Chapter: SKETCH EIGHTH. NORFOLK ISLE AND THE CHOLA WIDOW.

  "At last they in an island did espy
  A seemly woman sitting by the shore,
  That with great sorrow and sad agony
  Seemed some great misfortune to deplore;
  And loud to them for succor called evermore."

  "Black his eye as the midnight sky.
  White his neck as the driven snow,
  Red his cheek as the morning light;--
  Cold he lies in the ground below.
        My love is dead,
        Gone to his death-bed, ys
  All under the cactus tree."

  "Each lonely scene shall thee restore,
  For thee the tear be duly shed;
  Belov'd till life can charm no more,
  And mourned till Pity's self be dead."


Far to the northeast of Charles's Isle, sequestered from the rest, lies
Norfolk Isle; and, however insignificant to most voyagers, to me,
through sympathy, that lone island has become a spot made sacred by the
strangest trials of humanity.

It was my first visit to the Encantadas. Two days had been spent ashore
in hunting tortoises. There was not time to capture many; so on the
third afternoon we loosed our sails. We were just in the act of getting
under way, the uprooted anchor yet suspended and invisibly swaying
beneath the wave, as the good ship gradually turned her heel to leave
the isle behind, when the seaman who heaved with me at the windlass
paused suddenly, and directed my attention to something moving on the
land, not along the beach, but somewhat back, fluttering from a height.

In view of the sequel of this little story, be it here narrated how it
came to pass, that an object which partly from its being so small was
quite lost to every other man on board, still caught the eye of my
handspike companion. The rest of the crew, myself included, merely stood
up to our spikes in heaving, whereas, unwontedly exhilarated, at every
turn of the ponderous windlass, my belted comrade leaped atop of it,
with might and main giving a downward, thewey, perpendicular heave, his
raised eye bent in cheery animation upon the slowly receding shore.
Being high lifted above all others was the reason he perceived the
object, otherwise unperceivable; and this elevation of his eye was
owing to the elevation of his spirits; and this again--for truth must
out--to a dram of Peruvian pisco, in guerdon for some kindness done,
secretly administered to him that morning by our mulatto steward. Now,
certainly, pisco does a deal of mischief in the world; yet seeing that,
in the present case, it was the means, though indirect, of rescuing a
human being from the most dreadful fate, must we not also needs admit
that sometimes pisco does a deal of good?

Glancing across the water in the direction pointed out, I saw some white
thing hanging from an inland rock, perhaps half a mile from the sea.

"It is a bird; a white-winged bird; perhaps a--no; it is--it is a
handkerchief!"

"Ay, a handkerchief!" echoed my comrade, and with a louder shout
apprised the captain.

Quickly now--like the running out and training of a great gun--the long
cabin spy-glass was thrust through the mizzen rigging from the high
platform of the poop; whereupon a human figure was plainly seen upon the
inland rock, eagerly waving towards us what seemed to be the
handkerchief.

Our captain was a prompt, good fellow. Dropping the glass, he lustily
ran forward, ordering the anchor to be dropped again; hands to stand by
a boat, and lower away.

In a half-hour's time the swift boat returned. It went with six and came
with seven; and the seventh was a woman.

It is not artistic heartlessness, but I wish I could but draw in
crayons; for this woman was a most touching sight; and crayons, tracing
softly melancholy lines, would best depict the mournful image of the
dark-damasked Chola widow.

