1874-1875 2026
This is an AI modernization of The Mysterious Island into contemporary English. The original is available from Wikisource (the Hetzel 1875 text). Also available as an epub.
Jules Verne (1828–1905) published The Mysterious Island in three parts in 1874 and 1875, first in instalments in the family magazine run by his publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel and then as a book. It opens in March 1865, in the last weeks of the American Civil War. Five Northerners trapped in besieged Richmond, Virginia, two of them prisoners of war, steal a Confederate balloon during a hurricane and escape in it, along with a dog. The storm carries them for days and drops them on an unknown island in the South Pacific, more than a thousand miles from any other land, with almost nothing in their pockets.
The leader of the five is Cyrus Smith, an engineer, and the book is really about what an engineer knows. Starting from one match, then from none, the castaways make fire, bricks, pottery, iron, steel, glass, soap, candles, explosives and in the end a telegraph. Verne gives every step. The long chapters of chemistry and metalwork are the heart of the book's argument, which is that knowledge is the one thing a shipwreck cannot take from you, and they are kept here in full.
From the start, though, things happen on the island that nobody can explain. The answer, when it comes, ties this book to two earlier ones. Captain Grant's Children (1867–68) left a criminal marooned on a nearby island, and Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1870) ended with Captain Nemo's submarine vanishing into a whirlpool. Verne could not make the dates of the three books agree, and his publisher printed notes admitting as much. Those notes are left out here.
In the earlier book Nemo hides where he comes from. Verne had wanted him to be a Polish nobleman at war with Russia, and Hetzel talked him out of it. Here Verne tells the story at last: Nemo was an Indian prince who fought the British in the rising of 1857 and lost his whole family to it. W. H. G. Kingston's English translation of 1875, the one most English readers have known, cut and softened that history. This edition is translated complete from Verne's French and gives it in full.
Some things in this edition differ from the original. The heroes are American, so Verne measured in feet, miles and degrees Fahrenheit and added metric conversions for French readers. The American units are kept and the conversions dropped. Nab, Smith's servant, is a freed slave who chose to stay with him. Verne's narrator often calls him by a racial term rather than his name, and this edition uses his name. Two asides that mock his race have been cut, and so has a comparison between an ape and named human peoples. What Nab says and does is unchanged.
Part One: Shipwrecked in the Air
Part Two: The Marooned Man
Part Three: The Secret of the Island
The hurricane of 1865 — Cries in the air — A balloon carried off by a waterspout — The torn envelope — Nothing but sea in sight — Five passengers — What happens in the basket — A coast on the horizon — How the drama ends
"Are we going up again?"
"No! Just the opposite! We're going down!"
"Worse than that, Mr. Cyrus! We're falling!"
"For God's sake, throw out ballast!"
"That was the last sack!"
"Is the balloon rising?"
"No!"
"I can hear something like waves splashing!"
"The sea's right under the basket!"
"It can't be five hundred feet below us!"
Then a powerful voice tore through the air, and these words rang out:
"Throw out everything that has any weight! Everything! And God help us!"
Those were the words that burst out in the sky above the vast watery desert of the Pacific at about four o'clock in the afternoon on March 23, 1865.
No doubt nobody has forgotten the terrible northeasterly gale that broke loose at the height of that year's spring equinox, when the barometer fell to seven hundred and ten millimeters. It was a hurricane, without a single lull, and it lasted from March 18 to March 26. The damage it did was immense, in America, in Europe, and in Asia, across a band eighteen hundred miles wide that ran slantwise to the equator from the thirty-fifth parallel north to the fortieth parallel south. Cities flattened, forests torn up by the roots, shores laid waste by mountains of water that came rushing in like tidal bores, ships flung up on the coast — the shipping registers of the Bureau Veritas counted them by the hundreds — whole districts leveled by waterspouts that ground up everything in their path, several thousand people crushed on land or swallowed at sea: that was the evidence of its fury that this tremendous hurricane left behind it. In the scale of its disasters it outdid even the two that had devastated Havana and Guadeloupe so horribly, the one on October 25, 1810, the other on July 26, 1825.
Now, at the very moment when so many catastrophes were taking place on land and sea, a drama no less gripping was being played out in the churning air.
A balloon, carried like a ball on the top of a waterspout and caught in the whirling motion of that column of air, was racing through space at ninety miles an hour, spinning round and round as though some aerial Maelström had seized it.
Beneath the neck at the bottom of the balloon swung a basket holding five passengers, barely visible in the thick vapors, mixed with spray, that trailed down to the surface of the ocean.
Where had this balloon come from, this plaything of the frightful storm? From what point on the globe had it set out? It obviously could not have taken off during the hurricane. But the hurricane had been raging for five days already, and its first signs had shown themselves on the 18th. So one would have been justified in thinking that the balloon had come from very far away, since it could not have covered less than two thousand miles in every twenty-four hours.
In any case, the passengers could have had no way of estimating how far they had come since setting out, because they had nothing at all to take their bearings by. In fact, a curious thing must have happened: carried along in the midst of the storm's violence, they did not feel it. They were moving, they were spinning, without sensing anything of the rotation or of their headlong travel sideways through the air. Their eyes could not pierce the thick fog that heaped up beneath the basket. All around them was mist. The clouds were so dense that they could not have said whether it was day or night. No glint of light, no sound from inhabited lands, no roar of the ocean could have reached them in that dark immensity as long as they stayed in the upper heights. Only their rapid descent could have told them of the danger they were in above the waves.
Meanwhile the balloon, lightened of heavy things — ammunition, weapons, provisions — had risen again into the upper layers of the atmosphere, to a height of four thousand five hundred feet. Once they realized that the sea lay beneath the basket, the passengers decided that the dangers above were less fearsome than the dangers below. They had not hesitated to throw even their most useful possessions overboard, and they were trying not to lose another breath of the gas — the very soul of their machine — that held them up over the abyss.
The night passed in an anxiety that would have killed less determined spirits. Then day returned, and with the day the hurricane began to slacken. From the very start of that day, March 24, there were signs of calm. At dawn the clouds, thinner and more vaporous, had climbed back into the heights of the sky. Within a few hours the waterspout spread out at the top and broke apart. The wind dropped from a hurricane to what sailors call "a strong gale" — that is, the speed at which the layers of air were rushing along was cut in half. It was still what sailors call "a three-reef breeze," a wind that makes them shorten sail three times over, but the improvement in the turmoil of the elements was considerable all the same.
Toward eleven o'clock the lower air had noticeably cleared. The atmosphere had that damp clarity which you can see, and even feel, after the passage of great storms. The hurricane did not seem to have gone any farther west. It seemed to have killed itself. Perhaps, after the waterspout broke, it had drained away in sheets of electricity, as sometimes happens with the typhoons of the Indian Ocean.
But at about that same hour, anyone watching could have seen once more that the balloon was slowly sinking, in one continuous movement, into the lower layers of the air. It even seemed to be deflating little by little, its envelope stretching and sagging, changing from the shape of a sphere to the shape of an egg.
By noon the balloon was floating only two thousand feet above the sea. It held fifty thousand cubic feet of gas, and thanks to that great capacity it had clearly been able to stay aloft for a long time, whether by climbing to great altitudes or by traveling horizontally.
Now the passengers threw out the last things still weighing the basket down: the little food they had kept back, everything, down to the small odds and ends in their pockets. And one of them, hoisting himself up onto the ring where the cords of the net came together, tried to tie the neck of the balloon shut as tightly as he could.
It was plain that the passengers could no longer keep the balloon in the upper air. They were running out of gas!
So they were lost!
For it was neither a continent nor even an island that stretched out below them. The whole expanse offered not a single place to land, not one solid surface for their anchor to bite into.
It was the immense sea, its waves still smashing together with incomparable violence! It was the ocean with no limits in sight, even for them, high above it, their gaze sweeping a circle forty miles in radius! It was that liquid plain, beaten without mercy and lashed by the hurricane, which must have looked to them like a stampede of wild-maned waves with a vast net of white crests flung over them! Not a scrap of land in sight, not a ship!
So they had to stop the descent at any cost, to keep the balloon from being swallowed up by the waves. And that urgent task was clearly what the passengers in the basket were working at. But in spite of their efforts the balloon kept sinking, while at the same time it was driven along with tremendous speed in the direction of the wind — that is, from northeast to southwest.
A terrible situation for these unfortunate men! They had obviously lost all control of the balloon. Nothing they tried could work. The envelope was deflating more and more. The gas was escaping, and there was no possible way to hold it in. Their descent was visibly speeding up, and at one o'clock in the afternoon the basket was hanging no more than six hundred feet above the ocean.
The truth was that nothing could stop the gas from leaking, because it was pouring freely out through a tear in the envelope.
By lightening the basket of everything it held, the passengers had been able to keep themselves in the air a few hours longer. But the inevitable catastrophe could only be put off, and if no land appeared before nightfall, passengers, basket, and balloon would vanish for good beneath the waves.
The only maneuver left to try was tried at this point. The balloon's passengers were clearly people of great energy, people who knew how to look death in the face. Not a single complaint could be heard from their lips. They were resolved to fight to the last second and to do everything they could to delay their fall. The basket was nothing but a kind of wicker box, useless as a boat, and if it fell into the sea there would be no way at all to keep it afloat.
At two o'clock the balloon was barely four hundred feet above the waves.
At that moment a manly voice — the voice of a man whose heart fear could not reach — made itself heard. Other voices, no less determined, answered it.
"Has everything been thrown out?"
"No! There's still ten thousand francs in gold!"
A heavy bag dropped into the sea at once.
"Is the balloon rising?"
"A little, but it won't be long before it falls again!"
"What's left to throw out?"
"Nothing!"
"Yes there is! The basket!"
"Grab hold of the net! Overboard with the basket!"
That was in fact the one last way left to lighten the balloon. The ropes that tied the basket to the ring were cut, and the balloon, after its fall, shot back up two thousand feet.
The five passengers had hauled themselves up into the net above the ring and were clinging there in the mesh, staring down into the abyss.
Everyone knows how sensitive balloons are to any change of weight. Throw out the lightest object and the balloon moves up or down. Floating in the air, it behaves like a scale of mathematical precision. So it is easy to understand that when it is relieved of a relatively large weight, it moves a long way, and suddenly. That is what happened now.
But after hanging in balance for a moment up in the higher air, the balloon began to sink again. The gas was escaping through the tear, and there was no way to mend it.
The passengers had done everything they could do. No human means could save them now. They had nothing left to count on but the help of God.
At four o'clock the balloon was only five hundred feet above the surface of the water.
A loud bark rang out. A dog was traveling with the passengers, hanging on in the mesh of the net beside his master.
"Top's seen something!" cried one of the passengers.
And at once a strong voice rang out:
"Land! Land!"
Driven steadily southwest by the wind, the balloon had covered a considerable distance since dawn — hundreds of miles — and a fairly high piece of land had in fact just appeared in that direction.
But that land was still thirty miles away to leeward. It would take a good hour to reach it, and that only if they did not drift off course. An hour! Wouldn't the balloon lose all the gas it had left before then?
That was the terrible question! The passengers could clearly see that solid spot, which they had to reach at any cost. They did not know what it was, island or continent, since they barely knew what part of the world the hurricane had carried them to! But that land, whether inhabited or not, whether it would welcome them or not — they had to get there!
By four o'clock, though, it was plain that the balloon could not hold itself up any longer. It was skimming the surface of the sea. The crests of the enormous waves had already licked the bottom of the net several times, making it heavier still, and the balloon now lifted only halfway, like a bird with lead shot in its wing.
Half an hour later the land was only a mile off, but the balloon, exhausted, limp, stretched out of shape and crumpled into great folds, kept gas only in its upper part. The passengers clinging to the net were still too heavy for it, and soon, half plunged in the sea, they were being battered by the furious waves. Then the envelope bellied out like a pocket, and the wind, rushing into it, drove it along like a ship running before the wind. Perhaps it would reach the coast that way!
It was only two cable lengths from shore when terrible cries burst from four throats at once. The balloon, which had seemed as if it would never rise again, had just made one more unexpected leap after being struck by a tremendous wave. As though suddenly relieved of yet another part of its weight, it climbed to a height of fifteen hundred feet, and there it met a kind of eddy in the wind which, instead of carrying it straight to the coast, sent it along a course almost parallel to the shore. At last, two minutes later, it slanted back in toward the land and came down for good on the sand of the beach, out of reach of the waves.
Helping one another, the passengers managed to free themselves from the mesh of the net. Relieved of their weight, the balloon was caught up again by the wind, and like a wounded bird that finds one last moment of life, it vanished into the sky.
The basket had carried five passengers, plus a dog, and the balloon had thrown only four onto the shore.
The missing passenger had obviously been swept away by the wave that had just struck the net, and that was what had let the lightened balloon climb one last time and then, a few moments later, reach land.
The four castaways — for that is what we can call them now — had barely set foot on solid ground when all of them, thinking of the one who was gone, cried out:
"Maybe he's trying to swim ashore! Let's save him! Let's save him!"
An episode of the Civil War — The engineer Cyrus Smith — Gédéon Spilett — Nab — The sailor Pencroff — Young Harbert — An unexpected proposal — A meeting at ten o'clock at night — Departure in the storm
The men the hurricane had just thrown onto this coast were neither professional balloonists nor amateurs who liked to go adventuring in the air. They were prisoners of war, whose daring had driven them to escape under extraordinary circumstances. A hundred times they should have died! A hundred times their torn balloon should have flung them into the abyss! But heaven was saving them for a strange destiny. On March 24, after fleeing Richmond, which General Ulysses Grant's troops had under siege, they found themselves seven thousand miles from the capital of Virginia, the chief stronghold of the secessionists during the terrible Civil War. Their voyage through the air had lasted five days.
Here, then, are the curious circumstances in which the prisoners had escaped — an escape that was to end in the catastrophe we already know.
That same year, in February 1865, during one of the surprise attacks General Grant launched, without success, to take Richmond, several of his officers fell into enemy hands and were held in the city. One of the most distinguished of those captured belonged to the Federal general staff, and his name was Cyrus Smith.
Cyrus Smith, a native of Massachusetts, was an engineer and a scientist of the first rank, to whom the government of the Union had entrusted, during the war, the running of the railroads, whose strategic role was so enormous. He was a true Northerner: thin, bony, lanky, about forty-five years old, his close-cropped hair already going gray, and his beard too, of which he kept only a thick mustache. He had one of those fine heads that look as if they were made to be stamped on a coin or a medal — burning eyes, a serious mouth, the face of a scientist of the fighting kind. He was one of those engineers who chose to begin by handling the hammer and the pick, the way some generals choose to start out as common soldiers. So along with an ingenious mind he had supremely skillful hands. His muscles were remarkably firm and strong. Truly a man of action as much as a man of thought, he acted without effort, driven by a great overflow of vitality, with the kind of stubborn persistence that defies every stroke of bad luck. Very learned, very practical, and "très débrouillard," to borrow a phrase from French army slang — a man who could always find a way out of a fix — he had a superb temperament. He stayed master of himself whatever the circumstances, and he met to the highest degree the three conditions that together make up human energy: activity of mind and body, intensity of desire, and power of will. His motto could have been that of William of Orange in the seventeenth century: "I need no hope to undertake, nor success to persevere."
Cyrus Smith was also courage itself. He had been in every battle of the Civil War. He had started out under Ulysses Grant with the Illinois volunteers, and he had fought at Paducah, at Belmont, at Pittsburg Landing, at the siege of Corinth, at Port Gibson, at the Black River, at Chattanooga, in the Wilderness, on the Potomac — everywhere, and bravely, a soldier worthy of the general who once answered, "I never count my dead!" A hundred times Cyrus Smith should have been among those dead that the terrible Grant did not count. But in those battles, where he hardly spared himself, luck was always on his side, until the moment he was wounded and taken prisoner on the battlefield at Richmond.
On the same day as Cyrus Smith, another important figure fell into Southern hands. It was none other than the Honorable Gédéon Spilett, "reporter" for the New York Herald, who had been assigned to follow the ups and downs of the war with the armies of the North.
Gédéon Spilett belonged to that astonishing breed of English and American correspondents, men like Stanley, who will stop at nothing to get accurate news and send it to their papers as fast as it can possibly go. The newspapers of the Union, such as the New York Herald, are true powers in the land, and their envoys are representatives that have to be reckoned with. Gédéon Spilett stood in the front rank of those envoys.
He was a man of great merit — energetic, quick, ready for anything, full of ideas. He had traveled the whole world. He was a soldier and an artist, fiery in council, decisive in action, counting neither trouble nor fatigue nor danger when it came to finding out everything, for himself first and for his paper second. A true hero of curiosity, of news, of the never-before-told, of the unknown, of the impossible, he was one of those fearless observers who write under a hail of bullets, file their stories under cannon fire, and count every danger as a stroke of good luck.
He too had been in every battle, in the front line, a revolver in one hand and a notebook in the other, and grapeshot never made his pencil shake. He did not clog the wires with endless telegrams, like people who talk when they have nothing to say; but every one of his dispatches, short, sharp and clear, threw light on some important point. And he did not lack a sense of humor. It was he who, after the fight at the Black River, determined at any cost to keep his place at the telegraph office window so that he could report the result of the battle to his paper, wired the first chapters of the Bible for two solid hours. It cost the New York Herald two thousand dollars, but the New York Herald had the news first.
Gédéon Spilett was tall, forty at most. Reddish-blond side-whiskers framed his face. His eye was calm and sharp, quick to move from one thing to the next — the eye of a man used to taking in every detail of a landscape at a glance. Solidly built, he had been hardened in every climate, the way a bar of steel is tempered in cold water.
For ten years Gédéon Spilett had been the New York Herald's staff reporter, enriching its pages with his articles and his drawings, since he handled a pencil as well as a pen. When he was captured, he was in the middle of describing and sketching the battle. The last words found in his notebook were these: "A Southerner is aiming at me, and..." And the Southerner missed Gédéon Spilett, for, as was his unfailing habit, he came out of the affair without a scratch.
Cyrus Smith and Gédéon Spilett, who knew each other only by reputation, had both been taken to Richmond. The engineer's wound healed quickly, and it was while he was recovering that he met the reporter. The two men liked each other and came to value each other. Soon the life they shared had only one aim: to escape, to rejoin Grant's army, and to fight in its ranks again for the unity of the Union.
So the two Americans had made up their minds to seize any chance that came. But although they had been left free to move about the city, Richmond was so strictly guarded that escape had to be considered impossible.
Meanwhile Cyrus Smith had been joined by a servant who was devoted to him in life and in death. This fearless man was a Black man, born on the engineer's estate to a father and mother who were slaves. But Cyrus Smith, an abolitionist by reason and by heart, had freed him long ago. The slave who had become a free man had not wanted to leave his master. He loved him enough to die for him. He was thirty years old, strong, nimble, skillful, intelligent, gentle and calm, sometimes naive, always smiling, helpful and kind. His name was Nebuchadnezzar, but he answered only to the short, familiar name of Nab.
When Nab learned that his master had been taken prisoner, he left Massachusetts without a moment's hesitation and made his way to Richmond. By cunning and skill, after risking his life twenty times over, he managed to get inside the besieged city. There are no words for Cyrus Smith's pleasure at seeing his servant again, or for Nab's joy at finding his master.
But if Nab had managed to get into Richmond, getting out was another matter entirely, because the Federal prisoners were watched very closely. It would take an extraordinary opportunity to attempt an escape with any chance of success, and not only did that opportunity fail to come, it was very hard to see how to create one.
Meanwhile Grant was pressing on with his operations, hard. His victory at Petersburg had been bitterly contested and very dearly bought. His forces, joined to Butler's, were still getting nowhere in front of Richmond, and nothing suggested that the prisoners would be set free any time soon. The reporter, whose tedious captivity no longer gave him a single interesting detail to write down, could not stand it any longer. He had only one idea: to get out of Richmond, at any cost. Several times he even tried it, and was stopped by obstacles he could not get past.
Meanwhile the siege went on. And if the prisoners were in a hurry to escape and rejoin Grant's army, some of the besieged were in just as much of a hurry to get away and rejoin the secessionist army — among them a certain Jonathan Forster, a fanatical Southerner. For in fact, if the Federal prisoners could not leave the city, neither could the Confederates, because the Northern army had them surrounded. The governor of Richmond had been cut off from General Lee for a long time already, and it was of the greatest importance to let Lee know the city's situation, so as to hurry the relief army along. This Jonathan Forster then had the idea of rising into the air in a balloon, crossing over the besieging lines, and reaching the secessionist camp that way.
The governor authorized the attempt. A balloon was built and put at Jonathan Forster's disposal, and five of his companions were to go up with him. They were supplied with weapons, in case they had to defend themselves when they landed, and with food, in case their voyage through the air went on longer than planned.
The balloon's departure had been set for March 18. It was to take place at night, and with a moderate northwest wind the balloonists expected to reach Lee's headquarters within a few hours. But that northwest wind turned out to be no mere breeze. As early as the 18th, anyone could see it was turning into a hurricane. Soon the storm was so violent that Forster's departure had to be put off, because there was no way to risk the balloon and the men it would carry in the middle of the raging elements.
So the balloon, inflated in the great square of Richmond, stood there ready to leave at the first lull in the wind, and in the city people grew very impatient to see that the weather did not change.
March 18 and 19 went by without any change in the storm. In fact, they had great trouble protecting the balloon, which was tied to the ground and which the gusts kept knocking flat against it.
The night of the 19th to the 20th passed, but in the morning the hurricane was blowing even harder. Departure was impossible.
That day the engineer Cyrus Smith was approached in one of the streets of Richmond by a man he did not know. It was a sailor named Pencroff, somewhere between thirty-five and forty years old, powerfully built, deeply tanned, with bright, blinking eyes but a good, kindly face. This Pencroff was a Northerner who had sailed every sea on the globe, and when it came to adventures, everything extraordinary that can happen to a two-legged creature without feathers had already happened to him. It goes without saying that he had an enterprising nature, ready to dare anything, and that nothing could surprise him. At the start of that year Pencroff had come to Richmond on business with a boy of fifteen, Harbert Brown of New Jersey, the son of his captain — an orphan whom he loved as if he were his own child. Not having managed to leave the city before the first operations of the siege, he found himself trapped there, very much to his displeasure, and he too had only one idea left: to get away by any means possible. He knew the engineer Cyrus Smith by reputation. He knew how impatiently that determined man was chafing at the bit. So that day he did not hesitate to come up to him and say, without any more preamble:
"Mr. Smith, have you had enough of Richmond?"
The engineer stared at the man who had spoken to him like this, and who added in a low voice:
"Mr. Smith, do you want to escape?"
"When?" the engineer answered quickly — and it is safe to say the answer slipped out of him, since he had not yet taken a good look at the stranger speaking to him.
But after studying the sailor's honest face with a penetrating eye, he could not doubt that the man in front of him was a decent one.
"Who are you?" he asked curtly.
Pencroff told him.
"Good," answered Cyrus Smith. "And how do you propose we escape?"
"In that lazy good-for-nothing of a balloon they've left sitting there doing nothing. It looks to me like it's waiting just for us!"
The sailor did not need to finish his sentence. The engineer had understood at a word. He took Pencroff by the arm and led him off to his lodgings.
There the sailor laid out his plan, which was very simple, really. All they risked by carrying it out was their lives. The hurricane was at its most violent, true, but a skillful, daring engineer like Cyrus Smith would surely know how to handle a balloon. If he, Pencroff, had known how to work one, he wouldn't have hesitated to take off — with Harbert, of course. He had seen plenty worse, and he wasn't going to start worrying about a storm at this point!
Cyrus Smith had listened to the sailor without a word, but his eyes were shining. The opportunity was right there, and he was not a man to let it slip. The plan was merely very dangerous — and therefore it could be done. At night, despite the guards, they could get to the balloon, slip into the basket, and cut the ropes that held it down! Of course they might be killed, but on the other hand they might succeed. And without this storm... But without this storm the balloon would have left already, and the opportunity they had looked for so long would not be there now!
"I'm not alone!" Cyrus Smith said at last.
"How many people do you want to bring, then?" asked the sailor.
"Two: my friend Spilett and my servant Nab."
"So that makes three," answered Pencroff, "and with Harbert and me, five. The balloon was supposed to carry six..."
"That's enough. We'll go!" said Cyrus Smith.
That "we" committed the reporter, but the reporter was not a man to back out, and when the plan was explained to him he approved it without reservation. What surprised him was that such a simple idea had not already occurred to him. As for Nab, he followed his master wherever his master wanted to go.
"Tonight, then," said Pencroff. "The five of us will just wander over that way, like people out for a look!"
"Tonight, at ten o'clock," answered Cyrus Smith, "and heaven grant that this storm doesn't die down before we go!"
Pencroff took his leave of the engineer and went back to his lodgings, where young Harbert Brown had stayed behind. The brave boy knew the sailor's plan, and it was with some anxiety that he was waiting to hear how the approach to the engineer had gone. So, as you can see, it was five determined men who were about to throw themselves into the storm, in the teeth of a hurricane!
No! The hurricane did not die down, and neither Jonathan Forster nor his companions could dream of facing it in that flimsy basket! The day was terrible. The engineer feared only one thing: that the balloon, held to the ground and blown over flat by the wind, would be torn into a thousand pieces. For hours he prowled around the nearly deserted square, keeping an eye on it. Pencroff did the same on his side, hands in his pockets, yawning when the occasion called for it, like a man who has no idea how to kill time — but he too was dreading that the balloon would tear, or even break its ropes and fly off into the sky.
Evening came. The night was very dark. Thick mists drifted like clouds along the ground. Rain mixed with snow was falling. It was cold. A kind of fog hung heavy over Richmond. It seemed as if the violent storm had brought about a sort of truce between besiegers and besieged, as if the cannon had decided to fall silent before the tremendous blasts of the hurricane. The streets of the city were empty. In such horrible weather it had not even seemed necessary to guard the square where the balloon lay struggling. Everything was clearly in the prisoners' favor. But a voyage through those raging gusts!
"Nasty tide!" Pencroff muttered to himself, jamming his hat down with his fist as the wind tried to tear it off his head. "But bah! We'll come through all the same!"
At half past nine Cyrus Smith and his companions slipped into the square from different directions. The gas lamps had been blown out by the wind, and the square lay in deep darkness. They could not even see the enormous balloon, which was lying almost completely flattened on the ground. Besides the ballast bags that weighted the cords of the net, the basket was held by a strong cable passed through a ring set into the paving stones, with both ends brought back up on board.
The five prisoners met beside the basket. No one had seen them, and it was so dark that they could not even see each other.
Without a word, Cyrus Smith, Gédéon Spilett, Nab and Harbert took their places in the basket, while Pencroff, on the engineer's orders, unhooked the bundles of ballast one after another. It took only a few moments, and then the sailor joined his companions.
The balloon was now held only by the doubled cable, and all Cyrus Smith had left to do was give the order to go.
At that moment a dog leaped up into the basket in a single bound. It was Top, the engineer's dog, who had broken his chain and followed his master. Afraid of too much weight, Cyrus Smith wanted to send the poor animal back.
"Bah! One more!" said Pencroff, and he heaved two bags of sand out of the basket.
Then he let go one end of the doubled cable, and the balloon shot off at a slant and vanished — after knocking its basket against two chimneys and bringing them down in the fury of its departure.
The hurricane was now raging with appalling violence. During the night the engineer could not even think of trying to come down, and when day came, the mists hid every sight of land. It was only five days later that a break in the clouds revealed the immense sea beneath the balloon, which the wind was sweeping along at a terrifying speed!
We know how, of those five men who had left on March 20, four were thrown on March 24 onto a deserted coast more than six thousand miles from their country — while at home, on April 5, Richmond fell to Grant, the secessionists' revolt was crushed, Lee withdrew to the west, and the cause of American unity triumphed!
And the one who was missing, the one the four survivors of the balloon had rushed off to rescue first of all, was their natural leader — the engineer Cyrus Smith!
Five in the evening — The one who is missing — Nab's despair — Searching to the north — The islet — A long night of anguish — The morning fog — Nab swims for it — A view of the land — Wading the channel
The engineer had been carried off by a wave through the mesh of the net, which had given way. His dog had vanished too. The faithful animal had thrown himself into the sea of his own accord, to help his master.
"Come on!" cried the reporter.
And all four of them — Gédéon Spilett, Harbert, Pencroff and Nab — forgot how worn out and exhausted they were, and began to search.
Poor Nab was weeping with rage and despair at once, at the thought that he had lost everything he loved in the world.
Not two minutes had passed between the moment Cyrus Smith disappeared and the moment his companions reached land. So they could hope to get there in time to save him.
"Let's look for him! Let's look for him!" cried Nab.
"Yes, Nab," answered Gédéon Spilett, "and we'll find him!"
"Alive?"
"Alive!"
"Can he swim?" asked Pencroff.
"Yes!" answered Nab. "And besides, Top is with him!"
The sailor heard the roar of the sea and shook his head.
The engineer had vanished off the north part of the coast, about half a mile from the spot where the castaways had just come ashore. If he had managed to reach the nearest point of the shore, then that point had to lie half a mile away at most.
It was nearly six o'clock by then. The mist had just come down, and it made the night very dark. The castaways walked north along the east coast of this land onto which chance had thrown them — an unknown land, whose place on the globe they could not even guess. Underfoot was sandy ground, mixed with stones, that seemed to have no plant life of any kind. The ground was very uneven and rough, and in some places it seemed riddled with little potholes that made walking very hard. Every moment, big, heavy-winged birds burst out of these holes and fled in all directions, unseen in the dark. Others, quicker, rose in flocks and swept past like clouds. The sailor thought he recognized gulls and sea mews, whose shrill whistling competed with the roaring of the sea.
Now and then the castaways stopped, shouted at the top of their lungs, and listened for any answering call from the direction of the ocean. They reasoned, in fact, that if they had come anywhere near the place where the engineer might have come ashore, then the barking of the dog Top would have reached them, even if Cyrus Smith himself was in no condition to give a sign that he was alive. But no cry stood out above the rumble of the breakers and the rattle of the surf. Then the little band would set off again and search every least nook and cranny of the shore.
After twenty minutes of this, the four castaways were brought up short by a foaming fringe of waves. There was no more solid ground. They were standing at the tip of a sharp point, and the sea was breaking furiously against it.
"It's a headland," said the sailor. "We'll have to go back the way we came, keeping to the right, and that way we'll reach the mainland."
"But what if he's out there!" answered Nab, pointing to the ocean, where the enormous waves showed white in the darkness.
"Well then, let's call him!"
And all of them, joining their voices, gave a mighty shout, but nothing answered. They waited for a lull. They tried again. Still nothing.
So the castaways turned back, following the other side of the headland, over ground just as sandy and rocky as before. Pencroff noticed, though, that the shore here was steeper and that the ground was rising, and he guessed that it must join up, by a fairly long slope, with a high coast whose mass he could make out dimly in the dark. There were fewer birds on this part of the shore. The sea, too, was less rough and less noisy here, and it was striking how much the tossing of the waves had died down. They could barely hear the surf. No doubt this side of the headland formed a half-moon cove, sheltered by the sharp point from the swells rolling in from the open sea.
But following this direction meant walking south, away from the stretch of coast where Cyrus Smith might have landed. After a mile and a half the shoreline still showed no bend that would let them turn back north. Yet this headland, whose point they had rounded, surely had to be joined to the mainland somewhere. The castaways were at the end of their strength, but they kept on walking bravely, hoping at every moment to find some sharp turn that would put them back on their first heading.
Imagine their disappointment, then, when after walking about two miles they found themselves stopped once more by the sea, on a fairly high point made of slippery rocks.
"We're on an islet!" said Pencroff. "And we've walked it from one end to the other!"
The sailor was right. The castaways had been thrown, not onto a continent, not even onto an island, but onto an islet no more than two miles long, and obviously not very wide.
Was this barren islet, strewn with stones, without plants, the bleak refuge of a few seabirds, part of some larger archipelago? There was no telling. When the balloon's passengers had glimpsed land through the mist from their basket, they had not been able to make out how big it was. Even so, Pencroff, whose sailor's eyes were used to piercing the dark, thought he could just now make out some dim masses to the west that suggested a high coast.
But in this darkness there was no way to work out what sort of land the islet belonged to, a single island or a whole group of them. Nor could they get off it, since the sea surrounded it. So the search for the engineer had to wait until the next day — and he, alas, had not given a single cry to show where he was.
"Cyrus's silence doesn't prove anything," said the reporter. "He may have fainted, he may be hurt, he may just be unable to answer for the moment. But let's not give up hope."
Then the reporter suggested lighting a fire somewhere on the islet, as a signal to the engineer. But they searched in vain for wood or dry brush. Sand and stones — there was nothing else.
It is easy to understand how Nab must have grieved, and his companions too, for they had grown deeply attached to the fearless Cyrus Smith. It was all too clear that for now they were powerless to help him. They had to wait for daylight. Either the engineer had managed to save himself on his own and had already found shelter somewhere on the coast, or he was lost forever!
Those were long and painful hours to get through. The cold was sharp. The castaways suffered cruelly, but they hardly noticed it. They did not even think of resting for a moment. Forgetting themselves for the sake of their leader, hoping, determined to go on hoping, they walked back and forth across the barren islet, returning again and again to its northern tip, where they had to be nearest to the scene of the disaster. They listened, they shouted, they strained to catch some last call for help. Their voices must have carried a long way, because the air had grown fairly calm by then, and the noise of the sea was beginning to fall with the swell.
At one point one of Nab's cries even seemed to come back as an echo. Harbert pointed it out to Pencroff, adding:
"That would prove there's a coast fairly close to the west."
The sailor nodded. Besides, his eyes could not be deceiving him. If he had seen land, even a little, then land was there.
But that distant echo was the only answer Nab's cries drew, and all along the east side of the islet the vast emptiness stayed silent.
Meanwhile the sky was clearing little by little. Toward midnight a few stars came out, and if the engineer had been there beside his companions, he could have noticed that these were no longer the stars of the Northern Hemisphere. The North Star was nowhere to be seen on this new horizon. The constellations overhead were not the ones he was used to watching in the northern part of the New World, and the Southern Cross was blazing near the south pole of the sky.
The night went by. At about five in the morning on March 25, the upper sky took on a faint tinge of color. The horizon was still dark, but with the first light of day a thick fog rose from the sea, so that no one could see more than twenty paces or so. The fog unrolled in great heavy coils that drifted slowly along.
This was a setback. The castaways could make out nothing around them. While Nab and the reporter peered out over the ocean, the sailor and Harbert looked for the coast to the west. But not a scrap of land could be seen.
"Doesn't matter," said Pencroff. "If I can't see the coast, I can feel it. It's there... right there... as sure as we're not in Richmond anymore!"
But the fog would not last long. It was only the light haze of fair weather. A good strong sun was warming its upper layers, and the heat was filtering down to the surface of the islet.
Sure enough, at about half past six, three quarters of an hour after sunrise, the mist was growing thinner. It thickened up above but melted away below. Soon the whole islet came into view, as though it had just come down out of a cloud. Then the sea appeared, spreading out in a circle, endless to the east but bounded to the west by a high, steep coast.
Yes! The land was there. And there was safety — for the time being, at least. Between the islet and the coast lay a channel half a mile wide, and through it an extremely fast current was running noisily.
At once, though, one of the castaways, listening to nothing but his heart, plunged into the current without asking his companions' advice, without saying a single word. It was Nab. He was in a hurry to reach that coast and work his way north along it. No one could have held him back. Pencroff called after him, but it was no use. The reporter was getting ready to follow Nab.
Then Pencroff went up to him.
"You mean to cross this channel?" he asked.
"Yes," answered Gédéon Spilett.
"Well, wait, take my word for it," said the sailor. "Nab can manage to help his master on his own. If we went into that channel, we'd risk getting swept out to sea by the current — it's running hard as anything. Now, unless I'm mistaken, it's an ebb current. Look, the tide's going out over the sand. So let's be patient, and at low water we may find a place where we can wade across..."
"You're right," answered the reporter. "Let's split up as little as we can..."
Meanwhile Nab was fighting the current with all his strength. He was crossing it at a slant. They could see his dark shoulders come out of the water at every stroke. He was being carried sideways at tremendous speed, but he was gaining on the coast too. It took him more than half an hour to cross that half mile between the islet and the land, and he came ashore several thousand feet from the spot directly opposite the place he had started from. Nab climbed out at the foot of a high granite wall and gave himself a good shake. Then, running hard, he soon disappeared behind a point of rock that jutted out into the sea at about the level of the islet's northern tip.
Nab's companions had followed his daring attempt in anguish, and when he was out of sight they turned their eyes to the land where they were going to ask for refuge, eating a few of the shellfish that lay scattered across the sand as they looked. It was a meager meal, but at least it was a meal.
The coast opposite formed a broad bay. To the south it ended in a very sharp point, bare of any plants and very wild-looking. This point joined the shore in a rather fanciful curve and was braced against tall granite rocks. To the north, on the other hand, the bay widened out into a more rounded coastline that ran from southwest to northeast and ended in a slender cape. Between these two end points, which held the arc of the bay between them, the distance might have been eight miles. Half a mile from the shore, the islet took up a narrow strip of sea. It looked like an enormous whale — like a whale's carcass, greatly enlarged. At its widest it was no more than a quarter of a mile across.
Facing the islet, the shoreline began, in front, with a sandy beach strewn with blackish rocks, which were now coming back into view little by little as the tide went down. Behind it rose a sort of granite rampart, sheer as a wall and topped by an irregular ridge at least three hundred feet high. It ran on like this for three miles and ended suddenly on the right in a flat-cut face that looked as if it had been carved by human hands. On the left, by contrast, above the headland, this ragged sort of cliff broke up into prism-shaped fragments, made of jumbled rocks and fallen rubble, and sloped down in a long ramp that gradually blended into the rocks of the southern point.
On the high plateau along the top of the coast there was not a single tree. It was a bare tabletop, like Table Mountain above Cape Town at the Cape of Good Hope, only smaller. At least, that was how it looked from the islet. But there was no lack of green to the right, behind the flat-cut face. They could easily make out the dim mass of tall trees, crowded together and stretching on beyond the limits of sight. That greenery cheered the eye, which the harsh lines of the granite face had made so gloomy.
Finally, far in the background and above the plateau, to the northwest and at least seven miles off, a white summit was gleaming in the sunlight. It was a cap of snow, crowning some distant mountain.
So there was no saying yet whether this land was an island or part of a continent. But at the sight of the twisted, heaped-up rocks on the left, a geologist would not have hesitated to call them volcanic, for they were beyond question the work of underground fire.
Gédéon Spilett, Pencroff and Harbert studied this land closely. Perhaps they were going to live on it for many long years. Perhaps they would even die on it, if it did not lie on the route of passing ships!
"Well," asked Harbert, "what do you say, Pencroff?"
"Well," answered the sailor, "there's good and bad, like in everything. We'll see. But the ebb is starting to tell. In three hours we'll try the crossing, and once we're over there, we'll do our best to get ourselves out of this mess and find Mr. Smith!"
Pencroff had not been wrong in his forecast. Three hours later, at low tide, most of the sand that formed the bed of the channel had come uncovered. Between the islet and the coast there was nothing left but a narrow passage of water, which would surely be easy to get across.
And in fact, at about ten o'clock, Gédéon Spilett and his two companions stripped off their clothes, bundled them on their heads, and ventured into the channel, which was no more than five feet deep. Harbert, for whom the water would have been too deep, swam like a fish and came through splendidly. All three reached the opposite shore without trouble. There the sun quickly dried them, and they put back on the clothes they had kept out of the water, and they held a council.
The lithodomes — The river at its mouth — The "Chimneys" — The search goes on — The forest of evergreens — The supply of firewood — Waiting for the ebb — From the top of the cliff — The timber raft — Back to the shore
First of all, the reporter told the sailor to wait for him right where he was, and that he would come back and join him there. Then, without losing a moment, he set off up the shore in the direction Nab had taken a few hours before. He quickly disappeared around a bend in the coast, so impatient was he for news of the engineer.
Harbert had wanted to go with him.
"Stay here, my boy," the sailor had told him. "We've got a camp to set up, and we need to see whether we can find something more solid to sink our teeth into than shellfish. Our friends will need to get their strength back when they return. Everybody has his job."
"I'm ready, Pencroff," Harbert answered.
"Good!" the sailor went on. "That'll do. Let's be methodical about this. We're tired, we're cold, we're hungry. So what we need is shelter, fire, and food. The forest has wood, the nests have eggs. All that's left is to find the house."
"All right," said Harbert. "I'll look for a cave in these rocks. I'm bound to find some hole we can squeeze ourselves into!"
"That's the idea," said Pencroff. "Let's go, my boy."
So off the two of them went, walking along the foot of the enormous wall, on the beach that the falling tide had left wide and bare. But instead of heading north, they went south. A few hundred paces below the spot where they had landed, Pencroff had noticed a narrow break in the coast, which, he thought, must be the outlet of a river or a stream. Now, on the one hand, it was important to settle near a supply of drinking water. And on the other, it was not impossible that the current had carried Cyrus Smith in that direction.
The high wall, as we have said, rose to a height of three hundred feet. But it was solid rock from end to end, and even at its base, which the sea barely licked, it did not offer the slightest crack that could serve as a temporary home. It was a sheer wall of very hard granite that the waves had never worn away. Around its top fluttered a whole world of seabirds, especially various species of the web-footed order, with long, narrow, pointed beaks — very noisy birds, and not much frightened by the presence of man, who was no doubt disturbing their solitude for the first time. Among these web-footed birds Pencroff recognized several skuas, a kind of gull sometimes called jaegers, and also some small, greedy sea gulls that nested in the crevices of the granite. One gunshot fired into that swarm of birds would have brought down a great many of them. But to fire a gunshot you need a gun, and neither Pencroff nor Harbert had one. Besides, these gulls and skuas are hardly fit to eat, and even their eggs taste dreadful.
Meanwhile Harbert, who had moved off a little to the left, soon pointed out some rocks carpeted with seaweed, which the high tide would cover again a few hours later. On these rocks, in among the slippery wrack, swarmed two-shelled mollusks of a kind that starving people could hardly turn up their noses at. So Harbert called Pencroff, who came running.
"Hey! Mussels!" cried the sailor. "That'll make up for the eggs we haven't got!"
"They're not mussels," answered young Harbert, who was carefully examining the shellfish clinging to the rocks. "They're lithodomes."
"Can you eat them?" asked Pencroff.
"Absolutely."
"Then let's eat lithodomes."
The sailor could rely on Harbert. The boy was very good at natural history and had always had a real passion for that science. His father had encouraged him in it, sending him to the lectures of the best teachers in Boston, who were fond of this intelligent, hardworking boy. His naturalist's instincts would prove useful more than once in the days to come, and on this first occasion he was not mistaken.
These lithodomes were oblong shellfish that hung in clusters and clung tightly to the rocks. They belonged to that species of boring mollusk that drills holes into the very hardest stone, and their shells were rounded at both ends — a shape you do not see in the ordinary mussel.
Pencroff and Harbert ate a good many of these lithodomes, which were half open in the sun just then. They ate them like oysters and found that they had a strong, peppery taste, which left them with no regret at all that they had neither pepper nor seasoning of any kind.
So their hunger was satisfied for the moment, but not their thirst, which only grew after eating these naturally spicy shellfish. Now they had to find fresh water, and it seemed unlikely that there would be none in a country so wildly broken up. Pencroff and Harbert took the precaution of laying in a large supply of lithodomes, filling their pockets and their handkerchiefs with them, and then made their way back to the foot of the high ground.
Two hundred paces farther on they reached the break in the cliff through which, just as Pencroff had guessed, a little river was flowing brimful. At this spot the wall looked as if it had been split apart by some violent volcanic upheaval. At its foot a small cove cut into the shore, and the inner end of it made a fairly sharp angle. The stream here was a hundred feet wide, and its banks on either side were barely twenty feet across. The river ran almost straight in between the two walls of granite, which grew lower as they went upstream from the mouth. Then it turned sharply and disappeared under a thicket half a mile away.
"Water here! Wood over there!" said Pencroff. "Well, Harbert, now all we need is the house!"
The river water was clear. The sailor made sure that at this stage of the tide — that is, at low water, when the rising sea did not push into it — it was fresh. With that important point settled, Harbert hunted for some hollow that could serve as a shelter, but it was no use. Everywhere the wall was smooth, flat, and sheer.
At the very mouth of the stream, however, above the high-water line, fallen rock had formed — not a cave, but a heap of enormous boulders, of the kind you often come across in granite country, and which go by the name of "Chimneys."
Pencroff and Harbert made their way fairly deep in among the rocks, along sandy passages that were not short of light, since it came in through the gaps the blocks of granite left between them — some of those blocks staying up only by a miracle of balance. But with the light came the wind too — a real hallway draft — and with the wind, the sharp cold from outside. Still, the sailor thought that by closing off certain parts of these passages, and stopping up some of the openings with a mixture of stones and sand, they could make the Chimneys livable. Their ground plan looked like the printer's sign &, the one used to abbreviate et cetera. Now, by walling off the upper loop of the sign, where the south and west winds came rushing in, they could no doubt make use of its lower part.
"This is just the thing," said Pencroff. "And if we ever see Mr. Smith again, he'll know how to make something of this maze."
"We will see him again, Pencroff!" cried Harbert. "And when he comes back he has to find a home here that's more or less bearable. It will be, if we can set up a fireplace in the left-hand passage and keep an opening there for the smoke."
"We can do that, my boy," the sailor answered, "and these Chimneys" — that was the name Pencroff kept for this temporary home — "will do just fine for us. But first, let's go and lay in a supply of fuel. I've a notion the wood will come in handy for blocking up these holes the devil's blowing his trumpet through!"
Harbert and Pencroff left the Chimneys, rounded the corner, and started up the left bank of the river. The current was fairly swift and was carrying along some dead wood. The rising tide — and it could already be felt at this point — must push the river back hard for quite a long way upstream. So the sailor thought they might be able to use this flow and ebb to carry heavy loads.
After walking for a quarter of an hour, the sailor and the boy reached the sharp bend the river made as it swung away to the left. From there on, its course ran through a forest of magnificent trees. These trees had kept their green, late in the season though it was, because they belonged to the conifer family, which is found in every region of the globe, from the northern climates to the tropics. The young naturalist recognized deodars in particular, a kind of cedar very common in the Himalayas, which gave off a pleasant fragrance. Between these fine trees grew clumps of pines, spreading their dense umbrellas wide. In the tall grass, Pencroff felt dry branches snap under his feet, crackling like fireworks.
"Well, my boy," he said to Harbert, "I may not know the names of these trees, but I do at least know how to file them under 'firewood,' and right now that's the only kind that's any use to us!"
"Let's gather our supply!" answered Harbert, and he set to work at once.
The harvest was easy. They did not even need to strip branches off the trees, since huge quantities of dead wood lay on the ground at their feet. But if there was no shortage of fuel, the means of carrying it left a good deal to be desired. Since the wood was very dry, it would burn quickly. So they would need to bring a large amount of it back to the Chimneys, and what two men could carry would not be enough. Harbert pointed this out.
"Ah, my boy," answered the sailor, "there's got to be some way of moving this wood. There's always a way to do anything! If we had a cart or a boat, it would be too easy."
"But we've got the river!" said Harbert.
"Right," said Pencroff. "The river will be a road that travels all by itself, and timber rafts weren't invented for nothing."
"Only," Harbert pointed out, "our road is traveling the wrong way just now, since the tide's coming in!"
"Then we'll just have to wait for it to go out," answered the sailor, "and it'll be the sea that delivers our fuel to the Chimneys. Let's get our raft ready anyway."
The sailor, with Harbert behind him, headed for the corner where the edge of the forest met the river. Each of them carried as heavy a load of wood as his strength allowed, tied up in bundles. On the bank, too, there was a great deal of dead branches, lying in grass where very likely no human foot had ever stepped. Pencroff set to work on his raft at once.
In a sort of eddy, made by a point of the bank that broke the current, the sailor and the boy laid down some fairly thick pieces of wood, which they had tied together with dry creepers. This made a kind of raft, and on it they piled the whole harvest, layer after layer — at least twenty men's worth of carrying. In an hour the work was done, and the raft, moored to the bank, had to wait for the tide to turn.
That left a few hours to fill, and Pencroff and Harbert agreed to climb up to the plateau above, to get a look at the country over a wider area.
As it happened, two hundred paces back from the bend in the river, the wall ended in a slide of fallen rocks that sloped gently down to the edge of the forest. It was like a natural staircase. So Harbert and the sailor began to climb. Thanks to their strong legs they reached the top in no time, and took up a position at the corner where the crest overlooked the mouth of the river.
When they got there, their first look was for the ocean they had just crossed under such terrible conditions! They gazed with deep emotion over all that northern stretch of the coast where the disaster had happened. That was where Cyrus Smith had vanished. They searched with their eyes to see whether some piece of wreckage from their balloon, something a man might have clung to, was still floating. Nothing! The sea was nothing but a vast desert of water. As for the coast, it was deserted too. Neither the reporter nor Nab was anywhere to be seen. But it was possible that at that moment they were both so far away that no one could have made them out.
"Something tells me," cried Harbert, "that a man with as much energy as Mr. Cyrus couldn't just let himself drown like anybody else. He must have reached the shore somewhere. Don't you think so, Pencroff?"
The sailor shook his head sadly. He had little hope left of ever seeing Cyrus Smith again. But since he wanted to leave Harbert some hope, he said:
"Of course, of course. Our engineer's the kind of man who gets himself out of a fix where anybody else would go under!..."
All the same, he was studying the coast with the closest attention. Below him spread the sandy beach, bounded on the right of the river mouth by lines of breakers. Those rocks, still out of the water, looked like herds of seals lying in the surf. Beyond the band of reefs the sea glittered in the sunlight. To the south a sharp point closed off the horizon, and it was impossible to tell whether the land went on in that direction or whether it turned southeast and southwest, which would have made this coast a kind of very long peninsula. At the northern end of the bay the outline of the shore went on for a great distance, in a more rounded curve. There the shore was low and flat, with no cliff, and with broad sandbanks that the ebb tide left uncovered.
Then Pencroff and Harbert turned around to face west. Their eyes were caught at once by the snow-capped mountain that rose six or seven miles away. From its lowest slopes to within two miles of the coast stretched vast wooded masses, set off by great patches of green where the trees kept their leaves all year. Then, from the edge of this forest to the coast itself, there spread a broad green plateau dotted with clumps of trees scattered about at random. To the left they could catch a glint, now and then, of the little river's waters through a few clearings, and its fairly winding course seemed to lead back toward the buttresses of the mountain, among which it must have its source. At the point where the sailor had left his timber raft, it began to flow between the two high walls of granite. But while on its left bank the walls stayed clean and steep, on the right bank, on the contrary, they sank little by little — the great masses turning into lone boulders, the boulders into stones, the stones into pebbles, all the way to the tip of the point.
"Are we on an island?" the sailor murmured.
"If we are, it seems pretty big!" the boy answered.
"An island, however big it is, is still only an island!" said Pencroff.
But that important question could not be settled yet. Its answer would have to wait for another time. As for the land itself, island or continent, it seemed fertile, pleasant to look at, and varied in what it produced.
"That's a piece of luck," Pencroff remarked, "and in all our misfortune we ought to thank Providence for it."
"Then God be praised!" answered Harbert, whose devout heart was full of gratitude to the Maker of all things.
For a long time Pencroff and Harbert studied this country where their fate had flung them, but after such a quick look it was hard to imagine what the future held in store for them.
Then they started back, following the southern crest of the granite plateau, which was edged with a long, scalloped line of fantastic rocks that took on the strangest shapes. Several hundred birds lived there, nesting in holes in the stone. Harbert, jumping from rock to rock, sent a whole flock of them flying.
"Ah!" he cried. "Those aren't gulls of any kind!"
"Then what birds are they?" asked Pencroff. "Upon my word, they look like pigeons!"
"That's right, but they're wild pigeons — rock pigeons," answered Harbert. "I can tell them by the double black band on the wing, the white rump, and the ash-blue feathers. Now, if the rock pigeon is good to eat, its eggs must be excellent, and if these birds have left any in their nests at all!..."
"We won't give them time to hatch, except as an omelet!" Pencroff answered cheerfully.
"But what are you going to make your omelet in?" asked Harbert. "Your hat?"
"Well!" answered the sailor. "I'm not enough of a wizard for that. We'll have to settle for boiled eggs, my boy, and I'll take care of the hardest ones myself!"
Pencroff and the boy searched the crevices of the granite carefully, and sure enough, they found eggs in some of the hollows! A few dozen were gathered and wrapped up in the sailor's handkerchief. Then, since it was nearly time for high tide, Harbert and Pencroff began to make their way back down to the river.
When they reached the bend in the river it was one o'clock in the afternoon. The current was already turning. So they had to take advantage of the ebb to bring the timber raft down to the mouth. Pencroff had no intention of letting the raft drift off on the current with no one steering it, but he did not mean to climb aboard and steer it himself either. A sailor, though, is never at a loss when it comes to cables and ropes, and Pencroff quickly braided a rope several fathoms long out of dry creepers. This vegetable cable was tied to the back end of the raft, and the sailor held it in his hand while Harbert, pushing the raft off with a long pole, kept it out in the current.
The method worked perfectly. The enormous load of wood, which the sailor held back as he walked along the bank, followed the flow of the water. The bank was very steep, so there was no fear that the raft would run aground, and before two o'clock it arrived at the mouth, a few steps from the Chimneys.
Fitting out the Chimneys — The all-important question of fire — The box of matches — A search on the beach — The reporter and Nab return — A single match! — The crackling hearth — The first supper — The first night on land
As soon as the timber raft had been unloaded, Pencroff's first concern was to make the Chimneys fit to live in by blocking up the passages that let the wind blow through. Sand, stones, woven branches and wet earth sealed off tight the galleries of the "&" that lay open to the south winds, and shut off its upper loop. A single narrow, winding gut that opened on one side was left clear, to carry the smoke outside and give the fire a draft. In this way the Chimneys were divided into three or four rooms — if you can call them rooms, those gloomy dens that a wild animal would hardly have put up with. But they were dry, and you could stand upright in them, at least in the main room, which took up the center. Fine sand covered the floor, and all things considered they could make do with it until they found something better.
Harbert and Pencroff talked as they worked.
"Maybe our friends have found a better place than ours," Harbert said.
"Could be," the sailor answered, "but when in doubt, don't hold back! Better an extra string to your bow than no string at all!"
"Oh," Harbert said again, "if only they bring Mr. Smith back — if only they find him — then all we'll have left to do is thank heaven!"
"Yes!" Pencroff murmured. "He was a man, that one, a real one!"
"He was?" said Harbert. "Have you given up hope of ever seeing him again?"
"God forbid!" the sailor answered.
The work of fitting out the place was soon done, and Pencroff declared himself very pleased with it.
"Now," he said, "our friends can come back. They'll find shelter enough."
That left the hearth to build and the meal to make. A simple, easy job, really. Large flat stones were laid at the back of the first passage on the left, at the mouth of the narrow gut that had been kept open. Whatever heat the smoke did not carry outside would obviously be enough to keep the inside at a comfortable temperature. The supply of wood was stored in one of the rooms, and the sailor laid a few logs on the hearthstones, mixed in with kindling.
The sailor was busy at this when Harbert asked him whether he had any matches.
"Certainly," Pencroff answered, "and I'll add: luckily, because without matches or tinder we'd be in a real fix!"
"We could always make fire the way the islanders do, couldn't we," Harbert answered, "by rubbing two pieces of dry wood together?"
"Well! Try it, my boy, and we'll see if you manage anything besides wearing your arms out!"
"But it's a very simple method, and they use it all the time in the islands of the Pacific."
"I'm not saying they don't," Pencroff answered, "but the islanders must know the trick of it, or else they use a special kind of wood, because more than once I've tried to get a fire going that way and I've never once pulled it off! So I'll admit I prefer matches! Where are my matches?"
Pencroff felt in his jacket for the box that never left him, for he was a dedicated smoker. He did not find it. He went through his trouser pockets, and to his utter astonishment he found no box there either.
"Now that's stupid, worse than stupid!" he said, looking at Harbert. "That box must have dropped out of my pocket, and I've lost it! But you, Harbert, haven't you got anything — a flint and steel, anything at all that could make a fire?"
"No, Pencroff!"
The sailor went out, with the boy behind him, scratching his forehead hard.
On the sand, among the rocks, along the riverbank, the two of them searched with the greatest care, but it was no use. The box was made of copper and would never have escaped their eyes.
"Pencroff," Harbert asked, "didn't you throw that box out of the basket?"
"I made very sure not to," the sailor answered. "But when you've been shaken up the way we just were, a little thing like that can easily go missing. Why, even my pipe has deserted me! Blasted box! Where can it be?"
"Well, the tide's going out," said Harbert. "Let's run to the place where we came ashore."
It was not very likely they would find the box, which the waves must have rolled among the pebbles at high tide, but it was worth taking the chance into account. Harbert and Pencroff went quickly to the spot where they had landed the day before, some two hundred paces from the Chimneys.
There, among the pebbles and in the hollows of the rocks, they searched every inch. Nothing. If the box had fallen there, the waves must have carried it off. As the sea went out, the sailor poked into every crack in the rocks and found nothing. Under the circumstances it was a serious loss, and for the moment one that could not be made good.
Pencroff did not hide how bitterly disappointed he was. His forehead was deeply furrowed. He did not say a word. Harbert tried to comfort him by pointing out that the matches would most likely have been soaked by the seawater and impossible to use anyway.
"No, my boy," the sailor answered. "They were in a copper box that shut tight! And now what are we going to do?"
"We'll find some way to get fire, I'm sure of it," said Harbert. "Mr. Smith or Mr. Spilett won't be caught short the way we are!"
"Yes," Pencroff answered, "but in the meantime we've got no fire, and our friends will come back to a sorry meal!"
"But," Harbert said quickly, "they can't possibly be without tinder or matches!"
"I doubt it," the sailor answered, shaking his head. "For one thing, Nab and Mr. Smith don't smoke, and I'm very much afraid Mr. Spilett held on to his notebook sooner than his box of matches!"
Harbert did not answer. Losing the box was obviously a misfortune. Still, the boy was confident they would get fire one way or another. Pencroff, who had more experience, did not see it that way, even though he was not a man to be put out by small troubles or by large ones. In any case, there was only one thing to do: wait for Nab and the reporter to come back. But he would have to give up the meal of hard-boiled eggs he had meant to make for them, and a diet of raw meat did not strike him as a pleasant prospect, either for them or for himself.
Before going back to the Chimneys, in case they should end up with no fire at all, the sailor and Harbert gathered another load of lithodomes, and then they silently took the road back to their lodging.
Pencroff kept his eyes fixed on the ground, still hunting for his vanished box. He even went back up the left bank of the river from its mouth to the bend where the raft had been moored. He returned to the plateau above, crisscrossed it in every direction, and searched the tall grass along the edge of the forest — all in vain.
It was five o'clock in the evening when he and Harbert came back to the Chimneys. Needless to say, the passages were searched down to their darkest corners, and in the end they had to give it up for good.
Toward six o'clock, just as the sun was disappearing behind the high ground to the west, Harbert, who was pacing up and down the beach, called out that Nab and Gédéon Spilett were coming back.
They were coming back alone! ... The boy felt an indescribable tightening of the heart. The sailor's forebodings had not been wrong. The engineer Cyrus Smith had not been found!
When the reporter arrived, he sat down on a rock without a word. Worn out, dying of hunger, he did not have the strength to speak!
As for Nab, his reddened eyes showed how much he had wept, and the fresh tears he could not hold back said all too plainly that he had lost all hope!
The reporter told the story of their search for Cyrus Smith. He and Nab had covered more than eight miles of the coast, and so had gone well beyond the place of the balloon's next-to-last fall — the fall after which the engineer and the dog Top had disappeared. The beach was deserted. No trace, no footprint. Not a pebble freshly turned over, not a sign on the sand, not one mark of a human foot along that whole stretch of shoreline. It was obvious that no inhabitant ever came to that part of the coast. The sea was as empty as the shore, and it was there, a few hundred feet off the coast, that the engineer had found his grave.
At that moment Nab stood up, and in a voice that showed how stubbornly hope held out in him, he cried:
"No! No! He isn't dead! No! It can't be! Him? Come on! Me — anybody else — maybe! But him? Never. He's a man who comes back from anything! ..."
Then, his strength leaving him:
"Oh, I can't go on!" he murmured.
Harbert ran to him.
"Nab," the boy said, "we'll find him! God will give him back to us! But for now, you're hungry! Eat — please, eat a little something!"
And as he said it he held out a few handfuls of shellfish to poor Nab — a thin, meager meal!
Nab had not eaten for many hours, but he refused. Without his master, Nab could not, or would not, go on living!
Gédéon Spilett, on the other hand, devoured the shellfish; then he lay down on the sand at the foot of a rock. He was exhausted, but calm.
Then Harbert went over to him and took his hand.
"Sir," he said, "we've found a shelter where you'll be better off than here. Night's coming. Come and rest! Tomorrow we'll see ..."
The reporter got up and, with the boy guiding him, made his way toward the Chimneys.
At that moment Pencroff came up to him and, in the most offhand tone in the world, asked whether he happened to have a match on him.
The reporter stopped, felt in his pockets, found nothing, and said:
"I had some, but I must have thrown everything out ..."
Then the sailor called Nab over, asked him the same question, and got the same answer.
"Damnation!" cried the sailor, unable to hold the word back.
The reporter heard him and came over to Pencroff.
"Not one match?" he said.
"Not one, and so no fire!"
"Oh!" cried Nab. "If he were here, my master, he'd know how to make you one!"
The four castaways stood motionless and looked at one another, not without alarm. It was Harbert who broke the silence first.
"Mr. Spilett," he said, "you're a smoker, you always carry matches! Maybe you didn't look properly? Look again! One single match is all we need!"
The reporter went through his pockets again — trousers, vest, coat — and at last, to Pencroff's great joy and to his own utter surprise, he felt a little stick of wood caught in the lining of his vest. His fingers had hold of the little stick through the cloth, but they could not get it out. Since it had to be a match, and only one, the whole point was not to scrape off its phosphorus tip.
"Will you let me do it?" the boy said to him.
And very deftly, without breaking it, he managed to work out that little stick of wood — that wretched, precious splinter that meant so much to these poor men! It was whole.
"A match!" cried Pencroff. "Why, it's as good as having a whole cargo of them!"
He took the match and, with his companions behind him, went back to the Chimneys.
This little stick of wood, which in inhabited countries people throw away so carelessly and which is worth nothing at all, had to be used here with the utmost care. The sailor made sure it was perfectly dry. Then, that done:
"We'll need some paper," he said.
"Here," answered Gédéon Spilett, who, after some hesitation, tore a page out of his notebook.
Pencroff took the scrap of paper the reporter held out to him and crouched in front of the hearth. There, a few handfuls of dry grass, leaves and moss were placed under the bundles of sticks and arranged so that the air could move freely through them and set the dead wood quickly alight.
Then Pencroff folded the scrap of paper into a cone, as pipe smokers do in a high wind, and pushed it in among the moss. Next he picked up a slightly rough pebble and wiped it carefully, and, not without his heart pounding, he struck the match gently, holding his breath.
The first stroke did nothing. Pencroff had not pressed hard enough, for fear of scraping off the phosphorus.
"No, I can't do it," he said. "My hand's shaking ... The match would misfire ... I can't ... I won't! ..." And getting up, he handed the job to Harbert.
Certainly the boy had never in his life been so stirred. His heart was pounding. Prometheus going to steal fire from heaven can hardly have been more nervous! He did not hesitate, though, and struck the match quickly against the pebble. There was a little sputtering sound, and a small bluish flame sprang up, giving off a sharp, acrid smoke. Harbert gently turned the match over to feed the flame, then slid it into the paper cone. In a few seconds the paper caught, and the moss went up at once.
A few moments later the dry wood was crackling, and a cheerful blaze, fanned by the sailor's mighty breath, was growing in the middle of the darkness.
"At last!" cried Pencroff, getting to his feet. "I've never been so worked up in my life!"
There is no doubt that this fire looked fine on its hearth of flat stones. The smoke went out easily through the narrow flue, the chimney drew, and a pleasant warmth soon spread through the place.
As for the fire, they would have to take care never to let it go out again, and always to keep a few live embers banked under the ashes. But that was only a matter of care and attention, since there was no shortage of wood and the supply could always be renewed in good time.
Pencroff's first thought was to put the hearth to use by making a supper more nourishing than a plate of lithodomes. Harbert brought two dozen eggs. The reporter, propped up in a corner, watched these preparations without saying anything. Three questions strained his mind. Is Cyrus still alive? If he is alive, where can he be? If he survived his fall, how can it be that he has found no way to let them know he exists? As for Nab, he was wandering along the beach. He was nothing now but a body without a soul.
Pencroff, who knew fifty-two ways of cooking eggs, had no choice in the matter this time. He had to settle for burying them in the hot ashes and letting them harden slowly.
In a few minutes the cooking was done, and the sailor invited the reporter to take his share of the supper. Such was the castaways' first meal on that unknown coast. The hard-boiled eggs were excellent, and since an egg contains every element that human beings need for nourishment, these poor men felt much the better for them, and their strength came back.
Ah, if only one of them had not been missing from that meal! If all five of the prisoners who had escaped from Richmond had been there, under those heaped-up rocks, in front of that bright, crackling fire, on that dry sand, they might have had nothing but thanks to give to heaven! But the cleverest of them, and the most learned too, their undisputed leader, Cyrus Smith, was missing, alas — and his body had not even been granted a grave!
So passed that day, March 25. Night had fallen. Outside they could hear the wind whistling and the monotonous surf pounding the coast. The pebbles, pushed up and dragged back by the waves, rolled with a deafening roar.
The reporter had withdrawn to the back of a dark passage after jotting down a brief record of the day's events — the first sight of this new land, the disappearance of the engineer, the exploration of the coast, the business of the matches, and so on — and, with fatigue to help him, he managed to find some rest in sleep.
Harbert, for his part, soon fell asleep. As for the sailor, he spent the night beside the hearth sleeping with one eye open, and he did not spare the fuel.
Only one of the castaways did not rest in the Chimneys. It was Nab — inconsolable, despairing Nab — who, the whole night through, in spite of everything his companions said to persuade him to rest, wandered the beach calling for his master!
The castaways' inventory — Nothing — The burnt linen — An excursion into the forest — The flora of the evergreens — The jacamar gets away — Tracks of wild beasts — The couroucous — The grouse — A strange kind of fishing
The inventory of everything these castaways of the air possessed, thrown up on a coast that seemed to be uninhabited, will not take long to draw up.
They had nothing, apart from the clothes they had been wearing when disaster struck. One must mention, it is true, a notebook and a watch that Gédéon Spilett had kept, no doubt by oversight. But there was not a weapon, not a tool, not even a pocketknife. The passengers in the basket had thrown everything overboard to lighten the balloon.
The imaginary heroes of Daniel Defoe or of Wyss, who wrote The Swiss Family Robinson, and real castaways like Selkirk and Raynal, wrecked on Juan Fernández or in the Auckland Islands, were never so utterly destitute. Either they drew plentiful supplies from their stranded ship — seed, livestock, tools, ammunition — or else some piece of wreckage washed up on the shore that let them meet the first needs of life. They were never, at the start, completely unarmed in the face of nature. But here there was not a single instrument of any kind, not a single utensil. From nothing, they would have to arrive at everything!
And if only Cyrus Smith had been with them, if only the engineer could have put his practical knowledge and his inventive mind to work on their situation, perhaps all hope would not have been lost! Alas, they could no longer count on ever seeing Cyrus Smith again. The castaways had nothing to rely on but themselves, and that Providence which never abandons those whose faith is sincere.
But first of all, should they settle on this stretch of coast without trying to find out what continent it belonged to, whether it was inhabited, or whether it was only the shore of a desert island?
That was an important question, and one they needed to answer as soon as possible. On the answer would depend everything they did next. All the same, following Pencroff's advice, it seemed wise to wait a few days before setting out to explore. They had, in fact, to lay in food and find something more strengthening to eat than eggs and shellfish alone. The explorers might have to endure long, hard days with no shelter to rest their heads, and before anything else they had to get their strength back.
For the time being the Chimneys offered a good enough refuge. The fire was lit, and it would be easy to keep embers going. For the moment there was no shortage of shellfish and eggs among the rocks and on the beach. They would surely find some way to kill a few of the pigeons that flew by the hundreds along the crest of the plateau, even if it had to be with sticks or stones. Perhaps the trees of the nearby forest would give them fruit they could eat? And fresh water was right there. So it was agreed that they would stay at the Chimneys for a few days to get ready for an expedition, either along the coast or into the interior.
This plan suited Nab particularly well. As stubborn in his ideas as in his hunches, he was in no hurry to leave this part of the coast, the scene of the catastrophe. He did not believe — he refused to believe — that Cyrus Smith was lost. No, it did not seem possible to him that such a man could have come to so commonplace an end, carried off by a wave and drowned a few hundred paces from shore! As long as the sea had not thrown up the engineer's body, as long as he, Nab, had not seen his master's corpse with his own eyes and touched it with his own hands, he would not believe he was dead! And the idea took root deeper than ever in his stubborn heart. An illusion, perhaps, but an illusion that deserved respect, and the sailor had no wish to destroy it. For Pencroff there was no hope left: the engineer had truly perished in the waves. But with Nab there was no arguing. He was like the dog that cannot leave the spot where its master fell, and his grief was so great that he probably would not outlive him.
That morning, March 26, at first light, Nab had set off north along the coast again, back to the place where the sea had no doubt closed over the unfortunate Smith.
Breakfast that day consisted entirely of pigeon eggs and lithodomes. Harbert had found salt left by evaporation in the hollows of the rocks, and that mineral came in very handy.
When the meal was over, Pencroff asked the reporter whether he wanted to come with them into the forest, where he and Harbert were going to try their luck at hunting. But on second thought, someone had to stay behind to keep the fire going, and also in the very unlikely case that Nab needed help. So the reporter stayed.
"Off to the hunt, Harbert," said the sailor. "We'll find our ammunition along the way, and we'll cut our gun in the forest."
But just as they were leaving, Harbert pointed out that since they had no tinder, it might be wise to replace it with something else.
"With what?" asked Pencroff.
"Burnt linen," the boy answered. "In a pinch, it can do the job of tinder."
The sailor thought this very sensible advice. Its only drawback was that it meant sacrificing a piece of handkerchief. Still, it was worth it, and part of Pencroff's big checked handkerchief was soon reduced to a half-charred rag. This flammable stuff was stored in the central chamber, at the back of a little hollow in the rock, sheltered from all wind and damp.
It was now nine o'clock in the morning. The weather looked threatening, and the breeze was blowing from the southeast. Harbert and Pencroff rounded the corner of the Chimneys, not without a glance at the smoke curling up around a point of rock. Then they started up the left bank of the river.
When they reached the forest, Pencroff broke two stout branches off the first tree and turned them into clubs, and Harbert ground their tips to a point on a rock. Oh, what wouldn't he have given for a knife! Then the two hunters pushed on through the tall grass, following the bank. From the bend where the river turned toward the southwest, it narrowed little by little, and its banks formed a deep, steep-sided channel roofed over by the arching trees on either side. To keep from getting lost, Pencroff decided to follow the stream, which would always lead him back to where he had started. But the bank was not without its obstacles: here, trees whose supple branches bent down to the level of the current; there, creepers or thorns that had to be smashed through with a stick. Often Harbert would slip between the broken stumps as nimbly as a young cat and vanish into the undergrowth. But Pencroff would call him back at once and beg him not to wander off.
Meanwhile the sailor was paying close attention to the lay of the land and what it was like. On this left bank the ground was flat and rose very gradually toward the interior. In places it was damp, and then it took on a marshy look. You could sense a whole network of little trickles underneath, which must have been draining toward the river through some crack in the rock below. In places, too, a brook ran through the undergrowth, and it was easy to wade across. The opposite bank looked more rugged, and the valley, with the river running along its lowest line, showed its shape more clearly on that side. The hillside there, covered with trees rising in tiers, formed a screen that blocked the view. Walking on that right bank would have been hard, for the slopes dropped away steeply, and the trees, bent out over the water, held on only by the strength of their roots.
Needless to say, this forest, like the coast they had already covered, bore no trace of human beings. Pencroff noticed only the tracks of four-footed animals, fresh trails left by creatures whose species he could not make out. Quite certainly — and Harbert thought so too — some of them had been left by formidable wild beasts that they would no doubt have to reckon with. But nowhere was there the mark of an ax on a tree trunk, or the remains of a dead fire, or a human footprint. And perhaps they ought to be glad of that, for on this land in the middle of the Pacific, the presence of man might have been more to be feared than to be wished for.
Harbert and Pencroff, hardly talking, since the going was very rough, made only slow progress, and after an hour's walking they had covered barely a mile. So far the hunting had not paid off. A few birds were singing and fluttering among the branches, but they were very shy, as if man had instinctively taught them a well-founded fear. Among other birds, in a marshy part of the forest, Harbert pointed out one with a long, sharp beak that was built very much like a kingfisher. It differed from a kingfisher, though, in its rather coarse plumage, which had a metallic sheen.
"That must be a jacamar," said Harbert, trying to creep within good range of it.
"This would be a fine chance to taste jacamar," the sailor answered, "if that bird were in the mood to be roasted!"
At that moment a stone, thrown skillfully and hard by the boy, struck the bird where the wing joins the body. But the blow was not enough, for the jacamar ran off as fast as its legs would carry it and disappeared in an instant.
"What a clumsy fool I am!" cried Harbert.
"No, no, my boy!" the sailor answered. "That was a good throw, and plenty of people would have missed the bird altogether. Come on, don't be upset! We'll catch him another day!"
The exploration went on. The farther the hunters went, the more widely spaced and the more magnificent the trees became, but not one bore fruit they could eat. Pencroff looked in vain for some of those precious palm trees that serve so many purposes in daily life, and which have been found as far as the fortieth parallel in the northern hemisphere, but only as far as the thirty-fifth in the southern. This forest, however, was made up entirely of conifers: deodars, which Harbert had already recognized, Douglas firs like the ones that grow on the northwest coast of America, and splendid firs a hundred and fifty feet tall.
Just then a flock of small birds with pretty plumage and long, shimmering tails scattered among the branches, shedding their loosely attached feathers, which covered the ground with a fine down. Harbert picked up a few of the feathers and, after examining them, said:
"These are couroucous."
"I'd rather have a guinea fowl or a heath cock," answered Pencroff, "but anyway, are they good to eat?"
"They're good to eat, and their meat is actually very delicate," Harbert went on. "Besides, if I'm not mistaken, they're easy to get close to and knock down with a stick."
Slipping through the grass, the sailor and the boy reached the foot of a tree whose low branches were covered with the little birds. The couroucous were waiting there for the insects they feed on to fly past. You could see their feathered feet gripping tightly the middling shoots they were perched on.
The hunters then stood up and, swinging their sticks like scythes, mowed down whole rows of couroucous, which never thought of flying away and let themselves be knocked down like fools. A hundred of them already lay on the ground before the rest decided to escape.
"Good," said Pencroff. "Here's game made to measure for hunters like us! You could catch it by hand!"
The sailor strung the couroucous on a flexible switch, the way larks are strung for market, and the exploration went on. They could see that the stream curved slightly, so as to form a hook toward the south. But this detour probably did not go on for long, for the river must have had its source in the mountain and been fed by the melting of the snow that covered the sides of the central cone.
The particular purpose of this excursion, as we know, was to bring back to the residents of the Chimneys as much game as possible. It could not be said that this aim had been achieved so far. So the sailor kept up his search energetically, and grumbled whenever some animal, which he did not even have time to identify, bolted off through the tall grass. If only he had had the dog Top! But Top had disappeared at the same time as his master, and had probably perished with him!
Toward three o'clock in the afternoon, new flocks of birds were glimpsed through certain trees, pecking at their aromatic berries — junipers among them. Suddenly a real trumpet call rang through the forest. These strange, resounding fanfares came from the game birds known in the United States as grouse. Soon a few pairs came into view, with plumage mottled tawny and brown, and brown tails. Harbert could tell the males by the two pointed wings of feathers that stood up on their necks. Pencroff decided that it was absolutely essential to get hold of one of these birds, which were as big as a hen and whose meat is as good as a hazel grouse's. But it was difficult, for they would not let anyone near them. After several failed attempts, which did nothing but frighten the grouse, the sailor said to the boy:
"That settles it. Since we can't kill them on the wing, we'll have to try catching them with a line."
"Like a carp?" cried Harbert, very surprised at the suggestion.
"Like a carp," the sailor answered seriously.
In the grass Pencroff had found half a dozen grouse nests, each holding two or three eggs. He took great care not to touch these nests, since their owners were sure to come back to them. It was around them that he planned to set his lines — not snares, but real fishing lines with hooks. He led Harbert some distance from the nests, and there he prepared his peculiar tackle with all the care a disciple of Izaak Walton, the great writer on angling, would have brought to it. Harbert followed the work with an interest that is easy to understand, though he doubted it would succeed. The lines were made of thin creepers tied end to end, fifteen to twenty feet long. Big, very strong thorns with hooked points, taken from a bush of dwarf acacias, were tied to the ends of the creepers to serve as hooks. As for bait, fat red worms crawling on the ground did the job.
That done, Pencroff slipped through the grass, keeping cleverly out of sight, and laid the hooked ends of his lines near the grouse nests. Then he came back, took up the other ends, and hid with Harbert behind a big tree. Then both of them waited patiently. Harbert, it must be said, did not have much faith in the inventive Pencroff's success.
A good half hour went by, but, just as the sailor had predicted, several pairs of grouse came back to their nests. They hopped about, pecking at the ground, without the slightest suspicion that the hunters were there. The hunters, besides, had taken care to stay downwind of the birds.
There is no denying that at this moment the boy was intensely interested. He was holding his breath, and Pencroff, eyes wide, mouth open, lips pushed out as if he were about to taste a bite of grouse, was barely breathing at all.
Meanwhile the birds were strolling among the hooks without paying them much attention. Then Pencroff gave little tugs that jiggled the bait, as though the worms were still alive.
Without a doubt, the sailor felt a far stronger thrill at that moment than any angler does, since the angler cannot see his prey coming toward him through the water.
The tugs soon caught the birds' attention, and they began pecking at the hooks. Three grouse, very greedy no doubt, swallowed bait and hook together. Suddenly, with a sharp jerk, Pencroff set his hooks, and the beating of wings told him the birds were caught.
