The Unknown Shore

by Patrick O'Brian

  By this time Captain Cheap was growing very weak: Mr Hamilton was sadly reduced too, but he could still walk and manage his load, which was a plank. Captain Cheap could scarcely get along at all, however, even at the beginning of the day, and he was obliged to be helped by Tobias and Campbell, who also carried a full burden each. Jack, who was in the last canoe to be dismantled, had a putrid lump of seal wrapped in the captain’s piece of canvas. It had been given to the captain by an Indian who did not think it worth carrying over the long portage, and the understanding was that it would be shared in the evening, when a fire would make it edible.

  The canoe was very long in taking apart, because these Indians preferred to clear the holes of the caulking now rather than when they came to sew the planks together again – the more usual practice – and by the time it was ready the others were far ahead. The planks were delicate objects; a fall would break their perforated edges; and the Indians, having weighed Jack’s load, added nothing to it, but set off after their companions, carrying the whole of the canoe.

  ‘It is just as well,’ thought Jack, scrambling up a muddy slope behind them, ‘for I do not believe that I could carry so much as a paddle more.’ The canvas was an awkward burden, painfully heavy and apt to slide; he carried it on his neck and shoulders, with a line across his forehead, after the example of the Indians, because he needed both hands to get along and to keep up with them. They made their way through a long valley, which must have become dammed at its lower end within the last few years, for although the mud and swamp lay waist-deep in places, yet the broken stumps still stood in the firmer ground below. Jack had no shoes (he had eaten them long ago), and although his feet were quite hard they were not as hard as the Indians', and soon the blood was running under the black ooze that covered his legs.

  Hour after hour they went through the forest, and the Indians, full of meat and born to the country, kept drawing ahead. Sometimes they were slipping away through close-packed saplings, which waved above them; sometimes he could hear them pushing through tall undergrowth; sometimes as he emerged at one edge of a yellow-scummed mire he would see them disappearing at the far side of it, the open black mud showing where they had passed. They had no intention of waiting for him. With ever-increasing anxiety he hurried after the Indians through the gloom; his legs would scarcely bear him, and the pace was killing: he dreaded losing them – dreaded it beyond words.

  Now there was a long slough between tall trees; there was no trace of the Indians, no marks in the mud, but he could hear them in front of him, in the trees beyond the slough. A very tall beech had fallen, and it lay out across the surface of the standing water; his way probably lay along its trunk, he thought, and he hurried out along this natural bridge. Half-way over his feet slipped on rotten wood, the trunk gave a turn, and in a moment he was in the slough, struggling wildly, with his head under the surface, pressed down by his burden. There was no ground under his feet, and his clawing hands met only mud. With a tearing effort he wrenched his head back and, turning, snatched a breath of air; there was a branch within reach, and before it broke he managed to pull himself upright. He could not reach the trunk again, however, and he stood there for some moments, with only his head above the water and his feet in yielding mud. His weight was pressing him deeper: he was forced to move, and with a heavy, floundering, swimming motion he urged himself forward. The slough was shallower; the mud was only up to his chest. With each step it was less, and in ten minutes he was on solid ground on the far side.

  But his strength was almost entirely gone and he scarcely had the energy to be glad of his escape. Indeed, glad was not a word to use in connection with him at all at that time. One can bear a great deal, but there is a limit to human endurance, and suddenly it seemed to Jack that he had reached his limit. He sat, bowed right down, and indulged in the weakness of despair. But in fact he had not reached the end of his powers, as he knew very well after a minute or two; and when he had collected himself a little the haunting fear of being left quite filled his mind again: he was carrying no part of the canoe, and there was no material reason why the Indians should wait for him.

  ‘It is no good,’ he said aloud, looking at his burden: and with a vague notion that it would be wrong to leave it lying there on the ground, he stowed it neatly in the crutch of a tree. Even without it he could barely get along at first, but presently he came to a small, clear stream, running in the direction that he should go – or thought he should go – and here, when he had washed the fetid mud from his mouth and face, he felt better; a few minutes later he saw the traces of the Indians, and, knowing that he was on the right track, he hurried on, leaving blood at every step, but less wretched than before.