Her story was soon told, and though given in her own strange language
was as quickly understood; for our captain, from long trading on the
Chilian coast, was well versed in the Spanish. A Cholo, or half-breed
Indian woman of Payta in Peru, three years gone by, with her young
new-wedded husband Felipe, of pure Castilian blood, and her one only
Indian brother, Truxill, Hunilla had taken passage on the main in a
French whaler, commanded by a joyous man; which vessel, bound to the
cruising grounds beyond the Enchanted Isles, proposed passing close by
their vicinity. The object of the little party was to procure tortoise
oil, a fluid which for its great purity and delicacy is held in high
estimation wherever known; and it is well known all along this part of
the Pacific coast. With a chest of clothes, tools, cooking utensils, a
rude apparatus for trying out the oil, some casks of biscuit, and other
things, not omitting two favorite dogs, of which faithful animal all the
Cholos are very fond, Hunilla and her companions were safely landed at
their chosen place; the Frenchman, according to the contract made ere
sailing, engaged to take them off upon returning from a four months'
cruise in the westward seas; which interval the three adventurers deemed
quite sufficient for their purposes.

On the isle's lone beach they paid him in silver for their passage out,
the stranger having declined to carry them at all except upon that
condition; though willing to take every means to insure the due
fulfillment of his promise. Felipe had striven hard to have this payment
put off to the period of the ship's return. But in vain. Still they
thought they had, in another way, ample pledge of the good faith of the
Frenchman. It was arranged that the expenses of the passage home should
not be payable in silver, but in tortoises; one hundred tortoises ready
captured to the returning captain's hand. These the Cholos meant to
secure after their own work was done, against the probable time of the
Frenchman's coming back; and no doubt in prospect already felt, that in
those hundred tortoises--now somewhere ranging the isle's interior--they
possessed one hundred hostages. Enough: the vessel sailed; the gazing
three on shore answered the loud glee of the singing crew; and ere
evening, the French craft was hull down in the distant sea, its masts
three faintest lines which quickly faded from Hunilla's eye.

The stranger had given a blithesome promise, and anchored it with oaths;
but oaths and anchors equally will drag; naught else abides on fickle
earth but unkept promises of joy. Contrary winds from out unstable
skies, or contrary moods of his more varying mind, or shipwreck and
sudden death in solitary waves; whatever was the cause, the blithe
stranger never was seen again.

Yet, however dire a calamity was here in store, misgivings of it ere due
time never disturbed the Cholos' busy mind, now all intent upon the
toilsome matter which had brought them hither. Nay, by swift doom coming
like the thief at night, ere seven weeks went by, two of the little
party were removed from all anxieties of land or sea. No more they
sought to gaze with feverish fear, or still more feverish hope, beyond
the present's horizon line; but into the furthest future their own
silent spirits sailed. By persevering labor beneath that burning sun,
Felipe and Truxill had brought down to their hut many scores of
tortoises, and tried out the oil, when, elated with their good success,
and to reward themselves for such hard work, they, too hastily, made a
catamaran, or Indian raft, much used on the Spanish main, and merrily
started on a fishing trip, just without a long reef with many jagged
gaps, running parallel with the shore, about half a mile from it. By
some bad tide or hap, or natural negligence of joyfulness (for though
they could not be heard, yet by their gestures they seemed singing at
the time) forced in deep water against that iron bar, the ill-made
catamaran was overset, and came all to pieces; when dashed by
broad-chested swells between their broken logs and the sharp teeth of
the reef, both adventurers perished before Hunilla's eyes.

Before Hunilla's eyes they sank. The real woe of this event passed
before her sight as some sham tragedy on the stage. She was seated on a
rude bower among the withered thickets, crowning a lofty cliff, a little
back from the beach. The thickets were so disposed, that in looking upon
the sea at large she peered out from among the branches as from the
lattice of a high balcony. But upon the day we speak of here, the better
to watch the adventure of those two hearts she loved, Hunilla had
withdrawn the branches to one side, and held them so. They formed an
oval frame, through which the bluely boundless sea rolled like a painted
one. And there, the invisible painter painted to her view the
wave-tossed and disjointed raft, its once level logs slantingly
upheaved, as raking masts, and the four struggling arms
indistinguishable among them; and then all subsided into smooth-flowing
creamy waters, slowly drifting the splintered wreck; while first and
last, no sound of any sort was heard. Death in a silent picture; a dream
of the eye; such vanishing shapes as the mirage shows.