"Hurrah!" he shouted, rushing at the game, and he had it in hand in an instant.
Harbert had clapped his hands. It was the first time he had ever seen birds caught with a line. But the sailor, very modestly, assured him that this was not his first try, and that anyway the credit for the invention was not his.
"And in any case," he added, "in the situation we're in, we'd better expect to see plenty of other things like it!"
The grouse were tied together by the feet, and Pencroff, happy not to be going back empty-handed and seeing that the daylight was beginning to fade, thought it best to head for home.
The way back was plainly marked by the river; they had only to follow it downstream. And at about six o'clock, rather tired from their excursion, Harbert and Pencroff walked back into the Chimneys.
Nab has not come back yet — The reporter's thoughts — Supper — A bad night in the making — The storm is terrible — They set out in the night — A fight against rain and wind — Eight miles from the first camp
Gédéon Spilett was standing motionless on the beach at that moment, his arms crossed, looking out to sea. In the east the horizon was melting into a great black cloud that was climbing swiftly toward the zenith. The wind was already strong, and it was freshening as the day declined. The whole sky had an ugly look, and the first signs of a gale were plain to see.
Harbert went into the Chimneys, and Pencroff walked over to the reporter, who was so deep in thought that he did not see him coming.
"We're in for a bad night, Mr. Spilett!" said the sailor. "Rain and wind enough to make the petrels happy — they're sea birds that love nothing better than a storm!"
The reporter turned around, saw Pencroff, and these were his first words:
"How far from the coast would you say the basket was when that wave hit it and carried off our companion?"
The sailor had not expected the question. He thought for a moment and answered:
"Two cable lengths, at the most."
"But what's a cable length?" asked Gédéon Spilett.
"About a hundred and twenty fathoms, or six hundred feet."
"So," said the reporter, "Cyrus Smith disappeared twelve hundred feet from shore, at the most?"
"About that," answered Pencroff.
"And his dog too?"
"Him too."
"What surprises me," the reporter went on, "supposing our companion is dead, is that Top died as well, and that neither the dog's body nor his master's has washed up on the shore!"
"That's not surprising, with a sea as rough as that," answered the sailor. "Besides, the currents may have carried them farther along the coast."
"So it really is your opinion that our companion drowned?" the reporter asked once more.
"That's my opinion."
"Well, my own opinion," said Gédéon Spilett, "with all due respect to your experience, Pencroff, is that the twofold fact of Cyrus and Top vanishing completely, alive or dead, is something inexplicable and improbable."
"I'd like to think the way you do, Mr. Spilett," answered Pencroff. "Unfortunately, my mind's made up!"
With that, the sailor went back to the Chimneys. A good fire was crackling on the hearth. Harbert had just thrown an armful of dry wood onto it, and the flames cast great bursts of light into the dark parts of the passage.
Pencroff set to work on dinner at once. He thought it right to put something substantial on the menu, since they all needed to build their strength back up. The strings of couroucous were kept for the next day, but two grouse were plucked, and soon, skewered on a stick, the birds were roasting in front of a blazing fire.
At seven o'clock in the evening Nab had still not come back. His long absence could only make Pencroff anxious about him. The sailor had to fear that some accident had befallen him in this unknown land, or else that the poor fellow had done something desperate. But Harbert drew entirely different conclusions from Nab's absence. To his mind, if Nab had not come back, it was because something new had turned up that had led him to keep searching. And anything new could only be to Cyrus Smith's advantage. Why had Nab not returned, unless some hope was keeping him? Perhaps he had found some clue — a footprint, a scrap of wreckage — that had put him on the track. Perhaps at this very moment he was following a sure trail. Perhaps he was by his master's side...
That was how the boy reasoned. That was what he said. His companions let him talk. Only the reporter nodded his approval. But to Pencroff, the likely thing was that Nab had pushed his search along the shore farther than he had the day before, and simply could not have got back yet.
All the same, Harbert, stirred up by vague forebodings, said several times that he meant to go out and meet Nab. But Pencroff made him see that it would be a useless trip — that in this darkness and this dreadful weather he would never find Nab's tracks, and that it was better to wait. If Nab had not reappeared by the next day, Pencroff would not hesitate to go with Harbert and search for him.
Gédéon Spilett agreed with the sailor that they must not split up, and Harbert had to give up his plan; but two big tears fell from his eyes.
The reporter could not help throwing his arms around the generous boy.
The bad weather had now broken in earnest. A southeasterly gale was sweeping over the coast with unequaled violence. They could hear the sea, which was falling at that hour, roaring against the edge of the first line of rocks out beyond the shore. The rain, beaten into spray by the hurricane, lifted off like a liquid fog. It looked like rags of vapor trailing along the coast, where the shingle rattled violently, like cartloads of stones being dumped. The sand, whipped up by the wind, mixed with the downpour and made its onslaught unbearable. There was as much dust of rock in the air as dust of water. Between the mouth of the river and the face of the cliff, great eddies whirled, and the masses of air pouring out of that whirlpool, finding no other way out than the narrow valley at the bottom of which the river ran, rushed into it with irresistible force. So the smoke from the hearth, driven back down the narrow flue, kept blowing back into the passages, filling them and making them impossible to live in.
That was why, as soon as the grouse were cooked, Pencroff let the fire die down and kept only some embers buried under the ashes.
At eight o'clock Nab had still not reappeared. But by now it was reasonable to suppose that this frightful weather was all that had kept him from coming back, and that he must have taken shelter in some hollow to wait for the storm to end, or at least for daylight to return. As for going out to meet him, or trying to find him in such conditions, that was impossible.
The game made up the whole of supper. They ate the meat gladly, for it was excellent. Pencroff and Harbert, whose appetites had been sharpened by a long expedition, wolfed it down.
Then each of them went off to the corner where he had slept the night before, and Harbert soon fell asleep near the sailor, who had stretched out along the hearth.
Outside, as the night wore on, the storm grew to tremendous proportions. It was a gale to match the one that had carried the prisoners all the way from Richmond to this land in the Pacific. Storms like it are frequent at the time of the equinox, rich in disasters, and terrible above all over this wide open sea, which puts no obstacle in the way of their fury! So it is easy to understand that a coast facing east like this one — that is, straight into the blows of the hurricane, and taking them full on — was battered with a force no description can convey.
Very luckily, the heap of rocks that made up the Chimneys was solid. They were enormous blocks of granite, though a few of them, not quite balanced, seemed to tremble on their bases. Pencroff could feel it: with his hand pressed against the walls, he felt quick shudders running under it. Still, he kept telling himself, and rightly, that there was nothing to fear, and that his makeshift shelter would not collapse. All the same, he could hear stones, torn loose from the top of the plateau by the eddies of the wind, falling onto the beach. Some even rolled onto the upper part of the Chimneys, or shattered there when they came straight down. Twice the sailor got up and crawled to the mouth of the passage to look outside. But these small rockfalls were no real danger, and he went back to his place in front of the hearth, where the embers crackled under the ash.
In spite of the raging hurricane, the crash of the storm, the thunder of the tempest, Harbert slept soundly. In the end sleep took hold of Pencroff too, whose life at sea had used him to all such violence. Only Gédéon Spilett was kept awake by worry. He blamed himself for not having gone with Nab. As we have seen, he had not given up all hope. The forebodings that had stirred Harbert had never stopped stirring him as well. His thoughts were fixed on Nab. Why had Nab not come back? He tossed and turned on his bed of sand, paying hardly any attention to the battle of the elements outside. Now and then his eyes, heavy with exhaustion, closed for an instant, but some quick thought opened them again almost at once.
Meanwhile the night wore on. It might have been two o'clock in the morning when Pencroff, sound asleep by then, was shaken hard.
"What is it?" he cried, waking up and collecting his wits with the quickness peculiar to seafaring men.
The reporter was leaning over him and saying:
"Listen, Pencroff, listen!"
The sailor strained his ears and could make out no sound but the gusts.
"It's the wind," he said.
"No," answered Gédéon Spilett, listening again, "I thought I heard..."
"What?"
"A dog barking!"
"A dog!" cried Pencroff, leaping to his feet.
"Yes... barking..."
"That's impossible!" answered the sailor. "Anyway, how could you, with the storm roaring like that..."
"There... listen..." said the reporter.
Pencroff listened more closely, and in a moment of calm he did indeed think he heard distant barking.
"Well?..." said the reporter, gripping the sailor's hand.
"Yes... yes!..." answered Pencroff.
"It's Top! It's Top!..." cried Harbert, who had just woken up, and all three rushed for the mouth of the Chimneys.
They had a desperate struggle to get out. The wind kept driving them back. But at last they managed it, and they could stay on their feet only by bracing themselves against the rocks. They looked; they could not speak.
The darkness was total. Sea, sky and land were merged in one equal blackness. There did not seem to be a single atom of light anywhere in the air.
For several minutes the reporter and his two companions stayed like that, as if crushed by the wind, soaked by the rain, blinded by the sand. Then, in a lull in the storm, they heard the barking once more, and they could tell that it must be quite far off.
It could only be Top barking like that! But was he alone, or was someone with him? It was more likely that he was alone, for if Nab had been with him, Nab would have headed for the Chimneys as fast as he could.
The sailor squeezed the reporter's hand — he could not make himself heard — in a way that meant "Wait!" Then he went back into the passage.
A moment later he came out again with a burning bundle of sticks, flung it into the darkness, and gave a series of shrill whistles.
At this signal — one might have thought it was expected — barking answered from much nearer, and soon a dog dashed into the passage. Pencroff, Harbert and Gédéon Spilett went back in after him.
An armful of dry wood was thrown on the coals. A bright blaze lit up the passage.
"It's Top!" cried Harbert.
It was Top, indeed — a magnificent Anglo-Norman hound, which had got from the crossing of those two breeds both speed of foot and keenness of scent, the two supreme qualities of a hunting dog.
It was the dog of the engineer Cyrus Smith.
But he was alone! Neither his master nor Nab was with him!
And yet how had his instinct been able to lead him to the Chimneys, a place he did not know? It seemed inexplicable, above all in the middle of that black night and in such a storm! But — a detail more inexplicable still — Top was neither tired nor worn out, nor even spattered with mud or sand!...
Harbert had drawn him close and was holding the dog's head between his hands. The dog let him, and rubbed his neck against the boy's hands.
"If the dog has turned up, the master will turn up too!" said the reporter.
"God grant it!" answered Harbert. "Let's go! Top will lead us!"
Pencroff did not raise a single objection. He could feel that Top's arrival might well prove his guesses wrong.
"Off we go!" he said.
Pencroff carefully covered the coals on the hearth. He laid a few pieces of wood under the ashes, so that there would be fire to come back to. Then, after taking the leftovers of supper, he plunged outside, preceded by the dog, who seemed to be urging him on with little barks, and followed by the reporter and the boy.
The storm was now at its most violent, perhaps even at its very peak. The moon, which was new — and so in conjunction with the sun — let not the faintest glimmer filter through the clouds. Keeping to a straight course was hard. The best thing was to trust to Top's instinct, and that is what they did. The reporter and the boy walked behind the dog, and the sailor brought up the rear. No talk would have been possible. The rain was not very heavy, since the hurricane's blast broke it into spray, but the hurricane itself was terrible.
One circumstance, though, worked very luckily in favor of the sailor and his two companions. The wind was blowing from the southeast, and so it was at their backs. The sand it hurled so violently, which would have been unbearable in their faces, struck them from behind, and as long as they did not turn around it could not trouble them enough to slow them down. In fact they often went faster than they meant to, and quickened their steps so as not to be knocked over. But an immense hope doubled their strength, and this time they were not walking up the shore at random. They had no doubt that Nab had found his master and had sent them the faithful dog. But was the engineer alive? Or was Nab summoning his companions only to pay their last respects to the body of the unfortunate Smith?
After passing the cut-off corner of the high ground, which they had been careful to keep well clear of, Harbert, the reporter and Pencroff stopped to catch their breath. The angle of the rock sheltered them from the wind, and they got their breath back after a quarter of an hour's march that had been more of a run.
Now they could hear one another and answer, and when the boy spoke the name of Cyrus Smith, Top gave a few short barks, as if he meant to say that his master was saved.
"Saved, isn't he?" Harbert kept repeating. "Saved, Top?"
And the dog barked as if in answer.
They set off again. It was about half past two in the morning. The sea was beginning to rise, and this tide, driven by the wind, was a spring tide — the high tide of new moon — and threatened to be very strong. The great waves thundered against the line of reefs and attacked it so violently that they were very probably sweeping right over the islet, which was completely invisible now. So that long breakwater no longer sheltered the coast, which lay wide open to the shocks of the open sea.
As soon as the sailor and his companions had left the shelter of the corner, the wind struck them again with tremendous fury. Bent over, backs to the blast, they walked very fast, following Top, who never hesitated over which way to go. They were heading north, with an endless crest of breakers on their right, crashing with a deafening roar, and on their left a dark country whose look it was impossible to make out. But they could feel that it must be fairly flat, because the hurricane now passed right over their heads without whirling back on them, as it had done when it struck the granite cliff.
By four o'clock in the morning they reckoned they had covered five miles. The clouds had lifted a little and no longer trailed along the ground. The wind, less wet now, blew in very sharp currents of air, drier and colder. Poorly protected by their clothes, Pencroff, Harbert and Gédéon Spilett must have suffered cruelly, but not one complaint passed their lips. They were determined to follow Top wherever the intelligent animal chose to lead them.
Toward five o'clock day began to break. First, at the zenith, where the mists were thinner, a few grayish tints outlined the edges of the clouds, and soon, under an opaque band, a brighter streak sharply traced the horizon of the sea. The crests of the waves were touched with faint tawny gleams, and the foam turned white again. At the same time, on the left, the broken ground along the shore began to show in a blur, but it was still only gray on black.
At six o'clock in the morning it was full day. The clouds were racing along at great speed, fairly high up. The sailor and his companions were now about six miles from the Chimneys. They were following a very flat beach, bordered out to sea by a line of rocks of which only the tops showed above the water, since it was high tide. On the left the land, broken up by a few dunes bristling with thistles, had the rather wild look of a vast sandy region. The shoreline had few indentations, and the only barrier it offered the ocean was a fairly irregular chain of hummocks. Here and there one or two trees grimaced, bent over toward the west, their branches flung out in that direction. Far behind, to the southwest, curved the edge of the last forest.
At that moment Top showed unmistakable signs of excitement. He would run ahead, come back to the sailor, and seem to be urging him to hurry. The dog had now left the beach, and, driven by his remarkable instinct, without showing the least hesitation, he had gone in among the dunes.
They followed him. The country seemed completely deserted. Not a living creature stirred in it.
The belt of dunes was very wide, made up of hummocks and even of hills scattered about in the most haphazard way. It was like a little Switzerland of sand, and it took nothing short of a prodigious instinct to find the way through it.
Five minutes after leaving the beach, the reporter and his companions came to a kind of hollow dug into the back of a tall dune. There Top stopped and gave one clear bark. Spilett, Harbert and Pencroff went into this cave.
Nab was there, kneeling beside a body stretched out on a bed of grass...
The body was that of the engineer Cyrus Smith.
Is Cyrus Smith alive? — Nab's story — The footprints — A question with no answer — Cyrus Smith's first words — The footprints checked — The return to the Chimneys — Pencroff aghast!
Nab did not move. The sailor threw him just one word.
"Alive?" he cried.
Nab did not answer. Gédéon Spilett and Pencroff went pale. Harbert clasped his hands and stood frozen where he was. But it was plain that poor Nab, swallowed up in his grief, had neither seen his companions nor heard the sailor's words.
The reporter knelt beside the motionless body, opened the engineer's clothes, and laid his ear against his chest. A minute went by — it felt like a century! — while he tried to catch some beat of the heart.
Nab had straightened up a little and was staring without seeing. Despair could not have changed a man's face more. Nab was unrecognizable, worn out with fatigue, broken with grief. He believed his master was dead.
After a long and careful examination, Gédéon Spilett stood up.
"He's alive!" he said.
Pencroff knelt in his turn beside Cyrus Smith. His ear, too, caught a few heartbeats, and his lips felt a faint breath escaping from the engineer's lips.
At a word from the reporter, Harbert dashed outside to look for water. A hundred paces away he found a clear stream, obviously swollen by the rains of the day before, filtering through the sand. But there was nothing to carry the water in — not one shell in those dunes! The boy had to make do with soaking his handkerchief in the stream, and he ran back to the cave.
Luckily the wet handkerchief was all Gédéon Spilett needed, since he only wanted to moisten the engineer's lips. Those few drops of fresh water had an almost immediate effect. A sigh escaped from Cyrus Smith's chest, and he even seemed to be trying to say a few words.
"We'll save him!" said the reporter.
At those words Nab began to hope again. He undressed his master to see whether his body showed any wound. There were no bruises on the head, the chest or the limbs, not even a scrape — which was surprising, since Cyrus Smith's body must have been rolled about among the rocks. Even his hands were unmarked, and it was hard to explain how the engineer showed no trace of the struggle he must have gone through to get past the line of reefs.
But the explanation of this would come later. When Cyrus Smith could talk, he would tell them what had happened. For the moment the job was to bring him back to life, and rubbing him down would probably do it. So they rubbed him with the sailor's jacket. Warmed by this rough massage, the engineer moved his arm slightly, and his breathing began to settle into a steadier rhythm. He had been dying of exhaustion, and if the reporter and his companions had not arrived, that would certainly have been the end of Cyrus Smith.
"So you thought he was dead, your master?" the sailor asked Nab.
"Yes! Dead!" Nab answered. "And if Top hadn't found you, if you hadn't come, I would have buried my master and died beside him!"
You can see what a thread Cyrus Smith's life had hung by!
Then Nab told them what had happened. The day before, after leaving the Chimneys at dawn, he had gone up the coast heading north and reached the stretch of shore he had already searched.
There, without any hope, as he admitted, Nab had searched the shore, among the rocks and on the sand, for the slightest clue that might guide him. Above all he had examined the part of the beach that the high tide did not cover, because along its edge the rise and fall of the tide would have wiped out every trace. Nab no longer hoped to find his master alive. What he was looking for was a body — a body he wanted to bury with his own hands!
Nab had searched a long time, and all his efforts came to nothing. That deserted coast did not seem ever to have been visited by a human being. The shells that the sea could not reach — and there were millions of them above the high-tide line — lay untouched. Not one shell was crushed. Over a stretch of two or three hundred yards there was no sign of anyone having come ashore, either long ago or recently.
So Nab had decided to go on up the coast for a few miles. The currents might have carried a body to some point farther along. When a body is floating not far from a flat shore, it is very rare for the waves not to throw it up on the beach sooner or later. Nab knew that, and he wanted to see his master one last time.
"I walked along the coast for two more miles," he said. "I checked the whole line of reefs at low tide and the whole beach at high tide, and I'd given up hope of finding anything, when yesterday, around five o'clock in the evening, I noticed footprints in the sand."
"Footprints?" cried Pencroff.
"Yes!" answered Nab.
"And did these footprints start right at the reefs?" asked the reporter.
"No," Nab answered, "only at the high-tide line. Between the tide line and the reefs, the others must have been washed away."
"Go on, Nab," said Gédéon Spilett.
"When I saw those footprints, I went half out of my mind. They were very easy to make out, and they headed toward the dunes. I followed them for a quarter of a mile, running, but taking care not to step on them. Five minutes later, just as night was falling, I heard a dog barking. It was Top, and Top led me right here, to my master!"
Nab finished his story by telling them how he had grieved when he found that lifeless body. He had tried to catch some last sign of life in it! Now that he had found him dead, he wanted him alive! All his efforts had been useless! There was nothing left for him to do but pay his last respects to the man he loved so much!
Then Nab had thought of his companions. They would surely want to see the unfortunate man one last time! Top was there. Couldn't he rely on the cleverness of that faithful animal? Nab said the reporter's name several times over — of all the engineer's companions, he was the one Top knew best. Then he pointed south along the coast, and the dog dashed off in the direction he had been shown.
We know how Top got to the Chimneys all the same, guided by an instinct that could almost be called supernatural, since the animal had never been there before.
Nab's companions had listened to his story with the closest attention. To them there was something inexplicable in the fact that Cyrus Smith, after the struggle he must have gone through to escape the waves and cross the reefs, did not have so much as a scratch. And what was no easier to explain was how the engineer could have reached this cave, lost among the dunes more than a mile from the shore.
"So, Nab," said the reporter, "it wasn't you who carried your master here?"
"No, it wasn't me," Nab answered.
"It's pretty obvious Mr. Smith got here on his own," said Pencroff.
"Obvious, yes," remarked Gédéon Spilett, "but not believable!"
Only the engineer himself could explain it, and for that they would have to wait until he could speak again. Fortunately, life was already flowing back into him. The rubbing had got his blood circulating again. Cyrus Smith moved his arms once more, then his head, and once again a few words they could not understand escaped his lips.
Nab, bending over him, kept calling to him, but the engineer did not seem to hear, and his eyes stayed shut. Movement was the only sign of life in him. His senses had not yet come back.
Pencroff badly regretted having no fire, and nothing to make one with, because he had unfortunately forgotten to bring the burnt linen, which he could easily have lit by striking two pebbles together. As for the engineer's pockets, they were completely empty, except for his vest pocket, which held his watch. So they would have to carry Cyrus Smith to the Chimneys, and as soon as possible. On that, everyone agreed.
But the care they lavished on the engineer was to bring him round faster than they could have hoped. The water they moistened his lips with was reviving him little by little. Pencroff also had the idea of mixing the water with juice from the grouse meat he had brought along. Harbert ran down to the shore and came back with two big bivalve shells. The sailor made a sort of mixture in them and slipped it between the engineer's lips, and he seemed to drink it down eagerly.
Then his eyes opened. Nab and the reporter were bending over him.
"My master! My master!" cried Nab.
The engineer heard him. He recognized Nab and Spilett, then his two other companions, Harbert and the sailor, and his hand gave theirs a faint squeeze.
A few more words escaped his lips — words he had no doubt been saying before, and which showed what thoughts were tormenting his mind, even then. This time the words were understood.
"Island or continent?" he murmured.
"Ah!" cried Pencroff, who could not hold the exclamation back. "By all the devils, who cares, as long as you're alive, Mr. Cyrus! Island or continent? We'll find out later."
The engineer gave a slight nod and seemed to fall asleep.
They let him sleep, and the reporter immediately began making arrangements to carry the engineer back in the best possible way. Nab, Harbert and Pencroff left the cave and headed for a tall dune crowned with a few stunted trees. And as they went, the sailor could not stop himself from repeating:
"Island or continent! Thinking about that when he's got hardly a breath left in him! What a man!"
When they reached the top of the dune, Pencroff and his two companions, with no tools but their bare arms, stripped the main branches off a rather puny tree, a kind of maritime pine worn thin by the wind. Out of those branches they made a stretcher, which, once it was covered with leaves and grass, would let them carry the engineer.
It took them about forty minutes, and it was ten o'clock when the sailor, Nab and Harbert came back to Cyrus Smith, whom Gédéon Spilett had not left.
The engineer was just then waking from the sleep — or rather the stupor — in which they had found him. The color was coming back into his cheeks, which until then had been as pale as death. He raised himself a little, looked around him, and seemed to be asking where he was.
"Can you listen to me without tiring yourself, Cyrus?" said the reporter.
"Yes," answered the engineer.
"If you ask me," the sailor put in, "Mr. Smith will hear you even better if he has another go at this grouse jelly — because it is grouse, Mr. Cyrus," he added, holding out a little of the jelly, into which, this time, he had mixed a few shreds of meat.
Cyrus Smith chewed the bits of grouse, and what was left was shared among his three companions, who were suffering from hunger and found it a rather skimpy lunch.
"Good!" said the sailor. "There's food waiting for us at the Chimneys. Because you ought to know, Mr. Cyrus, that down there, to the south, we've got a house with rooms, beds and a fireplace, and in the pantry a few dozen birds that our Harbert calls couroucous. Your stretcher's ready, and as soon as you feel strong enough, we'll carry you home."
"Thank you, my friend," answered the engineer. "Another hour or two and we can go... And now, tell me, Spilett."
So the reporter told him what had happened. He told him everything Cyrus Smith could not have known: the balloon's last fall; the landing on this unknown land, which seemed deserted, whatever it turned out to be, island or continent; the discovery of the Chimneys; the search for the engineer; Nab's devotion; everything they owed to the intelligence of faithful Top; and so on.
"But," asked Cyrus Smith, his voice still weak, "you didn't pick me up on the beach, then?"
"No," answered the reporter.
"And it wasn't you who brought me to this cave?"
"No."
"How far is this cave from the reefs?"
"About half a mile," answered Pencroff. "And if you're amazed, Mr. Cyrus, we're no less surprised ourselves to find you here!"
"Indeed," answered the engineer, who was reviving little by little and taking an interest in these details, "indeed, that's very strange!"
"But," the sailor went on, "can you tell us what happened after that wave carried you off?"
Cyrus Smith gathered his memories. He knew very little. The wave had torn him out of the balloon's net. At first he had sunk several fathoms deep. When he came back up to the surface in the half darkness, he felt a living creature thrashing beside him. It was Top, who had leaped in to save him. Looking up, he could no longer see the balloon, which, relieved of his weight and the dog's, had shot away like an arrow. He found himself in the middle of the raging waves, at a distance from the coast that could not have been less than half a mile. He tried to fight the waves, swimming hard. Top held him up by his clothes. But a current as fast as lightning caught him and swept him north, and after half an hour of struggling he went under, dragging Top down with him into the depths. From that moment until the moment he had just found himself in his friends' arms, he remembered nothing at all.
"Still," Pencroff went on, "you must have been thrown up on the shore, and you must have had the strength to walk all the way here, since Nab found your footprints!"
"Yes... I must have..." answered the engineer, thinking it over. "And you didn't see any trace of human beings on this coast?"
"Not a trace," answered the reporter. "Besides, if by chance some rescuer had happened to be there at just the right moment, why would he have abandoned you after pulling you out of the waves?"
"You're right, my dear Spilett." Then, turning to his servant, the engineer added: "Tell me, Nab, it wasn't you who... you couldn't have had a moment's blackout... during which... No, that's absurd... Are any of those footprints still there?" asked Cyrus Smith.
"Yes, my master," answered Nab. "Right there at the entrance, on the back slope of this very dune, in a spot sheltered from the wind and rain. The others were wiped out by the storm."
"Pencroff," said Cyrus Smith, "would you take my shoes and see whether they fit those footprints exactly?"
The sailor did what the engineer asked. He and Harbert, guided by Nab, went to the place where the footprints were, while Cyrus Smith said to the reporter:
"Some inexplicable things have happened here!"
"Inexplicable indeed!" answered Gédéon Spilett.
"But let's not dwell on it now, my dear Spilett. We'll talk about it later."
A moment later the sailor, Nab and Harbert came back in.
There was no possible doubt. The engineer's shoes fitted the surviving footprints exactly. So it was Cyrus Smith who had left them in the sand.
"Well, then," he said, "it must have been me who had that hallucination, that blackout I was blaming on Nab! I must have walked like a sleepwalker, without knowing I was taking a step, and it must have been Top who led me here by instinct, after pulling me out of the waves... Come here, Top! Come, boy!"
The magnificent animal bounded up to his master, barking, and he was not short of pats and praise.
It will be agreed that there was no other explanation for the events that had led to Cyrus Smith's rescue, and that all the credit for the business belonged to Top.
Toward noon, when Pencroff asked Cyrus Smith whether he could be moved, Cyrus Smith's only answer was to stand up, with an effort that showed the most powerful willpower. But he had to lean on the sailor, or he would have fallen.
"Fine! Fine!" said Pencroff. "The stretcher for the engineer, please!"
The stretcher was brought. Its crosspieces had been covered with moss and long grass. They laid Cyrus Smith on it and set off toward the coast, Pencroff at one end of the poles, Nab at the other.
There were eight miles to cover, but since they could not go fast and might have to stop often, they would have to allow at least six hours to reach the Chimneys.
The wind was still violent, but fortunately it was no longer raining. Though he was lying down, the engineer propped himself on his elbow and studied the coast, especially the landward side, away from the sea. He did not speak, but he looked, and there is no doubt that the shape of that country — its rises and hollows, its forests, its different kinds of plants — was printed on his mind. After two hours on the way, however, fatigue won, and he fell asleep on the stretcher.
At half past five the little party reached the cut-off corner of the cliff, and a little later they stood in front of the Chimneys.
Everyone stopped, and the stretcher was set down on the sand. Cyrus Smith was sound asleep and did not wake.
Then, to his great surprise, Pencroff saw that the terrible storm of the day before had changed the look of the place. There had been some fairly big rockfalls. Large blocks of stone lay scattered on the beach, and a thick carpet of seaweed — wrack and algae — covered the whole shore. It was obvious that the sea had swept right over the islet and rolled all the way to the foot of the enormous granite rampart.
In front of the opening of the Chimneys the ground had been deeply gouged; the waves had battered it violently.
A kind of foreboding flashed through Pencroff's mind. He rushed into the passage.
Almost at once he came back out and stood frozen, staring at his companions...
The fire was out. The drowned ashes were nothing but mud. The burnt linen that was to serve as tinder was gone. The sea had pushed all the way to the back of the passages and turned everything upside down, wrecked everything, inside the Chimneys!
Cyrus is here — Pencroff's attempts — Rubbing sticks — Island or continent? — The engineer's plans — Where in the Pacific Ocean? — Deep in the forest — The stone pine — A capybara hunt — A smoke of good omen
In a few words Gédéon Spilett, Harbert and Nab were told how things stood. This accident, which could have very serious consequences — at least, that was how Pencroff saw it — had different effects on the honest sailor's companions.
Nab, overjoyed at having found his master again, did not listen, or rather did not even want to bother himself with what Pencroff was saying.
Harbert, for his part, seemed to share the sailor's fears to some degree.
As for the reporter, he answered Pencroff's words quite simply:
"Upon my word, Pencroff, I couldn't care less!"
"But I'm telling you, we don't have a fire anymore!"
"Pooh!"
"And no way of lighting it again."
"Bah!"
"But Mr. Spilett..."
"Isn't Cyrus here?" answered the reporter. "Isn't our engineer alive? He'll find a way to make us a fire, all right!"
"And with what?"
"With nothing."
What could Pencroff have said to that? He would have said nothing, because deep down he shared the faith his companions had in Cyrus Smith. To them the engineer was a world in miniature, a compound of all human science and all human intelligence! They would rather be with Cyrus on a desert island than without Cyrus in the busiest industrial city in the Union. With him, they could want for nothing. With him, they could not lose hope. If someone had come and told these good people that a volcanic eruption was about to wipe out this land, that this land was about to sink into the depths of the Pacific, they would have answered, without turning a hair: "Cyrus is here! Ask Cyrus!"
In the meantime, though, the engineer had sunk back into an exhaustion brought on by being carried, and for the moment no one could call on his ingenuity. Supper was bound to be very thin. All the grouse meat had been eaten, and there was no way to cook any kind of game at all. Besides, the couroucous they had been keeping in reserve had disappeared. They would have to think of something.
First of all, Cyrus Smith was carried into the central passage. There they managed to make him a bed of seaweed and wrack that had stayed more or less dry. The deep sleep that had taken hold of him could only bring his strength back quickly — better, no doubt, than a big meal would have done.
Night had fallen, and with it the temperature dropped sharply, as the wind shifted round to the northeast. And since the sea had destroyed the walls Pencroff had built at certain points in the passages, drafts swept through, and the Chimneys became hardly fit to live in. So the engineer would have been in a rather bad way if his companions had not taken off their jackets and sailor's jerseys and carefully covered him with them.
Supper that evening was nothing but those inevitable lithodomes, which Harbert and Nab gathered in great quantities on the beach. To these shellfish, though, the boy added a certain amount of edible seaweed, which he collected on high rocks whose sides the sea could only wet at the time of the highest tides. This seaweed, which belonged to the family of the wracks, was a kind of sargassum. When it is dried it gives a jellylike substance that is fairly rich in nourishment. So the reporter and his companions, after swallowing a considerable quantity of lithodomes, sucked on this sargassum and found its taste quite bearable — and it must be said that along the coasts of Asia it makes up a good part of what the local people eat.
"All the same," said the sailor, "it's time Mr. Cyrus came to our rescue."
Meanwhile the cold grew bitter, and unfortunately there was no way to fight it.
The sailor, truly annoyed, tried every means he could think of to get a fire. Nab even helped him in the attempt. He had found some dry moss, and by striking two pebbles together he got sparks. But the moss was not flammable enough and did not catch. Besides, those sparks were only glowing bits of flint, and they did not have the body of the sparks that fly from the piece of steel in an ordinary flint and steel. So the attempt failed.
Next Pencroff, though he had no faith at all in the method, tried rubbing two pieces of dry wood together, the way the islanders do. Certainly, the motion he and Nab put into it, if it had all been turned into heat, as the new theories say it can be, would have been enough to boil a steamer's boiler! The result was nothing. The pieces of wood got warm, and that was all — and even then a good deal less warm than the workers themselves.
After an hour of work Pencroff was dripping with sweat, and he threw the pieces of wood down in disgust.
"When they get me to believe the islanders light fires that way," he said, "it'll be hot even in winter! I'd sooner set my arms on fire by rubbing them together!"
The sailor was wrong to deny the method. It is a well-established fact that such peoples set wood alight by rubbing it fast. But not every kind of wood will do for it, and then there is "the knack," as the saying goes, and Pencroff very probably did not have "the knack."
Pencroff's bad temper did not last long. Harbert had picked up the two pieces of wood the sailor had thrown away and was doing his best to rub them harder than ever. The sturdy sailor could not hold back a burst of laughter at the sight of the boy's efforts to succeed where he himself had failed.
"Rub, my boy, rub!" he said.
"I am rubbing," answered Harbert, laughing, "but all I'm trying to do is warm myself up in my turn instead of shivering, and soon I'll be as hot as you are, Pencroff!"
Which is what happened. Be that as it may, they had to give up getting a fire for that night. Gédéon Spilett repeated for the twentieth time that Cyrus Smith would not be stumped by so small a thing. And in the meantime he stretched out in one of the passages, on the bed of sand. Harbert, Nab and Pencroff did the same, while Top slept at his master's feet.
The next day, March 28, when the engineer woke up at about eight o'clock in the morning, he saw his companions beside him, waiting for him to wake, and, as on the day before, his first words were:
"Island or continent?"
As you can see, it was his one fixed idea.
"Well," answered Pencroff, "we don't know anything about that, Mr. Smith!"
"You still don't know?..."
"But we'll find out," Pencroff added, "once you've piloted us around this country."
"I think I'm up to trying," answered the engineer, who, without too much effort, got up and stood on his feet.
"Now that's good!" cried the sailor.
"What I was dying of was mostly exhaustion," answered Cyrus Smith. "My friends, a little food, and you won't be able to tell. You have a fire, don't you?"
This question did not get an answer right away. But after a few moments:
"Alas! We have no fire," said Pencroff, "or rather, Mr. Cyrus, we don't have one anymore!"
And the sailor told the story of what had happened the day before. He amused the engineer with the tale of their one and only match, and then his failed attempt to make fire the way the islanders do.
"We'll think of something," answered the engineer, "and if we can't find some substance like tinder..."
"Well?" asked the sailor.
"Well, we'll make matches."
"Chemical ones?"
"Chemical ones!"
"It's as simple as that!" cried the reporter, clapping the sailor on the shoulder.
The sailor did not think it was quite so simple, but he did not argue. They all went outside. The weather had turned fine again. A bright sun was rising over the horizon of the sea and sprinkling flecks of gold over the rough, prism-shaped faces of the enormous wall.
After a quick look around him, the engineer sat down on a block of rock. Harbert offered him a few handfuls of mussels and sargassum, saying:
"It's all we've got, Mr. Cyrus."
"Thank you, my boy," answered Cyrus Smith. "It will do — for this morning, at least."
And he ate this meager food with a good appetite, washing it down with a little fresh water, drawn from the river in a big shell.
His companions watched him without speaking. Then, after eating his fill as well as he could, Cyrus Smith folded his arms and said:
"So, my friends, you still don't know whether fate has thrown us onto a continent or onto an island?"
"No, Mr. Cyrus," answered the boy.
"We'll know tomorrow," the engineer went on. "Until then, there's nothing to be done."
"Yes, there is," Pencroff replied.
"What, then?"
"Fire," said the sailor, who had his fixed idea too.
"We'll make one, Pencroff," answered Cyrus Smith. "While you were carrying me yesterday, didn't I see a mountain to the west that towers over this country?"
"Yes," answered Gédéon Spilett, "a mountain that must be fairly high..."
"Good," the engineer went on. "Tomorrow we'll climb to its summit, and we'll see whether this land is an island or a continent. Until then, I say again, there's nothing to be done."
"Yes, there is — fire!" said the stubborn sailor once more.
"But we will make a fire!" Gédéon Spilett replied. "A little patience, Pencroff!"
The sailor looked at Gédéon Spilett in a way that seemed to say, "If it's up to you to make it, we won't be tasting a roast anytime soon!" But he held his tongue.
Cyrus Smith, meanwhile, had not answered. He seemed very little concerned with this question of fire. For a few moments he stayed lost in thought. Then he spoke again.
"My friends," he said, "our situation may be wretched, but in any case it is very simple. Either we're on a continent, and then, at the cost of more or less hard work, we'll reach some inhabited place; or else we're on an island. In that case, it's one of two things: if the island is inhabited, we'll see about getting out of our fix with the help of its inhabitants; if it's deserted, we'll see about getting out of our fix all by ourselves."
"Nothing could be simpler, that's certain," answered Pencroff.
"But continent or island," asked Gédéon Spilett, "where do you think this hurricane has thrown us, Cyrus?"
"I can't know exactly," answered the engineer, "but the odds favor a land in the Pacific. When we left Richmond, the wind was blowing from the northeast, and its very violence proves that its direction can't have changed. If it held that course, from northeast to southwest, we crossed the states of North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia, the Gulf of Mexico, Mexico itself at its narrow part, and then a portion of the Pacific Ocean. I put the distance the balloon traveled at no less than six or seven thousand miles, and if the wind shifted by even half a point of the compass, it must have carried us either to the Mendaña archipelago — the Marquesas — or to the Tuamotus, or even, if it blew faster than I suppose, as far as New Zealand. If that last guess is right, getting home will be easy. English or Maori, we'll always find someone to talk to. If, on the other hand, this coast belongs to some desert island in a Micronesian archipelago, perhaps we'll be able to see as much from the top of that cone that towers over the country — and then we'll set about settling here as if we were never going to leave!"
"Never!" cried the reporter. "You say 'never,' my dear Cyrus?"
"Better to assume the worst right away," answered the engineer, "and save only the best for a surprise."
"Well said!" Pencroff replied. "And let's hope too that this island, if it is one, won't lie right off the shipping lanes! That would be bad luck indeed!"
"We won't know where we stand until we've climbed the mountain, and that comes before anything else," answered the engineer.
"But tomorrow, Mr. Cyrus," asked Harbert, "will you be up to the strain of the climb?"
"I hope so," answered the engineer, "but on condition that Master Pencroff and you, my boy, prove to be clever and skillful hunters."
"Mr. Cyrus," answered the sailor, "since you mention game — if I were as sure of being able to roast it when I got back as I am of bringing it back..."
"Bring it back anyway, Pencroff," answered Cyrus Smith.
So it was agreed that the engineer and the reporter would spend the day at the Chimneys, so as to examine the shoreline and the plateau above. Meanwhile Nab, Harbert and the sailor would go back to the forest, renew the supply of wood, and lay hands on any creature with feathers or fur that came within their reach.
So they set off at about ten o'clock in the morning, Harbert confident, Nab cheerful, Pencroff muttering to himself:
"If I find a fire at home when I get back, it'll be because the thunder came in person to light it!"
All three climbed back up the bank, and when they reached the bend in the river, the sailor stopped and said to his two companions:
"Do we start as hunters or as woodcutters?"
"Hunters," answered Harbert. "Look, Top's already on the scent."
"Then let's hunt," the sailor went on. "We'll come back here afterward and lay in our wood."
That said, Harbert, Nab and Pencroff tore three sticks from the trunk of a young fir and followed Top, who was bounding through the tall grass.
This time, instead of following the course of the river, the hunters plunged more directly into the very heart of the forest. The trees were the same as before, most of them belonging to the pine family. In certain places, where they grew less crowded and stood apart in clumps, these pines reached a great size, and their growth seemed to show that this country lay at a higher latitude than the engineer supposed. A few clearings, bristling with stumps worn away by time, were covered with dead wood, and so made inexhaustible stores of fuel. Then, past the clearing, the undergrowth closed in again and became almost impossible to get through.
Finding the way among these thickets of trees, with no beaten path, was rather difficult. So every now and then the sailor marked his route by breaking a few branches in a way that would be easy to recognize. But perhaps he had been wrong not to go up along the stream, as he and Harbert had done on their first excursion, for after an hour's walk not a single head of game had shown itself. Top, running under the low branches, startled only birds that no one could get near. Even the couroucous were nowhere to be seen, and it was likely that the sailor would be forced to go back to that marshy part of the forest where he had made his lucky grouse fishing.
"Hey, Pencroff," said Nab in a slightly sarcastic tone, "if that's all the game you promised to bring back to my master, it won't take much of a fire to roast it!"
"Patience, Nab," answered the sailor. "It won't be game we're short of on the way back!"
"So you don't have faith in Mr. Smith?"
"I do."
"But you don't believe he'll make a fire?"
"I'll believe it when the wood's blazing in the hearth."
"It will blaze, because my master said so!"
"We'll see!"
The sun, meanwhile, had not yet reached the highest point of its course above the horizon. So the exploring went on, and it was usefully marked by Harbert's discovery of a tree whose fruit could be eaten. It was the stone pine, which produces an excellent nut, much prized in the temperate regions of America and Europe. These nuts were perfectly ripe, and Harbert pointed them out to his two companions, who feasted on them.
"Well," said Pencroff, "seaweed for bread, raw mussels for meat, and nuts for dessert — that's the dinner of people who haven't got a single match left in their pockets, all right!"
"We mustn't complain," answered Harbert.
"I'm not complaining, my boy," answered Pencroff. "I'm only saying again that meat is a little too scarce in this kind of meal!"
"Top's seen something!..." cried Nab, and he ran toward a thicket into which the dog had disappeared, barking. Mixed with Top's barking were some peculiar grunts.
The sailor and Harbert had followed Nab. If there was game in there, this was not the moment to argue about how they could cook it, but about how they could catch it.
The hunters had hardly entered the thicket when they saw Top struggling with an animal, which he was holding by one ear. This four-footed beast was a kind of pig about two and a half feet long, blackish brown but lighter on the belly, with hair that was coarse and fairly thin. Its toes, pressed hard against the ground just then, seemed to be joined by webs of skin.
Harbert thought he recognized the animal as a capybara — that is, one of the largest members of the order of rodents.
The capybara, however, was not fighting the dog. It was stupidly rolling its big eyes, which sat deep in a thick layer of fat. Perhaps it was seeing men for the first time.
Nab, meanwhile, had tightened his grip on his stick and was about to knock the rodent senseless, when it tore itself free of Top's teeth — Top kept only a scrap of its ear — let out a mighty grunt, rushed at Harbert, half knocked him over, and vanished into the woods.
"Ah, the scoundrel!" cried Pencroff.
At once all three had dashed off on Top's trail, and just as they were about to catch up with him, the animal disappeared under the water of a large pond, shaded by tall pines centuries old.
Nab, Harbert and Pencroff had stopped and stood motionless. Top had thrown himself into the water, but the capybara, hidden at the bottom of the pond, did not show itself again.
"Let's wait," said the boy, "because it'll soon come up to the surface to breathe."
"Won't it drown?" asked Nab.
"No," answered Harbert, "since it has webbed feet and it's almost an amphibian. But let's watch for it."
Top had stayed in the water, swimming. Pencroff and his two companions each took up a position at a different point on the bank, to cut off every escape for the capybara, which the dog was looking for as he swam about the surface of the pond.
Harbert was not mistaken. After a few minutes the animal came back up above the water. With one bound Top was on it, and kept it from diving again. A moment later the capybara, dragged to the bank, was knocked dead with a blow of Nab's stick.
"Hurrah!" cried Pencroff, who liked to use that cry of triumph. "Just one glowing coal, and this rodent will be gnawed right down to the bone!"
Pencroff hoisted the capybara onto his shoulder, and judging by the height of the sun that it must be about two o'clock, he gave the signal to head back.
Top's instinct was a great help to the hunters, who, thanks to the intelligent animal, were able to find the way they had already come. Half an hour later they reached the bend in the river.
Just as he had the first time, Pencroff quickly put together a timber raft — though, with no fire, it seemed a useless job to him — and, with the raft following the current, they made their way back toward the Chimneys.
But the sailor was not fifty paces from them when he stopped, let out another tremendous hurrah, and, stretching his hand toward the corner of the cliff, shouted:
"Harbert! Nab! Look!"
Smoke was escaping and swirling up above the rocks!
An invention of the engineer's — The question that worries Cyrus Smith — Setting out for the mountain — The forest — Volcanic ground — The tragopans — The mouflons — The first plateau — Camp for the night — The summit of the cone
A few moments later the three hunters were standing before a crackling fire. Cyrus Smith and the reporter were there. Pencroff looked from one to the other without a word, his capybara in his hand.
"Well, yes, my good fellow," cried the reporter. "Fire, real fire, that's going to roast this magnificent game to perfection, and we'll be feasting on it before long!"
"But who lit it?" asked Pencroff.
"The sun!"
Gédéon Spilett's answer was exactly right. It was the sun that had supplied the heat Pencroff was marveling at. The sailor could not believe his eyes, and he was so dumbfounded that it did not even occur to him to question the engineer.
"So you had a lens, sir?" Harbert asked Cyrus Smith.
"No, my boy," he answered, "but I made one."
And he showed them the device that had served him as a lens. It was simply the two glasses he had taken off the reporter's watch and his own. He had filled the space between them with water and sealed their edges together with a little clay, and so he had made himself a real lens. Focusing the sun's rays on a bit of very dry moss, it had set the moss burning.
The sailor studied the device, then looked at the engineer without saying a word. But his look said a great deal! If Cyrus Smith was not a god to him, he was certainly more than a man. At last Pencroff found his voice again, and he cried:
"Write that down, Mr. Spilett, write that down on your paper!"
"It's written down," answered the reporter.
Then, with Nab's help, the sailor set up the spit, and the capybara, properly cleaned, was soon roasting like an ordinary suckling pig in front of a bright, crackling flame.
The Chimneys had become livable again, not only because the passages were warming up from the fire, but because the partitions of stones and sand had been rebuilt.
As you can see, the engineer and his companion had made good use of the day. Cyrus Smith had almost entirely recovered his strength, and he had tested it by climbing to the plateau above. From there his eye, trained to judge heights and distances, had rested for a long time on the cone whose peak he meant to reach the next day. The mountain, about six miles off to the northwest, seemed to him to stand three thousand five hundred feet above sea level. So an observer posted on its summit would be able to sweep the horizon for a radius of at least fifty miles. It was therefore likely that Cyrus Smith would easily settle the question of "continent or island," which he put, not without reason, ahead of every other.
They had a proper supper. The capybara meat was declared excellent. The sargassum and the stone-pine nuts rounded out the meal, during which the engineer said little. He was absorbed in the next day's plans.
Once or twice Pencroff put forward a few ideas about what ought to be done, but Cyrus Smith, who was clearly a methodical mind, merely shook his head.
"Tomorrow," he kept saying, "we'll know where we stand, and we'll act accordingly."
When the meal was over, fresh armfuls of wood were thrown on the fire, and the occupants of the Chimneys, faithful Top included, fell into a deep sleep. Nothing disturbed that peaceful night, and the next morning, March 29, they woke fresh and rested, ready to set out on the expedition that was to decide their fate.
Everything was ready for the start. What was left of the capybara could feed Cyrus Smith and his companions for another twenty-four hours. Besides, they fully expected to find more food along the way. Since the glasses had been put back on the engineer's and the reporter's watches, Pencroff burned a little more of the linen that was to serve as tinder. As for flint, there would be no shortage of it in ground of volcanic origin like this.
It was half past seven in the morning when the explorers, armed with sticks, left the Chimneys. On Pencroff's advice, it seemed best to take the road they had already traveled through the forest, even if they came back by another way. It was also the most direct route to the mountain. So they turned the southern corner and followed the left bank of the river, leaving it at the point where it bent toward the southwest. They found the path they had already beaten under the evergreens, and at nine o'clock Cyrus Smith and his companions reached the western edge of the forest.
The ground, fairly level until then — marshy at first, then dry and sandy — now showed a gentle slope, rising from the shore toward the interior of the country. A few very shy animals had been glimpsed among the tall trees. Top was quick to flush them, but his master called him back at once, for this was no time to chase them. Later on, they would see. The engineer was not a man to be distracted from his one fixed idea. In fact, you would not have been wrong to say that he was not looking at the country at all, neither at its lay of the land nor at what grew and lived there. His only goal was the mountain he meant to climb, and he went straight for it.
At ten o'clock they halted for a few minutes. On leaving the forest, they had seen the whole system of the mountains spread before them. The mountain was made of two cones. The first, cut off flat at a height of about two thousand five hundred feet, was propped up by oddly shaped buttresses of rock, which seemed to branch out like the talons of an immense claw clamped down on the ground. Between these spurs lay as many narrow valleys, bristling with trees, whose last clumps climbed all the way up to the flat top of the first cone. The vegetation, however, seemed thinner on the side of the mountain that faced northeast, and there they could make out fairly deep streaks that must have been lava flows.
On the first cone sat a second one, slightly rounded at its top and tilted a little to one side. It looked like a huge round hat cocked over one ear. It seemed to be made of bare earth, pierced in many places by reddish rocks.
It was the summit of this second cone that they needed to reach, and the ridge of the spurs ought to offer the best route to it.
"We're on volcanic ground," Cyrus Smith had said, and his companions, following him, began to climb little by little along the back of one of the spurs. It wound its way up in a snaking line, which made it easier going, and ended at the first plateau.
The ground swelled in many places into lumps and blisters; volcanic forces had plainly thrown it into convulsions. Here and there lay stray boulders, plentiful fragments of basalt, pumice stones, and obsidian. In isolated clumps rose the same kind of conifers that, a few hundred feet lower, at the bottom of the narrow gorges, formed thick groves almost impenetrable to the sun.
During this first part of the climb, on the lower slopes, Harbert pointed out tracks that showed large animals had passed by recently — wild beasts, or something else.
"Those creatures may not hand their territory over to us without a fight," said Pencroff.
"Well," answered the reporter, who had already hunted tigers in India and lions in Africa, "we'll see about getting rid of them. But in the meantime, let's keep on our guard!"
All the while they were climbing, little by little. The way was long, made longer by detours and by obstacles that could not be crossed head-on. Sometimes, too, the ground suddenly dropped away, and they found themselves at the edge of deep crevasses that had to be gone around. Retracing their steps like this to find some passable track cost them time and effort. At noon, when the little band stopped for lunch at the foot of a large clump of firs, beside a small stream that went tumbling off in a cascade, they were still only halfway to the first plateau. From then on it seemed unlikely they would reach it before nightfall.
From that spot the sea horizon spread out more widely. But on the right their view was stopped by the sharp headland to the southeast, and they could not tell whether the coast turned back abruptly to join some land lying behind it. To the left, their line of sight gained a few miles to the north. But from the northwest onward, from where the explorers stood, it was cut off sharply by the ridge of a strangely shaped spur, which formed a kind of mighty buttress for the central cone. So they still could not guess the answer to the question Cyrus Smith wanted to settle.
At one o'clock they took up the climb again. They had to bear off toward the southwest and push once more into fairly thick undergrowth. There, under cover of the trees, several pairs of game birds of the pheasant family fluttered about. They were "tragopans," decorated with a fleshy wattle hanging down over the throat and with two thin, round horns set just behind the eyes. Among these pairs, each bird about the size of a rooster, the female was brown all over, while the male was resplendent in red plumage sprinkled with little white teardrops. Gédéon Spilett killed one of these tragopans with a stone thrown hard and true, and Pencroff, made ravenous by the open air, eyed it with more than a little longing.
After leaving this thicket, the climbers boosted one another up on their shoulders and scaled a very steep bank for a hundred feet. They reached a higher level, with few trees, where the ground began to look volcanic. Now they had to work back toward the east, zigzagging to make the slopes easier, for they had become very steep, and each of them had to choose carefully where he put his foot. Nab and Harbert led the way and Pencroff brought up the rear, with Cyrus and the reporter between them. The animals that lived on these heights — and there was no lack of tracks — had to belong to those sure-footed, nimble-backed breeds, the chamois or their Pyrenean cousins the izards. They saw a few of them, but that was not the name Pencroff gave them, for at one point he shouted:
"Sheep!"
Everyone had stopped fifty paces from half a dozen large animals with strong horns that curved back and flattened toward the tips, and with a woolly fleece hidden under long, silky, tawny hair.
These were not ordinary sheep, but a species widely found in the mountain regions of the temperate zones, which Harbert named as mouflons.
"Do they have legs of lamb and chops?" asked the sailor.
"Yes," answered Harbert.
"Well, then, they're sheep!" said Pencroff.
The animals stood motionless among the fragments of basalt and stared in astonishment, as though they were seeing two-legged humans for the first time. Then, their fear suddenly awakened, they vanished, bounding away over the rocks.
"So long!" Pencroff called after them, in a tone so comical that Cyrus Smith, Gédéon Spilett, Harbert and Nab could not help laughing.
The climb went on. On some of the slopes they often noticed traces of lava, very oddly streaked. Little solfataras — vents that breathe out sulfurous steam — sometimes cut across the route the climbers were following, and they had to skirt around the edges. In a few places the sulfur had settled out as crystal crusts, amid the materials that usually come before an outpouring of lava: pozzolana, volcanic grit with irregular grains, heavily roasted, and whitish ash made of countless tiny crystals of feldspar.
As they drew near the first plateau, formed where the lower cone was cut off flat, the climb became very hard indeed. By about four o'clock they had passed the highest belt of trees. All that remained, here and there, were a few twisted, scrawny pines, which must have had a tough life to hold out against the great winds off the sea at that height. Luckily for the engineer and his companions, the weather was fine and the air still, for a strong breeze at an altitude of three thousand feet would have hampered their movements. The clearness of the air let them feel the purity of the sky overhead. A perfect calm reigned around them. They could no longer see the sun, which was now hidden by the vast screen of the upper cone. That screen blocked out the western half of the horizon, and its enormous shadow, stretching all the way to the shore, grew longer as the radiant sun sank on its daily course. A few vapors, more mist than cloud, were beginning to appear in the east, and the sun's rays tinted them with every color of the spectrum.
Only five hundred feet now separated the explorers from the plateau they wanted to reach to make camp for the night. But those five hundred feet grew into more than two miles because of the zigzags they had to make. The ground was practically giving way under their feet. The slopes were often so steep that they slid on the lava flows wherever the grooves, worn smooth by the weather, did not give them enough of a foothold. Evening was gradually coming on, and it was nearly night when Cyrus Smith and his companions, worn out by a seven-hour climb, arrived on the plateau of the first cone.
Now the business was to set up camp and get their strength back, first by eating supper and then by sleeping. This second level of the mountain rose from a base of rocks, and among them they easily found a sheltered spot. Fuel was not plentiful. Still, they could make a fire from the mosses and dry brush that bristled over parts of the plateau. While the sailor built his hearth on stones he set out for the purpose, Nab and Harbert busied themselves gathering fuel for it. They soon came back with their loads of brush. The flint and steel were struck, the burnt linen caught the sparks, and under Nab's breath a crackling fire grew up within a few moments in the shelter of the rocks.
This fire was meant only to fight off the rather cold night air. It was not used to cook the pheasant, which Nab was saving for the next day. The rest of the capybara and a few dozen stone-pine nuts made up the supper. It was not yet half past six, and everything was finished.
Cyrus Smith then had the idea of exploring, in the half-darkness, the wide circular shelf that held up the upper cone of the mountain. Before he took any rest, he wanted to know whether the base of that cone could be walked around, in case its sides proved too steep to climb all the way to the top. The question weighed on his mind, because it was possible that on the side toward which the hat tilted — that is, toward the north — the plateau would be impassable. And if the summit could not be reached on the one hand, and the base of the cone could not be circled on the other, there would be no way to examine the western part of the country, and the purpose of the climb would partly fail.
So the engineer, paying no attention to how tired he was, left Pencroff and Nab to arrange the sleeping quarters and Gédéon Spilett to write up the day's events, and began to follow the circular rim of the plateau, heading north. Harbert went with him.
The night was fine and still, and the darkness was not yet deep. Cyrus Smith and the boy walked side by side without speaking. In some places the plateau opened out wide in front of them, and they passed easily. In others, blocked by fallen rock, it left only a narrow trail where two people could not walk abreast. After twenty minutes of walking, Cyrus Smith and Harbert even had to stop. From that point on, the slopes of the two cones ran together. There was no longer any shoulder to separate the two parts of the mountain. Going around it on slopes that tilted at nearly seventy degrees became impossible.
But if the engineer and the boy had to give up following a circular path, they were given, in exchange, the chance to climb the cone directly.
For in front of them a deep gash opened in the mass of the mountain. It was the broken-out mouth of the upper crater — its spout, if you like — through which the molten matter had poured out in the days when the volcano was still active. Hardened lava and crusted cinders formed a kind of natural staircase, with broad, well-marked steps, which ought to make the way to the summit easier.
One glance was enough for Cyrus Smith to see how things lay, and without hesitating, with the boy behind him, he plunged into the enormous crevice in the gathering darkness.
There were still a thousand feet to climb. Would the inner slopes of the crater be passable? They would soon find out. The engineer would keep on climbing as long as nothing stopped him. Fortunately, these slopes, long and winding, made a wide spiral, like the thread of a screw, around the inside of the volcano, and that helped them gain height.
As for the volcano itself, there could be no doubt that it was completely extinct. Not a wisp of smoke escaped from its sides. Not a flame showed in its deep hollows. Not a rumble, not a murmur, not a tremor came out of that dark well, which perhaps sank all the way down to the bowels of the earth. Even the air inside the crater carried no trace of sulfurous fumes. This was more than a volcano asleep. It was a volcano dead and gone.
Cyrus Smith's attempt was bound to succeed. Little by little, as he and Harbert climbed the inner walls, they saw the crater widen above their heads. The circle of sky framed by the rim of the cone grew noticeably wider. With almost every step that Cyrus Smith and Harbert took, new stars came into view. The magnificent constellations of that southern sky were blazing. At the zenith shone the splendid Antares, in Scorpius, with its pure brilliance, and not far from it Beta Centauri, which is believed to be the star nearest the Earth. Then, as the crater opened out, there appeared Fomalhaut, in the Southern Fish, and the Southern Triangle, and at last, almost at the south pole of the heavens, the glittering Southern Cross, which takes the place of the North Star in the southern hemisphere.
It was nearly eight o'clock when Cyrus Smith and Harbert set foot on the upper crest of the mountain, at the summit of the cone.
By then it was completely dark, and their eyes could not see more than two miles in any direction. Did the sea surround this unknown land, or was this land joined, to the west, to some continent of the Pacific? It was still impossible to tell. Toward the west, a band of cloud lying sharply drawn along the horizon deepened the darkness, and the eye could not make out whether sky and water met there in one unbroken circle.
But at one point on that horizon a faint glow suddenly appeared, sinking slowly as the cloud rose toward the zenith.
It was the thin crescent of the moon, already about to set. But its light was enough to draw the line of the horizon clearly, now that it stood free of the cloud, and the engineer saw the moon's trembling image reflected for an instant on a surface of water.
Cyrus Smith took the boy's hand, and in a grave voice:
"An island!" he said, just as the crescent moon went out in the waves.
At the top of the cone — Inside the crater — Sea all around — No land in sight — The coast from a bird's-eye view — Rivers and mountains — Is the island inhabited? — Christening the bays, gulfs, capes, rivers and so on — Lincoln Island
Half an hour later Cyrus Smith and Harbert were back at the camp. The engineer told his companions only that the land where chance had thrown them was an island, and that they would decide what to do in the morning. Then everyone settled down to sleep as best he could, and in that hole in the basalt, two thousand five hundred feet above the level of the sea, on a peaceful night, "the islanders" slept deeply.
The next day, March 30, after a quick breakfast made entirely of the roast tragopan, the engineer wanted to climb back up to the summit of the volcano. He meant to take a careful look at the island where he and his friends were imprisoned — imprisoned for life, perhaps, if it lay a long way from any other land, or if it was off the track of the ships that visit the island groups of the Pacific Ocean. This time his companions went with him on the new exploration. They too wanted to see this island, which they were going to ask to supply their every need.
It must have been about seven o'clock in the morning when Cyrus Smith, Harbert, Pencroff, Gédéon Spilett and Nab left the camp. None of them seemed worried about the position he was in. No doubt they had faith in themselves; but it should be pointed out that this faith did not rest on the same ground in Cyrus Smith as in his companions. The engineer was confident because he felt able to wring from this wild nature everything that his companions' lives and his own would need. And they feared nothing precisely because Cyrus Smith was with them. The difference will be understood. Pencroff above all, ever since the business of the fire that had been lit again, would not have despaired for a single moment even if he had found himself on a bare rock, as long as the engineer was on that rock with him.
"Bah!" he said. "We got out of Richmond without permission from the authorities! It would be the very devil if we couldn't manage, one of these days, to get away from a place where nobody's going to stop us!"
Cyrus Smith took the same path as the day before. They went around the cone by way of the plateau that formed a kind of shoulder on the mountain, as far as the mouth of the enormous crevice. The weather was magnificent. The sun was climbing in a clear sky, and its rays covered the whole eastern side of the mountain.
They reached the crater. It was just as the engineer had made it out in the dark: a vast funnel that widened steadily as it rose, to a height of a thousand feet above the plateau. Below the crevice, broad, thick streams of old lava wound down the sides of the mountain, marking the road that the erupted matter had taken down to the lower valleys that cut across the northern part of the island.
The inside of the crater sloped at no more than thirty-five to forty degrees, and it offered neither difficulties nor obstacles to the climb. They could see traces of very ancient lava there, which had probably poured out over the top of the cone before the crevice in the side opened a new way for it.
As for the volcanic chimney that connected the layers deep underground with the crater, no one could judge its depth by eye, because it disappeared into darkness. But as for whether the volcano was completely extinct, there was no doubt about that.
Before eight o'clock Cyrus Smith and his companions were gathered at the top of the crater, on a cone-shaped swelling that bulged up from its northern rim.
"The sea! Sea everywhere!" they cried, as if their lips could not hold back the word that made islanders of them.
The sea indeed — the immense ring of water all around them! Perhaps, in climbing back to the top of the cone, Cyrus Smith had hoped to discover some coast, some nearby island, that he had not been able to make out the evening before in the dark. But nothing appeared, all the way to the edge of the horizon — that is, for more than fifty miles in every direction. No land in sight. Not a sail. All that immensity was empty, and the island sat at the center of a circle that seemed to have no end.
For several minutes the engineer and his companions, silent and motionless, swept their eyes over every point of the ocean. They searched it to its farthest limits. But Pencroff, who had such marvelous powers of sight, saw nothing — and certainly, if any land had risen above the horizon, even if it had shown only as a faint wisp of haze, the sailor would have recognized it beyond any doubt, for nature had set a pair of real telescopes under those eyebrows of his!
From the ocean their eyes turned back to the island, which they looked down on in its entirety, and the first question was asked by Gédéon Spilett, in these words:
"How big can this island be?"
Truly, it did not look very large in the middle of that immense ocean.
Cyrus Smith thought for a few moments. He studied the outline of the island carefully, taking into account the height at which he stood. Then:
"My friends," he said, "I don't think I'm wrong in saying that the island's coastline runs to more than a hundred miles."
"And so its area...?"
"That's hard to judge," the engineer replied, "because the coast is too irregularly cut up."
If Cyrus Smith's estimate was right, the island was very nearly the size of Malta or Zante in the Mediterranean. But it was at once much more irregular and less rich in capes, headlands, points, bays, coves and inlets. Its shape, which was truly strange, caught the eye, and when Gédéon Spilett, at the engineer's suggestion, had sketched its outline, they found that it looked like some fantastic animal — a sort of monstrous pteropod, one of those sea creatures that swim on winglike flaps, lying asleep on the surface of the Pacific.
Here, in fact, is the exact shape of the island, which it is important to describe. The reporter at once drew up a map of it, accurate enough for their needs.
The eastern part of the coast — the part where the castaways had come ashore — was cut back in a broad curve and edged a vast bay, which ended to the southeast in a sharp cape that a point of land had hidden from Pencroff on his first exploration. To the northeast two more capes closed off the bay, and between them ran a narrow gulf that looked like the half-open jaws of some fearsome shark.
From northeast to northwest the coast curved around like the flattened skull of a wild beast, then rose again into a sort of hump that gave no very definite outline to that part of the island, at whose center stood the volcanic mountain.
From there the shore ran fairly evenly north and south. Two-thirds of the way along this stretch it was cut by a narrow inlet, and from that point it ended in a long tail, like the tail of a gigantic alligator.
This tail formed a true peninsula, which stretched more than thirty miles out to sea, counting from the southeast cape of the island already mentioned. It curved around to form a wide-open bay, broadly exposed to the sea, which the lower coast of this so strangely shaped land traced out.
At its narrowest — that is, between the Chimneys and the inlet seen on the west coast at the same latitude — the island measured only ten miles across. But its greatest length, from the jaws in the northeast to the tip of the tail in the southwest, was no less than thirty miles.
As for the interior, its general look was this. The whole southern part, from the mountain down to the shore, was thickly wooded; the northern part was dry and sandy. Between the volcano and the east coast, Cyrus Smith and his companions were quite surprised to see a lake framed by a border of green trees, which they had never suspected was there. Seen from that height, the lake seemed to be at the same level as the sea. But after thinking it over, the engineer explained to his companions that this little sheet of water must lie three hundred feet up, because the plateau that held it was simply a continuation of the one along the coast.
"So it's a freshwater lake?" asked Pencroff.
"It must be," replied the engineer, "because it has to be fed by the water that runs down off the mountain."
"I can see a little river flowing into it," said Harbert, pointing to a narrow stream whose source had to lie somewhere in the foothills to the west.
"So there is," Cyrus Smith replied. "And since that stream feeds the lake, there's probably an outlet somewhere on the side toward the sea, where the overflow escapes. We'll see about that on our way back."
This small, winding stream and the river they already knew made up the island's whole system of waters — at least as far as the explorers could see. Still, under the masses of trees that turned two-thirds of the island into one immense forest, other streams might well be running down to the sea. One even had to suppose so, the region looked so fertile and so rich in the most magnificent specimens of temperate-zone plant life. In the northern part, on the other hand, there was no sign of running water. There might be standing water in the marshy part to the northeast, but that was all. Altogether it was dunes, sand, and a very marked barrenness that stood out sharply against the richness of the soil over the greater part of the island.
The volcano did not stand in the middle of the island. On the contrary, it rose in the northwest region and seemed to mark the border between the two zones. To the southwest, south and southeast, the lower slopes of its foothills disappeared under masses of greenery. To the north, on the other hand, one could follow their branching ridges until they died away in the sandy plains. It was on this side, too, that in the days of eruptions the outpourings had forced their way through, and a broad causeway of lava stretched all the way to the narrow jaws that formed the gulf in the northeast.
Cyrus Smith and his friends stayed an hour like this at the top of the mountain. The island spread out beneath them like a relief map in its different colors: green for the forests, yellow for the sands, blue for the waters. They took it in as a whole. Only the ground hidden under the immense greenery, the floors of the shady valleys, and the insides of the narrow gorges cut into the foot of the volcano escaped their search.
There remained one serious question to settle, a question that was bound to weigh heavily on the castaways' future.
Was the island inhabited?
It was the reporter who asked it, and after the careful examination they had just made of every region of the island, it seemed that the answer could already be no.
Nowhere could they see the work of a human hand. Not a cluster of huts, not a single lonely cabin, not a fishing station on the shore. No smoke rose into the air to betray the presence of man. It was true that some thirty miles separated the watchers from the farthest points — from that tail stretching out to the southwest — and it would have been difficult, even for Pencroff's eyes, to make out a dwelling there. Nor could they lift the curtain of greenery that covered three-quarters of the island and see whether or not it sheltered some village. But as a rule, islanders who live on these small specks of land risen out of the Pacific tend to live along the shore, and the shore seemed to be completely deserted.
Until they had explored it more fully, then, they could take it that the island was uninhabited.
But was it visited, at least from time to time, by the natives of neighboring islands? That question was hard to answer. No land appeared within about fifty miles. But fifty miles can easily be crossed, whether by Malay proas or by the great canoes of the Polynesians. So everything depended on where the island lay — on whether it was isolated in the Pacific or close to some group of islands. Would Cyrus Smith, with no instruments, manage later on to work out its position in latitude and longitude? That would be difficult. While they were in doubt, it was only sensible to take certain precautions against a possible landing by natives from nearby.
The exploration of the island was finished. Its shape had been worked out, its heights measured, its size calculated, its rivers and mountains surveyed. The lie of the forests and the plains had been roughly set down on the reporter's map. All that remained was to go back down the slopes of the mountain and to explore the land from three points of view: its mineral, its plant, and its animal resources.
But before giving his companions the signal to leave, Cyrus Smith spoke to them in his calm, grave voice.
"Here, my friends, is the narrow corner of the earth where the hand of the Almighty has thrown us. This is where we're going to live — for a long time, perhaps. Perhaps, too, some unexpected help will reach us, if a ship happens to pass by chance... I say by chance, because this island is of little importance. It doesn't even offer a harbor where ships could put in, and I'm afraid it lies outside the routes ships usually follow — that is, too far south for the vessels that sail among the island groups of the Pacific, and too far north for those that round Cape Horn on their way to Australia. I don't want to hide anything about our situation from you..."
"And you're right, my dear Cyrus," the reporter replied quickly. "You're dealing with men. They trust you, and you can count on them. Isn't that so, my friends?"
"I'll obey you in everything, Mr. Cyrus," said Harbert, seizing the engineer's hand.
"My master — always and everywhere!" cried Nab.
"As for me," said the sailor, "may I lose my name if I ever shirk the work! And if you're willing, Mr. Smith, we'll make this island into a little America! We'll build towns on it, we'll lay railroads, we'll put up telegraphs, and one fine day, when it's well transformed, well fitted out, well civilized, we'll go and offer it to the government of the Union! Only I ask one thing."
"What's that?" asked the reporter.
"That we stop thinking of ourselves as castaways, and think of ourselves as colonists who've come here to colonize!"
Cyrus Smith could not help smiling, and the sailor's motion was adopted. Then he thanked his companions and added that he was counting on their energy and on the help of Heaven.
"Well then! Off to the Chimneys!" cried Pencroff.
"One moment, my friends," replied the engineer. "I think it would be a good idea to give a name to this island, and to the capes, the headlands and the rivers we can see in front of us."
"A very good idea," said the reporter. "It will make any directions we have to give or follow a lot simpler in the future."
"Right," the sailor went on. "It's already something to be able to say where you're going and where you've come from. At least it feels like you're somewhere."
"The Chimneys, for instance," said Harbert.
"Exactly!" replied Pencroff. "That name was handier already, and it came to me all by itself. Shall we keep the name of the Chimneys for our first camp, Mr. Cyrus?"
"Yes, Pencroff, since that's what you christened it."
"Good. As for the others, that'll be easy," the sailor went on, warming to it. "Let's give them names the way the Robinsons did in those stories Harbert's read me more than once: 'Providence Bay,' 'Sperm Whale Point,' 'Cape Disappointed Hope'...!"
"Or rather the names of Mr. Smith," replied Harbert, "and Mr. Spilett, and Nab...!"
"My name!" cried Nab, with a dazzling grin.
"Why not?" said Pencroff. "'Port Nab' would sound very well! And 'Cape Gédéon'..."
"I'd rather have names taken from our own country," replied the reporter, "names that would remind us of America."
"Yes, for the main ones," said Cyrus Smith then. "For the bays and the seas, I'm all for it. If we give this vast bay to the east the name Union Bay, for example, and this wide indentation to the south the name Washington Bay, and the mountain we're standing on the name Mount Franklin, and that lake spread out below us the name Lake Grant — nothing could be better, my friends. Those names will remind us of our country and of the great citizens who have honored it. But for the rivers, the gulfs, the capes and the headlands we can see from the top of this mountain, let's choose names that call up their particular shapes instead. They'll stick better in our minds, and they'll be more practical too. The shape of the island is strange enough that we won't have any trouble thinking up names that fit the picture. As for the streams we don't know yet, the different parts of the forest that we'll explore later, and the coves we discover from here on, we'll christen them as they come along. What do you think, my friends?"
The engineer's proposal was adopted unanimously by his companions. The island lay there before their eyes like an unfolded map, and all they had to do was put a name to each of its coves and points and each of its heights. Gédéon Spilett would write them down as they went, and the island's geography would be fixed once and for all.
First of all, the two bays and the mountain were named Union Bay, Washington Bay and Mount Franklin, as the engineer had proposed.
"Now," said the reporter, "for that peninsula that juts out from the southwest of the island, I propose the name Serpentine Peninsula, and for the curled-up tail at the end of it, Reptile End — because it really is a reptile's tail."
"Adopted," said the engineer.
"Now," said Harbert, "the other end of the island, that gulf that looks so oddly like a pair of open jaws — let's call it Shark Gulf."
"Well found!" cried Pencroff. "And we'll finish the picture by calling the two sides of the jaws Mandible Cape."
"But there are two capes," the reporter pointed out.
"Well then," replied Pencroff, "we'll have North Mandible Cape and South Mandible Cape."
"They're written down," replied Gédéon Spilett.
"That leaves the point at the southeast end of the island to name," said Pencroff.
"You mean the end of Union Bay?" replied Harbert.
"Claw Cape!" Nab cried at once. He too wanted to be godfather to some piece of his new domain.
And truly Nab had found an excellent name, for that cape really did look like the powerful claw of the fantastic animal that this so strangely outlined island represented.
Pencroff was delighted with the way things were going, and their imaginations, a little overexcited by now, soon produced the following:
For the river that supplied the colonists with drinking water, and near which the balloon had thrown them, the name of the Mercy — a real word of thanks to Providence.
For the islet where the castaways had first set foot, the name of Safety Islet.
For the plateau that crowned the high granite wall above the Chimneys, from which the eye could take in the whole vast bay, the name of Prospect Plateau.
And finally, for the whole mass of impenetrable woods that covered Serpentine Peninsula, the name of the Far West forests.
That completed the naming of the parts of the island that could be seen and were known. Later on it would be filled out as new discoveries were made.
As for the island's orientation, the engineer had worked it out roughly from the height and position of the sun, which put Union Bay and the whole of Prospect Plateau to the east. But the next day, by taking the exact times of sunrise and sunset, and noting the sun's position at the moment exactly halfway between the two, he meant to fix the island's true north precisely. For since the island lay in the Southern Hemisphere, the sun at the precise moment of its highest point in the sky passed to the north, not to the south, as it seems to do in its apparent motion for places in the Northern Hemisphere.
So everything was done, and the colonists had only to go back down Mount Franklin and return to the Chimneys, when Pencroff suddenly cried out:
"Well! What a pack of scatterbrains we are!"
"Why's that?" asked Gédéon Spilett, who had closed his notebook and was getting up to leave.
"What about our island? What! We forgot to christen it!"
Harbert was about to propose giving it the engineer's name, and all his companions would have applauded, when Cyrus Smith said simply:
"Let's name it after a great citizen, my friends, the man who is fighting right now to defend the unity of the American republic! Let's call it Lincoln Island!"
Three hurrahs were the answer to the engineer's proposal.
And that evening, before they fell asleep, the new colonists talked about their faraway country. They spoke of the terrible war that was soaking it in blood. They could not doubt that the South would soon be beaten, and that the cause of the North, the cause of justice, would triumph — thanks to Grant, thanks to Lincoln!
Now, this was March 30, 1865, and they little knew that sixteen days later a dreadful crime would be committed in Washington, and that on Good Friday Abraham Lincoln would fall to the bullet of a fanatic.
Setting the watches — Pencroff is satisfied — A suspicious smoke — The course of Red Creek — The plants of Lincoln Island — The animals — Mountain pheasants — The kangaroo chase — The agouti — Lake Grant — Back to the Chimneys
The colonists of Lincoln Island took one last look around them. They walked the circuit of the crater along its narrow rim, and half an hour later they were back down on the first plateau, at the place where they had camped for the night.
Pencroff decided it was time for lunch, and that brought up the question of setting the two watches, Cyrus Smith's and the reporter's.
Gédéon Spilett's watch, as we know, had been spared by the seawater, since the reporter had been thrown up on the sand at the very start, out of reach of the waves. It was an excellently made instrument, a true pocket chronometer, and Gédéon Spilett had never once forgotten to wind it carefully every day.
The engineer's watch, on the other hand, had of course stopped during the time Cyrus Smith had spent in the dunes.
So the engineer wound it, and, judging from the height of the sun that it must be about nine o'clock in the morning, he set his watch to that hour.
Gédéon Spilett was about to do the same when the engineer stopped him with a hand and said:
"No, my dear Spilett, wait. You've kept Richmond time, haven't you?"
"Yes, Cyrus."
"So your watch is set to the meridian of that city — a meridian that's very nearly the same as Washington's?"
"Of course."
"Well, then, keep it that way. Just wind it very carefully every day, but don't touch the hands. It may be useful to us."
"What good will that do?" thought the sailor.
They ate, and ate so well that the store of game and almonds was completely used up. But Pencroff was not the least bit worried. They would stock up again along the way. Top, whose share had been a very meager one, would surely find some new game under cover of the thickets. Besides, the sailor was thinking of simply asking the engineer to make some gunpowder and one or two hunting guns, and he imagined that this would present no difficulty at all.
As they left the plateau, Cyrus Smith proposed to his companions that they take a new route back to the Chimneys. He wanted to get a look at Lake Grant, so magnificently framed by its border of trees. So they followed the crest of one of the spurs of the mountain, between which the creek that fed the lake probably had its source. As they talked, the colonists were already using nothing but the names they had just chosen, and that made it remarkably easier to share their ideas. Harbert and Pencroff — the one young, the other a bit of a child himself — were delighted with them, and as they walked the sailor said:
"Ha! Harbert! Look how well it works! We can't possibly get lost now, my boy, because whether we take the road by Lake Grant or cut through the Far West forests to the Mercy, we're bound to come out on Prospect Plateau, and so at Union Bay!"
