crews cast their nets, and then drew them tight and hauled them in. After hauling their nets they went off full to the gunwales, with their pumps working hard and so low in the water that it looked as if they might sink before they had unloaded their catch. As soon as they were unloaded they came back for more. The hungry cormorants from Peru, who had been dying all along the shores during the winter, soon began to look fat and sleek again. Perhaps the sardines were a sign that summer had arrived, for t
he gardens in Concepcion were gay with flowers, and the boisterous south wind sent little white wavelets scurrying across the bay.
We walked along the beach to the Admiral’s house for the last time, in places clambering over rocks on hand and footholds that we had come to know well, and we ate for the last time one of Señora Young’s prodigious and famous teas.
‘So you are really off at last,’ the Admiral said, ‘and you are going south, not true? I think that I should like to go with you.’
‘He would too, but I say he is too old now,’ said his Señora.
‘Too old, nonsense. Too comfortable perhaps,’ the Admiral bridled.
We had all the charts from the Golfo de Peñas to the south, by way of the Channels, and we spread them out on the floor to go through our route with the Admiral.
‘But you are going in very far to the south,’ he said, ‘it is a great pity that you will miss this part from Ancud, in here, where it is a very different country.’
‘The thing is,’ I said, ‘we want to get on now as it is already much later than we intended, and for most of the time in the Channels we can only travel by day, and what with finding our anchorages and making our moorings secure, and getting away in the morning, with only two of us we’ll make very short runs. I doubt if we’ll average more than thirty miles a day.’
‘That’s true,’ he said, ‘but I think that at least you should go in south of Chiloe here, by Guafo Island. It is such lovely country. You must remember that the longer you stay at sea, the more likely you are to meet with bad weather, not true? In the Channels it is all sheltered water, but it is getting a little late, and down south in the summer you have too much wind. Fewer gales you know, but it blows strongly in the Channels always, and at sea a gale is a gale, and it can blow just as hard in the summer as in the winter.’
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