Part 4

Over the nearest and lowest ridge there is a little crater lake and nearly one hundred years ago Charles Darwin climbed up and discovered it when he was cruising around here in the Beagle.

There is a five-mile channel across to Narborough Island which is a huge volcano, with sides almost entirely black with lava right down to the sea.

Don and I were almost the first ones ashore, and we found a small sea lion right in the rock gully, asleep. We tied a rope to him and played with him quite a while before Don took him back to the ship.

Serge took me with him collecting and we scrambled over two or three hills. I caught a two-inch scorpion under a rock and quite a few big grasshoppers and moths and butterflies. Serge is a Russian, whose last name is Chetyrkin. He speaks very little English, but is a fine taxidermist. His job is to preserve and mount birds and fish. He mounted for me my little pet penguin which died after we had him aboard for nearly a month. He was an awfully funny little bird, as tame and friendly as could be. We’d put small live fish in a glass tank and then watch him catch them, for these penguins are wonderful divers and swimmers. I think their entire food is fish. And that was the way my pet got his exercise and his dinner at the same time.

Another day, Don and I fished right off shore near the landing place and got many fine fish, one especially beautiful one all bright orange and black with a big bump over his nose. And once when we left a string of new specimens in the water to keep them alive, a shark came right up and bit one off the string!

The very first day in Tagus, Mother and the Doctor went out fishing and they brought in the finest lot of game fish we had the whole trip—big mackerel, groupers, bonito, tuna and barracuda.

Betty wanted to get up high enough on the mountain slopes to see across to the volcano which was the other side of the Island. It was the same one we had seen in eruption seven weeks earlier. She left the ship at five in the morning and was climbing all day till evening. She did get up beyond the clouds and then had to go by compass. There was damp wet grass and vegetation up there, although the lower slopes had all been dry lava and burned bunches of grassy stuff. She saw fresh tortoise tracks and wanted to follow on, but she knew everyone on the ship would worry if she did not come back and so she had to leave to climb down again. She went all alone.

Mother and Isabel took a hard climb in the opposite direction over two high hills and they saw a very much bigger crater lake which had never been reported before. It had very steep walls over five hundred feet high, and six little cone-like islands in the middle.

Along the shores of the cove there are grottoes and little caves and here there are penguins, and pelicans, and boobies and some very strange birds called flightless cormorants—birds which really have lost the power of flight because they have lived so long on the island and never really used their wings because they didn’t have to get food or travel anywhere.

THE GIANT DEVIL FISH

Two days after leaving Tagus we were cruising around along the shores of Narborough Island, trawling with the nets.

Two or three skiffs were near shore, some diving, some fishing and others dynamiting. Mother and Doctor Cady were trolling for big fish and suddenly Mother had a terrific hard pull, and for half an hour she had to “play” a tuna. It was 46 inches long, and weighed 46 pounds.

Soon after they saw a great long fin moving slowly along and when they came near found a big flat fish like a skate, slowly skimming just below the surface so that only his two fins came above the water. They followed him around and actually herded him over towards Bill and Dwight in another boat.

Next morning Don and Dwight and Doc went out to find one with two harpoons, plenty of rope and two kegs. They cruised around a little and soon saw a big ripple on the water, a ray going along with his fins sticking up in the air twenty inches.

They struck with their harpoons and after a great splash the big ray just sank out of sight and pulled the rope and two kegs right down with him. They waited a long time and watched for him to rise, but when we came along in the launch Pawnee we said we would stay to look while they went to the ship for another harpooning outfit. We chased another big ray for almost half a mile before the others came back.

Dwight took first shot, but the harpoon soon pulled out, and the big fish went sailing along the surface again. Then Don took a shot which held and he played out the rope, holding on to the end so that the ray had to tow the boat.

Meanwhile Bill had come along in another skiff to see the excitement. Bill gave them a second harpoon which Dwight stuck in and then the fish towed the two boats for a time, every once in a while flipping up its tail and hunching its back to try to sweep off the ropes and harpoons.

Gradually it swam back towards the ship and the men started their engine and forced it over that way. When it was quite near, we hurried to the boat to get the movie camera for Shorty, and I brought Dwight’s revolver to him. He shot it five times with a thirty-eight, and Bill put in five loads of heavy buck shot. Then it seemed to make a great effort and tried to swim down deep. Don held it with all his strength and would not let it go straight down. It flipped its wing and hit Don right across the shoulder and head twice but he never let go. Then it tried to spill over the boat by getting right under it. But finally they towed it near enough for the sailors to throw a rope down and get a line over it.

