Selkirk's Island, Diana Souhami [the best books to read TXT] 📗

*The gender of ships is by convention female. But I am not familiar enough with a ship to call it her or she.

*Pieces of eight, the parlance of pirates, were Spanish dollars or ‘piastre’ (pieza de ocho).

*It was known as both the Acapulco and the Manila galleon. It took the name of its port of departure.

*A ship is a large, sea-going vessel, as opposed to a boat. A galleon is a ship of war. A pinnace is a light vessel attendant on a larger one. A bark is a small sailing vessel.

*This record of nemesis quoted in George Anson, A Voyage Round the World (1748) is later than my story. Perhaps seals wreaked vengeance more than once.

*Miskitos are South American Indian people from the Atlantic coast of what is now Nicaragua and Honduras.

*Our Lady of Refuge.

**St Cecilia was the patron saint of music. She was beheaded in AD 230 for refusing to worship idols.

*Dampier, in A New Voyage (1697), explained that ‘Arack is distill’d from Rice, and other things.’

*According to his own testimony, in a Deposition now lodged in the Public Record Office, London (C24 / 1321 pt.1), Selkirk’s year of birth was 1680. (See page 188). In biographical reference to him, and on plaques and statues to his memory, the date given is 1676.

*This is apparently bare-knuckled boxing.

*Now named Sao Tiago.

*A fathom is about six feet. It is determined by the length of the outstretched arms of an average-sized man, to the tip of his longest finger.

*A league is about three miles.

*Shipworms have two small shells, each about a third of an inch long, with toothed ridges, with which they tunnel into wood. The worm’s body is supported by the tunnel as it bores and feeds.

3

THE ARRIVAL

THE ARRIVAL

A Ceawau

1704 Monsters of the Deep

ALL COURAGE left him when the ship was gone. The sea stretched out. The line of its horizon was, he knew, only the limit of his sight. The sea that had beckoned freedom and fortune now locked him in.

Thomas Jones, James Ryder, William Shribes, John Cobham … He thought they would come back for him. He stayed by the shore, scanning the ocean. Whatever their fate he now wanted to be with them. If their ship sank he would choose to go down with it. It was his ship too.

Laurence Wellbroke, Martin Cooke, Christian Fletcher, Peter Haywood… they defined his world. The voyage they had made together was for more than gold: it was to show courage, to have a common purpose, to be men. Without them The Island was a prison and he a mariner without a ship, a man without a voice.

The day grew cool, the wind ruffled the water and for a moment a rogue wave or a cloud looked like a sail. His hope was that someone would persuade Stradling to think again. They would come back for him. He would welcome them with fires and food.

He waited outside of time, like a dog. Prayer, he had been taught, had a controlling force. He invoked God, to sort this mess out. He prayed in a cajoling way. He felt rage at Stradling. Even Dampier, mad and drunk, marooned Huxford in the company of men. But Stradling had marooned him, Selkirk, with calculated malice and mocked him as the boat rowed off.

He did not leave the shore. He clambered over the stones to the western edge of the bay, wanting the wider view of the ocean. The fur seals bottled and dived, surf broke over the rocks. He was trapped in the bay by sheer cliffs. He clambered back to the eastern edge by the fast-flowing stream where trees grew close to the water’s edge.

The sun dipped down, the air cooled, the mountains loured. Dark came and the moon cut a path across the ocean. All night the seals howled. These were monsters of the deep. He feared they would encroach and break his limbs with their jaws. He fired a bullet into the air. For a minute the bay seemed quiet. Then it started again, a croak, a howl. This Island was a place of terror.

In his argument with Stradling, he had seen The Island as a place of plenty and comfort. The safe bet. He had reasoned that survival would be possible, even pleasurable. That rescue would soon come. But there was fear in the dancing shadows of night. There was malice focused on him. A hostile presence sensed his every move. He feared cannibalism. That he would be taunted and devoured.

The wind surged through the valley, the wind, he was to learn, that was strongest when the moon was full. It uprooted trees. They swished and crashed. The sound merged with the breaking waves, the calling seals and the cries of creatures preyed on at night.

1704 Griping of the Guts

IT WAS early spring and around him life regenerated, but he hated The Island, its inaccessible terrain, ferocious waterfalls and gusting winds. A faint breeze at night would stir to whirlwind. It was as if the wind was born in these mountains.

Time passed. ‘He grew dejected, languid, scarce able to act.’ He stayed by the shore, drank rum, chewed tobacco, and watched the sea. He stared so hard and long he only half remembered he was searching for a sail. Often he was deceived by the blowing of a whale or the refraction of light.†

There was a makeshift hut by the shore, of sailcloth, sandalwood and rushes. He put his possessions in it and envied those who had built it. They had got away.

He had with him his clothes and bedding, a pistol, gunpowder, bullets, a hatchet, a knife, a pot in which to boil food, a bible, a book of prayers, his navigation instruments, and charts on how to read the imprisoning sea. He had two pounds of tobacco, and a single flask of rum. He had bits of food, enough for three meals –