Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
fill away among the breakers and find a channel between them, now
that it was day? Since she had escaped the rocks through the night,
surely she would find her way by daylight. This was the greatest sea
adventure of my life. God knows how my vessel escaped.
The sloop at last reached inside of small islands that sheltered
her in smooth water. Then I climbed the mast to survey the wild scene
astern. The great naturalist Darwin looked over this seascape from the
deck of the Beagle, and wrote in his journal, 'Any landsman seeing the
Milky Way would have nightmares for a week'. He might have added,
'or seaman' as well.
20
Spray
was now in the Cockburn Channel which leads
back
into
the main strait. She was able to make her way back to Cape Froward
and pick up again her westward course. The next problem Slocum
had to contend with was a night attack by Fuegian Indians. For-
tunately he had anticipated this emergency by sprinkling the deck
with carpet tacks. The screams, shouts and howls which woke him
at midnight were gratifying proof of the success of this stratagem.
For three more wearying days and nights
Spray
was tossed around
by the unpredictable winds and tidal races which swirl round Tierra
de Fuego.
In Fortescue Bay Slocum had his first sight of civilisation in sev-
eral weeks. It took the shape of the SS
Columbia
out of New York
bound for San Francisco. Those were the days when the Panama
Canal was still a distant and dubious prospect. De Lesseps' company
having gone bankrupt in an attempt to cross the isthmus, other men
were not anxious to take up the challenge, so that many big ships
were still obliged to use the hazardous Straits of Magellan. The first
mate of the
Columbia
turned out to be an old colleague of Slocum's
and he gave his friend a generous gift of miscellaneous provisions.
As he enjoyed a delicious late supper and gazed across the harbour
to where the steamer's rows of electric lights were reflected in the