So instant was the scene, so trance-like its mild pictorial effect, so
distant from her blasted bower and her common sense of things, that
Hunilla gazed and gazed, nor raised a finger or a wail. But as good to
sit thus dumb, in stupor staring on that dumb show, for all that
otherwise might be done. With half a mile of sea between, how could her
two enchanted arms aid those four fated ones? The distance long, the
time one sand. After the lightning is beheld, what fool shall stay the
thunder-bolt? Felipe's body was washed ashore, but Truxill's never came;
only his gay, braided hat of golden straw--that same sunflower thing he
waved to her, pushing from the strand--and now, to the last gallant, it
still saluted her. But Felipe's body floated to the marge, with one arm
encirclingly outstretched. Lock-jawed in grim death, the lover-husband
softly clasped his bride, true to her even in death's dream. Ah,
heaven, when man thus keeps his faith, wilt thou be faithless who
created the faithful one? But they cannot break faith who never plighted
it.

It needs not to be said what nameless misery now wrapped the lonely
widow. In telling her own story she passed this almost entirely over,
simply recounting the event. Construe the comment of her features as you
might, from her mere words little would you have weened that Hunilla was
herself the heroine of her tale. But not thus did she defraud us of our
tears. All hearts bled that grief could be so brave.

She but showed us her soul's lid, and the strange ciphers thereon
engraved; all within, with pride's timidity, was withheld. Yet was there
one exception. Holding out her small olive hand before her captain, she
said in mild and slowest Spanish, "Senor, I buried him;" then paused,
struggled as against the writhed coilings of a snake, and cringing
suddenly, leaped up, repeating in impassioned pain, "I buried him, my
life, my soul!"

Doubtless, it was by half-unconscious, automatic motions of her hands,
that this heavy-hearted one performed the final office for Felipe, and
planted a rude cross of withered sticks--no green ones might be had--at
the head of that lonely grave, where rested now in lasting un-complaint
and quiet haven he whom untranquil seas had overthrown.

But some dull sense of another body that should be interred, of another
cross that should hallow another grave--unmade as yet--some dull anxiety
and pain touching her undiscovered brother, now haunted the oppressed
Hunilla. Her hands fresh from the burial earth, she slowly went back to
the beach, with unshaped purposes wandering there, her spell-bound eye
bent upon the incessant waves. But they bore nothing to her but a dirge,
which maddened her to think that murderers should mourn. As time went
by, and these things came less dreamingly to her mind, the strong
persuasions of her Romish faith, which sets peculiar store by
consecrated urns, prompted her to resume in waking earnest that pious
search which had but been begun as in somnambulism. Day after day, week
after week, she trod the cindery beach, till at length a double motive
edged every eager glance. With equal longing she now looked for the
living and the dead; the brother and the captain; alike vanished, never
to return. Little accurate note of time had Hunilla taken under such
emotions as were hers, and little, outside herself, served for calendar
or dial. As to poor Crusoe in the self-same sea, no saint's bell pealed
forth the lapse of week or month; each day went by unchallenged; no
chanticleer announced those sultry dawns, no lowing herds those
poisonous nights. All wonted and steadily recurring sounds, human, or
humanized by sweet fellowship with man, but one stirred that torrid
trance--the cry of dogs; save which naught but the rolling sea invaded
it, an all-pervading monotone; and to the widow that was the least loved
voice she could have heard.

No wonder, that as her thoughts now wandered to the unreturning ship,
and were beaten back again, the hope against hope so struggled in her
soul, that at length she desperately said, "Not yet, not yet; my foolish
heart runs on too fast." So she forced patience for some further weeks.
But to those whom earth's sure indraft draws, patience or impatience is
still the same.

Hunilla now sought to settle precisely in her mind, to an hour, how long
it was since the ship had sailed; and then, with the same precision, how
long a space remained to pass. But this proved impossible. What present
day or month it was she could not say. Time was her labyrinth, in which
Hunilla was entirely lost.

