Byron's Narrative of the Loss of the Wager

It is natural to think, that to men thus upon the point of perishing by shipwreck, the getting to land was the highest attainment of their wishes; undoubtedly it was a desirable event; yet, all things considered, our condition was but little mended by the change. Whichever way we looked, a scene of horror presented itself: on one side the wreck (in which was all that we had in the world to support and subsist us), together with a boisterous sea, presented us with the most dreary prospect; on the other, the land did not wear a much more favourable appearance: desolate and barren, without sign of culture, we could hope to receive little other benefit from it than the preservation it afforded us from the sea. It must be confessed this was a great and merciful deliverance from immediate destruction; but then we had wet, cold, and hunger, to struggle with, and no visible remedy against any of these evils. Exerting ourselves, however, though faint, benumbed, and almost helpless, to find some wretched covert against the extreme inclemency of the weather, we discovered an Indian hut, at a small distance from the beach, within a wood, in which as many as possible, without distinction, crowded themselves, the night coming on exceedingly tempestuous and rainy. But here our situation was such as to exclude all rest and refreshment by sleep from most of us; for besides that we pressed upon one another extremely, we were not without our alarms and apprehensions of being attacked by the Indians, from a discovery we made of some of their lances and other arms in our hut; and our uncertainty of their strength and disposition, gave alarm to our imagination, and kept us in continual anxiety.

In this miserable hovel, one of our company, a lieutenant of invalids, died this night; and of those who for want of room took shelter under a great tree, which stood them in very little stead, two more perished by the severity of that cold and rainy night. In the morning, the calls of hunger, which had been hitherto suppressed by our attention to more immediate dangers and difficulties, were now become too importunate to be resisted. We had most of us fasted eight and forty hours, some more; it was time, therefore, to make inquiry among ourselves what store of sustenance had been brought from the wreck by the providence of some, and what could be procured on the island by the industry of others: but the produce of the one amounted to no more than two or three pounds of biscuit dust reserved in a bag; and all the success of those who ventured abroad, the weather being still exceedingly bad, was to kill one sea-gull, and pick some wild cellery. These, therefore, were immediately put into a pot, with the addition of a large quantity of water, and made into a kind of soup, of which each partook as far as it would go; but we had no sooner thrown this down than we were seized with the most painful sickness at our stomachs, violent reachings, swoonings, and other symptoms of being poisoned. This was imputed to various causes, but in general to the herbs we made use of, in the nature and quality of which we fancied ourselves mistaken; but a little further inquiry let us into the real occasion of it, which was no other than this: the biscuit dust was the sweepings of the bread-room, but the bag in which they were put had been a tobacco bag; the contents of which not being entirely taken out, what remained mixed with the biscuit-dust, and proved a strong emetic.

We were in all about a hundred and forty who had got to shore; but some few remained still on board, detained either by drunkenness, or a view of pillaging the wreck, among which was the boatswain. These were visited by an officer in the yawl, who was to endeavour to prevail upon them to join the rest; but finding them in the greatest disorder, and disposed to mutiny, he was obliged to desist from his purpose and return without them. Though we were very desirous, and our necessities required that we should take some survey of the land we were upon; yet being strongly pre-possessed that the savages were retired but some little distance from us, and waited to see us divided, our parties did not make this day, any great excursions from the hut; but as far as we went, we found it very morassy and unpromising. The spot which we occupied was a bay formed by hilly promontories, that to the north so exceeding steep, that in order to ascend it (for there was no going round, the bottom being washed by the sea), we were at the labour of cutting steps. This, which we called Mount Misery, was of use to us in taking some observations afterwards, when the weather would permit: the southern promontory was not so inaccessible. Beyond this, I, with some others, having reached another bay, found driven ashore some parts of the wreck, but no kind of provision; nor did we meet with any shellfish, which we were chiefly in search of. We therefore returned to the rest, and for that day made no other repast than what the