  For a good hour and more he followed this stream, and then quite suddenly it flowed out into a vast lake, huge and grey, with the Cordilleras on the other side; and on its muddy shore there were the Indians, reassembling their canoes. The others sat at a little distance. They seemed to be completely done up, and for some time nobody said anything; they, knowing that the Indians were not yet ready, had felt no particular anxiety; and no one who had just made that march could be expected to care for anything but his own fatigue.

  ‘Where is my canvas and the seal?’ asked Captain Cheap at last.

  Jack explained. He was exhausted, but he was not beyond the prick of shame, and the low-voiced, bitter, heartfelt reproaches that met his explanation pierced him.

  ‘I would not have believed it in you, Byron. I had conceived you more of a man – a braver man.’

  ‘I would have carried the seal myself,’ said Mr Hamilton, ‘but I thought it was in the best hands. It was a poor thing to do. It was poorly done.’

  ‘After all this, we are to have nothing to eat, because you left it in the wood,’ said Campbell. ‘Another night with nothing to eat’

  Jack rose painfully, and turned back into the forest. ‘I will come with you,’ said Tobias; and when they had gone some way up the stream he said, ‘You must let me look at your feet, Jack. They are in a bad way.’ They sat down, and he searched the cuts and scratches for splinters. ‘Tell me where you left the bundle,’ he said, drawing out a jagged piece of wood, ‘and I will fetch it: I am remarkably fresh.’

  ‘I never could tell you for sure, Toby,’ said Jack, with a sort of smile. ‘Go back now, there’s a good fellow – it would oblige me most, upon my honour.’ But he made no protest when Tobias walked on with him, and it would have been useless if he had.

  It took something more than an hour to reach the place where Jack had left the seal and the canvas: on the way they talked very little, and now that they sat down under the crutched tree they said little more, being too weary; but the feeling of companionship was there.

  ‘That was where I fell in,’ said Jack, showing the slough. Tobias nodded. ‘If we can find a sound branch,’ said Jack, ‘we can sling the load between us.’

  ‘There is a puma on the other side,’ said Tobias. Jack made no reply; Tobias had pointed out two dull little birds on the way up and as there was one flying about now, making a noise like the yapping of a small, silly dog, Jack thought (as far as he could think at all, through the dullness of exhaustion) that that was what he meant.

  ‘We must go,’ said Jack, ‘or it will be night before we get back.’

  ‘Allow me two minutes to walk to the other side.’ Tobias walked across the shallower mud, vanished into the bushes and then returned with a pleased look on his pale, thin face.

  ‘I believe you would creep out of your grave to look at a flaming bird,’ said Jack. ‘Come, take an end.’

  ‘A puma is not a bird,’ said Tobias, after a hundred paces. ‘It is a kind of cat – felis concolor. You may see it soon: it is moving along with us, on the right.’

  The word cat brought nothing into Jack’s mind but a fleeting image of a shabby, brownish-black little creature called Tib that disgraced the drawing-room at home, and he plodded on in silence. Every hundred yards or so they chang
ed shoulders, and during the third change there was a coughing noise to their right, a series of coughs, huge, deep, throaty coughs, that culminated in a shattering roar, unimaginably loud.

  ‘Not a bird, Jack, you see,’ said Tobias.

  ‘How big?’ cried Jack, vividly alive now, with terror coursing up and down his spine.

  ‘The size of an indifferent lion,’ said Tobias. ‘You can see him if you bend and look under the yellow bush. He is tearing up the earth, and biting it.’

  ‘Can he climb?’

  ‘Oh, admirably.’

  ‘Toby, what shall we do?’

  ‘Why, unless you wish to go and look at him, we had better go on. It is getting late. But do not hurry so, Jack, nor make jerking movements. If he should come out, take no notice of him, or look at him kindly – do not provoke him. He is not a froward puma, I believe.’