It had been agreed that the colonists, without marching in a tight group, would not stray too far from one another. It was quite certain that some dangerous animals lived in the island's thick forests, and it was wise to stay on guard. Most of the time Pencroff, Harbert, and Nab walked in front, with Top ahead of them nosing into every corner. The reporter and the engineer went along together: Gédéon Spilett ready to note down any incident, the engineer silent most of the time, stepping off his path only to pick up now one thing, now another — some mineral or plant substance — which he put in his pocket without a word of comment.
"What the devil does he keep picking up?" Pencroff muttered. "I can look all I like, and I don't see a thing worth bending over for!"
Toward ten o'clock the little band was coming down the last slopes of Mount Franklin. So far the ground was dotted only with bushes and a few scattered trees. They were walking on yellowish, scorched earth, which formed a plain about a mile long in front of the edge of the woods. Big blocks of basalt lay strewn across the plain, which was very rough and broken in places — basalt of the kind that, according to Bischof's experiments, needed three hundred and fifty million years to cool. Still, there was no trace of lava, which had poured out mostly down the northern slopes.
Cyrus Smith expected, then, to reach the course of the creek without incident. By his reckoning it ought to wind along under the trees at the edge of the plain. Just then he saw Harbert running back in a hurry, while Nab and the sailor ducked out of sight behind the rocks.
"What is it, my boy?" asked Gédéon Spilett.
"Smoke," answered Harbert. "We saw smoke rising between the rocks, a hundred paces from us."
"Men, here?" exclaimed the reporter.
"Let's not show ourselves until we know who we're dealing with," answered Cyrus Smith. "If there are natives on this island, I'd rather fear them than hope for them. Where's Top?"
"Top's up ahead."
"And he isn't barking?"
"No."
"That's odd. All the same, let's try to call him back."
In a few moments the engineer, Gédéon Spilett, and Harbert had joined their two companions, and like them they hid behind some broken chunks of basalt.
From there they could see, very clearly, a column of smoke swirling as it rose into the air — smoke of a very distinctive yellowish color.
Top, called back by a soft whistle from his master, returned, and his master, signaling to his companions to wait for him, slipped off between the rocks.
The colonists waited without moving, a little anxious to learn the result of this scouting, when a call from Cyrus Smith brought them running. They joined him at once, and the first thing that struck them was the unpleasant smell that filled the air.
That smell, easy to recognize, had been enough to tell the engineer what the smoke was — the smoke that must have worried him at first, and not without reason.
"This fire," he said, "or rather this smoke, is nature's doing and nobody else's. It's nothing but a sulfur spring, which will let us give our sore throats a proper treatment."
"Fine!" cried Pencroff. "What a shame I haven't got a cold!"
The colonists then made their way toward the spot the smoke was coming from. There they found a sodium-sulfur spring, flowing quite abundantly between the rocks. Its waters, once they had absorbed oxygen from the air, gave off a strong smell of hydrogen sulfide — the rotten-egg gas.
Cyrus Smith dipped his hand in and found the water oily to the touch. He tasted it and judged that it had a slightly sweetish flavor. As for its temperature, he put it at ninety-five degrees Fahrenheit. And when Harbert asked him what he based this estimate on, he said:
"Quite simply, my boy, on the fact that when I put my hand into this water, I felt no sensation of cold or of heat. So it's at the same temperature as the human body, which is about ninety-five degrees."
Then, since the sulfur spring offered nothing they could use for the moment, the colonists headed for the dense edge of the forest, which began a few hundred paces away.
There, just as they had guessed, the stream ran its lively, clear waters between high banks of red earth, whose color showed the presence of iron oxide. That color at once gave the stream its name: Red Creek.
It was really only a wide brook, deep and clear, formed by the waters coming off the mountain. Half river, half torrent — here flowing quietly over the sand, there roaring over the tops of rocks or plunging down in a cascade — it ran toward the lake for a mile and a half, varying between thirty and forty feet wide. Its water was fresh, which suggested that the lake's water must be fresh too. That was a lucky thing, in case they found on its shores a better place to live than the Chimneys.
As for the trees that shaded the banks of the creek a few hundred feet downstream, most of them belonged to species that are plentiful in the temperate zone of Australia or Tasmania, and no longer to the conifers that bristled over the part of the island already explored, a few miles from Prospect Plateau. At this time of year — the beginning of April, which in this hemisphere corresponds to October, that is, to the start of autumn — they had not yet lost their leaves. Most of them were casuarinas and eucalyptus trees, some of which would yield, the following spring, a sugary manna just like the manna of the East. Clumps of Australian cedars rose here and there in the clearings, which were covered in the tall grass known as "tussock" in New Holland, as Australia was then called. But the coconut palm, so plentiful in the archipelagos of the Pacific, seemed to be missing from the island, whose latitude was doubtless too high.
"What a pity!" said Harbert. "Such a useful tree, with such wonderful nuts!"
As for birds, they swarmed among the rather sparse branches of the eucalyptus and the casuarinas, which left them plenty of room to spread their wings. Black, white, and gray cockatoos; parrots and parakeets in plumage shaded with every color; "kings," a brilliant green and crowned with red; blue lories; "blue mountains" — they seemed to be seen only through a prism, and they fluttered about in a deafening chatter.
All of a sudden a strange concert of clashing voices rang out from the middle of a thicket. One after another, the colonists heard birdsong, the cries of four-footed animals, and a sort of clicking of the tongue that they might have thought came from the lips of a native. Nab and Harbert had rushed toward the bush, forgetting the most basic rules of caution. Very luckily there was no dangerous wild beast there, and no hostile native either — only half a dozen of those mocking, singing birds which they recognized as "mountain pheasants." A few well-aimed blows with a stick brought the imitation show to an end, and provided an excellent piece of game for that evening's dinner.
Harbert also pointed out some magnificent pigeons with bronze-colored wings, some topped with a superb crest, others draped in green like their cousins at Port Macquarie in Australia. But it was impossible to get at them, any more than at the crows and magpies that flew off in flocks. A single shot of birdshot would have brought down these birds by the dozen, but the hunters were still reduced to stones for throwing weapons and sticks for hand weapons, and those primitive tools fell a long way short.
Just how far short became even clearer when a troop of four-footed animals went bounding off over the thickets — hopping, leaping, making jumps of thirty feet, regular flying mammals — so nimbly and so high that you might have thought they were jumping from tree to tree like squirrels.
"Kangaroos!" cried Harbert.
"And can you eat them?" replied Pencroff.
"Stewed," answered the reporter, "they're as good as the finest venison!..."
Gédéon Spilett had not finished that exciting sentence before the sailor, followed by Nab and Harbert, was off on the kangaroos' trail. Cyrus Smith called them back, in vain. But it was in vain, too, that the hunters were going to chase this springy game, which bounced along like a rubber ball. After five minutes of running they were out of breath, and the troop was vanishing into the brush. Top had had no more luck than his masters.
"Mr. Cyrus," said Pencroff, once the engineer and the reporter had caught up with him, "Mr. Cyrus, you can see we absolutely have to make guns. Is that going to be possible?"
"Perhaps," the engineer answered. "But we'll start by making bows and arrows, and I have no doubt you'll get to be as skillful with them as the Australian hunters."
"Bows and arrows!" said Pencroff, with a scornful face. "That's for children!"
"Don't be so proud, friend Pencroff," the reporter answered. "For centuries bows and arrows were enough to drench the world in blood. Gunpowder only dates from yesterday, and war is as old as the human race — unfortunately!"
"Upon my word, that's true, Mr. Spilett," replied the sailor, "and I always talk too fast. You'll have to forgive me!"
Meanwhile Harbert, wrapped up in his favorite science, natural history, came back to the kangaroos.
"Anyway," he said, "those were the hardest kind to catch. They were giants with long gray fur. But if I'm not mistaken there are also black kangaroos and red kangaroos, rock kangaroos, and rat kangaroos, which are easier to get hold of. People count about a dozen species..."
"Harbert," the sailor replied solemnly, "as far as I'm concerned there's only one species of kangaroo — the kangaroo-on-a-spit — and that's exactly the one we'll be missing tonight!"
Nobody could help laughing at Master Pencroff's new system of classification. The good sailor made no secret of his regret at being reduced to singing pheasants for dinner. But fortune was about to smile on him once again.
Top, in fact, knew very well that his own interests were at stake, and he went ferreting about everywhere with an instinct sharpened by a ferocious appetite. It was even likely that if any game fell into his jaws there would not be much of it left for the hunters, and that Top was hunting on his own account just then. But Nab was keeping an eye on him, and a good thing too.
Toward three o'clock the dog disappeared into the brushwood, and soon some low growls told them that he was grappling with some animal.
Nab dashed in, and sure enough he found Top greedily devouring a four-footed creature which ten seconds later it would have been impossible to identify inside Top's stomach. But very luckily the dog had come upon a whole nest of them. He had made a triple catch, and two other rodents — for the animals in question belonged to that order — lay strangled on the ground.
So Nab came back in triumph, holding one of the rodents in each hand. They were bigger than a hare. Their yellow coats were mixed with greenish spots, and their tails were only stubs.
Citizens of the Union could not hesitate over the proper name for these rodents. They were "maras," a kind of agouti, a little bigger than their relatives in the tropical countries — true American rabbits, with long ears, and with jaws armed on each side with five molars, which is exactly what sets them apart from the agoutis.
"Hurrah!" cried Pencroff. "The roast has arrived! And now we can go home!"
The march, interrupted for a moment, began again. Red Creek still rolled its clear waters along under a vault of casuarinas, banksias, and gigantic gum trees. Superb lily plants rose as high as twenty feet. Other tree-like species, unknown to the young naturalist, leaned out over the stream, which they could hear murmuring beneath these green arbors.
Meanwhile the stream was growing noticeably wider, and Cyrus Smith was inclined to think they would soon reach its mouth. And indeed, as they came out of a thick stand of fine trees, there it was all at once.
The explorers had arrived on the western shore of Lake Grant. The place was well worth looking at. This sheet of water, about seven miles around and covering two hundred and fifty acres, lay in a border of many kinds of trees. To the east, through a curtain of greenery lifted here and there as if to frame a picture, a sparkling horizon of sea appeared. To the north the lake traced a gently curving inward line, which contrasted with the sharp outline of its lower tip. Large numbers of water birds frequented the shores of this little Ontario, whose namesake's "Thousand Islands" were represented by a single rock sticking up out of the water a few hundred feet from the southern shore. On it lived several pairs of kingfishers, all together, perched on some stone, grave and motionless, watching for fish to go by — then darting, diving with a shrill cry, and coming up again with their prey in their beaks. Elsewhere, on the shores and on the islet, strutted wild ducks, pelicans, moorhens, red-bills, and philedons, which are equipped with a tongue shaped like a paintbrush, and one or two specimens of those splendid lyrebirds whose tails spread out like the graceful arms of a lyre.
As for the water of the lake, it was fresh and clear, a little dark, and from certain bubblings, and from the rings that spread out and crossed one another on its surface, there could be no doubt that it was full of fish.
"It's really beautiful, this lake!" said Gédéon Spilett. "A person could live on its shores!"
"A person will!" answered Cyrus Smith.
The colonists, wanting now to go back to the Chimneys by the shortest way, went down to the corner formed at the south where the lake's shores met. They forced their way, not without trouble, through thickets and brushwood that no human hand had ever yet pushed aside, and in this way they headed for the shore, so as to come out at the northern end of Prospect Plateau. They covered two miles in that direction, and then, past the last curtain of trees, the plateau appeared, carpeted with thick grass, and beyond it the endless sea.
To get back to the Chimneys, they had only to cross the plateau on a slant for a mile and then go down to the elbow formed by the first bend of the Mercy. But the engineer wanted to find out how, and where, the lake's overflow escaped, and so the exploration was stretched out under the trees for a mile and a half to the north. It was likely, in fact, that there was a spillway somewhere, probably through a gap in the granite. The lake, after all, was nothing but an immense basin that had slowly filled up with the flow of the creek, and its overflow had to be draining away to the sea by some waterfall or other. If that was so, the engineer thought it might be possible to put that waterfall to use and borrow its power, which at present was going to waste and doing no one any good. So they kept following the shores of Lake Grant, climbing up the plateau. But after going another mile in that direction, Cyrus Smith had still not found the spillway, which nevertheless had to exist.
It was half past four by then. Dinner had to be got ready, and that meant the colonists had to go home. So the little band turned back, and by the left bank of the Mercy, Cyrus Smith and his companions reached the Chimneys.
There the fire was lit, and Nab and Pencroff, the colony's natural cooks, briskly grilled the agoutis, and everyone did them full justice.
When the meal was over, just as each of them was about to settle down to sleep, Cyrus Smith pulled out of his pocket some small samples of different kinds of minerals, and said only this:
"My friends, this is iron ore, this is pyrite, this is clay, this is lime, this is coal. That is what nature gives us, and that is nature's share of the common work! Tomorrow, ours!"
What they found on Top — Making bows and arrows — A brickworks — The pottery kiln — Various cooking pots — The first stew — Mugwort — The Southern Cross — An important astronomical observation
"Well, Mr. Cyrus, where do we start?" Pencroff asked the engineer the next morning.
"At the beginning," answered Cyrus Smith.
And in fact it was at the very "beginning" that these colonists were going to be forced to start. They did not even have the tools needed to make tools. They were not even in the position of nature, which, "having time, saves effort." Time was exactly what they lacked, since they had to provide at once for the needs of daily life. Thanks to the experience of the human race they had nothing to invent, but at least they had everything to make. Their iron and their steel were still only ore, their pottery was still only clay, and their linen and their clothes were still only raw fiber.
It must be said, though, that these colonists were "men" in the finest and strongest sense of the word. The engineer could not have had more intelligent companions to help him, or more devoted and eager ones. He had questioned them. He knew what each of them could do.
Gédéon Spilett, a reporter of great talent, who had learned everything so that he could talk about everything, would contribute a great deal, with his head and with his hands, to the colonizing of the island. He would shrink from no task, and as a passionate hunter he would now make a trade of what until then had been only a pleasure.
Harbert, a fine boy, already remarkably well schooled in the natural sciences, was going to be a real asset to the common cause.
Nab was devotion itself. Skillful, intelligent, tireless, strong, with an iron constitution, he knew something of blacksmith's work and could only be extremely useful to the colony.
As for Pencroff, he had been a sailor on every ocean, a carpenter in the Brooklyn shipyards, a tailor's assistant aboard navy ships, and a gardener and a farmhand during his shore leaves, and so on. Like all seamen, he was fit for anything and knew how to do everything.
It would truly have been hard to bring together five men better fitted to struggle against fate, or more certain of winning.
"At the beginning," Cyrus Smith had said. And the beginning the engineer meant was building a piece of equipment that could be used to transform natural materials. Everyone knows the part that heat plays in such transformations. Fuel, whether wood or coal, could be used at once. So the task was to build a kiln to burn it in.
"What will the kiln be for?" asked Pencroff.
"For making the pottery we need," answered Cyrus Smith.
"And what will we make the kiln out of?"
"Bricks."
"And the bricks?"
"Clay. Let's go, my friends. To save ourselves hauling things back and forth, we'll set up our workshop right where the materials are. Nab will bring provisions, and there'll be no shortage of fire for cooking food."
"No," the reporter answered, "but what if there's a shortage of food, for lack of anything to hunt with?"
"Ah! If only we had a knife!" cried the sailor.
"Well?" asked Cyrus Smith.
"Well! I'd make a bow and arrows in no time, and there'd be plenty of game in the pantry!"
"Yes, a knife, a sharp blade..." said the engineer, as though he were talking to himself.
At that moment his eyes fell on Top, who was running back and forth along the shore.
Suddenly Cyrus Smith's face lit up.
"Top, here!" he said.
The dog came running at his master's call. The engineer took Top's head in his hands, unfastened the collar the animal wore around his neck, and broke it in two, saying:
"There are two knives, Pencroff!"
The sailor answered with two cheers. Top's collar was made of a thin strip of tempered steel. All they had to do was grind it first on a sandstone to bring the edge to a bare, sharp angle, and then take off the wire edge, the rough burr the grinding leaves, on a finer sandstone. Rock of that gritty kind was plentiful on the beach, and two hours later the colony's tool kit consisted of two sharp blades, which it had been easy to fit into sturdy handles.
The winning of this first tool was hailed as a triumph. And a precious winning it was, and it came at just the right moment.
They set off. Cyrus Smith meant to go back to the western shore of the lake, where the day before he had noticed the clayey soil he had brought a sample of. So they followed the bank of the Mercy, crossed Prospect Plateau, and after a walk of five miles at most they came to a clearing two hundred paces from Lake Grant.
On the way, Harbert had found a tree whose branches the Indians of South America use to make their bows. It was the "crejimba," a member of the palm family that bears no edible fruit. They cut long, straight branches, stripped them of leaves, and trimmed them, leaving them thicker in the middle and thinner at the ends. Now all that remained was to find a plant fit to make the bowstring. They found it in a species of the mallow family, an "Hibiscus heterophyllus," which supplied fibers so remarkably tough they could have been compared to animal sinews. In this way Pencroff got himself bows of considerable power, and the only thing they still lacked was arrows. The shafts were easy to make from straight, stiff branches without knots. But the head that had to tip them, something that could take the place of iron, was not going to be so easy to come by. Pencroff told himself, though, that since he had done his share of the work, luck would do the rest.
The colonists had arrived at the patch of ground they had explored the day before. It was made of the potter's clay that is used to make bricks and tiles, so it was very well suited to the job they had in hand. The work itself presented no difficulty. They only had to temper the clay with sand, so that it would not be too sticky, mold the bricks, and bake them in the heat of a wood fire.
Usually bricks are pressed into molds, but the engineer was satisfied to make them by hand. The whole day, and the next one, went into this work. The clay was soaked with water, then worked and kneaded with the feet and fists of the workmen, and then divided into blocks of equal size. A practiced workman can turn out as many as ten thousand bricks in twelve hours without a machine. But in their two days of work the five brickmakers of Lincoln Island made no more than three thousand. These were laid out side by side until they were completely dry and ready to be fired, which would be in three or four days.
It was on April 2 that Cyrus Smith set about fixing the island's orientation — finding exactly where north lay.
The evening before, he had noted the exact time at which the sun disappeared below the horizon, allowing for the refraction of the air, which makes the sun seem higher than it is. That morning he noted just as exactly the time at which it reappeared. Between that sunset and that sunrise, twelve hours and twenty-four minutes had passed. So six hours and twelve minutes after it rose, the sun, on that day, would cross the meridian exactly, and the point in the sky it occupied at that moment would be north. (At that time of year, and in that latitude, the sun was rising at 5:33 in the morning and setting at 6:17 in the evening.)
At the appointed time Cyrus took a sighting on that point. He lined up two trees with the sun, to serve him as markers, and in this way he obtained a fixed north-south line for all his later work.
During the two days before the bricks were fired, everyone was busy laying in fuel. Branches were cut all around the clearing, and they gathered up all the dead wood that had fallen under the trees. This did not happen without a little hunting in the neighborhood, all the more since Pencroff now had a few dozen arrows tipped with very sharp points. It was Top who had supplied those points, by bringing back a porcupine. As game it was fairly poor, but it was undeniably valuable for the quills that bristled all over it. These quills were fixed firmly to the ends of the arrows, and feathers from cockatoos were fitted to the other ends to make them fly true. The reporter and Harbert soon became very skillful archers. And so game of every kind, furred and feathered, poured into the Chimneys: capybaras, pigeons, agoutis, heath cocks, and more. Most of these animals were killed in the part of the forest on the left bank of the Mercy, which they named Jacamar Wood, in memory of the bird Pencroff and Harbert had chased on their first exploration.
This game was eaten fresh, but they saved the capybara hams. They seasoned them with fragrant leaves and then smoked them over a fire of green wood. Still, this very nourishing food was always roast after roast, and the diners would have been happy to hear a simple stew bubbling on the hearth. But for that they had to wait until the pot was made — which meant waiting until the kiln was built.
During these outings, which never went more than a short distance from the brickworks, the hunters found signs that large animals had passed by recently, animals armed with powerful claws, though they could not tell what species they were. So Cyrus Smith urged them to be extremely careful, because it was likely that the forest sheltered some dangerous wild beasts.
He was right to do it. One day, in fact, Gédéon Spilett and Harbert caught sight of an animal that looked like a jaguar. Luckily the beast did not attack them, because they might not have got away without some serious wound. But Gédéon Spilett promised himself that as soon as he had a real weapon — one of those guns Pencroff kept asking for — he would wage relentless war on the wild beasts and rid the island of them.
During those few days nothing was done to make the Chimneys more comfortable, since the engineer expected to discover, or if need be to build, a better place to live. They were content to spread a fresh bed of moss and dry leaves over the sand of the passages, and on these rather primitive beds the exhausted workers slept the sleep of the just.
They also worked out how many days had passed on Lincoln Island since the colonists had landed there, and from then on they kept a regular count. On April 5, which was a Wednesday, it had been twelve days since the wind had thrown the castaways onto this coast.
On April 6, at dawn, the engineer and his companions gathered in the clearing at the spot where the bricks were to be fired. Naturally this operation had to be done in the open air and not in kilns. Or rather, the pile of bricks would itself be one enormous kiln that would bake itself. The fuel, made of carefully prepared bundles of brushwood, was laid out on the ground, and around it they built several courses of dried bricks, which soon formed a great cube, with vents left in its outer walls to let the fire draw. This work took the whole day, and only in the evening did they set fire to the brushwood.
That night nobody went to bed, and they watched carefully to make sure the fire did not die down.
The firing lasted forty-eight hours and was a complete success. Then the smoking mass had to be left to cool. In the meantime Nab and Pencroff, guided by Cyrus Smith, hauled several loads of calcium carbonate — that is, limestone, a very common stone, which was plentiful north of the lake — on a hurdle made of woven branches. When these stones were broken down by heat, they gave a quicklime that was very rich, that swelled up a great deal when it was slaked with water, and that was in the end as pure as if it had been made by burning chalk or marble. Mixed with sand, which keeps the paste from shrinking as it hardens, this lime made an excellent mortar.
The result of all this work was that on April 9 the engineer had a good quantity of lime ready to use, and a few thousand bricks.
So, without losing a moment, they began building a kiln for firing the various kinds of pottery they needed for everyday household use. They managed it without much trouble. Five days later the kiln was loaded with coal from the open-air seam the engineer had discovered near the mouth of Red Creek, and the first smoke was pouring out of a chimney some twenty feet high. The clearing had been turned into a factory, and Pencroff was not far from believing that every product of modern industry was about to come out of that kiln.
In the meantime, what the colonists made first was a plain, coarse pottery, but one very well suited for cooking. The raw material was the very clay of the ground, to which Cyrus Smith had them add a little lime and some quartz. This paste was in fact real "pipe clay," the white clay that tobacco pipes are made from. Out of it they made pots; cups, molded over pebbles of suitable shapes; plates; big jars and tubs to hold water; and so on. These objects were clumsy and lopsided. But once they had been fired at a high temperature, the kitchen of the Chimneys found itself supplied with a number of utensils as precious as if they had been made of the finest porcelain clay.
It must be mentioned here that Pencroff, eager to find out whether this clay, prepared in this way, deserved its name of "pipe clay," made himself a few rather rough pipes. He thought they were charming, but alas, there was no tobacco to put in them! And it has to be said that this was a great hardship for Pencroff.
"But the tobacco will come, like everything else!" he kept saying, in his bursts of absolute confidence.
This work lasted until April 15, and it will be understood that the time was conscientiously spent. The colonists, turned potters, did nothing but make pottery. When it suited Cyrus Smith to turn them into blacksmiths, they would be blacksmiths. But since the next day was a Sunday, and Easter Sunday at that, they all agreed to keep it holy by resting. These Americans were religious men, who carefully observed the teachings of the Bible, and the situation they had been placed in could only deepen their trust in the Maker of all things.
On the evening of April 15, then, they went back to the Chimneys for good. The rest of the pottery was carried along with them, and the kiln was let go out until it was needed for something new. The return was marked by a lucky event: the engineer discovered something that could take the place of tinder. Everyone knows that tinder, that spongy, velvety flesh, comes from a certain mushroom, a bracket fungus of the genus Polyporus. Properly prepared, it catches fire extremely easily, especially if it has first been soaked in gunpowder or boiled in a solution of potassium nitrate or potassium chlorate. But until then they had not found any of those fungi, nor even any of the morels that can stand in for them. That day, though, the engineer recognized a certain plant belonging to the genus Artemisia, the mugworts, whose chief species include wormwood, southernwood, tarragon, genepi, and others. He pulled up several clumps, and holding them out to the sailor, he said:
"Here, Pencroff, this will make you happy."
Pencroff looked closely at the plant, which was covered with long, silky hairs, and whose leaves were coated in a cottony down.
"Eh! What's this, Mr. Cyrus?" asked Pencroff. "Good heavens! Is it tobacco?"
"No," answered Cyrus Smith. "It's artemisia — Chinese mugwort to the scientists — and for us it's going to be tinder."
And in fact this mugwort, once properly dried, did give them a substance that caught fire very easily, especially later on, when the engineer had soaked it in potassium nitrate, of which the island had several beds — and potassium nitrate is nothing other than saltpeter.
That evening all the colonists gathered in the central chamber and ate a proper supper. Nab had made an agouti stew and a seasoned capybara ham, and with them they had the boiled tubers of "Caladium macrorhizum," a kind of herbaceous plant of the arum family, which in the tropics would have grown into the shape of a tree. These rootstocks tasted excellent and were very nourishing, much like the substance sold in England under the name of "Portland sago," and up to a point they could take the place of bread, which the colonists of Lincoln Island still did not have.
When supper was over, before turning in for the night, Cyrus Smith and his companions went out to take the air on the beach. It was eight o'clock in the evening. The night promised to be magnificent. The moon, which had been full five days before, had not yet risen, but the horizon was already silvering with those soft, pale tints that might be called the moon's dawn. At the southern zenith the constellations that circle the pole were shining in all their splendor, and among them all the Southern Cross, which the engineer had greeted a few days before from the top of Mount Franklin.
Cyrus Smith watched that splendid constellation for some time. It carries two stars of the first magnitude at its top and its foot, a star of the second magnitude on its left arm, and one of the third magnitude on its right.
Then, after some thought, he asked the boy:
"Harbert, isn't today April 15?"
"Yes, Mr. Cyrus," answered Harbert.
"Well, unless I'm mistaken, tomorrow will be one of the four days of the year when true time and mean time are the same. That means, my boy, that tomorrow, to within a few seconds, the sun will cross the meridian exactly at noon by the clocks. So if the weather's fine, I think I'll be able to get the island's longitude to within a few degrees."
"Without instruments? Without a sextant?" asked Gédéon Spilett.
"Yes," the engineer went on. "And since the night is clear, I'm going to try this very evening to get our latitude, by working out the height of the Southern Cross — that is, of the south pole — above the horizon. You understand, my friends, that before we take on any serious work of settling in, it isn't enough to have found out that this land is an island. We have to find out, as nearly as we can, how far it lies from the American continent, or from the Australian continent, or from the main island groups of the Pacific."
"Right," said the reporter. "Instead of building a house, it might be in our interest to build a boat, if we happen to be only a hundred miles or so from an inhabited coast."
"That's why," Cyrus Smith continued, "I'm going to try tonight to get the latitude of Lincoln Island, and tomorrow at noon I'll try to work out its longitude."
If the engineer had had a sextant — an instrument that uses mirrors to measure the angle between two distant objects with great precision — the operation would have presented no difficulty at all. That evening, from the height of the pole, and the next day, from the sun's passage across the meridian, he would have had the island's coordinates. But since he had no such instrument, he had to make up for it.
So Cyrus Smith went back into the Chimneys. By the light of the fire he whittled two small flat rulers and joined them together at one end, so as to make a kind of pair of compasses whose legs could be spread apart or brought together. The joint was held by a strong acacia thorn, taken from the dead wood of the woodpile.
When this instrument was finished, the engineer went back to the beach. But he had to take the height of the pole above a sharply drawn horizon — that is, a sea horizon — and Claw Cape hid the horizon to the south from him, so he had to look for a better place to observe from. The best would obviously have been the stretch of coast facing directly south, but to get there he would have had to cross the Mercy, which was deep at that point, and that was a problem.
Cyrus Smith therefore decided to make his observation from Prospect Plateau, and to allow for its height above sea level — a height he planned to work out the next day by a simple method of elementary geometry.
So the colonists made their way up onto the plateau, climbing along the left bank of the Mercy, and took their places on the edge that ran from northwest to southeast — that is, on the line of oddly jagged rocks that bordered the river.
This part of the plateau stood some fifty feet higher than the heights on the right bank, which sloped down two ways, to the tip of Claw Cape and to the island's southern coast. So nothing blocked the view, which took in half the horizon, from the cape all the way to Reptile End. To the south, that horizon, lit from below by the first glow of the moon, stood out sharply against the sky and could be sighted on with fair precision.
At that moment the Southern Cross appeared to the observer upside down, with the star Alpha marking its foot, the end nearer the south pole.
This constellation does not lie as close to the south pole as the North Star does to the north pole. Alpha is about twenty-seven degrees from it. But Cyrus Smith knew this and meant to allow for that distance in his calculation. He also took care to observe it at the moment when it was crossing the meridian below the pole, which would make his work simpler.
So Cyrus Smith aimed one leg of his wooden compasses at the sea horizon and the other at Alpha, as he would have aimed the telescopes of a repeating circle, and the opening between the two legs gave him the angle that separated Alpha from the horizon. To fix the angle so that it could not change, he pinned the two little boards of his instrument with thorns onto a third one laid across them, so that the spread between them was held firm.
Once that was done, all that remained was to work out the angle he had obtained, correcting the observation to sea level so as to allow for the dip of the horizon — the way a horizon seen from a height lies a little below the true level — and that meant measuring the height of the plateau. The value of this angle would then give the height of Alpha above the horizon, and from it the height of the pole above the horizon — in other words, the island's latitude, since the latitude of any point on the globe is always equal to the height of the pole above that point's horizon.
These calculations were put off until the next day, and by ten o'clock everyone was sound asleep.
Measuring the granite wall — An application of the theorem of similar triangles — The latitude of the island — An excursion to the north — An oyster bed — Plans for the future — The sun crosses the meridian — The coordinates of Lincoln Island
The next day, April 16 — Easter Sunday — the colonists came out of the Chimneys at first light and set about washing their linen and cleaning their clothes. The engineer meant to make soap as soon as he could get hold of the raw materials soap-making calls for: soda or potash, and fat or oil. The all-important question of renewing their wardrobe would also be dealt with in its own time and place. In any case, their clothes would easily last another six months, because they were sturdy and could stand up to the wear and tear of manual work. But everything would depend on where the island lay in relation to inhabited lands. That was what would be settled this very day, if the weather allowed.
And the sun, rising over a clear horizon, promised a magnificent day, one of those beautiful autumn days that are like the warm season's last goodbye.
So the task was to complete the data from the evening before by measuring the height of Prospect Plateau above sea level.
"Don't you need an instrument like the one you used yesterday?" Harbert asked the engineer.
"No, my boy," he answered. "We're going to go about it another way, and one that's very nearly as precise."
Harbert, who loved to learn about everything, followed the engineer, who walked away from the foot of the granite wall and down to the edge of the beach. Meanwhile, Pencroff, Nab, and the reporter busied themselves with various jobs.
Cyrus Smith had brought along a sort of straight pole, about twelve feet long, which he had measured as exactly as he could by comparing it with his own height, which he knew to within a twelfth of an inch. Harbert carried a plumb line that Cyrus Smith had given him — simply a stone tied to the end of a flexible fiber.
When he was about twenty feet from the water's edge and about five hundred feet from the granite wall, which rose straight up, Cyrus Smith drove the pole two feet into the sand. Wedging it carefully, and checking it with the plumb line, he managed to stand it exactly upright — at right angles to the level of the horizon.
That done, he stepped back as far as he needed to so that, lying flat on the sand, he could send his line of sight from his eye past the top of the pole and the crest of the wall at the same time, just grazing both. Then he marked that spot carefully with a peg.
Then he turned to Harbert.
"Do you know the first principles of geometry?" he asked.
"A little, Mr. Cyrus," answered Harbert, who didn't want to claim too much.
"You remember the properties of two similar triangles?"
"Yes," said Harbert. "Their corresponding sides are proportional."
"Well, my boy, I've just built two similar triangles, both of them right triangles. The first, the smaller one, has for its sides the upright pole and the distance from the peg to the foot of the pole, and my line of sight for its hypotenuse. The second has for its sides the upright wall, whose height is what we want to measure, and the distance from the peg to the foot of that wall, and once again my line of sight for its hypotenuse — which happens to be the first triangle's hypotenuse, extended."
"Oh, Mr. Cyrus, I see!" cried Harbert. "Just as the distance from the peg to the pole is in proportion to the distance from the peg to the foot of the wall, the height of the pole is in the same proportion to the height of the wall."
"Exactly, Harbert," the engineer answered. "Once we've measured those first two distances, since we know the height of the pole, we'll only have one proportion to work out. That will give us the height of the wall and save us the trouble of measuring it directly."
The two horizontal distances were taken, using the pole itself as the measuring rod. Its length above the sand was exactly ten feet.
The first distance, between the peg and the point where the pole was driven into the sand, was fifteen feet.
The second distance, between the peg and the foot of the wall, was five hundred feet.
With these measurements finished, Cyrus Smith and the boy went back to the Chimneys.
There the engineer took a flat stone he had brought back from one of his earlier excursions, a kind of slate on which it was easy to scratch figures with a sharp shell. And he set out the following proportion — 15 is to 500 as 10 is to x:
15 : 500 :: 10 : x
500 x 10 = 5000
5000 / 15 = 333.33
From which it was established that the granite wall was three hundred and thirty-three feet high.
Cyrus Smith then picked up the instrument he had made the evening before, whose two little boards, by the spread between them, gave him the angular distance of the star Alpha above the horizon. He measured the opening of that angle very exactly on a circle that he divided into three hundred and sixty equal parts. Now, this angle — once he had added the twenty-seven degrees that separate Alpha from the south pole, and corrected the observation to sea level for the height of the plateau it had been made from — came to fifty-three degrees. Subtract those fifty-three degrees from ninety degrees — the distance from the pole to the equator — and thirty-seven degrees were left. So Cyrus Smith concluded that Lincoln Island lay on the thirty-seventh degree of south latitude; or, allowing for an error of five degrees, given how rough his methods were, that it must lie somewhere between the thirty-fifth and the fortieth parallels.
There remained the longitude, to complete the island's coordinates. The engineer would try to find it that very day at noon — that is, at the moment when the sun crossed the meridian.
It was decided that this Sunday would be spent on a walk, or rather on an exploration of the part of the island lying between the north end of the lake and Shark Gulf, and that, if the weather allowed, they would push the survey on as far as the northern side of South Mandible Cape. They would have lunch in the dunes and not come back until evening.
At half past eight in the morning the little troop was walking along the edge of the channel. On the other side, on Safety Islet, a great many birds were strolling about with a solemn air. They were diving birds of the penguin kind, easy to recognize by their unpleasant cry, which sounds like a donkey's bray. Pencroff considered them only from the point of view of eating, and he learned, not without some satisfaction, that their flesh, though blackish, is quite edible.
They could also see large amphibious animals crawling on the sand — seals, no doubt — which seemed to have chosen the islet as their refuge. There was little point in considering these as food, because their oily flesh is disgusting. Still, Cyrus Smith watched them closely, and, without explaining what he had in mind, he told his companions that very soon they would pay the islet a visit.
The shore the colonists were following was strewn with countless shells, some of which would have delighted any collector of mollusks. Among others there were pheasant shells, lamp shells, trigonias, and so on. But something far more useful was a huge oyster bed, uncovered at low tide, which Nab spotted among the rocks about four miles from the Chimneys.
"Nab hasn't wasted his day!" cried Pencroff, looking at the bed of oysters stretching out from the shore.
"It's a lucky find, all right," said the reporter. "And if it's true, as they say, that every oyster produces fifty to sixty thousand eggs a year, we'll have an inexhaustible supply there."
"Only I don't think oysters are very nourishing," said Harbert.
"No," answered Cyrus Smith. "An oyster contains very little nitrogenous matter — the stuff that builds up the body — and a man who lived on nothing else would need no fewer than fifteen or sixteen dozen a day."
"Fine!" said Pencroff. "We can swallow dozens and dozens of dozens before we use up the bed. How about taking a few for lunch?"
And without waiting for an answer to his proposal, knowing perfectly well that it was approved in advance, the sailor and Nab pried loose a good quantity of the shellfish. They put them in a sort of net made of hibiscus fibers that Nab had put together, which already held the meal's menu. Then they went on up the coast between the dunes and the sea.
Every now and then Cyrus Smith looked at his watch, so as to be ready in time for the observation of the sun, which had to be made at exactly noon.
This whole part of the island was very barren, all the way to the point that closed off Union Bay, the one that had been named South Mandible Cape. There was nothing to see there but sand and shells, mixed with fragments of lava. A few seabirds haunted this desolate coast — gulls, great albatrosses, and wild ducks too, which quite rightly roused Pencroff's appetite. He tried to bring some down with his arrows, but without success, because they hardly ever settled, and he would have had to hit them on the wing.
Which led the sailor to say to the engineer once again:
"You see, Mr. Cyrus, as long as we don't have a hunting gun or two, our equipment's going to leave something to be desired!"
"No doubt, Pencroff," the reporter answered, "but that's entirely up to you! Get us iron for the barrels, steel for the locks, saltpeter, charcoal, and sulfur for the powder, mercury and nitric acid for the fulminate that sets off the charge, and lead for the bullets, and Cyrus will make us first-class guns."
"Oh," answered the engineer, "we'll no doubt be able to find all those substances on the island, but a firearm is a delicate instrument, and it calls for tools of great precision. Well, we'll see later on."
"Why," cried Pencroff, "why did we have to throw overboard all those weapons we had in the basket with us, and our tools, right down to our pocketknives!"
"But if we hadn't thrown them out, Pencroff, the balloon would have thrown us into the bottom of the sea!" said Harbert.
"That's true enough, what you say, my boy!" answered the sailor.
Then, moving on to another idea:
"But now that I think of it," he added, "how flabbergasted Jonathan Forster and his friends must have been the next morning, when they found the place empty and the machine flown away!"
"What they might have thought is the least of my worries!" said the reporter.
"All the same, it was my idea!" said Pencroff, looking pleased with himself.
"A fine idea, Pencroff," answered Gédéon Spilett with a laugh, "and it's put us where we are!"
"I'd rather be here than in the hands of the Southerners!" cried the sailor. "Especially since Mr. Cyrus was kind enough to come and join us!"
"So would I, honestly!" replied the reporter. "Besides, what are we missing? Nothing!"
"Except... everything!" answered Pencroff, bursting out laughing and shaking his broad shoulders. "But one of these days we'll find a way to get out of here!"
"And sooner perhaps than you imagine, my friends," the engineer said then, "if Lincoln Island is only a moderate distance from an inhabited archipelago or a continent. Within an hour we'll know. I don't have a map of the Pacific, but I remember its southern part very clearly. The latitude I got yesterday puts Lincoln Island level with New Zealand to the west and with the coast of Chile to the east. But between those two lands the distance is at least six thousand miles. So what's left is to decide what point the island occupies in that wide stretch of sea, and that's what the longitude will give us in a little while — closely enough, I hope."
"Aren't the Tuamotus the islands nearest to us in latitude?" asked Harbert.
"Yes," answered the engineer, "but they're more than twelve hundred miles away from us."
"And over that way?" asked Nab, who was following the conversation with the greatest interest, and his hand pointed south.
"Over that way, nothing," answered Pencroff.
"Nothing, indeed," the engineer added.
"Well, Cyrus," asked the reporter, "what if Lincoln Island turns out to be only two or three hundred miles from New Zealand or Chile?..."
"Well," answered the engineer, "instead of building a house, we'll build a boat, and Master Pencroff will take charge of sailing her..."
"Why, of course, Mr. Cyrus," cried the sailor, "I'm all ready to become a captain — as soon as you've found a way to build a boat good enough to go to sea!"
"We'll do it, if it's necessary!" answered Cyrus Smith.
But while these men talked — men who truly had doubts about nothing — the hour was drawing near when the observation was to be made. How would Cyrus Smith go about recording the moment the sun crossed the island's meridian, without any instrument at all? That was something Harbert could not guess.
The observers were now six miles from the Chimneys, not far from the part of the dunes where the engineer had been found after his mysterious rescue. They halted at that spot and got everything ready for lunch, since it was half past eleven. Harbert went to fetch fresh water from the stream that ran close by, and he brought it back in a jug Nab had brought along.
While these preparations went on, Cyrus Smith set everything up for his astronomical observation. He chose a perfectly clear spot on the beach that the sea, as it went out, had leveled perfectly smooth. This layer of very fine sand was as flat as a mirror, without a single grain sticking up above the rest. Actually, it didn't matter whether this layer was level or not, and it mattered no more whether the stick, six feet tall, that was planted in it stood exactly upright. On the contrary, the engineer even tilted it toward the south — that is, away from the sun. For we must not forget that the colonists of Lincoln Island, precisely because the island lay in the Southern Hemisphere, saw the radiant sun trace its daily arc above the northern horizon, not above the southern one.
Harbert understood then how the engineer meant to record the sun's culmination — that is, its passage across the island's meridian, or, in other words, local noon. He would do it by means of the shadow the stick cast on the sand, a method that, lacking any instrument, would give him a close enough approximation for the result he wanted.
For the moment when this shadow reached its shortest length would be exactly noon, and it would be enough to follow the tip of the shadow to catch the instant when, after growing steadily shorter, it began to lengthen again. By tilting his stick away from the sun, Cyrus Smith made the shadow longer, and so its changes would be easier to see. After all, the bigger the hand of a dial, the more easily you can follow the movement of its tip. And the stick's shadow was nothing but the hand of a dial.
When he judged that the moment had come, Cyrus Smith knelt on the sand, and, with little wooden markers that he pushed into the sand, he began to mark off the shadow's successive shortenings. His companions, bending over him, followed the operation with the keenest interest.
The reporter held his chronometer in his hand, ready to note the time it showed when the shadow was at its shortest. What's more, since Cyrus Smith was working on April 16 — one of the days when true time and mean time are the same — the time given by Gédéon Spilett would be the true time in Washington at that moment, which would simplify the calculation.
Meanwhile the sun moved slowly on. The stick's shadow shrank little by little, and when it seemed to Cyrus Smith that it was starting to grow again:
"What time is it?" he asked.
"One minute past five," Gédéon Spilett answered at once.
All that was left was to do the arithmetic. Nothing could be easier. There was, as you can see, a difference of five hours, in round numbers, between the meridian of Washington and the meridian of Lincoln Island — that is, it was noon on Lincoln Island when it was already five in the afternoon in Washington. Now, the sun, in its apparent motion around the earth, travels one degree every four minutes, or fifteen degrees an hour. Fifteen degrees multiplied by five hours gave seventy-five degrees.
So, since Washington lies at 77° 3′ 11″ — call it seventy-seven degrees — counted from the meridian of Greenwich, which the Americans, along with the English, take as the starting point for longitude, it followed that the island lay seventy-seven degrees plus seventy-five degrees west of the meridian of Greenwich — that is, at one hundred and fifty-two degrees west longitude.
Cyrus Smith announced this result to his companions. And allowing for errors in the observations, as he had done with the latitude, he felt he could state that Lincoln Island lay between the thirty-fifth and the thirty-seventh parallels, and between the one hundred and fiftieth and the one hundred and fifty-fifth meridians west of Greenwich.
The margin he allowed for errors of observation was, as you can see, five degrees either way. At sixty miles to the degree, that could mean an error of three hundred miles in latitude or in longitude from the true position.
But this error would make no difference to the decision they had to make. It was perfectly obvious that Lincoln Island lay so far from any land or island group that no one could risk crossing that distance in a simple, fragile boat.
In fact, his reckoning put it at least twelve hundred miles from Tahiti and the islands of the Tuamotus, more than eighteen hundred miles from New Zealand, and more than four thousand five hundred miles from the American coast!
And when Cyrus Smith searched his memory, he could not recall that any island at all occupied, in that part of the Pacific, the position assigned to Lincoln Island.
Wintering on the island is settled once and for all — The metallurgical question — Exploring Safety Islet — The seal hunt — An echidna captured — The koula — What is called the Catalan method — Making iron — How steel is obtained
The next morning, April 17, the sailor's first words were for Gédéon Spilett.
"Well, sir," he asked, "what are we going to be today?"
"Whatever Cyrus pleases," the reporter answered.
And so the engineer's companions, who until then had been brickmakers and potters, were about to become metalworkers.
The day before, after lunch, they had carried their exploration as far as the tip of Mandible Cape, nearly seven miles from the Chimneys. There the long line of dunes came to an end, and the ground took on a volcanic look. There were no more high walls of rock like those at Prospect Plateau. Instead, a strange, ragged border framed the narrow gulf between the two capes, and it was made of minerals the volcano had once spewed out. Having reached the point, the colonists had turned back, and they got home to the Chimneys as night was falling. But they did not go to sleep until they had settled, once and for all, whether or not they should think of leaving Lincoln Island.
The twelve hundred miles that lay between the island and the Pomotou Archipelago were a great distance. A small boat would not have been enough to cross it, especially with the bad season coming on. Pencroff had said so flatly. Besides, building even a simple boat was hard work, even with the right tools, and the colonists had no tools at all. They would have to begin by making hammers, axes, adzes, saws, augers, planes and so on, and that would take time. So it was decided that they would spend the winter on Lincoln Island, and that they would look for a more comfortable home than the Chimneys to live in through the winter months.
First of all, they had to put to use the iron ore that the engineer had spotted in a few deposits in the northwest part of the island, and turn that ore into iron or into steel.
As a rule, the ground does not hold metals in a pure state. Most of them are found combined with oxygen or with sulfur. As it happened, of the two samples Cyrus Smith had brought back, one was magnetic iron ore, not a carbonate, and the other was pyrite — in other words, iron sulfide. So it was the first, the iron oxide, that had to be reduced with charcoal or coal — that is, stripped of its oxygen — to get the iron pure. This reduction is done by heating the ore to a high temperature in the presence of the coal. There are two ways of going about it. One is the quick, easy "Catalan method," which has the advantage of turning the ore straight into iron in a single operation. The other is the blast-furnace method, which first turns the ore into cast iron, and then turns the cast iron into iron by taking out of it the three or four percent of carbon combined with it.
Now, what did Cyrus Smith need? Iron, not cast iron, and he had to find the quickest method of reduction. What was more, the ore he had collected was very pure and very rich in itself. It was the kind of magnetic oxide that turns up in shapeless dark-gray masses, gives a black powder when it is ground, crystallizes in regular octahedrons — eight-sided crystals — supplies natural magnets, and is used in Europe to make the finest grades of iron, which Sweden and Norway have in such abundance. Not far from this deposit lay the coal beds the colonists had already been working. That made it very easy to treat the ore, since everything needed for the job was close at hand. It is exactly this that makes the mines of the United Kingdom so prodigiously rich: there the coal that smelts the metal is dug out of the same ground, at the same time, as the ore itself.
"So, Mr. Cyrus," Pencroff said to him, "we're going to work the iron ore?"
"Yes, my friend," the engineer answered, "and to do that — which won't displease you — we'll begin with a seal hunt on the islet."
"A seal hunt!" cried the sailor, turning to Gédéon Spilett. "So it takes seals to make iron?"
"If Cyrus says so!" the reporter answered.
But the engineer had already left the Chimneys, and Pencroff got ready for the seal hunt without getting any further explanation.
Soon Cyrus Smith, Harbert, Gédéon Spilett, Nab and the sailor were gathered on the beach at a spot where the channel left a kind of ford at low tide. The tide was at the very bottom of the ebb, and the hunters were able to cross the channel without getting wet above the knee.
So this was the first time Cyrus Smith had set foot on the islet, and the second time for his companions, since it was there that the balloon had first thrown them down. As they came ashore, a few hundred auks looked at them with innocent eyes. The colonists, armed with sticks, could easily have killed them, but they never thought of carrying out a slaughter that would have been doubly pointless — the more so because it mattered not to frighten the seals, which were lying on the sand a few cable lengths away. They also spared certain perfectly harmless penguins, whose wings had shrunk to stumps and lay flat like flippers, covered with feathers that looked like scales.
So the colonists moved carefully toward the northern point, walking over ground pocked with little hollows, each of them the nest of some water bird. Toward the end of the islet they could see big black spots swimming at the surface of the water. They looked like the tops of reefs on the move.
These were the seals they had come to capture. They had to let them come ashore first. With their narrow hips, their short, close-set fur and their spindle-shaped bodies, seals are excellent swimmers and hard to catch in the sea, while on land their short webbed feet let them do no more than crawl, and not quickly.
Pencroff knew the habits of these animals, and he advised waiting until they had stretched out on the sand in the sunshine, which would soon put them into a deep sleep. Then they would maneuver to cut off their retreat and strike them on the nose.
So the hunters hid behind the rocks along the shore and waited in silence.
An hour went by before the seals came out to play on the sand. There were half a dozen of them. Pencroff and Harbert then slipped away to go around the point of the islet, so as to come up behind the animals and cut off their retreat. Meanwhile Cyrus Smith, Gédéon Spilett and Nab crawled along the rocks and crept toward what was about to become the field of battle.
All of a sudden the sailor's tall figure rose to its full height. Pencroff gave a shout. The engineer and his two companions threw themselves as fast as they could between the sea and the seals. Two of the animals, struck hard, were left dead on the sand, but the others managed to get back to the sea and swim off.
"The seals you ordered, Mr. Cyrus!" said the sailor, walking up to the engineer.
"Good," Cyrus Smith answered. "We'll make forge bellows out of them!"
"Forge bellows!" cried Pencroff. "Well! There's a couple of lucky seals for you!"
It was in fact a blowing machine — a bellows, which the treatment of the ore required — that the engineer meant to make from the skins of these animals. They were of middling size, no more than six feet long, and their heads looked like dogs' heads.
Since there was no point in loading themselves down with the considerable weight of two whole seals, Nab and Pencroff decided to skin them on the spot, while Cyrus Smith and the reporter finished exploring the islet.
The sailor and Nab managed the job skillfully, and three hours later Cyrus Smith had two sealskins at his disposal. He meant to use them just as they were, without tanning them at all.
The colonists had to wait for the tide to go down again, and then they crossed the channel and went home to the Chimneys.
It was no small job to stretch those skins over wooden frames that would hold them open, and to sew them up with fibers so that they could store air without leaking too much. They had to try again several times. Cyrus Smith had nothing to work with but the two steel blades from Top's collar. Even so, he was so skillful, and his companions helped him so intelligently, that three days later the little colony's equipment had grown by one blowing machine. Its job was to drive air into the middle of the ore while it was being heated — a condition the operation could not succeed without.
It was on April 20, first thing in the morning, that what the reporter called in his notes "the metallurgical period" began. The engineer, as we know, had made up his mind to do the work right at the deposits of coal and ore. By his observations, these lay at the foot of the northeast spurs of Mount Franklin, which meant six miles away. So there was no question of coming back to the Chimneys every day, and it was agreed that the little colony would camp in a hut of branches, so that the important operation could be watched over night and day.
With this plan settled, they set out first thing in the morning. Nab and Pencroff dragged the blowing machine on a hurdle — a sledge of woven branches — along with a supply of vegetable and animal food, which they could top up along the way anyway.
The route they took ran through Jacamar Wood, which they crossed on a slant from southeast to northwest, through its thickest part. They had to cut a path, and that path was later to become the most direct road between Prospect Plateau and Mount Franklin. The trees, all of kinds they had already identified, were magnificent. Harbert pointed out some new ones, among them dragon trees, which Pencroff called "stuck-up leeks" — because, for all their height, they belonged to the same lily family as the onion, the chive, the shallot and the asparagus. These dragon trees could supply woody roots that are excellent cooked and that, when left to ferment a certain way, make a very pleasant liquor. They laid in a supply.
This march through the woods was long. It took the whole day, but it gave them a chance to observe the animals and plants. Top, who was more particularly in charge of the animals, ran through the grass and the brush and flushed every kind of game without distinction. Harbert and Gédéon Spilett killed two kangaroos with arrows, and also an animal that looked a great deal like both a hedgehog and an anteater: like the first, because it rolled itself into a ball and bristled with spines; like the second, because it had digging claws, a long thin snout ending in a bird's beak, and a tongue it could shoot out, covered with little barbs that held on to insects. It was an echidna.
"And when he's in the stewpot," Pencroff naturally remarked, "what will he taste like?"
"Like an excellent piece of beef," Harbert answered.
"We won't ask any more of him than that," the sailor answered.
During this outing they caught sight of a few wild boars, which made no attempt to attack the little party. It did not seem likely that they would meet any dangerous beasts — until, in a thick patch of brush, the reporter thought he saw, a few paces away, in the lowest branches of a tree, an animal he took for a bear. He calmly started to sketch it. Very luckily for Gédéon Spilett, the animal in question did not belong to that formidable family of flat-footed walkers the bears belong to. It was only a "koula," better known as a "sloth." It was the size of a big dog, with bristly fur of a dirty color and feet armed with strong claws, which let it climb trees and live on their leaves. Once the creature's identity had been checked — and nobody disturbed it in its business — Gédéon Spilett crossed out "bear" in the caption of his sketch, wrote "koula" in its place, and they went on their way.
At five in the evening Cyrus Smith gave the signal to halt. He was now outside the forest, where the mighty spurs that propped up Mount Franklin on its eastern side began. A few hundred paces off ran Red Creek, so drinking water was close by.
The camp was set up at once. In less than an hour, at the edge of the forest, among the trees, a hut of branches woven through with creepers and plastered with clay offered a good enough shelter. The geological search was put off until the next day. Supper was made ready, a good fire blazed in front of the hut, the spit turned, and by eight o'clock, while one of the colonists stayed awake to keep the fire going in case some dangerous animal came prowling around, the others were sound asleep.
The next day, April 21, Cyrus Smith, with Harbert, went to look for the very old rock formations where he had already found his sample of ore. He came on the deposit right at the surface, almost at the source of the creek, at the foot of the side of one of those northeast spurs. This ore, very rich in iron and set in a gangue — the waste rock around it — that melted easily, was perfectly suited to the method of reduction the engineer meant to use: the Catalan method, but in the simplified form used in Corsica.
The Catalan method proper calls for building furnaces and crucibles, where the ore and the charcoal, laid in alternate layers, are transformed and reduced. But Cyrus Smith intended to save himself all that construction. He simply wanted to build a cube-shaped heap of ore and coal and drive the wind from his bellows into the middle of it. This was no doubt the process used by Tubal-cain, the Bible's first worker in metals, and by the first metalworkers of the inhabited world. And what had worked for the grandsons of Adam, and what still gave good results in countries rich in ore and fuel, could hardly fail in the circumstances the colonists of Lincoln Island found themselves in.
Like the ore, the coal was gathered without trouble, close by and right on the surface. First they broke the ore into small pieces and cleaned the dirt off their surfaces by hand. Then coal and ore were stacked in a heap, in layer after layer — just as a charcoal burner stacks the wood he wants to turn into charcoal. That way, with the air blown in by the bellows, the coal would turn first into carbonic acid and then into carbon monoxide, and the carbon monoxide would reduce the iron oxide — that is, take its oxygen away.
That is how the engineer went about it. The sealskin bellows, fitted at its end with a pipe of fireclay that had been made beforehand in the pottery kiln, was set up next to the heap of ore. It was worked by a mechanism made of frames, fiber ropes and counterweights, and it drove a steady supply of air into the heap. This air raised the temperature, and it also played its part in the chemical change that was to yield pure iron.
The operation was hard. It took all the colonists' patience and all their ingenuity to carry it through, but in the end it succeeded. The final result was a bloom of iron — a lump of spongy metal — which had to be shingled and worked, that is, forged under the hammer, to drive out the melted gangue. Obviously these makeshift blacksmiths had no first hammer to start with. But after all, they were in the same position as the very first metalworker, and they did what he must have done.
The first bloom, fixed onto a stick for a handle, served as a hammer for forging the second on a granite anvil, and in this way they managed to get a metal that was rough but usable.
At last, after a great deal of effort and a great deal of weariness, by April 25 several bars of iron had been forged, and they were being turned into tools — crowbars, pincers, picks, mattocks and so on — which Pencroff and Nab declared to be real jewels.
But it was not as plain iron that this metal could be of most service. It was above all as steel. Now, steel is a combination of iron and carbon, and it is made in one of two ways: either from cast iron, by taking out the carbon it has too much of, or from iron, by adding the carbon it lacks. The first kind, made by decarburizing cast iron, gives natural or puddled steel. The second, made by carburizing iron, gives cementation steel.
So it was this second kind that Cyrus Smith had reason to try to make, since what he had was pure iron. He succeeded by heating the metal with powdered charcoal in a crucible made of fireclay.
Then he worked this steel, which can be shaped by hammering both hot and cold, under the hammer. Nab and Pencroff, skillfully guided, made axe heads. Heated red-hot and plunged suddenly into cold water, these took an excellent temper.
Other tools were made the same way — roughly shaped, it goes without saying: plane blades, axes, hatchets, strips of steel that were to be turned into saws, carpenter's chisels, and then the iron heads for mattocks, shovels and picks, hammers, nails and so on.
At last, on May 5, the first metallurgical period was over. The blacksmiths went home to the Chimneys, and new work would soon entitle them to take on yet another title.
The question of a home comes up again — Pencroff's flights of fancy — An exploration north of the lake — The northern edge of the plateau — The snakes — The far end of the lake — Top uneasy — Top swimming — A fight under the water
It was now May 6, which corresponds to November 6 in the lands of the northern hemisphere. For some days the sky had been growing misty, and it was important to make certain arrangements with the winter in mind. The temperature, however, had not yet dropped noticeably, and a thermometer brought to Lincoln Island would still have shown an average of fifty to fifty-four degrees Fahrenheit. That average should not surprise anyone. Lincoln Island, very probably lying somewhere between the thirty-fifth and fortieth parallels, had to be subject, in the southern hemisphere, to the same climate as Sicily or Greece in the northern. But just as Greece and Sicily have spells of fierce cold that bring snow and ice, so Lincoln Island would no doubt suffer, at the very depth of winter, certain drops in temperature that it would be wise to guard against.
In any case, even if the cold was not yet a threat, the rainy season was close. On this isolated island, out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and exposed to every kind of weather the open sea could throw at it, bad weather was bound to be frequent, and probably terrible.
So the question of a home more comfortable than the Chimneys had to be thought over seriously and settled quickly.
Pencroff, naturally, had a certain fondness for the shelter he had discovered himself. But he understood perfectly well that they had to look for another. The sea had already paid the Chimneys a visit, under circumstances the reader will remember, and they could not risk another accident like that one.
"Besides," added Cyrus Smith, who was talking these things over with his companions that day, "we have some precautions to take."
"Why?" said the reporter. "The island isn't inhabited."
"Probably not," answered the engineer, "although we haven't explored all of it yet. But even if there's no human being here, I'm afraid dangerous animals may be plentiful. So we ought to put ourselves out of reach of a possible attack, and stop making one of us stay up every night to keep a fire going. And then, my friends, we have to plan for everything. We're in a part of the Pacific that's often visited by Malay pirates..."
"What?" said Harbert. "This far from any land?"
"Yes, my boy," answered the engineer. "Those pirates are bold sailors as well as dangerous criminals, and we have to take our measures accordingly."
"Well then," answered Pencroff, "we'll fortify ourselves against wild beasts on two legs and on four. But, Mr. Cyrus, wouldn't it make sense to explore every part of the island before we start on anything?"
"That would be better," added Gédéon Spilett. "Who knows? We might find one of those caves on the opposite coast that we looked for on this one and never found."
"That's true," answered the engineer, "but you're forgetting, my friends, that we ought to settle near running water, and from the top of Mount Franklin we didn't see a single stream or river toward the west. Here, on the other hand, we're right between the Mercy and Lake Grant, and that's a considerable advantage we mustn't throw away. What's more, this coast faces east, so it isn't exposed the way the other one is to the trade winds, which blow from the northwest in this hemisphere."
"Then, Mr. Cyrus," answered the sailor, "let's build a house on the shore of the lake. We aren't short of bricks or tools now. We've been brickmakers, potters, smelters, and blacksmiths. We can certainly manage to be masons too, devil take it!"
"Yes, my friend, but before we decide, we have to look around. A home that nature had built for us at her own expense would save us a great deal of work, and it would probably give us an even safer refuge, because it would be as well defended against enemies from inside the island as against enemies from outside."
"True enough, Cyrus," answered the reporter, "but we've already examined that whole granite mass along the coast, and there isn't a hole in it, not even a crack!"
"No, not one!" added Pencroff. "Ah! If only we could have dug ourselves a home in that wall, high enough up to be out of reach — now that would have suited us! I can see it from here: five or six rooms on the face that looks out to sea..."
"With windows to let the light in!" said Harbert, laughing.
"And a staircase to get up to them!" added Nab.
"You're laughing," cried the sailor, "and why, I'd like to know? What's impossible about what I'm proposing? Don't we have picks and mattocks? Won't Mr. Cyrus know how to make gunpowder for blasting? Isn't that right, Mr. Cyrus — you'll make gunpowder the day we need it?"
Cyrus Smith had listened to the enthusiastic Pencroff as he spun out his somewhat fanciful plans. Attacking that mass of granite, even with blasting charges, would be a Herculean labor, and it really was a pity that nature had not done the hardest part of the job for them. But the engineer's only answer to the sailor was to suggest that they examine the wall more carefully, from the mouth of the river to the corner where it ended in the north.
So out they went, and the exploration was carried out, over a stretch of about two miles, with the greatest care. But nowhere did the smooth, straight wall show a single hollow of any kind. The nests of the rock pigeons that fluttered about its top turned out to be nothing more than holes bored into the very crest, along the jagged upper edge of the granite.
It was an unfortunate state of affairs, and as for attacking the mass with picks or gunpowder to hollow out a big enough space, that was not to be thought of. As chance would have it, on that whole stretch of the coast Pencroff had found the only shelter fit to live in for the time being — that is, the Chimneys, which they now had to give up after all.
When the exploration was finished, the colonists found themselves at the northern corner of the wall, where it ended in long slopes that ran down and died away on the beach. From there all the way to its western limit, the wall was nothing more than a kind of embankment: a thick mass of stones, earth and sand, bound together by plants, shrubs and grass, and sloping at an angle of only forty-five degrees. Here and there the granite still broke through and jutted out in sharp points from this sort of cliff. Clumps of trees rose in tiers up its slopes, and a fairly thick growth of grass carpeted it. But the vegetation went no farther than that, and a long sandy plain, starting at the foot of the embankment, stretched all the way to the shore.
Cyrus Smith thought, not without reason, that it must be on this side that the lake's overflow spilled out in a waterfall. After all, the surplus water that Red Creek poured in had to escape somewhere. Yet the engineer had not yet found that spot on any part of the shore they had already explored — that is, from the mouth of the creek in the west to Prospect Plateau.
So the engineer suggested to his companions that they climb the slope they were looking at and return to the Chimneys by the heights, exploring the northern and eastern shores of the lake on the way.
The suggestion was accepted, and within a few minutes Harbert and Nab had reached the plateau above. Cyrus Smith, Gédéon Spilett and Pencroff followed at a steadier pace.
Two hundred feet away, through the leaves, the lovely sheet of water was glittering in the sunlight. The landscape was charming there. The trees, their leaves turning yellow, were grouped in the most wonderful way, a real feast for the eyes. A few huge old trunks, felled by age, stood out with their blackish bark against the green carpet that covered the ground. A whole world of noisy cockatoos chattered there — living prisms in motion — hopping from one branch to the next. It was as if the light could only reach the ground broken into its colors by that strange canopy.
Instead of heading straight for the north shore of the lake, the colonists went around the edge of the plateau so as to reach the mouth of the creek on its left bank. It was a detour of a mile and a half at most. The walk was easy, because the trees were widely spaced and left a free passage between them. They could tell that the fertile zone stopped at this boundary, and the vegetation here was less vigorous than in all the land between the creek and the Mercy.
Cyrus Smith and his companions walked with a certain caution over this ground that was new to them. Bows, arrows, and sticks tipped with sharp iron points were their only weapons. No wild beast showed itself, however, and it was likely that such animals kept rather to the thick forests of the south. But the colonists had the unpleasant surprise of seeing Top stop short in front of a large snake, fourteen or fifteen feet long. Nab killed it with a blow of his stick. Cyrus Smith examined the reptile and declared that it was not venomous, since it belonged to the species of diamond snakes that the Aboriginal people of New South Wales eat. But there might well be others whose bite was deadly, such as the deaf adders with forked tails that rear up under your foot, or those winged snakes with two little ear-flaps that let them launch themselves with tremendous speed. Once his first surprise was over, Top went hunting the reptiles so furiously that they feared for him, and his master kept calling him back.
They soon reached the mouth of Red Creek, where it emptied into the lake. On the opposite bank the explorers recognized the spot they had already visited on their way down from Mount Franklin. Cyrus Smith noted that the creek carried a fairly large flow of water. Somewhere, therefore, nature had to have provided an outlet for the lake's overflow. That outlet was what they had to find, for it surely formed a waterfall, and it might be possible to put its mechanical power to use.
So the colonists, walking as they pleased but without straying too far from one another, began to make their way around the shore of the lake, which dropped off very steeply. The water seemed to be teeming with fish, and Pencroff promised himself he would make some fishing tackle to take advantage of it.
First they had to round the sharp northeastern point. One might have supposed that the water drained away there, since the end of the lake came almost up to the edge of the plateau. But that was not so, and the colonists went on exploring the shore, which, after a slight curve, ran back down parallel to the coast.
On this side the bank was less wooded, but a few clumps of trees scattered here and there added to the beauty of the landscape. Lake Grant now lay before them in all its extent, and not a breath of wind ruffled its surface. Top, beating through the brush, flushed flocks of various birds, which Gédéon Spilett and Harbert greeted with their arrows. One of them was even neatly hit by the boy and fell among some marsh grass. Top rushed to it and brought back a handsome swimming bird, slate-colored, with a short beak, a large plate on its forehead, toes widened by a scalloped fringe, and wings edged with a thin white border. It was a coot, about the size of a big partridge, one of the group called macrodactyls, the "long-toed" birds that form the link between the order of wading birds and the order of web-footed ones. Poor game, all in all, and the taste was bound to leave something to be desired. But Top would no doubt be less fussy than his masters, and it was agreed that the coot would be his supper.
The colonists were now following the eastern shore of the lake, and they would soon reach the part they had already surveyed. The engineer was very much surprised, because he could see no sign of the overflow draining away anywhere. The reporter and the sailor were talking with him, and he made no secret of his astonishment.
At that moment Top, who had been perfectly calm until then, began to show signs of agitation. The intelligent animal ran back and forth along the bank, stopped suddenly, and stared at the water with one paw raised, as though he were pointing at some invisible game. Then he barked furiously, as if casting about for a scent, and suddenly fell silent.
At first neither Cyrus Smith nor his companions had paid any attention to Top's behavior. But soon the dog's barking became so frequent that the engineer grew concerned.
"What is it, Top?" he asked.
The dog bounded several times toward his master, clearly and genuinely uneasy, and then dashed back to the bank. Then, all at once, he plunged into the lake.
"Here, Top!" shouted Cyrus Smith, who did not want to let his dog venture into those suspicious waters.
"What on earth is going on down there?" asked Pencroff, studying the surface of the lake.
"Top must have smelled some amphibious animal," answered Harbert.
"An alligator, I suppose?" said the reporter.
"I don't think so," answered Cyrus Smith. "Alligators are found only in lower latitudes."
Top, meanwhile, had come back at his master's call and returned to the bank. But he could not settle down. He kept leaping about in the tall grass, and, guided by his instinct, he seemed to be following some invisible creature that was gliding along under the water, skimming close to the shore. Yet the water was calm, and not a ripple disturbed its surface. Several times the colonists stopped on the bank and watched closely. Nothing appeared. There was some mystery here.
The engineer was greatly intrigued.
"Let's finish this exploration," he said.
Half an hour later they had all reached the southeastern corner of the lake and were back on Prospect Plateau itself. At this point the survey of the lake's shores had to be considered complete — and yet the engineer had not been able to discover where or how the water drained away.
"All the same, that outlet exists," he kept repeating, "and since it isn't on the outside, it must be cut through the inside of the granite mass along the coast!"
"But why does it matter so much to you to find out, my dear Cyrus?" asked Gédéon Spilett.
"It matters a good deal," answered the engineer, "because if the water flows out through the rock, there may be some cavity inside it that would be easy to make livable once we had turned the water aside."
"But isn't it possible, Mr. Cyrus," said Harbert, "that the water drains out through the bottom of the lake itself and reaches the sea by an underground channel?"
"That may well be," answered the engineer, "and if it is, we'll have to build our house ourselves, since nature hasn't paid the first costs of construction."
So the colonists were getting ready to cross the plateau and go back to the Chimneys, for it was five o'clock in the evening, when Top showed fresh signs of agitation. He barked furiously, and before his master could stop him, he rushed into the lake a second time.
Everyone ran to the bank. The dog was already more than twenty feet out, and Cyrus Smith was urgently calling him back, when an enormous head rose out of the water, which did not seem to be deep at that spot.
Harbert recognized at once the kind of amphibious animal that head belonged to — conical, with big eyes, and adorned with whiskers of long, silky hairs.
"A manatee!" he cried.
It was not a manatee, but a specimen of the species, classed in the order of cetaceans, that goes by the name of "dugong," for its nostrils opened on the upper part of its snout.
The enormous animal had lunged at the dog, who tried in vain to escape by turning back toward the bank. His master could do nothing to save him, and before it had even occurred to Gédéon Spilett or Harbert to string their bows, Top, seized by the dugong, vanished beneath the water.
Nab, his iron-tipped spear in his hand, was ready to throw himself in to the dog's rescue, determined to take on the formidable animal even in its own element.
"No, Nab," said the engineer, holding back his brave servant.
Meanwhile a struggle was going on under the water — an inexplicable struggle, since in such conditions Top obviously could not hold out; a struggle that had to be terrible, as they could see from the churning of the surface; a struggle, in short, that could only end in the dog's death! But suddenly, in the middle of a ring of foam, Top appeared again. Hurled into the air by some unknown force, he rose ten feet above the surface of the lake, fell back into the wildly churning water, and soon made it back to the bank without any serious wounds, miraculously saved.
Cyrus Smith and his companions stared without understanding. And here was something even more inexplicable! It looked as though the fight was still going on under the water. No doubt the dugong, attacked by some powerful animal after it had let go of the dog, was now fighting for its own life.
But it did not last long. The water turned red with blood, and the dugong's body, rising out of a scarlet slick that spread far and wide, soon ran aground on a little beach at the southern corner of the lake.
The colonists ran to the spot. The dugong was dead. It was an enormous animal, fifteen or sixteen feet long, and it must have weighed three or four thousand pounds. In its neck gaped a wound that seemed to have been made with a sharp blade.
What amphibious creature could have destroyed the formidable dugong with that terrible blow? No one could have said. And, deeply troubled by the incident, Cyrus Smith and his companions went back to the Chimneys.
A visit to the lake — The telltale current — Cyrus Smith's plans — The dugong fat — What to do with pyritic shale — Iron sulfate — How glycerin is made — Soap — Saltpeter — Sulfuric acid — Nitric acid — The new waterfall
The next day, May 7, Cyrus Smith and Gédéon Spilett left Nab to make breakfast and climbed up to Prospect Plateau, while Harbert and Pencroff went up the river to lay in a fresh supply of wood.
The engineer and the reporter soon reached the little beach at the southern tip of the lake where the amphibian had been left stranded. Flocks of birds had already swooped down on that great mass of flesh, and they had to drive them off with stones, because Cyrus Smith wanted to keep the dugong's fat and use it for the needs of the colony. As for the animal's meat, it could not fail to make excellent food, since in certain parts of Malaysia it is kept specially for the tables of the local princes. But that was Nab's business.
At that moment Cyrus Smith had other things on his mind. The incident of the day before had not faded from his thoughts, and it went on troubling him. He would have liked to get to the bottom of that underwater fight, and to know what cousin of the mastodons, or what other sea monster, had given the dugong such a strange wound.
So there he stood on the shore of the lake, watching, observing. But nothing showed itself beneath the calm water, which sparkled in the first rays of the sun.
At the little beach where the dugong's body lay, the water was shallow. But from there on the bottom of the lake sloped gradually downward, and in the middle it was probably very deep. The lake could be thought of as a wide basin that had been filled by the waters of Red Creek.
"Well, Cyrus," said the reporter, "I don't see anything suspicious about this water, do you?"
"No, my dear Spilett," answered the engineer, "and I really don't know how to explain what happened yesterday!"
"I admit," Gédéon Spilett went on, "that the wound on that amphibian is strange, to say the least. And I can't explain either how Top came to be thrown out of the water so violently. You'd really think a powerful arm had flung him out like that, and that the same arm, holding a dagger, had then killed the dugong!"
"Yes," answered the engineer, who had become thoughtful. "There's something here I can't understand. But do you understand any better, my dear Spilett, how I myself was saved — how I could have been pulled out of the waves and carried to the dunes? No, you don't, do you? That's why I sense some mystery here, one we'll no doubt uncover someday. So let's keep watching, but let's not dwell on these odd incidents in front of our companions. Let's keep our observations to ourselves and get on with our work."
As we know, the engineer had not yet been able to find where the lake's overflow escaped. But since he had seen no sign that it ever flooded its banks, there had to be a spillway somewhere. And now, as it happened, Cyrus Smith was rather surprised to notice a fairly strong current that could be felt at that very spot. He threw in a few small pieces of wood and saw that they drifted toward the southern corner. He followed the current, walking along the bank, and came to the southernmost point of the lake.
There the water seemed to sink a little, as though it were suddenly vanishing into some crack in the ground.
Cyrus Smith listened, putting his ear down to the level of the lake, and he heard, quite distinctly, the sound of an underground waterfall.
"That's where it is," he said, getting up again. "That's where the water drains out. That's where, no doubt, it runs through a channel cut in the mass of granite to reach the sea — through some hollows we might be able to put to good use! Well, I'm going to find out!"
The engineer cut a long branch and stripped it of its leaves. By pushing it down into the water at the corner where the two banks met, he found that there was a wide hole opening just one foot below the surface. This hole was the mouth of the spillway they had searched for in vain until then. The current there was so strong that the branch was torn out of the engineer's hands and disappeared.
"There's no doubt about it now," Cyrus Smith said again. "That's the mouth of the spillway, and I'm going to uncover it."
"How?" asked Gédéon Spilett.
"By lowering the level of the lake by three feet."
"And how will you lower it?"
"By opening another outlet for the water, a bigger one than this."
"Where, Cyrus?"
"On the part of the shore that comes closest to the coast."
"But that shore is granite!" the reporter pointed out.
"Well then," answered Cyrus Smith, "I'll blow up the granite, and the water, as it rushes out, will drop far enough to uncover this opening..."
"And it'll make a waterfall as it pours down onto the beach," the reporter added.
"A waterfall we'll put to use!" answered Cyrus. "Come on, come on!"
The engineer hurried his companion along, and the reporter's trust in Cyrus Smith was so complete that he did not doubt for a moment that the plan would succeed. And yet — that granite shore — how could they open it? Without gunpowder, and with crude tools, how could they break up that rock? Wasn't the engineer about to throw himself into a task beyond his strength?
When Cyrus Smith and the reporter got back to the Chimneys, they found Harbert and Pencroff busy unloading their timber raft.
"The woodcutters are just about done, Mr. Cyrus," said the sailor with a laugh, "and when you need masons..."
"Not masons — chemists," answered the engineer.
"Yes," added the reporter, "we're going to blow up the island..."
"Blow up the island!" cried Pencroff.
"Part of it, at least!" Gédéon Spilett replied.
"Listen to me, my friends," said the engineer.
And he told them what he had found. In his view, there had to be a hollow of some size inside the mass of granite that held up Prospect Plateau, and he meant to get into it. To do that, they first had to clear the opening through which the water was rushing, and that meant lowering the level of the lake by giving the water a wider way out. Hence the need to make an explosive substance that could cut a deep breach at another point on the shore. That was what Cyrus Smith was going to attempt, using the minerals that nature had put within his reach.
There is no need to say how eagerly they all, and Pencroff above all, greeted this plan. Using drastic measures, tearing open the granite, creating a waterfall — that suited the sailor perfectly! And he would be a chemist just as readily as he had been a mason or a bootmaker, since the engineer needed chemists. He would be anything anybody wanted — "even a teacher of dancing and good manners," he told Nab — if that were ever needed.
Nab and Pencroff were given the first job: removing the dugong's fat and preserving its meat, which was meant for the table. They set off at once, without even asking for any more explanation. Their trust in the engineer was absolute.
A few moments after they left, Cyrus Smith, Harbert, and Gédéon Spilett, dragging the hurdle behind them, went up the river toward the coal seam. There they would find plenty of that pyritic shale — slate-like rock full of iron pyrite — which does indeed turn up in the most recent of the rock layers geologists then called "transition" formations, and of which Cyrus Smith had already brought back a sample.
The whole day was spent hauling a good amount of this pyrite-bearing rock to the Chimneys. By evening they had several tons of it.
The next day, May 8, the engineer began his chemistry. This pyritic shale is made up mainly of carbon, silica, alumina, and iron sulfide, with the iron sulfide in excess. The task was to separate out the iron sulfide and turn it into iron sulfate as quickly as possible. Once they had the sulfate, they would extract sulfuric acid from it.
That was in fact the goal. Sulfuric acid is one of the most widely used of all chemical agents — so much so that a nation's industrial importance can be measured by how much of it the nation consumes. Later on this acid would be enormously useful to the colonists for making candles, tanning hides, and so on. But for the moment the engineer had another use in mind for it.
Behind the Chimneys, Cyrus Smith chose a spot and had the ground carefully leveled. On this ground he laid a heap of branches and chopped wood. On top of it went pieces of the pyritic shale, propped up against one another like the stones of an arch. Then the whole thing was covered with a thin layer of pyrite that had first been broken down to the size of walnuts.
