Part 3
There is a good deal of soil here, reddish and evidently very heavy rains at this season. The lagoons are fresh rain water and in places climbing up the mountains it seems like half dried stream beds or water courses—rocks and muddy places between, and then great terraces of tuffa rock, a very sharp lava rock which is hard to climb over.
A DAY ON SHIPBOARD
Soon after dawn each day one of the crew washes the decks. And it seems only a short time later that Willie, the German mess boy calls “Hallf pass seex.” I jump out of my cot on the upper deck, put on shorts, shirt and sneakers and beat it for breakfast at seven o’clock.
Just after breakfast or just before, the temperatures are taken and samples of water brought up from the different depths of the ocean. When that is finished, the depth of the ocean is measured. This is called “sounding.” A heavy lead weighing seventy-five pounds is let over on a piano wire till bottom is reached. Of course the ship’s engines have to be stopped while this is going on. The sounding machine has a contraption for bringing up samples of the sea bottom, so that one knows if there is sand or mud or rock below. Our soundings have varied from 746 fathoms to 2070 fathoms. A fathom is six feet.
It is fun to feel the icy cold water brought up, sometimes just above freezing although we at the surface are broiling with heat if we get out of the breeze.
The nets are put down 600 fathoms or more. There are three or four nets let out on the same cable, 150 to 200 fathoms apart. The net goes out for two hours, then begins hauling in. And of course there is excitement when it comes up for everybody wants to see, first if the nets are still on, and then what has been brought up in them. In it are tiny fish, pieces of strange unknown fish, once a black octopus with a queer umbrella-like arrangement over his mouth and head. Early in the voyage several nets were lost because they twisted off from the cable. And one was cut off by the propellers.
Next we feed the animals. The mocking birds have crumbs, the lizards are forcibly fed with bits of bread and water, the two very lovely albatrosses eat fish which is kept on the ice for them. These are now at the New York Zoological Park in the Bronx. I hope they like it there. And the little fish in the aquarium are given the “crumbs” from the nightly plankton nets. The nice little penguin died although for days he came out and had a swim, then gobbled up fish.
Then we have lunch. One day, the ship was stopped for half an hour, the gangway let down and we went swimming right in the ocean. It was over a mile and a half deep too. And beautifully clear water. If you even let yourself sink a few feet below the surface you could see right under our ship with the sunlight showing on the opposite side.
For an hour or two in the afternoon we seemed to be in a lot of drifting stuff. We saw two turtles, some big logs with birds resting on them and hundreds of tiny fish swimming round in the shadow underneath, and two poisonous sea snakes all brown and bright yellow. We caught a small dolphin fish on a line and while pulling it in three sharks followed.
All the nets were in before five o’clock for we have supper at that time. It is nice to sit up on the roof of the laboratory to watch the sunset and the moonlight later. And at eight o’clock the plankton net goes out for a short while. Plankton is very small sea life like bugs, queer fish that can’t move themselves. And then to bed for another day just like it tomorrow.
DREDGING
The Blake dredge has a ten-foot iron bar across the top, a handle arrangement and a long twenty-foot net at the bottom, in which things are thrown after being loosened by the top bar. The bottom of the net is fastened so that specimens cannot be dropped out.
This is put way down till it is on the ocean bottom, and then trawled along slowly for an hour or more. Sometimes the whole dredge is lost when it hits an unexpected mountain peak or rock or ledge at the bottom, as it was at Abingdon Island, and once the whole thing was terribly twisted and bent out of shape because of hitting something way down in the depths.
It is dragged along, the top iron bar loosening things from the floor of the sea, dumping them into the net, and then brought to the surface.
The things brought up are always very cold, often just above freezing because it is so cold down there. One day a whole bucket load of sea cucumbers came up in the net and they were icy cold as if they had been in an icebox.
Sometimes there are fish, pieces of coral, bits of rock, legs or even a whole starfish, many sea cucumbers and once or twice a strange fish with curious contraptions for lighting his way around, a long tentacle or barbel out in front of him with a light on it, or a bulb on top of his head on a curious trailer thing out in front of his mouth so other fish will be decoyed in front of him and he then swallows them.
When the dredge is coming in we stand around to see what it brings up. For two hours the cable will be coming in and winding up on the huge drum by machinery, then at last the net shows under the water. Everyone hurries to the side and holds dishes or buckets or tubs of water into which to dump specimens.