  Naked fear is the keenest spur of all; in spite of Tobias’ placid assurance, Jack was terrified, and his fright carried him down the long stream to the lake in such a state of nervous tension that he noticed neither his wounded feet nor his famished stomach. Fear enabled him to do what he could not have done unterrified, and it needed all Tobias’ fortitude and all his remaining strength to keep up with him.

  They came out into the open at the beginning of the twilight, as the rain started to fall. Many of the canoes were already on the water, and as they hurried down several more were launched: the cacique was chattering with impatience, holding the stern of the canoe with Captain Cheap in it. They carried the bundle to the water’s edge; the captain and the cacique seized it and threw it in. There were three other Indians in the canoe.

  ‘Wait,’ said Captain Cheap, waving them back, and the cacique interrupted with a flow of words. The remaining canoes were launched on either side of them, and the cacique’s canoe floated out from the shore. The Indians began to paddle – all the canoes were paddling now, with the blades flashing and the water white behind.

  Jack hailed: they both cried out together, and over the widening water came a confused, vague answer, half-heard and interrupted by the cacique. ‘You can wait …other Indians …no room …another canoe.’

  They stood there silent on the bank. No shouting would bring back the boats; and they watched them over the water until they disappeared in the darkness and the rain.

  Chapter Thirteen

  ‘TOBY,’ said Jack, turning towards the deserted shore with a ghastly attempt at lightness, when his aching eyes could no longer see anything on the lake, ‘you said that we could not be worse off when the barge left us. Don’t you wish you had held your tongue now?’

  ‘It was a thoughtless thing to say,’ replied Tobias in a steady voice. ‘It smacked of hubris – of insolent security.’ And after a few minutes he said, ‘Let us go down the shore, where the trees are thicker, and see whether we cannot find a little shelter. If we can sleep, we shall be able to think more clearly in the morning, what to do.’

  They wandered down the grey edge of the lake, and the sad waves came lapping in on the yielding mud; they looked for a tree with a thick enough trunk to give them a lee and tolerably even dry ground below it, but the darkness was coming on fast, and they could find nothing that protected them more than a very little. The roots of the tree which they had chosen (a kind of beech) would not allow them to lie down; they crouched, huddled together for warmth, in a half-sitting position, shivering with cold and hunger; nevertheless, they went to sleep – lapsed into a kind of stunned unconsciousness.

  Jack awoke in the black night, cramped and twisted with hunger, still partly entangled with a vivid dream of those beautiful days in the women’s wigwam, the smoky wigwam, the warmth and the fish sizzling on the pink embers: when he had gathered his wits for a few minutes he said, ‘Toby? Are you awake? Do you smell it? There is a smell of fire; I swear it.’

  The wind had died to a breeze that eddied along the edge of the forest, and from time to time it brought them a whiff of smoke. ‘Yes,’ said Tobias. ‘It is smoke.’ They set out towards it, often stopping like dogs to sniff: there was a little suffused light from the east, and the white frost helped them as they blundered through the trees. They had not gone far into the most sheltered part before they saw a wigwam, lit from within and smoking at the top: there were loud, harsh, furious voices inside.

  ‘It sounds like one of their religious …’ began Tobias.

  ‘I don’t care if they are raising the Devil,’ said Jack. ‘Wait for me here.’

  Tobias heard the noise redouble, and in a moment Jack returned. ‘They kicked me in the face as I tried to crawl in,’ he said, ‘but at least they know we are here.’

  A triangle of light appeared in the low entrance of the wigwam and an old woman peered out, beckoning. Going into an assembly of unknown savages, defenceless, on hands and knees, might very well be a matter for some hesitation, and it was a measure of their desperate state that they hurried in at once. There were several Indians, men and women; and on the ground near the fire lay a naked chief, as thin as a man could be, and he was plainly dying.

