or, Enchanted Isles
by Herman Melville
SKETCH THIRD.
ROCK RODONDO.
“For they this tight the Rock of vile Reproach, A dangerous and dreadful place, To which nor fish nor fowl did once approach, But yelling meaws with sea-gulls hoars and bace And cormoyrants with birds of ravenous race, Which still sit waiting on that dreadful clift.”
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“With that the rolling sea resounding soft In his big base them fitly answered, And on the Rock, the waves breaking aloft, A solemn ineane unto them measured.”
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“Then he the boteman bad row easily, And let him heare some part of that rare melody.”
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“Suddeinly an innumerable flight Of harmefull fowles about them fluttering cride, And with their wicked wings them oft did smight And sore annoyed, groping in that griesly night.”
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“Even all the nation of unfortunate And fatal birds about them flocked were.”
To go up into a high stone tower is not only a very fine thing initself, but the very best mode of gaining a comprehensive view of theregion round about. It is all the better if this tower stand solitaryand alone, like that mysterious Newport one, or else be sole survivorof some perished castle.
Now, with reference to the Enchanted Isles, we are fortunately suppliedwith just such a noble point of observation in a remarkable rock, fromits peculiar figure called of old by the Spaniards, Rock Rodondo, orRound Rock. Some two hundred and fifty feet high, rising straight fromthe sea ten miles from land, with the whole mountainous group to thesouth and east. Rock Rodondo occupies, on a large scale, very much theposition which the famous Campanile or detached Bell Tower of St. Markdoes with respect to the tangled group of hoary edifices around it.
Ere ascending, however, to gaze abroad upon the Encantadas, thissea-tower itself claims attention. It is visible at the distance ofthirty miles; and, fully participating in that enchantment whichpervades the group, when first seen afar invariably is mistaken for asail. Four leagues away, of a golden, hazy noon, it seems some SpanishAdmiral’s ship, stacked up with glittering canvas. Sail ho! Sail ho!Sail ho! from all three masts. But coming nigh, the enchanted frigateis transformed apace into a craggy keep.
My first visit to the spot was made in the gray of the morning. With aview of fishing, we had lowered three boats and pulling some two milesfrom our vessel, found ourselves just before dawn of day close under themoon-shadow of Rodondo. Its aspect was heightened, and yet softened, bythe strange double twilight of the hour. The great full moon burnt inthe low west like a half-spent beacon, casting a soft mellow tinge uponthe sea like that cast by a waning fire of embers upon a midnighthearth; while along the entire east the invisible sun sent pallidintimations of his coming. The wind was light; the waves languid; thestars twinkled with a faint effulgence; all nature seemed supine withthe long night watch, and half-suspended in jaded expectation of thesun. This was the critical hour to catch Rodondo in his perfect mood.The twilight was just enough to reveal every striking point, withouttearing away the dim investiture of wonder.
From a broken stair-like base, washed, as the steps of a water-palace,by the waves, the tower rose in entablatures of strata to a shavensummit. These uniform layers, which compose the mass, form its mostpeculiar feature. For at their lines of junction they project flatlyinto encircling shelves, from top to bottom, rising one above another ingraduated series. And as the eaves of any old barn or abbey are alivewith swallows, so were all these rocky ledges with unnumbered sea-fowl.Eaves upon eaves, and nests upon nests. Here and there were longbirdlime streaks of a ghostly white staining the tower from sea to air,readily accounting for its sail-like look afar. All would have beenbewitchingly quiescent, were it not for the demoniac din created by thebirds. Not only were the eaves rustling with them, but they flew denselyoverhead, spreading themselves into a winged and continually shiftingcanopy. The tower is the resort of aquatic birds for hundreds of leaguesaround. To the north, to the east, to the west, stretches nothing buteternal ocean; so that the man-of-war hawk coming from the coasts ofNorth America, Polynesia, or Peru, makes his first land at Rodondo. Andyet though Rodondo be terra-firma, no land-bird ever lighted on it.Fancy a red-robin or a canary there! What a falling into the hands ofthe Philistines, when the poor warbler should be surrounded by suchlocust-flights of strong bandit birds, with long bills cruel as daggers.
I know not where one can better study the Natural History of strangesea-fowl than at Rodondo. It is the aviary of Ocean. Birds light herewhich never touched mast or tree; hermit-birds, which ever fly alone;cloud-birds, familiar with unpierced zones of air.