And now follows--

Against my own purposes a pause descends upon me here. One knows not
whether nature doth not impose some secrecy upon him who has been privy
to certain things. At least, it is to be doubted whether it be good to
blazon such. If some books are deemed most baneful and their sale
forbid, how, then, with deadlier facts, not dreams of doting men? Those
whom books will hurt will not be proof against events. Events, not
books, should be forbid. But in all things man sows upon the wind, which
bloweth just there whither it listeth; for ill or good, man cannot know.
Often ill comes from the good, as good from ill.

When Hunilla--

Dire sight it is to see some silken beast long dally with a golden
lizard ere she devour. More terrible, to see how feline Fate will
sometimes dally with a human soul, and by a nameless magic make it
repulse a sane despair with a hope which is but mad. Unwittingly I imp
this cat-like thing, sporting with the heart of him who reads; for if he
feel not he reads in vain.

--"The ship sails this day, to-day," at last said Hunilla to herself;
"this gives me certain time to stand on; without certainty I go mad. In
loose ignorance I have hoped and hoped; now in firm knowledge I will but
wait. Now I live and no longer perish in bewilderings. Holy Virgin, aid
me! Thou wilt waft back the ship. Oh, past length of weary weeks--all to
be dragged over--to buy the certainty of to-day, I freely give ye,
though I tear ye from me!"

As mariners, tost in tempest on some desolate ledge, patch them a boat
out of the remnants of their vessel's wreck, and launch it in the
self-same waves, see here Hunilla, this lone shipwrecked soul, out of
treachery invoking trust. Humanity, thou strong thing, I worship thee,
not in the laureled victor, but in this vanquished one.

Truly Hunilla leaned upon a reed, a real one; no metaphor; a real
Eastern reed. A piece of hollow cane, drifted from unknown isles, and
found upon the beach, its once jagged ends rubbed smoothly even as by
sand-paper; its golden glazing gone. Long ground between the sea and
land, upper and nether stone, the unvarnished substance was filed bare,
and wore another polish now, one with itself, the polish of its agony.
Circular lines at intervals cut all round this surface, divided it into
six panels of unequal length. In the first were scored the days, each
tenth one marked by a longer and deeper notch; the second was scored for
the number of sea-fowl eggs for sustenance, picked out from the rocky
nests; the third, how many fish had been caught from the shore; the
fourth, how many small tortoises found inland; the fifth, how many days
of sun; the sixth, of clouds; which last, of the two, was the greater
one. Long night of busy numbering, misery's mathematics, to weary her
too-wakeful soul to sleep; yet sleep for that was none.

The panel of the days was deeply worn--the long tenth notches half
effaced, as alphabets of the blind. Ten thousand times the longing widow
had traced her finger over the bamboo--dull flute, which played, on,
gave no sound--as if counting birds flown by in air would hasten
tortoises creeping through the woods.

After the one hundred and eightieth day no further mark was seen; that
last one was the faintest, as the first the deepest.

"There were more days," said our Captain; "many, many more; why did you
not go on and notch them, too, Hunilla?"

"Senor, ask me not."

"And meantime, did no other vessel pass the isle?"

"Nay, Senor;--but--"

"You do not speak; but _what_, Hunilla?"

"Ask me not, Senor."

"You saw ships pass, far away; you waved to them; they passed on;--was
that it, Hunilla?"

"Senor, be it as you say."

Braced against her woe, Hunilla would not, durst not trust the weakness
of her tongue. Then when our Captain asked whether any whale-boats
had--

But no, I will not file this thing complete for scoffing souls to quote,
and call it firm proof upon their side. The half shall here remain
untold. Those two unnamed events which befell Hunilla on this isle, let
them abide between her and her God. In nature, as in law, it may be
libelous to speak some truths.