  Jack and Toby sat silent, motionless and inconspicuous: the shouting went on – it seemed to be ritual, for sometimes two men shouted together, with the same words. At dawn the old woman took a piece of seal, and holding it stretched between her teeth and her left hand, sliced off pieces with a shell; she passed it raw to the Indians, but for Jack and Tobias she put it to the fire, spitting liquid blubber from a piece she chewed upon the slices until they were done. They did not understand the significance of this, nor of many other things; but they ate the seal.

  Shortly after this three of the men, more brutal than any they had yet seen (their cheek-bones were slashed with parallel, raised scars, and their faces were scarcely human at all), went out, motioning Jack to go with them. Although they were not part of the tribe that had joined with the cacique, they too had carried their canoe over the watershed, and they now began putting it together. Tobias had picked up a certain amount of the Indians’ language by this time, but he found, when they would answer him at all, that these people spoke a different dialect: few of the words were the same, but at least it was clear that they were going to the north – that much could be learned by pointing – and it was probable from their manner that the Indians expected them and had been told about them. But this was not sure: the Indians’ lack of surprise might come from mere indifference. The only certainty was that these Indians, even more than the last, looked upon Jack and Tobias as nuisances, if not worse.

  The lowest savages have little curiosity. There are some who are unmoved by things outside their comprehension – metal, cloth and ships do not interest the most primitive of all. The survivors of the Wager were of consequence only to the cacique, whose comprehension was comparatively enlarged and to whom their remaining possessions were of value. These Indians knew nothing of firearms, had no notion of connecting whiteness with power and wealth and disbelieved what the cacique told them. They thought the cacique a fool and his protégés a troop of effeminate, uninteresting buffoons.

  And what is more, men with different-coloured skins have different smells: the Indians (whose scent was very keen, which made it worse) thought the white smell perfectly disgusting. The white colour, too, was loathsomely ugly, in their opinion – corpse-like, and probably produced by a discreditable disease which might very well be infectious. Still more important, it was obvious to the dullest Indian intelligence that many powerful gods hated these people. Why otherwise should they be so driven up and down, despised and wretched? And some of this hatred might be transferred to anyone who befriended them: their ill-luck might rub off. Lastly, it was clear to the Indians that these wretched people had no religious sense, no sense of piety; they knew nothing about the various beings who were to be appeased by ritual words and gestures; they did not even understand the simplest propitiation of the earth and sky. They were best ignored.

  Some faint notion of all this had been seeping into Tobias’ m
ind for a long while, and as they sat a little apart, watching the Indians at work (the Indians had angrily rejected Jack’s help, and when he brought them a fine length of supplejack they threw it into the water), he told Jack of his suspicions.

  ‘You may be right,’ said Jack, ‘particularly about the smell. I have always noticed how they hold their noses when we are by. I had thought it was the captain; but they do it still, I find.’

  The Indians were ready. They renewed the ridges of their tribal scars with ash, and they stood there, dull blue with cold, shifting the little square of fur they wore to cover their windward sides; their deep-sunk eyes were bloodshot and rimmed with scarlet from the night-long smoke in the wigwam, and they all seemed to be on the edge of a furious rage. An old woman came from the tent: she was a person of some distinction, it appeared, for they neither kicked nor struck her, and she wore an ample cloak made of vultures’ skins with the sparse feathers still on. Jack and Tobias stood in the most anxious hesitation: angry shouts asked them why they did not get in, the fools? And, half-comprehending, they scrambled aboard.

  All day long they paddled over the lake, and all day long the snowy Cordilleras retreated from them: in the evening they came to the outflowing river that drained the lake northwards, a fast, white-flowing stream, and here the Indians put into the shore. They put up their wigwam, but they would not allow any blasphemous, smelly, unlucky lepers in it (who would?); nor would they feed them. Jack and Tobias understood the general purpose of their remarks – it could not have been mistaken – and withdrew to an overhanging rock, which, by a very happy chance, had a deep pile of dry drifted leaves under it for a bed, and, more than that, the leaves had protected the still-edible stalks of some plants of rhubarb. They slept so well here that the Indians were up before them – they saw to their horror that in another five minutes the canoe might have gone, leaving them in that desolation.