When that was done, they set fire to the wood. Its heat passed to the shale, and the shale caught fire too, since it contained carbon and sulfur. Then fresh layers of crushed pyrite were added, built up into an enormous mound. They left a few vents in it, and covered its outside with earth and grass, just as if they were making charcoal by slowly burning a stack of wood.
Then they let the change take place. It would take no less than ten to twelve days for the iron sulfide to turn into iron sulfate, and the alumina into aluminum sulfate. Both of these substances dissolve in water. The rest — the silica, the burnt carbon, and the ashes — do not.
While this chemical work went on, Cyrus Smith had other jobs done. They put more than zeal into it. It was something close to fury.
Nab and Pencroff had removed the dugong's fat and collected it in big earthenware jars. From this fat the engineer wanted to separate one of its ingredients, glycerin, by saponifying it — that is, by turning it into soap. To get that result, all he had to do was treat it with soda or with lime. Either substance would attack the fat and form a soap, and in doing so would set the glycerin free — and glycerin was exactly what the engineer was after. He had no shortage of lime, as we know. But treating the fat with lime would give only lime soaps, which do not dissolve in water and so are useless. Treating it with soda, on the other hand, would give a soap that did dissolve, one that would come in handy for washing and cleaning around the house. So, being a practical man, Cyrus Smith naturally tried to get soda. Was that difficult? No, because the shore was thick with seaweed and sea plants: glasswort, ice plants, and all the rockweeds and other brown seaweeds that make up kelp and wrack. So they gathered a great quantity of these plants. First they dried them, then they burned them in pits in the open air. The fire was kept going for several days, so that the heat would climb high enough to melt the ashes. The result of all that burning was a solid, grayish mass, long known by the name of "natural soda."
With that in hand, the engineer treated the fat with the soda. This gave him, on one side, a soap that dissolved in water, and on the other, that neutral substance, glycerin.
But that was not all. With an eye to what he meant to prepare later, Cyrus Smith still needed another substance: potassium nitrate, better known as niter, or saltpeter.
Cyrus Smith could have made this substance by treating potassium carbonate — which is easy to extract from the ashes of plants — with nitric acid. But he had no nitric acid, and nitric acid was precisely what he wanted to end up with. So it was a vicious circle, one he could never have broken out of. Very luckily, this time nature was going to hand him the saltpeter, and all he would have to do was pick it up. Harbert found a bed of it in the north of the island, at the foot of Mount Franklin, and all that remained was to purify it.
These various jobs took about eight days. So they were finished before the iron sulfide had finished turning into iron sulfate. In the days that followed, the colonists had time to make fireproof pottery out of potter's clay and to build a brick furnace of a special design, which would be used to distill the iron sulfate once they had it. All this was finished around May 18, at about the same time the chemical change was complete. Gédéon Spilett, Harbert, Nab, and Pencroff, skillfully guided by the engineer, had become the handiest workmen in the world. Besides, of all teachers, necessity is the one people listen to most and the one who teaches best.
When the pile of pyrite had been completely burned down, what was left — iron sulfate, aluminum sulfate, silica, leftover carbon, and ashes — was put into a basin full of water. They stirred this mixture, let it settle, and then poured off the liquid. That gave them a clear liquid with the iron sulfate and aluminum sulfate dissolved in it, while the other materials stayed behind as solids, since they do not dissolve. Finally, once part of this liquid had evaporated, crystals of iron sulfate formed and settled out. The mother liquor — that is, the liquid that had not evaporated, which held the aluminum sulfate — was thrown away.
So Cyrus Smith now had a fairly large quantity of these iron sulfate crystals, and the next task was to get sulfuric acid out of them.
In industry, making sulfuric acid takes a costly installation. You need large factories, special equipment, platinum apparatus, and chambers lined with lead, which the acid cannot eat through, where the transformation takes place, and so on. The engineer had none of this equipment. But he knew that in Bohemia in particular, sulfuric acid is made by simpler methods, which even have the advantage of producing it at a higher concentration. That is how the acid known as Nordhausen acid is made.
To get his sulfuric acid, Cyrus Smith now had only one operation left to perform: to heat the iron sulfate crystals strongly in a closed vessel, so that the sulfuric acid would distill off as vapor. That vapor, when it condensed, would then give him the acid.
This was the job the fireproof pottery was for — the crystals were placed inside it — and the furnace, whose heat would distill the sulfuric acid. The operation was carried out perfectly, and on May 20, twelve days after he had begun, the engineer was the owner of the agent he expected to use later in so many different ways.
Now, why did he want this agent? Quite simply to produce nitric acid. And that was easy, since saltpeter, attacked by sulfuric acid, gave him exactly that acid by distillation.
But in the end, what was he going to use this nitric acid for? His companions still did not know, because he had not yet said the last word about his work.
The engineer was nearing his goal, though, and one last operation gave him the substance that had demanded all these preparations.
He took some nitric acid and brought it together with the glycerin, which he had first concentrated by evaporating it in a water bath — a pot set inside a larger pot of hot water. And even without using a freezing mixture to keep it cold, he obtained several pints of an oily, yellowish liquid.
Cyrus Smith had done this last operation alone, off by himself, far from the Chimneys, because there was a danger of explosion. When he brought a flask of the liquid back to his friends, all he said was:
"Here's nitroglycerin!"
It was indeed that terrible product, whose explosive power is perhaps ten times that of ordinary gunpowder, and which has already caused so many accidents! Since a way has been found to turn it into dynamite, though — that is, to mix it with a solid substance, clay or sugar, porous enough to hold it — the dangerous liquid has been used more safely. But dynamite was not yet known at the time when the colonists were at work on Lincoln Island.
"And this stuff is what's going to blow up our rocks?" said Pencroff, looking rather doubtful.
"Yes, my friend," answered the engineer. "And this nitroglycerin will have all the more effect because the granite is extremely hard and will put up that much more resistance to being blown apart."
"And when do we get to see it, Mr. Cyrus?"
"Tomorrow, as soon as we've dug a blasting hole," answered the engineer.
The next day — May 21 — at dawn, the miners went to a point of land that formed the eastern shore of Lake Grant, only five hundred paces from the coast. At that spot the plateau lay lower than the surface of the lake, and the water was held back only by its frame of granite. So it was obvious that if they broke this frame, the water would escape through the gap and form a stream. That stream would run down the sloping surface of the plateau and then plunge over onto the beach. As a result, the level of the whole lake would drop, and the mouth of the spillway would be uncovered — which was the final goal.
So it was the frame they had to break. Under the engineer's direction, Pencroff, armed with a pickax that he swung with skill and strength, attacked the outer face of the granite. The hole they had to drill started from a horizontal ledge on the shore, and it had to slant downward so as to reach a level well below the surface of the lake. That way, when the explosion pushed the rocks apart, the water would be able to pour out freely and drop far enough.
The work took a long time, because the engineer wanted a tremendous effect and meant to put no less than ten liters of nitroglycerin into the blast. But Pencroff, taking turns with Nab, did so well that by four o'clock in the afternoon the blasting hole was finished.
That left the question of how to set off the explosive. Normally nitroglycerin is fired by means of fulminate caps, which explode and so set off the main charge. It takes a shock to make it explode; if it is simply lit, it will burn without blowing up.
Cyrus Smith could certainly have made a cap. In place of fulminate, he could easily have made something like guncotton, since he had nitric acid on hand. Packed into a cartridge and pushed down into the nitroglycerin, this substance would have exploded when lit by a fuse and set off the blast.
But Cyrus Smith knew that nitroglycerin has the property of detonating when it is struck. So he decided to make use of this property, ready to try another method if this one failed.
The fact is that the blow of a hammer on a few drops of nitroglycerin spread on the surface of a hard stone is enough to set off an explosion. But whoever was there to strike the hammer blow would be a victim of the explosion. So Cyrus Smith came up with this idea. Above the blasting hole he set up a post, and from it, on a plant fiber, he hung a lump of iron weighing several pounds. A second long fiber, first soaked in sulfur, was tied by one end to the middle of the first, while its other end trailed along the ground for a distance of several feet from the hole. When this second fiber was lit, it would burn until the flame reached the first. The first fiber would catch fire in its turn and break, and the lump of iron would come crashing down onto the nitroglycerin.
So this apparatus was set up. Then the engineer sent his companions away, filled the blasting hole until the nitroglycerin came right up level with its mouth, and sprinkled a few drops of it on the surface of the rock, just under the hanging lump of iron.
That done, Cyrus Smith took the end of the sulfur-soaked fiber and lit it. Then he left the spot and went back to join his companions at the Chimneys.
The fiber was supposed to burn for twenty-five minutes, and sure enough, twenty-five minutes later, an explosion went off that no words could describe. The whole island seemed to shake on its foundations. A spray of stones shot up into the air as if a volcano had spewed it out. The blast of displaced air was so violent that the rocks of the Chimneys swayed. The colonists, though they were more than two miles from the blast, were knocked flat on the ground.
They got up again, climbed back up to the plateau, and ran toward the spot where the explosion must have torn open the lake's bank...
A triple hurrah burst from their chests! The granite frame had been split wide open! A rapid stream of water was pouring out of it. It raced foaming across the plateau, reached the edge, and plunged three hundred feet down onto the beach!
Pencroff doubts nothing anymore — The lake's old spillway — A descent underground — The road through the granite — Top has vanished — The central cavern — The lower well — Mystery — With blows of the pick — The return
Cyrus Smith's plan had succeeded. But, as was his habit, he showed no sign of satisfaction; he stood motionless, lips pressed together, eyes fixed. Harbert was overjoyed. Nab was leaping with delight. Pencroff wagged his big head and muttered:
"Well, well, our engineer sure knows his business!"
And indeed the nitroglycerin had done its work with tremendous force. The breach blown in the lake was so large that the volume of water now pouring out through this new spillway was at least three times what had flowed through the old one. The result had to be that, a short while after the operation, the level of the lake would have dropped by at least two feet.
The colonists went back to the Chimneys to fetch picks, iron-tipped spears, fiber ropes, a flint and steel, and some tinder; then they returned to the plateau. Top went with them.
On the way, the sailor could not keep from saying to the engineer:
"But do you realize, Mr. Cyrus, that with that charming liquid you've made, a person could blow up our whole island?"
"No doubt about it — the island, the continents, and the earth itself," replied Cyrus Smith. "It's only a question of quantity."
"Then couldn't you use this nitroglycerin to load firearms?" asked the sailor.
"No, Pencroff, because it's too violent a substance — it would shatter the gun. But it would be easy to make guncotton, or even ordinary gunpowder, since we have nitric acid, saltpeter, sulfur, and charcoal. Unfortunately, it's the guns we don't have."
"Oh, Mr. Cyrus," replied the sailor, "with a little goodwill...!"
There was no doubt about it: Pencroff had struck the word "impossible" out of the dictionary of Lincoln Island.
When they reached Prospect Plateau, the colonists headed straight for the point of the lake near which the mouth of the old spillway opened. By now it ought to be uncovered. And since the water would no longer be rushing into it, the spillway should have become passable, and it would no doubt be easy to find out how it was laid out inside.
In a few moments the colonists had reached the lower corner of the lake, and one glance was enough to tell them that they had got the result they wanted.
There, in the granite wall of the lake and now above the level of the water, appeared the opening they had searched for so long. A narrow ledge, laid bare by the falling water, made it possible to reach it. The opening was about twenty feet wide but only two feet high. It looked like a storm drain in the edge of a sidewalk. So it could not have given the colonists an easy way in; but Nab and Pencroff took up their picks, and in less than an hour they had made it high enough.
The engineer then came closer and saw that, in its upper part, the walls of the spillway sloped at no more than thirty to thirty-five degrees. That meant they could be walked, and as long as the slope did not get steeper it would be easy to climb down them all the way to sea level. And if, as was very likely, some vast hollow existed inside the granite mass, they might find a way to put it to use.
"Well, Mr. Cyrus, what's stopping us?" asked the sailor, impatient to venture into the narrow passage. "You see Top's already gone ahead of us!"
"Fine," replied the engineer. "But we need to be able to see. Nab, go cut some resinous branches."
Nab and Harbert ran to the shores of the lake, which were shaded by pines and other evergreens, and soon came back with branches, which they made up into torches. The torches were lit from the flint and steel, and then, with Cyrus Smith in the lead, the colonists started down the dark tunnel that the lake's overflow had filled not long before.
Contrary to what one might have expected, the tunnel grew wider as it went, so that almost at once the explorers could stand upright as they descended. The granite walls, worn smooth by the water over endless ages, were slippery, and they had to watch out for falls. So the colonists had tied themselves to one another with a rope, the way mountain climbers do. Luckily, some ledges in the granite formed real steps and made the descent less dangerous. Droplets still hanging from the rock glittered in rainbow colors here and there in the torchlight, and one might have thought the walls were covered with countless stalactites. The engineer studied this black granite. He could not see a single layer in it, not a single crack. The mass was solid and extremely fine-grained. So this tunnel dated from the very birth of the island. It was not the water that had hollowed it out little by little. Pluto, the god of the fires underground, and not Neptune, the god of the sea, had bored it with his own hand, and on the wall they could still make out the traces of volcanic action that the scouring of the water had not been able to wipe away entirely.
The colonists went down very slowly. They could not help feeling a certain emotion at venturing like this into the depths of the rock, where human beings had obviously never been before. They did not talk, but they were thinking, and more than one of them must have had the thought that some octopus or other gigantic cephalopod might be living in the hollows inside, since they were connected with the sea. So they had to go forward with a certain caution.
Besides, Top was at the head of the little troop, and they could rely on the dog's keen instincts. He would not fail to give the alarm if there was need.
After they had gone down about a hundred feet, along a rather winding route, Cyrus Smith, who was in front, stopped, and his companions caught up with him. The spot where they had halted was hollowed out to form a cave of modest size. Drops of water were falling from its roof, but they were not seeping through the rock. They were simply the last traces left by the torrent that had roared through this hollow for so long. The air was slightly damp but gave off no foul or poisonous smell.
"Well, my dear Cyrus?" said Gédéon Spilett. "Here's a retreat that nobody knows about, well hidden down in these depths — but when all's said and done, it's not fit to live in."
"Why not fit to live in?" asked the sailor.
"Because it's too small and too dark."
"Can't we make it bigger, dig it out, cut openings in it for daylight and air?" replied Pencroff, who no longer doubted anything.
"Let's go on," replied Cyrus Smith. "Let's go on with our exploring. Maybe lower down nature will have spared us that work."
"We're only a third of the way down so far," Harbert pointed out.
"About a third," replied Cyrus Smith, "since we've come down roughly a hundred feet from the opening, and it isn't impossible that a hundred feet lower..."
"Where's Top?" asked Nab, interrupting his master.
They searched the cave. The dog was not there.
"He's probably gone on ahead," said Pencroff.
"Let's catch up with him," replied Cyrus Smith.
They took up the descent again. The engineer carefully watched every turn the spillway took, and despite its many windings he could keep track fairly easily of its general direction, which was toward the sea.
The colonists had gone down roughly another fifty feet, measured straight down, when their attention was caught by faraway sounds coming up from deep inside the rock. They stopped and listened. Carried along the passage the way a voice travels through a speaking tube, the sounds reached their ears clearly.
"That's Top barking!" cried Harbert.
"Yes," replied Pencroff, "and our good dog's barking like mad!"
"We have our iron-tipped spears," said Cyrus Smith. "Let's be on our guard — and forward!"
"This is getting more and more interesting," Gédéon Spilett murmured into the sailor's ear, and the sailor nodded.
Cyrus Smith and his companions rushed down to help the dog. Top's barking grew louder and louder. There was a strange fury in his jerky, broken yelps. Was he locked in a fight with some animal whose lair he had disturbed? It is fair to say that the colonists, without a thought for the danger they were exposing themselves to, were now in the grip of an irresistible curiosity. They were no longer climbing down the passage; they were practically sliding down its wall. And in a few minutes, sixty feet lower, they had caught up with Top.
There the passage opened into a vast and magnificent cavern. There Top was running back and forth, barking furiously. Pencroff and Nab shook their torches and flung great flashes of light across every jutting point of the granite, while Cyrus Smith, Gédéon Spilett, and Harbert stood with their spears raised, ready for anything.
The enormous cavern was empty. The colonists went over it in every direction. There was nothing — not an animal, not a living creature! And yet Top kept on barking. Neither petting nor threats could make him stop.
"There must be an exit somewhere that the lake water drained out through to the sea," said the engineer.
"Right," replied Pencroff, "and let's be careful not to fall into a hole."
"Go on, Top, go on!" cried Cyrus Smith.
The dog, roused by his master's words, ran toward the far end of the cavern, and there his barking doubled.
They followed him, and by the light of the torches they saw the mouth of a real well opening in the granite. This was surely where the water that had once run through the rock used to escape. And this time it was no longer a slanting passage that could be climbed down, but a straight vertical shaft that it would have been impossible to venture into.
They held their torches out over the opening. They could see nothing. Cyrus Smith broke off a burning branch and threw it into the abyss. The blazing resin, which shone all the brighter for the speed of its fall, lit up the inside of the well, but still nothing appeared. Then the flame went out with a faint hiss that showed it had reached a layer of water — that is, sea level.
By timing how long the fall took, the engineer was able to estimate the depth of the well, which turned out to be about ninety feet.
So the floor of the cavern lay ninety feet above sea level.
"Here's our home," said Cyrus Smith.
"But something was living in it," replied Gédéon Spilett, whose curiosity was not satisfied.
"Well, whatever it was, amphibian or something else, it has escaped through this exit," replied the engineer, "and left the place to us."
"All the same," added the sailor, "I'd have liked to be Top a quarter of an hour ago, because he didn't bark like that for no reason!"
Cyrus Smith was looking at his dog, and any of his companions who had come close to him would have heard him murmur these words:
"Yes, I really do think Top knows more than we do about a good many things!"
Meanwhile, the colonists' wishes had for the most part come true. Chance, helped along by their leader's marvelous shrewdness, had served them well. Here, at their disposal, they had a vast cavern. They could not yet judge its size by the feeble light of the torches, but it would certainly be easy to divide it into rooms with brick partitions and to fit it out, if not as a house, then at least as a roomy apartment. The water had left it and could never come back. The place was theirs.
Two difficulties remained: first, how to bring light into a hollow carved out of solid rock; second, how to make it easier to get in and out. As for light, there was no point in thinking of letting it in from above, since an enormous thickness of granite roofed the cavern over. But perhaps they could cut through the front wall, the one that faced the sea. During the descent Cyrus Smith had judged fairly closely how steep the spillway was, and so how long; and that gave him good reason to believe that the front part of the wall could not be very thick. If they could get light that way, they would get access that way too, since it was just as easy to cut a door as windows, and to set up a ladder on the outside.
Cyrus Smith shared his ideas with his companions.
"Then let's get to work, Mr. Cyrus!" replied Pencroff. "I've got my pick, and I'll find a way to make daylight through that wall. Where do I hit it?"
"Here," replied the engineer, pointing out to the sturdy sailor a fairly deep recess in the wall, which ought to make it thinner at that spot.
Pencroff attacked the granite, and for half an hour, by the light of the torches, he sent chips flying all around him. The rock threw off sparks under his pick. Nab took over from him, and then Gédéon Spilett after Nab.
The work had been going on for two hours already, and they were beginning to fear that at this spot the wall might be thicker than the pick was long, when, at one last blow struck by Gédéon Spilett, the tool went right through the wall and fell outside.
"Hurrah! And hurrah again!" cried Pencroff.
At that point the wall was only three feet thick.
Cyrus Smith came and put his eye to the opening, which was eighty feet above the ground. Before him stretched the edge of the shore, the islet, and beyond it the boundless sea.
The hole was fairly wide, because the rock around it had crumbled a good deal, and through it the light came pouring in and flooded this splendid cavern with a magical effect! On its left side it was no more than thirty feet high and thirty feet wide, over a length of a hundred feet. But on its right side, by contrast, it was enormous, and its vault curved up to a height of more than eighty feet. Here and there, granite pillars, set irregularly, held up the springing of the arches, like those in the nave of a cathedral. Resting on side piers of a sort — here flattening into low round arches, there soaring up on pointed Gothic ribs, vanishing into dark bays whose fanciful arches could just be glimpsed in the shadows, and richly adorned with jutting knobs of rock that hung down like so many pendants — the vault offered a picturesque mixture of everything that Byzantine, Romanesque, and Gothic architecture have ever produced under the hand of man. And yet here it was only the work of nature! Nature alone had hollowed out this fairy-tale Alhambra in a mass of granite!
The colonists were struck dumb with wonder. Where they had expected to find nothing but a cramped hollow, they had found a kind of marvelous palace, and Nab had taken off his hat, as if he had been carried into a temple!
Cries of admiration burst from every mouth. Their hurrahs rang out and went echoing on and on until they died away in the depths of the dark naves.
"Ah, my friends!" cried Cyrus Smith. "Once we've let plenty of light into the inside of this rock, once we've laid out our bedrooms, our storerooms, and our kitchen and pantries in its left-hand part, we'll still have this splendid cavern left over, and we'll make it our study and our museum!"
"And what will we call it?" asked Harbert.
"Granite House," replied Cyrus Smith — a name his companions greeted with another round of hurrahs.
By now the torches were almost completely burned down, and since, to get back, they would have to climb up the passage to the top of the plateau, it was decided to put off until the next day the work of fitting out their new home.
Before leaving, Cyrus Smith came and leaned once more over the dark well that dropped straight down to sea level. He listened closely. There was no sound at all — not even the sound of the water, which the swell must sometimes stir down in those depths. Another flaming piece of resin was thrown down. The walls of the well lit up for a moment, but this time, no more than the first time, nothing suspicious came to light. If some sea monster had been caught by surprise when the water drained away, it had by now made its way back to the open sea through the underground channel that ran on beneath the beach — the channel the lake's overflow had followed before a new exit was opened for it.
Still, the engineer stood motionless, ears straining, eyes fixed on the depths, and did not say a single word.
At last the sailor came up to him and touched his arm.
"Mr. Smith?" he said.
"What is it, my friend?" replied the engineer, as if he were coming back from the land of dreams.
"The torches are about to go out."
"Let's go!" replied Cyrus Smith.
The little troop left the cavern and began its climb up through the dark spillway. Top brought up the rear, still letting out strange growls. The climb was hard going. The colonists stopped for a few moments at the upper cave, which made a kind of landing halfway up this long granite staircase. Then they started climbing again.
Soon they could feel fresher air. The droplets, dried up by evaporation, no longer glittered on the walls. The smoky light of the torches was growing paler. Nab's went out, and if they did not want to find themselves in deep darkness, they had to hurry.
So hurry they did, and a little before four o'clock, just as the sailor's torch went out in its turn, Cyrus Smith and his companions came out through the mouth of the spillway.
Cyrus Smith's plan — The front of Granite House — The rope ladder — Pencroff's dreams — The aromatic herbs — A natural warren — Bringing water to the new home — The view from the windows of Granite House
The next day, May 22, work began on fitting out the new home. The colonists were impatient, in fact, to trade their cramped shelter in the Chimneys for this vast, healthy retreat, hollowed out of the solid rock and safe from both the sea and the sky. The Chimneys were not to be abandoned entirely, though. The engineer meant to turn them into a workshop for the heavy jobs.
Cyrus Smith's first concern was to find out exactly where on the cliff the front of Granite House lay. He went down to the beach at the foot of the enormous wall. The pick that had slipped from the reporter's hands must have fallen straight down, so all they had to do was find the pick, and they would know the spot where the hole had been broken through the granite.
The pick was easily found. And sure enough, a hole opened in a straight vertical line above the place where it had stuck in the sand, about eighty feet above the beach. A few rock pigeons were already flying in and out through that narrow opening. It really seemed as if Granite House had been discovered for their sake!
The engineer intended to divide the right-hand portion of the cavern into several rooms, opening off an entrance corridor, and to light it with five windows and a door cut through the face of the cliff. Pencroff was fine with the five windows, but he could not see the use of the door, since the old spillway gave them a natural staircase by which they could always get into Granite House easily.
"My friend," Cyrus Smith answered him, "if it's easy for us to reach our home through the spillway, it will be just as easy for others. On the contrary, I plan to block the spillway at its mouth and seal it up tight. If necessary, I'll even hide the entrance completely by building a dam and raising the level of the lake."
"Then how will we get in?" asked the sailor.
"By a ladder on the outside," replied Cyrus Smith. "A rope ladder. Once it's pulled up, no one will be able to reach our home."
"But why all these precautions?" said Pencroff. "So far the animals haven't seemed all that dangerous. And as for natives, there aren't any on our island!"
"Are you quite sure of that, Pencroff?" asked the engineer, looking straight at the sailor.
"Well, obviously we won't be sure until we've explored every part of it," Pencroff answered.
"Exactly," said Cyrus Smith, "because so far we know only a small part of it. But in any case, even if we have no enemies inside the island, they may come from outside it. These waters of the Pacific are bad waters. So let's take our precautions against anything that might happen."
Cyrus Smith was talking sense, and Pencroff, without raising any further objection, got ready to carry out his orders.
So the front of Granite House was to be lit by five windows and a door, serving what made up the "apartment," properly speaking, and also by one wide bay and a row of small round windows that would let light pour into that marvelous nave, which was to serve as the great hall. This front, eighty feet above the ground, faced east, and the rising sun greeted it with its first rays. It stretched along the section of the cliff wall that lay between the projecting corner over the mouth of the Mercy and a line drawn straight up from the heap of rocks that formed the Chimneys. That meant the bad winds — the ones from the northeast — struck it only at a slant, because the very angle of that projecting corner sheltered it. Besides, until the window frames could be made, the engineer planned to close the openings with thick shutters that would let through neither wind nor rain, and that he could disguise if he needed to.
The first job, then, was to hollow out these openings. Working that hard rock with a pick would have been too slow, and Cyrus Smith, as we know, was a man for big methods. He still had a certain amount of nitroglycerin on hand, and he put it to good use. The explosive's effect was properly confined, and under its force the granite broke open at the very places the engineer had chosen. Then pick and mattock finished shaping the pointed Gothic arches of the five windows, the big bay, the round windows, and the door. They trimmed and squared the frames, whose outlines came out rather fanciful, and a few days after the work began, Granite House was flooded with the light of the eastern sky, which reached into its most hidden depths.
Under the plan Cyrus Smith had settled on, the apartment was to be divided into five compartments, all looking out over the sea. On the right came an entrance hall served by a door, where the ladder would end. Next came a first room, thirty feet wide, which would be the kitchen; then a dining room forty feet wide; then a bedroom just as wide; and finally a "guest room," which Pencroff had insisted on, and which lay next to the great hall.
These rooms — or rather this row of rooms that made up the apartment of Granite House — were not meant to fill the whole depth of the cavern. A corridor was to run behind them, between the rooms and a long storeroom, where the tools, the provisions, and the reserves would all find plenty of space. Everything gathered on the island, plant or animal, would keep there in excellent condition, completely protected from damp. There was no shortage of room, and every item could be stored in proper order. On top of that, the colonists still had the small cave above the great cavern, which would serve as the attic of their new house.
With the plan settled, all that remained was to carry it out. So the miners turned brickmakers once again, and the bricks were brought over and stacked at the foot of Granite House.
Until now Cyrus Smith and his companions had been able to get into the cavern only by way of the old spillway. To do that, they first had to climb to Prospect Plateau by a roundabout path along the riverbank, then go down two hundred feet through the tunnel, and climb back up just as far whenever they wanted to return to the plateau. All that cost a lot of time and a great deal of effort. So Cyrus Smith decided to get on at once with making a strong rope ladder, which, once it was pulled up, would make the entrance to Granite House absolutely impossible to reach.
This ladder was made with enormous care. Its two side ropes were braided from the fibers of the kurrajong, twisted together with a hand-turned winch, and they were as strong as a heavy cable. As for the rungs, they came from a kind of red cedar whose branches were light but tough. Pencroff did the work, and he did it like a master.
Other ropes were made from plant fibers too, and a rough block and tackle was rigged at the door. That way the bricks could easily be hoisted up to the level of Granite House. Moving the materials became much simpler, and the work on the inside began right away. There was plenty of lime, and several thousand bricks lay ready for use. They had no trouble putting up the framework for the partitions — a very simple one, as it happened — and in a very short time the apartment was divided into rooms and a storeroom, just as planned.
All this work went quickly under the direction of the engineer, who handled the hammer and the trowel himself. No kind of manual labor was foreign to Cyrus Smith, and in this way he set an example for companions who were intelligent and eager. They worked with confidence, even cheerfully. Pencroff always had a joke ready — carpenter one moment, ropemaker the next, mason after that — and he spread his good humor through their whole little world. His faith in the engineer was absolute. Nothing could have shaken it. He believed Smith could take on anything and succeed at everything. The question of clothes and shoes — a serious question, certainly — the question of light through the winter nights, the farming of the fertile parts of the island, the transformation of this wild plant life into cultivated crops: all of it looked easy to him, with Cyrus Smith's help, and all of it would be done in its own good time. He dreamed of rivers turned into canals to carry the wealth of the soil, of quarries and mines to be opened, of machines for every kind of industry, of railroads — yes, railroads! — whose network would surely cover Lincoln Island one day.
The engineer let Pencroff talk. He did not trim back a single one of that good-hearted man's exaggerations. He knew how catching confidence is. He even smiled to hear him, and he said nothing of the worries the future sometimes gave him. For in this part of the Pacific, far from the shipping lanes, he had reason to fear that help might never come. The colonists would have to rely on themselves, on themselves alone, because Lincoln Island lay so far from any other land that to venture out in a boat — and any boat they built would be a makeshift one — would be a serious and dangerous business.
"But," as the sailor said, "they stood a hundred cubits above the Robinsons of the old days, who had to work a miracle for every single thing."
And in fact, they "knew." And the man who "knows" succeeds where others would merely scrape by, and would inevitably die.
During all this work Harbert distinguished himself. He was intelligent and active, quick to understand and good at carrying things out, and Cyrus Smith grew more and more attached to the boy. Harbert, for his part, felt a warm and respectful friendship for the engineer. Pencroff could see perfectly well the close bond forming between the two of them, but he was not the least bit jealous.
Nab was Nab. He was what he would always be: courage, eagerness, devotion, and self-forgetfulness in person. He had the same faith in his master as Pencroff did, but he showed it less noisily. Whenever the sailor got carried away with enthusiasm, Nab always looked as though he were answering, "But what could be more natural?" He and Pencroff were very fond of each other, and they had soon dropped all formality between them.
As for Gédéon Spilett, he did his share of the common work, and he was not the clumsiest of them, either — which never stopped surprising the sailor a little. A "journalist" who was clever not just at understanding everything, but at doing everything!
The ladder was finally put in place on May 28. It had no fewer than a hundred rungs over the eighty feet of sheer height it covered. Luckily Cyrus Smith had been able to divide it into two sections by taking advantage of an overhang in the wall that jutted out about forty feet above the ground. This ledge, carefully leveled with the pick, became a kind of landing. The first ladder was fastened to it, which cut the ladder's swing in half, and a rope made it possible to haul that lower ladder up to the level of Granite House. As for the second ladder, it was made fast both at its lower end, which rested on the ledge, and at its upper end, which was tied to the door itself. That made the climb a good deal easier. Besides, Cyrus Smith meant to install a hydraulic elevator later on, which would spare the inhabitants of Granite House all that effort and lost time.
The colonists quickly got used to the ladder. They were nimble and skillful, and Pencroff, as a sailor used to running up the ratlines of a ship's rigging, was able to give them lessons. But he had to give lessons to Top as well. The poor dog, with his four paws, was not built for this kind of exercise. Pencroff, however, was such a devoted teacher that Top ended up making his climbs quite respectably, and he was soon going up the ladder the way his fellow dogs do every day in the circus. How proud the sailor was of his pupil, words cannot say. Still, more than once, Pencroff carried him up on his back, and Top never complained about that.
It should be pointed out here that during all this work — and it was pushed hard, since the bad season was coming — the food question had not been neglected. Every day the reporter and Harbert, who had now definitely become the colony's suppliers, spent a few hours hunting. So far they had worked only Jacamar Wood, on the left bank of the river, because without a bridge or a boat no one had crossed the Mercy yet. All those immense forests that had been given the name of the Far West forests were still unexplored. That important expedition was being saved for the first fine days of the coming spring. But Jacamar Wood had game enough. Kangaroos and wild boars were plentiful there, and the hunters' iron-tipped spears, bow, and arrows did wonders. What was more, near the southwest corner of the lagoon, Harbert discovered a natural warren — a sort of slightly damp meadow covered with willows and aromatic herbs that perfumed the air: thyme, wild thyme, basil, savory, all the fragrant plants of the mint family that rabbits are so fond of.
The reporter remarked that, since the table was so clearly laid for rabbits, it would be surprising if the rabbits failed to show up, and the two hunters explored this warren carefully. In any case, it grew useful plants in abundance, and a naturalist would have found plenty of specimens of the plant kingdom to study there. Harbert gathered a good quantity of shoots of basil, rosemary, lemon balm, betony, and others, which have various medicinal properties: some good for the chest, some astringent, some for bringing down fevers, others for easing cramps or rheumatism. And when Pencroff later asked what all this harvest of herbs was for:
"To take care of us," the boy answered, "to treat us when we're sick."
"Why would we get sick, when there aren't any doctors on the island?" Pencroff replied, perfectly seriously.
There was no answer to that. But the boy gathered his harvest all the same, and it was very well received at Granite House — all the more because, along with these medicinal plants, he was able to bring in a good amount of bee balm, Monarda didyma, the plant known in North America as "Oswego tea," which makes an excellent drink.
At last, that day, by searching hard, the two hunters came upon the actual site of the warren. The ground there was riddled with holes like a colander.
"Burrows!" cried Harbert.
"Yes," the reporter replied, "I can see them."
"But is anybody living in them?"
"That's the question."
The question was soon answered. Almost at once, hundreds of little animals that looked like rabbits went scattering in every direction, so fast that even Top could not have outrun them. Hunters and dog ran their hardest, but the rodents got away from them with ease. The reporter, however, was determined not to leave the spot before he had caught at least half a dozen of these animals. He wanted to stock the larder with them first, and later on they could tame any they caught. With a few snares set at the mouths of the burrows, the operation could not fail. But at that moment they had no snares, and nothing to make them with. So they had to resign themselves to visiting every hole, poking around in it with a stick, and doing by sheer patience what they could not do any other way.
At last, after an hour of digging around, four of the rodents were caught in their holes. They were rabbits quite like their European cousins, commonly known as "American rabbits."
So the day's catch was carried back to Granite House, and it appeared at supper that evening. The residents of that warren were not to be sneezed at, for they were delicious. Here was a precious resource for the colony, and one that looked as if it would never run out.
On May 31 the partitions were finished. All that was left was to furnish the rooms, which would be the work of the long winter days. A fireplace was built in the first room, which served as the kitchen. The pipe that was to carry the smoke outside gave the makeshift stove-fitters some trouble. Cyrus Smith thought it simplest to make it out of brick clay. Since there could be no question of running it out through the plateau above, they drilled a hole in the granite over the kitchen window, and the pipe, slanting upward, ended at that hole, like the pipe of a sheet-iron stove. Perhaps — very likely, in fact — the chimney would smoke whenever the strong east winds blew straight against the front of the cliff. But those winds were rare, and anyway Master Nab, the cook, was not so particular.
When this work inside was done, the engineer turned to blocking the mouth of the old spillway where it opened onto the lake, so as to shut off any way in by that route. Blocks of rock were rolled into the opening and firmly cemented. Cyrus Smith did not yet carry out the plan he had made to drown that opening under the waters of the lake by raising them back to their old level with a dam. For now he was content to hide the blockage with grasses, shrubs, and brush, planted in the cracks between the rocks, which the coming spring would make grow thick and wild.
He did, however, use the spillway to bring a thin stream of the lake's fresh water all the way down to their new home. A small channel cut below the surface of the lake did the job, and this branch of a pure, never-failing source delivered twenty-five to thirty gallons a day. So Granite House would never be short of water.
At last everything was finished — and none too soon, for the bad season was coming on. Thick shutters could close the windows in the front of the cliff until the engineer had time to make window glass.
Gédéon Spilett had very artistically arranged plants of all kinds in the projections of the rock around the windows, along with long, trailing grasses, so that the openings were framed in picturesque greenery that looked charming.
The inhabitants of this solid, healthy, and safe home could only be delighted with their work. From the windows their gaze could roam over a boundless horizon, closed off to the north by the two Mandible Capes and to the south by Claw Cape. All of Union Bay spread out magnificently before them. Yes, these good colonists had every reason to be satisfied, and Pencroff was not stingy in his praise of what he jokingly called "his apartment on the fifth floor above the mezzanine!"
The rainy season — The question of clothing — A seal hunt — Making candles — Work inside Granite House — The two little bridges — Back from a visit to the oyster bed — What Harbert finds in his pocket
Winter truly began with the month of June, which in this hemisphere corresponds to December in the northern one. It opened with showers and squalls that followed one another without a break. The residents of Granite House could now appreciate the advantages of a home that no bad weather could touch. The shelter of the Chimneys would have been far too poor a refuge against the hardships of a winter, and there was reason to fear that the high tides, driven by winds from the open sea, might break into it again. Cyrus Smith even took a few precautions against that possibility, to protect as well as he could the forge and the furnaces that were set up there.
All through June, the time went into all sorts of work, which left room for both hunting and fishing, and the pantry's stores could be kept amply supplied. As soon as he had the leisure, Pencroff meant to set up traps, from which he expected great things. He had already made snares out of woody fibers, and not a day went by without the warren supplying its share of rodents. Nab spent nearly all his time salting or smoking meat, which kept him in excellent preserved provisions.
The question of clothing now came up for very serious discussion. The colonists had no clothes but the ones they had been wearing when the balloon threw them onto the island. Those clothes were warm and sturdy. They had taken the greatest care of them, and of their underclothes too, and they kept everything perfectly clean. But all of it would soon need replacing. Besides, if the winter turned out to be harsh, the colonists would suffer badly from the cold.
On this point, Cyrus Smith's ingenuity had come up short. He had had to see to the most urgent things first, to build the home and make sure of the food supply, and the cold might catch him before the question of clothing was solved. So they would just have to resign themselves to getting through this first winter without complaining too much. When the fine season came, they would go hunting in earnest for the mouflons whose presence had been noticed during the exploration of Mount Franklin, and once the wool was gathered, the engineer would surely know how to make warm, sturdy cloth out of it... How? He would think about that.
"Well, we'll just have to toast our shins by the fire in Granite House!" said Pencroff. "There's fuel everywhere, and no reason to go easy on it."
"Besides," said Gédéon Spilett, "Lincoln Island doesn't lie in a very high latitude, and the winters here probably aren't severe. Didn't you tell us, Cyrus, that this thirty-fifth parallel corresponds to the latitude of Spain in the other hemisphere?"
"Certainly," answered the engineer, "but some winters are very cold in Spain! Snow and ice, nothing missing, and Lincoln Island may be tested just as hard. Still, this is an island, and being an island, I hope its temperature will be milder."
"Why is that, Mr. Cyrus?" asked Harbert.
"Because the sea, my boy, can be thought of as an immense reservoir in which the heat of summer is stored up. When winter comes, the sea gives that heat back, and so the regions near the oceans enjoy a moderate average temperature — not as hot in summer, but not as cold in winter."
"We'll see," said Pencroff. "Personally, I don't intend to worry about how cold it will or won't be. What's certain is that the days are already short and the evenings long. Suppose we took up the question of lighting?"
"Nothing could be easier," said Cyrus Smith.
"To take up?" asked the sailor.
"To solve."
"And when do we start?"
"Tomorrow, with a seal hunt."
"To make tallow candles?"
"Tallow? For shame, Pencroff! Proper candles — stearin candles."
That was indeed the engineer's plan, and it was a workable one, since he had lime and sulfuric acid, and the amphibians on the islet would furnish the fat he needed to make them.
It was June 4. It was Pentecost Sunday, and everyone agreed to keep the holiday. All work stopped, and prayers rose toward heaven. But these prayers were now prayers of thanks. The colonists of Lincoln Island were no longer the wretched castaways who had been flung onto the islet. They no longer asked; they gave thanks.
The next day, June 5, in rather uncertain weather, they set out for the islet. Once again they had to wait for low tide to wade across the channel, and on that subject it was agreed that they would build a boat of some sort, however rough, which would make getting back and forth easier and would also let them travel up the Mercy during the great exploration of the island's southwest, which had been put off until the first fine days.
The seals were plentiful, and the hunters, armed with their iron-tipped spears, easily killed half a dozen. Nab and Pencroff skinned them and carried back to Granite House only their fat and their skins, the skins being meant for making sturdy shoes.
The result of this hunt was as follows: about three hundred pounds of fat, all of which was to go into making candles.
The process was extremely simple, and if it did not give perfect results, the candles were at least usable. Even if Cyrus Smith had had nothing but sulfuric acid at his disposal, he could have heated that acid with the neutral fat — in this case the seal fat — and separated out the glycerin. Then, from the new compound, he could easily have separated the olein, the margarin, and the stearin by using boiling water. But to keep the operation simple, he chose to saponify the fat with lime. In this way he obtained a lime soap, which sulfuric acid easily broke down: the acid made the lime settle out as calcium sulfate and set the fatty acids free.
Of these three acids — oleic, margaric, and stearic — the first, being liquid, was squeezed out under enough pressure. The other two together made up the very substance that would be molded into candles.
The whole operation took no more than twenty-four hours. After several trials, the wicks were made of plant fibers, and when they were dipped in the melted substance, they produced genuine stearin candles, molded by hand, which lacked nothing but bleaching and polishing. They did not, of course, have the advantage of wicks soaked in boric acid, which turn to glass little by little as they burn and so are consumed completely. But Cyrus Smith made a fine pair of snuffers, and these candles were greatly appreciated during the long evenings at Granite House.
All that month there was no shortage of work inside the new home. The joiners had plenty to do. The tools, which were very rough, were improved. More were added to them, too.
Among other things, scissors were made, and the colonists could at last cut their hair, and if not shave their beards, at least trim them as they pleased. Harbert had none, and Nab hardly any, but their companions were bristling with enough of it to justify making the scissors.
Making a handsaw — the kind called a panel saw — cost endless trouble, but in the end they had a tool that, worked hard enough, could cut through the fibers of wood. So they made tables, seats, and cupboards to furnish the main rooms, and bed frames whose only bedding was mattresses of eelgrass. The kitchen, with its shelves holding the earthenware utensils, its brick stove, and its stone sink for the washing up, looked very fine, and Nab went about his business there with great solemnity, as if he were working in a chemist's laboratory.
But the joiners soon had to give way to the carpenters. The new spillway, blasted open with explosives, made it necessary to build two little bridges, one on Prospect Plateau and the other down on the beach itself. Now, in fact, both the plateau and the beach were cut straight across by a stream that had to be crossed by anyone who wanted to reach the north of the island. To avoid it, the colonists would have had to make a long detour, going west until they were beyond the springs of Red Creek. The simplest thing, then, was to put two little bridges across, one on the plateau and one on the beach, each twenty to twenty-five feet long, whose entire framework was just a few tree trunks squared off with the ax. It took only a few days. Once the bridges were in place, Nab and Pencroff used them to go as far as the oyster bed that had been found off the dunes. They pulled along with them a sort of rough cart, which replaced the old hurdle, since that had really been too awkward, and they brought back a few thousand oysters. These quickly took to their new home among the rocks at the mouth of the Mercy, which made so many natural oyster pens. The oysters were of excellent quality, and the colonists ate them almost every day.
As you can see, Lincoln Island, although its inhabitants had explored only a very small part of it, already supplied almost all their needs. And it was likely that, searched down to its most hidden corners — all across the wooded country stretching from the Mercy to Reptile End — it would pour out new treasures.
Only one hardship still weighed on the colonists of Lincoln Island. They had no lack of meat, the nitrogen-rich food, nor of the vegetable foods that ought to balance it. The woody roots of the dragon trees, left to ferment, gave them a sour drink, a sort of beer far better than plain water. They had even made sugar, without sugarcane or beets, by collecting the sap that flows from "Acer saccharinum," a kind of maple, of the family Aceraceae, that thrives in every temperate zone, and of which the island had a great many. They made a very pleasant tea from the bee balm brought back from the warren. And they had plenty of salt, the only mineral that is part of the human diet... But they had no bread.
Perhaps, later on, the colonists could replace that food with some substitute, sago-palm flour or the starch of the breadfruit tree. And it was possible, in fact, that the southern forests might count some of those precious trees among their species, but so far none had been found.
Yet in this matter Providence was to come straight to the colonists' aid — in an infinitesimal amount, it is true, but still: Cyrus Smith, with all his intelligence and all his ingenuity, could never have produced what Harbert found one day, by the purest chance, in the lining of his jacket, which he was busy mending.
That day — it was pouring rain — the colonists were gathered in the great hall of Granite House when the boy suddenly cried out:
"Look, Mr. Cyrus! A grain of wheat!"
And he showed his companions a grain, one single grain, which had slipped from his torn pocket into the lining of his jacket.
The grain was there because Harbert, back in Richmond, had been in the habit of feeding some wood pigeons that Pencroff had given him.
"A grain of wheat?" the engineer said quickly.
"Yes, Mr. Cyrus, but just one, only one!"
"Well, my boy," cried Pencroff with a smile, "that gets us a long way, I must say! What could we possibly do with one grain of wheat?"
"We'll make bread out of it," answered Cyrus Smith.
"Bread, cakes, pies!" retorted the sailor. "Come on! The bread this grain of wheat gives us won't choke us anytime soon!"
Harbert, attaching very little importance to his discovery, was about to throw the grain away, but Cyrus Smith took it, examined it, saw that it was in good condition, and, looking the sailor straight in the eye, asked him calmly:
"Pencroff, do you know how many ears a grain of wheat can produce?"
"One, I suppose!" answered the sailor, surprised by the question.
"Ten, Pencroff. And do you know how many grains an ear carries?"
"No, I can't say I do."
"Eighty on average," said Cyrus Smith. "So if we plant this grain, at the first harvest we'll reap eight hundred grains. Those will produce six hundred and forty thousand at the second harvest, five hundred and twelve million at the third, and at the fourth more than four hundred billion grains. That's the proportion."
Cyrus Smith's companions listened without answering. The figures stunned them. And yet they were exact.
"Yes, my friends," the engineer went on. "Such are the arithmetical progressions of fruitful nature. And even so, what is this multiplication of the grain of wheat, whose ear carries only eight hundred grains, compared with the poppy plants that bear thirty-two thousand seeds, or the tobacco plants that produce three hundred and sixty thousand? Within a few years, if it weren't for the many causes of destruction that hold their fertility in check, those plants would overrun the whole earth."
But the engineer had not finished his little cross-examination.
"And now, Pencroff," he went on, "do you know how many bushels four hundred billion grains make?"
"No," answered the sailor, "but what I do know is that I'm nothing but a dunce!"
"Well, it would come to more than three million, at a hundred and thirty thousand grains to the bushel, Pencroff."
"Three million!" cried Pencroff.
"Three million."
"In four years?"
"In four years," answered Cyrus Smith, "and even in two, if, as I hope, we can get two harvests a year in this latitude."
To that, as was his habit, Pencroff could think of no reply but a tremendous hurrah.
"So, Harbert," the engineer added, "you've made a discovery of the greatest importance to us. Everything, my friends, everything can be of use to us in the situation we're in. Please don't forget it."
"No, Mr. Cyrus, no, we won't forget it," answered Pencroff. "And if I ever find one of those tobacco seeds that multiply by three hundred and sixty thousand, I promise you I won't throw it to the wind! And now, do you know what we have left to do?"
"We have to plant this grain," answered Harbert.
"Yes," added Gédéon Spilett, "and with all the respect it deserves, because it carries our future harvests inside it."
"If only it grows!" cried the sailor.
"It will grow," answered Cyrus Smith.
It was June 20. So the time was right for sowing that single, precious grain of wheat. At first there was talk of planting it in a pot. But on reflection they decided to trust nature more boldly and give it to the earth. That was done the very same day, and there is no need to add that every precaution was taken to make the operation succeed.
The weather having cleared a little, the colonists climbed to the heights above Granite House. There, on the plateau, they chose a spot well sheltered from the wind, where the noonday sun would pour down all its warmth. The spot was cleared, carefully weeded, and even dug over to drive out any insects or worms. They laid down a bed of good soil improved with a little lime. They put a fence around it. Then the grain was pressed down into the moist bed.
Didn't it seem as if these colonists were laying the cornerstone of a building? It reminded Pencroff of the day he had struck his one and only match, and of all the care he had taken over that operation. But this time the matter was more serious. For the castaways would always have managed to get fire, by one means or another, but no human power could ever give them back this grain of wheat if, by bad luck, it should die!
A few degrees below zero — Exploring the marshy southeast — The culpeos — A view of the sea — A conversation about the future of the Pacific Ocean — The ceaseless work of the infusoria — What will become of the globe — The hunt — Shelduck Marsh
From that moment on, not a single day went by without Pencroff paying a visit to what he called, in all seriousness, his "wheat field." And woe to any insect that ventured into it! It could expect no mercy.
Toward the end of June, after endless rains, the weather turned decidedly cold. On the 29th a Fahrenheit thermometer would certainly have read no more than twenty degrees.
The next day, June 30, which corresponds to December 31 in the northern year, was a Friday. Nab remarked that the year was ending on an unlucky day. But Pencroff answered that, naturally, the next one would begin on a lucky one, which was better.
In any case, it began with a very sharp cold. Chunks of ice piled up at the mouth of the Mercy, and before long the lake froze over from end to end.
The supply of fuel had to be renewed several times. Pencroff had not waited for the river to freeze before bringing enormous timber rafts down to where they were needed. The current was a tireless engine, and it was put to work carrying driftwood until the cold came and chained it up. To the fuel the forest provided so generously, the colonists also added several cartloads of coal, which had to be fetched from the foot of the spurs of Mount Franklin. The powerful heat of the coal was warmly appreciated when the temperature fell, on July 4, to eight degrees Fahrenheit. A second fireplace had been built in the dining room, and there they all worked together.
During this cold spell Cyrus Smith had every reason to congratulate himself on having brought a small stream of Lake Grant's water down to Granite House. The water was drawn from below the frozen surface and led through the old spillway, so it stayed liquid. It arrived in an inside reservoir, which had been dug out at the corner of the back storeroom, and the overflow ran away down the well to the sea.
About this time, the weather being extremely dry, the colonists, dressed as warmly as they could manage, decided to spend a day exploring the part of the island that lay to the southeast, between the Mercy and Claw Cape. It was a vast stretch of marshland, and there might be good hunting there, since water birds were bound to swarm in it.
They reckoned on eight or nine miles out and as many back, so the day would be well used. And since it also meant exploring an unknown part of the island, the whole colony had to take part. So on July 5, at six in the morning, with dawn barely breaking, Cyrus Smith, Gédéon Spilett, Harbert, Nab and Pencroff left Granite House, armed with spears, snares, bows and arrows and carrying enough provisions, with Top frisking ahead of them.
They took the shortest way, and the shortest way was to cross the Mercy on the ice that was then choking it.
"But," the reporter rightly observed, "this is no substitute for a real bridge!"
And so the building of a "real" bridge was added to the list of jobs to be done.
It was the first time the colonists had set foot on the right bank of the Mercy and ventured among those tall, magnificent conifers, now covered in snow.
But they had not gone half a mile when a whole family of four-footed animals burst out of a thick clump of brush where they had made their home. Top's barking had put them to flight.
"Oh! They look like foxes!" cried Harbert, as he watched the whole band clear out as fast as they could go.
They were foxes, as it happened, but very large ones, and they made a sort of barking sound that seemed to astonish Top himself. He stopped short in his chase and gave the swift animals time to disappear.
The dog had a right to be surprised, since he knew no natural history. But by their barking these foxes, reddish gray in coat, with black tails ending in a white tuft, had given away who they were. Harbert gave them their true name without a moment's hesitation: "culpeos." Culpeos are often found in Chile, in the Falklands, and all along the American coasts that lie between the thirtieth and fortieth parallels. Harbert was very sorry that Top had not managed to catch one of these carnivores.
"Can you eat them?" asked Pencroff, who never looked at the island's wildlife from more than one particular point of view.
"No," answered Harbert, "but zoologists still haven't settled whether the pupil of these foxes' eyes is made for day or for night, or whether they ought to be classed with the dogs proper."
Cyrus Smith could not help smiling at the boy's remark, which showed a serious mind. As for the sailor, once these foxes could not be classed in the edible genus, he did not care what they were. All the same, he pointed out that when a poultry yard was set up at Granite House, it would be wise to take a few precautions against probable visits from these four-legged robbers. Nobody disagreed.
After rounding Jetsam Point, the colonists came upon a long beach washed by the open sea. It was then eight o'clock in the morning. The sky was perfectly clear, as it often is in long spells of hard cold. But Cyrus Smith and his companions, warmed by their walk, did not feel the sting of the air too sharply. Besides, there was no wind, and that makes a deep drop in temperature far easier to bear. A brilliant sun, which gave no warmth at all, was just rising out of the ocean, and its enormous disk hung swaying on the horizon. The sea lay smooth and blue, like a Mediterranean bay under a clear sky. Claw Cape, curved like a scimitar, tapered to a sharp point some four miles off to the southeast. To the left, the edge of the marsh ended abruptly at a little point of land that the sun's rays were now outlining in a line of fire. Certainly, in this part of Union Bay, with nothing to shelter it from the open sea, not even a sandbank, ships beaten by the east winds would have found no refuge at all. From the calm of the sea, which no shoals disturbed, from its even color, unspotted by any yellowish tinge, and above all from the absence of any reef, you could tell that this coast dropped off steeply and that the ocean covered deep abysses here. Behind them, to the west, the first lines of trees of the Far West forests rose, but four miles away. You might almost have thought you were on the desolate coast of some island in the Antarctic, overrun by ice. The colonists halted there for lunch. They lit a fire of brushwood and dried wrack, and Nab prepared a lunch of cold meat, adding a few cups of Oswego tea.
As they ate, they looked around them. This part of Lincoln Island really was barren, a sharp contrast to the whole western region. That led the reporter to remark that if chance had first thrown the castaways onto this beach, they would have formed a dismal idea of their future domain.
"I don't think we could even have reached it," the engineer answered, "because the sea here is deep, and it didn't offer us a single rock to take refuge on. In front of Granite House, at least, there were sandbanks and an islet, and they multiplied our chances of being saved. Here there's nothing but the abyss!"
"It's rather odd," observed Gédéon Spilett, "that an island this small should have such varied ground. Logically, that kind of diversity belongs only to continents of a certain size. You'd really think that the western part of Lincoln Island, so rich and fertile, was washed by the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico, while its northern and southeastern shores stretched along some kind of Arctic sea."
"You're right, my dear Spilett," Cyrus Smith replied. "I've noticed it too. I find this island strange, in its shape as much as in its nature. It's like a summary of every aspect a continent can show, and I wouldn't be surprised if it had once been a continent."
"What! A continent in the middle of the Pacific?" cried Pencroff.
"Why not?" answered Cyrus Smith. "Why shouldn't Australia, New Ireland, everything the English geographers call Australasia, together with the archipelagos of the Pacific, once have formed a sixth part of the world, as important as Europe or Asia, as Africa or the two Americas? My mind has no trouble accepting that all the islands rising out of this vast ocean are nothing but the peaks of a continent now sunk beneath it, a continent that stood above the waters in prehistoric times."
"Like Atlantis long ago," said Harbert.
"Yes, my boy... if it ever existed, that is."
"And Lincoln Island would have been part of that continent?" asked Pencroff.
"Probably," answered Cyrus Smith, "and that would go a long way toward explaining the variety of things we see growing on it."
"And the large number of animals that still live here," Harbert added.
"Yes, my boy," the engineer replied, "and you've just handed me a new argument in support of my theory. From what we've seen, it's certain that there are a great many animals on the island, and, what's stranger, that the species are extremely varied. There's a reason for that, and in my view it's that Lincoln Island may once have been part of some vast continent that has slowly sunk beneath the Pacific."
"Then one fine day," Pencroff retorted, not seeming entirely convinced, "what's left of that old continent may disappear in its turn, and there'll be nothing at all between America and Asia?"
"Not so," answered Cyrus Smith. "There'll be the new continents that billions upon billions of tiny animals are working to build at this very moment."
"And who are these bricklayers?" asked Pencroff.
"The coral infusoria," answered Cyrus Smith. "Those microscopic creatures, by their unending labor, built Clermont-Tonnerre Island, the atolls, and the many other coral islands of the Pacific Ocean. It takes forty-seven million of them to weigh a single grain, and yet, out of the sea salts they absorb and the solid elements in the water that they take in, these tiny animals produce limestone. And that limestone forms enormous undersea foundations as hard and solid as granite. Long ago, in the first ages of creation, nature used fire, and produced the land by thrusting it up from below. But now she has handed the job over to microscopic animals, because the power of that fire inside the globe has plainly grown weaker, as the great number of volcanoes now extinct on the earth's surface shows. And I really do believe that, as century follows century and infusoria follow infusoria, this Pacific may one day turn into a vast continent, which new generations will settle and civilize in their turn."
"That'll take a while!" said Pencroff.
"Nature has time on her side," the engineer replied.
"But what's the use of new continents?" asked Harbert. "It seems to me that the habitable lands we have now are enough for humanity. And nature never does anything useless."
"Nothing useless, it's true," the engineer went on. "But here's one way the need for new continents in the future might be explained, and in exactly this tropical zone where the coral islands lie. At least, the explanation seems plausible to me."
"We're listening, Mr. Cyrus," Harbert answered.
"Here's what I think. Scientists generally agree that one day our globe will come to an end, or rather that animal and plant life will no longer be possible on it, because of the intense cooling it will undergo. Where they disagree is on the cause of that cooling. Some think it will come from the drop in the sun's temperature after millions of years. Others think it will come from the gradual dying out of the fires inside our globe, which have more influence on it than people generally suppose. I hold with the second theory myself, and I base it on this fact: the moon is truly a cooled-off body, which can no longer support life, even though the sun goes on pouring the same amount of heat onto its surface. So if the moon has cooled, it's because the inner fires to which it owed its origin, like every other body in the starry universe, have gone out completely. In any case, whatever the cause, our globe will cool one day, but the cooling will happen only little by little. And what will follow? The temperate zones, at some more or less distant time, will be no more habitable than the polar regions are now. So the populations of men, like the herds and flocks of animals, will flow back toward the latitudes that get the sun's most direct heat. An immense migration will take place. Europe, Central Asia, North America will gradually be abandoned, just like Australasia and the lower parts of South America. The plant life will follow the human migration. The flora will retreat toward the equator at the same time as the fauna. The central parts of South America and Africa will become the inhabited continents above all others. The Sami and the Samoyeds will find the climate of the polar sea on the shores of the Mediterranean. Who can tell us that, by then, the equatorial regions won't be too small to hold and feed the whole human race? So why shouldn't far-seeing nature, to give a refuge to that whole migration of plants and animals, be laying the foundations of a new continent under the equator even now, and why shouldn't she have given the infusoria the job of building it? I've often thought about all these things, my friends, and I seriously believe that the face of our globe will one day be completely transformed. As new continents rise, the seas will cover the old ones, and in centuries to come, new Columbuses will set out to discover the islands of Chimborazo, of the Himalayas or of Mont Blanc, all that is left of a drowned America, Asia and Europe. And then, finally, these new continents will in their turn become uninhabitable themselves. The heat will die out, like the heat of a body the soul has just left, and life will disappear from the globe, if not for good, then at least for a time. Perhaps then our sphere will rest, will renew itself in death, to rise again one day in higher conditions! But all that, my friends, is the secret of the Maker of all things, and, starting from the work of the infusoria, I've let myself be carried a little too far, perhaps, in prying into the secrets of the future."
"My dear Cyrus," Gédéon Spilett replied, "to me these theories are prophecies, and one day they'll come true."
"That's God's secret," said the engineer.
"That's all very well," said Pencroff, who had been listening with both ears, "but will you tell me, Mr. Cyrus, whether Lincoln Island was built by your infusoria?"
"No," answered Cyrus Smith. "It's purely volcanic in origin."
"Then it'll disappear one day?"
"Probably."
"I certainly hope we won't be on it then."
"No, don't worry, Pencroff. We won't be on it, because we have no wish to die here, and we may manage to get ourselves off it in the end."
"Meanwhile," answered Gédéon Spilett, "let's settle in as if it were for eternity. Never do anything by halves."
That ended the conversation. Lunch was over. The exploration began again, and the colonists reached the edge of the marshy region.
It was a true marsh, and it stretched all the way to the rounded coast at the southeastern end of the island, covering perhaps twenty square miles. The ground was a silt of clay and silica, mixed with a great deal of rotting plant matter. Pond algae, rushes, sedges and bulrushes covered it, with here and there a few patches of grass as thick as a heavy carpet. Frozen pools sparkled in many places in the sunlight. Neither the rains nor any river swollen by a sudden flood could have formed these reserves of water. The natural conclusion was that the marsh was fed by water seeping up through the ground, and so it was. There was even reason to fear that in the hot season the air here would fill with the foul vapors that breed marsh fevers.
Above the water plants, over the surface of the still water, fluttered a whole world of birds. A marsh hunter, or a professional shooting from a blind, could not have wasted a single shot here. Wild ducks, pintails, teal and snipe lived there in flocks, and these birds, not at all shy, let people come close to them easily.
A single charge of birdshot would certainly have brought down a few dozen of them, so tightly packed were their ranks. The colonists had to make do with arrows. The result was smaller, but the silent arrow had the advantage of not frightening the birds, which the bang of a gun would have scattered to every corner of the marsh. So this time the hunters settled for a dozen ducks, white-bodied with a cinnamon band around them, green heads, black, white and russet wings and flattened bills, which Harbert recognized as "shelducks." Top helped skillfully in catching them, and their name was given to this marshy part of the island: Shelduck Marsh. So the colonists had a plentiful reserve of water game there. When the time came, it would only be a matter of using it properly, and it was likely that several species of these birds could be, if not tamed, at least settled in the neighborhood of the lake, which would put them more directly within reach of the people who meant to eat them.
At about five in the evening Cyrus Smith and his companions started back for home. They crossed Shelduck Marsh and recrossed the Mercy on the bridge of ice.
By eight o'clock that evening they were all back at Granite House.
The traps — The foxes — The peccaries — The wind swings round to the northwest — A snowstorm — The basket makers — The hardest cold of the winter — Crystallizing the maple sugar — The mysterious well — The planned exploration — The lead pellet
The bitter cold lasted until August 15, though it never went below the lowest Fahrenheit reading they had seen so far. When the air was still, the low temperature was easy enough to bear. But when the north wind blew, it was hard going for people who were not properly dressed. Pencroff even got to the point of wishing that Lincoln Island had given shelter to a few families of bears, instead of these foxes and seals, whose fur left a lot to be desired.
"Bears," he would say, "are generally well dressed, and I'd ask nothing better than to borrow the warm coats they wear, just for the winter."
"But maybe," Nab answered with a laugh, "those bears wouldn't agree to give you their coats, Pencroff. They aren't Saint Martins, those beasts — they don't go cutting their cloaks in half for whoever's cold!"
"We'd make them, Nab, we'd make them," Pencroff replied, in a thoroughly commanding tone.
But those formidable meat-eaters did not exist on the island — or at least they had not shown themselves so far.
All the same, Harbert, Pencroff, and the reporter set about building traps on Prospect Plateau and along the edges of the forest. In the sailor's opinion any animal at all would be a fine catch, and whatever rodents or meat-eaters were the first to try out the new traps would be welcome at Granite House.
The traps were extremely simple, by the way. They were pits dug in the ground, with a ceiling of branches and grass over the top to hide the opening, and at the bottom some bait whose smell might draw the animals in. That was all. It should be said, though, that they had not been dug just anywhere, but in particular spots where a greater number of tracks showed that four-footed animals passed often. The traps were checked every day, and three times in those first days they found specimens of the culpeos that had already been seen on the right bank of the Mercy.
"Well, now! Is there nothing but foxes in this country?" cried Pencroff, the third time he pulled one of these animals out of the pit, where it was sitting looking thoroughly sheepish. "Beasts that aren't good for anything!"
"Oh, but they are," said Gédéon Spilett. "They're good for something!"
"And what's that?"
"For bait, to catch other animals with!"
The reporter was right, and from then on the traps were baited with the carcasses of these foxes.
The sailor had also made snares out of kurrajong fiber, and the snares brought in more than the traps did. Hardly a day went by without some rabbit from the warren letting itself get caught. It was always rabbit, but Nab knew how to vary his sauces, and the diners never thought of complaining.
Once or twice, however, in the second week of August, the traps gave the hunters animals other than culpeos, and more useful ones. They were some of the wild boars that had already been reported north of the lake. Pencroff did not need to ask whether these beasts were good to eat. That was plain enough from how much they looked like the pigs of America or Europe.
"But these aren't pigs, Pencroff," Harbert told him. "I'm warning you."
"My boy," answered the sailor, leaning over the trap and pulling out one of these representatives of the pig family by the little appendage that served it for a tail, "let me go on believing they're pigs!"
"Why?"
"Because it makes me happy!"
"So you're really fond of pork, Pencroff?"
"I'm very fond of pork," the sailor answered, "especially the feet. And if a pig had eight of them instead of four, I'd like it twice as much!"
As for the animals in question, they were peccaries, belonging to one of the four genera that make up the family. They were even of the species called "tajaçu," the collared peccary, recognizable by its dark color and by the lack of the long canine teeth that arm the mouths of its relatives. Peccaries usually live in herds, and it was likely that they were plentiful in the wooded parts of the island. In any case they were edible from head to foot, and Pencroff asked nothing more of them.
Toward August 15 the weather changed suddenly when the wind swung round to the northwest. The temperature rose a few degrees, and the moisture that had built up in the air soon came down as snow. The whole island was covered with a white layer and showed itself to its inhabitants in a new light. The snow fell heavily for several days, and it was soon two feet deep.
Before long the wind freshened with extreme violence, and from high up in Granite House they could hear the sea roaring over the reefs. At certain corners the air swirled in quick eddies, and the snow, caught up in them, formed tall spinning columns, like those waterspouts at sea that twirl on their bases and that ships fire their cannon at to break them up. Still, the hurricane was coming from the northwest, so it struck the island from behind, and the way Granite House faced protected it from a direct assault. But in the middle of that blizzard, as terrible as if it had been raging over some polar country, neither Cyrus Smith nor his companions could venture outside, however much they wanted to, and they stayed shut in for five days, from August 20 to 25. They could hear the storm roaring in Jacamar Wood, which was bound to suffer for it. Many trees would no doubt be torn up by the roots, but Pencroff consoled himself with the thought that he would not have the trouble of chopping them down.
"The wind's turned woodcutter — let it get on with it," he kept saying.
And anyway, there would have been no way to stop it.
How the residents of Granite House must have thanked Heaven, then, for providing them with this solid, unshakable retreat! Cyrus Smith certainly deserved his fair share of the thanks. But after all, it was nature that had hollowed out this huge cavern, and he had only discovered it. In there, all of them were safe, and the blows of the storm could not reach them. If they had built a house of brick and wood on Prospect Plateau, it would certainly not have stood up to the fury of this hurricane. As for the Chimneys, just from the crash of the breakers, which they could hear so loudly, it was clear that the place must be utterly uninhabitable, because the sea, sweeping over the islet, must be pounding it furiously. But here in Granite House, in the heart of this mass of rock that neither water nor air could get a grip on, there was nothing to fear.
During those few days of confinement the colonists did not sit idle. There was no shortage of wood, already sawn into planks, in the storeroom, and little by little they finished the furniture, tables and chairs, solid ones for sure, since no one had spared the material. These pieces were a bit heavy, and they hardly lived up to the old name for furniture — "movables" — which makes being easy to shift the whole point. But they were the pride of Nab and Pencroff, who would not have traded them for pieces by Boulle, the great cabinetmaker of the French kings.
Then the carpenters became basket makers, and they did not do badly at this new craft either. Near the point that the lake thrust out to the north, they had discovered a rich willow bed where purple osiers grew in large numbers. Before the rainy season Pencroff and Harbert had harvested these useful shrubs, and their stems, now well sorted, could be put to good use. The first attempts were shapeless. But thanks to the skill and intelligence of the workers — talking it over among themselves, remembering models they had seen, trying to outdo one another — baskets and hampers of various sizes soon added to the colony's equipment. The storeroom was stocked with them, and Nab put away his harvests of rootstocks, stone-pine nuts, and dragon-tree roots in special hampers of their own.
During the last week of August the weather changed once again. The temperature dropped a little and the storm died down. The colonists rushed outside. There were easily two feet of snow on the beach, but the surface of the snow had hardened, and they could walk on it without too much trouble. Cyrus Smith and his companions climbed up to Prospect Plateau.
What a change! The woods, which they had left green — especially the nearby part, where conifers grew thickest — had now vanished under a single color. Everything was white, from the summit of Mount Franklin down to the shore: the forests, the meadow, the lake, the river, the beaches. The water of the Mercy ran under a vault of ice, which broke up with a crash at every rise and fall of the tide. Numerous birds were fluttering over the frozen surface of the lake: ducks and snipe, pintails and guillemots. There were thousands of them. The rocks between which the waterfall poured over the edge of the plateau bristled with ice. You would have said the water was gushing from a monstrous gargoyle, carved with all the fancy of a Renaissance artist. As for judging how much damage the hurricane had done to the forest, that was not yet possible. They would have to wait until the immense white layer had melted away.
Gédéon Spilett, Pencroff, and Harbert did not miss this chance to go and check their traps. It was not easy to find them under the snow that covered them. They even had to be careful not to tumble into one or another of them, which would have been dangerous and humiliating at the same time: to be caught in your own trap! But in the end they avoided that embarrassment and found the traps completely intact. No animal had fallen into them, and yet there were many tracks all around, among them certain very sharply printed claw marks. Harbert did not hesitate to declare that some meat-eater of the cat family had passed that way, which bore out the engineer's opinion that there were dangerous wild beasts on Lincoln Island. No doubt these beasts usually lived in the dense forests of the Far West, but, driven by hunger, they had ventured as far as Prospect Plateau. Perhaps they could smell the residents of Granite House?
"So what exactly are these cats of yours?" asked Pencroff.
"They're tigers," Harbert answered.
"I thought those animals were only found in hot countries?"
"In the New World," the boy answered, "they've been seen everywhere from Mexico to the Pampas of Buenos Aires. And since Lincoln Island lies at about the same latitude as the provinces of the River Plate, it isn't surprising that there should be a few tigers here."
"All right, we'll keep watch," Pencroff answered.
Meanwhile the snow eventually disappeared as the temperature rose again. Rain began to fall, and its dissolving action wiped the white layer away. In spite of the bad weather, the colonists restocked their reserves of everything: stone-pine nuts, dragon-tree roots, rootstocks, and maple sap on the vegetable side; rabbits from the warren, agoutis, and kangaroos on the animal side. That called for a few trips into the forest, and they found that a good number of trees had been brought down by the last hurricane. The sailor and Nab even pushed on with the cart as far as the coal seam, to bring back a few tons of fuel. On the way they saw that the chimney of the pottery kiln had been badly damaged by the wind and had lost a good six feet at least from its top.
Along with the coal, the supply of firewood at Granite House was renewed too, and they took advantage of the Mercy's current, which was running free again, to float several rafts of timber down. The period of hard cold might not be over yet.
They had also paid a visit to the Chimneys, and the colonists could only congratulate themselves on not having lived there during the storm. The sea had left unmistakable marks of its ravages. Heaved up by the winds from offshore, it had leaped over the islet and violently attacked the passages, which were now half filled with sand, and thick layers of seaweed covered the rocks. While Nab, Harbert, and Pencroff were hunting or bringing in more fuel, Cyrus Smith and Gédéon Spilett busied themselves clearing out the Chimneys. They found the forge and the furnaces more or less intact, protected as they had been, right from the start, by the sand piled up over them.
It was not for nothing that the fuel supply had been built up again. The colonists were not yet done with the hard cold. In the Northern Hemisphere, as everyone knows, February is the month best known for great drops in temperature. It was bound to be the same in the Southern Hemisphere, and the end of August, which is North America's February, did not escape this law of climate.
Around the 25th, after another round of snow and rain, the wind jumped to the southeast, and all of a sudden the cold became extremely sharp. By the engineer's estimate, the mercury in a Fahrenheit thermometer would have read no less than eight degrees below zero. This fierce cold, made still more painful by a biting wind, held for several days. The colonists had to shut themselves up in Granite House once again. Since every opening in the front of the cliff had to be sealed up tight, leaving only the bare minimum for fresh air to get in, they went through a great many candles. To save them, the colonists often lit the place only by the flames of the fireplaces, where no one stinted on fuel. Several times one or another of them went down to the beach, among the chunks of ice that the rising tide piled up there at every high water. But they soon climbed back up to Granite House, and it was not without trouble and pain that their hands held on to the rungs of the ladder. In that fierce cold, the rungs burned their fingers.
Once again they had to find ways to fill the idle hours that this confinement forced on the residents of Granite House. So Cyrus Smith took on a job that could be done behind closed doors.
As we know, the only sugar the colonists had was the liquid they drew from the maple by cutting deep notches in the tree. All they had to do was collect this sap in containers, and they used it as it was for all sorts of cooking, all the more readily because, as it aged, the sap tended to turn white and take on the thickness of syrup.
But they could do better than that, and one day Cyrus Smith announced to his companions that they were about to turn into sugar refiners.
"Refiners!" said Pencroff. "That's a pretty hot trade, isn't it?"
"Very hot!" answered the engineer.
"Then it's just right for the season!" the sailor shot back.
The word "refining" should not bring to mind those factories full of complicated machinery and crowds of workers. No! To crystallize this sap, all they had to do was purify it by an extremely easy process. It was put on the fire in big earthenware pots and simply allowed to boil down for a while, and soon a scum rose to the surface. As soon as it began to thicken, Nab took care to stir it with a wooden spatula, which would speed up the evaporation and at the same time keep it from taking on a burnt taste.
After a few hours of boiling over a good fire — which did as much good to the workers as to the stuff they were working on — the sap had turned into a thick syrup. This syrup was poured into clay molds, which had been made beforehand and fired in the kitchen stove itself, and which had been given all sorts of shapes. The next day the syrup had cooled and set into loaves and tablets. It was sugar — a little reddish in color, but almost transparent, and with a perfect taste.
The cold went on until the middle of September, and the prisoners of Granite House were beginning to find their captivity very long. Almost every day they tried a few outings, which could not last long. So they worked constantly at fitting out their home, and they talked as they worked. Cyrus Smith taught his companions about everything, and above all he explained the practical uses of science to them. The colonists had no library at their disposal. But the engineer was a book always ready, always open to the page each one needed — a book that answered all their questions, and that they leafed through often. So the time went by, and these good people did not seem to fear the future at all.
All the same, it was time for this confinement to end. They were all eager to see, if not the fine season, then at least the end of this unbearable cold. If only they had been dressed well enough to brave it, what trips they would have made, to the dunes, or to Shelduck Marsh! The game must have been easy to get close to, and the hunting would certainly have been rewarding. But Cyrus Smith insisted that no one should put his health at risk, because he needed every pair of hands, and his advice was followed.
But it must be said that the most impatient of all at this imprisonment — after Pencroff, at any rate — was Top. The faithful dog felt very cramped in Granite House. He kept going back and forth from one room to the next, and in his own way he showed how bored he was at being cooped up.
Cyrus Smith often noticed that whenever Top went near the dark well that connected with the sea, the one whose opening was at the back of the storeroom, he would give strange growls. Top would circle around this hole, which had been covered over with a wooden lid. Sometimes he even tried to slip his paws under the lid, as if he wanted to lift it. Then he would yelp in a peculiar way, a way that showed both anger and uneasiness.
The engineer watched this performance several times. What could there be in that pit to make such an impression on the intelligent animal? The well ran down to the sea, that much was certain. Did it branch off, then, into narrow tunnels running through the framework of the island? Did it connect with other caverns inside? Did some sea monster come, now and then, to breathe at the bottom of the well? The engineer did not know what to think, and he could not stop himself from dreaming up strange possibilities. Used as he was to traveling far into the realm of scientific fact, he could not forgive himself for letting himself be drawn into the realm of the strange, almost of the supernatural. But how else could he explain why Top — one of those sensible dogs that have never wasted their time barking at the moon — kept stubbornly probing that pit with his nose and his ears, if nothing was happening down there that ought to rouse his uneasiness? Top's behavior puzzled Cyrus Smith more than seemed reasonable to admit, even to himself.
In any case, the engineer shared his impressions only with Gédéon Spilett. He saw no point in letting his companions in on the thoughts that kept coming to him in spite of himself, over what was perhaps nothing more than a whim of Top's.
At last the cold ended. There were rains, squalls mixed with snow, sudden showers of sleet and hail, gusts of wind — but this foul weather did not last. The ice had melted and the snow was gone. The beach, the plateau, the banks of the Mercy, and the forest could all be used again. The return of spring delighted the residents of Granite House, and soon they were spending only the hours of sleep and meals inside.
They hunted a great deal in the second half of September, which led Pencroff to demand, more insistently than ever, the firearms that he claimed Cyrus Smith had promised him. The engineer knew very well that without special tools it would be almost impossible for him to make a gun that would be of any real use, so he kept putting the job off until later. Besides, he pointed out, Harbert and Gédéon Spilett had become skilled archers. All sorts of excellent animals — agoutis, kangaroos, capybaras, pigeons, bustards, wild ducks, snipe, in short every kind of game, furred or feathered — were falling to their arrows, and so they could afford to wait. But the stubborn sailor would not hear of it, and he would give the engineer no rest until his wish was granted. Gédéon Spilett, for that matter, backed Pencroff up.
"If the island has fierce animals on it, as we have some reason to suspect," he said, "we have to think about fighting them and wiping them out. A time may come when that's our first duty."
But at that point it was not the question of firearms that was on Cyrus Smith's mind. It was the question of clothing. The clothes the colonists wore had lasted through the winter, but they would not hold out until the next one. Hides from meat-eating animals or wool from grazing ones — that was what they had to get, at any cost. And since there was no shortage of mouflons, the thing to do was to find a way to gather a flock of them, which would be raised for the colony's needs. A pen for the domestic animals, a poultry yard fitted out for the birds — in short, a kind of farm to be set up at some spot on the island: those would be the two important projects to carry out during the fine season.