Still, how it was that, although our vessel had lain three days anchored
nigh the isle, its one human tenant should not have discovered us till
just upon the point of sailing, never to revisit so lone and far a spot,
this needs explaining ere the sequel come.

The place where the French captain had landed the little party was on
the further and opposite end of the isle. There, too, it was that they
had afterwards built their hut. Nor did the widow in her solitude desert
the spot where her loved ones had dwelt with her, and where the dearest
of the twain now slept his last long sleep, and all her plaints awaked
him not, and he of husbands the most faithful during life.

Now, high, broken land rises between the opposite extremities of the
isle. A ship anchored at one side is invisible from the other. Neither
is the isle so small, but a considerable company might wander for days
through the wilderness of one side, and never be seen, or their halloos
heard, by any stranger holding aloof on the other. Hence Hunilla, who
naturally associated the possible coming of ships with her own part of
the isle, might to the end have remained quite ignorant of the presence
of our vessel, were it not for a mysterious presentiment, borne to her,
so our mariners averred, by this isle's enchanted air. Nor did the
widow's answer undo the thought.

"How did you come to cross the isle this morning, then, Hunilla?" said
our Captain.

"Senor, something came flitting by me. It touched my cheek, my heart,
Senor."

"What do you say, Hunilla?"

"I have said, Senor, something came through the air."

It was a narrow chance. For when in crossing the isle Hunilla gained the
high land in the centre, she must then for the first have perceived our
masts, and also marked that their sails were being loosed, perhaps even
heard the echoing chorus of the windlass song. The strange ship was
about to sail, and she behind. With all haste she now descends the
height on the hither side, but soon loses sight of the ship among the
sunken jungles at the mountain's base. She struggles on through the
withered branches, which seek at every step to bar her path, till she
comes to the isolated rock, still some way from the water. This she
climbs, to reassure herself. The ship is still in plainest sight. But
now, worn out with over tension, Hunilla all but faints; she fears to
step down from her giddy perch; she is fain to pause, there where she
is, and as a last resort catches the turban from her head, unfurls and
waves it over the jungles towards us.

During the telling of her story the mariners formed a voiceless circle
round Hunilla and the Captain; and when at length the word was given to
man the fastest boat, and pull round to the isle's thither side, to
bring away Hunilla's chest and the tortoise-oil, such alacrity of both
cheery and sad obedience seldom before was seen. Little ado was made.
Already the anchor had been recommitted to the bottom, and the ship
swung calmly to it.

But Hunilla insisted upon accompanying the boat as indispensable pilot
to her hidden hut. So being refreshed with the best the steward could
supply, she started with us. Nor did ever any wife of the most famous
admiral, in her husband's barge, receive more silent reverence of
respect than poor Hunilla from this boat's crew.

Rounding many a vitreous cape and bluff, in two hours' time we shot
inside the fatal reef; wound into a secret cove, looked up along a green
many-gabled lava wall, and saw the island's solitary dwelling.

It hung upon an impending cliff, sheltered on two sides by tangled
thickets, and half-screened from view in front by juttings of the rude
stairway, which climbed the precipice from the sea. Built of canes, it
was thatched with long, mildewed grass. It seemed an abandoned hay-rick,
whose haymakers were now no more. The roof inclined but one way; the
eaves coming to within two feet of the ground. And here was a simple
apparatus to collect the dews, or rather doubly-distilled and finest
winnowed rains, which, in mercy or in mockery, the night-skies sometimes
drop upon these blighted Encantadas. All along beneath the eaves, a
spotted sheet, quite weather-stained, was spread, pinned to short,
upright stakes, set in the shallow sand. A small clinker, thrown into
the cloth, weighed its middle down, thereby straining all moisture into
a calabash placed below. This vessel supplied each drop of water ever
drunk upon the isle by the Cholos. Hunilla told us the calabash, would
sometimes, but not often, be half filled overnight. It held six quarts,
perhaps. "But," said she, "we were used to thirst. At sandy Payta, where
I live, no shower from heaven ever fell; all the water there is brought
on mules from the inland vales."

