CHAPTER III

RARE BIRDS

Twenty hours later--in early afternoon--we were anchoring off the fishing village of San Pedro, which is on Ambergris Key. This sizable island acknowledges the rule of British Honduras but is virtually the Czardom of two Englishmen who bought it and converted it into a vast coconut grove. The trees are laid out with the regularity of those in a Delaware peach orchard.

Spinden rowed to the village with Gough and Pilot Bevans, who was to leave us here for his home on nearby Key Corker. McClurg, Griscom, Whiting and I unboxed one of the outboard motors and screwed it to the stern of the _Imp_, our larger tender. We armed ourselves with shotguns and gamegetters. The gamegetter is a very useful little implement, consisting of a folding, skeleton stock and two barrels, the larger 41 or 44 caliber and the smaller 22. Without the stock it is a pistol. With the stock it is either rifle or shotgun, for either ball or shot can be used in both barrels. Griscom says he has brought down game as heavy as large hawks with a gamegetter and he expects to bag most of his specimens with this tool.

At McClurg’s second pull on the cord the little motor started. He pointed the _Imp’s_ bow for a distant promontory beyond the planted area where the negro Customs man said we might find birds.

To eastward the reef was a white ribbon of foam, here and there dotted darkly where a coral head rose above water. Within this barrier, the ocean could do no more than rock us on a gently heaving surface so smooth that every detail of the bottom was visible through eight or ten feet of water. Little black and gold fishes, and larger ones as blue as pieces of twilight sky, darted over the creamy bottom.

Three times we vainly tried to land through the belt of sea grass which fringed the shore. The _Imp’s_ foot of draft was too much. The fourth time we poled her into a tiny ditch a native had dug through this grass-covered mud bank and pulled her out on the beach before his one-roomed hut. The man was out fishing, and when his wife saw us she ran into the woods with one child in her arms and another clinging to her hand.

“You see, Griscom, you really ought to shave,” observed McClurg.

“Let’s shave Griscom with an oyster shell,” suggested Whiting, picking a shell from the sand.

Griscom and I sprinted up the narrow beach with Whiting and McClurg in pursuit.

A pelican was soaring down the narrow beach toward us. In his effortless flight his wings made a perfect cupid’s bow. I took a snap shot, missed with the right barrel, then loosed the left as he passed overhead.

McClurg and Whiting did not see him till a great projectile came hurtling through a palm with a crashing of branches which warned them to jump aside just in time.

“Laugh that off!” shouted Griscom, chuckling at the dismay with which our pursuers were appreciating the bulk and nature of the missile which had missed them by inches only. “Better lay off us _hombres_. Next time we’ll drop an eagle on you--or a roc.”

As if really daunted Whiting and McClurg sat down beside the carcase of the great pelican, and began to smoke to drive away the mosquitoes which swarmed out of the low palm scrub.

Three times my companion and I penetrated this strip of bush only to find a swamp within two hundred yards of the sea. At last we came upon a tiny path which indicated that the marsh had fallen back a little. The path led into a clearing where a melon patch was guarded by a fence of dilapidated fishnet hung on sticks. In a lone tree nearby was a platform, possibly used against marauding birds and animals by the owner of the melons. Griscom followed the northern side of the clearing, I the southern.

I pursued a woodpecker he wanted, but could not come within range. The damp sandy soil was marked by the feet of peccary, deer and a cat smaller than a jaguar--perhaps a kind of ocelot. Apparently it had been hunting the peccary, which had been hunting the melons.

At the end of the clearing water again glistened between the dark trunks of mangroves. I heard three small reports from Griscom’s gamegetter. A grayish bird flitted out of a guano palm and the twelve gauge roared. Even by number tens the bird was too torn to make a good specimen.

It was a Central American mockingbird, said Griscom, who potted one like it just before we met again by the tree with the lookout platform. He had also shot the red-headed woodpecker I had lost--or its brother.

“But here’s something that makes our little shore adventure worth while, fellah,” exclaimed the ornithologist, reaching carefully into a big pocket of his hunting coat. He pulled out an oriole.