wild cellery afforded us. The ensuing night proved exceedingly tempestuous; and, the sea running very high, threatened those on board with immediate destruction by the parting of the wreck. They then were as solicitous to get ashore, as they were before obstinate in refusing the assistance we sent them; and when they found the boat did not come to their relief at the instant they expected it, without considering how impracticable a thing it was to send it them in such a sea, they fired one of the quarter-deck guns at the hut; the ball of which did but just pass over the covering of it, and was plainly heard by the captain and us who were within. Another attempt, therefore, was made to bring these madmen to land, which, however, by the violence of the sea, and other impediments, occasioned by the mast that lay alongside, proved ineffectual. This unavoidable delay made the people on board outrageous: they fell to beating every thing to pieces that fell in the way; and, carrying their intemperance to the greatest excess, broke open chests and cabins for plunder that could be of no use to them: and so earnest were they in this wantonness of theft, that one man had evidently been murdered on account of some division of the spoil, or for the sake of the share that fell to him, having all the marks of a strangled corpse. One thing in this outrage they seemed particularly attentive to, which was, to provide themselves with arms and ammunition, in order to support them in putting their mutinous designs in execution, and asserting their claim to a lawless exemption from the authority of their officers, which they pretended must cease with the loss of the ship. But of these arms, which we stood in great need of, they were soon bereaved, upon coming ashore, by the resolution of Captain Cheap and Lieutenant Hamilton of the marines. Among these mutineers which had been left on board, as I observed before, was the boatswain; who, instead of exerting the authority he had over the rest, to keep them within bounds as much as possible, was himself a ringleader in their riot: him, without respect to the figure he then made, for he was in laced clothes, Captain Cheap, by a blow well laid on with his cane, felled to the ground. It was scarce possible to refrain from laughter at the whimsical appearance these fellows made, who, having rifled the chests of the officers' best suits, had put them on over their greasy trowsers and dirty checked shirts. They were soon stripped of their finery, as they had before been obliged to resign their arms.

The incessant rains, and exceeding cold weather in this climate, rendered it impossible for us to subsist long without shelter; and the hut being much too little to receive us all, it was necessary to fall upon some expedient, without delay, which might serve our purpose: accordingly the gunner, carpenter, and some more, turning the cutter keel upwards, and fixing it upon props, made no despicable habitation. Having thus established some sort of settlement, we had the more leisure to look about us, and to make our researches with greater accuracy than we had before, after such supplies as the most desolate coasts are seldom unfurnished with. Accordingly we soon provided ourselves with some sea-fowl, and found limpets, muscles, and other shell-fish in tolerable abundance; but this rummaging of the shore was now becoming extremely irksome to those who had any feeling, by the bodies of our drowned people thrown among the rocks, some of which were hideous spectacles, from the mangled condition they were in by the violent surf that drove in upon the coast. These horrors were overcome by the distresses of our people, who were even glad of the occasion of killing the gallinazo (the carrion crow of that country), while preying on these carcases, in order to make a meal of them. But a provision by no means proportionable to the number of mouths to be fed, could, by our utmost industry, be acquired from that part of the island we had hitherto traversed: therefore, till we were in a capacity of making more distant excursions, the wreck was to be applied to as often as possible, for such supplies as could be got out of her. But as this was a very precarious fund in its present situation, and at best could not last us long; considering too that it was very uncertain how long we might be detained upon this island the stores and provision we were so fortunate as to retrieve, were not only to be dealt out with the most frugal economy, but a sufficient quantity, if possible, laid by to fit us out, whenever we could agree upon any method of transporting ourselves from this dreary spot. The difficulties we had to encounter in these visits to the wreck, cannot be easily described; for no part of it being above water except the quarter-deck and part of the fore-castle, we were usually obliged to purchase such things as were within reach, by means of large hooks fastened to poles, in which business we were much incommoded by the dead bodies floating between decks.