Tied among the thickets were some twenty moaning tortoises, supplying
Hunilla's lonely larder; while hundreds of vast tableted black bucklers,
like displaced, shattered tomb-stones of dark slate, were also scattered
round. These were the skeleton backs of those great tortoises from
which Felipe and Truxill had made their precious oil. Several large
calabashes and two goodly kegs were filled with it. In a pot near by
were the caked crusts of a quantity which had been permitted to
evaporate. "They meant to have strained it off next day," said Hunilla,
as she turned aside.

I forgot to mention the most singular sight of all, though the first
that greeted us after landing.

Some ten small, soft-haired, ringleted dogs, of a beautiful breed,
peculiar to Peru, set up a concert of glad welcomings when we gained the
beach, which was responded to by Hunilla. Some of these dogs had, since
her widowhood, been born upon the isle, the progeny of the two brought
from Payta. Owing to the jagged steeps and pitfalls, tortuous thickets,
sunken clefts and perilous intricacies of all sorts in the interior,
Hunilla, admonished by the loss of one favorite among them, never
allowed these delicate creatures to follow her in her occasional
birds'-nests climbs and other wanderings; so that, through long
habituation, they offered not to follow, when that morning she crossed
the land, and her own soul was then too full of other things to heed
their lingering behind. Yet, all along she had so clung to them, that,
besides what moisture they lapped up at early daybreak from the small
scoop-holes among the adjacent rocks, she had shared the dew of her
calabash among them; never laying by any considerable store against
those prolonged and utter droughts which, in some disastrous seasons,
warp these isles.

Having pointed out, at our desire, what few things she would like
transported to the ship--her chest, the oil, not omitting the live
tortoises which she intended for a grateful present to our Captain--we
immediately set to work, carrying them to the boat down the long,
sloping stair of deeply-shadowed rock. While my comrades were thus
employed, I looked and Hunilla had disappeared.

It was not curiosity alone, but, it seems to me, something different
mingled with it, which prompted me to drop my tortoise, and once more
gaze slowly around. I remembered the husband buried by Hunilla's hands.
A narrow pathway led into a dense part of the thickets. Following it
through many mazes, I came out upon a small, round, open space, deeply
chambered there.

The mound rose in the middle; a bare heap of finest sand, like that
unverdured heap found at the bottom of an hour-glass run out. At its
head stood the cross of withered sticks; the dry, peeled bark still
fraying from it; its transverse limb tied up with rope, and forlornly
adroop in the silent air.

Hunilla was partly prostrate upon the grave; her dark head bowed, and
lost in her long, loosened Indian hair; her hands extended to the
cross-foot, with a little brass crucifix clasped between; a crucifix
worn featureless, like an ancient graven knocker long plied in vain. She
did not see me, and I made no noise, but slid aside, and left the spot.

A few moments ere all was ready for our going, she reappeared among us.
I looked into her eyes, but saw no tear. There was something which
seemed strangely haughty in her air, and yet it was the air of woe. A
Spanish and an Indian grief, which would not visibly lament. Pride's
height in vain abased to proneness on the rack; nature's pride subduing
nature's torture.

Like pages the small and silken dogs surrounded her, as she slowly
descended towards the beach. She caught the two most eager creatures in
her arms:--"Mia Teeta! Mia Tomoteeta!" and fondling them, inquired how
many could we take on board.

The mate commanded the boat's crew; not a hard-hearted man, but his way
of life had been such that in most things, even in the smallest, simple
utility was his leading motive.

"We cannot take them all, Hunilla; our supplies are short; the winds are
unreliable; we may be a good many days going to Tombez. So take those
you have, Hunilla; but no more."

