Gerald Durrell - Golden Bats and Pink Pigeons

‘Tell me,’ I asked Tony, since geographical nomenclature, like the zoological, sometimes needs explanation, ‘can you explain the anomaly of the names of those two islands?’

‘Which ones?’ asked Tony, puffing clouds of aromatic smoke from his pipe.

‘Round Island and Ile aux Serpents,’ I said.

‘I don’t quite see what you mean,’ said Tony, puzzled.

Well, Ile aux Serpents is round, and has no snakes inhabiting it, while Round Island is not round and is inhabited by two species of snake.’

'Ah, yes, that is curious,’ admitted Tony. ‘My own view is that they got the islands muddled up when they were drawing the maps. It can happen, you know.’

‘I believe you,’ I said. ‘I once had an official map of the Cameroons which not only deflated a major town into a village, but shifted it two hundred miles north as well.’

Gradually, the whole sky lightened to powder-blue and shell-pink, and the clouds became smooth and white, piled up on the horizon like a snow-bedecked group of trees. Then, suddenly, through this forest of cumulus, the sun shouldered its way like a tiger, and burnt a glittering path of light across the sea, that seemed to catch the Dorade in claws of heat, even at that early hour.

The closer we got to Round Island, the more forbidding did the terrain appear. The sun was rising almost directly behind it, so that we saw it mainly in silhouette, rising, apparently sheer from the sea, with a tattered fringe of palms along part of its summit. The good ship Dorade shouldered its way across a blue swell that was, though not fierce, languidly muscular, and gave the impression of great power, like a half-asleep blue cat.

‘I’m glad it’s so calm,’ said Tony. ‘In fact, it’s the calmest I’ve ever seen it. Sometimes, it takes over an hour to land, and they frequently have to cut the anchor adrift if it catches under one of the submarine ledges.’

‘I know,’ I said. ‘I read with reverence, not unmixed with awe, Nicolas Pike’s description of his sojourn on Round Island. His account of his first landing gives one pause for thought.’

^Yes. Remarkable man,’ said Tony.

Pike was one of those indefatigable Victorian explorers, to whom present-day naturalists and zoologists owe such a great debt as, in their extraordinary unsuitable clothing but with bright, alert, all-embracing minds, they circumnavigated the world, cataloguing everything they saw, recording everything they heard, insatiable in their thirst for knowledge, and most of them, blessed with a strange, archaic style of writing and a sense of humour of the variety generally only found in the more ancient volumes of Punch. Their accounts of what they saw and collected have a freshness, enthusiasm and appeal which is generally lacking in the flaccid travel books foisted on us nowadays by the naturalist traveller of the jet set. Here, for example, was Nicolas Pike setting foot on Round Island for the first time:

I at once saw that what had been told me of the difficulty of landing was no exaggeration. Luckily, our fishermen crew made their arrangements skilfully. The boat was allowed to drift within a few feet of the table rock, our landing place, against which the waves were breaking.

At this stage we had to wait, and watch for an opportunity for one of our crew to jump ashore with a rope, so that the boat might be kept bow on and steady. When this was effected, the rope was securely fastened to iron rings placed there for that purpose years ago; and then our provisions, water, etc., were passed on shore.

When everything was safely landed, each one watched for the moment when the boat rose, and sprung on to the rock with a bound that made every nerve quiver; and it needed a sure foot and steady eye to alight firmly on the slippery stone.

If our little craft, which rose and fell some ten or twelve feet, had struck her bows on the precipitous ledge, she would have been hurled to Davy Jones’s Locker, and all in her, in a few seconds. The depth of the water is about four fathoms here.

As the Dorade rose and sank on the polished blue rollers, I could see what Pike meant. Scanning the cliffs we were now approaching, I could not spot a single place suitable for setting ashore anything less agile than a mountain goat. Where is the landing area?’ I enquired of Tony.

‘There,’ he said, gesturing vaguely towards the apparently perpendicular rock face. ‘That flat area of rock; that’s where Pike landed.’

Peering closely, I could just make out a flat protuberance of rock that looked about the size of a dining-room table, against which the blue sea shouldered in a suggestive manner.

‘There?’ I asked, disbelievingly.

‘There,’ said Tony.

‘I don’t wish to seem over-critical,’ I said, ‘but it looks to me as though one would have to be a cross between an exceptionally agile gecko and a Sherpa to get on to that.’

‘Don’t worry, Gerry,’ said Wahab, grinning, ‘you can only die once.’

‘I know,’ I said. ‘That’s why I’m so anxious not to squander the experience by using it up too soon.’

‘Calmest day I’ve ever seen. There’ll be no difficulty,’ said Tony, seriously.

There was great activity up in the bows and the anchor rattled overboard into about forty feet of gin-clear water.

‘That’s the cave that Nicolas Pike sheltered in when he was caught in the cyclone,’ said Wahab, pointing at the half-moon

scoop out of the rocks alongside the landing site.

‘The roof’s fallen now, but you can still see the shape of it,’added Tony.

I gazed at the half-circle carved out of the cliff bedecked now with a host of shiny, black mud-skippers (that crawled in a most un-fish-like way over the rocks) and a bevy of scarlet and purple crabs, and I remembered Pike’s hair-raising description. It was the actual place, I realised with a feeling of reverence, where he almost lost his ‘unwhisperables’:

Busy as we were, the elements were collecting their forces more energetically still; and at half-past six the sea suddenly began to roll in heavily, and very soon volumes of water, ten or twelve feet deep, poured over the table rock, where our party had embarked only two hours previously. The wash of the waves swept off our water casks that were about fifty yards from it, and at an elevation of about twenty-five feet; and they were not long before they surged into the cave, nearly reaching the spot where we stood watching the scene in dismay, and cutting off our retreat.

The captain of the boat, as soon as he saw the sudden change in the weather, raised his anchor and scudded off before the wind, and we soon lost sight of him in the heavy rolling billows.

All efforts now were turned to securing everything as far as was practicable; but the night was well set in before we had finished, and the whole sky was overcast with heavy clouds. The reverberations of the deep rolling thunder made the mountain tremble, and the vivid flashes of lightning occasionally lit up the foaming, seething mass of waters below us, madly dashing against the rocks, the spray thoroughly drenching us.

Then came the rain in a deluge to add to our troubles; and it was not long before the torrents rushing down the mountain poured over the precipice forming the roof of our cave, in a cascade twenty feet wide, bringing with them stones of all sizes, that struck the bottom of the cave with great force, and then bounded off into the sea, now and then giving us a sharp blow. Here we remained, the sea gradually encroaching on our quarters, till we were obliged to crowd in the farthest comers, and hold on to prevent our being washed away. Matters were getting too exciting to be pleasant, and we felt some effort must be made to escape from our perilous position.