“I can’t be sure till I get back to the museum and check up, but I’ll bet you a season subscription to the opera that that’s a new subspecies!”

“It’s beautifully shot.” There was hardly a stain on the smooth golden feathers. “What’s that between its beak?” I asked, leaning over the bird.

“A dried leaf to keep it from soiling itself.” He snatched the prize back suddenly. “Good Lord, man, don’t drip on it--your face is covered with blood.”

“So’s your forehead. But no self-respecting mosquito would even prospect around in that beard of yours.”

We walked quickly back to the boat, swinging our arms against the swarming insects. We launched the boat, walking far out, but still they harried us. They could not lower our spirits, however. In his first three birds Griscom had got a new species. The more he examined the oriole the more confident he was of this.

Tremendous luck, in a way. Yet it must be remembered that this country is _terra nova_ to ornithology, and it was almost certain that something new was to be found here. The luck is that we have found a new species so soon. (With characteristic generosity Griscom has named the oriole for me.)

Our high spirits increased when Spinden reported meeting a man in San Pedro who had been told by a _chiclero_ of Maya ruins at Chunyaxché. We were exulting over this confirmation after supper, when Whiting, who had been reading, slid out of his bunk with my copy of Gann’s _In an Unknown Land_.

Whiting pointed out a passage which I had marked a year ago and forgotten. After describing the abundant fish and waterfowl he saw at Boca de Paila Gann alludes casually to the “stone-walled ruins of ... dwellings” of the ancestors of some Chunyancha Indians whose village he did not visit but who he was told lived by the side of a lake connected with the sea by “a little creek navigable only for small canoes.”

This tallied with the description of the approach to Chunyaxché given us at Payo Obispo by _Señor_ Enriquez. If there was truth in the rumor we heard that Gann was planning exploration of the territory ahead of us he may be even now on his way to Cozumel to charter a sloop to take him to Boca de Paila. There is good reason for us to hurry on to Chunyaxché.

However, not a soul aboard the _Albert_ has ever visited the dangerous coast between here and Boca de Paila. Captain Gough thinks that under these circumstances it would be dangerous to run by night or even to enter any of these unknown ports except under favorable conditions. This phrase means with the sun behind us, or at least overhead. When the sun is ahead of a boat her lookout cannot see rocks and bars in time to avoid them, says Gough. This is the identical advice given us by Morley, Lothrop, Ricketson, of the Carnegie Institution, and John Held, Jr. To fly in the face of such a unanimity of expert opinion seems like asking for trouble.

Captain Gough has suggested making two stops before Boca de Paila, namely Chinchorro Bank and Ascension Bay. I have never heard of an archæologist visiting Chinchorro Bank, but there is so little _terra firma_ there that ruins are unlikely. However, when Gough mentioned Chinchorro Bank I saw Griscom puff vigorously on his omnipresent pipe--a sure sign of suppressed excitement. Ever since I first told Griscom about Chinchorro when we passed it in the night on the steamer from New Orleans to Belize he has wanted to visit this God-forsaken obstacle in the track of sailing ships from Belize to Europe. He believes that the Big Key near the center of the great elliptical ring of reef may have land birds very interesting for him to study. A good place to look for a new species, he thinks, particularly as Cozumel Island, which is rather similarly situated, is said to have a number of birds not found anywhere else in the world. What’s more, he has reminded us that Chinchorro’s islets have the characteristic ring formation of the typical Pacific Ocean atoll.

“It would be sport to visit a South Sea Island without going to the South Seas--What!” he exclaimed. He has a very contagious enthusiasm for unusual and desolate places. The wilder and more forbidding they are the better he likes them. McClurg is keen for Chinchorro, too. He thinks the reefs and currents warrant closer study than they have ever had.

The chart shows good anchorage near both the southern and northern ends of the Bank, albeit the number of coral heads and shoals indicated on the paper is forbidding. But Gough is confident he can “negotiate” the anchorage. Griscom’s success with the oriole makes me want to strain a point in his favor, and the truth is I am eager to see this mass of reefs and atolls myself. So are all of us. What is it in every man which makes him leap to the invitation to step ashore on soil which perhaps no other human being has ever trod?

