Nothing daunted, the plucky little fellow, as the smallest and lightest man amongst us, was the first to ascend the rope; and I confess the time we were waiting for the welcome signal of his safe arrival was one of awful suspense, for it was a mere chance if the rope held out, or if he could fight against the wind and driving rain.
At last, to our great joy, above the roar of the elements we heard his welcome ‘all right!’ I next ascended, and, divested of all but an old blue shirt and trousers, I grasped the rope and swung on to the projecting cliff, and commenced mounting, hand over hand. It was nervous work, swinging thus in mid air, between life and death, as a slip would have sent me into the yawning gulf below. I was soon high enough to rest my feet on the side of the rock, and could hear my friend urging me on in a voice that seemed to come from the clouds. I felt desperately thankful when I arrived at the top, in spite of my hands and feet being lacerated and bleeding, and my body bruised all over, to say nothing of the loss of the greater part of my unwhisperables.
Our landing on Round Island was considerably less hair- raising than Pike’s experience had been. No sooner had the anchor got a grip on the ocean bed than Tony and the diver slid overboard like otters, carrying two ropes, and soon these were made fast from the Dorade to the shore. As a spider lets forth a thread of silk, waits for it to catch, and then uses it as a guide-line, so these two ropes were to be our guide-lines along which we were to pull and steer the dinghy to the landing site. So we loaded our baskets of food and equipment into the dinghy, piled in ourselves, and were pulled shorewards.
Now we were closer, with the glare of the sun hidden behind the bulk of the island, we could see for the first time what a curious geological formation it was. The whole island was composed of tuff, and this soft stuff had been smoothed and sculpted by the wind and rain into pleats and scallops, so that the whole island was like a gigantic stone crinoline dropped on the surface of the sea, with here and there, standing up like jagged brocade, turrets, arches, and flying buttresses carved by the elements. I was sorry to see that the only part of the island that appeared to be remotely flat was the rocky area that formed the landing stage. The rest rose precipitously in what appeared to be an unclimbable rock face.
There was no time to worry about what awaited us on the island, for the tricky moment of disembarkation had arrived. It bore no resemblance to the difficulties that Pike had encountered at this very same spot, but even though it was the calmest anyone could remember, the boat was still lifted and lowered some three feet by the swell, and the bows of the dinghy scrunched and splintered when they touched the rock. The landing was no more difficult than stepping off the back of a rocking-horse on to a nursery table, but the way even that apparently gentle swell could grind the dinghy against the rocks, made you fully aware of the bone-crushing results if you were to miss your footing and place a leg between the boat and the shore. However, both we and the gear were landed without mishap. Picking up our various baskets and bags, we followed Wahab and Tony up the slope between the strangely sculptured pinnacles of rock.
‘Will you get these rocks?’ panted Dave. Aren’t they the damnedest thing you’ve ever seen? A sort of Round Island Grand Canyon.’
A White-tailed tropic bird hung in the sky above us like an ivory Maltese Cross, screaming peevishly, and Dave paused to wipe the sweat from his eyes and reply to it with what appeared to be a blast of invective in its own tongue. Startled, the bird slid away on the wind and disappeared.
Aren’t they the most beautiful God-damned birds you’ve ever seen?’ enquired Dave.
I made no reply. Weighted down with a ’fridge-full of iced drinks and a selection of cameras and binoculars, I had no breath for imitations or speech, and I wondered how Dave had. The surface of the rock appeared smooth, but in places it was covered with a thin crust, ready to peel away, like the skin off an over-enthusiastic sunbather’s back, and in other parts with a fine smattering of granules. Both these surfaces, if trodden on unwarily, made one’s feet slide, which either meant that one lost a yard of ground or that one slid ungracefully, and with ever increasing momentum, into the sea below. Although it was only seven o’clock, the air was warm and moist and sticky with salt, and the sweat poured down us in torrents. The equipment became heavier with each step and the slope appeared to become more vertical as we climbed. Wahab paused above us and looked back, grinning and wiping the sweat from his bronze face.
‘It is not far now,’ he called. ‘There is the picnic tree.’
I looked to where he was pointing, and there, high above us (as unattainable as the tip of Everest), I saw the curious fan-like leaves of the pandanus, beckoning us like green hands. It seemed an age before we reached the tree, which stood on a series of thick, leg-like roots. We paused thankfully in the small pools of shade cast by its leaves, stacked the food in the shade and sorted out the equipment we needed for our hunt. As we did this, there suddenly emerged from every nook and cranny around us, as if summoned by the flute of some invisible Pied Piper, a host of large, fat, shiny skinks with bright, intelligent eyes.
‘Look!’ croaked John, his spectacles misting over with emotion. ‘Just look at them! Telfarii.’
‘Yes, yes,’ said Wahab, beaming at John’s obvious delight. ‘They are very tame. They always join the picnic under the tree. Later, we will feed them.’
‘Did you ever see anything so God-damned cute?’ demanded Dave. ‘Just look at those sons-of-bitches. Tame as a chorus of rabbits.’
The skinks were handsome lizards with heavy, square-looking bodies, short legs, and long tails. They held their heads high as they moved with graceful, slithering motions towards us and proceeded to climb all over our piles of equipment. They were coloured a sober but pleasing shade of grey or brown, but when the sunlight hit them at a certain angle, their smooth scales, like mosaic-work, suddenly bloomed into purple, green, peacock- blue and gold, rainbowed like a film of oil on a roadside puddle. This skink, Telfair’s skink or telfarii, was one of the species we had come so far to collect, and far from appearing elusive, here was a welcoming committee going through our baggage with all the thoroughness of a band of elegant Customs officers.
Since these specimens seemed so eager to be caught, it seemed to us more sensible to concentrate on the two other species we had come for. One was Gunther’s gecko, of which it had been estimated that only five hundred specimens remained on the island, and the other a small species of skink which, Tony and Wahab informed us encouragingly, only inhabited the summit of Round Island. Tony suggested that it would be a good idea to search for the Gunther’s gecko first, since they inhabited scattered palm trees on the western slopes of the island, which would not, as yet, have received the full force of the sun.
Before we set out, Wahab, with a great flourish, produced a bag of straw hats he had chosen for everyone. The majority were broad- brimmed and these he reserved for us, as guests. In consequence, the only one he could find for himself was a cloche hat belonging to his wife, in elegant magenta and white straw, with a pink ribbon to tie under the chin. This, he donned with perfect seriousness, and was somewhat surprised at our laughter.
‘But the sun is very hot,’ he explained, ‘and one needs a hat.’ And very beautiful you look, Wahab,’ said Ann. ‘Don’t take any notice of them. They’re only jealous because they don’t look so handsome.’
Thus placated, Wahab gave us his searchlight grin and insisted on wearing his ridiculous headgear for the rest of the day.
We had landed some three-quarters of the way down the eastern side of the island, and we now made our way along the slopes towards the northern tip, moving among the scattered Round Island palms and the thickets of pandanus which grew in patches on the barren hillside. As well as being moulded into smooth longitudinal folds and ridges, the soft tuff had been gouged out in places by winter rains and the last cyclone (delicately, and inappropriately, called ‘Gervaise’) into long, deep gashes in the hillside, running from the steep upper slopes down to the sea, down which were carried avalanches of what top-soil remained and rocks of considerable size. Some of these ravines were, in places, ten to fifteen feet in depth, and forty to fifty feet across. I thought bitterly, as I panted my way moistly across the scorching rocks, that this moonscape had been created by the interference of man.