So, with these future settlements in view, it was becoming urgent to make a thorough reconnaissance of the whole unknown part of Lincoln Island — that is, under the tall forests that stretched along the right bank of the Mercy, from its mouth to the tip of Serpentine Peninsula, as well as along the whole of the west coast. But they needed settled weather, and another month would have to go by before the exploration could usefully be undertaken.
So they were waiting with a certain impatience, when something happened that made the colonists still more eager to visit every corner of their domain.
It was October 24. That day Pencroff had gone to check the traps, which he always kept properly baited. In one of them he found three animals that were sure to be welcome in the pantry. They were a female peccary and her two young.
So Pencroff came back to Granite House delighted with his catch, and, as always, the sailor made a great show of his hunting.
"Come on! We're going to have a fine meal, Mr. Cyrus!" he cried. "And you too, Mr. Spilett, you'll be eating some of this!"
"I'm quite willing to eat some," the reporter answered. "But what is it I'll be eating?"
"Suckling pig."
"Oh, really? Suckling pig, Pencroff? To hear you talk, I thought you were bringing back a partridge stuffed with truffles!"
"What?" cried Pencroff. "Are you turning up your nose at suckling pig, by any chance?"
"No," answered Gédéon Spilett, without showing any enthusiasm, "as long as we don't overdo it..."
"All right, all right, Mr. Journalist," the sailor shot back — he did not like to hear his hunting run down. "So you're getting fussy, are you? And seven months ago, when we landed on the island, you'd have been only too happy to come across game like this!..."
"There you go, there you go," the reporter answered. "Man is never perfect, and never satisfied."
"Well," Pencroff went on, "I hope Nab will outdo himself. Look! These two little peccaries aren't even three months old! They'll be as tender as quail! Come on, Nab, come with me! I'll keep an eye on the cooking myself."
And the sailor, with Nab following him, made for the kitchen and buried himself in his culinary labors.
They let him do it his own way. So he and Nab prepared a magnificent meal: the two little peccaries, a kangaroo soup, a smoked ham, stone-pine nuts, dragon-tree drink, Oswego tea — everything they had that was best, in short. But among all the dishes, the place of honor was to go to the delicious peccaries, braised in their own juices.
At five o'clock dinner was served in the dining room of Granite House. The kangaroo soup was steaming on the table. Everyone found it excellent.
After the soup came the peccaries, which Pencroff insisted on carving himself, and he served each of the diners an enormous helping.
These suckling pigs were truly delicious, and Pencroff was devouring his share with tremendous gusto, when all at once a cry and an oath escaped him.
"What is it?" asked Cyrus Smith.
"It's... it's... I've just broken a tooth!" answered the sailor.
"Well, now! Are there pebbles in your peccaries, then?" said Gédéon Spilett.
"Must be," answered Pencroff, taking out of his mouth the object that had just cost him a molar!...
It was not a pebble...
It was a lead pellet.
About the lead pellet — Building a canoe — The hunts — At the top of a kauri — Nothing to show that man is here — A catch by Nab and Harbert — A turtle turned over — A turtle gone — Cyrus Smith's explanation
It was seven months to the day since the passengers of the balloon had been thrown onto Lincoln Island. In all that time, however hard they had searched, not one human being had shown himself to them. Never had a wisp of smoke betrayed the presence of man anywhere on the island. Never had any work of human hands shown that someone had passed that way, whether long ago or lately. Not only did the island seem to be uninhabited; there was every reason to believe it had never been inhabited at all. And now that whole scaffolding of deductions was collapsing in front of a single pellet of metal found in the body of a harmless little animal!
For that lead had come out of a firearm, and who but a human being could have fired it?
When Pencroff set the pellet down on the table, his companions stared at it in deep astonishment. All the consequences of this incident, enormous for all its apparent smallness, had suddenly seized their minds. The sudden appearance of some supernatural being could not have struck them more sharply.
Cyrus Smith did not hesitate. He began at once to lay out the theories that so surprising and unexpected a fact was bound to raise. He picked up the pellet, turned it this way and that, and felt it between his thumb and forefinger. Then:
"You're sure," he asked Pencroff, "that the peccary this pellet wounded was barely three months old?"
"Barely, Mr. Cyrus," answered Pencroff. "It was still nursing at its mother when I found it in the pit."
"Well, then," said the engineer, "that proves, all by itself, that a gun has been fired on Lincoln Island within the last three months at most."
"And that a lead pellet hit this little animal," added Gédéon Spilett, "though not fatally."
"There's no doubt about it," Cyrus Smith went on, "and here are the consequences we ought to draw from it. Either the island was inhabited before we came, or men have landed on it within the last three months at most. Did those men come here on purpose or by accident? Did they put in to shore, or were they shipwrecked? That question can only be cleared up later. As for who they are — Europeans or Malays, enemies or friends to men like us — we have nothing at all to guess by. And whether they're still on the island or have left it, we don't know that either. But these questions concern us too closely for us to stay in doubt about them any longer."
"No! A hundred times no! A thousand times no!" cried the sailor, getting up from the table. "There are no other men on Lincoln Island but us! Hang it all, the island isn't big, and if anybody lived on it, we'd have caught sight of a few of them by now!"
"It would certainly be very surprising if we hadn't," said Harbert.
"But it would be a great deal more surprising, I should think," observed the reporter, "if this peccary had been born with a lead pellet inside it!"
"Unless," said Nab seriously, "Pencroff had..."
"Listen to him, Nab!" Pencroff shot back. "So for the last five or six months I've been carrying a lead pellet around in my jaw without noticing it! And where would it have been hiding?" the sailor added, opening his mouth to show off the splendid thirty-two teeth that filled it. "Take a good look, Nab, and if you find one hollow tooth in that set, you have my permission to pull out half a dozen!"
"Nab's theory can't be accepted, that's true," answered Cyrus Smith, who for all the seriousness of his thoughts could not hold back a smile. "It's certain that a gun has been fired on the island within the last three months at most. But I'm inclined to think that whoever landed on this coast has been here only a very short time, or else only stopped and went on. Because if the island had been inhabited when we were surveying it from the top of Mount Franklin, we would have seen them or they would have seen us. So most likely some castaways were thrown up somewhere on the coast by a storm only a few weeks ago. Whatever the truth is, we need to be certain about it."
"I think we ought to act carefully," said the reporter.
"I agree," answered Cyrus Smith, "because unfortunately there's reason to fear that it's Malay pirates who have landed on the island!"
"Mr. Cyrus," asked the sailor, "wouldn't it be a good idea, before we go out exploring, to build a boat that would let us go up the river, or around the coast if need be? We mustn't let ourselves be caught unprepared."
"That's a good idea, Pencroff," answered the engineer, "but we can't wait. It would take at least a month to build a boat..."
"A real boat, yes," the sailor answered. "But we don't need anything fit to go to sea. In five days at most I'll guarantee to build a canoe good enough to travel on the Mercy."
"In five days?" cried Nab. "Make a boat?"
"Yes, Nab, a boat the way the Indians make them."
"Out of wood?" asked Nab, not looking very convinced.
"Out of wood," answered Pencroff, "or rather out of bark. I'll say it again, Mr. Cyrus: in five days the job can be done!"
"Five days it is, then!" answered the engineer.
"But until then we'd better keep a sharp watch!" said Harbert.
"A very sharp watch, my friends," answered Cyrus Smith. "And I'll ask you to keep your hunting trips to the neighborhood of Granite House."
Dinner ended less cheerfully than Pencroff had hoped.
So the island was inhabited, or had been, by someone besides the colonists. Since the incident of the lead pellet, that was now a fact beyond dispute, and a discovery like that could only cause the colonists serious alarm.
Before going to bed, Cyrus Smith and Gédéon Spilett talked these things over for a long time. They wondered whether, by any chance, this incident might have some connection with the unexplained circumstances of the engineer's rescue, and with the other strange details that had struck them more than once already. In the end, though, after arguing the question both ways, Cyrus Smith said:
"To sum it up, would you like to know what I think, my dear Spilett?"
"Yes, Cyrus."
"Well, here it is. However carefully we explore the island, we won't find anything!"
The very next day Pencroff set to work. The point was not to build a proper boat with ribs and planking, but simply a flat-bottomed craft that would float, which would be excellent for traveling on the Mercy, especially up near its sources, where the water would be shallow. Pieces of bark sewn one to another would be enough to make the light little vessel, and if natural obstacles meant it had to be carried overland, it would be neither heavy nor awkward. Pencroff planned to join the strips of bark with riveted nails, and to make sure, by fitting them tightly together, that the craft would be perfectly watertight.
So they had to choose trees whose bark was supple and tough enough to lend itself to the work. Now, as it happened, the last storm had brought down a number of Douglas firs, which were perfectly suited to this kind of construction. Some of these firs were lying on the ground, and all that remained was to strip off the bark. But that turned out to be the hardest part, given how poor the colonists' tools were. Still, in the end they managed it.
While the sailor, with the engineer's help, was busy at this without losing an hour, Gédéon Spilett and Harbert were not idle either. They had made themselves the colony's providers. The reporter never tired of admiring the boy, who had become remarkably skillful with the bow and the spear. Harbert also showed great daring, together with a good deal of that coolness one might rightly call "the reasoning side of bravery." The two hunting companions, heeding Cyrus Smith's advice, no longer went more than two miles from Granite House in any direction. But the lower slopes of the forest supplied plenty of agoutis, capybaras, kangaroos, peccaries and so on. And though the traps were not bringing in much now that the cold had ended, the warren at least was giving its usual share, which would have been enough to feed the whole colony of Lincoln Island.
Often, during these hunts, Harbert talked with Gédéon Spilett about the incident of the lead pellet and the conclusions the engineer had drawn from it. One day — it was October 26 — he said to him:
"But, Mr. Spilett, don't you think it's very strange that if some castaways have landed on this island, they still haven't shown themselves anywhere near Granite House?"
"Very surprising, if they're still here," answered the reporter, "but not surprising at all if they're gone!"
"So you think those people have already left the island?" Harbert went on.
"It's more than likely, my boy. If they had stayed for long, and above all if they were still here, something would have given them away sooner or later."
"But if they were able to leave again," the boy pointed out, "then they weren't castaways?"
"No, Harbert. Or at least they were what I'd call temporary castaways. It's quite possible that a gale threw them onto the island without wrecking their boat, and that once the gale had passed they put to sea again."
"One thing has to be said," Harbert remarked. "Mr. Smith has always seemed more afraid of finding human beings on our island than eager to."
"That's true," answered the reporter. "He doesn't see who could be sailing these seas except the Malays, and those gentlemen are nasty scoundrels, best avoided."
"It isn't impossible, Mr. Spilett," Harbert went on, "that one of these days we'll come across some traces of their landing, and then perhaps we'll know for certain?"
"I won't say no, my boy. An abandoned camp, a dead fire, could put us on the trail, and that's what we'll be looking for on our next expedition."
On the day the two hunters had this talk, they were in a part of the forest near the Mercy that was remarkable for its magnificent trees. Among others, there rose up there, nearly two hundred feet above the ground, a few of those superb conifers that the Maori people of New Zealand call "kauris."
"I have an idea, Mr. Spilett," said Harbert. "If I climbed to the top of one of these kauris, maybe I could look out over the country for quite a long way around?"
"It's a good idea," answered the reporter, "but can you climb all the way to the top of those giants?"
"I can at least try," answered Harbert.
The boy, nimble and skillful, sprang up onto the lowest branches, which were arranged so as to make the kauri fairly easy to climb, and in a few minutes he had reached its crown, which rose clear of the immense plain of green formed by the rounded treetops of the forest.
From that high point the eye could range over the whole southern part of the island, from Claw Cape in the southeast to Reptile End in the southwest. To the northwest stood Mount Franklin, which blocked out a good quarter of the horizon.
But from the top of his lookout Harbert could survey exactly the part of the island that was still unknown, the part that might have sheltered, or might be sheltering still, the strangers whose presence they suspected.
The boy looked with the closest attention. At sea, first of all, there was nothing in sight. Not a sail, either on the horizon or in the waters close to the island. Still, since the mass of trees hid the shoreline, it was possible that a ship — especially one that had lost its masts — had come in very close to land and so could not be seen by Harbert.
In the middle of the Far West forests there was nothing either. The forest made an impenetrable dome several square miles across, without a clearing, without a gap. It was not even possible to follow the course of the Mercy, or to make out the spot on the mountain where it had its source. Perhaps other creeks ran toward the west, but there was nothing to show it.
But even if every sign of a camp escaped Harbert, might he not catch some smoke in the air that would betray the presence of man? The air was clear, and the faintest wisp of vapor would have stood out sharply against the sky.
For a moment Harbert thought he saw a thin thread of smoke rising in the west, but a more careful look showed him he was mistaken. He looked with the greatest care, and his eyesight was excellent... No, there was definitely nothing there.
Harbert climbed back down to the foot of the kauri, and the two hunters returned to Granite House. There Cyrus Smith listened to the boy's account, shook his head, and said nothing. It was quite clear that no one could settle the question until the island had been explored from end to end.
Two days later — October 28 — another incident took place, and its explanation, too, would leave something to be desired.
While roaming along the beach two miles from Granite House, Harbert and Nab were lucky enough to capture a magnificent specimen of the order of chelonians, the turtles. It was a green turtle, of the genus Mydas, and its shell gave off wonderful green gleams.
Harbert had spotted the turtle as it was slipping between the rocks to reach the sea.
"Over here, Nab! Over here!" he shouted.
Nab came running.
"What a beautiful animal!" said Nab. "But how are we going to catch it?"
"Nothing could be easier, Nab," answered Harbert. "We'll turn this turtle over on its back, and then it won't be able to get away. Take your spear and do what I do."
Sensing danger, the reptile had drawn itself in between its upper shell and its under-shell. Neither its head nor its legs could be seen any longer, and it lay as still as a rock.
Harbert and Nab then worked their poles in under the animal's breastbone, and by heaving together they managed, not without trouble, to turn it over on its back. The turtle was three feet long and must have weighed at least four hundred pounds.
"Good!" cried Nab. "That's going to make friend Pencroff happy!"
And indeed friend Pencroff could hardly fail to be happy, because the flesh of these turtles, which feed on eelgrass, is extremely tasty. At that moment all that could still be seen of this one was its head — small and flat, but greatly widened at the back by large hollows at the temples, hidden under an arch of bone.
"And now what are we going to do with our game?" said Nab. "We can't drag it all the way to Granite House!"
"Let's leave it here, since it can't turn itself back over," answered Harbert, "and we'll come back for it with the cart."
"All right."
All the same, to be extra careful, Harbert took the trouble — which Nab thought unnecessary — to wedge the animal in place with big stones. After that the two hunters went back to Granite House along the beach, which the tide, low just then, had laid wide open. Harbert, who wanted to surprise Pencroff, said nothing to him about the "superb specimen of the chelonians" he had left turned over on the sand. But two hours later, when he and Nab came back with the cart to the place where they had left it, the "superb specimen of the chelonians" was no longer there.
Nab and Harbert first looked at each other, then looked all around them. Yet this was certainly the spot where the turtle had been left. The boy even found the stones he had used, so he was sure he was not mistaken.
"Well, how about that!" said Nab. "So these creatures can turn themselves back over?"
"It looks that way," answered Harbert, who could make no sense of it at all and was staring at the stones scattered on the sand.
"Well, Pencroff won't be pleased, that's for sure!"
"And Mr. Smith may have a hard time explaining how it disappeared!" thought Harbert.
"All right," said Nab, who wanted to hide their misadventure, "we just won't mention it."
"On the contrary, Nab, we have to mention it," answered Harbert.
And the two of them took up the cart they had brought for nothing and went back to Granite House.
When he reached the work yard, where the engineer and the sailor were working together, Harbert told them what had happened.
"Ah! You clumsy pair!" cried the sailor. "To let at least fifty bowls of soup get away!"
"But Pencroff," Nab retorted, "it's not our fault the creature ran off, because I'm telling you we'd turned it over!"
"Then you didn't turn it over enough!" the incorrigible sailor shot back with a grin.
"Not enough!" cried Harbert.
And he told how he had taken care to wedge the turtle in place with stones.
"Then it's a miracle!" Pencroff replied.
"I thought, Mr. Cyrus," said Harbert, "that turtles couldn't get back on their feet once they'd been turned on their backs — especially big ones?"
"That's true, my boy," answered Cyrus Smith.
"Then how could it have happened...?"
"How far from the sea had you left the turtle?" asked the engineer, who had stopped his work and was thinking the incident over.
"About fifteen feet, at most," answered Harbert.
"And the tide was low at the time?"
"Yes, Mr. Cyrus."
"Well, then," answered the engineer, "what the turtle couldn't do on the sand, it may have been able to do in the water. It must have turned itself over when the rising tide reached it, and then calmly made its way back out to sea."
"Oh! What clumsy fools we are!" cried Nab.
"That's exactly what I had the honor of telling you!" answered Pencroff.
Cyrus Smith had given this explanation, and it was a reasonable one, no doubt. But was he really convinced that it was the right one? One would not dare to say so.
First trial of the canoe — Wreckage on the shore — The tow — Jetsam Point — Inventory of the chest: tools, weapons, instruments, clothing, books, utensils — What Pencroff misses — The Gospel — A verse from the holy book
By October 29 the bark canoe was entirely finished. Pencroff had kept his promise, and in five days a sort of canoe had been built, its hull ribbed with flexible rods of crejimba wood. A bench in the stern, a second bench amidships to hold the sides apart, a third bench in the bow, a gunwale to carry the tholepins for two oars, and a sculling oar for steering made up the whole of the little boat, which was twelve feet long and weighed under two hundred pounds. As for the launching, it was extremely simple. The light canoe was carried down onto the sand at the water's edge in front of Granite House, and the rising tide lifted it. Pencroff jumped straight in, worked it along with the sculling oar, and was able to confirm that it was entirely fit for the use they meant to make of it.
"Hurrah!" cried the sailor, who did not scorn to celebrate his own triumph that way. "With this you could go all the way around..."
"The world?" asked Gédéon Spilett.
"No, the island. A few stones for ballast, a mast up in the bow, and a scrap of sail that Mr. Smith will make us one of these days, and we'll go a long way! Well, Mr. Cyrus, and you, Mr. Spilett, and you, Harbert, and you, Nab, aren't you coming to try out our new ship? What the devil! We've got to see whether she can carry all five of us!"
It was, in fact, a test worth making. With a stroke of the sculling oar Pencroff brought the boat back to the shore through a narrow passage between the rocks, and it was agreed that they would try out the canoe that very day by following the shore as far as the first point, where the rocks of the south ended.
Just as they were getting in, Nab exclaimed:
"But your ship's taking on quite a bit of water, Pencroff!"
"That's nothing, Nab," replied the sailor. "The wood has to swell tight! In two days you won't see a drop, and our canoe will have no more water in her belly than a drunkard has in his stomach. All aboard!"
So they all got in, and Pencroff pushed off. The weather was magnificent, and the sea as calm as if its waters had been held within the narrow shores of a lake. The canoe could face it as safely as if it had been going up the quiet current of the Mercy.
Nab took one of the two oars and Harbert the other, while Pencroff stayed in the stern to steer with the sculling oar.
The sailor first crossed the channel and ran close along the southern tip of the islet. A light breeze was blowing from the south. There was no swell, either in the channel or out at sea. A few long undulations, which the canoe hardly felt because it was heavily loaded, swelled the surface of the sea at regular intervals. They went out about half a mile from the coast, far enough to take in the whole sweep of Mount Franklin.
Then Pencroff came about and headed back toward the mouth of the river. The canoe now followed the shore, which curved round to the farthest point of land and hid the whole low, marshy plain of Shelduck Marsh.
Measured around the curve of the coast, that point was about three miles from the Mercy. The colonists decided to go as far as its tip and to round it only far enough to get a quick look at the coast as far as Claw Cape.
So the boat followed the shoreline two cable lengths out at most, steering clear of the reefs scattered all along that stretch of coast, which the rising tide was beginning to cover. The cliff kept getting lower from the river mouth to the point. It was a heap of granite blocks flung about at random, very different from the great wall that formed Prospect Plateau, and extremely wild to look at. It was as though an enormous cartload of rocks had been dumped there. Not a scrap of vegetation grew on that sharp spur, which ran out two miles in front of the forest, and the point looked rather like a giant's arm reaching out of a green sleeve.
Driven by its two oars, the boat moved along easily. Gédéon Spilett, a pencil in one hand and his notebook in the other, sketched the coast in broad strokes. Nab, Pencroff, and Harbert chatted as they looked over this part of their domain, which was new to them, and as the canoe went farther south the two Mandible Capes seemed to shift their places and close Union Bay in more tightly.
As for Cyrus Smith, he did not talk. He watched. And from the wariness in his eyes it always seemed as though he were studying some strange country.
Meanwhile, after three quarters of an hour on the water, the canoe had nearly reached the tip of the point, and Pencroff was getting ready to round it, when Harbert stood up and pointed to a black spot.
"What's that I see over there on the beach?" he said.
Every eye turned toward the place he pointed to.
"There's something there, all right," said the reporter. "It looks like a piece of wreckage half buried in the sand."
"Ah!" cried Pencroff. "I see what it is!"
"What?" asked Nab.
"Barrels! Barrels — and they may be full!" answered the sailor.
"To the shore, Pencroff!" said Cyrus Smith.
A few strokes of the oars, and the canoe grounded at the head of a little cove. Its passengers jumped out onto the beach.
Pencroff had not been mistaken. Two barrels lay there, half sunk in the sand, but still firmly lashed to a large chest. Held up by them, the chest had floated along until it ran aground on the shore.
"So there's been a shipwreck somewhere near the island?" asked Harbert.
"Obviously," replied Gédéon Spilett.
"But what's in this chest?" cried Pencroff, with an impatience that was only natural. "What's in this chest? It's shut tight, and nothing to break the lid open with! Well, then, we'll do it with stones..."
And the sailor, lifting a heavy rock, was about to smash in one side of the chest when the engineer stopped him.
"Pencroff," he said, "can you hold back your impatience for just one hour?"
"But, Mr. Cyrus, think of it! Maybe everything we're missing is in there!"
"We'll find out, Pencroff," replied the engineer. "But take my word for it, don't smash this chest. It may be useful to us. Let's take it to Granite House, where we can open it more easily without breaking it. It's all fitted out for the trip. Since it floated this far, it will surely float as far as the mouth of the river."
"You're right, Mr. Cyrus, and I was wrong," replied the sailor. "But a man isn't always master of himself!"
The engineer's advice was sound. For one thing, the canoe could not have held whatever the chest probably contained. It must be heavy, since it had needed two empty barrels to "buoy it up," as sailors say. So it was better to tow it just as it was to the shore below Granite House.
And now, where had this wreckage come from? That was an important question. Cyrus Smith and his companions looked carefully all around them and walked along the shore for several hundred paces. No other debris turned up. They searched the sea as well. Harbert and Nab climbed a tall rock, but the horizon was empty. Nothing in sight — neither a disabled ship nor a vessel under sail.
Still, there had been a shipwreck. There was no doubt about that. Could this incident be connected with the incident of the lead pellet? Had strangers perhaps landed somewhere else on the island? Could they still be there? But the colonists naturally reflected that these strangers could not be Malay pirates, because the wreckage had obviously come from either America or Europe.
They all went back to the chest. It measured five feet long by three feet wide. It was made of oak, very carefully closed, and covered with a thick hide held in place with copper nails. The two big casks, tightly sealed but clearly empty from the sound they gave when struck, were bound to its sides with stout ropes, tied in knots that Pencroff easily recognized as "sailor's knots." The chest seemed to be perfectly preserved, which was explained by the fact that it had run aground on a sandy beach and not on reefs. Looking it over carefully, one could even be sure that it had not been in the sea for long, and that it had only recently arrived on this shore. No water seemed to have got inside, and the things it held must be undamaged.
It was clear that the chest had been thrown overboard from a disabled ship running toward the island. In the hope that it would reach the coast, where they could find it again later, some of the people on board had taken the precaution of lightening it with a float.
"We'll tow this wreckage to Granite House," said the engineer, "and we'll make an inventory of what's in it. Then, if we find any survivors of this shipwreck on the island — supposing there was one — we'll give it back to its owners. If we don't find anyone..."
"We'll keep it for ourselves!" cried Pencroff. "But, for God's sake, what on earth can be in there?"
The tide was already starting to reach the wreckage, which would certainly float at high water. One of the ropes holding the barrels was partly unwound and used as a towline to tie the float to the boat. Then Pencroff and Nab dug away the sand with their oars to make it easier to move the chest. Soon the boat, towing the chest behind it, began to round the point, which was given the name Jetsam Point. The tow was heavy, and the barrels were barely enough to hold the chest above the water. So the sailor feared at every moment that it would break loose and sink to the bottom. Fortunately his fears did not come true, and an hour and a half after setting out — it had taken all that time to cover the three miles — the canoe came alongside the shore in front of Granite House.
Canoe and wreckage were then hauled up onto the sand, and since the sea was already going out, they were soon left high and dry. Nab had gone to fetch tools to force the chest open while damaging it as little as possible, and they set about the inventory. Pencroff made no attempt to hide that he was extremely excited.
The sailor began by untying the two barrels, which were in very good shape and could be put to use, it goes without saying. Then the locks were forced with a crowbar, and the lid fell open at once.
A second casing, of zinc, lined the inside of the chest. Plainly it had been arranged so that the things it held would be safe from damp under any circumstances.
"Ah!" cried Nab. "What if it's canned food in there!"
"I certainly hope not," replied the reporter.
"If only there were..." said the sailor under his breath.
"Were what?" asked Nab, who had heard him.
"Nothing!"
The zinc casing was cut open across its whole width and folded back over the sides of the chest, and little by little all sorts of very different things were taken out and set down on the sand. At each new object Pencroff let out new hurrahs, Harbert clapped his hands, and Nab danced for joy. There were books in there that would have driven Harbert wild with delight, and cooking utensils that Nab would have covered with kisses!
All in all, the colonists had every reason to be extremely pleased, for the chest held tools, weapons, instruments, clothing, and books. Here is the exact list, as Gédéon Spilett entered it in his notebook:
Tools: 3 knives with several blades
2 woodcutter's axes
2 carpenter's hatchets
3 planes
2 adzes
1 twibill (a double-bladed mortising axe)
6 cold chisels
2 files
3 hammers
3 gimlets
2 augers
10 bags of nails and screws
3 saws of different sizes
2 boxes of needles
Weapons: 2 flintlock guns
2 percussion-cap guns
2 center-fire carbines
5 cutlasses
4 boarding sabers
2 kegs of gunpowder, holding twenty-five pounds each
12 boxes of percussion caps
Instruments: 1 sextant
1 pair of binoculars
1 telescope
1 case of drawing compasses
1 pocket compass
1 Fahrenheit thermometer
1 aneroid barometer
1 box holding a complete photographic outfit: lens,
plates, chemicals, etc.
Clothing: 2 dozen shirts of an unusual fabric that looked like
wool but was plainly of vegetable origin
3 dozen stockings of the same fabric
Utensils: 1 iron kettle
6 tin-lined copper saucepans
3 iron platters
10 sets of aluminum forks and spoons
2 teakettles
1 small portable stove
6 table knives
Books: 1 Bible with the Old and New Testaments
1 atlas
1 dictionary of the various Polynesian languages
1 dictionary of natural science, in six volumes
3 reams of blank paper
2 ledgers with blank pages
"You have to admit," said the reporter, once the inventory was finished, "that the owner of this chest was a practical man! Tools, weapons, instruments, clothes, utensils, books — nothing's missing! You'd really think he'd been expecting to be shipwrecked and had got ready for it ahead of time!"
"Nothing's missing, indeed," murmured Cyrus Smith thoughtfully.
"And one thing's certain," added Harbert. "The ship that carried this chest and its owner wasn't a Malay pirate!"
"Unless," said Pencroff, "the owner had been taken prisoner by pirates..."
"That won't do," replied the reporter. "It's more likely that an American or European ship was driven into these waters, and that some passengers, wanting to save at least the bare necessities, packed this chest this way and threw it into the sea."
"Do you think so, Mr. Cyrus?" asked Harbert.
"Yes, my boy," replied the engineer. "That could be how it happened. It's possible that at the moment of a shipwreck, or in expectation of one, someone gathered various essential things into this chest, hoping to find them again somewhere on the coast..."
"Even the photography box!" the sailor remarked, looking rather unconvinced.
"As for that apparatus," replied Cyrus Smith, "I don't really see the use of it. A fuller supply of clothing or more ammunition would have served us better — or any other castaways, for that matter!"
"But isn't there some mark on these instruments, these tools, these books — some address — that could tell us where they came from?" asked Gédéon Spilett.
That remained to be seen. So every object was carefully examined, especially the books, the instruments, and the weapons. Contrary to the usual practice, neither the weapons nor the instruments bore a maker's mark. Besides, they were in perfect condition and did not seem ever to have been used. The same was true of the tools and the utensils: everything was new. That proved, in short, that these things had not been grabbed at random and tossed into the chest. On the contrary, they had been chosen with forethought and packed with care. The second casing of metal pointed the same way. It had kept them safe from all damp, and it could never have been soldered in a moment of haste.
As for the dictionaries of natural science and of the Polynesian languages, both were in English, but neither carried a publisher's name or a date of publication.
The same went for the Bible, printed in English — a quarto volume, remarkable as a piece of printing, which seemed to have been leafed through often.
As for the atlas, it was a magnificent work, with maps of the whole world and several maps of the globe drawn on Mercator's projection. Its place names were in French — but it too carried neither a date of publication nor a publisher's name.
So there was nothing on any of these things to show where they had come from, and therefore nothing to suggest the nationality of the ship that must have passed through these waters not long before. But wherever the chest had come from, it made the colonists of Lincoln Island rich. Until then they had made everything themselves by transforming the raw products of nature, and they had pulled through by their own intelligence. But didn't it seem as though Providence had wanted to reward them by sending them, just now, these products of human industry? And so, with one accord, they lifted up their thanks to Heaven.
Still, one of them was not entirely satisfied. That was Pencroff. It appeared that the chest did not contain something he cared about enormously. As the objects came out of it, his hurrahs grew fainter and fainter, and once the inventory was done he was heard to mutter:
"That's all fine and good, but you'll see — there won't be anything in this box for me!"
Which led Nab to say to him:
"Well now, friend Pencroff, what were you expecting?"
"Half a pound of tobacco!" Pencroff replied in all seriousness. "Then my happiness would have been complete!"
Nobody could help laughing at the sailor's remark.
But one consequence of finding the wreckage was that a serious exploration of the island was now more necessary than ever. So it was agreed that the next day, at first light, they would set out up the Mercy and make their way to the west coast. If any castaways had landed somewhere on that coast, they might well be without any resources, and help had to be brought to them without delay.
During the rest of that day the various objects were carried up to Granite House and arranged in an orderly way in the great hall.
That day — October 29 — happened to be a Sunday, and before going to bed Harbert asked the engineer whether he would read them some passage from the Gospel.
"Gladly," replied Cyrus Smith.
He took up the holy book and was about to open it when Pencroff stopped him.
"Mr. Cyrus," he said, "I'm superstitious. Open it at random and read us the first verse your eyes fall on. We'll see if it fits our situation."
Cyrus Smith smiled at the sailor's notion, and to humor him he opened the Gospel exactly where a bookmark lay between the pages.
At once his eyes were caught by a red cross, made in pencil, that had been placed beside verse 8 of chapter 7 of the Gospel of Saint Matthew.
And he read the verse, which went like this:
Everyone who asks receives, and whoever seeks finds.
The departure — The rising tide — Elms and nettle trees — Various plants — The jacamar — What the forest looked like — The giant eucalyptus trees — Why they are called "fever trees" — Troops of monkeys — The waterfall — Camp for the night
The next day, October 30, everything was ready for the planned exploration, which recent events had made so urgent. Things had in fact turned out in such a way that the colonists of Lincoln Island could imagine they were no longer the ones in need of rescue, but the ones who might be able to bring it.
So it was agreed that they would go up the Mercy as far as the river's current allowed a boat to travel. That way a large part of the journey would be made without effort, and the explorers could carry their provisions and their weapons to a point well into the west of the island.
They had had to think, after all, not only about the things they were taking but also about the things that luck might allow them to bring back to Granite House. If there had been a shipwreck on the coast, as everything suggested, there would be no shortage of wreckage, and it would be well worth salvaging. With that in mind, the cart would no doubt have suited better than the fragile canoe. But the cart was heavy and clumsy and had to be pulled by hand, which made it much less practical. That led Pencroff to express his regret that the chest had not contained, along with "his half-pound of tobacco," a pair of those sturdy New Jersey horses, which would have been extremely useful to the colony!
The provisions, already loaded by Nab, consisted of preserved meat and a few gallons of beer and fermented liquor — enough to keep them going for three days, the longest time Cyrus Smith meant to give the exploration. Besides, they counted on restocking along the way if they needed to, and Nab took good care not to forget the little portable stove.
For tools, the colonists took the two woodsman's axes, which would serve to cut a path through the thick forest. For instruments, they took the spyglass and the pocket compass.
For weapons, they chose the two flintlock guns. On this island these were more useful than the percussion-cap guns would have been, because a flintlock needs only flints, which are easy to replace, while the others need percussion caps, and frequent use would soon have exhausted the supply. All the same, they also took one of the carbines and a few cartridges. As for the gunpowder, of which the barrels held about fifty pounds, they had to bring a certain amount, but the engineer was counting on making an explosive substance that would let them spare it. To the firearms they added the five cutlasses, well sheathed in leather. Equipped like that, the colonists could venture into the vast forest with a fair chance of getting themselves out of any trouble.
There is no need to add that Pencroff, Harbert, and Nab, armed this way, had nothing left to wish for — even though Cyrus Smith had made them promise not to fire a single shot unless they had to.
At six o'clock in the morning the canoe was pushed into the water. Everyone climbed aboard, Top included, and they headed for the mouth of the Mercy.
The tide had been coming in for only half an hour. That meant there were still a few hours of flood tide, and they had to make the most of them, because later the ebb would make it hard to go upriver. The tide was already running strongly, since the moon would be full in three days, and the canoe, which only had to be kept in the current, moved quickly between the two high banks without any need for the oars to speed it along.
In a few minutes the explorers reached the bend in the Mercy — the very angle where, seven months earlier, Pencroff had put together his first timber raft.
After that rather sharp angle the river curved round and turned southwest, and its course ran on in the shade of tall evergreen conifers.
The banks of the Mercy were magnificent. Cyrus Smith and his companions could only admire, without reservation, those beautiful effects that nature achieves so easily with water and trees. As they went on, the kinds of trees in the forest changed. On the right bank rose tier upon tier of splendid members of the elm family — true elms, those precious trees that builders prize so highly, because their wood keeps for a long time under water. Then came many clusters from the same family, among them nettle trees, whose kernel yields a very useful oil. Farther on, Harbert noticed some plants of the lardizabala family, whose supple branches, soaked in water, make excellent rope, and two or three trunks of the ebony family, a beautiful black streaked with wandering veins.
Every now and then, at places where it was easy to land, the canoe stopped. Then Gédéon Spilett, Harbert, and Pencroff, guns in hand and with Top running ahead, beat the bank. Quite apart from the game, they might come across some useful plant that was not to be sneezed at — and the young naturalist got exactly what he had hoped for. He discovered a kind of wild spinach from the goosefoot family, and many specimens of the mustard family belonging to the cabbage genus, which could certainly be "civilized" by transplanting them: there was watercress, horseradish, and turnips, and finally some little branching stems, slightly hairy, about three feet high, that bore seeds of an almost brown color.
"Do you know what that plant is?" Harbert asked the sailor.
"Tobacco!" cried Pencroff, who had obviously never seen his favorite plant anywhere but in the bowl of his pipe.
"No, Pencroff!" answered Harbert. "That's not tobacco, it's mustard."
"Mustard it is, then!" answered the sailor. "But if by any chance a tobacco plant should turn up, my boy, kindly don't turn your nose up at it."
"We'll find some one day!" said Gédéon Spilett.
"Really?" cried Pencroff. "Well, on that day I honestly don't know what our island will still be missing!"
These various plants were carefully dug up by the roots and carried to the canoe. Cyrus Smith had not left it; he was still absorbed in his own thoughts.
The reporter, Harbert, and Pencroff went ashore several times in this way, sometimes on the right bank of the Mercy, sometimes on the left. The left bank was less steep, the right bank more heavily wooded. By consulting his pocket compass, the engineer was able to establish that from the first bend the river ran roughly southwest to northeast, in a nearly straight line, for a distance of about three miles. But it seemed likely that its course changed farther on, and that the Mercy climbed toward the northwest, toward the foothills of Mount Franklin, which must feed it with their waters.
During one of these excursions, Gédéon Spilett managed to catch two pairs of live birds of the chicken family. They had long, slender beaks, long necks, and short wings, and no tail to speak of. Harbert, rightly, named them "tinamous," and it was decided that they would be the first residents of the future poultry yard.
So far, though, the guns had not spoken. The first shot to ring out in that forest of the Far West was set off by the appearance of a handsome bird that looked, in its build, very much like a kingfisher.
"I know that one!" cried Pencroff — and it is fair to say that his gun went off almost in spite of him.
"What do you know?" asked the reporter.
"The bird that got away from us on our first trip, the one we named this part of the forest after."
"A jacamar!" cried Harbert.
It was indeed a jacamar, a beautiful bird whose rather coarse plumage has a metallic sheen. A few pellets of shot had brought it down, and Top carried it back to the canoe, along with a dozen "touraco-lories," climbing birds about the size of a pigeon, painted all over in green, with part of their wings crimson and an upright crest edged with a white border. The honor of that fine shot went to the boy, and he was rather proud of it. The lories made better eating than the jacamar, whose flesh is a little tough, but it would have been hard to persuade Pencroff that he had not killed the king of edible birds.
It was ten o'clock in the morning when the canoe reached a second bend of the Mercy, about five miles from its mouth. They stopped there for lunch, and the halt, in the shelter of tall, beautiful trees, lasted half an hour.
The river was still sixty to seventy feet wide, and its bed five to six feet deep. The engineer had noticed that many tributaries swelled its flow, but they were only small streams, too shallow for any boat. As for the forest — whether you called it Jacamar Wood or the Far West forests — it stretched as far as the eye could see. Nowhere, neither under the tall timber nor among the trees along the banks of the Mercy, was there any sign that human beings had been there. The explorers could not find a single suspicious trace. It was obvious that no woodsman's ax had ever notched these trees, that no pioneer's knife had ever cut these creepers stretched from trunk to trunk among the dense undergrowth and the long grass. If some castaways had landed on the island, they had not yet left the shore, and it was not under this thick cover that they should look for the survivors of the shipwreck they suspected.
So the engineer showed a certain haste to reach the west coast of Lincoln Island, which by his reckoning was at least five miles away. They set off again by water. Although, in its present direction, the Mercy seemed to run not toward the coast but rather toward Mount Franklin, it was decided that they would keep using the canoe as long as there was enough water under its keel to float it. That would spare them a great deal of effort and save time as well, because otherwise they would have had to hack a path with the axes through the thick brush.
But soon the flood tide gave out altogether — either because the tide was going down, as it was in fact due to at that hour, or because it was no longer felt this far from the mouth of the Mercy. So they had to get out the oars. Nab and Harbert took their places on the thwart, Pencroff took the steering oar at the stern, and they went on up the river.
The forest now seemed to be thinning out on the Far West side. The trees there stood farther apart and were often quite alone. But precisely because they were spaced out, they had more of the free, clean air that moved around them, and they were magnificent.
What splendid examples of the plant life of that latitude! Their presence alone would have been enough for a botanist to name, without a moment's hesitation, the parallel that Lincoln Island lay on!
"Eucalyptus!" Harbert had cried out.
And that is what they were — those superb trees, the last giants of the zone just beyond the tropics, the cousins of the eucalyptus of Australia and New Zealand, both of which lie in the same latitude as Lincoln Island. Some of them rose to a height of two hundred feet. Their trunks measured twenty feet around at the base, and their bark, furrowed with networks of fragrant resin, was as much as five inches thick. Nothing could be more marvelous — or stranger — than these enormous members of the myrtle family, whose leaves turned their edges to the light and let the sun's rays reach all the way to the ground!
At the foot of these eucalyptus trees, fresh grass carpeted the ground, and out of the tufts burst flocks of little birds that shone in the shafts of light like winged jewels.
"Now those are trees!" cried Nab. "But are they good for anything?"
"Pooh!" answered Pencroff. "Giant plants must be like giant people. They're not much good for anything except showing off at fairs!"
"I think you're mistaken, Pencroff," Gédéon Spilett answered. "Eucalyptus wood is starting to be used to great advantage in fine furniture-making."
"And I'll add," said the boy, "that eucalyptus trees belong to a family with plenty of useful members. There's the guava tree, which gives guavas; the clove tree, which produces cloves; the pomegranate, which bears pomegranates; the Eugenia cauliflora, whose fruit makes a passable wine; the ugni myrtle, which contains an excellent alcoholic liquor; the caryophyllus myrtle, whose bark makes a highly valued cinnamon; the Eugenia pimenta, which is where Jamaica pepper comes from; the common myrtle, whose berries can stand in for pepper; the Eucalyptus robusta, which produces an excellent kind of manna; the Eucalyptus gunei, whose sap turns into beer when it ferments; and finally all those trees known as 'trees of life' or 'ironwood,' which belong to this same myrtle family — and it has forty-six genera and thirteen hundred species!"
They let the boy go on, and he rattled off his little botany lesson with great enthusiasm. Cyrus Smith listened with a smile, and Pencroff with a pride beyond words.
"Fine, Harbert," Pencroff answered, "but I'd be willing to swear that none of those useful specimens you just listed are giants like these!"
"That's true, Pencroff."
"So that backs up what I said," the sailor replied. "Giants are good for nothing!"
"That's where you're wrong, Pencroff," the engineer put in, "and it so happens that these very giant eucalyptus trees sheltering us are good for something."
"And what's that?"
"For making the country they grow in healthier. Do you know what they call them in Australia and New Zealand?"
"No, Mr. Cyrus."
"They call them 'fever trees.'"
"Because they give you fever?"
"No — because they prevent it!"
"Good. I'll make a note of that," said the reporter.
"Note it down, then, my dear Spilett, because it seems to be proved that the presence of eucalyptus trees is enough to neutralize the poisonous vapors of marshes. This natural safeguard has been tried in certain regions of southern Europe and North Africa where the soil was thoroughly unhealthy, and the health of the people who live there has gradually improved. No more recurring fevers in the areas covered by forests of these trees. The fact is now beyond doubt, and it's a lucky thing for us, the colonists of Lincoln Island."
"Ah! What an island! What a blessed island!" cried Pencroff. "I'm telling you, it doesn't lack a thing... Except..."
"That will come, Pencroff, it will turn up," answered the engineer. "But let's get back on the river and push on as far as it will carry our canoe!"
So the exploration went on for at least two more miles through country covered with eucalyptus, which towered over all the other woods in that part of the island. The area they covered stretched beyond the reach of sight on both sides of the Mercy, whose rather winding bed now ran deep between high green banks. The channel was often choked with tall weeds and even with sharp rocks, which made the going quite hard. The oars were hampered, and Pencroff had to push the boat along with a pole. They could also feel the bottom rising little by little, and the moment was not far off when the canoe would have to stop for lack of water. The sun was already sinking toward the horizon and throwing the trees' enormous shadows across the ground. Cyrus Smith, seeing that he could not reach the west coast of the island that day, decided to camp at the very spot where lack of water would force them to stop. He reckoned he must still be five or six miles from the coast, and that distance was too great to attempt crossing at night through these unknown woods.
So they kept the boat moving through the forest without a rest. Little by little the forest grew thicker again, and it seemed more inhabited as well — for, unless the sailor's eyes deceived him, he thought he saw troops of monkeys running through the underbrush. Sometimes two or three of these animals even stopped a short distance from the canoe and stared at the colonists without showing the slightest fear, as if, seeing human beings for the first time, they had not yet learned to dread them. It would have been easy to shoot these four-handed creatures, but Cyrus Smith would not allow a pointless slaughter, though the hot-headed Pencroff was a little tempted by it. And it was the prudent choice besides, because these monkeys were strong and extremely agile and could be dangerous. It was better not to provoke them with an attack that served no purpose at all.
It is true that the sailor looked at monkeys from a purely culinary point of view, and in fact these animals, which eat nothing but plants, make excellent game. But since there was plenty of food, there was no reason to waste ammunition for nothing.
Toward four o'clock, going up the Mercy became very difficult, because its course was clogged with water plants and rocks. The banks rose higher and higher, and the riverbed was already cutting its way between the first foothills of Mount Franklin. So its sources could not be far off, since they were fed by all the waters of the mountain's southern slopes.
"Within a quarter of an hour we'll have to stop, Mr. Cyrus," said the sailor.
"Well, then, we'll stop, Pencroff, and set up a camp for the night."
"How far can we be from Granite House?" asked Harbert.
"About seven miles," the engineer answered, "though that takes into account the windings of the river, which have carried us to the northwest."
"Are we going on?" asked the reporter.
"Yes, for as long as we can," answered Cyrus Smith. "Tomorrow, at daybreak, we'll leave the canoe. In two hours, I hope, we'll cover the distance that separates us from the coast, and we'll have almost the whole day to explore the shore."
"Onward!" answered Pencroff.
But soon the canoe scraped the pebbly bottom of the river, which was by then no more than twenty feet wide. A thick arch of greenery curved over its bed and wrapped it in half-darkness. They could also hear the fairly loud sound of falling water, which told them that a natural dam lay a few hundred paces upstream.
And sure enough, at a last bend in the river, a waterfall appeared through the trees. The canoe struck the bottom, and a few moments later it was tied to a trunk near the right bank.
It was about five o'clock. The last rays of the sun were slipping under the thick branches and striking the little waterfall at a slant, so that its damp spray glittered with all the colors of the rainbow. Beyond it, the bed of the Mercy disappeared into the thickets, where it was fed by some hidden spring. The various streams that flowed into it along the way made it a real river farther down, but here it was no more than a clear, shallow brook.
They camped on that very spot, which was charming. The colonists went ashore, and a fire was lit under a clump of broad nettle trees, in whose branches Cyrus Smith and his companions could, if they had to, have found a refuge for the night.
Supper was soon devoured, because everyone was hungry, and after that nobody thought of anything but sleep. But as night fell, a few roars of a suspicious kind were heard, so the fire was built up for the night, to protect the sleepers with its crackling flames. Nab and Pencroff even kept watch in turn and did not spare the fuel. Perhaps they were not mistaken when they thought they saw the shadows of animals prowling around the camp, either in the underbrush or among the branches. But the night passed without incident, and the next day, October 31, at five o'clock in the morning, everyone was up and ready to set off.
Heading for the coast — Troops of monkeys — A new stream — Why the tide does not reach it — A forest for a coastline — Reptile End — Gédéon Spilett makes Harbert envious — The bamboo fireworks
At six o'clock in the morning, after a first breakfast, the colonists set off again, meaning to reach the west coast of the island by the shortest way. How long would it take them to get there? Cyrus Smith had said two hours, but that obviously depended on what kind of obstacles they met. This part of the Far West looked crammed with trees, like an immense thicket made up of every possible kind of wood. So they would probably have to clear a path through grass, brush and creepers, and walk with an ax in hand — and with a gun, too, no doubt, judging by the cries of wild beasts they had heard in the night.
The exact position of the camp could be fixed by the position of Mount Franklin. Since the volcano rose to the north at a distance of less than three miles, all they had to do was strike out in a straight line to the southwest to reach the west coast.
They set off, after carefully making sure the canoe was well moored. Pencroff and Nab carried provisions that would feed the little party for at least two days. There was no more talk of hunting. The engineer even urged his companions to avoid any unnecessary shot, so as not to give away their presence anywhere near the shore.
The first blows of the ax fell in the brush, among clumps of mastic shrubs, a little above the waterfall, and Cyrus Smith, compass in hand, pointed out the way.
The forest here was made up of trees most of which they had already identified around the lake and Prospect Plateau. There were deodars, Douglas firs, casuarinas, gum trees, eucalyptus, dragon trees, hibiscus, cedars and other kinds, mostly of middling size, because there were so many of them that they had stunted one another's growth. So the colonists could move only slowly along this road, which they were cutting as they walked, and which the engineer had in mind to link up later with the road to Red Creek.
Since leaving the camp, the colonists had been going down the low slopes that made up the island's mountain system, over very dry ground. But its lush growth hinted either at a network of water running underground or at some stream flowing nearby. All the same, Cyrus Smith did not remember seeing any watercourse but Red Creek and the Mercy on his expedition to the crater.
During the first hours of the trip they saw troops of monkeys again, which seemed utterly astonished at the sight of these men, whose appearance was new to them. Gédéon Spilett jokingly asked whether these agile, sturdy four-handed creatures might not take him and his companions for degenerate brothers! And frankly, mere pedestrians, hampered by the brush at every step, tangled in creepers, blocked by tree trunks, did not cut much of a figure next to those supple animals, which leaped from branch to branch and let nothing stop them. The monkeys were numerous, but, very fortunately, they showed no sign of hostility.
They also saw a few wild boars, some agoutis, some kangaroos and other rodents, and two or three koulas, which Pencroff would gladly have treated to a few loads of shot.
"But hunting season isn't open," he said. "So frisk around, my friends, jump and fly in peace! We'll have a word or two with you on the way back!"
At half past nine in the morning, the road, which ran straight to the southwest, was suddenly cut off by an unknown stream, thirty to forty feet wide. Its swift current, driven by the slope of its bed and broken by a great many rocks, rushed along with a harsh roar. This creek was deep and clear, but it would have been completely impossible to navigate.
"We're cut off!" cried Nab.
"No," answered Harbert, "it's only a brook, and we'll manage to swim across it."
"What for?" answered Cyrus Smith. "This creek obviously runs to the sea. Let's stay on its left bank and follow it, and I'll be very surprised if it doesn't take us to the coast in no time. Let's go!"
"Just a moment," said the reporter. "What about this creek's name, my friends? Let's not leave our geography incomplete."
"Right!" said Pencroff.
"Name it, my boy," said the engineer, turning to the boy.
"Wouldn't it be better to wait until we've followed it all the way to its mouth?" Harbert pointed out.
"Very well," answered Cyrus Smith. "Then let's follow it without stopping."
"One moment more!" said Pencroff.
"What is it?" asked the reporter.
"If hunting is forbidden, fishing is allowed, I suppose," said the sailor.
"We have no time to lose," answered the engineer.
"Oh! Five minutes!" Pencroff replied. "All I ask is five minutes, in the interest of our lunch!"
And Pencroff lay down on the bank, plunged his arms into the running water, and soon sent a few dozen fine crayfish flying out from among the rocks, where they were swarming.
"Now that's going to be good!" cried Nab, coming to help the sailor.
"Didn't I tell you? Except for tobacco, there's everything on this island!" Pencroff murmured with a sigh.
It took less than five minutes to make a miraculous catch, because the creek was teeming with crayfish. These crustaceans had cobalt-blue shells and a beak armed with a little tooth. They filled a bag with them, and set off again.
Once they were following the bank of this new stream, the colonists walked more easily and more quickly. Besides, its banks were untouched by any human footprint. From time to time they spotted tracks left by large animals that came regularly to drink at the stream, but nothing more. It was not in this part of the Far West, then, that the peccary had taken the lead pellet that had cost Pencroff a molar.
Meanwhile, looking at that swift current racing off toward the sea, Cyrus Smith began to suspect that he and his companions were much farther from the west coast than they thought. In fact, at that hour the tide was rising along the shore, and it ought to have pushed back the creek's current if its mouth had been only a few miles off. But no such thing was happening, and the water kept flowing along the natural slope of its bed. The engineer must have been very surprised, and he kept checking his compass to make sure that some bend in the stream was not leading him back into the heart of the Far West.
Little by little, however, the creek grew wider and its waters less turbulent. The trees on its right bank were as crowded as those on its left, and the eye could not see past them. But those wooded masses were certainly empty of people, because Top was not barking, and the clever animal would not have failed to signal any stranger in the neighborhood of the stream.
At half past ten, to Cyrus Smith's great surprise, Harbert, who had gone a little way ahead, suddenly stopped and shouted:
"The sea!"
And a few moments later the colonists, halted at the edge of the forest, saw the western shore of the island spread out before their eyes.
But what a contrast between this coast and the east coast, where chance had first thrown them! No more granite wall, no reef offshore, not even a sandy beach. The forest made the shore, and its last trees, lashed by the waves, leaned out over the water. It was not a shore of the kind nature usually makes, either by spreading out wide carpets of sand or by piling up rocks. It was a wonderful border made of the most beautiful trees in the world. The bank stood high enough to overlook the level of the highest tides, and over all that rich soil, which rested on a base of granite, the splendid forest trees seemed as firmly rooted as the ones massed in the island's interior.
The colonists were standing at the notch of a small, insignificant cove, which could not have held even two or three fishing boats, and which served as the outlet of the new creek. But — a curious arrangement — instead of running into the sea down a gently sloping mouth, its waters fell from a height of more than forty feet. That explained why the rising tide had not made itself felt anywhere up the creek. In fact, the tides of the Pacific, even at their very highest, could never reach the level of the river, whose bed formed a sort of upper reach, like the stretch of a canal above a lock. Millions of years, no doubt, would still go by before the water wore away that granite sill and carved out a mouth a boat could use. So, by common consent, they gave the stream the name of Fall River.
Beyond it, to the north, the forest border went on for about two miles. Then the trees grew sparser, and beyond them a line of very picturesque heights stood out, running almost straight north and south. In the other direction, along the whole stretch of shore between Fall River and Reptile End, there was nothing but masses of woods, magnificent trees, some upright, some leaning, whose roots were bathed by the long swell of the sea. And it was in that direction — that is, along the whole of the Serpentine Peninsula — that the exploration had to go on, because that part of the shore offered places of refuge that the other, bare and wild, would obviously have refused to castaways of any kind.
The weather was fine and clear. From the top of a cliff, where Nab and Pencroff set out lunch, the eye could see a long way. The horizon was perfectly sharp, and there was not a sail out at sea. Along the whole shore, as far as the eye could reach, not a ship, not even a piece of wreckage. But the engineer would not consider the question settled until he had explored the coast all the way to the very tip of the Serpentine Peninsula.
Lunch was quickly dispatched, and at half past eleven Cyrus Smith gave the signal to leave. Instead of traveling along the crest of a cliff or over a sandy beach, the colonists had to keep under cover of the trees in order to follow the shore.
The distance from the mouth of Fall River to Reptile End was about twelve miles. On a walkable beach, without hurrying, the colonists could have covered that distance in four hours. But it took them twice as long to reach their goal, because the trees they had to get around, the brush they had to cut, the creepers they had to break, kept stopping them, and so many detours made their road much longer.
For that matter, there was nothing on this shore to show that a ship had been wrecked there recently. It is true, as Gédéon Spilett pointed out, that the sea could have carried everything away, and that just because no trace of a wreck could be found anymore, they should not conclude that no ship had been thrown ashore on this part of Lincoln Island.
The reporter's reasoning was sound. Besides, the incident of the lead pellet proved beyond any doubt that a gun had been fired on the island within the last three months at most.
It was already five o'clock, and the tip of the Serpentine Peninsula was still two miles from where the colonists were. Clearly, once Cyrus Smith and his companions reached Reptile End, they would not have time to get back before sunset to the camp they had set up near the sources of the Mercy. So they would have to spend the night on the promontory itself. But they had plenty of provisions, and that was lucky, because furred game no longer showed itself along this strip of forest, which was only a shoreline, after all. Birds, on the other hand, swarmed there — jacamars, couroucous, tragopans, grouse, lories, parrots, cockatoos, pheasants, pigeons and a hundred others. Not a tree without a nest, not a nest that was not full of beating wings!
At about seven o'clock in the evening, worn out with fatigue, the colonists reached Reptile End, a sort of scroll strangely carved out against the sea. Here the shore forest of the peninsula ended, and along the whole southern stretch the coast took on the usual look of a coast again, with its rocks, its reefs and its beaches. So it was possible that a disabled ship had run aground on this part of the island. But night was coming on, and the exploration had to be put off until the next day.
Pencroff and Harbert at once hurried off to look for a good spot to make camp. The last trees of the Far West forest came to an end at this point, and among them the boy recognized thick clumps of bamboo.
"Good!" he said. "Now that's a valuable find."
"Valuable?" answered Pencroff.
"Of course," Harbert went on. "I won't tell you, Pencroff, that bamboo bark, cut into flexible strips, is used for making baskets and hampers; that the bark, pulped and soaked, is used for making Chinese paper; that the stems, depending on how thick they are, give you canes, pipe stems and water pipes; that big bamboos make excellent building material, light and strong and never attacked by insects. I won't even add that if you saw bamboo stems between the joints, and keep part of the crosswise wall that forms the joint as a bottom, you get strong, handy containers that the Chinese use a great deal! No! None of that would satisfy you. But..."
"But...?"
"But I'll tell you, in case you didn't know, that in India people eat bamboo like asparagus."
"Thirty-foot asparagus!" cried the sailor. "And is it good?"
"Excellent," answered Harbert. "Only it isn't the thirty-foot stems people eat. It's the young bamboo shoots."
"Perfect, my boy, perfect!" answered Pencroff.
"I'll also add that the pith of the new stems, pickled in vinegar, makes a much-prized relish."
"Better and better, Harbert."
"And finally, that between their joints bamboos ooze a sweet liquid you can make into a very pleasant drink."
"Is that all?" asked the sailor.
"That's all!"
"And you can't smoke it, by any chance?"
"You can't smoke it, my poor Pencroff!"
Harbert and the sailor did not have to look long for a good place to spend the night. The rocks of the shore were deeply split — the sea must batter them violently when the southwest winds blew — and they held hollows where the colonists could sleep sheltered from the weather. But just as the two of them were about to go into one of these caves, a tremendous roaring stopped them in their tracks.
"Back!" cried Pencroff. "We've got nothing but birdshot in our guns, and animals that roar like that wouldn't care any more about it than about a grain of salt!"
And the sailor, seizing Harbert by the arm, dragged him behind the shelter of the rocks, just as a magnificent animal appeared at the mouth of the cave.
It was a jaguar, at least as large as its Asian relatives — that is, it measured more than five feet from the tip of its head to the root of its tail. Its tawny coat was set off by several rows of black spots, regularly ringed like eyes, which stood out against the white fur of its belly. Harbert recognized it as that ferocious rival of the tiger, far more formidable than the cougar, which is only the rival of the wolf!
The jaguar came forward and looked around, its fur bristling, its eyes blazing, as if this were not the first time it had smelled a man.
Just then the reporter was coming around the high rocks. Harbert, thinking he had not seen the jaguar, was about to rush toward him. But Gédéon Spilett signaled to him with his hand and kept on walking. This was not his first tiger. He came up to within ten paces of the animal and stood still, his carbine at his shoulder, without a single muscle twitching.
The jaguar gathered itself and sprang at the hunter. But at the very moment it leaped, a bullet struck it between the eyes, and it dropped dead.
Harbert and Pencroff rushed over to the jaguar. Nab and Cyrus Smith came running from their side, and for a few moments they all stood looking at the animal stretched out on the ground. Its magnificent skin would be an ornament for the great hall of Granite House.
"Oh, Mr. Spilett! How I admire you, and how I envy you!" cried Harbert, in a burst of enthusiasm that was only natural.
"Come now, my boy," answered the reporter, "you'd have done the same."
"Me! With nerves like that...!"
"Just imagine, Harbert, that a jaguar is a hare, and you'll shoot it as calmly as you please."
"There you are!" answered Pencroff. "Nothing more to it than that!"
"And now," said Gédéon Spilett, "since this jaguar has left its den, my friends, I don't see why we shouldn't move into it for the night."
"But others might come back!" said Pencroff.
"It'll be enough to light a fire at the mouth of the cave," said the reporter, "and they won't risk crossing the threshold."
"To the jaguars' house, then!" answered the sailor, dragging the animal's body along behind him.
The colonists headed for the abandoned den, and there, while Nab skinned the jaguar, his companions piled a great heap of dry wood at the entrance, which the forest supplied in plenty.
But Cyrus Smith, having noticed the clump of bamboo, went and cut a good quantity of it and mixed it in with the fuel for the fire.
That done, they settled into the cave, whose sandy floor was strewn with bones. The guns were loaded, just in case of a sudden attack. They had supper, and then, when it was time to rest, they set fire to the woodpile at the mouth of the cave.
At once a regular volley of bangs burst out into the air! It was the bamboo, caught by the flames, going off like firecrackers! That racket alone would have been enough to terrify the boldest wild beasts!
And this way of making loud explosions was not the engineer's invention. According to Marco Polo, the Tartars have used it successfully for many centuries to drive the fearsome wild beasts of Central Asia away from their camps.
A proposal to come back by the southern shore — The lay of the coast — Searching for the supposed shipwreck — Wreckage in the air — Discovery of a little natural harbor — Midnight on the banks of the Mercy — A boat adrift
Cyrus Smith and his companions slept like innocent marmots in the cave the jaguar had so politely left at their disposal.
At sunrise they were all on the shore, at the very tip of the promontory, and once again their eyes went to the horizon, which they could see around two-thirds of its circle. One last time the engineer was able to make sure that no sail and no hull of a wrecked ship could be seen on the sea, and the spyglass could not pick out a single suspicious spot.
There was nothing on the shore either, at least along the straight stretch that made up the south coast of the promontory for three miles. Beyond that, a bend in the land hid the rest of the coast, and even from the tip of Serpentine Peninsula they could not see Claw Cape, which was hidden behind high rocks.
That left the southern shore of the island still to explore. So should they set about exploring it right away, and give this day, November 2, to the job?
That had not been part of the original plan. When they left the canoe at the sources of the Mercy, it had been agreed that after looking over the west coast they would come back for it and return to Granite House by way of the river. At the time Cyrus Smith had believed that the western shore might offer shelter either to a ship in distress or to a vessel on an ordinary voyage. But since that coast had no landing place at all, they would have to look on the south side of the island for what they had not been able to find on the west.
It was Gédéon Spilett who proposed carrying the exploration on, so that the question of the supposed shipwreck could be settled once and for all, and he asked how far Claw Cape might be from the tip of the peninsula.
"About thirty miles," the engineer answered, "if we allow for the curves of the coast."
"Thirty miles!" said Gédéon Spilett. "That'll be a hard day's march. All the same, I think we ought to go back to Granite House along the southern shore."
"But from Claw Cape to Granite House," Harbert pointed out, "it's at least another ten miles."
"Call it forty miles altogether," answered the reporter, "and let's not hesitate to do them. At least we'll get a look at that unknown shore, and we won't have to start this exploration over again."
"Quite right," said Pencroff. "But what about the canoe?"
"The canoe stayed by itself at the sources of the Mercy for one day," answered Gédéon Spilett. "It can very well stay there for two! So far we can hardly say the island is overrun with thieves!"
"All the same," said the sailor, "when I remember that business with the turtle, I don't have any more confidence than I need to."
"The turtle! The turtle!" answered the reporter. "Don't you know it was the sea that turned it back over?"
"Who knows?" murmured the engineer.
"But..." said Nab.
Nab plainly had something to say, because he kept opening his mouth to speak and then not speaking.
"What is it you want to say, Nab?" the engineer asked him.
"If we go back along the shore as far as Claw Cape," answered Nab, "then once we've rounded the cape, we'll be blocked..."
"By the Mercy! That's right," answered Harbert, "and we won't have a bridge or a boat to get across it!"
"Oh, Mr. Cyrus," answered Pencroff, "with a few floating logs, we won't have any trouble getting over that river!"
"Never mind," said Gédéon Spilett, "it'll be useful to build a bridge if we want an easy way into the Far West."
"A bridge!" cried Pencroff. "Well, isn't Mr. Smith an engineer by trade? He'll build us a bridge whenever we want a bridge! As for getting you over to the other bank of the Mercy tonight, and without wetting a thread of your clothes, leave that to me. We've still got a day's food, which is all we need, and anyway the game may not let us down today the way it did yesterday. Let's go!"
The reporter's proposal, backed very warmly by the sailor, won everyone's approval, because each of them wanted to be done with his doubts, and if they came back by way of Claw Cape, the exploration would be complete. But there was not an hour to lose. A stage of forty miles was a long one, and they could not count on reaching Granite House before nightfall.
So at six o'clock in the morning the little troop set off. In case of unpleasant encounters with animals on two legs or on four, the guns were loaded with ball, and Top, who was to lead the way, was ordered to scour the edge of the forest.
From the tip of the promontory that formed the tail of the peninsula, the coast curved around for a distance of five miles. They covered it quickly, and the most painstaking search turned up no trace whatever of any landing, old or recent — no wreckage, no remains of a camp, no ashes of a dead fire, not a single footprint!
When the colonists reached the corner where the curve ended and the coast turned northeast to form Washington Bay, they could take in the whole length of the island's southern shore at a glance. Twenty-five miles off, the coast ended at Claw Cape, which showed only faintly in the morning haze, and which a mirage lifted up so that it seemed to hang between land and water. Between the place where the colonists stood and the far end of the great bay, the shore was made up first of a wide, very smooth, very flat beach, with a fringe of trees behind it. After that the coastline grew very ragged and thrust sharp points out into the sea. And last of all a jumble of blackish rocks piled up in picturesque disorder all the way to Claw Cape.
That was the lay of this part of the island, which the explorers were seeing for the first time and which they took in at a glance after stopping for a moment.
"A ship that ran aground here," said Pencroff, "would be lost, no question about it. Sandbanks reaching far out from shore, and beyond them, reefs! Bad waters!"
"But at least there'd be something left of the ship," the reporter pointed out.
"There'd be pieces of timber left on the reefs, and nothing on the sand," answered the sailor.
"Why's that?"
"Because that sand is even more dangerous than the rocks. It swallows up everything that's thrown onto it, and a few days are enough for the hull of a ship of several hundred tons to disappear into it completely!"
"So, Pencroff," asked the engineer, "if a ship had been lost on those banks, it wouldn't be surprising if there were no trace of it left now?"
"No, Mr. Smith, not given time, or a storm. Still, even then it would be surprising if bits of the masts or a few spars hadn't been thrown up on the shore, out of reach of the sea."
"Then let's go on with our search," answered Cyrus Smith.
At one o'clock in the afternoon the colonists reached the far end of Washington Bay. By then they had covered twenty miles.
They stopped for lunch.
Here began an uneven coast, oddly jagged and lined by a long string of the reefs that took over from the sandbanks. The tide was slack just then, but it would soon go out and lay them bare. They could see the smooth swells of the sea breaking on the heads of the rocks and spreading out in long fringes of foam. From this point on to Claw Cape the beach was narrow, squeezed between the edge of the reefs and the edge of the forest.
So the going was about to get harder, because countless fallen rocks cluttered the shore. The granite wall, too, kept rising higher and higher, and of the trees that crowned it farther back they could see only the green tops, which not a breath of wind was stirring.
After half an hour's rest the colonists set off again, and their eyes did not leave a single spot of the reefs or the beach unexamined. Pencroff and Nab even ventured out among the rocks whenever something caught their eye. But wreckage there was none — they had been fooled by some odd shape in the rocks. They did see, though, that edible shellfish were plentiful on this beach. But it could not be put to good use until there was some link between the two banks of the Mercy, and until they had better means of carrying things.
So nothing that had to do with the supposed shipwreck appeared on this shore. And yet anything of any size — the hull of a ship, for instance — would have been visible by now, or its wreckage would have been carried ashore, as the chest had been, and the chest had been found less than twenty miles away. But there was nothing.
Toward three o'clock Cyrus Smith and his companions came to a narrow, well-sheltered cove with no stream flowing into it. It made a real little natural harbor, invisible from the open sea, and it was reached by a narrow channel that wound between the reefs.
At the back of this cove, some violent upheaval had torn open the rocky rim of the shore, and a cutting, hollowed out in a gentle slope, led up to the plateau above. That spot could not be more than ten miles from Claw Cape, and so it must lie four miles in a straight line from Prospect Plateau.
Gédéon Spilett suggested to his companions that they stop here. They agreed, because the walk had sharpened everyone's appetite, and though it was not yet dinnertime, nobody said no to a bite of venison to keep him going. This snack would let them hold out until supper at Granite House.
A few minutes later the colonists, seated at the foot of a magnificent clump of maritime pines, were devouring the provisions Nab had taken out of his knapsack.
The spot stood fifty to sixty feet above sea level. So the view from it reached a good way: passing over the last rocks of the cape, it ran on until it lost itself in Union Bay. But neither the islet nor Prospect Plateau could be seen, nor could they have been at that moment, because the rise of the ground and the screen of tall trees cut off the northern horizon abruptly.
Needless to say, wide as the stretch of sea was that the explorers could take in, and though the engineer's spyglass swept point by point around the whole circle where sky and water met, not a ship was sighted.
In the same way the spyglass was moved with the same care over the whole part of the coast that still remained to be explored, from the beach out to the reefs, and no wreckage appeared in the field of the instrument.
"Well," said Gédéon Spilett, "we'll have to make up our minds to it, and console ourselves with the thought that nobody's going to come and dispute our possession of Lincoln Island!"
"But what about that lead pellet?" said Harbert. "It wasn't imaginary, I suppose!"
"A thousand devils, no!" cried Pencroff, thinking of his missing molar.
"Then what are we to conclude?" asked the reporter.
"This," answered the engineer. "That three months ago at the most, a ship, willingly or not, put in here..."
"What! You'd accept, Cyrus, that it sank without leaving any trace?" cried the reporter.
"No, my dear Spilett. But notice this: if it's certain that a human being set foot on this island, it seems no less certain that he has left it now."
"Then if I understand you, Mr. Cyrus," said Harbert, "the ship has gone away again?..."
"Obviously."
"And we've lost a chance of getting home, and lost it for good?" said Nab.
"For good, I'm afraid."
"Well! Since the chance is lost, let's go," said Pencroff, who was already homesick for Granite House.
But he had barely stood up when Top's barking rang out loudly, and the dog came out of the woods holding in his mouth a scrap of cloth smeared with mud.
Nab pulled the scrap out of the dog's mouth. It was a piece of strong canvas.
Top kept barking, and by running back and forth he seemed to be inviting his master to follow him into the forest.
"There's something in there that might just explain my lead pellet!" cried Pencroff.
"A castaway!" answered Harbert.
"Wounded, maybe!" said Nab.
"Or dead!" answered the reporter.
And they all rushed after the dog, in among the tall pines that formed the first screen of the forest. Just in case, Cyrus Smith and his companions had their weapons ready.
They had to go a good way into the woods, but to their great disappointment they still saw no footprints. The brush and the creepers were untouched, and they even had to cut through them with the ax, as they had done in the densest depths of the forest. So it was hard to believe that any human creature had passed this way before them. And yet Top went back and forth, not like a dog searching at random but like a creature with a will of its own, following an idea.
After seven or eight minutes of walking, Top stopped. The colonists had come to a kind of clearing, ringed with tall trees. They looked all around them and saw nothing, either under the brush or between the tree trunks.
"Well, what is it, Top?" said Cyrus Smith.
Top barked harder than ever, jumping up at the foot of a gigantic pine.
All of a sudden Pencroff cried out:
"Ah! Good! Ah! Perfect!"
"What is it?" asked Gédéon Spilett.
"We've been looking for wreckage on the sea or on land!"
"Well?"
"Well, it's in the air!"
And the sailor pointed to a sort of great whitish rag caught at the top of the pine. Top had brought back a piece of it that had fallen to the ground.
"But that's not wreckage!" cried Gédéon Spilett.
"Beg your pardon, it is!" answered Pencroff.
"What? It's...?"
"It's all that's left of our airship — our balloon, run aground up there at the top of that tree!"
Pencroff was not mistaken, and he let out a magnificent hurrah, adding:
"Now there's good cloth! There's enough to keep us in linen for years! Enough to make handkerchiefs and shirts! Eh, Mr. Spilett, what do you say to an island where shirts grow on trees?"
It really was a lucky thing for the colonists of Lincoln Island that the balloon, after its last leap through the air, had come down again on the island, and that they had now had the luck to find it. Either they would keep the envelope as it was, if they ever wanted to try another escape through the air, or they would put to good use those several hundred yards of fine-quality cotton cloth, once the varnish had been taken off it. As you can easily imagine, everyone shared Pencroff's joy, and shared it heartily.
But the envelope had to be taken down from the tree it was hanging in and put somewhere safe, and that was no small job. Nab, Harbert and the sailor climbed to the top of the tree, and it took wonders of skill to free the enormous, empty balloon.
The operation lasted nearly two hours. And at the end of it, not only the envelope, with its valve, its springs and its brass fittings, but also the net — that is, a great quantity of ropes and cords — and the ring and the balloon's anchor were all on the ground. Apart from the tear, the envelope was in good condition; only the neck at its bottom had been ripped.
It was a fortune that had fallen from the sky.
"All the same, Mr. Cyrus," said the sailor, "if we ever decide to leave the island, it won't be by balloon, will it? Those airships don't go where you want them to, and we know something about that! Look here, if you take my advice, we'll build a good boat of twenty tons or so, and you'll let me cut a foresail and a jib out of this cloth. As for the rest, it'll do to clothe us!"
"We'll see, Pencroff," answered Cyrus Smith. "We'll see."
"Meanwhile we have to put all this somewhere safe," said Nab.
And indeed, there was no thinking of carrying this load of cloth, cords and ropes to Granite House, for it weighed a great deal. And until they had a proper vehicle to haul it in, it was important not to leave these riches any longer at the mercy of the first hurricane that came along. By pooling their efforts the colonists managed to drag the whole lot down to the shore, where they found a fairly large hollow in the rock that, thanks to the way it faced, neither wind nor rain nor sea could get into.
"We needed a cupboard, and we've got a cupboard," said Pencroff. "But since it doesn't lock, it would be wise to hide the opening. I don't say that because of thieves on two feet, but because of thieves on four!"
By six o'clock in the evening everything was stored away. They gave the little inlet that formed the cove the very fitting name of "Balloon Harbor," and then they took the road for Claw Cape again. Pencroff and the engineer talked over various projects that ought to be carried out as soon as possible. Before anything else they had to throw a bridge across the Mercy, so as to have an easy way through to the south of the island. Then a cart would come back for the balloon, because the canoe could never have carried it all. Then they would build a decked boat. Then Pencroff would rig her as a cutter, and they could set out on voyages of circumnavigation... around the island. Then, and so on.
Meanwhile night was coming on, and the sky was already dark when the colonists reached Jetsam Point, at the very spot where they had found the precious chest. But there, no more than anywhere else, was there anything to show that any shipwreck had taken place, and they had to come back to the conclusions Cyrus Smith had already put forward.
From Jetsam Point to Granite House there were still four miles to go, and they were quickly covered. But it was after midnight when the colonists, having followed the shore to the mouth of the Mercy, reached the first bend in the river.
There the riverbed was eighty feet wide, which was not easy to cross. But Pencroff had promised to overcome that difficulty, and now he was called on to make good.
It has to be admitted that the colonists were worn out. The stage had been long, and the episode of the balloon had done nothing to rest their legs and arms. So they were in a hurry to get back to Granite House to eat their supper and sleep, and if the bridge had been built, they would have been home in a quarter of an hour.
The night was very dark. So Pencroff got ready to keep his promise by making a sort of raft on which they could cross the Mercy. He and Nab, armed with axes, picked out two trees near the bank to make the raft from, and began chopping at them from the base.
Cyrus Smith and Gédéon Spilett sat on the bank, waiting for the moment when they could help their companions, while Harbert walked back and forth without straying very far.
All at once the boy, who had gone a little way up the river, came running back, and pointing upstream along the Mercy:
"What's that drifting down there?" he cried.
Pencroff stopped work and made out a moving object that showed dimly in the dark.
"A boat!" he said.
They all came closer and saw, to their utter surprise, a small craft following the current.
"Boat ahoy!" the sailor shouted, out of an old professional habit, without stopping to think that it might have been better to keep quiet.
No answer. The boat kept drifting, and it was no more than ten paces off when the sailor cried:
"Why, it's our canoe! It's broken its mooring line and come down with the current! I must say, it's turning up at just the right time!"
"Our canoe?..." murmured the engineer.
Pencroff was right. It really was the canoe, whose mooring line had broken, no doubt, and which was coming back all by itself from the sources of the Mercy! So it was important to catch it as it went by, before the river's swift current carried it out past the mouth. Nab and Pencroff did exactly that, deftly, with a long pole.
The canoe came in to the bank. The engineer, stepping into it first, took hold of the mooring line and made sure by feeling it that the line really had been worn through by rubbing against the rocks.
"Now that," the reporter said to him in a low voice, "is what you might call a circumstance..."
"A strange one!" answered Cyrus Smith.
Strange or not, it was a lucky one! Harbert, the reporter, Nab and Pencroff got in after him. They had no doubt that the line had simply worn through. But the most astonishing part of the business was really that the canoe had arrived at the very moment when the colonists were there to catch it as it went by — because a quarter of an hour later it would have been lost at sea.
If this had been the age of genies, the incident would have given them every right to think that the island was haunted by some supernatural being who had put his powers at the service of the castaways!
A few strokes of the paddle brought the colonists to the mouth of the Mercy. The canoe was hauled up the beach close to the Chimneys, and they all made for the ladder of Granite House.
But at that moment Top barked angrily, and Nab, who was feeling for the first rung, let out a cry...
The ladder was gone.
Pencroff hails — A night in the Chimneys — Harbert's arrow — Cyrus Smith's plan — An unexpected solution — What had happened at Granite House — How a new servant entered the colonists' service
Cyrus Smith had stopped short without a word. His companions searched in the darkness, both up the face of the cliff, in case the wind had shifted the ladder, and along the ground, in case it had come loose and fallen... But the ladder had completely disappeared. As for whether a gust had lifted it up to the first landing, halfway up the wall, there was no telling in that pitch-dark night.
"If this is a joke," cried Pencroff, "it's a bad one! To come home and find there's no staircase up to your bedroom — that's nothing for tired people to laugh at!"
Nab, for his part, was lost in exclamations!
"But there hasn't been any wind!" Harbert pointed out.
"I'm beginning to think there are some strange goings-on on Lincoln Island!" said Pencroff.
"Strange?" replied Gédéon Spilett. "Not at all, Pencroff. Nothing could be more natural. Somebody came while we were away, took possession of the place, and pulled up the ladder!"
"Somebody!" cried the sailor. "And who, then?..."