_Chinchorro!_ The name cries of lonely cruelty and iron desolation. _Chinchorro!_ Page Edgar Allan Poe and Robert Louis Stevenson.

So we are on our way to Chinchorro now.

Before he left us Bevans imparted minute information about the way to sail through the reef off San Pedro, and Gough accomplished the feat in defiance of his rule about the sun, which was less than an hour high in the east. The _Albert_ put-putted straight into its low rays.

I was sorting ammunition below when the good schooner raised up on her tail, like a rearing mare. I got to the top of the ladder just in time to be spilled into the fore shrouds as the vessel stood on her head. About us was a sight for Gods and Poets.

We were on the bar where great rollers from the blue depths beyond all but broke. Not more than seventy-five yards from us on each side the end of a reef was converting mountains of luscious green into geysers of foamy white. I went up the mainmast a few feet, after Whiting. From there these two natural seawalls stretched off for miles like great crouched monsters, thundering in rage at this terrible buffeting and spewing hissing white water as the largest, angriest whales in the world could never spout.

Perhaps our schooner stood on her ends for one minute, perhaps for two. Spinden moaned that she reminded him of some mules he had ridden, “You think you’re going fast but if you analyze the motion it’s mostly up and down.”

The poor fellow had hardly said this when his cargo became as uneasy as the _Albert’s_. But the schooner kept hers.

We were in blue water now, blue with white patches where the wind whipped the caps off the heads of the big bold seas. Off to port as far as we could see was the thin white thread of reef, then beyond the green shallows the thinner white thread of beach holding back the press of grass-green palms, stunted guano palms and tall twisted coco palms, leaning toward the ocean they loved despite the droning remonstrance of the trades.

The _Albert_ was proving herself a good sea boat. She took her huge rollers as surely as a duck would take them.

“God, I wish we would sail,” said Whiting. “It’s a crime to waste gas on a day like this.”

Gough put all sail on her. She carried her rags as easily as the Hotel Plaza carries its awnings, although it was blowing a good four point breeze on the Beaufort scale, almost a five I thought.

Poor Spinden lay lengthwise on deck. At every large ninth wave he rolled between the _Imp_ and the wooden cowl over the companionway.

“Hang it, you’ll break our best dinghy,” said McClurg, and he wedged the archæologist against the _Imp_ with the two boxes which had held the Johnson motors.

“What’s that vile stuff you’re smoking?” I asked Whiting.

“Griscom’s Edgworth,” he answered, “have some?”

“It was my favorite tobacco an hour ago,” I answered, in the slow sad realization that all was not well with me.

The rest of the morning I sat in various spots on the roof of the “Porch” chewing lemons and trying to avoid the tobacco smoke which Whiting and McClurg playfully emitted from windward positions.

Griscom was below skinning birds and fumigating himself the while with his great curved tobacco burner. After half an hour he rushed top side, with his face a sicklier hue than any visage I have ever seen outside of a moving picture studio.

His recovery was remarkable. He avoided the technical loss of sea health even while he was greenest, and within fifteen minutes he was smoking again. But he did no more skinning below decks. And he made no objections when Belize John, his apprentice in the art, announced he guessed he’d “quit skinnin’ birds till the table’s steadier.”

About noon the Captain began to pinch the _Albert_ into the wind, saying he feared we would pass out of sight of the low keys which are our destination unless he did so. But the result was to make the schooner luff so that McClurg and I thought the sails were holding her back instead of helping her forward. Because the leaches drew a little every now and then the skipper stoutly maintained that the canvas was helping her. McClurg says he knows a lot of fishing schooner captains with the same quaint notion, which is not much exaggerated in suggesting that the flags on an excursion steamer help her on a windward course. However, we did not argue the point, for we have discovered that there is never very much of the heel and lilt of real sailing in the sensations which come when the _Albert’s_ rags are drawing. Her sixteen-foot beam is not exceptional for a boat of her other dimensions, but it is enough to keep her deck comparatively level in even a stiff blow. She is hardly more inclined to capsize than a floating drydock. We were not worried about her hindering sails, for her engines were being aided by a three mile current, which sets into the mainland shore south of Chinchorro Bank somewhere and sweeps northward all the way to Cape Catoche. It is really the beginning of the Gulf Stream.

