St. Paul
(Based on true events)
It’s not easy to convince a beautiful woman to live on a sunken volcanic crater midway between Australia and Cape Town. But if, in the early nineteenth century, you are the wife of a rogue French nobleman whose freebooting and smuggling escapades have caught the attention of the law in Mauritius, you go along with the idea.
Then even the gorgeous spouse of an aristocrat had minimal rights in domestic matters.
Trying hard to maintain her stately composure where she lightly leans on the bulwark of the aft ‘castle, she looks on as deckhands load the last of her precious belongings, heirlooms no less, into the forward hold of her husband’s sixty-ton schooner. She dabs with a lace-lined handkerchief at one of the beads of sweat crawling from her hairline down the side of her face. A lady should never perspire this much. European fashion is wholly impractical at these latitudes, she reminded herself again.
Her usual full lips purse to thin lines devoid of circulation. She detests the humidity in Mauritius, and the fourteen Malagasy natives her smuggler better-half had employed for the voyage. He probably pressed them into signing the ship’s articles. Why would anyone voluntarily opt to live in a crater? Or work for him.
Her mother had warned her against the courtship of the nobleman saying the man’s eyes were shifty and his mouth cruel. Did you see his small feet, my dear? Something is off. Besides, being the wife of a mariner is hard. He will have women in every port. If he makes it past the scurvy and the privateers he will age with the typical seafarer’s ungainly legs.
But mothers and daughters often see men differently and she chose adventure… and the danger of far-off lands over a kind face.
At least the ship’s company also includes two white men and an Indian boy. Still, being the only female amongst eighteen men on a small vessel about to embark on a one-way journey makes her vision swim and she feels a tad nauseous. One of the white men, a robust type with strong legs and blond curls, had already rudely appraised her like she was horseflesh; there was no attempt at hiding his thoughts. She steadies her hips against the railing. They have not even cast off and she already feels the onset of seasickness. Merde.
The voyage lasts three weeks by the end of which she would have lived anywhere as long as it was on dry ground. The journey involved big seas, dreary food and the constant smell of stale confines and sweaty natives.
On a breezy blue-sky day, St. Paul’s singular knoll appears. It gradually swells to eight hundred feet out of the Indian ocean. The triangular island is two and a half miles long by one and a half miles wide. A century before, Its volcanic cone had descended into the depths, leaving a perfect circular rim on the eastern side of the landmass. The seas had long ago breached the rim resulting in a volcanic sea lake accessible by small boat on the high tide through a narrow gap of only three hundred feet.
There is a single place to moor on the lake where the Frenchman sends the jolly-boat. Later he orders the Malagasies to build a group of houses with volcanic rock in the same area. The men raise a herd of goats, plant vegetables, trap the peculiar flightless ducks and raid the rockhopper penguin colony for eggs. Eventually, his wife finds some respite in the island’s cool climate and attempts to make her home comfortable with her mother’s furniture and linens. She spends her days mostly indoors, reading and writing letters to her mother which would never reach their destination.
Sometimes she goes for long solitary walks on the lush slopes of the crater, marvelling at the plants and birds. All those exotic calls. When he has had much wine, her husband scoffs at her bouts of nostalgia. Woman, your melancholy is too much, even for a sympathetic man such as me. Pull yourself together and find something useful to do. All that reading and writing make it only worse! At least we live, free, on our own island.
The curly-haired sailor seems more sympathetic.
The island teams with fur seals and the self-proclaimed French ruler wastes no time in sending out hunting parties. He makes sure the blond seafarer accompanies every hunt. They will later trade the thousands of seal skins they amass in Cape Town and Mauritius.
One day on the high tide, a passing vessel stands off in the bay and sends a boat to the mooring on the lake. The Frenchman orders his wife to prepare a feast of roast duck and brandy for the ship’s master, but the supper conversation is strained. After months at sea, the captain cannot keep his eyes off the attractive hostess. At the end of the visit, the visitor is no wiser to the name of his host or his pretty wife, and when the captain requests fresh provisions for his vessel the Frenchman brusquely refuses.
Ultimately, the isolation of St. Paul takes its toll on the scrawny Malagasies. To avert a mutiny, the Frenchman increases their ration of rum and tobacco. Some months later, he sends his schooner with the two white sailors and eight natives to Table Bay to trade pelts. However, upon its return after two months, the crew finds the island deserted and the houses raised to the ground. And freshly dug graves.
There is no sign of the freebooter and his brave and beautiful wife.
Picture courtesy of B. Navez – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7645698