"Why, the hunter with the lead pellet," the reporter answered. "What good would he be if he didn't explain our misfortune?"
"Well, if there's somebody up there," said Pencroff with an oath, for he was beginning to lose patience, "I'm going to hail him, and he'd better answer!"
And in a voice like thunder, the sailor let out a long "Ahoy!" which the echoes threw back with force.
The colonists listened, and they thought they heard, somewhere up near Granite House, a kind of snickering whose source they could not make out. But no voice answered Pencroff's voice, and he repeated his vigorous call to no purpose.
There was truly enough here to astonish the most unconcerned men in the world, and the colonists could not be unconcerned men of that kind. In their situation every incident was serious, and certainly, in the seven months they had lived on the island, none had come along that was quite so surprising.
Be that as it may, forgetting how tired they were and gripped by the strangeness of the event, they stood at the foot of Granite House, not knowing what to think or what to do, asking one another questions that no one could answer, piling up theories each more impossible than the last. Nab was moaning, bitterly disappointed not to be able to get back into his kitchen — all the more because the provisions for the journey were used up and he had no way to replace them just then.
"My friends," Cyrus Smith said at last, "there's only one thing for us to do: wait for daylight, and then act according to circumstances. But to do our waiting, let's go to the Chimneys. There we'll have shelter, and if we can't have supper, at least we can sleep."
"But who's the cheeky fellow who played this trick on us?" Pencroff asked once again, unable to resign himself to the business.
Whoever the "cheeky fellow" might be, the only thing to do, as the engineer had said, was to go back to the Chimneys and wait there for day. Top, however, was ordered to stay under the windows of Granite House, and when Top was given an order, Top carried it out without any argument. So the good dog stayed at the foot of the wall while his master and his companions took refuge among the rocks.
To say that the colonists, worn out as they were, slept well on the sand of the Chimneys would be stretching the truth. Not only could they not help being very anxious to learn how serious this new incident was — whether it was the result of some accident whose natural causes would become plain by daylight, or, on the contrary, the work of a human being — but they were also very badly bedded down. In any case, one way or another, their home was occupied at this moment, and they could not get back into it.
And Granite House was more than their home; it was their storehouse. All the colony's equipment was there: weapons, instruments, tools, ammunition, food supplies, and so on. If all that were plundered, the colonists would have to start setting themselves up all over again, make their weapons and tools over again. A serious matter! So, giving in to their uneasiness, one or another of them kept going out every few minutes to see whether Top was standing a good watch. Cyrus Smith alone waited with his usual patience, though his stubborn reason was exasperated to find itself facing a fact that was utterly inexplicable, and he was indignant at the thought that around him, perhaps above him, some influence was at work to which he could not put a name. Gédéon Spilett entirely shared his view on this point, and the two of them talked it over several times, but in low voices — these inexplicable circumstances that defeated all their insight and all their experience. There was certainly a mystery on this island, and how were they to get to the bottom of it? Harbert, for his part, could not imagine what to think, and would have liked to question Cyrus Smith. As for Nab, he had ended by telling himself that none of this was his business, that it was his master's business, and if he had not been afraid of offending his companions, good Nab would have slept that night every bit as soundly as if he had been resting on his own bunk in Granite House!
Pencroff, finally, was the most furious of them all, and he was honestly and thoroughly angry.
"It's a prank," he kept saying, "a prank somebody's pulled on us! Well, I don't like pranks, I don't, and woe to the prankster if he falls into my hands!"
As soon as the first glimmer of day rose in the east, the colonists, suitably armed, went down to the shore at the edge of the reefs. Granite House faced the rising sun directly and would soon be lit up by the light of dawn, and in fact, before five o'clock, the windows, with their shutters closed, appeared through their curtains of leaves.
On that side everything was in order. But a cry burst from the colonists' chests when they saw that the door — which they had certainly shut before they left — stood wide open.
Someone had got into Granite House. There was no longer any doubt about it.
The upper ladder, which usually stretched from the landing to the door, was in its place. But the lower ladder had been pulled up and hauled all the way to the doorsill. It was more than obvious that the intruders had wanted to protect themselves against any surprise.
As for what kind of intruders they were and how many, there was no telling yet, since not one of them showed himself.
Pencroff hailed again.
No answer.
"The scoundrels!" cried the sailor. "Would you look at that — sleeping peacefully as if they owned the place! Ahoy there! Pirates, bandits, privateers, sons of John Bull!"
When Pencroff, as an American, had called somebody a "son of John Bull" — that is, an Englishman — he had climbed to the very summit of insult.
By now it was full day, and the front of Granite House lit up in the rays of the sun. But inside as well as out, everything was silent and calm.
The colonists had come to wondering whether Granite House was occupied or not. And yet the position of the ladder proved it plainly enough, and it was even certain that the occupants, whoever they might be, could not have got away! But how could they reach them?
Then Harbert had the idea of tying a cord to an arrow and shooting the arrow so that it would pass between the first rungs of the ladder, which were hanging over the doorsill. Then, by means of the cord, they could unroll the ladder down to the ground and restore communication between the ground and Granite House.
There was obviously nothing else to be done, and with a little skill the method ought to work. Very luckily, bows and arrows had been left in one of the passages of the Chimneys, where there were also a few dozen fathoms of light hibiscus cord. Pencroff unwound this cord and fastened the end of it to a well-feathered arrow. Then Harbert set the arrow to his bow and took aim, with extreme care, at the dangling end of the ladder.
Cyrus Smith, Gédéon Spilett, Pencroff and Nab had stepped back, so as to watch what would happen at the windows of Granite House. The reporter, his carbine at his shoulder, had the door in his sights.
The bow sprang, the arrow whistled off, pulling the cord after it, and passed between the last two rungs.
The operation had worked.
At once Harbert seized the end of the cord. But just as he gave it a jerk to bring the ladder tumbling down, an arm darted out between the wall and the door, snatched the ladder, and pulled it back inside Granite House.
"You triple scoundrel!" cried the sailor. "If a bullet's what would make you happy, you won't have long to wait!"
"But who is it?" asked Nab.
"Who? Didn't you recognize him?..."
"No."
"Why, it's a monkey, a macaque, a capuchin, a she-ape, an orang, a baboon, a gorilla, a marmoset! Our home's been invaded by monkeys, and they climbed up the ladder while we were gone!"
And at that very moment, as if to prove the sailor right, three or four of the four-handed creatures appeared at the windows, whose shutters they had pushed open, and greeted the rightful owners of the place with a thousand contortions and grimaces.
"I knew it was nothing but a prank!" cried Pencroff. "But here's one of the pranksters who's going to pay for the rest!"
The sailor raised his gun to his shoulder, took quick aim at one of the monkeys, and fired. They all vanished, except one, which was mortally hit and came hurtling down onto the beach.
This monkey, a tall one, belonged to the highest order of the four-handed animals; there was no mistaking it. Whether it was a chimpanzee, an orang, a gorilla or a gibbon, it ranked among the anthropoids, the apes so named for their resemblance to human beings. Besides, Harbert declared that it was an orangutan, and we know that the boy knew his zoology.
"What a magnificent animal!" cried Nab.
"As magnificent as you like!" Pencroff replied. "But I still don't see how we're going to get back into our house!"
"Harbert's a good shot," said the reporter, "and his bow is right here! Let him try again..."
"Huh! These monkeys are sly!" cried Pencroff. "They won't come back to the windows, and we won't be able to kill them, and when I think of the damage they can do in the rooms, in the storeroom..."
"Patience," Cyrus Smith answered. "These animals can't hold us off for long!"
"I won't be sure of that till they're on the ground," the sailor replied. "And to start with, Mr. Smith, do you know how many dozen of these pranksters there are up there?"
It would have been hard to answer Pencroff. And as for repeating the boy's attempt, that was not easy, because the bottom end of the ladder had been pulled back inside the door, and when they hauled on the cord again, the cord broke and the ladder did not come down.
The situation was truly awkward. Pencroff was raging. The business had a certain comic side, which he, for his part, did not find funny at all. Obviously the colonists would get back into their home in the end and drive out the intruders. But when, and how? That was what they could not have said.
Two hours went by, during which the monkeys took care not to show themselves. But they were still there, and three or four times a muzzle or a paw slipped out through the door or the windows and was greeted with gunfire.
"Let's hide," the engineer said then. "Perhaps the monkeys will think we've gone and show themselves again. But Spilett and Harbert should lie in wait behind the rocks and fire at anything that appears."
The engineer's orders were carried out. While the reporter and the boy, the two best marksmen in the colony, took up positions within easy range but out of the monkeys' sight, Nab, Pencroff and Cyrus Smith climbed to the plateau and made for the forest to kill some game, for it was time for the midday meal and there was nothing left in the way of food.
At the end of half an hour the hunters came back with a few rock pigeons, which were roasted after a fashion. Not one monkey had shown itself again.
Gédéon Spilett and Harbert went to take their share of the meal while Top kept watch under the windows. Then, after eating, they went back to their posts.
Two hours later the situation had still not changed in the least. The four-handed creatures gave no further sign of life, and you might have believed they had disappeared. But what seemed most likely was that, frightened by the death of one of their number and terrified by the gunshots, they were lying low at the back of the rooms of Granite House, or even in the storeroom. And when the colonists thought of the riches that storeroom held, the patience the engineer had urged on them so strongly ended by turning into violent irritation — and frankly, there was every reason for it.
"This is really too stupid," the reporter said at last, "and there's truly no reason for it ever to end!"
"We've got to make those rascals clear out, though!" cried Pencroff. "We'd get the better of them easily enough, even if there were twenty of them, but to do that we've got to fight them hand to hand! Look here! Isn't there any way at all of getting at them?"
"Yes," replied the engineer, through whose mind an idea had just flashed.
"One?" said Pencroff. "Well, then it's the right one, since there aren't any others! What is it?"
"Let's try to get down into Granite House through the lake's old spillway," the engineer replied.
"Oh, by a thousand thousand devils!" cried the sailor. "And I never thought of that!"
It was, in fact, the only way to get inside Granite House, fight the gang and throw it out. The mouth of the spillway, it is true, was closed by a wall of cemented stones, which would have to be sacrificed; but they would only have to build it again. Luckily, Cyrus Smith had not yet carried out his plan of hiding that opening by drowning it under the waters of the lake, because then the operation would have taken a good deal of time.
It was already past noon when the colonists, well armed and carrying picks and mattocks, left the Chimneys, passed under the windows of Granite House after ordering Top to stay at his post, and got ready to go up the left bank of the Mercy to reach Prospect Plateau.
But they had not gone fifty paces in that direction when they heard the dog barking furiously. It was like a desperate summons.
They stopped.
"Run!" said Pencroff.
And they all went tearing back down the bank as fast as their legs would carry them.
When they reached the bend, they saw that the situation had changed.
The monkeys, seized by a sudden fright from some unknown cause, were trying to escape. Two or three were running and leaping from one window to another with the agility of circus clowns. They were not even trying to put the ladder back, though it would have been easy for them to climb down by it; in their terror, perhaps, they had forgotten that way of clearing out. Soon five or six were in a position to be shot at, and the colonists, aiming at their leisure, fired. Some, wounded or killed, fell back into the rooms, shrieking shrilly. Others, flung outward, were smashed in their fall, and a few moments later it was reasonable to suppose there was not a single four-handed creature left alive in Granite House.
"Hurrah!" cried Pencroff. "Hurrah! Hurrah!"
"Not so many hurrahs!" said Gédéon Spilett.
"Why not? They're all dead," replied the sailor.
"Agreed, but that doesn't give us a way of getting back into our house."
"Let's go to the spillway!" retorted Pencroff.
"Of course," said the engineer. "And yet it would have been better..."
At that moment, as if in answer to Cyrus Smith's remark, they saw the ladder slide over the doorsill, then unroll and drop all the way to the ground.
"Well, a thousand pipes! That's a good one!" cried the sailor, looking at Cyrus Smith.
"Too good!" murmured the engineer, and he was the first to spring onto the ladder.
"Look out, Mr. Cyrus!" cried Pencroff. "If there are still some of those apes..."
"We shall see," the engineer replied without stopping.
All his companions followed him, and in a minute they had reached the doorsill.
They searched everywhere. There was no one in the rooms, and no one in the storeroom, which the gang of four-handed raiders had left untouched.
"Well, now, what about the ladder?" cried the sailor. "Who's the gentleman who sent it back down to us?"
But just then a shriek rang out, and a big ape that had taken refuge in the passage burst into the great hall with Nab after it.
"Ah, the bandit!" cried Pencroff.
And ax in hand, he was about to split the animal's head open, when Cyrus Smith stopped him and said:
"Spare him, Pencroff."
"Show mercy to this hairy rascal?"
"Yes! He's the one who threw us the ladder!"
And the engineer said it in so peculiar a voice that it would have been hard to tell whether he was speaking seriously or not.
Nevertheless they threw themselves on the ape, which put up a brave fight before it was brought down and tied up.
"Phew!" cried Pencroff. "And what are we going to do with him now?"
"Make him a servant!" Harbert answered.
And in saying so the boy was not altogether joking, for he knew how much use can be made of this intelligent race of four-handed animals.
The colonists then came up to the ape and looked him over closely. He did indeed belong to that species of anthropoid ape whose facial angle — the slope of the face from brow to jaw — is not much smaller than a human being's. He was an orang, and as such he had neither the ferocity of the baboon, nor the thoughtlessness of the macaque, nor the uncleanliness of the marmoset, nor the impatience of the Barbary ape, nor the bad instincts of the dog-faced monkey. It is to this family of anthropoids that so many traits belong which show in these animals an almost human intelligence. Employed in households, they can wait at table, clean the rooms, look after the clothes, black the boots, handle a knife, spoon and fork skillfully, and even drink wine... every bit as well as the best servant who ever walked on two legs without feathers. We know that the great naturalist Buffon owned one of these apes, which served him for a long time as a faithful and devoted servant.
The one who now lay tied up in the great hall of Granite House was a great big devil, six feet tall, his body admirably proportioned, his chest broad, his head of medium size, his facial angle reaching sixty-five degrees, his skull rounded, his nose prominent, his skin covered with smooth, soft, glossy hair — in short, a perfect specimen of the anthropoids. His eyes, a little smaller than human eyes, sparkled with intelligent liveliness; his white teeth gleamed under his mustache, and he wore a little curly beard the color of hazelnuts.
"A handsome fellow!" said Pencroff. "If only we knew his language, we could talk to him!"
"So, my master, it's serious?" said Nab. "We're going to take him on as a servant?"
"Yes, Nab," the engineer answered with a smile. "But don't be jealous!"
"And I hope he'll make an excellent servant," added Harbert. "He looks young, so his education will be easy, and we won't have to use force to tame him, or pull out his canine teeth, the way people do in such cases! He can't help but become attached to masters who are kind to him."
"And kind we'll be," replied Pencroff, who had forgotten all his grudge against "the pranksters."
Then, going up to the orang:
"Well, my boy," he asked him, "how are we doing?"
The orang answered with a little grunt that did not suggest too bad a temper.
"So we'd like to join the colony?" asked the sailor. "We're going to enter the service of Mr. Cyrus Smith?"
Another approving grunt from the ape.
"And we'll be content with our board for wages?"
A third grunt, in the affirmative.
"His conversation is a little monotonous," Gédéon Spilett observed.
"Good!" retorted Pencroff. "The best servants are the ones who talk the least. And besides — no wages! Do you hear, my boy? To start with, we won't give you any wages, but we'll double them later on, if we're pleased with you!"
That was how the colony gained a new member, who was to do it more than one good turn. As for what he should be called, the sailor asked that, in memory of another ape he had once known, he be named Jupiter — Jup for short.
And that is how, without further ceremony, Master Jup was installed in Granite House.
Plans to carry out — A bridge over the Mercy — Making an island of Prospect Plateau — The drawbridge — The wheat harvest — The stream — The little bridges — The poultry yard — The dovecote — The two onaggas — The cart in harness — A trip to Balloon Harbor
So the colonists of Lincoln Island had won back their home without having to go in by the old spillway, and that spared them a good deal of masonry work. It was lucky, really, that just as they were getting ready to do it, the band of monkeys had been seized by a terror as sudden as it was inexplicable, and that this terror had driven them out of Granite House. Had the animals somehow sensed that a serious attack was about to be made on them by another route? That was about the only way to explain their retreat.
During the last hours of the day the monkeys' bodies were carried into the woods and buried there. Then the colonists set to work repairing the disorder the intruders had left behind. It was disorder, not damage: the monkeys had turned the furniture of the rooms upside down, but at least they had broken nothing. Nab lit his stoves again, and the reserves in the pantry provided a solid meal, which everyone did full justice to.
Jup was not forgotten. He ate stone-pine nuts and rootstocks with a good appetite, and he found himself supplied with plenty of both. Pencroff had untied his arms, but he thought it wise to leave the hobbles on his legs until he could count on the ape having accepted his new life.
Then, before going to bed, Cyrus Smith and his companions sat around the table and talked over several projects that urgently needed doing.
The most important and the most pressing were two: building a bridge over the Mercy, so as to connect the southern part of the island with Granite House, and then setting up a corral to house the mouflons, or any other wool-bearing animals they ought to capture.
As anyone can see, both projects were aimed at the question of clothing, which was then the most serious one they faced. The bridge would make it easy to bring home the balloon's envelope, which would give them linen, and the corral would supply a harvest of wool, which would give them winter clothes.
As for the corral, Cyrus Smith meant to build it at the very sources of Red Creek, where the grazing animals would find pastures with plenty of fresh food. The road between Prospect Plateau and the sources had already been partly cleared, and with a better-built cart than the first one, hauling would be easier — especially if they managed to capture some animal that could pull it.
But while there was no harm in the corral being a long way from Granite House, the same could not be said of the poultry yard, which Nab now brought to the colonists' attention. The birds really did need to be within reach of the head cook, and no spot seemed better suited for the poultry yard than the stretch of the lakeshore next to the old spillway. Water birds would thrive there as well as the others, and the pair of tinamous caught on the last expedition would serve for a first try at taming.
The next day, November 3, the new work began with the building of the bridge, and every pair of hands was called on for this important job. Saws, axes, chisels, and hammers were loaded onto the colonists' shoulders, and, turned into carpenters, they went down to the beach.
There Pencroff had a thought.
"And what if, while we're away, Master Jup takes it into his head to pull up the ladder he was so kind as to send down to us yesterday?"
"Let's fasten down its lower end," Cyrus Smith answered.
This was done with two stakes driven firmly into the sand. Then the colonists went up the left bank of the Mercy and soon came to the bend the river made.
There they stopped, to see whether the bridge ought to be built at this point. The place seemed right.
From here to Balloon Harbor, which they had discovered the day before on the south coast, it was only three and a half miles, and from the bridge to the harbor it would be easy to clear a road a cart could travel, which would make it simple to go back and forth between Granite House and the south of the island.
Cyrus Smith now told his companions about a plan he had been turning over for some time — one that was very simple to carry out and very much worth doing. It was to cut Prospect Plateau off completely, so as to protect it from any attack by four-footed or four-handed creatures. That way Granite House, the Chimneys, the poultry yard, and the whole upper part of the plateau, which was meant for planting, would be safe from the raids of animals.
Nothing could be easier to carry out than this plan, and here is how the engineer meant to go about it.
The plateau was already defended on three sides by water, some of it man-made and some of it natural:
On the northwest, by the shore of Lake Grant, from the corner that rested against the mouth of the old spillway all the way to the cut made in the lake's east bank to let the water out.
On the north, from that cut down to the sea, by the new stream that had dug itself a bed across the plateau and the beach, above and below the waterfall. And to make that stream impassable to animals, all they had to do was dig its bed deeper.
Along the whole eastern edge, by the sea itself, from the mouth of that same stream to the mouth of the Mercy.
And finally on the south, from that river mouth up to the bend of the Mercy where the bridge was to be built.
That left only the western side of the plateau, between the bend of the river and the southern corner of the lake. It was less than a mile long, and it lay open to anything that came along. But nothing was easier than to dig a wide, deep ditch there. The lake would fill it, and the overflow would pour down through a second waterfall into the bed of the Mercy. The level of the lake would no doubt drop a little because of this new outlet for its water, but Cyrus Smith had made sure that Red Creek brought in enough water to allow his plan to go ahead.
"So you see," the engineer added, "Prospect Plateau will be a real island, surrounded by water on every side. It will connect with the rest of our domain only by the bridge we are about to put across the Mercy, by the two little bridges already built above and below the waterfall, and finally by two more little bridges still to be built — one over the ditch I'm proposing we dig, and the other on the left bank of the Mercy. Now, if this bridge and these little bridges can be raised whenever we like, Prospect Plateau will be safe from any surprise."
To make himself clearer, Cyrus Smith had drawn a map of the plateau, and his companions grasped the whole plan at once. They approved it unanimously, and Pencroff, brandishing his carpenter's ax, shouted:
"The bridge first!"
It was the most urgent job. Trees were chosen, felled, stripped of their branches, and sawed up into joists, thick planks, and boards. The bridge was to be fixed in the section that rested on the right bank of the Mercy, and movable in the section that joined the left bank, so that this part could be raised by means of counterweights, the way certain bridges over canal locks are.
As anyone will understand, it was a large piece of work, and although it was skillfully managed, it did take a certain amount of time, because the Mercy was about eighty feet wide. They had to drive piles into the riverbed to hold up the fixed deck of the bridge, and they had to set up a pile driver — a heavy weight hoisted and dropped again and again — to pound on the tops of the piles. These piles would form two arches, so that the bridge could bear heavy loads.
Very fortunately, they lacked nothing: not the tools for working wood, not the ironwork for strengthening it, not the ingenuity of a man who understood this kind of work wonderfully well, and not the zeal of his companions, who after seven months had naturally become very skillful with their hands. And it must be said that Gédéon Spilett was not the clumsiest of them. He competed in skill with the sailor himself, who "would never have expected so much from a mere journalist!"
The building of the bridge over the Mercy took three weeks, and they were very busy weeks. The colonists ate their midday meal right at the work site, and since the weather was magnificent then, they went back to Granite House only for supper.
During this time it was clear that Master Jup was settling in easily and growing used to his new masters, whom he still watched with an extremely curious eye. All the same, as a precaution, Pencroff did not yet give him complete freedom of movement. He wanted to wait, and rightly, until the edges of the plateau had been made impossible to cross by the planned works. Top and Jup got along splendidly and liked to play together, but Jup did everything with great seriousness.
On November 20 the bridge was finished. Its movable section, balanced by counterweights, swung up easily, and only a slight effort was needed to raise it. Between its hinge and the last crossbeam, where it came to rest when it was lowered again, there was a gap of twenty feet — wide enough that no animal could jump across it.
Next came the question of going to fetch the balloon's envelope, which the colonists were eager to put somewhere completely safe. But to carry it, they would have to take a cart all the way to Balloon Harbor, and that meant clearing a road through the dense thickets of the Far West. That would take a certain amount of time. So Nab and Pencroff first went ahead to scout as far as the harbor, and when they found that the "stock of cloth" was not suffering in the least in the cave where it had been stored, it was decided that the work on Prospect Plateau would go on without a break.
"That," Pencroff pointed out, "will let us set up our poultry yard under better conditions, since we won't have to be afraid of visits from foxes or attacks from any other pests."
"Not to mention," Nab added, "that we'll be able to clear the plateau, and plant wild plants there..."
"And get our second wheat field ready!" the sailor cried triumphantly.
The fact was that the first wheat field, sown with a single grain, had done wonderfully well, thanks to Pencroff's care. It had produced the ten ears the engineer had predicted, and since each ear held eighty grains, the colony now found itself the owner of eight hundred grains — in six months — which promised two harvests every year.
These eight hundred grains, less about fifty kept back to be safe, were therefore to be sown in a new field, and with no less care than the single grain had been.
The field was prepared and then surrounded by a strong palisade, tall and sharp-pointed, which four-footed animals would have had a very hard time getting over. As for the birds, they were kept away by screeching whirligigs and frightful scarecrows, products of Pencroff's fanciful imagination. The seven hundred and fifty grains were then laid in small, very regular furrows, and nature had to do the rest.
On November 21 Cyrus Smith began laying out the ditch that was to close off the plateau on the west, from the southern corner of Lake Grant to the bend of the Mercy. There were two or three feet of topsoil there, and granite underneath. So they had to make nitroglycerin all over again, and the nitroglycerin did its usual work. In less than two weeks a ditch twelve feet wide and six deep had been dug in the hard ground of the plateau. By the same means a new cut was made in the rocky rim of the lake, and the water rushed into this new bed, forming a little stream that was given the name "Glycerin Creek." It became a tributary of the Mercy. Just as the engineer had said, the level of the lake dropped, but by an amount you could barely see. Finally, to complete the enclosure, the bed of the stream on the beach was made much wider, and the sand was held back by a double palisade.
By the end of the first half of December this work was completely finished. Prospect Plateau — an irregular sort of pentagon about four miles around, with a belt of water all the way round it — was now entirely safe from any attack.
During that month of December the heat was intense. Even so, the colonists would not stop carrying out their plans, and since setting up the poultry yard had become urgent, they went ahead and set it up.
It goes without saying that once the plateau was completely closed off, Master Jup had been set free. He never left his masters now and showed no wish at all to escape. He was a gentle animal, yet very strong, and astonishingly agile. Ah! When it came to climbing the ladder of Granite House, nobody could have competed with him. He was already being put to some kinds of work: he hauled loads of wood and carted away the stones that had been dug out of the bed of Glycerin Creek.
"He's not a mason yet, but he's already a 'monkey'!" Harbert said jokingly. He was referring to the nickname "monkey" that French masons give their apprentices. And if ever a name was deserved, it was this one!
The poultry yard took up an area of two hundred square yards, chosen on the southeast shore of the lake. It was surrounded by a palisade, and various shelters were built for the animals that were to live in it. These were huts of branches, divided into compartments, and they were soon simply waiting for their guests.
The first were the pair of tinamous, which before long produced a large brood of young. They were joined by half a dozen ducks that lived along the shores of the lake. Some of these belonged to that Chinese species whose wings open like a fan, and whose brilliant, vivid plumage rivals that of the golden pheasant. A few days later Harbert caught a pair of gallinaceous birds — game birds of the chicken family — with rounded tails made of long feathers: magnificent "alectors," which soon became tame. As for the pelicans, the kingfishers, and the moorhens, they came of their own accord to the shore by the poultry yard. And this whole little world, after a few quarrels, cooing, squawking, and clucking, ended up getting along, and it multiplied at a rate that was reassuring for the colony's future food supply.
Cyrus Smith, wanting to round out the work, also built a dovecote in one corner of the poultry yard. In it they housed a dozen of the pigeons that haunted the high rocks of the plateau. These birds easily got into the habit of coming back to their new home every evening, and they showed more of a tendency to be domesticated than their relatives the wood pigeons, which in any case breed only in the wild.
At last the time had come to use the balloon's envelope for making linen. As for keeping it in its present form and risking a hot-air balloon to leave the island, over a sea that was practically without limits — that would have been thinkable only for people who lacked everything, and Cyrus Smith, a practical mind, could not consider it.
So the job was to bring the envelope back to Granite House, and the colonists set about making their heavy cart lighter and easier to handle. But while they did not lack a vehicle, they still had to find something to pull it! Wasn't there some native grazing animal on the island that could take the place of a horse, a donkey, an ox, or a cow? That was the question.
"Honestly," Pencroff said, "a draft animal would be very useful to us, until Mr. Cyrus is good enough to build us a steam wagon, or even a locomotive — because one day, for sure, we'll have a railroad from Granite House to Balloon Harbor, with a branch line up Mount Franklin!"
And the honest sailor believed what he was saying! Oh, imagination, when faith gets mixed up in it!
But, not to exaggerate, a simple four-footed animal that could be put in harness would have suited Pencroff perfectly well. And since Providence had a soft spot for him, it did not keep him waiting long.
One day, December 23, they heard Nab shouting and Top barking, each trying to outdo the other. The colonists, who were busy at the Chimneys, came running at once, afraid that something unpleasant had happened.
What did they see? Two handsome, good-sized animals, which had wandered carelessly onto the plateau, since the little bridges had not been closed. They looked like two horses, or at least two donkeys, a male and a female. They were finely built, with pale yellowish-gray coats, white legs and tails, and black stripes across the head, neck, and body. They were walking calmly forward without showing the least alarm, and they looked with bright eyes at these men, whom they could not yet recognize as their masters.
"They're onaggas!" Harbert cried. "Animals halfway between the zebra and the quagga!"
"Why not donkeys?" asked Nab.
"Because they don't have long ears, and their shape is more graceful!"
"Donkeys or horses," Pencroff shot back, "they're 'engines,' as Mr. Smith would say, and as such they're worth catching!"
Without frightening the two animals, the sailor slipped through the grass to the little bridge over Glycerin Creek and swung it up, and the onaggas were prisoners.
Now, should they be seized by force and made to submit to domestication? No. It was decided that for a few days they would be left to come and go freely on the plateau, where there was plenty of grass, and the engineer immediately had a stable built near the poultry yard, where the onaggas would find good bedding and shelter for the night.
So this magnificent pair was left entirely free to move about, and the colonists even avoided frightening them by coming too close. Several times, though, the onaggas seemed to feel a need to leave this plateau, which was too cramped for animals used to wide-open spaces and deep forests. Then they could be seen following the belt of water that stood in their way as a barrier they could not cross, letting out a few shrill brays, then galloping off through the grass. And when they had calmed down, they would stand for hours on end gazing at those great woods that were closed to them forever!
Meanwhile, harness and traces had been made out of plant fibers, and a few days after the onaggas were captured, not only was the cart ready to be hitched up, but a straight road — or rather a cutting — had been made through the Far West forest from the bend of the Mercy to Balloon Harbor. So the cart could now be driven there, and it was toward the end of December that they tried out the onaggas for the first time.
Pencroff had already coaxed the animals enough that they would come and eat out of his hand, and they let people come near them without any trouble. But once they were in harness they reared, and it was very hard to hold them. All the same, they would soon get used to this new work, because the onagga, less rebellious than the zebra, is often put to harness in the mountainous parts of southern Africa, and it has even been acclimatized in Europe, in relatively cold regions.
That day the whole colony, except Pencroff, who walked at the head of his animals, climbed into the cart and took the road to Balloon Harbor. It goes without saying that they were jolted about on that barely roughed-out road. But the cart arrived without mishap, and that same day they were able to load the envelope and the balloon's various riggings onto it.
At eight o'clock in the evening the cart, having crossed back over the bridge over the Mercy, came down the left bank of the river and stopped on the beach. The onaggas were unhitched and led back to their stable, and Pencroff, before falling asleep, let out a sigh of satisfaction so loud that it echoed through Granite House.
Linen — Sealskin shoes — Making guncotton — Various sowings — Fishing — Turtle eggs — Master Jup's progress — The corral — Hunting mouflons — New riches, plant and animal — Memories of the homeland far away
The first week of January was given over to making the linen the colony needed. The needles found in the chest went to work between fingers that were strong, if not delicate, and it is safe to say that whatever was sewn stayed sewn.
There was no shortage of thread, thanks to Cyrus Smith's idea of reusing the thread that had already served to stitch together the strips of the balloon. Gédéon Spilett and Harbert unpicked those long strips with admirable patience, because Pencroff had been forced to give up the job, which drove him to distraction. But once it came to sewing, he had no equal. Everybody knows, after all, that sailors have a remarkable gift for the seamstress's trade.
Next, the cloth that had made up the balloon's envelope was scoured with soda and potash, obtained by burning plants, so that the cotton, freed of its varnish, got back its natural softness and stretch. Then it was left out in the open air, which bleached it, until it turned a perfect white.
In this way they made a few dozen shirts and socks — the socks not knitted, of course, but cut and sewn from cloth. What a pleasure it was for the colonists to put on clean white linen at last — very rough linen, no doubt, but they were past worrying about such small things — and to sleep between sheets, which turned the bunks of Granite House into thoroughly respectable beds.
It was also around this time that they made shoes of sealskin, which arrived just in time to replace the shoes and boots they had brought from America. It is safe to say that these new shoes were wide and long, and never pinched the walkers' feet!
As the year 1866 began, the heat held on and on, but the hunting in the woods never let up. Agoutis, peccaries, capybaras, kangaroos, game with fur and game with feathers were positively swarming, and Gédéon Spilett and Harbert were by now too good as shots ever to waste a single shot.
Cyrus Smith kept urging them to go easy on the ammunition, and he took steps to replace the powder and shot found in the chest, which he wanted to keep in reserve for the future. After all, did he know where chance might someday throw him and his companions, if they ever left their domain? They had to be ready for every need the unknown might bring, and so they had to save their ammunition by putting other materials, easy to replace, in its place.
To replace lead, of which Cyrus Smith had found no trace on the island, he used iron shot, which was easy to make, and did so without much loss. Since these pellets were not as heavy as lead pellets, he had to make them bigger, and each charge held fewer of them, but the hunters' skill made up for the difference. As for gunpowder, Cyrus Smith could have made it, since he had saltpeter, sulfur and charcoal on hand. But making it calls for extreme care, and without special equipment it is hard to turn out powder of good quality.
So Cyrus Smith preferred to make pyroxylin — that is, guncotton — a substance in which cotton is not essential, because cotton goes into it only as cellulose. Now, cellulose is nothing other than the basic tissue of plants, and it is found in an almost pure state not only in cotton but in the textile fibers of hemp and flax, in paper, in old linen, in the pith of the elder, and so on. And it so happened that elders grew in abundance on the island, near the mouth of Red Creek. The colonists were already using the berries of these shrubs, which belong to the honeysuckle family, in place of coffee.
So all they had to do was gather this elder pith — the cellulose. As for the other material needed to make guncotton, it was nothing but fuming nitric acid. And Cyrus Smith, who had sulfuric acid at his disposal, had already been able to produce nitric acid easily by treating the saltpeter that nature had provided.
So he decided to make guncotton and use it, though he recognized that it had some fairly serious drawbacks: its effect was very uneven; it was far too flammable, since it catches fire at three hundred and thirty-eight degrees Fahrenheit instead of four hundred and sixty-four; and it burned so instantaneously that it could damage firearms. On the other hand, guncotton had these advantages: dampness did not spoil it, it did not foul the barrels of the guns, and its propelling force was four times that of ordinary gunpowder.
To make guncotton, you need only plunge cellulose into fuming nitric acid for a quarter of an hour, then wash it in plenty of water and let it dry. As you see, nothing could be simpler.
Cyrus Smith had only ordinary nitric acid on hand, not the fuming or monohydrated kind — that is, the acid that gives off whitish vapors when it meets damp air. But by using ordinary nitric acid in its place, mixed in the proportion of three volumes to five volumes of concentrated sulfuric acid, the engineer was bound to get the same result — and he got it. So the island's hunters soon had a perfectly prepared substance at their disposal, which, used with discretion, gave excellent results.
Around this time the colonists cleared three acres of Prospect Plateau, and the rest was kept as meadow to feed the onaggas. Several excursions were made into Jacamar Wood and the Far West forests, and they brought back a real harvest of wild vegetables — spinach, cress, horseradish, turnips — which careful cultivation would soon improve, and which were going to balance the high-protein diet that the colonists of Lincoln Island had lived on until then. They also hauled in sizable loads of wood and coal. Every excursion was at the same time a chance to improve the roads, whose surface was gradually being packed down under the wheels of the cart.
The warren still supplied its share of rabbits to the pantries of Granite House. Since it lay a little outside the point where Glycerin Creek began, its residents could not get onto the protected plateau, and so they could not ravage the new plantings there. As for the oyster bed, laid out among the rocks of the beach and frequently restocked, it gave them excellent shellfish every day. Besides that, the fishing, whether in the lake or in the current of the Mercy, soon paid off, because Pencroff had set out bottom lines armed with iron hooks. On these they often caught fine trout, and certain extremely tasty fish whose silvery sides were sprinkled with little yellowish spots. And so Master Nab, who was in charge of the cooking, could vary the menu of every meal very pleasantly. Only bread was still missing from the colonists' table, and, as has been said, it was a privation they truly felt.
Around this time they also hunted sea turtles, which came to the beaches of Mandible Cape. There the sand was covered with little bumps, each one holding perfectly round eggs with hard white shells, whose albumen has the property of not setting when cooked, as the white of a bird's egg does. The sun took care of hatching them, and there were naturally a great many of them, since each turtle can lay as many as two hundred and fifty a year.
"A regular field of eggs," Gédéon Spilett remarked, "and all we have to do is harvest them."
But they did not settle for the produce; they went after the producers too, and that hunt let them bring back to Granite House a dozen of these chelonians, which are truly excellent eating. Turtle soup, spiced up with aromatic herbs and set off with a few crucifers, often won Master Nab, who made it, the praise he deserved.
One more lucky event should be mentioned here, which let them lay in new stores for the winter. Salmon came in schools and ventured into the Mercy, swimming up it for several miles. It was the season when the females, going in search of suitable places to spawn, went ahead of the males and made a great commotion as they passed through the fresh water. A thousand or so of these fish, some as long as two and a half feet, poured into the river this way, and it was enough to build a few weirs to hold a great many of them back. In this way they caught several hundred, which were salted and stored away for the time when winter would freeze the streams and make all fishing impossible.
It was at this time that the very intelligent Jup was promoted to the post of valet. He had been dressed in a jacket, short breeches of white canvas, and an apron whose pockets were his delight, because he stuffed his hands into them and would not let anyone come rummaging in them. The clever orangutan had been wonderfully trained by Nab, and Nab and the ape seemed to understand each other when they talked together. Jup, besides, had a real fondness for Nab, and Nab returned it. Unless someone needed his services, whether to haul wood or to climb to the top of some tree, Jup spent most of his time in the kitchen and tried to imitate Nab in everything he saw him do. The teacher, for his part, showed great patience and even an extreme zeal in instructing his pupil, and the pupil showed a remarkable intelligence in profiting from the lessons his teacher gave him.
So you can imagine how delighted the diners of Granite House were one day when Master Jup, napkin over his arm, came in without any warning to wait on them at table. Skillful and attentive, he performed his service perfectly, changing the plates, bringing in the dishes, pouring the drinks, all with a gravity that amused the colonists no end and sent Pencroff into raptures.
"Jup, some soup!"
"Jup, a little agouti!"
"Jup, a plate!"
"Jup! Good Jup! Honest Jup!"
That was all you could hear, and Jup, never once flustered, answered every call and kept an eye on everything. And he nodded his intelligent head when Pencroff, repeating his joke from the first day, told him:
"Jup, there's no doubt about it — we'll have to double your wages!"
Needless to say, by now the orangutan was completely at home in Granite House, and he often went with his masters into the forest without ever showing the least wish to run away. You should have seen him then, walking along in the funniest way, with a cane that Pencroff had made him, which he carried on his shoulder like a gun! If they needed a fruit picked from the top of a tree, how fast he was up there! If the wheel of the cart got stuck in the mud, with what strength Jup set it back on its way with a single heave of his shoulder!
"What a fellow!" Pencroff often exclaimed. "If he were as wicked as he is good, there'd be no handling him!"
It was toward the end of January that the colonists undertook some major works in the central part of the island. It had been decided to build a corral near the sources of Red Creek, at the foot of Mount Franklin. It would hold the ruminants, which would have been a nuisance at Granite House — and above all the mouflons, which were to supply wool for making winter clothes.
Every morning the colony — sometimes all of it, more often only Cyrus Smith, Harbert and Pencroff — went out to the sources of the creek. With the onaggas helping, it was now nothing more than a five-mile outing under a dome of greenery, along the newly cut road, which came to be called "the Corral Road."
There a large site had been chosen, on the far side of the mountain's southern shoulder. It was a meadow dotted with clumps of trees, lying at the very foot of a spur that closed it in on one side. A little stream, born on the spur's slopes, ran diagonally across the meadow, watering it, and then lost itself in Red Creek. The grass was fresh, and the trees growing here and there let the air move freely over the ground. So all they had to do was surround the meadow with a palisade running in a curve, with each end resting against the spur, high enough that not even the most agile animals could jump it. This enclosure could hold a hundred or so horned animals, mouflons or wild goats, along with the young that would be born later on.
So the engineer laid out the boundary of the corral, and they had to set about felling the trees needed to build the palisade. But since cutting the road had already cost a good number of trunks, they hauled those over, and these supplied about a hundred stakes, which were planted firmly in the ground.
In the front of the palisade they left a fairly wide opening, closed by a double gate made of stout planks and meant to be strengthened by bars on the outside.
Building this corral took no less than three weeks, because besides the work on the palisade, Cyrus Smith put up large plank sheds where the ruminants could take shelter. Besides, these structures had to be built extremely solidly, because mouflons are powerful animals, and their first fits of violence were something to fear. The stakes, sharpened at the top and hardened there in the fire, had been tied together with bolted crossbars, and at intervals props secured the strength of the whole.
With the corral finished, the next step was a great roundup at the foot of Mount Franklin, in the middle of the pastures where the ruminants grazed. This took place on February 7, on a beautiful summer day, and everyone took part. The two onaggas, already fairly well broken and ridden by Gédéon Spilett and Harbert, were a great help on this occasion.
The whole maneuver consisted of driving the mouflons and goats inward by gradually tightening the circle of beaters around them. So Cyrus Smith, Pencroff, Nab and Jup took up positions at various points in the woods, while the two riders and Top galloped around the corral within a radius of half a mile.
There were plenty of mouflons in this part of the island. These handsome animals, as big as deer, with horns stronger than a ram's and a grayish fleece mixed with long hairs, looked like argalis.
What an exhausting day of hunting it was! So much coming and going, so much running back and forth, so much shouting! Of the hundred or so mouflons that were driven in, more than two-thirds slipped past the beaters. But in the end some thirty of these ruminants and about ten wild goats, pushed little by little toward the corral, whose open gate seemed to offer them a way out, rushed into it and could be shut in.
All in all, the result was satisfying, and the colonists had nothing to complain about. Most of the mouflons were females, some of which would soon give birth. So it was certain that the flock would thrive, and that before long they would have plenty not only of wool but of hides as well.
That evening the hunters came back to Granite House worn out. Even so, they went back to visit the corral the very next day. The prisoners had certainly tried to knock down the palisade, but they had not managed it, and they soon settled down.
Nothing of any importance happened during that month of February. The daily work went on methodically, and while the roads to the corral and to Balloon Harbor were being improved, a third was begun, which ran from the enclosure toward the west coast. The part of Lincoln Island still unknown was the great forest that covered Serpentine Peninsula, where the wild beasts took refuge — and Gédéon Spilett fully intended to rid his domain of them.
Before the cold season came back, the most careful attention was also given to cultivating the wild plants that had been transplanted from the forest to Prospect Plateau. Harbert hardly ever came back from an excursion without bringing some useful plants. One day it was specimens of the chicory tribe, whose very seed could be pressed to yield an excellent oil; another day it was a common sorrel, whose properties against scurvy were not to be scorned; then some of those precious tubers that have been grown in South America since time immemorial — potatoes, of which more than two hundred kinds are known today. The vegetable garden, now well tended, well watered and well protected from the birds, was divided into little square beds where lettuces, purple potatoes, sorrel, turnips, horseradish and other crucifers were growing. The soil of the plateau was wonderfully fertile, and they could hope for abundant harvests.
There was no lack of drinks either, and as long as they did not demand wine, even the fussiest had no reason to complain. To the Oswego tea that the bee balm supplied, and the fermented drink made from the roots of the dragon tree, Cyrus Smith had added real beer. He brewed it from the young shoots of the black spruce, Abies nigra, which, once boiled and fermented, gave that pleasant and particularly healthful drink the Anglo-Americans call spruce beer.
Toward the end of the summer the poultry yard held a fine pair of bustards of the houbara species, known by a sort of cape of feathers; a dozen shovelers, whose upper bill was extended on each side by a flap of skin; and some magnificent roosters, black in the comb, the wattles and the skin, like the roosters of Mozambique, which strutted about on the shore of the lake.
So everything was succeeding, thanks to the energy of these brave and intelligent men. Providence did a great deal for them, no doubt; but true to the great rule that Heaven helps those who help themselves, they helped themselves first, and Heaven came to their aid afterward.
After those hot summer days, in the evening, when the work was done and the sea breeze was rising, they liked to sit at the edge of Prospect Plateau, under a sort of veranda covered with climbing plants that Nab had put up with his own hands. There they talked, they taught one another, they made plans, and the sailor's hearty good humor kept cheering up this little world, in which the most perfect harmony had never stopped reigning.
They talked about home, too, about their dear, great America. How was the Civil War going? It obviously could not have dragged on! Richmond had surely fallen quickly into General Grant's hands! The capture of the Confederate capital must have been the last act of that deadly struggle! By now the North had triumphed for the good cause. Oh, how welcome a newspaper would have been to the exiles of Lincoln Island! For eleven months now, all contact between them and the rest of humankind had been cut off, and soon, on March 24, would come the anniversary of the day the balloon had flung them onto this unknown coast! They had been nothing but castaways then, not even knowing whether they could hold on to their miserable lives against the elements! And now, thanks to their leader's knowledge, thanks to their own intelligence, they were real colonists, equipped with weapons, tools and instruments, who had learned to turn the animals, the plants and the minerals of the island — the three kingdoms of nature — to their own use!
Yes! They often talked about all these things, and they still made many plans for the future!
As for Cyrus Smith, silent most of the time, he listened to his companions more often than he spoke. Now and then he smiled at some remark of Harbert's or some sally of Pencroff's, but always and everywhere he was thinking about those inexplicable events, that strange riddle whose secret still escaped him!
Bad weather — The hydraulic elevator — Making window glass and glassware — The bread tree — Frequent visits to the corral — The flock grows — A question from the reporter — The exact position of Lincoln Island — Pencroff's proposal
The weather changed during the first week of March. There had been a full moon at the start of the month, and the heat was still fierce. The air felt charged with electricity, and a spell of stormy weather, longer or shorter, was truly to be feared.
And sure enough, on the 2nd, thunder rumbled with tremendous violence. The wind was blowing from the east, and hail struck full on the front of Granite House, rattling against it like a volley of grapeshot. They had to shut the door and the window shutters tight, or everything inside the rooms would have been flooded.
When Pencroff saw those hailstones coming down, some of them as big as a pigeon's egg, he had only one thought: his wheat field was in the gravest danger.
He ran straight to his field, where the ears were already beginning to lift their little green heads, and he managed to protect his crop by spreading a big sheet of canvas over it. He was stoned in its place, but he did not complain.
This bad weather lasted a week, and all that time the thunder never stopped rolling in the depths of the sky. Between two storms you could still hear it growling dully somewhere beyond the horizon; then it would start again with fresh fury. The sky was streaked with lightning, and bolts struck several trees on the island, among them an enormous pine that stood near the lake at the edge of the forest. Two or three times, too, the lightning hit the beach, melting the sand and turning it to glass. When the engineer found these fulgurites — tubes of sand fused by lightning — they led him to think it might be possible to fit the windows with thick, strong panes of glass that could stand up to wind, rain and hail.
With no urgent work to do outdoors, the colonists made use of the bad weather to work inside Granite House, which was being fitted out more fully and more comfortably day by day. The engineer set up a lathe, which let him turn a few utensils for washing or for the kitchen, and above all buttons, which they had been sorely missing. A rack had been put up for the guns, which were kept with the greatest care, and the shelves and cupboards left nothing to be desired. They sawed, they planed, they filed, they turned, and all through that stretch of bad weather nothing could be heard but the squeal of tools and the hum of the lathe, answering the rumble of the thunder.
Master Jup had not been forgotten. He had a room of his own near the main storeroom, a sort of cabin with a bunk always full of good bedding, which suited him perfectly.
"With good old Jup there's never any back talk," Pencroff often said, "never a rude answer! What a servant, Nab! What a servant!"
"My pupil," Nab would answer, "and soon my equal!"
"Your superior, you mean," the sailor would shoot back, laughing, "because you talk, Nab, and he doesn't!"
It goes without saying that Jup now knew his duties thoroughly. He beat the clothes, he turned the spit, he swept the rooms, he waited at table, he stacked the firewood, and — a detail that delighted Pencroff — he never went to bed without first coming to tuck the worthy sailor in.
As for the health of the members of the colony, two-legged or two-handed, four-handed or four-legged, it left nothing to be desired. Living this open-air life, on this healthy soil, in this temperate zone, working with head and hands, they could not believe that sickness would ever touch them.
And indeed they were all marvelously well. Harbert had already grown two inches in a year. His face was taking shape and becoming more manly, and he promised to be a young man as fine in body as in character. Besides, he used every spare moment his manual work left him to learn. He read the few books that had been found in the chest, and beyond the practical lessons that came out of the very necessities of their situation, he had in the engineer a teacher for the sciences and in the reporter a teacher for languages, and both were glad to round out his education.
The engineer's fixed idea was to pass on to the boy everything he knew, to teach him by example as much as by word, and Harbert made the most of his teacher's lessons.
"If I die," Cyrus Smith thought, "he will take my place!"
The storm ended around March 9, but the sky stayed covered with clouds for the whole of that last month of summer. The atmosphere, violently shaken by all those electrical upheavals, could not get back its former clearness, and there was rain and fog almost every day, apart from three or four fine days that allowed all kinds of excursions.
Around this time the female onagga gave birth to a foal, a female like her mother, which thrived wonderfully. At the corral, likewise, the flock of mouflons increased, and several lambs were already bleating in the sheds, to the great delight of Nab and Harbert, who each had a favorite among the newborns.
They also tried domesticating the peccaries, and the experiment was a complete success. A sty was built near the poultry yard, and it soon held several young ones well on the way to becoming civilized — that is, to getting fat under Nab's care. Master Jup, whose job was to bring them their daily food — dishwater, kitchen scraps and so on — did his task conscientiously. Now and then, it is true, he amused himself at the expense of his little boarders by pulling their tails. But that was mischief, not malice: those little curly tails amused him like a toy, and his instincts were a child's.
One day that March, Pencroff, chatting with the engineer, reminded Cyrus Smith of a promise he had not yet had time to keep.
"You talked about a contraption that would do away with the long ladders at Granite House, Mr. Cyrus," he said. "Aren't you going to put it in someday?"
"You mean a sort of elevator?" answered Cyrus Smith.
"Let's call it an elevator, if you like," the sailor replied. "The name doesn't matter, as long as it takes us up to our house without wearing us out."
"Nothing could be easier, Pencroff. But is it really worth it?"
"Certainly, Mr. Cyrus. Now that we've given ourselves what we need, let's think a bit about comfort. For people it'll be a luxury, if you like; but for things it's a necessity! It's no fun climbing a long ladder when you're carrying a heavy load!"
"Well then, Pencroff, we'll try to make you happy," said Cyrus Smith.
"But you haven't got an engine to work it."
"We'll make one."
"A steam engine?"
"No, a water engine."
And in fact a natural force was right there at the engineer's disposal to drive his machine, and he could put it to use without much trouble.
All he had to do was increase the flow of the small branch channel taken off the lake, which supplied water to the inside of Granite House. The opening left among the stones and grass at the upper end of the old spillway was made bigger, which produced a strong fall of water at the bottom of the passage, and the overflow from it drained away down the inner well. Beneath this fall the engineer installed a drum fitted with paddles. Outside, it was linked to a wheel wound with a strong cable that carried a large basket. In this way, by means of a long rope that hung down to the ground and could be used to engage or disengage the water engine, a person could ride up in the basket all the way to the door of Granite House.
It was on March 17 that the elevator worked for the first time, to everyone's satisfaction. From then on all loads — wood, coal, provisions, and the colonists themselves — were hoisted up by this very simple system. It replaced the primitive ladder, which nobody thought of missing. Top showed himself particularly delighted with the improvement. He did not have, and could not have, Master Jup's knack for climbing rungs, and many a time he had had to make the ascent to Granite House on Nab's back, or even on the orangutan's.
Around this time, too, Cyrus Smith tried making glass, and first he had to adapt the old pottery kiln for this new purpose. That presented some fairly serious difficulties. But after several failed attempts he finally managed to set up a glassworks, which Gédéon Spilett and Harbert, the engineer's natural assistants, did not leave for several days.
As for the substances that go into glass, they are simply sand, chalk and soda (either the carbonate or the sulfate). Now, the shore supplied the sand; the lime supplied the chalk; the sea plants supplied the soda; the pyrites supplied the sulfuric acid; and the ground supplied the coal to heat the kiln to the necessary temperature. So Cyrus Smith had everything he needed to begin.
The tool that was hardest to make was the glassblower's "pipe": an iron tube five or six feet long, used to gather up on one of its ends the material that is kept in a molten state. But Pencroff managed to make this pipe by rolling a long, thin strip of iron the way a gun barrel is rolled, and it was soon ready for work.
On March 28 the kiln was fired up hot. A hundred parts of sand, thirty-five of chalk and forty of sulfate of soda, mixed with two or three parts of powdered charcoal, made up the batch, which was put into crucibles of fireclay. When the high heat of the kiln had turned it liquid, or rather into a thick paste, Cyrus Smith "gathered" a certain amount of this paste on the end of the pipe. He turned it over and over on a metal plate set out beforehand, so as to give it the right shape for blowing. Then he handed the pipe to Harbert and told him to blow into the other end.
"Like blowing soap bubbles?" the boy asked.
"Exactly," answered the engineer.
And Harbert, puffing out his cheeks, blew so long and so well into the pipe, taking care to keep turning it all the while, that his breath swelled the glassy mass. More molten material was added to the first, and soon the result was a bubble a foot across. Then Cyrus Smith took the pipe back from Harbert and, swinging it to and fro like a pendulum, drew the soft bubble out until it took the shape of a cylinder with cone-shaped ends.
So the blowing had produced a glass cylinder closed off by two rounded caps, like halves of a ball. These were easily cut off with a sharp iron dipped in cold water. Then, by the same method, the cylinder was split along its length. After a second heating had made it soft again, it was spread out on a plate and flattened with a wooden roller.
The first pane was made, and all they had to do was repeat the operation fifty times to have fifty panes. So the windows of Granite House were soon fitted with sheets of glass — not very clear, perhaps, but transparent enough.
As for glassware, tumblers and bottles, that was child's play. Besides, they took them just as they came off the end of the pipe. Pencroff had asked for the privilege of "blowing" in his turn, and he loved it. But he blew so hard that his products took on the most comical shapes, and he admired every one of them.
During one of the excursions made at this time, a new tree was discovered whose products added still more to the colony's food supply.
Cyrus Smith and Harbert, out hunting, had gone one day into the Far West forests, on the left bank of the Mercy, and as always the boy was asking the engineer a thousand questions, which he answered gladly. But hunting is like every other occupation here below: when you don't bring the proper zeal to it, there are plenty of reasons why you won't succeed. Now Cyrus Smith was no hunter, and on top of that, Harbert was talking chemistry and physics that day. So a good many kangaroos, capybaras and agoutis passed well within range and still got away from the boy's gun. As a result, the day was already well along and the two hunters were in a fair way to having made the trip for nothing, when Harbert stopped short and gave a shout of joy.
"Oh, Mr. Cyrus! Do you see that tree?"
And he pointed to what was a shrub rather than a tree, for it had only a single stem, covered in scaly bark, which bore leaves streaked with little parallel veins.
"And what is this tree that looks like a little palm?" asked Cyrus Smith.
"It's a Cycas revoluta — there's a picture of it in our dictionary of natural history!"
"But I don't see any fruit on this shrub."
"No, Mr. Cyrus," answered Harbert, "but its trunk holds a flour that nature gives us ready-ground."
"So it's the bread tree?"
"Yes! The bread tree."
"Well, my boy," said the engineer, "that's a precious discovery while we wait for our wheat harvest. Let's get to work — and heaven grant you're not mistaken!"
Harbert was not mistaken. He broke open the stem of a cycad. It was made of a glandular tissue and held a quantity of floury pith, crossed by bundles of woody fiber, which were separated by rings of the same material arranged one inside another. Mixed with this starch was a slimy juice with an unpleasant taste, but it would be easy to drive it out by pressing. This cellular substance made a real flour of superior quality, extremely nourishing — so much so that the laws of Japan once forbade its export.
Cyrus Smith and Harbert studied the part of the Far West where these cycads grew, took landmarks, and went back to Granite House, where they announced their discovery.
The next day the colonists went out to harvest, and Pencroff, more and more enthusiastic about his island, said to the engineer:
"Mr. Cyrus, do you believe there are castaway islands?"
"What do you mean by that, Pencroff?"
"Why, I mean islands made specially so that people can be shipwrecked on them properly, where poor devils can always manage to get by!"
"That's possible," said the engineer with a smile.
"It's certain, sir," answered Pencroff, "and it's just as certain that Lincoln Island is one of them!"
They came back to Granite House with an ample harvest of cycad stems. The engineer built a press to squeeze out the slimy juice mixed with the starch, and he got a good quantity of flour, which Nab's hands turned into cakes and puddings. It was not yet real wheat bread, but they were almost there.
At this time, too, the onagga, the goats and the ewes at the corral gave all the milk the colony needed every day. So the cart — or rather a sort of light two-wheeled trap that had replaced it — made frequent trips to the corral. And when it was Pencroff's turn to make the rounds, he took Jup along and let him drive, which Jup did with his usual intelligence, cracking his whip.
So everything was thriving, at the corral as well as at Granite House, and truly the colonists, apart from being far from their homeland, had nothing to complain about. Indeed, they had grown so used to this life, so at home on this island, that they could not have left its welcoming soil without regret!
And yet, so deeply is love of country rooted in the human heart that if some ship had unexpectedly come in sight of the island, the colonists would have signaled to it, drawn it in, and gone!... Meanwhile they lived this happy life, and they feared rather than wished for anything that might come along to interrupt it.
But who can boast of ever having pinned fortune down, and of being safe from her reverses?
Be that as it may, this Lincoln Island, where the colonists had now been living for more than a year, was often the subject of their conversation, and one day a remark was made that would later lead to serious consequences.
It was April 1, a Sunday — Easter Day — which Cyrus Smith and his companions had kept holy with rest and prayer. The day had been beautiful, as a day in October might be in the northern hemisphere.
Toward evening, after dinner, they were all gathered on the veranda at the edge of Prospect Plateau, watching night rise over the horizon. Nab had served a few cups of the infusion of elderberry seeds that stood in for coffee. They were talking about the island and its isolated position in the Pacific when Gédéon Spilett happened to say:
"My dear Cyrus, since you've had that sextant we found in the chest, have you taken our island's position again?"
"No," answered the engineer.
"But it might be a good idea to do it, with an instrument that's better than the one you used."
"What for?" said Pencroff. "The island's fine where it is!"
"No doubt," Gédéon Spilett went on, "but it may be that the flaws in your instruments affected the accuracy of your observations, and since it's easy to check them..."
"You're right, my dear Spilett," answered the engineer, "and I ought to have made that check sooner — although if I did make some mistake, it shouldn't be more than five degrees in longitude or latitude."
"Ah! Who knows?" the reporter went on. "Who knows whether we aren't a lot closer to an inhabited land than we think?"
"We'll know tomorrow," answered Cyrus Smith, "and if I hadn't had so much work that left me no free time, we'd know already."
"Good!" said Pencroff. "Mr. Cyrus is too good an observer to have gone wrong, and unless it's moved, the island is right where he put it!"
"We'll see."
So the next day the engineer used the sextant to make the observations needed to check the coordinates he had already obtained, and here is the result of his work.
His first observation had given him this position for Lincoln Island:
Longitude west: from 150° to 155°
Latitude south: from 30° to 35°
The second gave, exactly:
Longitude west: 150° 30′
Latitude south: 34° 57′
So, for all the imperfection of his instruments, Cyrus Smith had worked with such skill that his error had not gone beyond five degrees.
"Now," said Gédéon Spilett, "since we have an atlas as well as a sextant, let's see, my dear Cyrus, exactly where Lincoln Island sits in the Pacific."
Harbert went to get the atlas, which, as we know, had been published in France, so that its place names were in French.
The map of the Pacific was spread out, and the engineer, compasses in hand, got ready to fix the island's position on it.
Suddenly the compasses stopped in his hand, and he said:
"But there's already an island in this part of the Pacific!"
"An island?" cried Pencroff.
"Ours, surely?" said Gédéon Spilett.
"No," Cyrus Smith went on. "This island lies at 153° longitude and 37° 11′ latitude — that is, two and a half degrees farther west and two degrees farther south than Lincoln Island."
"And what island is it?" asked Harbert.
"Tabor Island."
"Is it a big island?"
"No, it's an islet lost in the Pacific, which perhaps nobody has ever visited!"
"Well, we'll visit it," said Pencroff.
"We will?"
"Yes, Mr. Cyrus. We'll build a decked boat, and I'll take charge of sailing her. How far are we from this Tabor Island?"
"About a hundred and fifty miles to the northeast," answered Cyrus Smith.
"A hundred and fifty miles! What's that?" answered Pencroff. "In forty-eight hours, with a good wind, it's done!"
"But what for?" asked the reporter.
"You never know. We'll have to see!"
And on that answer it was decided that a boat would be built, so that she could put to sea around next October, when the fine season came back.
Building the boat — The second wheat harvest — Hunting koulas — A new plant, more pleasant than useful — A whale in sight — The harpoon from the Vineyard — Cutting up the whale — What the whalebone was for — The end of May — Pencroff has nothing left to wish for
When Pencroff got an idea into his head, he gave himself no rest, and gave nobody else any, until it had been carried out. Now, he wanted to visit Tabor Island, and since a boat of some size was needed for the crossing, that boat had to be built.
Here is the plan the engineer settled on, in agreement with the sailor.
The boat would measure thirty-five feet along the keel and nine feet in the beam, which would make her a fast sailer if her bottom and her waterlines came out well. She should draw no more than six feet, enough depth in the water to keep her from drifting sideways off her course. She would be decked over her whole length, with two hatches opening into two cabins separated by a bulkhead. She would be rigged as a sloop, with a mainsail, a staysail, a square running sail, a topsail and a jib: a set of sails very easy to handle, quick to lower when a squall struck, and very good for sailing close to the wind. Finally, her hull would be carvel-built — that is, the planks would lie flush, edge to edge, instead of overlapping one another — and as for her frames, they would be bent into place hot, after the planking had been fitted over temporary molds.
What wood would they build her of? Elm or fir, both plentiful on the island? They decided on fir. It is a wood a little "splitty," as carpenters say, but it is easy to work, and it stands being soaked in water as well as elm does.
Once these details were settled, it was agreed that, since the fine season would not come back for another six months, Cyrus Smith and Pencroff would work on the boat by themselves. Gédéon Spilett and Harbert were to go on hunting, and neither Nab nor Master Jup, his assistant, would give up the household work that had fallen to them.
As soon as the trees were chosen, they were felled, cut into lengths and sawn into planks, the way pit sawyers would have done it. A week later a shipyard had been laid out in the recess between the Chimneys and the cliff, and a keel thirty-five feet long, with a sternpost at the after end and a stem at the forward end, lay stretched out on the sand.
Cyrus Smith had not gone blindly into this new job. He knew shipbuilding as he knew almost everything, and he had first worked out the shape of his boat on paper. Besides, he was well served by Pencroff, who had worked several years in a Brooklyn shipyard and knew the practical side of the trade. So it was only after strict calculation and careful thought that the temporary molds were set up on the keel.
Pencroff, as anyone will readily believe, was all on fire to see his new undertaking through, and he would not have left it for a moment.
Only one task had the privilege of tearing him away from his shipyard, and then for a single day. That was the second wheat harvest, which took place on April 15. It had done as well as the first and gave the yield of grain that had been predicted.
"Five bushels, Mr. Cyrus!" said Pencroff, after measuring his riches with the greatest care.
"Five bushels," answered the engineer, "and at a hundred and thirty thousand grains a bushel, that makes six hundred and fifty thousand grains."
"Well! This time we'll sow the lot," said the sailor, "except for a little reserve, all the same!"
"Yes, Pencroff, and if the next harvest gives a proportional yield, we'll have four thousand bushels."
"And we'll eat bread?"
"We'll eat bread."
"But we'll have to make a mill?"
"We'll make a mill."
So the third wheat field was incomparably larger than the first two, and the soil, prepared with the utmost care, received the precious seed. That done, Pencroff went back to his work.
Meanwhile Gédéon Spilett and Harbert went hunting in the surrounding country, and they ventured quite deep into the still unknown parts of the Far West, their guns loaded with ball, ready for any unpleasant encounter. It was a tangled mass of magnificent trees crowded against one another as though they were short of room. Exploring these great stands of timber was extremely difficult, and the reporter never risked it without taking the pocket compass, because the sun barely got through the thick branches and it would have been hard to find the way back. Game was naturally scarcer in such places, where it would not have had enough room to move freely. Still, three big plant-eaters were killed during the last two weeks of April. They were koulas, one of which the colonists had already seen north of the lake, and they let themselves be killed stupidly among the thick branches of the trees where they had taken refuge. Their skins were brought back to Granite House, and with the help of sulfuric acid they were put through a kind of tanning that made them usable.
On one of these excursions they also made a discovery, precious from another point of view altogether, and this one they owed to Gédéon Spilett.
It was April 30. The two hunters had pushed deep into the southwest of the Far West when the reporter, some fifty paces ahead of Harbert, came into a sort of clearing where the trees stood farther apart and let in a few rays of sun.
The first thing that struck Gédéon Spilett was the smell given off by certain plants with straight, round, branching stems, which bore their flowers in clusters and had very tiny seeds. The reporter pulled up one or two of these stems and went back to the boy.
"Look at this, Harbert. What is it?" he said.
"And where did you find this plant, Mr. Spilett?"
"Over there, in a clearing, where it grows in great quantities."
"Well, Mr. Spilett," said Harbert, "this is a find that gives you every right to Pencroff's gratitude!"
"So it's tobacco?"
"Yes, and if it isn't the finest quality, it's tobacco all the same!"
"Ah! Good old Pencroff! Won't he be happy! But he won't smoke the whole lot, hang it! He'll leave us our share!"
"Oh! I've got an idea, Mr. Spilett," answered Harbert. "Let's not say anything to Pencroff. We'll take the time to cure these leaves, and then one fine day we'll hand him a pipe all filled and ready!"
"Agreed, Harbert, and on that day our worthy companion won't have anything left in this world to wish for!"
The reporter and the boy gathered a good supply of the precious plant and went back to Granite House, where they smuggled it in "as contraband," with as many precautions as if Pencroff had been the strictest of customs officers.
Cyrus Smith and Nab were let in on the secret, and the sailor suspected nothing during the whole of the rather long time it took to dry the thin leaves, chop them, and roast them slightly on hot stones. That took two months; but all this handling could be done without Pencroff's knowing, because, busy as he was building the boat, he came up to Granite House only at rest time.
Once again, however, like it or not, his favorite work was interrupted on May 1 by a fishing adventure in which all the colonists had to take part.
For several days they had been able to watch an enormous animal swimming in the waters of Lincoln Island, two or three miles offshore. It was a whale of the largest size, which in all likelihood belonged to the southern species known as the "Cape whale."
"What a piece of luck it would be to catch her!" cried the sailor. "Ah! If we had a proper boat and a harpoon in good shape, I'd be saying, 'After that beast — she's worth the taking!'"
"Well, Pencroff," said Gédéon Spilett, "I'd have liked to see you handle a harpoon. It must be something to watch!"
"Very much something to watch, and not without danger," said the engineer. "But since we haven't the means to attack the animal, there's no point thinking about her."
"I'm surprised," said the reporter, "to see a whale in such a comparatively high latitude."
"Why's that, Mr. Spilett?" answered Harbert. "We're right in the part of the Pacific that English and American whalers call the 'Whale Field,' and it's here, between New Zealand and South America, that the whales of the southern hemisphere are found in the greatest numbers."
"Nothing truer," answered Pencroff, "and what surprises me is that we haven't seen more of them. After all, since we can't get near them, what does it matter!"
And Pencroff went back to his work, not without a sigh of regret. For in every sailor there is a fisherman, and if the pleasure of fishing goes up in direct proportion to the size of the fish, you can judge what a whaler feels in the presence of a whale!
And if it had only been the pleasure! But there was no hiding the fact that such a prize would have been very profitable to the colony, for the oil, the fat and the whalebone could all be put to a great many uses!
Now, it so happened that the whale they had sighted seemed unwilling to leave the waters around the island. So, from the windows of Granite House or from Prospect Plateau, Harbert and Gédéon Spilett when they were not out hunting, and Nab while he kept an eye on his stoves, never let go of the spyglass, and they followed every movement the animal made. The whale had come far into the wide expanse of Union Bay and was furrowing it at speed from Mandible Cape to Claw Cape, driven by her prodigiously powerful tail fin, which she bore down on to push herself forward in great surges, at a speed that sometimes reached twelve miles an hour. Sometimes, too, she came so close to the islet that they could make her out completely. It was indeed the southern right whale, which is entirely black, and whose head is flatter than that of the northern whales.
They could also see her shoot a cloud of vapor high into the air from her blowholes... or of water. For, odd as it may seem, naturalists and whalers still do not agree on the matter. Is it air or is it water that is forced out like that? The general view is that it is vapor, which condenses suddenly on meeting the cold air and falls back as rain.
All the same, the presence of this sea mammal was on the colonists' minds. It irritated Pencroff most of all and kept distracting him from his work. He ended up wanting that whale the way a child wants something it has been forbidden. At night he dreamed of her out loud, and certainly, if he had had any means of attacking her, if the boat had been fit to put to sea, he would not have hesitated to go after her.
But what the colonists could not do, chance did for them. On May 3, shouts from Nab, posted at his kitchen window, announced that the whale had run aground on the island's shore.
Harbert and Gédéon Spilett, who were just setting off to hunt, dropped their guns; Pencroff threw down his ax; Cyrus Smith and Nab joined their companions; and they all hurried toward the place where she had stranded.
She had run aground at high tide on the beach of Jetsam Point, three miles from Granite House. So it was likely that the whale would not be able to work herself free easily. In any case they had to hurry, so as to cut off her retreat if need be. They ran with picks and iron-tipped spears, crossed the bridge over the Mercy, went back down the right bank of the river, took the beach, and in less than twenty minutes the colonists stood beside the enormous animal, above which a whole world of birds was already swarming.
"What a monster!" cried Nab.
And the word was right, for it was a southern right whale eighty feet long, a giant of her kind, which could not have weighed less than a hundred and fifty thousand pounds!
Yet the monster, stranded as she was, did not stir, and did not thrash about trying to float herself off while the tide was still high.
The colonists soon had the explanation of why she lay so still, when at low tide they walked all the way around the animal.
She was dead, and a harpoon was sticking out of her left side.
"So there are whalers in our waters?" said Gédéon Spilett at once.
"Why do you say that?" asked the sailor.
"Because that harpoon is still there..."
"Eh, Mr. Spilett, that proves nothing," answered Pencroff. "Whales have been known to travel thousands of miles with a harpoon in their side, and if this one had been struck in the North Atlantic and come to die in the South Pacific, there'd be nothing surprising in it!"
"All the same..." said Gédéon Spilett, who was not satisfied by Pencroff's assurance.
"It's perfectly possible," answered Cyrus Smith, "but let's look at this harpoon. Perhaps, following a fairly common custom, the whalers engraved the name of their ship on it?"
And indeed, when Pencroff had pulled out the harpoon that was stuck in the animal's side, he read this inscription on it:
Maria-Stella
Vineyard.
"A ship from the Vineyard! A ship from my part of the world!" he cried. "The Maria-Stella! A fine whaler, upon my word! And one I know well! Ah, my friends, a ship from the Vineyard, a whaler from the Vineyard!"
And the sailor, brandishing the harpoon, kept repeating, not without emotion, that name so dear to his heart, the name of his native place!
But since they could hardly wait for the Maria-Stella to come and claim the animal she had harpooned, they decided to cut the whale up before she began to decompose. The birds of prey, which had been spying on this rich prize for several days, meant to take possession without further delay, and they had to be driven off with gunfire.
The whale was a female, and her udders yielded a large quantity of milk which, in the opinion of the naturalist Dieffenbach, could pass for cow's milk — and indeed it differs from it neither in taste, nor in color, nor in density.
Pencroff had once served aboard a whaling ship, and he was able to direct the cutting-up methodically. It was a rather unpleasant job, and it lasted three days, but not one of the colonists flinched from it — not even Gédéon Spilett, who, according to the sailor, would end up making "a very good castaway."
The blubber was cut into parallel slices two and a half feet thick, then divided into pieces that might weigh a thousand pounds each, and melted down in big earthenware vessels brought to the spot where the whale was being cut up — for they did not want to make the approaches to Prospect Plateau reek. In the melting it lost about a third of its weight. But there was blubber to spare: the tongue alone gave six thousand pounds of oil, and the lower lip four thousand. And besides this fat, which would keep them supplied with stearin and glycerin for a long time, there was the whalebone, which no doubt would find its uses too, even though nobody at Granite House carried an umbrella or wore a corset. The upper part of the whale's mouth was furnished, on both sides, with eight hundred horny plates, very springy, fibrous in texture, and fringed at their edges like two great combs whose teeth, six feet long, serve to strain out the thousands of tiny creatures, small fish and mollusks the whale lives on.
The job finished, to the great satisfaction of those who had done it, what was left of the animal was abandoned to the birds, which would make every last trace of it disappear, and the daily work at Granite House was taken up again.
Before going back to the shipyard, however, Cyrus Smith had the idea of making certain devices that greatly excited his companions' curiosity. He took a dozen strips of whalebone, cut each one into six equal pieces, and sharpened them at the ends.
"And those, Mr. Cyrus," asked Harbert, when the job was done, "what will they be good for...?"
"For killing wolves, foxes, and even jaguars," answered the engineer.
"Now?"
"No, this winter, when we have ice at our disposal."
"I don't understand..." answered Harbert.
"You will, my boy," answered the engineer. "This device isn't my invention. The Aleut hunters of Russian America use it a great deal. You see these strips of whalebone, my friends? Well, when it freezes, I'll bend them double and keep pouring water over them until each one is completely coated in a layer of ice that will hold it bent. Then I'll scatter them over the snow, after first hiding them under a layer of fat. Now, what will happen if a hungry animal swallows one of these baits? The heat of its stomach will melt the ice, and the whalebone will spring straight and pierce it with its sharpened ends."
"Now that's clever!" said Pencroff.
"And it will save powder and bullets," answered Cyrus Smith.
"It's better than traps!" added Nab.
"So let's wait for winter!"
"Let's wait for winter."
Meanwhile the building of the boat went forward, and toward the end of the month she was half planked. It could already be seen that her lines would be excellent for keeping the sea well.
Pencroff worked with unequaled energy, and it took his sturdy constitution to stand the strain. But his companions were secretly preparing a reward for all his trouble, and on May 31 he was to feel one of the greatest joys of his life.
That day, at the end of dinner, just as he was about to leave the table, Pencroff felt a hand come down on his shoulder.
It was the hand of Gédéon Spilett, who said to him:
"Just a moment, Master Pencroff! You don't walk out like that! What about the dessert you're forgetting?"
"Thank you, Mr. Spilett," answered the sailor, "but I'm going back to work."
"Well, then, a cup of coffee, my friend?"
"No more than that."
"A pipe, then?"
Pencroff had jumped to his feet, and his big, good-natured face went pale when he saw the reporter holding out a pipe all filled and ready, and Harbert holding out a glowing ember.
The sailor tried to say something and could not get a word out. But he seized the pipe and carried it to his lips; then, putting the ember to it, he drew five or six puffs, one after another.
A bluish, fragrant cloud spread out, and from the depths of that cloud came a voice in raptures, repeating:
"Tobacco! Real tobacco!"
"Yes, Pencroff," answered Cyrus Smith, "and excellent tobacco at that!"
"Oh, divine Providence! Holy Maker of all things!" cried the sailor. "Now there's nothing missing on our island!"
And Pencroff smoked, and smoked, and smoked!
"And who made this discovery?" he asked at last. "You, I suppose, Harbert?"
"No, Pencroff, it was Mr. Spilett."
"Mr. Spilett!" cried the sailor, crushing the reporter to his chest in a hug such as the reporter had never had to endure before.
"Oof! Pencroff," answered Gédéon Spilett, getting back his breath, which had been in some danger for a moment. "Save a share of your gratitude for Harbert, who recognized the plant, for Cyrus, who prepared it, and for Nab, who had a terrible time keeping the secret!"
"Well, my friends, I'll pay you back for this some day!" answered the sailor. "From now on, it's for life and death between us!"
Winter — Fulling the wool — The mill — Pencroff's fixed idea — The whalebone — What an albatross can be used for — The fuel of the future — Top and Jup — Storms — Damage to the poultry yard — An excursion to the marsh — Cyrus Smith alone — Exploring the well
Meanwhile winter was arriving with the month of June, which is the December of the northern zones, and the great task of the season was making warm, sturdy clothes.
The mouflons in the corral had been sheared, so the colonists had their precious textile fiber. All that remained was to turn it into cloth.
It goes without saying that Cyrus Smith had no carding machines, no combing machines, no smoothing machines, no drawing frames, no twisting frames, no "spinning mule" or "self-acting" mule to spin the wool, and no loom to weave it. He had to go about it a simpler way, one that would save both spinning and weaving. And in fact he meant quite simply to make use of a property of wool fibers: when they are pressed together from every direction, they tangle up, and just by crisscrossing they form the fabric called felt. So felt could be made by simple fulling, that is, by pounding the wool. The process makes the fabric less supple, but it does a great deal to increase how well it holds in heat. And it so happened that the wool from the mouflons had very short fibers, which is just what makes for good felting.
The engineer, helped by his companions, Pencroff included (once again he had to leave his boat!), began with the preliminary work, whose purpose was to rid the wool of the oily, greasy substance it is soaked in, which is called suint. This degreasing was done in tubs full of water, heated to a temperature of a hundred and fifty-eight degrees Fahrenheit, and the wool soaked in them for twenty-four hours. After that it was washed thoroughly in baths of soda. Then, once the wool had been squeezed dry enough, it was ready to be fulled, that is, to be made into a strong fabric. It would be coarse, no doubt, and it would have had no value at all in a manufacturing center in Europe or America, but it was going to be prized very highly on "the markets of Lincoln Island."
Clearly this kind of fabric must have been known from the most ancient times, and in fact the first woolen fabrics ever made were made by the very process Cyrus Smith was about to use.
Where his training as an engineer served him best was in building the machine for fulling the wool. He cleverly took advantage of a mechanical power that had gone unused until then, the force of the waterfall on the beach, to drive a fulling mill.