We held on the starboard tack. Fearful that we might pass Chinchorro the Captain kept going aloft to take a squint eastward. His method of ascent was admirably facile. Like the crew he is constantly barefoot while afloat, and his soles are as tough as a Japanese firewalker’s. He seizes the wire shroud between the big toe and second toe of each pedal extremity, and proceeds aloft hand over hand and foot over foot with the ease of a monkey.

Just a few minutes ago he sighted land. He put the _Albert_ about immediately.

We can see a faint blur of trees from the deck already--Cayo Grande, the biggest key of Chinchorro. It is now a few minutes past three. After the first thrill of glimpsing our coral island we go about sundry tasks below in preparation for landing. I return to the deck shortly and am surprised to see the whole long shore of the island, with sharp details like dead trees and patches of beach grass. We are very near the bright green where the shallows begin. Gough is at the maintop. He has said he would take the northern entrance through the reef and I wonder why he doesn’t tack. Probably he wants to parallel the reef closely, learning all he can of it for possible future visits.

The reef is not breaking, for it is under the lee of Big Key. Every second I expect the order to tack, yet we hold on toward the dangerous light green. This is becoming uncomfortable. I step to the companionway.

“McClurg, come up here quick, will you?” (He is on deck in three bounds.) “What the devil is his idea? Do you suppose he knows an opening not shown on the chart?”

“If he doesn’t we’re in for it,” grins McClurg.

We are fairly in the green shallows now. It’s appalling how shallow they are.

The Captain slides down the mainmast with the speed of a fireman, bounds past McClurg and me into the foreshrouds, shouting orders as he goes.

“Put her off, Jawny, off dis way, quick starboard! Joe, _Matchee_, drop dem sails.”

McClurg and I help the seamen, joined by Whiting. In the confusion of fluttering canvas and stumbling, swearing men I am conscious of a wicked coral head, only a foot below water. The clumsy schooner is swinging to starboard slowly. Will she turn soon enough, I wonder in some cool recess of my brain, while all the rest of me pants and perspires at a downhaul?

Yes, she’s missing the coral head to port by four feet, grazing a wickeder one to starboard by half that distance.

“Stawp one engine,” bawls Gough.

Thank God the sails are down.

One engine stops. “Half speed on da odda,” directs our Skipper. Through five or six other voices the order reaches the engine room, yet we are still rushing at reddish brown coral heads with horrible speed. The white bottom is peppered with them, every one near enough the surface to tear out the boat’s vitals.

The miserable curtains on the “Porch” over the engine room are half down, and the Skipper’s traffic cop signals from the starboard fore shrouds are invisible to Belize John at the wheel. One of the faithful “_Matchees_” stands below and behind the Skipper imitating his gestures. But excited men keep running between this Indian and the wheel so I crouch just forward of the “Porch” and in turn relay the Captain’s signals aft. Since he clings to the shrouds with his left hand only his right is free. A slow extension of the whole arm means turn to starboard slowly, a sharp stab means turn quickly. Curving forward sweeps of the arm, like the motorist’s “Pass me--I’m going to turn out” signal, means go to port hard or easy according to the degree of agitation of the arm. Never was a vessel so conned.

Griscom is standing by the upturned _Imp_ emitting great clouds of smoke. McClurg by the foremast foot looks alternately ahead and up at the Skipper, quiet amused amazement on his face, a sort of “I wonder what he’ll do next look.”

The boat twists like a snake, but a slower snake now, thank Heaven.

“Stawp da engine,” yells Gough, pushing back the flat of his hand. He drops to the deck, snatches the fifteen foot sounding pole and jabs furiously at the bottom.

A sand bar is the obstacle now.