In order to secure what we thus got, in a manner to answer the ends and purposes above-mentioned, Captain Cheap ordered a store tent to be erected near his hut as a repository, from which nothing was to be dealt out but in the measure and proportion agreed upon by the officers; and though it was very hard upon us petty officers, who were fatigued with hunting all day in quest of food, to defend this tent from invasion by night, no other means could be devised for this purpose so effectual as the committing this charge to our care; and we were accordingly ordered to divide the task equally between us. Yet, notwithstanding our utmost vigilance and care, frequent robberies were committed upon our trust, the tent being accessible in more than one place. And one night, when I had the watch, hearing a stir within, I came unawares upon the thief, and presenting a pistol to his breast, obliged him to submit to be tied up to a post till I had an opportunity of securing him more effectually. Depredations continued to be made on our reserved stock, notwithstanding the great hazard attending such attempts; for our common safety made it necessary to punish them with the utmost rigour. This will not be wondered at, when it is known how little the allowance which might consistently be dispensed from thence, was proportionable to our common exigencies; so that our daily and nightly task of roving after food, was not in the least relaxed thereby; and all put together was so far from answering our necessities, that many at this time perished with hunger. A boy, when no other eatables could be found, having picked up the liver of one of the drowned men (whose carcase had been torn to pieces by the force with which the sea drove it among the rocks), was with difficulty withheld from making a meal of it. The men were so assiduous in their research after the few things which drove from the wreck, that in order to have no sharers of their good fortune, they examined the shore no less by night than by day; so that many of those who were less alert, or not so fortunate as their neighbours, perished with hunger, or were driven to the last extremity. It must be observed, that on the 14th of May we were cast away, and it was not till the 25th of this month that provision was served regularly from the store tent.

The land we were now settled upon was about 90 leagues to the northward of the western mouth of the straits of Magellan, in the latitude of between 47 and 48° south, from whence we could plainly see the Cordilleras; and by two Lagoons on the north and south of us, stretching towards those mountains, we conjectured it was an island. But as yet we had no means of informing ourselves perfectly, whether it was an island or the main; for besides that the inland parts at a little distance from us seemed impracticable from the exceeding great thickness of the wood, we had hitherto been in such confusion and want (each finding full employment for his time, in scraping together a wretched subsistence, and providing shelter against the cold and rain), that no party could be formed to go upon discoveries. The climate and season too were utterly unfavourable to adventurers, and the coast, as far as our eye could stretch seaward, a scene of such dismal breakers as would discourage the most daring from making attempts in small boats. Nor were we assisted in our enquiries by any observation that could be made from that eminence we called Mount Misery, toward land, our prospect that way being intercepted by still higher hills and lofty woods: we had therefore no other expedient, by means of which to come at this knowledge, but by fitting out one of our ship's boats upon some discovery, to inform us of our situation. Our long-boat was still on board the wreck; therefore a number of hands were now dispatched to cut the gunwale of the ship, in order to get her out. Whilst we were employed in this business, there appeared three canoes of Indians paddling towards us: they had come round the point from the southern Lagoons. It was some time before we could prevail upon them to lay aside their fears and approach us; which at length they were induced to do by the signs of friendship we made them, and by shewing some bale-goods, which they accepted, and suffered themselves to be conducted to the captain, who made them, likewise, some presents. They were strangely affected with the novelty thereof; but chiefly when shewn the looking-glass, in which the beholder could not conceive it to be his own face that was represented, but that of some other behind it, which he therefore went round to the back of the glass to find out.

These people were of a small stature, very swarthy, having long, black, coarse hair, hanging over their faces. It was evident, from their great surprise, and every part of their behaviour, as well as their not having one thing in their possession which could be derived from white people, that they had never seen such. Their clothing was nothing but a bit of some beast's skin about their waists, and something woven from feathers over the shoulders; and as they uttered no word of any language we had ever heard, nor had any method of making themselves understood, we presumed they could have had no intercourse with Europeans. These savages, who upon their departure left us a few muscles, returned in two days, and surprised us by bringing three sheep. From whence they could procure animals in a part of the world so distant from any Spanish settlement, cut off from all communication with the Spaniards by an inaccessible coast and unprofitable country, is difficult to conceive. Certain it is, that we saw no such creatures, nor ever heard of any such, from the Straits of Magellan, till we got into the neighbourhood of Chiloe: it must be by some strange accident that these creatures came into their possession; but what that was, we never could learn from them. At this interview we bartered with them for a dog or two, which we roasted and eat. In a few days after, they made us another visit, and bringing their wives with them, took up their abode with us for some days; then again left us.