She was in the boat; the oarsmen, too, were seated; all save one, who
stood ready to push off and then spring himself. With the sagacity of
their race, the dogs now seemed aware that they were in the very instant
of being deserted upon a barren strand. The gunwales of the boat were
high; its prow--presented inland--was lifted; so owing to the water,
which they seemed instinctively to shun, the dogs could not well leap
into the little craft. But their busy paws hard scraped the prow, as it
had been some farmer's door shutting them out from shelter in a winter
storm. A clamorous agony of alarm. They did not howl, or whine; they all
but spoke.

"Push off! Give way!" cried the mate. The boat gave one heavy drag and
lurch, and next moment shot swiftly from the beach, turned on her heel,
and sped. The dogs ran howling along the water's marge; now pausing to
gaze at the flying boat, then motioning as if to leap in chase, but
mysteriously withheld themselves; and again ran howling along the beach.
Had they been human beings, hardly would they have more vividly inspired
the sense of desolation. The oars were plied as confederate feathers of
two wings. No one spoke. I looked back upon the beach, and then upon
Hunilla, but her face was set in a stern dusky calm. The dogs crouching
in her lap vainly licked her rigid hands. She never looked be her: but
sat motionless, till we turned a promontory of the coast and lost all
sights and sounds astern. She seemed as one who, having experienced the
sharpest of mortal pangs, was henceforth content to have all lesser
heartstrings riven, one by one. To Hunilla, pain seemed so necessary,
that pain in other beings, though by love and sympathy made her own, was
unrepiningly to be borne. A heart of yearning in a frame of steel. A
heart of earthly yearning, frozen by the frost which falleth from the
sky.

The sequel is soon told. After a long passage, vexed by calms and
baffling winds, we made the little port of Tombez in Peru, there to
recruit the ship. Payta was not very distant. Our captain sold the
tortoise oil to a Tombez merchant; and adding to the silver a
contribution from all hands, gave it to our silent passenger, who knew
not what the mariners had done.

The last seen of lone Hunilla she was passing into Payta town, riding
upon a small gray ass; and before her on the ass's shoulders, she eyed
the jointed workings of the beast's armorial cross.

       *       *       *       *       *

 This is about Norfolk Isle, northeast of Charles's Island. This has a story too. A sad, sad, story of pathos, about turtles in love. Okay, not about turtles in love. But yes about pathos. Shmoop would rather have turtles in love. But Melville did not ask Shmoop. Anyway. So it's the narrator/Melville's first visit to the Galapagos, when a shipmate sees something fluttering in the distance. They figure out it's a handkerchief, and sail off towards it. Where they find a woman, stranded. Pathos! And some turtles, as there always are on the Galapagos. The woman is named Hunilla; three years ago she'd sailed with her new husband Felipe and brother Truxill on a French whaler. The whaler put them on the island where they were to collect turtles for the oil; the captain was supposed to come back and get them. But he didn't. And they're screwed. Even worse, Felipe and Truxill go on a fishing trip and are killed by a bad tide. Hunilla is not having the best of luck. She is very sad. The sailors hearing her stories are sad. Ah, the pathos. Felipe's body came ashore and she buried him. Hunilla doesn't know the ship isn't coming back, so she waits and waits. Scenes of great sadness etc. etc. Hunilla kept a marker of days for a while, and then stopped. The implication is that she was pregnant and had a baby who was stillborn. This is not said directly, though. There's also some suggestion that a ship did come ashore and that a sailor or sailors raped Hunilla, though she won't talk about it. Hunilla says it was lucky fate that led her to see the narrator's ship which has finally come to rescue her, because usually she's on the opposite side of the island. They take her back to her hut, and she brings her oil and some turtles aboard the ship. She's got a lot of dogs too, but has to leave a bunch of them. So when they push off the island, the dogs left behind run along after her howling. They sell her oil to give her money, and she leaves the ship at Payta. That's the end of a sad story. On to one with more murder and action.