And the crew help, one at the engine, one oiling wire as it winds on the drum, and two or three of us beating the cable with heavy clubs to shake off the water as much as possible to keep it from rusting.
Many of the deep sea things are very bright red. The shrimps, the starfish and the cucumbers are different colors, reddish, yellowish white, purple, and even a bright bluish one came up.
PANAMA
Panama is crowded with Blacks, Indians, Hindus, Spanish, and many Chinese. The streets are narrow and full of people all the time. The stores open right upon the streets, and all the houses are built at the edge of the sidewalk with balconies on the upper stories out over the sidewalk.
Some of the children are terrible beggars and hang onto your coat while you are walking along the street. And many of them run around, without a thing on, stark naked funny little black children.
We drove out to Old Panama one day, and saw the ruins of what used to be the richest city in the New World. All the pirates knew this was a very rich city and full of treasures. Gold was brought there from Peru and then shipped to Spain on Spanish ships.
In 1637 Henry Morgan, a famous English pirate and adventurer, came across the isthmus and attacked the city of Old Panama. The city burned up, almost all of it, and the few people who escaped then made another city which is the present Panama, six miles away. It is a better place, with a better harbor at the mouth of the Boca Grande River.
We went to the top of Ancon Hill in an auto, way up above the City to get the view—way off over the Canal, over the city, far beyond the Old Panama ruins, and of course far out to sea. There are three cannons on this hill, and I could turn one all by myself and see how it works. If Panama should ever be attacked, this would be a wonderful hill for protecting the city. There are fortifications on both sides of the Canal entrance at Balboa. They also have quite a few aeroplanes.
We went swimming at the Balboa Club-house pool, one of the best I have ever seen. Mr. Grieser showed me the proper leg stroke for the crawl, and I met a twelve year old boy there who had gone to New York with a crack team of swimmers. He dived from a sixty-foot board in Madison Square Garden.
Don Dickerman bought three dugouts from a native fisherman in Panama, and he also got two monkeys, a Cebus, a marmoset, and a cunning little monkey-like animal called a kinkaiu, which goes out mostly at night. This last little one was very soft and furry and was very gentle too. He curled himself and tried to keep in the dark all day, sleeping. I hope I can buy one some time for I like him better than the other pets.
Bobbie Fish bought a little pet called a coatamundi. We call him “Snootie” for his upper lip is long and sticks out over his lower. He is little almost as a rat with a furry long tail. Betty has a brown puppy, named Dyna—short, she says, for Dynamite Bill who gave it to her.
Gregory Bateson left at Panama and took many of the live things back with him to New York. The lizards and smaller things died but the pair of lovely albatrosses lived and I hope I shall see them when I go to the Zoo. Bateson is still a student at Cambridge University in England and his father is a famous scientist.
On Saturday night late we pulled out of the dock at Panama, but we had to wait all next day at anchor in the outer harbor for two new firemen. Two of ours had left and not come back to the boat. And as the Captain wanted to keep all the rest of the crew aboard we stayed out there so more couldn’t leave.
COCOS ISLAND
Cocos Island is about five hundred miles from Panama, in the Pacific Ocean, and belongs to the country of Costa Rica. Four times a year it is visited by a government boat from Costa Rica.
It is a steep high island, bright green jungle, with few protected coves or bays. The best anchorage is Chatham Bay which has some shelter with a big high solid rock island to the west and a small rock island to the east side. The only settlement ever made here was around two bends or coves from Chatham Bay, at Wafer Bay. The beach is more beautiful there and the slope behind the beach is easier to climb; there was more level ground to cultivate and plant to trees and vegetables. But this second bay is not a safe harbor for a ship to lie in, open and with squalls and winds blowing all the time and rollers on the beach at nearly every high tide.
For about ten years a Captain Gissler, his wife and servants lived at this Wafer Bay. He spent his time mostly looking for treasure and we saw many deep holes which he probably had dug. As he is not here today and the place is deserted, maybe he found it and moved away to a less lonely place.
Pirates had been here and buried gold, and it is said that some treasure has been found at different times.
There are many beautiful waterfalls. Lots of them tumble right down into the sea from the steep cliffs and for over a hundred years ships have come here for fresh water, whalers and pirates and merchant ships or “tramps.” One stream empties right into the Bay.