Nothing could have been more primitive. A shaft fitted with cams, which lifted vertical pestles one after another and let them drop again; troughs to hold the wool, into which the pestles fell; a strong timber frame to hold and tie the whole system together: that was the machine in question. And that was what such machines had been for centuries, until someone had the idea of replacing the pestles with pressing rollers, so that the material was no longer beaten but truly rolled flat.
The operation, carefully directed by Cyrus Smith, was a complete success. The wool had first been soaked in a soapy solution. On the one hand this helped the fibers to slide, draw together, pack down and soften; on the other, it kept the beating from damaging them. The wool came out of the mill as a thick sheet of felt. The tiny ridges and rough scales that every wool fiber naturally carries had caught and tangled in one another so well that they made a fabric fit for clothes and blankets alike. Obviously it was not merino, or muslin, or Scotch cashmere, or worsted stuff, or rep, or China satin, or Orleans cloth, or alpaca, or broadcloth, or flannel! It was "Lincolnian felt," and Lincoln Island had one more industry.
So the colonists had good clothes and thick blankets, and they could watch the winter of 1866-67 approach without fear.
The real cold began to bite around June 20, and to his great regret Pencroff had to put off building the boat, which in any case was certain to be finished by the next spring.
The sailor's fixed idea was to make a voyage of exploration to Tabor Island. Cyrus Smith did not approve of the trip, which was pure curiosity, since there was obviously no help to be found on that bare, half-barren rock. A voyage of a hundred and fifty miles in a fairly small boat, across unknown seas, gave him a good deal of worry. Suppose the boat, once out at sea, found it impossible to reach Tabor and could not get back to Lincoln Island. What would become of her in the middle of the Pacific, an ocean so rich in disasters?
Cyrus Smith often talked over the plan with Pencroff, and he found in the sailor a rather odd stubbornness about making this voyage, a stubbornness that Pencroff himself may not have fully understood.
"After all," the engineer said to him one day, "I'll point out to you, my friend, that after singing the praises of Lincoln Island so often, after telling us so many times how sorry you'd be if you ever had to leave it, you're the first one who wants to go."
"Leave it for a few days, that's all," answered Pencroff, "just for a few days, Mr. Cyrus! Long enough to go and come back and see what that islet is!"
"But it can't be as good as Lincoln Island!"
"I'm sure of that already!"
"Then why take the risk?"
"To find out what's going on on Tabor Island!"
"But nothing's going on there! Nothing can be going on there!"
"Who knows?"
"And what if you're caught in a storm?"
"That's nothing to fear in the good season," answered Pencroff. "But, Mr. Cyrus, since we have to plan for everything, I'll ask your permission to take only Harbert with me on the voyage."
"Pencroff," said the engineer, putting his hand on the sailor's shoulder, "if anything happened to you and to that boy, whom chance has made our son, do you think we would ever get over it?"
"Mr. Cyrus," answered Pencroff with unshakable confidence, "we won't bring you that grief. Anyway, we'll talk about this voyage again when the time comes to make it. And then I imagine that when you've seen our boat well rigged and well fitted out, when you've watched how she behaves at sea, when we've sailed around our island — because we'll do that together — I imagine, I say, that you won't hesitate any longer to let me go! I won't hide it from you: she's going to be a masterpiece, that boat of yours!"
"At least say 'our boat,' Pencroff!" answered the engineer, disarmed for the moment.
There the conversation ended, to begin again later, without convincing either the sailor or the engineer.
The first snow fell toward the end of June. Before that, the corral had been well stocked with provisions and no longer needed daily visits, but it was decided that they would never let a week go by without going there.
The traps were set again, and the devices Cyrus Smith had made got their first trial. The curved strips of whalebone, locked in a sheath of ice and covered with a thick layer of fat, were laid at the edge of the forest, at the spot where animals usually passed on their way to the lake.
To the engineer's great satisfaction, this invention, borrowed from the Aleut hunters, worked perfectly. A dozen foxes, a few wild boars and even a jaguar were caught by it, and the animals were found dead, their stomachs pierced by the whalebone as it sprang straight.
Here belongs an experiment that deserves to be told, because it was the colonists' first attempt to communicate with their fellow men.
Gédéon Spilett had already thought several times of throwing a message into the sea, sealed in a bottle that the currents might carry to an inhabited coast, or else of entrusting it to pigeons. But how could anyone seriously hope that pigeons or bottles would cross the distance that separated the island from any land, which was twelve hundred miles? It would have been sheer folly.
But on June 30, not without trouble, they captured an albatross that a shot from Harbert's gun had slightly wounded in the foot. It was a magnificent bird of that family of great ocean fliers whose outspread wings measure ten feet from tip to tip, and which can cross seas as wide as the Pacific.
Harbert would have liked very much to keep the splendid bird. Its wound healed quickly, and he claimed he could tame it. But Gédéon Spilett made him understand that they could not pass up this chance to try to reach the lands of the Pacific by such a courier, and Harbert had to give in, for if the albatross had come from some inhabited region, it would surely go back there as soon as it was free.
Perhaps, deep down, Gédéon Spilett, in whom the newspaperman sometimes came back to the surface, was not sorry to launch, on the off chance, a gripping article telling the adventures of the colonists of Lincoln Island! What a triumph for the official reporter of the New York Herald, and for the issue that would carry the story, if it ever reached the desk of his editor, the Honorable John Bennett!
So Gédéon Spilett wrote a short account, which was put into a bag of strong gummed canvas, with an urgent request that whoever found it should forward it to the offices of the New York Herald. The little bag was tied around the albatross's neck, not its foot, because these birds have the habit of resting on the surface of the sea. Then this swift courier of the air was given its freedom, and it was not without some emotion that the colonists watched it vanish far off into the mists of the west.
"Where's he off to?" asked Pencroff.
"Toward New Zealand," answered Harbert.
"Bon voyage!" cried the sailor, who, for his part, did not expect much to come of this way of corresponding.
With the winter, the indoor work at Granite House had started up again: mending clothes, making all sorts of things, and among others the sails for the boat, which were cut from the balloon's inexhaustible envelope...
During the month of July the cold was severe, but they spared neither wood nor coal. Cyrus Smith had put a second fireplace into the great hall, and that was where they spent the long evenings. They talked while they worked, and read when their hands were idle, and the time passed profitably for everyone.
It was a real delight for the colonists when, in that room well lit with candles and well heated with coal, after a hearty dinner, with the elderberry coffee steaming in their cups and their pipes trailing plumes of fragrant smoke, they heard the storm roaring outside! Their comfort would have been complete, if comfort could ever be complete for people who are far from their fellow men and have no way of reaching them! They talked endlessly about their country, about the friends they had left behind, about the greatness of the American republic, whose influence could only grow. And Cyrus Smith, who had been deeply involved in the affairs of the Union, held his listeners spellbound with his stories, his insights and his predictions.
One day it happened that Gédéon Spilett was led to say to him:
"But really, my dear Cyrus, all this industrial and commercial activity that you predict will keep on growing — isn't it in danger of being stopped dead sooner or later?"
"Stopped! By what?"
"Why, by running out of coal, which has every right to be called the most precious of minerals!"
"Yes, the most precious, indeed," answered the engineer, "and it seems as though nature wanted to prove it, by making the diamond, which is nothing but pure carbon, crystallized."
"You don't mean, Mr. Cyrus," Pencroff put in, "that they'll burn diamonds instead of coal in the fireboxes of the boilers?"
"No, my friend," answered Cyrus Smith.
"All the same, I insist," Gédéon Spilett went on. "You don't deny that one day the coal will be entirely used up?"
"Oh, the coal deposits are still enormous, and the hundred thousand workers who dig ten million metric tons out of them every year are not close to exhausting them!"
"With the amount of coal being burned growing all the time," answered Gédéon Spilett, "we can foresee that those hundred thousand workers will soon be two hundred thousand, and that the output will double?"
"No doubt. But after the deposits in Europe, which new machines will soon let us mine more deeply, the coal mines of America and Australia will go on supplying industry for a long time yet."
"How long?" asked the reporter.
"Two hundred and fifty or three hundred years at least."
"That's reassuring for us," answered Pencroff, "but worrying for our great-grand-cousins!"
"They'll find something else," said Harbert.
"Let's hope so," answered Gédéon Spilett, "because without coal, no more machines, and without machines, no more railroads, no more steamships, no more factories, nothing that the progress of modern life demands!"
"But what will they find?" asked Pencroff. "Can you picture it, Mr. Cyrus?"
"More or less, my friend."
"And what will they burn instead of coal?"
"Water," answered Cyrus Smith.
"Water!" cried Pencroff. "Water to fire steamships and locomotives! Water to heat water!"
"Yes, but water broken down into the elements it is made of," answered Cyrus Smith, "and broken down, no doubt, by electricity, which by then will have become a powerful force that people know how to handle — for all the great discoveries, by some law nobody can explain, seem to arrive together and complete one another at the same moment. Yes, my friends, I believe that one day water will be used as fuel, and that hydrogen and oxygen, the two gases it is made of, used separately or together, will provide an inexhaustible source of heat and light, of an intensity that coal could never reach. One day the bunkers of steamships and the tenders of locomotives will be loaded, not with coal, but with these two gases, compressed, and they will burn in the fireboxes with enormous heating power. So there is nothing to fear. As long as this earth is inhabited, it will meet the needs of the people who live on it, and they will never lack light or heat, any more than they will lack the products of the vegetable, mineral or animal kingdoms. So I believe that when the coal deposits are exhausted, we will heat our engines and ourselves with water. Water will be the coal of the future."
"I'd like to see that," said the sailor.
"You were born too soon, Pencroff," answered Nab, and those were the only words he contributed to the discussion.
Still, it was not Nab's remark that ended the conversation, but Top's barking, which broke out again with that strange tone that had already troubled the engineer. At the same time Top began once more to circle around the opening of the well at the far end of the inside passage.
"What's Top barking like that about this time?" asked Pencroff.
"And why is Jup grunting that way?" added Harbert.
It was true: the orangutan had joined the dog and was showing unmistakable signs of agitation, and, a curious detail, the two animals seemed more uneasy than angry.
"It's obvious," said Gédéon Spilett, "that this well connects directly with the sea, and that some sea animal comes now and then to breathe at the bottom of it."
"That's obvious," answered the sailor, "and there's no other explanation to give... Come on, quiet, Top," Pencroff added, turning to the dog, "and you, Jup, off to your room!"
The ape and the dog fell silent. Jup went back to bed, but Top stayed in the great hall, and he went on growling under his breath for the rest of the evening.
Nobody spoke of the incident again, but it clouded the engineer's brow all the same.
For the rest of July there were spells of rain and spells of cold. The temperature did not drop as low as it had the winter before; at its coldest it went no lower than eight degrees Fahrenheit. But if this winter was less cold, it was at least more troubled by storms and gales. Once again the sea made violent attacks that more than once put the Chimneys in danger. You might have thought that a tidal wave, set off by some upheaval under the sea, was lifting these monstrous breakers and hurling them against the wall of Granite House.
When the colonists leaned out of their windows and watched those enormous masses of water breaking before their eyes, they could only admire the magnificent spectacle of the ocean's powerless fury. The waves bounced back in dazzling foam, the whole beach disappeared under the raging flood, and the cliff seemed to rise out of the sea itself, while the spray flew more than a hundred feet into the air.
During these storms it was hard to venture onto the island's roads, even dangerous, because trees came down often. Still, the colonists never let a week go by without visiting the corral. Luckily the enclosure, sheltered by the southeast shoulder of Mount Franklin, did not suffer much from the violence of the hurricane, which spared its trees, its sheds and its palisade. But the poultry yard, set up on Prospect Plateau and so directly exposed to the blasts of the east wind, took a good deal of damage. The dovecote lost its roof twice, and the fence was blown down as well. All of it would have to be rebuilt more solidly, because it was now clear that Lincoln Island lay in the worst waters of the Pacific. It truly seemed to be the center point of vast cyclones, which lashed it the way a whip lashes a spinning top. Only here it was the top that stood still, and the whip that went round.
During the first week of August the gusts died down little by little, and the air recovered a calm it had seemed to have lost forever. With the calm the temperature fell, the cold grew very sharp again, and the thermometer dropped to eight degrees below zero Fahrenheit.
On August 3 an excursion that had been planned for several days was made to the southeast of the island, toward Shelduck Marsh. The hunters were tempted by all the water birds that had set up their winter quarters there. Wild ducks, snipe, pintails, teal and grebes were plentiful, and it was decided that a day would be given to an expedition against these birds.
Not only Gédéon Spilett and Harbert but also Pencroff and Nab took part in the expedition. Cyrus Smith alone, pleading some work or other, did not join them and stayed at Granite House.
So the hunters took the road to Balloon Harbor to get to the marsh, after promising to be back by evening. Top and Jup went with them. As soon as they had crossed the bridge over the Mercy, the engineer raised it and went back, meaning to carry out a plan for which he wanted to be alone.
That plan was to make a thorough exploration of the inside well, whose opening was level with the passage of Granite House, and which connected with the sea, since it had once served as the channel for the waters of the lake.
Why did Top circle that opening so often? Why did he let out such strange barks when some kind of uneasiness drew him back to the well? Why did Jup join Top in a sort of shared anxiety? Did the well have other branches besides its straight connection down to the sea? Did it spread out toward other parts of the island? That was what Cyrus Smith wanted to know — and, to begin with, to be the only one to know. So he had made up his mind to try exploring the well while his companions were away, and now the chance had come.
It was easy to get down to the bottom of the well by using the rope ladder, which had not been in use since the elevator was put in and which was long enough. That is what the engineer did. He dragged the ladder to the hole, which was about six feet across, and after tying its upper end securely, he let it unroll down the shaft. Then, having lit a lantern, taken a revolver and stuck a cutlass in his belt, he started down the first rungs.
The wall was solid everywhere. But a few knobs of rock jutted out here and there, and by means of these projections it would really have been possible for some agile creature to climb up to the mouth of the well.
The engineer took note of that. But when he passed his lantern carefully over the projections, he found no mark, no chipped edge, nothing to suggest that they had ever been used for a climb, long ago or lately.
Cyrus Smith went deeper, lighting up every part of the wall.
He saw nothing suspicious.
When the engineer reached the last rungs, he felt the surface of the water, which was perfectly calm at that moment. Neither at the water's level nor anywhere else in the well was there any side passage that might branch off into the interior of the rock mass. The wall, when Cyrus Smith struck it with the handle of his cutlass, rang solid. It was compact granite, through which no living creature could force its way. To reach the bottom of the well and then climb to its opening, anything would have to come through that channel, always underwater, which linked it to the sea through the rocky ground beneath the beach — and that was possible only for sea animals. As for where the channel came out, at what point on the shore and how deep beneath the waves, there was no way to tell.
So Cyrus Smith, having finished his exploration, climbed back up, pulled up the ladder, covered the mouth of the well and went back to the great hall of Granite House, deep in thought, saying to himself:
"I saw nothing, and yet there is something there!"
Rigging the boat — An attack by culpeos — Jup wounded — Jup nursed — Jup cured — The boat finished — Pencroff's triumph — The Bonadventure — A first trial south of the island — An unexpected document
That same evening the hunters came home. They had had good hunting, and they were literally loaded down with game, carrying everything four men could carry.
Top had a string of pintails around his neck, and Jup had belts of snipe wound around his body.
"There, my master!" cried Nab. "There's something to keep us busy! Preserves, pâtés — we'll have a fine store of them! But somebody has to help me. I'm counting on you, Pencroff."
"No, Nab," the sailor answered. "The boat's rigging needs me, and you'll have to manage without me."
"What about you, Mr. Harbert?"
"I have to go to the corral tomorrow, Nab," the boy answered.
"Then it'll be you who helps me, Mr. Spilett?"
"To oblige you, Nab," the reporter answered. "But I warn you — if you let me in on your recipes, I'll publish them."
"As you please, Mr. Spilett," said Nab. "As you please!"
And that is how, the next day, Gédéon Spilett became Nab's assistant and was set up in his culinary laboratory. Before that, though, the engineer had told him the result of the exploration he had carried out the day before, and on that point the reporter shared Cyrus Smith's opinion: even though he had found nothing, there was still a secret waiting to be discovered!
The cold held on for another week, and the colonists did not leave Granite House except to look after the poultry yard. The whole dwelling was filled with the good smells given off by the expert operations of Nab and the reporter. Not all the game from the marsh hunt was turned into preserves, though. In that intense cold the meat kept perfectly, so wild ducks and the rest were eaten fresh, and they were declared superior to every other water bird in the known world.
During that week Pencroff, helped by Harbert, who handled a sailmaker's needle with skill, worked so hard that the boat's sails were finished. There was no shortage of hemp rope, thanks to the rigging that had been recovered along with the balloon's envelope. The cables and the cords of the net were all made of excellent line, and the sailor put it to good use. The sails were edged with strong bolt ropes — the ropes sewn around a sail's border to take the strain — and there was still enough left over to make the halyards, the shrouds, the sheets, and so on. As for the blocks, Cyrus Smith made the ones they needed on the lathe the sailor had set up, following Pencroff's advice. So it happened that the rigging was entirely ready long before the boat was finished. Pencroff even made a flag of blue, red, and white, its colors supplied by certain dye plants that were very plentiful on the island. Only, to the thirty-seven stars that stand for the thirty-seven states of the Union and shine on the blue corner of the American flag, the sailor had added a thirty-eighth: the star of "the State of Lincoln," because he already considered his island part of the great republic.
"And it is, at heart," he would say, "even if it isn't yet in fact!"
Meanwhile the flag was raised at the middle window of Granite House, and the colonists saluted it with three hurrahs.
By now the cold season was nearing its end, and it seemed that this second winter would pass without any serious incident, when, on the night of August 11, Prospect Plateau was threatened with complete devastation.
After a well-filled day the colonists were sound asleep when, at about four o'clock in the morning, they were suddenly wakened by Top's barking.
This time the dog was not barking near the mouth of the well, but at the threshold of the door, and he was throwing himself against it as if he wanted to break it down. Jup, for his part, was letting out shrill cries.
"Hey there, Top!" cried Nab, who was the first one awake.
But the dog went on barking even more furiously.
"What is it?" asked Cyrus Smith.
They all dressed in a hurry and rushed to the windows of the room and threw them open.
Before their eyes lay a sheet of snow that looked barely white in that very dark night. The colonists could see nothing, but they could hear strange barks bursting out of the darkness. It was obvious that the beach had been invaded by a number of animals that could not be made out.
"What is it?" cried Pencroff.
"Wolves, jaguars, or monkeys!" answered Nab.
"The devil! But they could get up onto the plateau!" said the reporter.
"And our poultry yard," cried Harbert, "and our plantations..."
"Which way did they get in?" asked Pencroff.
"They must have crossed the little bridge on the beach," the engineer answered. "One of us must have forgotten to close it."
"That's right," said Spilett. "I remember now — I left it down..."
"That was a fine piece of work, Mr. Spilett!" cried the sailor.
"What's done is done," Cyrus Smith answered. "Let's think about what has to be done now!"
Those were the questions and answers that flew back and forth between Cyrus Smith and his companions. It was certain that the little bridge had been crossed, that the beach had been invaded by animals, and that these animals, whatever they were, could reach Prospect Plateau by climbing along the left bank of the Mercy. So they had to get there first and fight them off, if need be.
"But what are these creatures?" someone asked a second time, just as the barking rang out louder.
The barking made Harbert start. He remembered having heard it before, during his first visit to the sources of Red Creek.
"They're culpeos — foxes!" he said.
"Forward!" cried the sailor.
And all of them, arming themselves with axes, carbines, and revolvers, crowded into the elevator's basket and set foot on the beach.
These culpeos are dangerous animals when there are a great many of them and hunger has made them savage. All the same, the colonists did not hesitate to throw themselves into the middle of the pack, and their first revolver shots, flashing quick bursts of light through the darkness, drove the leading attackers back.
What mattered above all was to keep these raiders from climbing up to Prospect Plateau. If they got there, the plantations and the poultry yard would be at their mercy, and immense damage — perhaps damage beyond repair, especially to the wheat field — would inevitably follow. But since the plateau could only be invaded by way of the left bank of the Mercy, it was enough to set up an impassable barrier against the culpeos on the narrow strip of bank between the river and the granite wall.
Everyone understood this, and at an order from Cyrus Smith they made for the spot he named, while the pack of culpeos leaped about in the dark.
So Cyrus Smith, Gédéon Spilett, Harbert, Pencroff, and Nab took up positions to form a line that nothing could get through. Top, his tremendous jaws wide open, stood out in front of the colonists, and behind him came Jup, armed with a knotty cudgel that he swung like a war club.
The night was extremely dark. Only in the flash of the shots — and every one of them had to count — could the attackers be seen. There must have been at least a hundred of them, and their eyes glowed like live coals.
"They mustn't get through!" cried Pencroff.
"They won't get through!" the engineer answered.
But if they did not get through, it was not for want of trying. The rear ranks pushed the front ones forward, and it was a ceaseless battle of revolver shots and ax blows. Many culpeo bodies must already have been strewn on the ground, but the pack did not seem to shrink. It was as if it were endlessly renewed by fresh arrivals over the little bridge on the beach.
Soon the colonists had to fight hand to hand, and they did not get away without a few wounds — slight ones, luckily. With one revolver shot Harbert had rid Nab of a culpeo that had just sprung onto his back like a wildcat. Top fought with real fury, leaping at the foxes' throats and strangling them outright. Jup, armed with his stick, laid about him like a madman, and it was no use trying to keep him in the rear. He must have had eyes that could pierce that darkness, because he was always where the fighting was thickest, and every now and then he let out a shrill whistle, which in him was the sign of tremendous glee. At one point he even pushed so far forward that, in the flash of a revolver shot, they could see him surrounded by five or six big culpeos, holding them off with rare coolness.
The fight was bound to end in the colonists' favor, but only after they had held out for two long hours! It was probably the first glimmers of dawn that decided the attackers to retreat. They bolted off to the north, back over the little bridge, which Nab ran to raise at once.
When the daylight was strong enough to light up the battlefield, the colonists counted some fifty bodies scattered across the beach.
"And Jup!" cried Pencroff. "Where's Jup?"
Jup had disappeared. His friend Nab called him, and for the first time Jup did not answer his friend's call.
Everyone set out to look for Jup, dreading to find him among the dead. They cleared the ground of the bodies, which were staining the snow with their blood, and Jup was found in the middle of a regular heap of culpeos. Their smashed jaws and broken backs showed that they had had to deal with the terrible cudgel of that fearless animal. Poor Jup was still holding the stump of his broken stick in his hand. But once he had lost his weapon, he had been overwhelmed by their numbers, and deep wounds furrowed his chest.
"He's alive!" cried Nab, bending over him.
"And we'll save him," the sailor answered. "We'll take care of him just as if he were one of us!"
It seemed as though Jup understood, for he leaned his head on Pencroff's shoulder as if to thank him. The sailor was wounded himself, but his wounds, like his companions', were trifling, since thanks to their firearms they had almost always been able to keep the attackers at a distance. So the orangutan was the only one in serious condition.
Carried by Nab and Pencroff, Jup was brought to the elevator, and barely a faint moan escaped his lips. They hoisted him gently up to Granite House. There he was laid on one of the mattresses taken from one of the bunks, and his wounds were washed with the greatest care. They did not seem to have reached any vital organ, but Jup had been badly weakened by loss of blood, and a fairly high fever set in.
So after his wounds were dressed they put him to bed and placed him on a strict diet — "just like a real person," said Nab — and they gave him a few cups of a cooling herbal tea, its ingredients supplied by Granite House's pharmacy of plants.
At first Jup's sleep was restless, but little by little his breathing became more regular, and they left him to rest in perfect quiet. From time to time Top came walking — on tiptoe, you might say — to visit his friend, and he seemed to approve of all the care being taken of him. One of Jup's hands hung over the edge of the bed, and Top licked it with a sorrowful air.
That same morning they buried the dead. The bodies were dragged to the Far West forest and buried deep.
This attack, which could have had such serious consequences, taught the colonists a lesson. From then on they never went to bed until one of them had made sure that all the bridges were raised and that no invasion was possible.
Meanwhile Jup, after giving them serious cause for worry for a few days, fought back hard against his illness. His constitution won out. The fever went down little by little, and Gédéon Spilett, who was something of a doctor, soon considered him out of danger. On August 16 Jup began to eat. Nab made him good little sweet dishes, which the patient savored with great relish, for if he had one endearing fault it was that he was a bit of a glutton, and Nab had never done a thing to cure him of it.
"What do you expect?" he would say to Gédéon Spilett, who sometimes scolded him for spoiling the ape. "The only pleasure poor Jup has is eating, and I'm only too happy to be able to repay him for his services this way!"
Ten days after taking to his bed, on August 21, Master Jup got up. His wounds had healed over, and it was plain that before long he would get back his usual agility and strength. Like every convalescent, he was seized with a ravenous hunger, and the reporter let him eat as much as he liked, trusting to the instinct that reasoning creatures so often lack and that would keep the orangutan from any excess. Nab was delighted to see his pupil's appetite coming back.
"Eat, my Jup," he would tell him, "and don't deny yourself a thing! You shed your blood for us, and the least I can do is help you make more!"
At last, on August 25, they heard Nab's voice calling his companions.
"Mr. Cyrus, Mr. Gédéon, Mr. Harbert, Pencroff — come here! Come here!"
The colonists, who were gathered in the great hall, got up at Nab's call. He was in the room set aside for Jup.
"What is it?" asked the reporter.
"Look!" Nab answered, with a huge burst of laughter.
And what did they see? Master Jup, sitting cross-legged in the doorway of Granite House, calmly and seriously smoking!
"My pipe!" cried Pencroff. "He's taken my pipe! Ah, my good Jup, I'm giving it to you! Smoke, my friend, smoke!"
And Jup solemnly puffed out thick clouds of tobacco smoke, which seemed to give him unequaled pleasure.
Cyrus Smith did not seem especially surprised by the incident, and he cited several cases of tame monkeys that had grown used to tobacco.
But from that day on, Master Jup had his own pipe — the sailor's former pipe — which was hung in his room beside his supply of tobacco. He filled it himself, he lit it with a glowing coal, and he seemed to be the happiest of all four-handed creatures. As you might expect, this shared taste only tightened the close bonds of friendship that already joined the worthy ape and the honest sailor.
"Maybe he's a man," Pencroff would sometimes say to Nab. "Would it surprise you if one day he started talking to us?"
"Goodness, no," Nab would answer. "What surprises me is that he doesn't talk. After all, the only thing he's missing is speech!"
"All the same, it would tickle me," the sailor went on, "if one fine day he said to me, 'How about we swap pipes, Pencroff?'"
"Yes," Nab answered. "What a pity he was born mute!"
With the month of September the winter was over for good, and work started up again in earnest.
The building of the boat moved quickly. Her outer planking was already all in place, and now they fitted her with frames on the inside, so as to tie every part of the hull together. The frames were made of timbers softened with steam, which bent to every curve the boat's lines called for.
Since there was no shortage of wood, Pencroff suggested to the engineer that they line the inside of the hull with a second, watertight layer of planking — what shipwrights call a ceiling — which would make the boat completely sound.
Cyrus Smith, not knowing what the future held in store, approved the sailor's idea of making their boat as strong as possible.
The ceiling and the deck were entirely finished around September 15. To caulk the seams they made oakum out of dried eelgrass, which was driven in with mallet blows between the planks of the hull, the ceiling, and the deck. Then the seams were coated with boiling tar, which the pines of the forest supplied in plenty.
The fitting out of the boat was as simple as could be. First she was ballasted with heavy pieces of granite, set in a bed of lime mortar, and they stowed about twelve thousand pounds of it. A floor was laid over this ballast, and the inside was divided into two cabins, each with a bench running along it that doubled as a storage chest. The foot of the mast was to serve as a prop for the partition between the two cabins, which were reached through two hatches opening onto the deck and fitted with hatch covers.
Pencroff had no trouble finding a suitable tree for the mast. He chose a young fir, good and straight and free of knots, which he only had to square off at the heel, where it would sit in its step, and round off at the top. The ironwork for the mast, the rudder, and the hull had been made at the forge in the Chimneys — roughly, but solidly. At last the yards, the topmast, the boom, the spars, the oars, and so on were all finished in the first week of October, and it was agreed that they would try the boat out in the waters around the island, to find out how she behaved at sea and how far they could trust her.
All this time the necessary work had not been neglected. The corral had been rearranged, since the flock of mouflons and goats now counted a number of young ones that had to be housed and fed. The colonists had kept up their visits to the oyster bed, to the warren, to the coal and iron deposits, and to certain parts of the Far West forests, which were full of game and had not yet been explored.
Some more native plants were discovered, too, and even if they were of no immediate use, they helped to vary the vegetable stores of Granite House. They were kinds of ice plant, some like the ones at the Cape of Good Hope, with fleshy leaves you could eat, and others producing seeds that held a sort of flour.
On October 10 the boat was launched. Pencroff was beaming. The operation went off perfectly. The boat, fully rigged, was pushed on rollers to the edge of the shore, where the rising tide took her, and she floated to the applause of the colonists — and especially of Pencroff, who showed no modesty whatever on this occasion. Besides, his pride was bound to outlast the boat's completion, since, having built her, he was now going to be called on to command her. The rank of captain was conferred on him with everyone's approval.
To satisfy Captain Pencroff, the first thing to do was give the boat a name. After several proposals had been argued over at length, the votes came together on Bonadventure, which was the honest sailor's baptismal name.
As soon as the rising tide had lifted the Bonadventure, they could see that she sat perfectly on her waterline and ought to sail well on every point of sailing.
In any case, she would be put to the test that very day, on an excursion off the coast. The weather was fine, the breeze fresh, and the sea easy, especially along the southern shore, since the wind had been blowing from the northwest for an hour already.
"All aboard! All aboard!" Captain Pencroff kept shouting.
But they had to have lunch before they left, and it even seemed wise to take provisions on board, in case the excursion stretched on into the evening.
Cyrus Smith was just as eager to try out this boat. The plans were his, though on the sailor's advice he had often changed parts of them. But he did not have the confidence in her that Pencroff showed, and since the sailor had not mentioned the voyage to Tabor Island again, Cyrus Smith even hoped he had given it up. He would have hated, in fact, to see two or three of his companions venture far out to sea in this boat, which was small, after all, and measured no more than fifteen tons.
At half past ten everyone was on board, even Jup, even Top. Nab and Harbert weighed the anchor, which was biting into the sand near the mouth of the Mercy. The mainsail was hoisted, the Lincolnian flag flew from the masthead, and the Bonadventure, steered by Pencroff, stood out to sea.
To get out of Union Bay they first had to run before the wind, and they could see that on that course the boat's speed was satisfactory.
After rounding Jetsam Point and Claw Cape, Pencroff had to sail close-hauled — as near into the wind as the boat would go — to run along the southern coast of the island. After a few tacks he observed that the Bonadventure could sail within about five points of the wind and held up well against drifting to leeward. She came about very well, having plenty of "way," as sailors say, and even gained ground as she turned.
The Bonadventure's passengers were truly delighted. They had a good boat here, one that could do them great service if the need arose, and in such fine weather, with such a steady breeze, the outing was a delight.
Pencroff stood out to sea three or four miles from the coast, abreast of Balloon Harbor. From there the island appeared in its full extent and in a new light: the varied panorama of its shoreline from Claw Cape to Reptile End; its forests in the foreground, where the conifers still stood out against the young leaves of the other trees, barely in bud; and Mount Franklin, towering over everything, its head still whitened with a little snow.
"How beautiful it is!" cried Harbert.
"Yes, our island is beautiful and good," Pencroff answered. "I love it the way I loved my poor mother! It took us in when we were poor and lacking everything, and what do these five children who dropped on it out of the sky lack now?"
"Nothing!" Nab answered. "Nothing, Captain!"
And the two good fellows gave three tremendous hurrahs in honor of their island!
Meanwhile Gédéon Spilett, leaning against the foot of the mast, was sketching the panorama spread out before his eyes.
Cyrus Smith watched in silence.
"Well, Mr. Cyrus," asked Pencroff, "what do you say about our boat?"
"She seems to handle well," the engineer answered.
"Good! And do you think now that she could make a voyage of some length?"
"What voyage, Pencroff?"
"To Tabor Island, for instance?"
"My friend," answered Cyrus Smith, "I believe that in an emergency we shouldn't hesitate to trust ourselves to the Bonadventure, even for a longer crossing. But, as you know, I would be sorry to see you leave for Tabor Island, since nothing obliges you to go there."
"A person likes to know his neighbors," Pencroff answered, digging in on his idea. "Tabor Island is our neighbor, and our only one! Good manners say we ought to go and pay it a visit, at least!"
"The devil!" said Gédéon Spilett. "Our friend Pencroff is a stickler for etiquette!"
"I'm not a stickler for anything at all," retorted the sailor. The engineer's opposition annoyed him a little, but he would not have wanted to cause him any pain.
"Remember, Pencroff," Cyrus Smith answered, "that you can't go to Tabor Island alone."
"One companion will be enough for me."
"Very well," answered the engineer. "So you're risking depriving the colony of Lincoln Island of two colonists out of five?"
"Out of six!" Pencroff answered. "You're forgetting Jup."
"Out of seven!" added Nab. "Top's worth as much as anybody!"
"There's no risk, Mr. Cyrus," Pencroff went on.
"That may be, Pencroff. But I'll say it again: it means exposing yourselves to danger for no need!"
The stubborn sailor made no reply and let the conversation drop, fully determined to take it up again. But he had no idea that an incident was about to come to his aid and turn what had been nothing but a whim — and a debatable one, after all — into a work of humanity.
After standing out to sea, the Bonadventure had just come back in toward the coast, heading for Balloon Harbor. It was important to check the channels that ran between the sandbanks and the reefs, and to mark them with buoys if necessary, since this little cove was to be the boat's home port.
They were now only half a mile from the coast, and they had had to beat their way in against the wind. The Bonadventure's speed was quite moderate at that point, because the breeze, partly blocked by the high ground, barely filled her sails. The sea, smooth as a mirror, rippled only when the cat's-paws passed fitfully across it.
Harbert had stationed himself in the bow, to point out the course to follow through the channels, when suddenly he cried:
"Luff, Pencroff, luff!"
"What's the matter?" answered the sailor, getting to his feet. "A rock?"
"No... wait," said Harbert. "I can't see well... luff a little more... good... bear off a bit..."
And as he said it Harbert, lying flat along the gunwale, plunged his arm quickly into the water and straightened up, saying:
"A bottle!"
He was holding a corked bottle in his hand, which he had just snatched from the water a few cable lengths from the coast.
Cyrus Smith took the bottle. Without saying a single word, he popped out the cork and drew out a damp piece of paper, on which these words could be read:
Castaway... Tabor Island: 153° W. long. — 37° 11′ S. lat.
Departure decided — Hypotheses — Preparations — The three passengers — The first night — The second night — Tabor Island — Searching the beach — Searching the woods — Nobody — Animals — Plants — A dwelling — Deserted
"A castaway!" cried Pencroff. "Marooned a few hundred miles from us, on this Tabor Island! Ah, Mr. Cyrus, you won't stand in the way of my voyage now!"
"No, Pencroff," answered Cyrus Smith, "and you'll leave as soon as possible."
"Tomorrow?"
"Tomorrow."
The engineer was holding the paper he had pulled out of the bottle. He studied it for a few moments, then spoke again.
"From this document, my friends," he said, "and from the very way it's written, we can conclude two things right away. First, the castaway on Tabor Island is a man with a fairly advanced knowledge of seamanship, since he gives the island's latitude and longitude, and they agree with the ones we found, to within a single minute. Second, he's English or American, since the document is written in English."
"That's perfectly logical," answered Gédéon Spilett, "and the presence of this castaway explains how the chest came to wash up on our shores. There was a shipwreck, because there's a castaway. As for him, whoever he is, it's lucky for him that Pencroff had the idea of building this boat and trying her out today of all days. One day later, and this bottle might have smashed on the reefs."
"Yes," said Harbert, "it's a lucky chance that the Bonadventure passed that way just when the bottle was still floating!"
"And that doesn't strike you as odd?" Cyrus Smith asked Pencroff.
"It strikes me as lucky, that's all," answered the sailor. "Do you see anything extraordinary in it, Mr. Cyrus? That bottle had to end up somewhere, and why not here as well as anywhere else?"
"Perhaps you're right, Pencroff," answered the engineer, "and yet..."
"But," Harbert pointed out, "nothing proves that the bottle has been floating on the sea for a long time, does it?"
"Nothing," answered Gédéon Spilett, "and in fact the document looks as if it was written recently. What do you think, Cyrus?"
"That's hard to check, and anyway, we'll find out!" answered Cyrus Smith.
While they were talking, Pencroff had not been idle. He had put the boat about, and the Bonadventure, running on a broad reach with every sail drawing, was racing toward Claw Cape. Everyone was thinking about the castaway on Tabor Island. Was there still time to save him? It was a great event in the life of the colonists! They themselves were only castaways, but it was to be feared that another man had not been as fortunate as they had, and their duty was to hurry to the help of misfortune.
They rounded Claw Cape, and at about four o'clock the Bonadventure dropped anchor at the mouth of the Mercy.
That same evening the details of the new expedition were settled. It seemed best that Pencroff and Harbert, who both knew how to handle a boat, should make the voyage by themselves. If they left the next day, October 11, they could arrive sometime on the 13th, because with the wind that was blowing it would take no more than forty-eight hours to make the crossing of a hundred and fifty miles. Add one day on the island and three or four days to come back, and they could count on being home on Lincoln Island by the 17th. The weather was fine, the barometer was rising steadily, without any jumps, and the wind seemed well settled. Every chance, then, was on the side of these good men, whom a duty to their fellow man was about to carry far from their island.
So it had been agreed that Cyrus Smith, Nab and Gédéon Spilett would stay at Granite House. But a protest was raised. Gédéon Spilett, who had by no means forgotten his trade as a reporter for the New York Herald, declared that he would swim there rather than miss a chance like this, and so he was allowed to join the voyage.
The evening was spent carrying aboard the Bonadventure some bedding, utensils, weapons, ammunition, a compass, and provisions for about a week. The loading was quickly done, and the colonists went back up to Granite House.
The next morning at five o'clock they said their goodbyes, not without some emotion on both sides. Pencroff spread his sails to the wind and headed for Claw Cape, which he had to round before setting a direct course to the southwest.
The Bonadventure was already a quarter of a mile from the coast when her passengers saw two men on the heights of Granite House waving goodbye to them. It was Cyrus Smith and Nab.
"Our friends!" cried Gédéon Spilett. "This is our first separation in fifteen months!..."
Pencroff, the reporter and Harbert waved one last goodbye, and Granite House soon disappeared behind the high rocks of the cape.
For the first hours of the day the Bonadventure stayed in constant sight of the southern coast of Lincoln Island, which soon looked like nothing more than a green basket with Mount Franklin rising out of it. Distance had shrunk the heights, and from out here the island hardly looked like a place to tempt a ship in to land.
They passed Reptile End at about one o'clock, but ten miles out to sea. At that distance it was no longer possible to make out anything of the western coast, which stretched as far as the shoulders of Mount Franklin, and three hours later the whole of Lincoln Island had sunk below the horizon.
The Bonadventure behaved perfectly. She rose easily to the waves and made rapid headway. Pencroff had rigged his gaff topsail, and with every stitch of canvas set he held a dead straight course, checked by the compass.
From time to time Harbert took a turn at the helm, and the boy's hand was so steady that the sailor could not fault him for a single swerve off course.
Gédéon Spilett chatted with one and then the other, and lent a hand with the sails when needed. Captain Pencroff was entirely satisfied with his crew, and talked of nothing less than rewarding them with "a tot of wine every watch"!
In the evening the crescent moon, which would not reach its first quarter until the 16th, showed for a while in the twilight and soon went out. The night was dark but full of stars, and the next day promised to be fine again.
As a precaution, Pencroff took in the gaff topsail. He did not want to risk being caught by some sudden gust with canvas set at the masthead. It was perhaps too much caution for so calm a night, but Pencroff was a prudent seaman, and no one could have blamed him for it.
The reporter slept for part of the night. Pencroff and Harbert relieved each other at the helm every two hours. The sailor trusted Harbert as he trusted himself, and the boy's coolness and good sense justified that trust. Pencroff gave him the course the way a captain gives it to his helmsman, and Harbert did not let the Bonadventure stray from it by a hair.
The night passed well, and the day of October 12 went by under the same conditions. The southwesterly course was kept strictly all that day, and unless the Bonadventure was being carried along by some unknown current, she ought to make landfall right on Tabor Island.
As for the sea the boat was crossing, it was completely empty. Now and then some large bird, an albatross or a frigate bird, passed within gunshot, and Gédéon Spilett wondered whether it was to one of those powerful fliers that he had entrusted his last dispatch to the New York Herald. These birds were the only living things that seemed to visit this stretch of ocean between Tabor Island and Lincoln Island.
"And yet," Harbert remarked, "this is the time of year when the whalers usually head for the southern part of the Pacific. Honestly, I don't believe there's a lonelier sea than this one!"
"It's not as empty as all that!" answered Pencroff.
"What do you mean?" asked the reporter.
"Well, we're on it, aren't we! Do you take our boat for a piece of driftwood and the three of us for porpoises?"
And Pencroff laughed at his own joke.
By evening, going by dead reckoning, they could assume that the Bonadventure had covered a hundred and twenty miles since leaving Lincoln Island — that is, in thirty-six hours, which gave a speed of three and a third miles an hour. The breeze was light and dying down. Still, they could hope that at daybreak the next day, if the reckoning was right and the course had been true, they would sight Tabor Island.
So neither Gédéon Spilett, nor Harbert, nor Pencroff slept that night of October 12 to 13. Waiting for the morning, they could not help feeling deeply stirred. There were so many uncertainties in the venture they had undertaken! Were they near Tabor Island? Was the island still inhabited by the castaway they were coming to help? Who was this man? Wouldn't his arrival bring some trouble into their little colony, so united until now? And besides, would he agree to trade one prison for another? All these questions, which would surely be answered the next day, kept them awake, and at the first glimmer of dawn they turned their eyes to every point of the western horizon in turn.
"Land!" Pencroff shouted at about six o'clock in the morning.
And since it was unthinkable that Pencroff could be mistaken, it was obvious that land was there.
Imagine the joy of the Bonadventure's little crew! In a few hours they would be on the island's shore!
Tabor Island, a sort of low coast barely rising out of the waves, was no more than fifteen miles away. The Bonadventure's bow, which was pointing a little to the south of the island, was turned straight toward it, and as the sun climbed in the east, a few summits stood out here and there.
"It's only an islet, much less important than Lincoln Island," Harbert remarked, "and it was probably raised up from the sea floor, like ours."
At eleven in the morning the Bonadventure was only two miles off, and Pencroff, looking for a channel to bring her in, was moving forward only with extreme caution over these unknown waters.
By now they could take in the whole islet at a glance. Clumps of green gum trees stood out on it, along with a few other large trees of the same kinds that grew on Lincoln Island. But — a rather astonishing thing — not a wisp of smoke rose to show that the islet was inhabited, and not a signal could be seen anywhere along the shore!
And yet the document had been definite: there was a castaway, and that castaway should have been on the lookout!
Meanwhile the Bonadventure was threading her way through the rather tricky channels that the reefs left between them, and Pencroff watched every twist and turn of them with the closest attention. He had put Harbert at the helm and stationed himself in the bow, studying the water, ready to lower the sail, whose halyard he held in his hand. Gédéon Spilett swept the whole shoreline with the spyglass without seeing a thing.
At last, at about noon, the Bonadventure ran her stem up onto a sandy beach. The anchor was dropped, the sails lowered, and the little boat's crew went ashore.
And there was no doubt that this really was Tabor Island, since, according to the most recent charts, there was no other island in that part of the Pacific between New Zealand and the American coast.
The boat was moored securely, so that the ebbing tide could not carry her off. Then Pencroff and his two companions, well armed, went up the beach to reach a kind of cone, two hundred and fifty to three hundred feet high, that rose half a mile away.
"From the top of that hill," said Gédéon Spilett, "we should be able to get a general idea of the islet, and that will make our search easier."
"It's doing here," answered Harbert, "just what Mr. Cyrus did first thing on Lincoln Island, when he climbed Mount Franklin."
"Exactly," answered the reporter, "and it's the best way to go about it!"
Talking as they went, the explorers moved forward along the edge of a meadow that ran right up to the foot of the cone. Flocks of rock pigeons and terns, like the ones on Lincoln Island, flew up in front of them. In the woods that bordered the meadow on the left they heard brushwood rustling and glimpsed grass stirring, signs of very shy animals. But so far nothing showed that the islet was inhabited.
When they reached the foot of the cone, Pencroff, Harbert and Gédéon Spilett climbed it in a few minutes and looked out to every point of the horizon.
They were indeed on an islet. It measured no more than six miles around, and its outline, with few capes or headlands jutting out and few coves or inlets cutting in, made a long oval. All around, the sea stretched to the edge of the sky, with nothing else at all. There was not a speck of land, not a sail in sight!
The islet was wooded all over, and it had none of the variety of Lincoln Island, which was barren and wild in one part and fertile and rich in the other. Here there was one even mass of green, with two or three low hills rising above it. A stream crossed the oval at a slant, flowing through a broad meadow and emptying into the sea on the western coast through a narrow mouth.
"It's a small estate," said Harbert.
"Yes," answered Pencroff, "it would have been a bit cramped for us!"
"And on top of that," answered the reporter, "it seems to be uninhabited."
"It does," answered Harbert. "Nothing here gives any sign of human beings."
"Let's go down," said Pencroff, "and look."
The sailor and his two companions went back to the shore, to the spot where they had left the Bonadventure. They had decided to go all the way around the islet on foot before venturing into the interior, so that not a single spot would escape their search.
The beach was easy to follow, and only in a few places was it cut by big rocks, which they could easily get around. The explorers headed south, scaring up large flocks of water birds and herds of seals, which threw themselves into the sea the moment they caught sight of the men, however far off.
"Those animals," the reporter pointed out, "aren't seeing human beings for the first time. They're afraid of them, so they know them."
An hour after setting out, the three of them had reached the southern tip of the islet, which ended in a sharp cape, and they turned north along the western coast. It was made of sand and rock as well, with thick woods behind.
Nowhere was there any trace of a dwelling, nowhere the print of a human foot, along the whole edge of the islet, which they had walked completely around after four hours.
It was extraordinary, to say the least, and they were bound to believe that Tabor Island was not inhabited, or was no longer. Perhaps, after all, the document was already several months or several years old, and in that case it was possible that the castaway had been taken home — or that he had died of hardship.
Pencroff, Gédéon Spilett and Harbert, trying out theories that were more or less likely, ate a quick dinner on board the Bonadventure, so that they could set off again and keep exploring until nightfall.
And so they did. At five in the afternoon they ventured into the woods.
Many animals fled at their approach — mainly, one could even say only, goats and pigs, which, as was easy to see, belonged to European breeds. No doubt some whaler had put them ashore on the island, where they had multiplied rapidly. Harbert promised himself that he would catch a pair or two alive to take back to Lincoln Island.
So there was no longer any doubt that men had visited this islet at some time or other. That became even clearer when, through the forest, they found trodden paths, tree trunks felled with an ax, and everywhere the mark of human work. But these trees, which were rotting away, had been cut down many years before. The ax cuts had grown a velvet of moss, and the grass grew long and thick across the paths, so that they were hard to make out.
"But," Gédéon Spilett pointed out, "that proves not only that men landed on this islet but that they lived on it for some time. Now, who were these men? How many of them were there? How many are left?"
"The document," said Harbert, "only mentions one castaway."
"Well, if he's still on the island," answered Pencroff, "there's no way we won't find him!"
So the exploration went on. The sailor and his companions naturally followed the path that cut diagonally across the islet, and so they came out beside the stream that ran down to the sea.
The animals of European stock and the bits of work done by human hands proved beyond question that people had come to this island before them. A number of specimens from the plant kingdom proved it no less. In some places, in the middle of clearings, it was plain that the ground had been planted with vegetables, probably quite a long time ago.
And what was Harbert's joy when he recognized potatoes, chicory, sorrel, carrots, cabbages and turnips! They had only to gather the seed to enrich the soil of Lincoln Island.
"Good! Fine!" answered Pencroff. "That'll suit Nab nicely, and us too. So even if we don't find the castaway, at least our voyage won't have been wasted, and God will have rewarded us!"
"No doubt," answered Gédéon Spilett. "But to judge by the state these plantings are in, I'm afraid the islet hasn't been inhabited for a long time."
"Yes," answered Harbert. "Anyone living here, whoever it was, would never have neglected such an important crop!"
"Right!" said Pencroff. "This castaway has gone!... That's what we have to suppose..."
"Then we have to accept that the document is already old?"
"Obviously."
"And that the bottle only reached Lincoln Island after floating on the sea for a long time?"
"Why not?" answered Pencroff. "But here comes the night," he added, "and I think we'd better stop searching for now."
"Let's go back on board, and we'll start again tomorrow," said the reporter.
That was the wisest course, and they were about to take it when Harbert pointed to a dark shapeless mass among the trees and cried:
"A house!"
At once all three of them made for the dwelling he had pointed out. In the last light of dusk they could see that it had been built of planks covered with thick tarred canvas.
The door was half shut. Pencroff pushed it open and strode quickly inside...
The house was empty!
An inventory — The night — A few letters — The search goes on — Plants and animals — Harbert in great danger — On board — Departure — Bad weather — A flash of instinct — Lost at sea — A fire lit in time
Pencroff, Harbert and Gédéon Spilett had stood there silent in the darkness.
Pencroff called out in a loud voice.
No answer came.
So the sailor struck his flint and steel and lit a twig. For a moment its light showed a small room that seemed to be entirely deserted. At the far end was a rough fireplace holding a few cold ashes and an armful of dry wood. Pencroff tossed the burning twig onto it; the wood crackled and threw out a bright glow.
Now the sailor and his two companions could make out an unmade bed whose blankets, damp and yellowed, proved that it had not been slept in for a long time; in one corner of the fireplace, two kettles covered with rust and an overturned cooking pot; a cupboard with a few half-moldy sailor's clothes in it; on the table, a pewter plate and fork and a Bible eaten away by damp; in a corner, some tools — a shovel, a mattock, a pickax — and two hunting guns, one of them broken; on a plank that served as a shelf, a keg of gunpowder still untouched, a keg of shot and several boxes of percussion caps. And all of it lay under a thick coat of dust that had perhaps been gathering for many long years.
"There's nobody here," said the reporter.
"Nobody!" answered Pencroff.
"Nobody has lived in this room for a long time," Harbert observed.
"Yes, a very long time!" answered the reporter.
"Mr. Spilett," Pencroff said then, "instead of going back on board, I think we'd do better to spend the night in this house."
"You're right, Pencroff," answered Gédéon Spilett, "and if the owner comes back — well! Maybe he won't mind finding the place taken!"
"He won't come back!" said the sailor, shaking his head.
"You think he's left the island?" asked the reporter.
"If he'd left the island, he'd have taken his weapons and his tools with him," answered Pencroff. "You know what castaways think those things are worth — they're the last scraps saved from the wreck. No! No!" the sailor repeated, in a voice full of conviction. "No! He hasn't left the island! If he'd escaped in a boat he built himself, he'd have been even less likely to leave behind things he couldn't live without! No — he's on the island!"
"Alive?..." asked Harbert.
"Alive or dead. But if he's dead, I don't suppose he buried himself," answered Pencroff, "so at the very least we'll find his remains!"
So it was agreed that they would spend the night in the abandoned house, and a supply of wood stacked in one corner would keep it warm enough. With the door shut, Pencroff, Harbert and Gédéon Spilett sat on a bench and stayed there, talking little but thinking a great deal. They were in a frame of mind to imagine anything and to expect anything, and they listened eagerly to every sound outside. If the door had suddenly opened and a man had stood before them, they would not have been very much surprised, in spite of everything about the place that spoke of long abandonment. Their hands were ready to clasp the hands of that man, that castaway, that unknown friend whom friends had come to find!
But no sound was heard, the door did not open, and the hours went by.
How long that night seemed to the sailor and his two companions! Only Harbert slept, for two hours, because at his age sleep is a necessity. All three of them were impatient to take up the previous day's exploration again and to search the islet down to its most hidden corners! Pencroff's conclusions were perfectly sound. Since the house was abandoned, and since the tools, the utensils and the weapons were still in it, it was almost certain that the man who had lived there had died. The right thing to do, then, was to look for his remains and at least give them a Christian burial.
Day came. Pencroff and his companions set about examining the house at once.
It had been built, truly, in a well-chosen spot, on the back slope of a little hill sheltered by five or six magnificent gum trees. In front of it, an ax had cleared a wide opening through the trees, so that the eye could travel out over the sea. A small lawn, surrounded by a wooden fence that was falling to pieces, led down to the shore, and on the left of it the mouth of the stream opened into the sea.
The house had been built of planks, and it was easy to see that those planks had come from the hull or the deck of a ship. So it was likely that a disabled vessel had been driven ashore on the island, that at least one man of her crew had been saved, and that this man, having tools at hand, had used the wreckage of the ship to build himself this dwelling.
That became plainer still when Gédéon Spilett, after walking all the way around the house, noticed on one of the planks — probably one of those that had formed the bulwarks of the wrecked ship — these letters, already half worn away:
BR..TAN.A
"Britannia!" cried Pencroff, whom the reporter had called over. "That's a name plenty of ships have had, and I couldn't tell you whether this one was English or American!"
"It doesn't matter, Pencroff!"
"No, it doesn't matter," answered the sailor, "and the survivor of her crew, if he's still alive — we'll save him, whatever country he belongs to! But before we start exploring again, let's go back to the Bonadventure first!"
A kind of uneasiness about his boat had come over Pencroff. Suppose the islet was inhabited after all, and some inhabitant had taken possession of her... But he shrugged his shoulders at so unlikely an idea.
Still, the sailor was not sorry to go and have breakfast on board. The way was already marked out, and it was not long — barely a mile. So they set off again, searching the woods and thickets with their eyes as they went, while goats and pigs ran off through them by the hundreds.
Twenty minutes after leaving the house, Pencroff and his companions were back in sight of the eastern coast of the island and of the Bonadventure, held by her anchor, which had bitten deep into the sand.
Pencroff could not hold back a sigh of satisfaction. After all, that boat was his child, and it is a father's right to worry more often than he has reason to.
They went back on board and ate breakfast — a big enough one that they would not need dinner until very late. Then, the meal finished, the exploration began again and was carried out with the most painstaking care.
All things considered, it was very likely that the islet's one inhabitant had died. So it was a dead man, rather than a living one, whose traces Pencroff and his companions were trying to find! But their search was in vain. For half the day they combed the clumps of trees that covered the islet and found nothing. They had to admit at last that if the castaway was dead, no trace of his body was left now, and that some wild animal had no doubt devoured it down to the last bone.
"We'll leave tomorrow at daybreak," Pencroff said to his two companions. Around two o'clock in the afternoon the three of them had lain down in the shade of a clump of pines to rest for a few minutes.
"I think we can take the castaway's things with us without any qualms, can't we?" Harbert added.
"I think so too," answered Gédéon Spilett, "and these weapons and tools will round out the equipment of Granite House. Unless I'm mistaken, that's a sizable supply of powder and shot."
"Yes," answered Pencroff, "but let's not forget to catch a pair or two of these pigs. Lincoln Island hasn't got any..."
"Or to gather those seeds," Harbert added. "They'll give us every vegetable of the Old World and the New."
"Then perhaps it would be wise," said the reporter, "to stay one more day on Tabor Island, so we can collect everything that might be of use to us."
"No, Mr. Spilett," answered Pencroff, "and I'll ask you to leave first thing tomorrow, at daybreak. The wind looks to me as if it means to shift into the west, and after having a fair wind to come here, we'll have a fair wind to go home."
"Then let's not waste any time!" said Harbert, getting to his feet.
"Let's not waste any time," answered Pencroff. "You, Harbert, see to gathering those seeds — you know them better than we do. Meanwhile Mr. Spilett and I will go hunting the pigs, and even without Top, I'm pretty sure we'll manage to catch a few!"
So Harbert took the path that would lead him back toward the cultivated part of the islet, while the sailor and the reporter went straight into the forest.
A good many specimens of the pig family fled before them, and these remarkably nimble animals did not seem in any mood to let themselves be approached. Still, after half an hour's chase, the hunters had managed to seize a pair that had gone to ground in a dense thicket — when shouts rang out a few hundred paces to the north of the islet. Mixed with the shouts came horrible hoarse roars that had nothing human about them.
Pencroff and Gédéon Spilett straightened up, and the pigs took advantage of the movement to escape, just as the sailor was getting his ropes ready to tie them.
"That's Harbert's voice!" said the reporter.
"Run!" cried Pencroff.
And at once the sailor and Gédéon Spilett raced as fast as their legs would carry them toward the place the shouts were coming from.
They were right to hurry. At a turn in the path, near a clearing, they saw the boy thrown to the ground by a wild creature — a gigantic ape, no doubt — that was about to do him serious harm.
To hurl themselves on this monster, throw it down in its turn, tear Harbert away from it and then pin it firmly — for Pencroff and Gédéon Spilett it was the work of a moment. The sailor had the strength of a Hercules, and the reporter was very powerful too. In spite of the monster's struggles, it was tied up so securely that it could not make a single movement.
"You're not hurt, Harbert?" asked Gédéon Spilett.
"No! No!"
"Oh! If that ape had hurt you!..." cried Pencroff.
"But it isn't an ape!" answered Harbert.
At these words, Pencroff and Gédéon Spilett took a good look at the strange being lying on the ground.
Truly, it was no ape! It was a human creature — it was a man! But what a man! A wild man, in all the horror of the word, and all the more appalling because he seemed to have sunk to the very lowest depth of brutishness!
Bristling hair; an untrimmed beard hanging down to his chest; a body almost naked except for a rag of blanket around his loins; fierce eyes; enormous hands with immensely long nails; skin as dark as mahogany; feet so hardened they might have been made of horn — such was the wretched creature that, in spite of everything, they had to call a man! Yet one really had the right to wonder whether there was still a soul in that body, or whether nothing but the crude instinct of the brute had survived in him!
"Are you quite sure that's a man, or that it ever was one?" Pencroff asked the reporter.
"Sadly, there's no doubt of it," the reporter answered.
"Then could he be the castaway?" said Harbert.
"Yes," answered Gédéon Spilett, "but the poor wretch has nothing human left in him!"
The reporter was right. It was clear that if the castaway had ever been a civilized being, solitude had turned him into a wild man — and worse, perhaps, into a true man of the woods. Hoarse sounds came from his throat, through teeth as sharp as a meat-eater's, made now for grinding nothing but raw flesh. His memory must have deserted him long ago, no doubt, and for a long time too he had no longer known how to use his tools or his weapons. He no longer knew how to make a fire! It could be seen that he was quick and supple, but that all his physical powers had developed at the expense of his mind and his moral nature!
Gédéon Spilett spoke to him. He did not seem to understand, or even to hear... And yet, looking him straight in the eyes, the reporter thought he could see that his reason was not entirely extinguished.
Meanwhile the prisoner was not struggling, and he made no attempt to break his bonds. Was he crushed by the presence of these men who had once been his own kind? Had he found, in some corner of his brain, a fleeting memory that was drawing him back toward humanity? If he had been set free, would he have tried to run away, or would he have stayed? No one knows — they did not put it to the test. And after studying the wretched man with the closest attention, Gédéon Spilett spoke.
"Whoever he is," he said, "whoever he was and whatever he may become, it's our duty to take him back with us to Lincoln Island!"
"Yes! Yes!" answered Harbert. "And maybe, with care, we can wake some spark of intelligence in him again!"
"The soul doesn't die," said the reporter, "and it would be a great thing to rescue this creature of God from the brute he's become!"
Pencroff shook his head doubtfully.
"We have to try, at any rate," the reporter answered him. "Our humanity demands it."
It was indeed their duty as civilized beings and as Christians. All three of them understood it, and they knew very well that Cyrus Smith would approve of what they had done.
"Do we leave him tied up?" asked the sailor.
"Maybe he'd walk if we untied his feet?" said Harbert.
"Let's try," answered Pencroff.
The ropes that hobbled the prisoner's feet were undone, but his arms stayed tightly bound. He stood up by himself and showed no sign of wanting to run away. His dry eyes darted sharp looks at the three men walking beside him, and nothing suggested that he remembered being one of their kind, or at least having once been one. A continuous hissing came from his lips, and he looked fierce, but he made no attempt to resist.
On the reporter's advice, the unfortunate man was taken back to his house. Perhaps the sight of the things that had belonged to him would make some impression on him! Perhaps a single spark would be enough to rekindle his darkened mind, to relight his extinguished soul!
The house was not far away. In a few minutes they had all reached it. But there the prisoner recognized nothing, and he seemed to have lost all awareness of everything!
What could they conclude from the depth of brutishness this miserable being had fallen to, except that his imprisonment on the islet must go back a long way, and that he had come there in his right mind, and solitude had reduced him to this state?
Then the reporter had the idea that the sight of fire might have some effect on him. In an instant one of those fine bright blazes that draw even animals to them lit up the hearth.
At first the sight of the flames seemed to hold the poor man's attention. But soon he drew back, and the light died out of his blank gaze.
Clearly there was nothing to be done, for the moment at least, except take him on board the Bonadventure. That was done, and there he stayed, under Pencroff's guard.
Harbert and Gédéon Spilett went back onto the islet to finish their work, and a few hours later they returned to the shore carrying the utensils and the weapons, a harvest of vegetable seeds, a few head of game and two pairs of pigs. Everything was loaded aboard, and the Bonadventure stood ready to weigh anchor as soon as the next morning's tide began to run.
The prisoner had been put in the forward cabin, where he stayed calm and silent, deaf and dumb at once.
Pencroff offered him something to eat, but he pushed away the cooked meat they held out to him, which no doubt no longer suited him. And sure enough, when the sailor showed him one of the ducks Harbert had shot, he threw himself on it with the greed of an animal and devoured it.
"You think he'll come back from this?" said Pencroff, shaking his head.
"Maybe," answered the reporter. "It isn't impossible that our care will end up having some effect on him, because it was solitude that made him what he is, and from now on he'll never be alone again!"
"The poor man must have been like this for a long time!" said Harbert.
"Maybe," answered Gédéon Spilett.
"How old could he be?" asked the boy.
"That's hard to say," answered the reporter, "because you can't see his features under that thick beard covering his face. But he isn't young anymore, and I'd guess he must be at least fifty."
"Did you notice, Mr. Spilett, how deeply his eyes are sunk under his brows?" asked the boy.
"Yes, Harbert, but I'd add that they're more human than you'd be tempted to believe from the look of the rest of him."
"Well, we'll see," answered Pencroff, "and I'm curious to hear what Mr. Smith makes of our wild man. We went looking for a human being, and it's a monster we're bringing back! Well, you do what you can!"
The night went by. Whether the prisoner slept or not, no one knows, but in any case, although he had been untied, he did not stir. He was like those wild animals that are stunned by the first hours of captivity, and whose rage comes back to them later.
At daybreak the next day — October 15 — the change of weather Pencroff had foreseen had come. The wind had backed into the northwest, and it favored the Bonadventure's return. But at the same time it was freshening, and that was bound to make the sailing harder.
At five o'clock in the morning the anchor was weighed. Pencroff took a reef in his mainsail and set his course east-northeast, so as to head straight for Lincoln Island.
The first day of the crossing passed without incident. The prisoner had stayed quiet in the forward cabin, and since he had once been a sailor, the motion of the sea seemed to have a kind of healthy effect on him. Was some memory of his old trade coming back to him, then? In any case, he kept still, more astonished than downcast.
The next day — October 16 — the wind freshened a great deal and swung still farther toward the north, which meant it blew from a direction less favorable to the Bonadventure, which went leaping over the waves. Pencroff soon found himself sailing close-hauled, and without saying anything about it he began to grow uneasy at the state of the sea, which was breaking violently over his boat's bow. Certainly, if the wind did not change, it would take him longer to reach Lincoln Island than it had taken to get to Tabor Island.
And in fact, by the morning of the 17th, the Bonadventure had been under way for forty-eight hours, and there was nothing to show that she was anywhere near the island. Besides, it was impossible to work out the distance they had covered by dead reckoning, since both her heading and her speed had been far too irregular.
Twenty-four hours later there was still no land in sight. By then the wind was blowing dead against them and the sea was atrocious. They had to work the boat's sails quickly, for the seas were breaking clean over her; they had to take in reefs and keep changing tack, beating to windward in short runs. It even happened, during the day of the 18th, that the Bonadventure was completely buried by a wave, and if her passengers had not taken the precaution beforehand of lashing themselves to the deck, they would have been swept away.
On that occasion Pencroff and his companions, hard at work clearing the boat, received help they had never expected — from the prisoner. He sprang up through the hatch as if his sailor's instinct had taken over, and with a mighty blow of a spar he smashed through the bulwarks so that the water filling the deck could drain away faster. Then, once the boat was clear, he went back down to his cabin without having said a single word.
Pencroff, Gédéon Spilett and Harbert, utterly astounded, had let him do it.
Still, their situation was bad, and the sailor had reason to believe he was lost on that immense sea, with no chance of finding his way again!
The night of the 18th to the 19th was dark and cold. Around eleven o'clock, however, the wind died down, the swell dropped, and the Bonadventure, tossed about less, picked up speed. She had, in any case, behaved wonderfully in the heavy sea.
Neither Pencroff nor Gédéon Spilett nor Harbert thought of taking even an hour's sleep. They kept watch with the utmost care, for one of two things was true: either Lincoln Island could not be far off, and they would sight it at daybreak, or else the Bonadventure had been carried off by currents and had drifted to leeward, and then it would be almost impossible to correct her course.
Pencroff, worried to the last degree, still did not despair, for his spirit was made of well-tempered stuff. Sitting at the tiller, he stubbornly tried to pierce the thick darkness that surrounded him.
Around two o'clock in the morning, he suddenly stood up.
"A fire! A fire!" he shouted.
And sure enough, a bright light had appeared twenty miles to the northeast. Lincoln Island was there, and that light, plainly lit by Cyrus Smith, was showing them the way.
Pencroff, who had been steering much too far to the north, changed course and headed for the fire, which shone above the horizon like a star of the first magnitude.
The return — Discussion — Cyrus Smith and the stranger — Balloon Harbor — The third harvest — A windmill — The first flour and the first bread — The engineer's devotion — A moving experiment — A few tears fall
The next day, October 20, at seven o'clock in the morning, after four days at sea, the Bonadventure ran gently aground on the beach at the mouth of the Mercy.
Cyrus Smith and Nab had grown very uneasy over the bad weather and their companions' long absence. They had climbed up to Prospect Plateau at first light, and at last they had sighted the boat that had taken so long to come back!
"Thank God! There they are!" Cyrus Smith had cried.
As for Nab, he had started dancing for joy, spinning round and round, clapping his hands and shouting, "Oh, my master!" — a pantomime more touching than the finest speech!
The engineer's first thought, as he counted the people he could see on the Bonadventure's deck, had been that Pencroff had not found the castaway of Tabor Island — or at least that the poor man had refused to leave his island and trade one prison for another.
And in fact Pencroff, Gédéon Spilett and Harbert were alone on the Bonadventure's deck.
When the boat came in, the engineer and Nab were waiting for her on the shore, and before the passengers had even jumped down onto the sand, Cyrus Smith was saying to them:
"We've been very worried that you were so late, my friends! Did something go wrong?"
"No," replied Gédéon Spilett. "Quite the opposite — everything went wonderfully. We'll tell you all about it."
"All the same," the engineer went on, "your search failed, since there are only three of you, just as when you left?"
"Beg your pardon, Mr. Cyrus," replied the sailor. "There are four of us!"
"You found the castaway?"
"Yes."
"And you brought him back?"
"Yes."
"Alive?"
"Yes."
"Where is he? Who is he?"
"He is," answered the reporter, "or rather he was, a man! That's all we can tell you, Cyrus!"
The engineer was told at once what had happened on the voyage. They described how the search had been carried out; how the islet's one dwelling had been abandoned long ago; and finally how they had captured a castaway who no longer seemed to belong to the human race.
"It's got to the point," Pencroff added, "where I don't know if we did right to bring him here."
"Of course you did right, Pencroff!" the engineer answered quickly.
"But the poor wretch has lost his reason, hasn't he?"
"Now, perhaps," replied Cyrus Smith. "But only a few months ago this unhappy man was a man like you and me. And who knows what would become of the last one of us left alive, after a long solitude on this island? Woe to the man who is alone, my friends! Isolation must destroy the reason quickly indeed, since you found the poor creature in such a state!"
"But, Mr. Cyrus," asked Harbert, "what makes you think the poor man has only sunk this low in the last few months?"
"Because the document we found had been written recently," answered the engineer, "and no one but the castaway could have written it."
"Unless," Gédéon Spilett pointed out, "it was written by a companion of his who has since died."
"That's impossible, my dear Spilett."
"Why?" asked the reporter.
"Because the document would have spoken of two castaways," replied Cyrus Smith, "and it speaks of only one."
Harbert told the story of the crossing in a few words, and he dwelt on one curious fact: the passing sort of resurrection that had taken place in the prisoner's mind when, for a moment, at the height of the storm, he had become a sailor again.
"Good, Harbert," replied the engineer. "You're right to attach great importance to that. This unfortunate man can't be incurable. It's despair that has made him what he is. But here he'll find his fellow men again, and since there's still a soul in him, we'll save that soul!"
So the castaway of Tabor Island was brought out of the cabin he occupied in the Bonadventure's bow, to the engineer's deep pity and Nab's great astonishment. The moment he was set ashore, he showed every intention of running away.
But Cyrus Smith came up to him and laid a hand on his shoulder with a gesture full of authority, and looked at him with infinite gentleness. At once the wretched man fell under a kind of instant spell. Little by little he grew calm; his eyes dropped, his head bowed, and he put up no more resistance.
"Poor marooned soul!" murmured the engineer.
Cyrus Smith had studied him closely. To judge by appearances, there was nothing human left in this miserable being. And yet Cyrus Smith, as the reporter had done before him, caught in his look something like an elusive glimmer of intelligence.
It was decided that the marooned man — or rather the stranger, for that was what his new companions called him from then on — would stay in one of the rooms of Granite House. He could not escape from there in any case. He let himself be led to it without any trouble, and with good care to help, they could perhaps hope that one day he would make one more companion for the colonists of Lincoln Island.
During lunch, which Nab had hurried along — the reporter, Harbert and Pencroff were dying of hunger — Cyrus Smith had them tell him in detail about everything that had happened on the voyage of exploration to the islet. He agreed with his friends that the stranger must be English or American. The name Britannia suggested as much, and besides, through that unkempt beard, under the thicket that served him for hair, the engineer believed he had made out the distinctive features of an Anglo-Saxon.
"But come to think of it," said Gédéon Spilett, turning to Harbert, "you never told us how you ran into this wild man. All we know is that he'd have strangled you if we hadn't had the luck to get there in time to help you!"
"Honestly," answered Harbert, "I'd be hard put to say what happened. I think I was busy gathering my plants when I heard a noise like an avalanche coming down out of a very tall tree. I barely had time to turn around... This poor man, who must have been crouching up in a tree, threw himself on me in less time than it takes me to tell you, and if it hadn't been for Mr. Spilett and Pencroff..."
"My boy!" said Cyrus Smith. "You ran a real risk there. But perhaps without it the poor creature would always have slipped away from your search, and we wouldn't have one more companion."
"So you hope to make a man of him again, Cyrus?" asked the reporter.
"Yes," replied the engineer.
When lunch was over, Cyrus Smith and his companions left Granite House and went back down to the beach. Then they unloaded the Bonadventure. The engineer examined the weapons and the tools, but he saw nothing that might allow him to establish the stranger's identity.
The pigs captured on the islet were judged likely to be a great asset to Lincoln Island, and they were taken to the sties, where they would surely settle in easily.
The two kegs of powder and shot, and the packets of percussion caps, were very well received. They even agreed to set up a small powder magazine, either outside Granite House or else in the upper cave, where there was no explosion to fear. All the same, they would go on using guncotton. It gave excellent results, so there was no reason to replace it with ordinary gunpowder.
When the boat had been unloaded:
"Mr. Cyrus," said Pencroff, "I think it would be wise to put our Bonadventure somewhere safe."
"Isn't she properly placed at the mouth of the Mercy?" asked Cyrus Smith.
"No, Mr. Cyrus," replied the sailor. "Half the time she's aground on the sand, and that strains her. She's a good boat, you see, and she behaved beautifully in that gale that hit us so hard on the way back."
"Couldn't we keep her afloat in the river itself?"
"We could, Mr. Cyrus, no doubt about it. But the river mouth gives her no shelter at all, and in an east wind I think the Bonadventure would take a terrible beating from the seas."
"Well, then, where do you want to put her, Pencroff?"
"At Balloon Harbor," replied the sailor. "That little cove, sheltered by the rocks, looks to me like just the harbor she needs."
"Isn't it a bit far?"
"Bah! It's not more than three miles from Granite House, and we've got a fine straight road to take us there!"
"Go ahead, Pencroff, and take your Bonadventure there," replied the engineer. "Still, I'd rather have her where we can keep a closer eye on her. When we have the time, we'll have to build her a little harbor of her own."
"Splendid!" cried Pencroff. "A harbor with a lighthouse, a breakwater and a dry dock! Honestly, Mr. Cyrus, with you everything's too easy!"
"Yes, my good Pencroff," replied the engineer, "but only on condition that you help me — because you do a good three-quarters of all our work!"
So Harbert and the sailor went back aboard the Bonadventure. The anchor was weighed, the sail hoisted, and the sea breeze carried her swiftly to Claw Cape. Two hours later she was riding on the calm waters of Balloon Harbor.
In the first days the stranger spent at Granite House, had he already given any reason to think that his wild nature had changed? Was a brighter light shining in the depths of that darkened mind? Was the soul, in short, coming back into the body? Yes, beyond any doubt — so much so that Cyrus Smith and the reporter wondered whether the poor man's reason had ever been completely snuffed out.
At first, used as he was to the open air and to the boundless freedom he had enjoyed on Tabor Island, the stranger had shown some fits of sullen rage, and they had to fear that he might hurl himself down onto the beach through one of the windows of Granite House. But little by little he calmed down, and they were able to leave him free to move about as he liked.
So there was reason to hope, and to hope a great deal. Already the stranger was forgetting the instincts of a beast of prey. He accepted food less brutish than what he had gorged himself on at the islet, and cooked meat no longer filled him with the disgust he had shown aboard the Bonadventure.
Cyrus Smith had taken advantage of a moment when he was asleep to cut his unkempt hair and beard, which had formed a kind of mane and given him such a wild look. He had also dressed him more decently, after taking away the scrap of cloth that had covered him. Thanks to this care, the stranger took on a human face again, and it even seemed that his eyes had grown gentler. Surely, when intelligence once lit it, this man's face must have had a sort of handsomeness.
Every day, Cyrus Smith made it his duty to spend a few hours in his company. He would come and work near him, busying himself with one thing and another, so as to catch his attention. A single flash, after all, might be enough to rekindle that soul; a single memory crossing that brain might be enough to call his reason back. They had seen it happen during the storm aboard the Bonadventure!
The engineer also made a point of talking out loud, so as to reach the depths of that numbed intelligence through the ears and the eyes at the same time. Sometimes one of his companions joined him, sometimes another, sometimes all of them. Most often they talked about things to do with the sea, which ought to move a sailor more than anything. At moments the stranger seemed to pay a vague kind of attention to what was being said, and the colonists soon became convinced that he partly understood them. Sometimes, even, his face wore an expression of deep pain — proof that he was suffering inside, for his features could not have been so misleading as that. But he did not speak, though more than once they might have thought a few words were about to escape his lips.
Be that as it may, the poor man was calm and sad! But was his calm only on the surface? Was his sadness only the result of being shut in? Nothing could be said for certain yet. He now saw only certain things, within a narrow field; he was constantly in contact with the colonists, and he was bound to grow used to them in the end; he had no desire left unsatisfied; he was better fed and better clothed. It was only natural that his physical nature should change little by little. But had a new life really entered into him? Or — to use a word that could fairly be applied to him — had he only been tamed, the way an animal is tamed by its master? That was an important question, and Cyrus Smith was eager to settle it. Yet he did not want to rush his patient! For to him the stranger was simply a patient! Would he ever be a convalescent?
And so how closely the engineer watched him, every moment! How he lay in wait for his soul, if one may put it that way! How ready he was to seize it!
The colonists followed every stage of the cure Cyrus Smith had undertaken with sincere emotion. They helped him, too, in this work of humanity, and all of them — except perhaps the doubting Pencroff — soon came to share his hope and his faith.
The stranger's calm was deep, as has been said, and he showed a kind of attachment to the engineer, whose influence he plainly felt. So Cyrus Smith decided to put him to the test by taking him into different surroundings: before the ocean his eyes had once been used to gazing on, at the edge of forests that must remind him of the ones where so many years of his life had been spent!
"But," said Gédéon Spilett, "can we hope that once he's set free he won't run away?"
"It's an experiment we have to try," answered the engineer.
"Ha!" said Pencroff. "Once that fellow has open space in front of him and gets a whiff of the fresh air, he'll be off as fast as his legs will carry him!"
"I don't think so," replied Cyrus Smith.
"Let's try it," said Gédéon Spilett.
"Let's try it," replied the engineer.
That day was October 30, which meant the castaway of Tabor Island had been a prisoner in Granite House for nine days. It was warm, and a fine sun was beating down on the island.
Cyrus Smith and Pencroff went to the stranger's room. They found him lying near the window, gazing at the sky.
"Come, my friend," the engineer said to him.
The stranger got up at once. His eyes fixed on Cyrus Smith, and he followed him, while the sailor walked behind, not very confident about how the experiment would turn out.
When they reached the door, Cyrus Smith and Pencroff had him take his place in the elevator, while Nab, Harbert and Gédéon Spilett waited for them at the foot of Granite House. The basket went down, and in a few moments they were all together on the beach.
The colonists moved a little way off from the stranger, so as to leave him some freedom.
He took a few steps toward the sea, and his eyes shone with an extraordinary eagerness, but he made no attempt at all to escape. He was watching the little waves that broke against the islet and came in to die on the sand.
"That's still only the sea," Gédéon Spilett remarked, "and it may not make him want to run off!"
"Yes," replied Cyrus Smith. "We need to take him up to the plateau, to the edge of the forest. There the experiment will tell us more."