It had been bleeding pretty heavily and there was a big trail of blood all the way to the shore, and some sharks were following this up.

It measured eighteen feet across from wing to wing and weighed 2400 pounds. And after they started dissecting it they found an unborn ray that weighed 28 pounds and made a perfect specimen to preserve and take back to the New York Zoological Society.

MOLTEN LAVA

We were sailing along the east coast of Albemarle Island for we wanted to know if the volcano we had seen in eruption on Easter Sunday, nearly two months before, was still in eruption. We were almost there, practically on the Equator, and we recognized the columns of smoke half way up the side of the mountain.

Suddenly a yell came from the bridge and the Mate blew the foghorn (which is the way we are called to hurry to see something) and when we came running out we saw a high funnel of bright white smoke rising right out of the sea down at the end of a point, a few miles ahead of us. It couldn’t be spray for it was too enormously high and kept right in one place.

Uncle Will thought for a long time it must be a geyser or small volcano right at the water’s edge. And everybody watched it through glasses and climbed up into the crows-nest for a better view. But when we came along closer we could easily see it was a great field of hot lava which had reached the sea and was pouring into the cold water. For a while before we reached there we could see a streak of dull green in the water, quite distinct from the dark indigo blue, making a very clear line between the two. And the temperature of the water went up from the normal 74 degrees which we had had right along, to 99 degrees, and even that was a quarter of a mile away from the shore.

Luckily, the strong on-shore wind made it possible for us to go very close and not run any danger of getting in poisonous gases or smoke, for there were great clouds of smoke.

The shore rocks were black, there were two colors in the water, green close to shore and blue out beyond, and these big masses of very white steamy smoke. And then as we came closer we could see huge openings at the end of the lava flow, like pipes emptying red hot lava out into the water. It looked like bright blood.

All day till dark, we circled around and kept passing near it, keeping about a quarter of a mile from shore. There were high waves and a strong breeze and the smoke was blowing steadily up the mountain side so that by sunset time we couldn’t see the little cones up on the higher slopes from which the whole flow had come down.

But after dark we could tell just the line the stream had flowed down, a rather zigzag course, and right over the place to which Uncle Will and John had climbed two months earlier. There were great hot patches which glowed red in the dark and little specks of hot fiery places all along the slopes. And then at the bottom right at the shore, these great huge open hot red streams spilling out into the sea. Once or twice it would break out in bigger flows or whole big chunks would fall off into the water, and then it would shoot out and throw boiling lava into the air, way up, like blasting or skyrockets.

Through the glasses we could see several birds which had flown too near and their bodies were floating along in the water. Once we saw a poor sea lion throw himself straight up into the air five times and then flop down dead right near the terrible stream. A great big octopus floated by, just about dead. And we watched a whole wave so full of fish it looked black, swimming as fast as they possibly could straight out to the cold water. Once too, we saw a shark in a kind of daze, swimming along, and probably not knowing why the water was so suddenly growing hotter and hotter.

Shorty took some fine pictures of the whole thing, the smoke spurting up in the air, the pieces of rock crunching off and exploding into the water, and the great streams of melted rock.

The last thing at night when we left, we saw six big outlets or hot glowing spouts dimmer and dimmer as we turned eastward. Next morning we left the Galápagos Islands for Panama.

(A Little Song Written by Don Dickerman for David’s Birthday Party)

SONG TO DAVIE PUTNAM

Oh, his name was Davie Putnam, And the youngest man aboard, In truth we guessed they shipped him for a lark. Didn’t need no powder monkey, Guests we couldn’t quite afford, But he sailed with William Beebe on the Ark.

Oh, we took this Davie Putnam, And we sailed away I say, To those desert islands cruel, bleak and stark. There we captured giant lizards, Sharks and tortoise in the bay, As we sailed with William Beebe in the Ark.

And this little Davie Putnam, Who was only twelve y’see, With his mates t’home a’friskin’ in the park, Steps out with all his olders, Hunts and fishes with the best, As he sailed with William Beebe in the Ark.

So this little Davie Putnam, Smallest man aboard the ship, As the topmost fightin’ pirate makes his mark; And besides we liked his spirit And his many a merry quip, As we sailed with William Beebe on the Ark.