There are many beautiful ferns and tree-ferns and tall jungle trees. The tangle of vines is very thick, and the only way to go into the interior of the island at all is to follow along the beds of streams and climb up rocks and waterfalls and around cascades for the sides of the brooks are like solid walls and there are not many places where you can get up.
We went up a lovely stream bed one day from Chatham Bay. We pulled ourselves up rocks and around bad places and stepped into deep pools sometimes up to our necks. We had gone at least a mile and a half up the river, climbing steadily, when we came to a beautiful little cascade that fell down a cliff about seventy feet high. I was catching small blue crayfish in the pool at the foot of it when I lost my balance and fell down onto a jagged rock.
For a time I could hardly bear the pain of it and just sat and cried. Mother and Isabel and Betty were all afraid I might have broken a leg or something. They were awfully worried for we were so far from the shore and had climbed waterfalls all morning to get there. But it was only a terribly bad bruise and I was glad Mother was so strong. She had to practically carry me and lower me down over rocks and waterfalls all the way back. We stopped to eat our lunch on a lovely huge bowlder in the middle of the stream about half way down. After resting a while I felt a little better and could help myself getting down hard places. It would be awful to break an arm or a leg or even to sprain one’s ankle in such a place for even a trail is impossible there and it is very hard to carry anyone down such a place.
Mother was pretty tired, especially as she had a bad sunburn on her back and shoulders and I broke the blisters by putting my arms around her to steady myself, and sometimes I even had to climb down her back to lower myself from one high rock to another six feet below.
The night before this trip up the river, we had a furious gale. The wind blew harder than I ever felt it, and for a time the rain came in a solid mass like a warm wet curtain, streaming across the decks. Everything was soaked, chairs fell over, curtains were tangled up, doors slammed. And then the boobies kept flying right into the ship banging their heads and bodies against things and stunning themselves. They dropped headlong into the “lab” where we were sitting, they fell to the floor in our cabins if the doors were open for a minute, and all over the decks the poor things were crouching around squawking. And they vomited up fish all over the place.
This is a curious habit with some birds; they seem to do it as a forfeit to another bird. They cough up their food which the other bird then takes as payment, leaving the stranded one alone without pecking him. White-headed terns flew aboard too. We were all of us busy throwing them overboard.
In the middle of all the gale and rain and wind, the five rowboats which were over the side tied to the boom by lines, had to be brought on board. A mate stood on the top of the gangway, a life preserver on a long line in the water in case someone fell overboard, and then one by one five men went out on the boom, to the end, down the rope ladder, into a tangled up and bouncing boat, and then rowed it aft to be hoisted up by other men onto the ship. It was all quite exciting and I stood in the rain a long time watching.
The next morning it was all calm again and you couldn’t believe there had been a small hurricane the night before.
MAY 20TH, 1925
May twentieth is my birthday, and Mother had made me a whole pirate outfit—pantaloon trousers, red sash, calico head scarf, a machete, rope soled shoes, and a ragged shirt.
Everybody met at Uncle Will’s cabin just before dinner, and then to the pounding of a big drum we all marched down to the dining saloon, everybody dressed in full pirate costumes, with wild looking wigs and knives and cutlasses of every description.
I got two knives, a jar of jam, a box of sweet crackers, a cocoanut, a fine piece of old Chiriqui Indian Pottery, and a peach of a collecting bag. “Lumpy,” the baker, made me a huge birthday cake.
Then after dinner Shorty took a flashlight picture of the gang against the shrouds down on the hatch deck. We really looked like a pirate crew too, with everyone in costume and apparently on a sailing ship. The steep rocky island near the north point of Chatham Bay showed in the background, and made it seem even more real.
The night of the birthday party Don Dickerman wore his “Marooned man” costume. It is entirely rags and tatters and mended with bits of old string and leather. With a wig of tangled hair all knotted and a bandanna and a cutlass he looks pretty awful. John Tee Van had torn trousers, bare body, a frightful long black wig and he painted on a terrible scar across his face, and slashes of blood on his insteps. Some of the others had fine clothes of velvet with old lace, the rich pirates or those who had stolen booty from some recent captive. And the girls looked like pirates’ wives or sweethearts, except Mother who came as a wild woman, my captive, all bound up with ropes and being dragged along.
About the grandest birthday present one could get was given me by Don. It was his favorite sword, a real old time cutlass which perhaps was used by pirates. He called it “Fury” and got up an awfully funny card to go with it.
