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She amused herself with copying a huge tuft of the tussock-grass which grew near, and then made me stand and sit, now in one position, now in another, while she took my portrait. Then telling me to play about near her, and to take care not to tumble off the rock, she sat down to meditate.
A careful search of the beach and the rocks within our reach failed to reveal the missing article. This was a serious loss, even if the voyage to the head of the sound could be made in good weather. At dusk the ice in the cove was rearing and crashing on the beach. It had forced up a ridge of stones close to where the 'James Caird' lay at the edge of the tussock-grass.
In the distance, down the valley below us, we could see tussock-grass close to the shore, and if we could get down it might be possible to dig out a hole in one of the lower snow-banks, line it with dry grass, and make ourselves fairly comfortable for the night. Back we went, and after a detour we reached the top of another ridge in the fading light.
There's a fort within three miles of us." He had hardly finished speaking, when one of the men at the side of the lugger suddenly looked towards the beach, as though he had caught sight of something. "Something's up," he said sharply. The beach and the shore beyond were both very flat in that part; nothing but marshy land, overgrown with tussock-grass, and a few sand-dunes, covered with bents.
It has a tuft of green leaves, which are rather palmy-looking at a distance, and which springs from the top of a pithy, worthless stem, varying from one to twenty or thirty feet in height. Sometimes the stem is branched at the top, and each branch ends in a tuft. The flax and the cabbage-tree and the tussock-grass are the great botanical features of the country.
The rise of the tide was about five feet, and at spring tide the water must have reached almost to the edge of the tussock-grass. The completion of this job removed our immediate anxieties, and we were free to examine our surroundings and plan the next move. The day was bright and clear. King Haakon Bay is an eight-mile sound penetrating the coast of South Georgia in an easterly direction.
Then we waited for Byron's "great ninth wave," and when it lifted the 'James Caird' in we held her and, by dint of great exertion, worked her round broadside to the sea. Inch by inch we dragged her up until we reached the fringe of the tussock-grass and knew that the boat was above high-water mark.
A small valley, or stretch of level ground enclosed by surrounding ridges, lay before him; its grey sandy surface interspersed by a few patches of darker colour, which the moon, shining brightly from a blue sky, disclosed to be tufts of tussock-grass and mimosa bushes.
We pushed on some way inland, and though the herbage was high, it was not thick except in places where there were large tufts of tall tussock-grass, like waving plumes growing out of the earth, while the ground itself was tolerably smooth. We went on till we reached a rocky knoll rising like an island amidst the sea of waving grass that surrounded it.
Ere long they came to the lofty dwelling of the son of Peleus for which the Myrmidons had cut pine and which they had built for their king; when they had built it they thatched it with coarse tussock-grass which they had mown out on the plain, and all round it they made a large courtyard, which was fenced with stakes set close together.
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