“Six feet, hold her steady Jawn, fahve an’ a half.” We hold our breath as the water shoals to five feet--a scant six inches more than we draw.

“If we strike it’s abandon ship I guess,” Spinden is saying beside me. “We never can turn her here, the rocks are too close.”

The pole is probing furiously for a little more depth. The schooner has bare steerage way. In a moment the wind on our port bow will begin to drive her to a lurking ledge, its sharp brown horns pricking through the green water thirty feet to starboard.

“Fahve feet, fahve feet,” jab, jab, jab,--he has no breath to repeat that ominous depth. Then a triumphant shout:

“Fahve an’ a half, fahve an’ a half. Six, seven, eight--start da engine.”

We’re over! We are inside the reef now, and menaced by only a scattering of coral heads, each visible long before we reach it as the water smoothens under the increasing protection of the key.

One dark patch is straight in our path. I shudder as we plough for it, full speed on one engine. But the Captain’s judgment of depths is uncanny, there’s at least eight feet over that ledge. Darker patches he recognizes at once as weed, not coral. Temperamental his actions may be and nerve-racking to us, but he is an artist in his work, no mistake about that.

“Stawp her,” comes the command again. Followed by, “Let her go, _Matchee_.”

Down goes our sand anchor to a white bottom in ten feet of water, matchlessly clear.

“Do we have to do that again, Captain?” asks Spinden as Gough shambles aft.

“Why, look who’s here,” laughs McClurg. “Spinden when did you come back?”

“One reef is better for the stomach than a crate of lemons,” I observe.

“You ought to know, fellah,” Griscom chuckles. “Lord, I never saw a man look so seedy without letting go.”

Gough seems a little embarrassed.

“Ah give da order to tack,” he says, “but da helmsman was too slow. Den ah seen a little channel tru da reef an’ decided to fawlah her.”

“You won’t have to patent your discovery,” remarks McClurg, “I don’t think there’ll be any great rush to use your private entrance to the Bank.”

If the Captain gave the order to tack Belize John may not have heard it. It was inaudible to me at the foot of the mainmast. Certainly it was obvious that we were getting too close to the reef before I called McClurg on deck. The chart gives no hint of any entrance where we came in. I am beginning to suspect the Captain of a fondness for tight places.

Anyway, here we are, about a mile north of the southwest point of the key and not more than a quarter-mile from shore, which Griscom is studying with his Zeiss field glasses.

“Egad, fellah, this is the place,” he exclaims, putting up the glasses, “it’s rotten with life, every kind of life except human. I have a hunch there are rails here, and they might be a new species. There might be a new mangrove warbler, too. Let’s have a look at it before supper.”

We five Americans get into the _Imp_ and row the short distance to shore. Three of the crew follow in the other dinghy to get dead wood for the galley stove. A hurricane which swept this coast a few years ago killed many of the trees on the island.

We land at the mouth of a little creek. Its sandy bottom is scoured by the swift ebb tide which bears with it furtive crabs and swift prowling sharks. We glimpse a big shallow lagoon beyond the rim of solid sand where the trees grow. Stumps and sharks’ fins project from the water. It is a repellant place, yet fascinating in its sinister desolation.

But already we are late for supper. Eager as we are for Chunyaxché we decide to stay here tomorrow, dedicating the day to a gigantic bird hunt for Griscom’s benefit.

The hot core of the sun has dropped from the flaming west. The trade wind sings in the rigging, sings of shoals and souls of bygone sailors.

Moonlight sifts to the clear cool sea bed of shifting sand, the sand which clutches ships, then mercifully buries them. Soft and bright is the moon, clean and strong the great friendly trade wind.

We strip off our clothes to feel the wind on our bodies. We step to the rail. Here on this wide white sea bed are no lurking furtive things like those that prowl that foul lagoon. Arms up for a dive, bodies balancing--

What’s that off there--that curving twelve foot shadow? a strip of seaweed? But it moves--in a stealthy circle--upward, too. Swish, a black triangular thing glistens and is gone--the ugly back fin.

[Illustration]