And Dwight Franklin made me a lovely drawing of the beach at Cocos back in the old days, with a regular pirate landing on it from his ship. That picture is used at the end of my book.
Cocos Island is really a wonderful place for a pirate party anyway, for real pirates were there many times, and maybe men were marooned there, or left there, and mutinies occurred. Treasure was buried there. Along the beach where ships came for fresh water, there are carvings on the rocks, ship’s names and dates, many of them old and back as far as 1813. There were names of famous whaling ships, and one, The Shrew, was a real pirate ship but the date was not given with that one, probably on purpose.
There is a fine tunnel right through the rock in one place, going fully a hundred yards through a point of land to another bay quite round the corner. Don went through it in his little dugout canoe which he bought in Panama and Tamms, the third mate, went in his motor skiff with the Johnson engine.
In one little bay beyond the settlement we found a hole twenty feet deep where Captain Gissler or someone else had dug for treasure. Don and Dwight went down it on a rope and only found a board and a piece of rope there.
WEEKS AT SEA
For two weeks after leaving Cocos Island we were at sea again. The daily soundings were taken, the temperatures of the water and samples, and then there were the nets. We had out the big otter trawl net to go to the bottom every day until we lost it by getting it tangled in the propeller over the stern. And the long eight-foot net to go to bottom we also lost, probably because it hit a submerged mountain peak or a huge rock.
But there were always other nets, the one metre net, the half metre and the Blake dredge. A metre is a little over three feet. Once in the morning and once every afternoon these went over, and there was always great excitement about it. There were some fine rich hauls.
In about the best haul there were two tubs of deep sea fish from bottom—black and queer looking, some with long pointed tails without a tail fin, some eels, black with pointed heads, and a lot of funny little fish like sharks only with bright green eyes. Many of these come to the surface with the scales all torn off or soft and peeling.
There were light pink starfish, very brittle, a few sea cucumbers, some living sponges, crabs, bright red shrimps and two or three very queer looking fish with faces like demons or bogeys with funny little electric light things sticking out in front of them on long barbels, which is what they call the long whisker-like thing.
I brought home for my collection a few specimens of this rare deep sea life. Starfish, shrimp and cyclothone, which is a small deep sea fish.
Apparently there is a great undersea plateau around Cocos. It is about six hundred fathoms deep. Just off the edge of this it is thirteen to sixteen hundred fathoms deep.
For days we saw many ocean tunnie fish jumping near the ship, and we tried all kinds of baits and different spoons and squids to catch them. One day Mother finally got four of them by jerking a squid up and down from off the boom. They weighed from ten to fourteen pounds and it certainly was very good to have fresh fish for breakfast next morning. They are a beautiful fish, like a torpedo, or bullet shaped with lovely dark blue backs and pinkish silvery sides with four stripes below the middle line and they are very swift swimmers, moving as fast or faster than the ship, for hours at a time.
One day I was sitting on the rail preparing a fish skeleton, and suddenly there was a loud “Pwishshsh” right near me. Mack, the first mate, called out “Whale!” and I jumped up and saw him not fifteen feet away. A big black body about forty feet long.
Another day we saw a whole school of big blackfish, a kind of small whale, and they also were right near the boat for an hour. They first look like huge slow porpoises coming slowly to the surface to breathe. They are black, with rounded snouts and a big huge, fin, something like a shark’s, on the back.
During this time at sea, Shorty and I made a cute little dog house for Betty’s puppy, Dyna. It is white, with a red roof and a little gable over the door with a sign, “Beware of the Dog.” Shorty Schoedsack is the photographer who went with my friend Colonel Cooper to Persia and took the wonderful movie “Grass.” He is called “Shorty” because he is about six feet six inches tall.
We had rough seas and constant rains almost all the time out here perhaps because we were still so close to the Cocos Islands. But it has meant we could not go over the side for a swim or even put out the little motor skiff for game fishing or trolling.
TAGUS COVE
HALF A MINUTE SOUTH OF THE EQUATOR
Tagus Cove is on the west side of Albemarle Island, a deep little bay about half a mile wide. The cliffs around it are steep except for one place at the end where there is a little gully in the rocks. There is no beach, so we landed in this gully where the rocks were very slippery.
When you are once ashore, however, it is fairly easy walking because the lava is very old and crumbly, like clinkers, and the scrubby bushes and stumpy trees give one a hold.