Whenever the weather permitted, which was now grown something drier, but exceeding cold, we employed ourselves about the wreck, from which we had, at sundry times, recovered several articles of provision and liquor: these were deposited in the store-tent. Ill-humour and discontent, from the difficulties we laboured under in procuring subsistence, and the little prospect there was of any amendment in our condition, was now breaking out apace. In some it shewed itself by a separation of settlement and habitation; in others, by a resolution of leaving the captain entirely, and making a wild journey by themselves, without determining upon any plan whatever. For my own part, seeing it was the fashion, and liking none of their parties, I built a little hut just big enough for myself and a poor Indian dog I found in the woods, who could shift for himself along shore, at low water, by getting limpets. This creature grew so fond of me, and faithful, that he would suffer nobody to come near the hut without biting them. Besides those seceders I mentioned, some laid a scheme of deserting us entirely: these were in number ten; the greatest part of them a most desperate and abandoned crew, who, to strike a notable stroke before they went off, placed half a barrel of gunpowder close to the captain's hut, laid a train to it, and were just preparing to perpetrate their wicked design of blowing up their commander, when they were with difficulty dissuaded from it by one who had some bowels and remorse of conscience left in him. These wretches, after rambling for some time in the woods, and finding it impracticable to get off, for they were then convinced that we were not upon the main, as they had imagined when they first left us, but upon an island within four or five leagues of it, returned and settled about a league from us; however, they were still determined, as soon as they could procure craft fit for their purpose, to get to the main. But before they could effect this, we found means to prevail upon the armourer and one of the carpenter's crew, – two very useful men to us, who had imprudently joined them, – to come over again to their duty. The rest, (one or two excepted) having built a punt, and converted the hull of one of the ship's masts into a canoe, went away up one of the Lagoons, and never were heard of more.

These being a desperate and factious set, did not distress us much by their departure, but rather added to our future security: one in particular, James Mitchell by name, we had all the reason in the world to think had committed no less than two murders since the loss of our ship; one on the person found strangled on board, another on the body of a man whom we discovered among some bushes upon Mount Misery, stabbed in several places, and shockingly mangled. This diminution of our numbers was succeeded by an unfortunate accident much more affecting in its consequences, I mean the death of Mr. Cozens, midshipman; in relating which with the necessary impartiality and exactness, I think myself obliged to be more than ordinarily particular. Having one day, among other things, got a cask of peas out of the wreck, about which I was almost constantly employed, I brought it to shore in the yawl; when having landed it, the captain came down upon the beach, and bid me to go up to some of the tents and order hands to come down and roll it up; but finding none except Mr. Cozens, I delivered him the orders, who immediately came down to the captain, where I left them when I returned to the wreck. Upon my coming on shore again, I found that Mr. Cozens was put under confinement by the captain, for being drunk and giving him abusive language: however, he was soon after released. A day or two after, he had some dispute with the surgeon, and came to blows: all these things incensed the captain greatly against him. I believe this unfortunate man was kept warm with liquor, and set on by some ill-designing persons; for, when sober, I never knew a better natured man, or one more inoffensive. Some little time after, at the hour of serving out provisions, Mr. Cozens was at the store tent; and having, it seems, lately had a quarrel with the purser, and now some words arising between them, the latter told him he was come to mutiny; and without any further ceremony, fired a pistol at his head, which narrowly missed him. The captain, hearing the report of a pistol, and perhaps the purser's words, that Cozens was come to mutiny, ran out of his hut with a cocked pistol in his hand, and, without asking any questions, immediately shot him through the head. I was at this time in my hut, as the weather was extremely bad; but running out upon the alarm of this firing, the first thing I saw was Mr. Cozens on the ground, weltering in his blood: he was sensible, and took me by the hand, as he did several others, shaking his head, as if he meant to take leave of us. If Mr. Cozens' behaviour to his captain was indecent and provoking, the captain's, on the other hand, was rash and hasty: if the first was wanting in that respect and observance which is due from a petty officer to his commander, the latter was still more unadvised in the method he took for the enforcement of his authority; of which, indeed, he was jealous to the last degree, and which he