Let us first glance low down to the lowermost shelf of all, which is thewidest, too, and but a little space from high-water mark. Whatoutlandish beings are these? Erect as men, but hardly as symmetrical,they stand all round the rock like sculptured caryatides, supporting thenext range of eaves above. Their bodies are grotesquely misshapen; theirbills short; their feet seemingly legless; while the members at theirsides are neither fin, wing, nor arm. And truly neither fish, flesh, norfowl is the penguin; as an edible, pertaining neither to Carnival norLent; without exception the most ambiguous and least lovely creature yetdiscovered by man. Though dabbling in all three elements, and indeedpossessing some rudimental claims to all, the penguin is at home innone. On land it stumps; afloat it sculls; in the air it flops. As ifashamed of her failure, Nature keeps this ungainly child hidden away atthe ends of the earth, in the Straits of Magellan, and on the abasedsea-story of Rodondo.
But look, what are yon wobegone regiments drawn up on the next shelfabove? what rank and file of large strange fowl? what sea Friars ofOrders Gray? Pelicans. Their elongated bills, and heavy leathern pouchessuspended thereto, give them the most lugubrious expression. A pensiverace, they stand for hours together without motion. Their dull, ashyplumage imparts an aspect as if they had been powdered over withcinders. A penitential bird, indeed, fitly haunting the shores of theclinkered Encantadas, whereon tormented Job himself might have well satdown and scraped himself with potsherds.
Higher up now we mark the gony, or gray albatross, anomalously socalled, an unsightly unpoetic bird, unlike its storied kinsman, which isthe snow-white ghost of the haunted Capes of Hope and Horn.
As we still ascend from shelf to shelf, we find the tenants of the towerserially disposed in order of their magnitude:–gannets, black andspeckled haglets, jays, sea-hens, sperm-whale-birds, gulls of allvarieties:–thrones, princedoms, powers, dominating one above another insenatorial array; while, sprinkled over all, like an ever-repeated flyin a great piece of broidery, the stormy petrel or Mother Cary’s chickensounds his continual challenge and alarm. That this mysterioushummingbird of ocean–which, had it but brilliancy of hue, might, fromits evanescent liveliness, be almost called its butterfly, yet whosechirrup under the stern is ominous to mariners as to the peasant thedeath-tick sounding from behind the chimney jamb–should have itsspecial haunt at the Encantadas, contributes, in the seaman’s mind, nota little to their dreary spell.
As day advances the dissonant din augments. With ear-splitting cries thewild birds celebrate their matins. Each moment, flights push from thetower, and join the aerial choir hovering overhead, while their placesbelow are supplied by darting myriads. But down through all this discordof commotion, I hear clear, silver, bugle-like notes unbrokenly falling,like oblique lines of swift-slanting rain in a cascading shower. I gazefar up, and behold a snow-white angelic thing, with one long, lance-likefeather thrust out behind. It is the bright, inspiriting chanticleer ofocean, the beauteous bird, from its bestirring whistle of musicalinvocation, fitly styled the “Boatswain’s Mate.”
The winged, life-clouding Rodondo had its full counterpart in the finnyhosts which peopled the waters at its base. Below the water-line, therock seemed one honey-comb of grottoes, affording labyrinthinelurking-places for swarms of fairy fish. All were strange; manyexceedingly beautiful; and would have well graced the costliest glassglobes in which gold-fish are kept for a show. Nothing was more strikingthan the complete novelty of many individuals of this multitude. Herehues were seen as yet unpainted, and figures which are unengraved.
To show the multitude, avidity, and nameless fearlessness and tamenessof these fish, let me say, that often, marking through clear spaces ofwater–temporarily made so by the concentric dartings of the fish abovethe surface–certain larger and less unwary wights, which swam slow anddeep; our anglers would cautiously essay to drop their lines down tothese last. But in vain; there was no passing the uppermost zone. Nosooner did the hook touch the sea, than a hundred infatuates contendedfor the honor of capture. Poor fish of Rodondo! in your victimizedconfidence, you are of the number of those who inconsiderately trust,while they do not understand, human nature.
But the dawn is now fairly day. Band after band, the sea-fowl sail awayto forage the deep for their food. The tower is left solitary save thefish-caves at its base. Its birdlime gleams in the golden rays like thewhitewash of a tall light-house, or the lofty sails of a cruiser. Thismoment, doubtless, while we know it to be a dead desert rock othervoyagers are taking oaths it is a glad populous ship.
But ropes now, and let us ascend. Yet soft, this is not so easy.
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