The Birth of People's Republic of Antartica, стр. 58

a one-hundred-mile-long and ten-mile-wide funnel of water, bordered by out islands like droppings, especially west of West Falkland. The archipelago lies about four hundred miles off Tierra del Fuego, on a part of the ocean floor that is called the Falkland Plateau. What I knew about the Falklands that day was concise; wind, rain, birds, seals, and a dampness that frosted one’s beard. I approached cautiously, intending to swing around East Falkland in three days, my original plan was to circle east through the Falkland Sound and come around to approach Port Stanley, at the eastern most tip of East Falkland, from the northwest.

We crossed what was called the Eagle Passage between George Island and East Falkland without incident but with difficulty, the seas sloppy, the fogbanks and steady wind dangerous in lumbering Black Crane. The out islands showed concentrations of fires, and wreckage that was likely other derelict vessels piled up on rocks. East Falkland showed encampments inland. Lazarus made sense when he said there seemed more fires than there were supposed to be people in the Falklands. And where were the flocks, I asked, the islands were supposed to be covered with sheep ranches. I bypassed the first villages we sighted on East Falkland as we moved into the Sound, more for uncertainty of tides than for worry. By midnight, we felt more of those very deep rumblings from the southwest. Wild Drumrul used a Turkish word that I was to learn meant earthquake.

When Wild Drumrul spotted several long boats filled with men and rowers making for us from East Falkland, we must have been twenty-five miles inside the Sound. My crew reacted well, no alarm, steady-handed. We were pressed maneuvering the mid-Sound islets and rocks, because the water was choppy, the tide dragging us westward. I struggled to keep our bow up to the threat. The longboats passed us as if we were not there. I counted four craft, heavily laden so low in the water, pulling in haste toward West Falkland to the northwest. I liked their look. What a peculiar explanation for a choice that would mean everything to my fate. It is so; I liked the look of purpose about them: determined, sure, hard-set, well done. I brought Black Crane about and fell into their wake. We could not keep up with the wind against us, so I struck sail, put us under oar. Soon after, we heard explosions to the far east; Otter Ransom agreed with Orlando the Black that it was an artillery barrage. We pulled across the Sound’s centrifugal tidal rip, returned to sail.

By first light, we had lost the longboats, but we had found an inviting West Falkland inlet, with what seemed a ramshackle village at its northern end, sprawled between cliffs and rolling moors. We passed outlying jetties, saw holes that resembled impact craters. It was early morning as we came about to clear the sandbars, took in sail, pulled into the inlet. We passed two old men working on sails on the stony beach. At the inmost wharf, there was a sandbag redoubt, and a flagpole bearing a blue and white pennant showing a yellow sunface. None of us recognized that it was the flag of the Argentine Republic. What we saw seemed quiet, not dangerous—deep poverty. My explanation for the fact that we were ignored is that several other boats came into the inlet after us, and more were already tied up. There was a festive mood. When church bells began tolling from the town, I made my decision to land. We tied up, and Lazarus, Otter Ransom, and I set off for the village. We fell into a rush of men and boys from shacks on the shore, and we were swept along to the village square—muddy holes, plenty of dogs, several rusted vehicles, a church, and a row of stone huts. The bells stopped as a tattered platoon of soldiers in green woolen uniforms emerged from the church doors. I quickly made sense of the scene. There was to be an execution by firing squad. Though we were strangers, there were many there not of the village, and we were overlooked in the excitement. We slid toward the church side of the square, near several ancient-looking nuns—whom I thought out of place, given that the church was Protestant, by the cornerstone, the First Presbyterian Church of West Falkland. There was also a scaffolding there. I tell this about that scaffolding: There were wagon wheels raised above its platform; there were decaying corpses tied on top of those wheels. The crowd became lively, expectant, when the soldiers led out a dozen prisoners chained together in threes.

Lazarus translated the commanding officer’s speech to the crowd, whom he called “the vigilant home guard of the liberated village of 2 de Diciembre.” His talk included sufficient references to invasion, sedition, sabotage, and counterrevolution for us to conclude that the Falkland archipelago—two hundred treeless, wind-scourged islands of shepherds and fishermen—was buried in a civil war. Lazarus said the soldiers were Argentines, though the officer also used the word Patagonians, meaning they were from that region of Argentina. They belonged to what was called “El Ejercito de la Tierra del Fuego,” which means, literally, the army of the land afire, or, figuratively, The Army of the End of the Earth.

“I’ve seen this before, read about it all my life,” said Lazarus. Its too familiar. It’s routine. This town is the front, or was recently. A good guess is that it fell to these troops last December, in a late spring campaign. These campesinos are the militia. Our commandant is regular army, a drunkard, to hear him. He’s probably assigned to organize the villagers. What war this is, and who the enemy is, well, I can make a good guess.”

Lazarus was interrupted as the executions did proceed with a routine. The first trio, a Negro and two gray little men, died badly. The subaltern’s pistol misfired at the coup de grace. The