saw daily declining, and ready to be trampled upon. His mistaken apprehension of a mutinous design in Mr. Cozens, the sole motive of this rash action, was so far from answering the end he proposed by it, that the men, who before were much dissatisfied and uneasy, were by this unfortunate step thrown almost into open sedition and revolt. It was evident that the people, who ran out of their tents, alarmed by the report of fire-arms, though they disguised their real sentiments for the present, were extremely affected at this catastrophe of Mr. Cozens (for he was greatly beloved by them): their minds were now exasperated, and it was to be apprehended, that their resentment, which was smothered for the present, would shortly shew itself in some desperate enterprise. The unhappy victim, who lay weltering in his blood on the ground before them, seemed to absorb their whole attention; the eyes of all were fixed upon him; and visible marks of the deepest concern appeared in the countenances of the spectators. The persuasion the captain was under, at the time he shot Mr. Cozens, that his intentions were mutinous, together with a jealousy of the diminution of his authority, occasioned also his behaving with less compassion and tenderness towards him afterwards than was consistent with the unhappy condition of the poor sufferer: for when it was begged as a favour by his mess-mates, that Mr. Cozens might be removed to their tent, though a necessary thing in his dangerous situation, yet it was not permitted; but the poor wretch was suffered to languish on the ground some days, with no other covering than a bit of canvass thrown over some bushes, where he died. But to return to our story: the Captain, addressing himself to the people thus assembled, told them, that it was his resolution to maintain his command over them as usual, which still remained in as much force as ever; and then ordered them all to return to their respective tents, with which order they instantly complied. Now we had saved the long-boat from the wreck, and got it in our possession, there was nothing that seemed so necessary towards the advancing our delivery from this desolate place, as the new modelling this vessel so as to have room for all those who were inclined to go off in her, and to put her in a condition to bear the stormy seas we must of course encounter. We therefore hauled her up, and having placed her upon blocks, sawed her in two, in order to lengthen her about twelve feet by the keel. For this purpose, all those who could be spared from the more immediate task of procuring subsistence, were employed in fitting and shaping timber as the carpenter directed them; I say, in procuring subsistence, because the weather lately having been very tempestuous, and the wreck working much, had disgorged a great part of her contents, which were every where dispersed about the shore.

We now sent frequent parties up the Lagoons, which sometimes succeeded in getting some sea-fowl for us. The Indians appearing again in the offing we put off our yawl, in order to frustrate any design they might have of going up the Lagoon towards the deserters, who would have availed themselves of some of their canoes to have got upon the main. Having conducted them in, we found that their intention was to settle among us, for they had brought their wives and children with them, in all about fifty persons, who immediately set about building themselves wigwams, and seemed much reconciled to our company; and, could we have entertained them as we ought, they would have been of great assistance to us, who were yet extremely put to it to subsist ourselves, being a hundred in number; but the men, now subject to little or no control, endeavoured to seduce their wives, which gave the Indians such offence, that in a short time they found means to depart, taking every thing along with them; and we, being sensible of the cause, never expected to see them return again. The carpenter having made some progress in his work upon the long-boat, in which he was enabled to proceed tolerably, by the tools and other articles of his business retrieved from the wreck, the men began to think of the course they should take to get home; or rather, having borrowed Sir John Narborough's Voyage of Captain Cheap, by the application of Mr. Bulkely, which book he saw me reading one day in my tent, they, immediately upon perusing it, concluded upon making their voyage home by the Straits of Magellan. This plan was proposed to the captain, who by no means approved of it, his design being to go northwards, with a view of seizing a ship of the enemy's, by which means he might join the Commodore: at present, therefore, here it rested. But the men were in high spirits from the prospect they had of getting off in the long-boat, overlooking all the difficulties and hazards of a voyage almost impracticable, and caressing the carpenter, who indeed was an excellent workman, and deserved all the encouragement they could give him. The Indians having left us, and the weather continuing tempestuous and rainy, the distresses of the people for want of food become insupportable. Our number, which was at first one hundred and forty-five, was now reduced to one hundred, and chiefly by famine, which put the rest upon all shifts and devices to support themselves. One day, when I was at home in my hut with my Indian dog, a party came to my door, and told me their necessities were such, that they must eat the creature or starve. Though their plea was urgent, I could not help using some arguments to endeavour to dissuade them from killing him, as his faithful services and fondness deserved it at my hands; but, without weighing my arguments, they took him away by force and killed him; upon which, thinking that I had at least as good a right to a share as the rest, I sat down with them, and partook of their repast. Three weeks after that I was glad to make a meal of his paws and skin, which, upon recollecting the spot where they had killed him, I found thrown aside and rotten. The pressing calls of hunger drove our men to their wit's end, and put them upon a variety of devices to satisfy it. Among the ingenious this way, one Phips, a boatswain's mate, having got a water puncheon, scuttled it; then lashing two logs, one on each side, set out in quest of adventures in this extraordinary and original piece of embarkation. By this means he would frequently, when all the rest were starving, provide himself with wild fowl; and it must have been very bad weather indeed which could deter him from putting out to sea when his occasions required. Sometimes he would venture far out in the offing, and be absent the whole of the day: at last, it was his misfortune, at a great distance from shore, to be overset by a heavy sea; but being near a rock, though no swimmer, he managed so as to scramble to it, and with great difficulty ascended it: there he remained two days with very little hopes of any relief, for he was too far off to be seen from shore; but fortunately a boat, having put off and gone in quest of wild fowl that way, discovered him making such signals as he was able, and brought him back to the island. But this accident did not so discourage him but that soon after, having procured an ox's hide, used on board for sifting powder, and called a gunner's hide, by the assistance of some hoops he formed something like a canoe, in which he made several successful voyages. When the weather would permit us, we seldom failed of getting some wild fowl, though never in any plenty, by putting off with our boats; but this most inhospitable climate is not only deprived of the sun for the most part, by a thick, rainy atmosphere, but is also visited by almost incessant tempests. It must be confessed, we reaped some benefit from these hard gales and overgrown seas, which drove several things ashore; but there was no dependence on such accidental relief; and we were always alert to avail ourselves of every interval of fair weather, though so little to be depended on, that we were often unexpectedly and to our peril overtaken by a sudden change. In one of our excursions I, with two more, in a wretched punt of our own making, had no sooner landed at our station upon a high rock, than the punt was driven loose by a sudden squall; and had not one of the men, at the risk of his life, jumped into the sea and swam on board her, we must in all probability have perished; for we were more than three leagues from the island at the time. Among the birds we generally shot, was the painted goose, whose plumage is variegated with the most lively colours; and a bird much larger than a goose, which we called the race-horse, from the velocity with which it moved upon the surface of the water, in a sort of half flying, half running motion. But we were not so successful in our endeavours by land; for though we sometimes got pretty far into the woods, we met with very few birds in all our walks. We never saw but three woodcocks, two of which were killed by Mr. Hamilton, and one by myself. These, with some humming-birds, and a large kind of robin redbreast, were the only feathered inhabitants of this island, excepting a small bird with two very long feathers in his tail, which was generally seen amongst the rocks, and was so tame, that I have had them rest upon my shoulder whilst I have been gathering shell-fish. Indeed, we were visited by many birds of prey, some very large; but these only occasionally, and, as we imagined, allured by some dead whale in the neighbourhood, which was once seen. However, if we were so fortunate as to kill one of them, we thought ourselves very well off. In one of my walks, seeing a bird of this latter kind upon an eminence, I endeavoured to come upon it unperceived with my gun, by means of the woods which lay at the back of that eminence; but when I had proceeded so far in the wood as to think I was in a line with it, I heard a growling close by me, which made me think it advisable to retire as soon as possible; the woods were so gloomy I could see nothing; but as I retired, this noise followed me close till I had got out of them. Some of our men did assure me, that they had seen a very large beast in the woods; but their description of it was too imperfect to be relied upon. The wood here is chiefly of the aromatic kind; the iron wood, a wood of a very deep red hue, and another, of an exceeding bright yellow. All the low spots are very swampy; but what we thought strange, upon the summits of the highest hills were found beds of shells, a foot or two thick.