"Anyway, he can't get away," Nab pointed out, "since the bridges are raised."
"Oh!" said Pencroff. "As if a man like that would let a little stream like Glycerin Creek stand in his way! He'd be across it in no time — in a single jump, even!"
"We'll see," was all Cyrus Smith answered, and his eyes never left his patient's.
The stranger was then led toward the mouth of the Mercy, and they all climbed up the left bank of the river and reached Prospect Plateau.
When he came to the spot where the first fine trees of the forest grew, their leaves stirring lightly in the breeze, the stranger seemed to drink in, intoxicated, the deep fragrance that filled the air, and a long sigh broke from his chest!
The colonists stayed back, ready to hold him if he made a move to escape!
And in fact the poor creature was on the point of leaping into the creek that separated him from the forest. For an instant his legs tensed like a spring... But almost at once he drew back into himself, he half sank to the ground, and a large tear rolled from his eyes!
"Ah!" cried Cyrus Smith. "So you've become a man again, since you're weeping!"
A mystery to clear up — The stranger's first words — Twelve years on the islet! — Confessions that slip out — The disappearance — Cyrus Smith's confidence — Building a mill — The first bread — An act of devotion — Honest hands!
Yes! The poor wretch had wept! Some memory, no doubt, had passed through his mind, and, as Cyrus Smith put it, he had become a man again through his tears.
The colonists left him on the plateau for a while, and even moved a little way off, so that he would feel free. But he gave no thought at all to taking advantage of that freedom, and Cyrus Smith soon decided to bring him back to Granite House.
Two days after this scene, the stranger seemed to want to join little by little in the life they all shared. It was obvious that he heard and that he understood, but no less obvious that he was strangely stubborn about not speaking to the colonists. For one evening Pencroff, listening at the door of his room, heard these words escape his lips:
"No! Here! Me! Never!"
The sailor reported the words to his companions.
"There's some painful mystery here!" said Cyrus Smith.
The stranger had begun to use the farm tools, and he was working in the vegetable garden. When he stopped work, which happened often, he would stay as if withdrawn into himself; but on the engineer's advice the others respected the solitude he seemed to want to keep. If one of the colonists came near him, he drew back, and sobs heaved his chest, as if it were too full!
Was it remorse, then, that weighed on him so heavily? One might well think so, and one day Gédéon Spilett could not help making this remark:
"If he doesn't speak, I think it's because he would have things too serious to say!"
They had to be patient and wait.
A few days later, on November 3, the stranger was working on the plateau when he stopped and let his spade drop to the ground. Cyrus Smith, who was watching him from a short distance, saw tears running from his eyes once again. A kind of irresistible pity drew him over, and he touched the man's arm lightly.
"My friend?" he said.
The stranger's eyes tried to avoid his, and when Cyrus Smith tried to take his hand, he drew back sharply.
"My friend," said Cyrus Smith in a firmer voice, "look at me. I want you to!"
The stranger looked at the engineer and seemed to come under his power, like a mesmerized subject under the spell of his mesmerist. He wanted to run away. But then a kind of transformation came over his face. His eyes flashed like lightning. Words were struggling to break from his lips. He could not hold them back any longer!... At last he folded his arms, and then, in a hollow voice:
"Who are you?" he asked Cyrus Smith.
"Castaways like you," answered the engineer, who was deeply moved. "We've brought you here, among your fellow men."
"My fellow men!... I have none!"
"You're among friends..."
"Friends!... For me! Friends!" cried the stranger, hiding his head in his hands. "No... never... leave me alone! Leave me alone!"
Then he fled toward the side of the plateau that overlooked the sea, and there he stayed a long time without moving.
Cyrus Smith had rejoined his companions and was telling them what had just happened.
"Yes! There's a mystery in this man's life," said Gédéon Spilett, "and it seems the only road by which he has come back to humanity is remorse."
"I don't really know what kind of man we've brought back here," said the sailor. "He has secrets..."
"Which we'll respect," Cyrus Smith answered quickly. "If he has done some wrong, he has paid for it cruelly, and in our eyes he is forgiven."
For two hours the stranger stayed alone on the beach, plainly in the grip of memories that were bringing his whole past back to him — a dark past, no doubt — and the colonists, without letting him out of their sight, made no attempt to disturb his solitude.
After those two hours, however, he seemed to have come to a decision, and he came to find Cyrus Smith. His eyes were red from the tears he had shed, but he was no longer weeping. His whole face bore the mark of deep humility. He seemed fearful and ashamed, as though he were trying to make himself as small as possible, and his eyes stayed fixed on the ground.
"Sir," he said to Cyrus Smith, "you and your companions — are you English?"
"No," answered the engineer. "We're Americans."
"Ah!" said the stranger, and he murmured these words:
"I'd rather that!"
"And you, my friend?" asked the engineer.
"English," he answered hurriedly.
And as if those few words had cost him a great deal to say, he walked away from the shore and paced the beach from the waterfall to the mouth of the Mercy, in a state of extreme agitation.
Then, passing close to Harbert at one point, he stopped, and in a choked voice:
"What month?" he asked him.
"December," answered Harbert.
"What year?"
"1866."
"Twelve years! Twelve years!" he cried. Then he left the boy abruptly.
Harbert reported the questions and his answers to the colonists.
"That unhappy man," Gédéon Spilett observed, "had lost track of the months and the years!"
"Yes!" Harbert added. "And he had already been on the islet for twelve years when we found him there!"
"Twelve years!" answered Cyrus Smith. "Ah! Twelve years alone, after a life that was cursed, perhaps, could easily unsettle a man's reason!"
"I'm inclined to believe," Pencroff said then, "that this man didn't land on Tabor Island by shipwreck at all, but that he was left there as punishment for some crime."
"You must be right, Pencroff," replied the reporter, "and if that's so, it isn't impossible that the people who left him on the island will come back to fetch him one day!"
"And they won't find him anymore," said Harbert.
"But then," Pencroff went on, "we'd have to go back, and..."
"My friends," said Cyrus Smith, "let's not take up that question until we know where we stand. I believe this unhappy man has suffered, that he has paid hard for his wrongs, whatever they may be, and that the need to unburden himself is choking him. Let's not push him to tell us his story! He'll tell it to us, no doubt, and when we've heard it we'll see what course to take. Besides, only he can tell us whether he had something more than hope — whether he was certain of being taken home one day. But I doubt it!"
"And why?" asked the reporter.
"Because if he'd been sure of being rescued within a fixed time, he would have waited for the hour of his rescue and would not have thrown that document into the sea. No, it's more likely that he was condemned to die on that islet and was never to see his fellow men again!"
"But," the sailor observed, "there's one thing I can't explain."
"What's that?"
"If this man was abandoned on Tabor Island twelve years ago, we can easily suppose he'd already been for several years in the wild state we found him in!"
"That's likely," answered Cyrus Smith.
"So, as a consequence, it would be several years since he wrote that document!"
"No doubt... and yet the document looked as if it had been written recently!..."
"Besides, how can we believe that the bottle holding the document took several years to get from Tabor Island to Lincoln Island?"
"It isn't absolutely impossible," answered the reporter. "Couldn't it have been in the waters around the island for a long time already?"
"No," answered Pencroff, "because it was still floating. And we can't even suppose that after lying on the shore for some length of time it could have been carried off by the sea again, because it's all rocks along the south coast, and it would certainly have been smashed there!"
"That's true," answered Cyrus Smith, and he stood lost in thought.
"And then," the sailor added, "if the document was several years old, if it had been shut up in that bottle for several years, the damp would have spoiled it. But nothing of the kind — it was in a perfect state of preservation."
The sailor's observation was perfectly sound, and there was something incomprehensible here, for the document had seemed freshly written when the colonists found it in the bottle. What was more, it gave the position of Tabor Island precisely in latitude and longitude, and that implied that its author had a fairly thorough knowledge of hydrography — the science of charting the seas — which a simple sailor could not have had.
"Here again there is something inexplicable," said the engineer, "but let's not push our new companion to talk. When he wants to, my friends, we'll be ready to listen!"
During the days that followed, the stranger did not say a single word, and he did not once leave the bounds of the plateau. He worked the soil without losing an instant and without taking a moment's rest, but always apart from the others. At mealtimes he did not come up to Granite House, though he had been invited again and again, and he was content to eat a few raw vegetables. When night came he did not go back to the room that had been given to him, but stayed out there, under some clump of trees, or, when the weather was bad, huddled in some hollow in the rocks. He was still living, in other words, as he had in the days when the forests of Tabor Island were his only shelter. Since every effort to persuade him to change his way of life had failed, the colonists waited patiently. But the moment was finally coming when, driven by his conscience, irresistibly and almost against his will, he would let terrible confessions slip out.
On November 10, at about eight o'clock in the evening, just as darkness was beginning to fall, the stranger suddenly appeared in front of the colonists, who were gathered on the veranda. His eyes were shining strangely, and his whole person had taken on once more the wild look of the bad days.
Cyrus Smith and his companions were stunned to see that, in the grip of some terrible emotion, his teeth were chattering like a man in a fever. What was wrong with him? Was the sight of his fellow men unbearable to him? Had he had enough of this life among honest people? Was he homesick for his brutish state? They had to think so when they heard him pour out these broken sentences:
"Why am I here?... What right did you have to drag me away from my islet?... Can there be any bond between you and me?... Do you know who I am... what I've done... why I was out there... alone? And who told you I wasn't abandoned there... that I wasn't condemned to die there?... Do you know my past?... Do you know whether I haven't robbed, murdered... whether I'm not a wretch... a cursed creature... fit only to live like a wild beast... far from everyone... tell me... do you know?"
The colonists listened without interrupting the wretched man, from whom these half-confessions were escaping almost in spite of himself. Cyrus Smith tried to calm him by going up to him, but he drew back sharply.
"No! No!" he cried. "Just one word... Am I free?"
"You're free," answered the engineer.
"Then goodbye!" he cried, and he fled like a madman.
Nab, Pencroff and Harbert ran at once toward the edge of the woods... but they came back alone.
"We must let him go!" said Cyrus Smith.
"He'll never come back..." cried Pencroff.
"He'll come back," answered the engineer.
And many days went by after that; but Cyrus Smith — was it a kind of presentiment? — held stubbornly to the unshakable idea that the unhappy man would come back sooner or later.
"It's the last revolt of a rough nature," he would say, "one that remorse has touched, and that a new solitude would terrify."
Meanwhile work of every kind went on, both on Prospect Plateau and at the corral, where Cyrus Smith meant to build a farm. It goes without saying that the seeds Harbert had collected on Tabor Island had been carefully sown. The plateau was now one vast vegetable garden, well laid out and well tended, and it kept the colonists' arms busy. There was always work to do there. As the vegetables multiplied, the simple beds had had to be enlarged, and they were turning into real fields and taking the place of the meadows. But there was plenty of fodder in other parts of the island, and the onaggas need never fear being put on short rations. Besides, it was better to turn Prospect Plateau, defended by its deep belt of creeks, into a vegetable garden, and to move the meadows outside, since they had no need of protection against raids by the four-handed creatures and the four-footed ones.
On November 15 they brought in the third harvest. Here was a field that had grown in size in the eighteen months since the first grain of wheat was sown! The second crop, of six hundred thousand grains, yielded this time four thousand bushels — more than five hundred million grains! The colony was rich in wheat, for sowing ten bushels or so was enough to make sure of a harvest every year that would feed everyone, men and animals alike.
So the harvest was gathered in, and the last two weeks of November were given over to the work of breadmaking.
For they had the grain, but not the flour, and a mill had to be set up. Cyrus Smith could have used the second waterfall that poured down into the Mercy to drive his machinery, since the first was already busy working the hammers of the fulling mill. But after some discussion they decided to put up a simple windmill on the heights of Prospect Plateau. Building the one would be no harder than building the other, and they could be sure, besides, that there would be no lack of wind on that plateau, open as it was to the breezes off the sea.
"Not to mention," said Pencroff, "that a windmill will be more cheerful, and look fine in the landscape!"
So they set to work, choosing timber for the body of the mill and its machinery. Some big blocks of sandstone that lay at the north end of the lake could easily be made into millstones, and as for the sails, the inexhaustible envelope of the balloon would supply the canvas they needed.
Cyrus Smith drew up the plans, and they chose a site for the mill a little to the right of the poultry yard, near the lakeshore. The whole body of the mill was to rest on a pivot held in heavy timbers, so that it could turn, with all the machinery inside it, to face whichever way the wind asked.
The work went quickly. Nab and Pencroff had become very skillful carpenters and had only to follow the patterns the engineer gave them. And so a kind of cylindrical sentry box — a real pepper pot of a thing — topped with a pointed roof, soon rose on the chosen spot. The four frames that made up the sails had been firmly set into the windshaft — the main axle the sails turn — at a certain angle to it, and they were fastened with iron pins. As for the various parts of the machinery inside, they were made without any trouble: the casing to hold the two millstones, the stationary bedstone and the turning runner stone; the hopper, a sort of big square trough, wide at the top and narrow at the bottom, which would let the grain fall onto the stones; the rocking spout that regulates the flow of grain, which its endless tick-tack has earned the nickname of "the chatterbox"; and finally the bolter, which sifts the flour and separates the bran from it. The tools were good, and the work was not very hard, for when all is said and done the working parts of a mill are very simple. It was only a question of time.
Everyone had worked on building the mill, and on December 1 it was finished.
As always, Pencroff was delighted with his work, and he had no doubt the machine was perfect.
"Now for a good wind," he said, "and we'll grind our first harvest in fine style!"
"A good wind, by all means," answered the engineer, "but not too much wind, Pencroff."
"Bah! Our mill will only turn the faster!"
"There's no need for it to turn so fast," replied Cyrus Smith. "We know from experience that a mill does the most work when the number of turns its sails make in a minute is six times the number of feet the wind travels in a second. With an average breeze, which moves twenty-four feet a second, the sails will make sixteen turns a minute, and that's all we need."
"Just right!" cried Harbert. "There's a nice breeze blowing from the northeast that will suit us perfectly!"
There was no reason to put off opening the mill, for the colonists were eager to taste the first piece of bread on Lincoln Island. So that very morning two or three bushels of wheat were ground, and the next day at breakfast a magnificent loaf — a little heavy, perhaps, though it had been raised with brewer's yeast — stood on the table at Granite House. Everyone bit into it with a will, and with what pleasure, you can easily imagine!
Still the stranger had not reappeared. Several times Gédéon Spilett and Harbert had searched the forest around Granite House without meeting him or finding any trace of him. They were seriously worried by this long disappearance. Certainly the former wild man of Tabor Island would have no trouble living in the Far West forests, so full of game. But wasn't there reason to fear that he would fall back into his old habits, and that this freedom would rekindle his wild instincts? Cyrus Smith, however, by some kind of presentiment no doubt, still kept saying that the runaway would come back.
"Yes, he'll come back!" he repeated, with a confidence his companions could not share. "When this unhappy man was on Tabor Island, he knew he was alone! Here, he knows his fellow men are waiting for him! Since he has half told us about his past life, this poor penitent, he'll come back to tell all of it, and on that day he'll be one of us!"
Events were about to prove Cyrus Smith right.
On December 3, Harbert had left Prospect Plateau and gone fishing on the southern shore of the lake. He was unarmed. Until then there had never been any need for precautions, since dangerous animals did not show themselves in that part of the island.
Meanwhile Pencroff and Nab were working in the poultry yard, while Cyrus Smith and the reporter were busy at the Chimneys making soda, since the supply of soap had run out.
Suddenly shouts ring out:
"Help! Help me!"
Cyrus Smith and the reporter were too far away to hear them. Pencroff and Nab, leaving the poultry yard in all haste, had rushed toward the lake.
But before them the stranger, whose presence in that place no one could have suspected, was crossing Glycerin Creek, which separated the plateau from the forest, and leaping onto the opposite bank.
There Harbert stood face to face with a formidable jaguar, like the one that had been killed at Reptile End. Taken completely by surprise, he was standing with his back against a tree, while the animal, crouched and gathered, was about to spring... But the stranger, with no weapon but a knife, hurled himself at the fearsome beast, which turned on this new adversary.
The fight was short. The stranger had tremendous strength and skill. He had seized the jaguar by the throat with a hand as powerful as a pair of shears, not caring whether the beast's claws dug into his flesh, and with the other hand he drove his knife into its heart.
The jaguar fell. The stranger pushed it aside with his foot and was about to run off just as the colonists arrived at the scene of the fight, when Harbert clung to him and cried:
"No! No! You won't go away!"
Cyrus Smith went toward the stranger, whose brows drew together as he saw him approach. Blood was running down his shoulder under his torn jacket, but he paid no attention to it.
"My friend," Cyrus Smith said to him, "we have just come into a debt of gratitude to you. You risked your life to save our boy!"
"My life!" murmured the stranger. "What's it worth? Less than nothing!"
"Are you hurt?"
"It doesn't matter."
"Will you give me your hand?"
And as Harbert tried to take hold of that hand, which had just saved him, the stranger folded his arms, his chest swelled, his eyes clouded over, and he seemed about to flee. But making a violent effort over himself, he said abruptly:
"Who are you? And what do you claim to be to me?"
It was the colonists' story that he was asking for in this way, and for the first time. Perhaps, once that story was told, he would tell his own?
In a few words Cyrus Smith told him everything that had happened since they left Richmond: how they had pulled through, and what resources they now had at their disposal.
The stranger listened with the closest attention.
Then the engineer told him who they all were — Gédéon Spilett, Harbert, Pencroff, Nab, and himself — and he added that the greatest joy they had felt since they arrived on Lincoln Island was when they came back from the islet and could count one more companion among them.
At these words the man flushed, his head sank onto his chest, and his whole person showed how ashamed he was.
"And now that you know us," Cyrus Smith added, "will you give us your hand?"
"No," answered the stranger in a hollow voice. "No! You are honest men, you! And I!..."
Still keeping apart — The stranger's request — The farm set up at the corral — Twelve years ago! — The quartermaster of the Britannia — Abandoned on Tabor Island — Cyrus Smith's hand — The mysterious document
Those last words bore out what the colonists had sensed. There was some dark past in this unhappy man's life, atoned for perhaps in the eyes of men, but one his conscience had not yet absolved him of. In any case, the guilty man felt remorse, he repented, and his new friends would have shaken the hand they asked of him warmly — but he did not feel worthy to hold it out to honest people! Still, after the scene with the jaguar he did not go back to the forest, and from that day on he never again left the grounds of Granite House.
What was the mystery of this man's life? Would the stranger speak one day? Only the future would tell. In any case, they all agreed that his secret would never be asked of him, and that they would live with him as if they suspected nothing.
For some days, then, their life together went on as it had before. Cyrus Smith and Gédéon Spilett worked side by side, chemists one day, physicists the next. The reporter left the engineer only to go hunting with Harbert, for it would not have been wise to let the boy roam the forest alone, and they had to stay on their guard. As for Nab and Pencroff — one day at the stables or the poultry yard, another at the corral, not to mention the work at Granite House — they were never short of things to do.
The stranger worked apart from the others. He had gone back to his usual way of living: he did not come to meals, he slept under the trees of the plateau, he never mixed with his companions. It really seemed as though the company of the men who had saved him was more than he could bear!
"But then," Pencroff would point out, "why did he ask other people for help? Why did he throw that document into the sea?"
"He'll tell us," Cyrus Smith always answered.
"When?"
"Sooner, perhaps, than you think, Pencroff."
And in fact the day of confession was near.
On December 10, a week after his return to Granite House, Cyrus Smith saw the stranger coming toward him. In a calm voice and a humble tone, the man said:
"Sir, I have something to ask of you."
"Go ahead," replied the engineer. "But first, let me ask you something."
At these words the stranger flushed and was on the point of turning away. Cyrus Smith understood what was going on in the guilty man's soul: no doubt he was afraid the engineer meant to question him about his past!
Cyrus Smith held him back with his hand.
"Comrade," he said, "we're not just your companions here. We're your friends. I wanted to tell you that. And now I'm listening."
The stranger passed his hand over his eyes. A kind of trembling had come over him, and for some moments he could not get a word out.
"Sir," he said at last, "I've come to ask you a favor."
"What is it?"
"Four or five miles from here, at the foot of the mountain, you have a corral for your livestock. Those animals need looking after. Will you let me live out there with them?"
For some moments Cyrus Smith looked at the unfortunate man with deep compassion. Then:
"My friend," he said, "the corral has nothing but stables, hardly fit for the animals..."
"It will be good enough for me, sir."
"My friend," Cyrus Smith went on, "we'll never stand in your way in anything. You'd like to live at the corral. Very well. You'll always be welcome at Granite House, of course. But since you want to live at the corral, we'll make the arrangements needed for you to be properly settled there."
"Any way at all, I'll be fine there."
"My friend," answered Cyrus Smith, who was leaning on that warm word on purpose, "you'll let us be the judges of what we ought to do about that!"
"Thank you, sir," the stranger answered, and he withdrew.
The engineer at once told his companions about the request that had been made to him, and they decided to build a wooden house at the corral and make it as comfortable as they could.
That very day the colonists went to the corral with the tools they would need, and before the week was out the house was ready to receive its occupant. It had been put up about twenty feet from the stables, and from there it would be easy to keep an eye on the flock of mouflons, which by then numbered more than eighty head. A few pieces of furniture were made — a bunk, a table, a bench, a cupboard, a chest — and weapons, ammunition and tools were carried out to the corral.
The stranger, for his part, had not gone to look at his new home. He had let the colonists work on it without him while he kept busy on the plateau, no doubt wanting to put the finishing touches to his own task. And in fact, thanks to him, all the fields had been plowed and were ready to be sown as soon as the time came.
The house at the corral was finished on December 20. The engineer told the stranger that his new home was ready for him, and the man replied that he would go and sleep there that very evening.
That evening the colonists were gathered in the great hall of Granite House. It was eight o'clock — the hour when their companion was to leave them. Not wanting to embarrass him by forcing on him, with their presence, a farewell that might have cost him dearly, they had left him alone and gone back up to Granite House.
They had been talking in the great hall for a few minutes when there came a light knock at the door. Almost at once the stranger came in, and without any preamble he said:
"Gentlemen, before I leave you, it's right that you should know my story. Here it is."
These simple words made a very deep impression on Cyrus Smith and his companions.
The engineer had risen to his feet.
"We ask nothing of you, my friend," he said. "It's your right to keep silent..."
"It's my duty to speak."
"Then sit down."
"I'll stay standing."
"We're ready to hear you," replied Cyrus Smith.
The stranger stood in a corner of the room, half sheltered by the shadows. He was bareheaded, his arms folded across his chest, and it was in that posture that, in a low, muffled voice, speaking like someone who is forcing himself to speak, he told the following story. His listeners did not interrupt him once.
"On December 20, 1854, a steam yacht, the Duncan, belonging to a Scottish laird, Lord Glenarvan, dropped anchor off Cape Bernouilli, on the west coast of Australia, at the latitude of the thirty-seventh parallel. On board the yacht were Lord Glenarvan, his wife, a major in the British army, a French geographer, a girl and a boy. These last two were the children of Captain Grant, whose ship, the Britannia, had been lost with all hands a year before. The Duncan was commanded by Captain John Mangles and manned by a crew of fifteen.
"This is why the yacht was off the coast of Australia at that time.
"Six months earlier, a bottle holding a document written in English, German and French had been found in the Irish Sea, picked up by the Duncan. The gist of the document was that there were still three survivors of the wreck of the Britannia — Captain Grant and two of his men — and that they had found refuge on a piece of land. The document gave its latitude, but the longitude had been washed out by the sea water and could no longer be read.
"That latitude was 37° 11′ south. So, with the longitude unknown, anyone who followed the thirty-seventh parallel across continents and seas was certain to reach the land where Captain Grant and his two companions were living.
"The British Admiralty hesitated to undertake the search, so Lord Glenarvan resolved to try everything to find the captain. Mary and Robert Grant had been put in touch with him. The Duncan was fitted out for a long voyage, and Lord Glenarvan's family and the captain's children wanted to take part in it. Leaving Glasgow, the Duncan headed into the Atlantic, rounded the Strait of Magellan, and sailed up the Pacific as far as Patagonia, where, by a first reading of the document, it could be supposed that Captain Grant was a prisoner of the native people.
"The Duncan landed her passengers on the west coast of Patagonia and sailed off to pick them up again on the east coast, at Cape Corrientes.
"Lord Glenarvan crossed Patagonia, following the thirty-seventh parallel, and, having found no trace of the captain, he took ship again on November 13 to carry on his search across the ocean.
"After visiting the islands of Tristan da Cunha and Amsterdam, which lay on his course, without success, the Duncan arrived, as I said, at Cape Bernouilli on the Australian coast on December 20, 1854.
"Lord Glenarvan meant to cross Australia as he had crossed America, and he went ashore. A few miles from the coast there was a farm belonging to an Irishman, who offered the travelers his hospitality. Lord Glenarvan told the Irishman the reasons that had brought him to those parts, and asked him whether he knew of an English three-master, the Britannia, being lost on the west coast of Australia within the last two years.
"The Irishman had never heard of any such wreck. But, to the great surprise of everyone there, one of the Irishman's farmhands broke in and said:
"'My lord, praise God and thank Him. If Captain Grant is still alive, he is alive on Australian soil.'
"'Who are you?' asked Lord Glenarvan.
"'A Scot like yourself, my lord,' the man answered, 'and I'm one of Captain Grant's companions — one of the castaways of the Britannia.'
"This man's name was Ayrton. He was indeed the quartermaster of the Britannia, as his papers showed. But he had been separated from Captain Grant at the moment the ship broke up on the reefs, and until then he had believed that his captain had died with the whole crew, and that he, Ayrton, was the only survivor of the Britannia.
"'Only,' he added, 'it wasn't on the west coast but on the east coast of Australia that the Britannia was lost. And if Captain Grant is still alive, as his document says, he's a prisoner of the Aboriginal people, and it's on the other coast that you have to look for him.'
"As he said this, the man's voice was frank and his gaze was steady. No one could doubt what he said. The Irishman, who had employed him for more than a year, vouched for him. Lord Glenarvan believed in the man's honesty, and on his advice he decided to cross Australia by following the thirty-seventh parallel. Lord Glenarvan, his wife, the two children, the major, the Frenchman, Captain Mangles and a few sailors would make up the little party, with Ayrton as their guide, while the Duncan, under the command of her first mate, Tom Austin, would go on to Melbourne and wait there for Lord Glenarvan's instructions.
"They set off on December 23, 1854.
"It is time to say that this Ayrton was a traitor. He had indeed been the quartermaster of the Britannia. But after quarrels with his captain he had tried to stir up the crew to mutiny and seize the ship, and on April 8, 1852, Captain Grant had put him ashore on the west coast of Australia and sailed off and left him there — which was no more than justice.
"So this wretch knew nothing of the wreck of the Britannia. He had only just learned of it from Glenarvan's account! Since he had been marooned, he had become, under the name of Ben Joyce, the leader of a gang of escaped convicts. And if he insisted so brazenly that the wreck had happened on the east coast, if he urged Lord Glenarvan to set off in that direction, it was because he hoped to separate him from his ship, seize the Duncan, and turn the yacht into a pirate ship of the Pacific."
Here the stranger broke off for a moment. His voice was trembling, but he went on in these words:
"The expedition set off and made its way across Australia. Naturally it was an unlucky one, since Ayrton — or Ben Joyce, whichever you like to call him — was leading it, with his band of convicts sometimes going on ahead of it, sometimes following behind, for they had been told of the blow that was to be struck.
"Meanwhile the Duncan had been sent to Melbourne for repairs. The thing, then, was to get Lord Glenarvan to order her to leave Melbourne and sail to the east coast of Australia, where it would be easy to seize her. Ayrton led the expedition fairly close to that coast, into the middle of vast forests where there was nothing at all to live on. Then he got himself a letter, which he had taken it upon himself to carry to the Duncan's first mate — a letter ordering the yacht to sail at once to the east coast, to Twofold Bay, a few days' journey from where the expedition had halted. That was where Ayrton had arranged to meet his accomplices.
"Just as the letter was about to be handed to him, the traitor was unmasked, and there was nothing left for him but to run. But that letter, which was to deliver the Duncan into his hands, he had to have at any cost. Ayrton managed to get hold of it, and two days later he reached Melbourne.
"Until then the criminal had succeeded in his vile plans. He would be able to bring the Duncan to Twofold Bay, where it would be easy for the convicts to take her, and once her crew had been massacred, Ben Joyce would be master of those seas... God was to stop him just as his evil designs were coming to their end.
"Ayrton reached Melbourne and handed the letter to the first mate, Tom Austin, who read it and set sail at once. But imagine Ayrton's disappointment and rage when, the day after they sailed, he learned that the mate was taking the ship not to the east coast of Australia, to Twofold Bay, but to the east coast of New Zealand! He tried to stop it. Austin showed him the letter!... And in fact, by a providential mistake on the part of the French geographer who had written that letter, the east coast of New Zealand was the destination it named.
"All of Ayrton's plans were falling apart! He tried to stir up a mutiny. They locked him up. And so he was carried off to the coast of New Zealand, with no idea anymore what would become of his accomplices, or what would become of Lord Glenarvan.
"The Duncan stayed cruising off that coast until March 3. That day Ayrton heard the boom of guns. It was the Duncan's carronades firing, and soon Lord Glenarvan and all his party came on board.
"Here is what had happened.
"After a thousand hardships and a thousand dangers, Lord Glenarvan had managed to finish his journey and reach the east coast of Australia, at Twofold Bay. No Duncan! He telegraphed to Melbourne. The answer came back: 'Duncan sailed on the 18th of this month for unknown destination.'
"Lord Glenarvan could think only one thing: that the honest yacht had fallen into the hands of Ben Joyce and had become a pirate ship!
"Even so, Lord Glenarvan would not give up. He was a fearless and generous man. He took passage on a merchant ship, had himself carried to the west coast of New Zealand, and crossed it along the thirty-seventh parallel without finding any trace of Captain Grant. But on the other coast, to his great surprise, and by the will of Heaven, he found the Duncan again, under the command of the first mate, who had been waiting for him for five weeks!
"It was March 3, 1855. Lord Glenarvan was aboard the Duncan, then, but so was Ayrton. He was brought before Lord Glenarvan, who wanted to get out of him everything the bandit might know about Captain Grant. Ayrton refused to speak. Lord Glenarvan then told him that at the first port they put in to, he would be handed over to the British authorities. Ayrton said nothing.
"The Duncan took up her course along the thirty-seventh parallel again. Meanwhile Lady Glenarvan set herself to break down the bandit's resistance. At last her influence won out, and Ayrton, in exchange for whatever he could tell, proposed that Lord Glenarvan maroon him on one of the islands of the Pacific instead of handing him over to the British authorities. Lord Glenarvan, determined to do anything to learn what had become of Captain Grant, agreed.
"Ayrton then told the whole story of his life, and it was established that he knew nothing at all after the day Captain Grant had put him ashore on the Australian coast.
"Nevertheless, Lord Glenarvan kept the promise he had made. The Duncan went on her way and came to Tabor Island. That was where Ayrton was to be left — and it was there too that, by a real miracle, they found Captain Grant and his two men, on that very thirty-seventh parallel. So the convict was to take their place on that deserted islet, and these are the words Lord Glenarvan spoke as Ayrton left the yacht:
"'Here, Ayrton, you will be far from any land, with no possible way of reaching other men. You will not be able to escape from this islet where the Duncan leaves you. You will be alone, under the eye of a God who reads the very depths of men's hearts. But you will not be lost, or forgotten, as Captain Grant was. Unworthy as you are to be remembered by men, men will remember you. I know where you are, Ayrton, and I know where to find you. I will never forget it!'
"And the Duncan set sail and was soon gone from sight.
"It was March 18, 1855.
"Ayrton was alone, but he had no shortage of ammunition, weapons, tools or seeds. At his disposal — his, the convict's — was the house built by honest Captain Grant. He had only to let himself live, and to atone in solitude for the crimes he had committed.
"Gentlemen, he repented. He was ashamed of his crimes, and he was very unhappy! He told himself that if men came back one day to look for him on that islet, he must be worthy of going back among them! How he suffered, the wretch! How he worked to remake himself by work! How he prayed to be made new by prayer!
"For two years, three years, it went on that way. But Ayrton, worn down by solitude, always watching for some ship to appear on the horizon of his island, always asking himself whether the time of his atonement would soon be over, suffered as no one has ever suffered! Ah, how hard that solitude is for a soul eaten away by remorse!
"But no doubt Heaven did not think him punished enough, the unhappy man, for little by little he felt himself becoming a wild man! Little by little he felt himself sinking to the level of a brute! He cannot tell you whether it was after two years of being abandoned or four, but in the end he became the wretched creature you found!
"I don't need to tell you, gentlemen, that Ayrton, or Ben Joyce, and I are one and the same!"
Cyrus Smith and his companions had risen to their feet when the story ended. It is hard to say how deeply they were moved! So much misery, so much pain and despair laid bare in front of them!
"Ayrton," Cyrus Smith said then, "you were a great criminal, but Heaven must surely find that you've atoned for your crimes! It has proved it by bringing you back among your fellow men. Ayrton, you are forgiven! And now, will you be our companion?"
Ayrton had stepped back.
"Here is my hand!" said the engineer.
Ayrton rushed to take the hand Cyrus Smith held out to him, and great tears ran from his eyes.
"Will you live with us?" asked Cyrus Smith.
"Mr. Smith, give me a little more time," Ayrton answered. "Let me stay alone in the house at the corral!"
"As you wish, Ayrton," replied Cyrus Smith.
Ayrton was about to leave when the engineer put one last question to him.
"One more word, my friend. If you meant to live alone, why did you throw into the sea the document that put us on your track?"
"A document?" answered Ayrton, who seemed not to know what he was being asked about.
"Yes, the document sealed in a bottle that we found, which gave the exact position of Tabor Island!"
Ayrton passed his hand across his forehead. Then, after thinking:
"I never threw any document into the sea!" he answered.
"Never?" cried Pencroff.
"Never!"
And Ayrton bowed, went back to the door, and was gone.
Conversation — Cyrus Smith and Gédéon Spilett — An idea of the engineer's — The electric telegraph — The wires — The battery — The alphabet — Fine weather — The colony prospers — Photography — A snow effect — Two years on Lincoln Island
"The poor man!" said Harbert. He had rushed to the door, but he came back after seeing Ayrton slide down the elevator rope and vanish into the darkness.
"He'll come back," said Cyrus Smith.
"Now look here, Mr. Cyrus," cried Pencroff, "what does this mean? What! It wasn't Ayrton who threw that bottle into the sea? Then who on earth was it?"
Certainly, if ever a question needed asking, it was that one!
"It was him," answered Nab. "Only, the poor man was already half out of his mind."
"Yes!" said Harbert. "He didn't know what he was doing anymore."
"That's the only way to explain it, my friends," Cyrus Smith answered quickly. "And now I understand how Ayrton could give the exact position of Tabor Island, since the very events that led up to his being abandoned there had taught it to him."
"All the same," Pencroff pointed out, "if he wasn't a brute yet when he wrote his document, and if it's seven or eight years since he threw it into the sea, how is it the paper wasn't spoiled by the damp?"
"That proves," answered Cyrus Smith, "that Ayrton lost his reason at a much more recent time than he believes."
"It must be so," answered Pencroff. "Otherwise the thing would be inexplicable."
"Inexplicable indeed," answered the engineer, who seemed unwilling to carry the conversation any further.
"But did Ayrton tell the truth?" asked the sailor.
"Yes," answered the reporter. "The story he told is true in every point. I remember very well that the newspapers reported Lord Glenarvan's attempt and the result he obtained."
"Ayrton told the truth," added Cyrus Smith. "Don't doubt it, Pencroff, because the truth was cruel enough to him. A man tells the truth when he accuses himself like that!"
The next day — December 21 — the colonists went down to the beach and climbed up to the plateau, but they found no Ayrton there. During the night Ayrton had gone off to his house at the corral, and the colonists judged it best not to trouble him with their company. Time would no doubt do what encouragement had not been able to do.
So Harbert, Pencroff and Nab went back to their usual occupations. As it happened, that same day the same work brought Cyrus Smith and the reporter together in the workshop at the Chimneys.
"Do you know, my dear Cyrus," said Gédéon Spilett, "that the explanation you gave yesterday about that bottle didn't satisfy me at all? How can anyone believe that the poor wretch could have written that document and thrown that bottle into the sea without keeping the slightest memory of it?"
"Which is why it wasn't he who threw it, my dear Spilett."
"Then you still believe..."
"I believe nothing, I know nothing!" Cyrus Smith answered, cutting the reporter off. "I'm content to file this incident among the ones I haven't been able to explain so far!"
"Really, Cyrus," said Gédéon Spilett, "these things are unbelievable! Your rescue, the chest stranded on the sand, Top's adventures, and now this bottle... Are we never going to get the answer to these riddles?"
"Yes!" the engineer answered sharply. "Yes, even if I have to search this island down to its very bowels!"
"Perhaps chance will give us the key to this mystery!"
"Chance, Spilett! I hardly believe in chance, any more than I believe in mysteries in this world. There's a cause for everything inexplicable that happens here, and I'll find that cause. But in the meantime, let's watch and work."
January came. The year 1867 was beginning. The summer work was pushed ahead steadily. In the days that followed, Harbert and Gédéon Spilett went over toward the corral and were able to see that Ayrton had taken possession of the home that had been prepared for him. He was looking after the large flock entrusted to his care, and he was going to spare his companions the trouble of coming to visit the corral every two or three days. All the same, so as not to leave Ayrton alone for too long, the colonists paid him visits fairly often.
Nor was it a matter of indifference — given certain suspicions that the engineer and Gédéon Spilett shared — that this part of the island should be kept under some sort of watch, and if anything happened, Ayrton would not fail to let the people at Granite House know.
Still, it was possible that something might happen suddenly and need to reach the engineer quickly. And quite apart from anything to do with the mystery of Lincoln Island, plenty of other things might happen that would call for the colonists to act at once: a ship passing in the offing within sight of the west coast, a wreck on the western approaches, a possible landing by pirates, and so on.
So Cyrus Smith decided to put the corral in instant communication with Granite House.
It was on January 10 that he told his companions about his plan.
"Now look here! How are you going to manage that, Mr. Cyrus?" asked Pencroff. "You aren't by any chance thinking of putting in a telegraph?"
"Exactly that," answered the engineer.
"Electric?" cried Harbert.
"Electric," answered Cyrus Smith. "We have everything we need to make a battery. The hardest part will be drawing out the iron wire, but with a drawplate I think we'll manage it."
"Well, after that," the sailor replied, "I'm not giving up hope of seeing us ride on a railroad one of these days!"
So they set to work, beginning with the hardest part — that is, making the wire — because if they failed at that, there would be no point in building the battery and the other equipment.
The iron of Lincoln Island, as we know, was of excellent quality, and so it was very well suited to being drawn out into wire. Cyrus Smith began by making a drawplate. This was a plate of steel pierced with cone-shaped holes of various sizes, which would bring the wire, one hole after another, down to the thinness he wanted. This piece of steel was tempered "to its full hardness," as metalworkers say, and then fixed immovably onto a frame driven solidly into the ground, only a few feet from the great waterfall, whose driving power the engineer was going to put to use once again.
That was where the fulling mill stood. It was not running at the time, but its main shaft, which turned with tremendous force, could be used to draw the wire by winding it around itself.
The operation was a delicate one and took a great deal of care. The iron was first prepared in long, thin rods whose ends had been filed down to a point. Each rod was pushed through the largest hole in the drawplate and pulled through by the main shaft, which wound it up over a length of twenty-five to thirty feet. Then it was unwound and fed in turn through the holes of smaller and smaller diameter! In the end the engineer had wires forty to fifty feet long, which could easily be joined together and strung across the five miles that separated the corral from the grounds of Granite House.
It took only a few days to finish this job. In fact, as soon as the machine was up and running, Cyrus Smith left his companions to work as wire-drawers and turned to making his battery.
What he needed, in this case, was a battery that would give a steady current. As everyone knows, the elements of modern batteries are usually made of retort carbon, zinc and copper. The engineer had no copper at all. In spite of all his searching, he had not found a trace of it on Lincoln Island, and he would have to do without. Retort carbon — that is, the hard graphite left in the retorts of gasworks after the hydrogen has been driven out of the coal — could have been produced, but it would have meant setting up special apparatus, which would have been a big job. As for zinc, you will remember that the chest found at Jetsam Point had been lined with a casing of that metal, which could not have been put to better use than this.
So Cyrus Smith, after thinking it over carefully, decided to build a very simple battery, close to the one Becquerel invented in 1820, in which zinc is the only metal used. As for the other substances, nitric acid and potash, he had all of them at hand.
Here, then, is how this battery was put together. Its effect was to come from the action of the acid and the potash on each other.
A number of glass bottles were made and filled with nitric acid. The engineer sealed each one with a stopper, and through the stopper ran a glass tube. The tube was closed at its lower end, which was meant to dip into the acid, by a plug of clay held in place with a piece of cloth. Into this tube, through its upper end, he then poured a solution of potash, which he had obtained beforehand by burning various plants to ash. In this way the acid and the potash could act on each other through the clay.
Next, Cyrus Smith took two strips of zinc. One was dipped into the nitric acid, the other into the potash solution. At once a current was set up, running from the strip in the bottle to the strip in the tube. When the two strips were connected by a metal wire, the strip in the tube became the positive pole of the apparatus and the strip in the bottle its negative pole. Each bottle, then, produced its own current, and all these currents together would be enough to bring about every effect needed for electric telegraphy.
Such was the ingenious and very simple apparatus that Cyrus Smith built — the apparatus that would let him set up telegraphic communication between Granite House and the corral.
It was on February 6 that they began planting the poles, fitted with glass insulators, that were to carry the wire along the Corral Road. A few days later the wire was strung, ready to carry the electric current at a speed of a hundred thousand kilometers a second, with the earth taking care of bringing it back to its starting point.
Two batteries had been made, one for Granite House and the other for the corral, because if the corral was to communicate with Granite House, it might be just as useful for Granite House to communicate with the corral.
As for the receiver and the transmitter, they were very simple. At both stations the wire was coiled around an electromagnet — that is, a piece of soft iron with a wire wound around it. When the connection was made between the two poles, the current set out from the positive pole, ran along the wire, passed through the electromagnet, which became a magnet for the time being, and returned through the ground to the negative pole. When the current was broken, the electromagnet stopped being a magnet at once. So all that was needed was to place a plate of soft iron in front of the electromagnet. While the current was flowing, the plate was pulled toward it; when the current was broken, the plate fell back. Once he had this movement of the plate, Cyrus Smith could very easily connect it to a needle set on a dial with the letters of the alphabet around its rim, and in that way the two stations could send messages to each other.
The whole thing was completely installed on February 12. That day Cyrus Smith sent the current through the wire, asked whether all was well at the corral, and a few moments later received a satisfactory reply from Ayrton.
Pencroff was beside himself with joy. Every morning and every evening he sent a telegram to the corral, and it never went unanswered.
This way of keeping in touch had two very real advantages. First, it let them make sure Ayrton was at the corral. Second, it kept him from being completely cut off. Besides, Cyrus Smith never let a week go by without going to see him, and Ayrton came to Granite House now and then, where he always found a warm welcome.
So the fine season went by in the usual work. The colony's resources, especially in vegetables and grain, grew from day to day, and the plants brought back from Tabor Island had done perfectly. Prospect Plateau looked very reassuring. The fourth wheat harvest had been splendid, and, as you can well imagine, nobody took it into his head to count whether the four hundred billion grains were all there at the harvest. Pencroff had had the idea of doing it, all the same. But Cyrus Smith told him that even if he managed to count three hundred grains a minute — that is, nine thousand an hour — it would take him about five thousand five hundred years to finish the job, and the good sailor decided he had better give it up.
The weather was magnificent, the temperature very hot during the day. But in the evening the sea breezes came in to cool the burning air and gave the people of Granite House fresh nights. There were a few thunderstorms, though. They did not last long, but they fell on Lincoln Island with extraordinary force. For several hours at a time the lightning never stopped setting the sky ablaze, and the thunder rolled without a pause.
By this time the little colony was extremely prosperous. The residents of the poultry yard were multiplying fast, and the colonists lived off the surplus, since it was becoming urgent to bring the population down to a more reasonable number. The pigs had already had young, and, as you can imagine, looking after these animals took up a large part of Nab's and Pencroff's time. The onaggas, which had produced two pretty foals, were ridden most often by Gédéon Spilett and Harbert, who had become an excellent rider under the reporter's coaching. They were also harnessed to the cart, to haul wood and coal to Granite House, or the various minerals the engineer was using.
Several reconnaissance trips were pushed, during this time, deep into the Far West forests. The explorers could venture there without fear of the heat, because the sun's rays barely got through the thick tangle of branches overhead. In this way they visited the whole left bank of the Mercy, which ran beside the road from the corral to the mouth of Fall River.
But on these excursions the colonists took care to be well armed, because they often met wild boars, very fierce and savage, which had to be fought in earnest.
During this season a fearful war was also waged on the jaguars. Gédéon Spilett had vowed a very special hatred against them, and his pupil Harbert backed him up well. Armed as they were, they hardly feared meeting one of these big cats. Harbert's daring was superb, and the reporter's coolness astonishing. And so some twenty magnificent skins already decorated the great hall of Granite House, and if things went on like this, the jaguars would soon be extinct on the island, which was exactly what the hunters were aiming for.
The engineer sometimes took part in the various reconnaissance trips into the unknown parts of the island, which he observed with close attention. In the thickest parts of those vast woods it was other tracks than animals' that he was looking for, but nothing suspicious ever met his eyes. Neither Top nor Jup, who went with him, gave any sign by the way they behaved that there was anything out of the ordinary. And yet, more than once again, the dog barked at the mouth of the well that the engineer had explored without result.
It was during this time that Gédéon Spilett, with Harbert's help, took several pictures of the most picturesque parts of the island, using the photographic outfit that had been found in the chest and had not been used until then.
The outfit, fitted with a powerful lens, was very complete. The substances needed for making photographs — collodion to prepare the glass plate, silver nitrate to make it sensitive to light, hyposulfate of soda to fix the image once it was taken, ammonium chloride to bathe the paper meant for the positive print, sodium acetate and gold chloride to soak that print in — nothing was missing. Even the papers were there, already treated with chloride. Before laying them in the frame on top of the negatives, all you had to do was soak them for a few minutes in silver nitrate diluted with water.
So in a short time the reporter and his assistant became skilled operators, and they got some quite fine prints of the scenery: the whole island, taken from Prospect Plateau, with Mount Franklin on the horizon; the mouth of the Mercy, so picturesquely framed by its high rocks; the clearing and the corral set against the first slopes of the mountain; the whole curious sweep of Claw Cape, of Jetsam Point, and so on.
The photographers did not forget to take portraits of everyone living on the island, without leaving anyone out.
"It fills the place up," said Pencroff.
And the sailor was delighted to see his likeness, faithfully reproduced, decorating the walls of Granite House, and he liked to stop in front of this exhibition just as he would have stopped at the finest shop windows on Broadway.
But, it must be said, the most successful portrait of all was beyond question Master Jup's. Master Jup had posed with a seriousness impossible to describe, and his picture was so lifelike it seemed about to speak!
"You'd think he was about to pull a face!" cried Pencroff.
And if Master Jup had not been pleased, he would have been very hard to please. But he was pleased, and he gazed at his picture with a sentimental air that let a slight touch of vanity show through.
The great heat of summer ended with the month of March. The weather was sometimes rainy, but the air was still warm. This month of March, which corresponds to September in northern latitudes, was not as fine as they might have hoped. Perhaps it meant an early, harsh winter.
One morning — the 21st — they might even have believed that the first snows had arrived. Harbert had gone early to one of the windows of Granite House, and he called out:
"Look! The islet's covered with snow!"
"Snow, at this time of year?" answered the reporter, who had joined the boy.
Their companions were soon beside them, and they could only agree on one thing: not only the islet but the whole beach at the foot of Granite House was covered with a white layer, spread evenly over the ground.
"It's snow all right!" said Pencroff.
"Or something very like it!" answered Nab.
"But the thermometer reads fifty-eight degrees!" Gédéon Spilett pointed out.
Cyrus Smith looked at the white sheet without giving an opinion, because he truly did not know how to explain this phenomenon, at that time of year and at such a temperature.
"A thousand devils!" cried Pencroff. "Our crops are going to freeze!"
And the sailor was getting ready to go down when the nimble Jup got ahead of him and slid all the way to the ground.
But the orangutan had not yet touched the ground when the enormous layer of snow rose up and scattered into the air in flakes so countless that they veiled the light of the sun for several minutes.
"Birds!" cried Harbert.
They were indeed flocks of seabirds with dazzling white plumage. They had come down by hundreds of thousands on the islet and the shore, and they vanished into the distance, leaving the colonists open-mouthed, as if they had watched a scene change in a fairy play, with summer taking the place of winter before their eyes. Unfortunately, the change had been so sudden that neither the reporter nor the boy managed to bring down one of these birds, and they could not tell what species they were.
A few days later it was March 26, and two years had passed since the castaways of the air had been thrown onto Lincoln Island!
Memories of home — The chances ahead — A plan to survey the island's coasts — Departure on April 16 — Serpentine Peninsula seen from the sea — The basalt of the west coast — Bad weather — Night falls — A new incident
Two years already! And for two years the colonists had had no contact with their fellow human beings! They had no news of the civilized world. They were lost on this island as completely as if they had been on some tiny asteroid of the solar system!
What was happening at home just then? The image of their country was always before their eyes — a country torn apart by civil war when they had left it, and one that the Southern rebellion was perhaps still drenching in blood! It was a great grief to them, and they often talked these things over, though never once doubting that the cause of the North must triumph, for the honor of the American Union.
In those two years not a single ship had passed within sight of the island — or at least not a single sail had been spotted. It was obvious that Lincoln Island lay outside the usual sea routes, and even that it was unknown — as the maps proved, besides — for even without a harbor, its fresh water ought to have drawn ships looking to refill their casks. But the sea around it was always empty, as far as the eye could reach, and the colonists could hardly count on anyone but themselves to get home.
There was, however, one chance of rescue, and that chance was discussed one day in the first week of April by the colonists, who had gathered in the great hall of Granite House.
They had, in fact, been talking about America, about the country where they were born and which they had so little hope of seeing again.
"There's no getting around it," said Gédéon Spilett. "We'll have only one way — just one — of leaving Lincoln Island, and that's to build a ship big enough to stay at sea for a few hundred miles. It seems to me that when you've built a sloop, you can perfectly well build a ship!"
"And when you've been to Tabor Island," Harbert added, "you can perfectly well go to the Tuamotus!"
"I don't say no," replied Pencroff, who always had the deciding voice on matters of the sea. "I don't say no — though going near and going far aren't quite the same thing! If our boat had been threatened by some nasty gale on the trip to Tabor Island, we knew there was a port not too far off one way or the other. But twelve hundred miles to cover is a good long stretch, and the nearest land is at least that far away!"
"If it came to it, Pencroff, wouldn't you try the venture?" asked the reporter.
"I'll try anything anyone likes, Mr. Spilett," the sailor answered, "and you know very well I'm not a man to back down!"
"Remember, too, that there's one more sailor among us now," Nab pointed out.
"Who's that?" asked Pencroff.
"Ayrton."
"That's true," said Harbert.
"If he'd agree to come!" Pencroff observed.
"Come now!" said the reporter. "Do you really think that if Lord Glenarvan's yacht had turned up at Tabor Island while Ayrton was still living there, he would have refused to leave?"
"You're forgetting, my friends," Cyrus Smith said then, "that Ayrton was no longer in his right mind during the last years he spent there. But that isn't the question. What we need to decide is whether we should count the Scottish ship's return among our chances of rescue. Now, Lord Glenarvan promised Ayrton he would come back for him on Tabor Island once he judged that his crimes had been sufficiently paid for, and I believe he will come back."
"Yes," said the reporter, "and I'd add that he'll come back soon, because it's been twelve years since Ayrton was marooned!"
"Well!" answered Pencroff. "I quite agree with you that the lord will come back, and soon too. But where will he put in? At Tabor Island, not at Lincoln Island."
"That's all the more certain," Harbert replied, "because Lincoln Island isn't even on the map."
"So, my friends," the engineer went on, "we must take the necessary steps to make sure that our presence, and Ayrton's, on Lincoln Island is made known on Tabor Island."
"Obviously," the reporter answered, "and nothing could be easier than to leave a notice in that hut which was the home of Captain Grant and of Ayrton — a notice giving our island's position, which Lord Glenarvan or his crew can't fail to find."
"It's a pity, in fact," the sailor observed, "that we forgot to take that precaution on our first trip to Tabor Island."
"And why would we have taken it?" Harbert replied. "We didn't know Ayrton's story at that point. We had no idea that someone was supposed to come looking for him one day, and by the time we did know the story, the season was too far along to let us go back to Tabor Island."
"Yes," said Cyrus Smith, "it was too late, and the crossing must wait until next spring."
"But what if the Scottish yacht comes before then?" said Pencroff.
"That's not likely," answered the engineer, "because Lord Glenarvan wouldn't choose the winter season to venture into these distant seas. Either he has already come back to Tabor Island since Ayrton has been with us — that is, in the last five months — and left again, or he won't come until later, and there will be time enough, as soon as the first fine days of October arrive, to go to Tabor Island and leave a notice there."
"You have to admit," said Nab, "it would be very bad luck if the Duncan had turned up in these seas only in the last few months!"
"I hope that isn't the case," replied Cyrus Smith, "and that Heaven hasn't taken away the best chance we have left!"
"I think," the reporter remarked, "that in any case we'll know where we stand once we've been back to Tabor Island, because if the Scots have returned there, they're bound to have left some traces of their visit."
"That's obvious," answered the engineer. "So then, my friends, since we have this chance of getting home, let us wait patiently, and if it's taken from us, we'll see then what we ought to do."
"In any case," said Pencroff, "it's understood that if we do leave Lincoln Island one way or another, it won't be because we're unhappy here!"
"No, Pencroff," answered the engineer. "It will be because here we are far from everything a man should hold dearest in the world — his family, his friends, the country where he was born!"
With matters settled that way, there was no more talk of building a ship big enough to risk the voyage, either north to the island groups or west to New Zealand, and they went about nothing but their usual tasks in preparation for a third winter at Granite House.
It was also decided, however, that before the bad weather came the boat would be used for a voyage around the island. The full survey of the coasts was not yet finished. The colonists had only a rough idea of the shoreline to the west and the north, from the mouth of Fall River all the way to the Mandible Capes, and no better idea of the narrow bay that cut in between those capes like the jaws of a shark.
The plan for this excursion was put forward by Pencroff, and Cyrus Smith gave it his full approval, because he wanted to see that whole part of his domain for himself.
The weather was changeable at the time, but the barometer was not making any sudden swings, so they could count on weather they could handle. As it happened, during the first week of April, after a sharp drop of the barometer, its rise again was announced by a strong wind from the west that lasted five or six days. Then the needle of the instrument settled again at a height of twenty-nine and nine-tenths inches, and conditions seemed right for the exploration.
The day of departure was set for April 16, and the Bonadventure, moored at Balloon Harbor, was stocked with supplies for a voyage that might last some time.
Cyrus Smith told Ayrton about the planned expedition and invited him to take part. But Ayrton preferred to stay on land, so it was decided that he would come to Granite House while his companions were away. Master Jup was to keep him company, and raised no objection whatever.
On the morning of April 16 all the colonists, with Top, were on board. The wind was blowing from the southwest, a fine breeze, and on leaving Balloon Harbor the Bonadventure had to tack back and forth to reach Reptile End. Of the ninety miles that made up the island's perimeter, the south coast accounted for some twenty, from the harbor to the headland. Hence the need to make those twenty miles sailing as close to the wind as she could, since the wind was dead ahead.
It took no less than the whole day to reach the headland, because when the boat left harbor she found only two more hours of ebb tide and then, against her, six hours of flood tide, which were very hard to make headway against. So night had fallen by the time they rounded the headland.
Pencroff then suggested to the engineer that they keep going at low speed, with two reefs in the sail. But Cyrus Smith preferred to anchor a few cable lengths offshore, so as to see this part of the coast again by daylight. It was even agreed that, since the point was a careful survey of the island's shoreline, they would not sail at night, and that when evening came they would drop anchor close to land, as long as the weather allowed.
So the night was spent at anchor in the lee of the headland, and since the wind had died down along with the mist, nothing broke the silence. The passengers, except the sailor, may have slept a little less well aboard the Bonadventure than they would have in their rooms at Granite House — but sleep they did.
The next day, April 17, Pencroff got under way at first light. On a broad reach, with the wind on the port side, he was able to run very close along the west coast.
The colonists knew this wooded and magnificent coast, since they had already walked along its edge, and yet it roused all their admiration once again. They hugged the land as closely as they could, slowing down so as to take everything in, and only taking care not to strike the tree trunks that floated here and there. Several times they even dropped anchor, and Gédéon Spilett took photographs of that superb shoreline.
Toward noon the Bonadventure reached the mouth of Fall River. Beyond it, on the right bank, the trees appeared again, but more thinly scattered, and three miles farther on they formed nothing but isolated clumps among the western spurs of the mountain, whose barren backbone stretched all the way to the shore.
What a contrast between the southern and the northern parts of this coast! The one was as wooded and green as the other was harsh and wild! It looked like one of those "iron coasts," as they are called in some countries, and its tortured structure seemed to show that a true crystallization had suddenly taken place in basalt that was still boiling in the geological ages. It was a terrible-looking heap, which would have struck terror into the colonists at the outset if chance had cast them up on this part of the island! When they were on the summit of Mount Franklin, they had not been able to make out how deeply sinister this shore looked, because they had seen it from too high above. But seen from the sea, this coastline had a strangeness to it whose equal could perhaps be found in no other corner of the world.
The Bonadventure passed along this coast, keeping half a mile off. It was easy to see that it was made of blocks of every size, from twenty feet to three hundred feet high, and of every shape: cylindrical like towers, prismatic like steeples, pyramidal like obelisks, conical like factory chimneys. An ice field in the polar seas could not have been piled up more fantastically in its sublime horror! Here, bridges flung from one rock to the next; there, arches set out like those of a cathedral nave, so deep the eye could not reach their end; in one place, broad hollows whose vaulted roofs looked like great monuments; in another, a real crowd of points, of little pyramids, of spires, more than any Gothic cathedral has ever had. All the whims of nature, more varied even than those of the imagination, shaped this grandiose shoreline, which ran on for eight or nine miles.
Cyrus Smith and his companions gazed at it with a surprise that came close to stupefaction. But if they were struck dumb, Top was not shy about letting out barks that were echoed back a thousand times by the basalt wall. The engineer even noticed that these barks had something odd about them, like the ones the dog gave at the mouth of the well in Granite House.
"Let's go in closer," he said.
And the Bonadventure came and skimmed as near as she could to the rocks of the shore. Perhaps there was some cave there that ought to be explored? But Cyrus Smith saw nothing — not a cavern, not a crevice that could have served as a hiding place for any creature at all, for the foot of the rocks was washed by the surf itself. Soon Top stopped barking, and the boat drew off again to a few cable lengths from the shore.
In the northwestern part of the island the shore became flat and sandy once more. A few scattered trees stood out above a low, marshy stretch of land that the colonists had glimpsed before, and, in violent contrast with the other, so lifeless coast, life now showed itself in myriads of water birds.
That evening the Bonadventure anchored in a slight inlet of the shore on the north side of the island, close to land, since the water was so deep there. The night passed peacefully, because the breeze died away, so to speak, with the last glimmers of daylight, and rose again only with the first tints of dawn.
As it was easy to get ashore that morning, the colony's official hunters — that is, Harbert and Gédéon Spilett — went off for a two-hour walk and came back with several strings of ducks and snipe. Top had done wonders, and not a single bird had been lost, thanks to his zeal and skill.
At eight in the morning the Bonadventure got under way and ran along very fast, heading north toward North Mandible Cape, for the wind was right behind her and the breeze was tending to freshen.
"Anyhow," said Pencroff, "I wouldn't be surprised if some westerly gale was brewing. Yesterday the sun set on a very red horizon, and this morning here are 'cats' tails,' which mean no good."
These cats' tails were wispy cirrus clouds scattered across the zenith, and they are never less than five thousand feet above sea level. They looked like light tufts of cotton wool, and their presence usually announces some coming disturbance in the elements.
"Well then," said Cyrus Smith, "let's carry as much sail as we can and go and look for shelter in Shark Gulf. I think the Bonadventure will be safe there."
"Exactly," Pencroff answered, "and besides, the north coast is nothing but dunes, not very interesting to look at."
"I wouldn't be sorry," the engineer added, "to spend not only the night but tomorrow as well in that bay. It deserves to be explored carefully."
"I think we'll be forced to, whether we like it or not," answered Pencroff, "because the horizon's starting to look threatening out to the west. Look how dirty it's getting!"
"In any case, we have a good wind to reach Mandible Cape," the reporter remarked.
"A very good wind," replied the sailor. "But to get into the gulf we'll have to tack, and I'd very much like to be able to see clearly in waters I don't know!"
"Waters that must be strewn with reefs," Harbert added, "if we judge by what we've seen on the south shore of Shark Gulf."
"Pencroff," Cyrus Smith said then, "do whatever you think best. We leave it to you."
"Don't worry, Mr. Cyrus," the sailor answered. "I won't take any risks I don't have to! I'd sooner have a knife in my belly than a rock in my Bonadventure's!"
What Pencroff called the belly was the part of his boat's hull that lay underwater, and he cared more about it than about his own skin!
"What time is it?" asked Pencroff.
"Ten o'clock," Gédéon Spilett answered.
"And how far do we have to go to the cape, Mr. Cyrus?"
"About fifteen miles," the engineer replied.
"That's a matter of two and a half hours," said the sailor, "and we'll be abreast of the cape between noon and one o'clock. Unfortunately, the tide will turn just then, and the ebb will be running out of the gulf. So I'm very much afraid it'll be hard to get in, with both wind and sea against us."
"All the more so because it's full moon today," Harbert observed, "and these April tides are very strong."
"Well, Pencroff," asked Cyrus Smith, "can't you anchor off the tip of the cape?"
"Anchor close to land, with bad weather on the way!" cried the sailor. "Are you serious, Mr. Cyrus? That would be running ourselves aground on purpose!"
"Then what will you do?"
"I'll try to stay out at sea until the flood tide — that is, until seven o'clock this evening — and if there's still a little daylight, I'll try to get into the gulf. If not, we'll stay out tacking back and forth all night, and go in tomorrow at sunrise."
"As I told you, Pencroff, we leave it to you," replied Cyrus Smith.
"Ah!" said Pencroff. "If only there were a lighthouse on this coast, it'd make things easier for sailors!"
"Yes," answered Harbert, "and this time we won't have an obliging engineer to light a fire to guide us into port!"
"Why, that's right, my dear Cyrus," said Gédéon Spilett. "We've never thanked you. But honestly, without that fire we could never have reached..."
"A fire...?" asked Cyrus Smith, greatly astonished at the reporter's words.
"What we mean, Mr. Cyrus," answered Pencroff, "is that we were in real trouble aboard the Bonadventure during the last hours before we got back, and we'd have passed the island on its leeward side if you hadn't taken the precaution of lighting a fire on the night of October 19 to 20, on the plateau above Granite House."
"Yes, yes!... That was a lucky idea I had!" the engineer replied.
"And this time," the sailor added, "unless Ayrton thinks of it, there'll be nobody to do us that little favor!"
"No! Nobody!" answered Cyrus Smith.
And a few moments later, finding himself alone with the reporter in the bow of the boat, the engineer leaned close to his ear and said:
"If there is one thing certain in this world, Spilett, it is that I never lit a fire on the night of October 19 to 20 — not on the plateau above Granite House, and not anywhere else on the island!"
The night at sea — Shark Gulf — Confidences — Preparations for winter — The bad season comes early — Great cold — Work indoors — After six months — A photographic plate — An unexpected incident
Things turned out just as Pencroff had foreseen, for his hunches could not be wrong. The wind freshened, and from a good breeze it rose to a gale — that is, it reached a speed of forty to forty-five miles an hour, the kind of wind in which a ship at sea would have been down to close-reefed topsails, with her topgallant masts struck. Now, it was about six o'clock when the Bonadventure came abreast of the gulf, and at that moment the ebb was running, so it was impossible to get in. They had no choice but to stand off from the land, for even if he had wanted to, Pencroff could not have reached the mouth of the Mercy either. So he rigged his jib on the mast as a storm sail, and he waited, keeping her head toward the shore.
Very fortunately, though the wind was very strong, the sea, sheltered by the coast, did not build up much. So there was no need to dread the heavy seas that break aboard, which are a great danger to small boats. The Bonadventure would no doubt not have capsized, for she was well ballasted; but huge masses of water crashing onto her deck could have put her in danger if the hatches had given way. Pencroff, skilled sailor that he was, was ready for anything. Certainly he had enormous confidence in his boat, but he waited for daylight with a certain anxiety all the same.
During that night Cyrus Smith and Gédéon Spilett had no chance to talk together, and yet the sentence the engineer had spoken into the reporter's ear was well worth one more discussion of that mysterious influence which seemed to rule over Lincoln Island. Gédéon Spilett could not stop thinking about this new and inexplicable incident, about this fire that had appeared on the coast of the island. He had really seen that fire! His companions, Harbert and Pencroff, had seen it just as he had! That fire had shown them where the island lay on that dark night, and they had never doubted that it was the engineer's hand that had lit it. And now here was Cyrus Smith declaring flatly that he had done nothing of the kind!
Gédéon Spilett promised himself that he would come back to this incident as soon as the Bonadventure was home again, and that he would urge Cyrus Smith to tell their companions about these strange events. Perhaps then they would decide to make, all together, a complete search of every part of Lincoln Island.
Be that as it may, no fire was lit that evening on those still-unknown shores that formed the entrance of the gulf, and the little boat went on standing off the land all night long.
When the first gleams of dawn began to show on the eastern horizon, the wind, which had eased a little, shifted two points and let Pencroff run more easily into the narrow entrance of the gulf. At about seven o'clock in the morning, the Bonadventure, having borne away toward North Mandible Cape, carefully entered the passage and ventured out onto those waters, which were shut in by the strangest frame of lava.
"Now there," said Pencroff, "is a stretch of sea that would make a wonderful anchorage, where whole fleets could maneuver at their ease!"
"What's especially curious," Cyrus Smith observed, "is that this gulf was formed by two flows of lava, thrown out by the volcano and piled up by one eruption after another. The result is that the gulf is completely sheltered on every side, and it's likely that even in the worst winds the sea in here is as calm as a lake."
"No doubt," the sailor went on, "since the only way the wind can get in is through that narrow gap between the two capes, and even then the north cape covers the south one, so it's very hard for a squall to get in. Honestly, our Bonadventure could stay in here from one end of the year to the other without even straining at her anchors!"
"It's a bit big for her!" the reporter pointed out.
"Ah, Mr. Spilett," replied the sailor, "I grant you it's too big for the Bonadventure. But if the fleets of the Union ever need a safe shelter in the Pacific, I don't believe they'll ever find a better anchorage than this one!"
"We're in the Shark's jaws," Nab remarked then, alluding to the shape of the gulf.
"Right inside its jaws, my good Nab!" replied Harbert. "But you're not afraid they'll snap shut on us, are you?"
"No, Mr. Harbert," replied Nab, "and yet I don't much like this gulf! It has a wicked look about it!"
"Well, now!" cried Pencroff. "Here's Nab running down my gulf, just when I'm thinking of making a present of it to America!"
"But are the waters deep, at least?" asked the engineer. "Because what's enough for the Bonadventure's keel wouldn't be enough for our ironclads."
"Easy to check," replied Pencroff.
And the sailor let down a long rope that served him as a sounding line, with a block of iron tied to the end of it. The line measured about fifty fathoms, and it ran out to the very end without touching bottom.
"There we are," said Pencroff. "Our ships can come in here! They won't run aground!"
"Indeed," said Cyrus Smith, "this gulf is a real abyss. But considering the volcanic origin of the island, it's not surprising that the sea floor should have hollows like this."
"It looks, too," Harbert observed, "as though these walls had been cut straight down. I really believe that at their foot, even with a line five or six times as long, Pencroff wouldn't find bottom."
"That's all very well," the reporter said then, "but I'll point out to Pencroff that his anchorage is missing one important thing!"
"And what's that, Mr. Spilett?"
"A gap, a cutting of some kind, that gives a way into the interior of the island. I can't see a single spot where anyone could set foot!"
And in fact the high lava walls, very steep, offered not one place along the whole edge of the gulf where a landing could be made. It was an impassable rampart, like the fjords of Norway, only more barren still. The Bonadventure, skimming so close along those high walls that she almost touched them, did not find even a ledge where her passengers could step ashore.
Pencroff consoled himself by saying that with the help of blasting they could easily break open that wall when it became necessary. And since there was plainly nothing to be done in this gulf, he steered his boat toward the narrow entrance and came out of it at about two o'clock in the afternoon.
"Phew!" said Nab, with a sigh of satisfaction.
You really would have said that good Nab did not feel at ease in those enormous jaws!
From Mandible Cape to the mouth of the Mercy it was hardly more than about eight miles. So they set a course for Granite House, and the Bonadventure, with the wind free in her sails, ran along the coast a mile out. The enormous lava rocks soon gave way to those fantastic dunes among which the engineer had been found in such a strange way, and which the seabirds haunted by the hundreds.
At about four o'clock, leaving the point of the islet to port, Pencroff entered the channel that separated it from the coast, and at five o'clock the Bonadventure's anchor bit into the sandy bottom at the mouth of the Mercy.
The colonists had left their home three days before. Ayrton was waiting for them on the beach, and Master Jup came joyfully to meet them, giving out hearty grunts of satisfaction.
So the whole of the island's coastline had now been explored, and no suspicious trace had been seen. If some mysterious being lived there, it could only be under cover of the impenetrable woods of Serpentine Peninsula, where the colonists had not yet carried their search.
Gédéon Spilett talked these things over with the engineer, and they agreed that they would draw their companions' attention to the strange character of certain incidents that had taken place on the island, the latest of which was one of the most inexplicable.
So Cyrus Smith, coming back to the business of a fire lit on the shore by an unknown hand, could not help asking the reporter for the twentieth time:
"But are you sure you really saw it? Wasn't it a partial eruption of the volcano, a meteor of some kind?"
"No, Cyrus," replied the reporter. "It was certainly a fire lit by a human hand. Besides, ask Pencroff and Harbert. They saw it just as I saw it myself, and they'll confirm what I say."
And so it came about that a few days later, on the evening of April 25, when all the colonists were gathered on Prospect Plateau, Cyrus Smith spoke up and said:
"My friends, I think I ought to call your attention to certain things that have happened on the island, and I'd very much like to have your opinion about them. These things are, so to speak, supernatural..."
"Supernatural!" cried the sailor, puffing out a cloud of tobacco smoke. "Could our island be supernatural?"
"No, Pencroff, but mysterious, certainly," replied the engineer, "unless you can explain to us what Spilett and I have not been able to understand so far."
"Go on, Mr. Cyrus," replied the sailor.
"Well, then," said the engineer, "have you understood how it could have happened that, after I fell into the sea, I was found a quarter of a mile inland, without being aware of having been moved?"
"Unless, while you were unconscious..." said Pencroff.
"That isn't possible," replied the engineer. "But let's go on. Have you understood how Top was able to find your shelter, five miles from the cave where I was lying?"
"The dog's instinct..." replied Harbert.
"A strange instinct!" the reporter pointed out. "Because in spite of the rain and wind that were raging that night, Top arrived at the Chimneys dry and without a speck of mud on him!"
"Let's go on," the engineer went on. "Have you understood how our dog was so strangely thrown up out of the water of the lake, after his fight with the dugong?"
"No! Not really, I admit," replied Pencroff. "And the wound the dugong had in its side, a wound that looked as if it had been made by a cutting blade, makes no more sense either."
"Let's go on again," Cyrus Smith resumed. "Have you understood, my friends, how that lead pellet came to be in the body of the young peccary? How that chest came ashore so luckily, without any trace of a shipwreck? How that bottle with the document in it turned up just when it did, on our first trip out to sea? How our canoe broke its mooring and came down the current of the Mercy to join us exactly when we needed it? How, after the invasion of the monkeys, the ladder was so conveniently sent back down from the heights of Granite House? And how, last of all, the document that Ayrton claims he never wrote fell into our hands?"
Cyrus Smith had just listed, without forgetting a single one, the strange events that had taken place on the island. Harbert, Pencroff and Nab looked at one another, not knowing what to answer, for the string of incidents, grouped together like this for the first time, could not fail to astonish them in the highest degree.
"Upon my word," Pencroff said at last, "you're right, Mr. Cyrus, and it's hard to explain those things!"
"Well, my friends," the engineer went on, "one last event has been added to those, and it's every bit as incomprehensible as the others!"
"What is it, Mr. Cyrus?" Harbert asked quickly.
"When you came back from Tabor Island, Pencroff," the engineer went on, "you say a fire appeared to you on Lincoln Island?"
"Certainly," replied the sailor.
"And you're quite sure you saw that fire?"
"As sure as I see you."
"You too, Harbert?"
"Oh, Mr. Cyrus!" cried Harbert. "That fire was shining like a star of the first magnitude!"
"But wasn't it a star?" the engineer insisted.
"No," replied Pencroff, "because the sky was covered with heavy clouds, and anyway a star wouldn't have been so low on the horizon. But Mr. Spilett saw it as well as we did, and he can confirm what we say!"
"I'll add," said the reporter, "that the fire was very bright, and that it threw out a sort of sheet of electric light."
"Yes! Yes! Exactly..." replied Harbert. "And it was certainly up on the heights of Granite House."
"Well, my friends," replied Cyrus Smith, "on that night of October 19 to 20, neither Nab nor I lit a fire on the coast."
"You didn't...?" cried Pencroff, so utterly astonished that he could not even finish his sentence.
"We never left Granite House," replied Cyrus Smith, "and if a fire appeared on the coast, it was some other hand than ours that lit it!"
Pencroff, Harbert and Nab were dumbfounded. There could have been no illusion: a fire really had struck their eyes during that night of October 19 to 20!
Yes! They had to admit it: a mystery existed! An inexplicable influence — clearly well disposed toward the colonists, but highly provoking to their curiosity — was making itself felt on Lincoln Island, and always, it seemed, at exactly the right moment. Was there, then, some being hidden in its deepest retreats? That was what they would have to find out, at any cost!
Cyrus Smith also reminded his companions of the odd behavior of Top and Jup when they used to prowl around the mouth of the well that connected Granite House with the sea, and he told them that he had explored that well without discovering anything suspicious. In the end, the conclusion of this conversation was a decision, taken by every member of the colony, to search the whole island from end to end as soon as the fine season returned.
But from that day on, Pencroff seemed troubled. This island, which he had made into his own personal property, no longer seemed to belong to him entirely. It seemed to him that he shared it with another master, to whom, like it or not, he felt himself subject. He and Nab often talked about these inexplicable things, and both of them, being much inclined by their very natures to believe in marvels, were not far from thinking that Lincoln Island was under the rule of some supernatural power.
Meanwhile the bad days had come with the month of May — the November of the northern latitudes. The winter looked likely to be hard and to come early. So the work of preparing for winter was taken in hand without delay.
Besides, the colonists were well prepared to meet this winter, however hard it might be. They had no shortage of felt clothing, and the mouflons, numerous by then, had supplied plenty of the wool needed to make that warm cloth.
It goes without saying that Ayrton had been given these comfortable clothes too. Cyrus Smith offered to let him come and spend the bad season at Granite House, where he would be better housed than at the corral, and Ayrton promised to do so as soon as the last jobs at the corral were finished. This he did around the middle of April. From then on Ayrton shared the common life and made himself useful at every opportunity; but always humble and sad, he never took part in his companions' pleasures!
For most of this third winter the colonists spent on Lincoln Island, they stayed shut up in Granite House. There were very great storms and terrible squalls that seemed to shake the rocks to their very foundations. Immense tidal surges threatened to sweep right over the island, and any ship anchored off its shores would certainly have been lost with all hands. Twice during one of these storms the Mercy rose so high that they feared the bridge and the little bridges would be carried away, and they even had to strengthen the ones on the beach, which vanished under the water whenever the sea beat against the shore.
You can well imagine that such gales, as violent as waterspouts and full of mingled rain and snow, did damage on Prospect Plateau. The mill and the poultry yard suffered particularly. The colonists often had to make urgent repairs there, or the lives of the birds would have been seriously threatened.
In these spells of really bad weather, a few pairs of jaguars and bands of monkeys would venture right up to the edge of the plateau, and there was always the fear that the nimblest and boldest of them, driven by hunger, would manage to get across the creek — which, besides, gave them an easy crossing when it was frozen. Crops and domestic animals would then have been destroyed without fail if not for a constant watch, and they often had to open fire to keep these dangerous visitors at a respectful distance. So the winterers never ran short of work, for besides the jobs outdoors there were always a thousand things to fit out and improve in Granite House.
There were also some fine hunts, made in the hard frosts on the vast Shelduck Marsh. Gédéon Spilett and Harbert, helped by Jup and Top, never wasted a shot among those myriads of ducks, snipe, teal, pintails and lapwings. Getting to that rich hunting ground was easy, too, either by going along the Balloon Harbor road after crossing the bridge over the Mercy, or by going around the rocks of Jetsam Point, and the hunters never went more than two or three miles from Granite House.
So the four months of winter passed — and they were truly harsh: June, July, August and September. But all in all, Granite House did not suffer too much from the bad weather. The same was true of the corral, which, being less exposed than the plateau and largely sheltered by Mount Franklin, caught only the tail ends of the gales, already broken by the forests and the high rocks of the coast. So the damage there was slight, and Ayrton's busy, skillful hands were enough to repair it quickly when, in the second half of October, he went back to spend a few days at the corral.
During this winter no new inexplicable incident occurred. Nothing strange happened, although Pencroff and Nab were on the lookout for the smallest events they might have been able to link to a mysterious cause. Even Top and Jup no longer prowled around the well, and gave no sign of uneasiness. So it seemed that the series of supernatural incidents had been interrupted, although they often talked about them during the evenings at Granite House, and it remained firmly agreed that the island would be searched down to its hardest-to-explore corners. But an event of the gravest kind, whose consequences might be disastrous, came along to turn Cyrus Smith and his companions away from their plans for a while.
It was October. The fine season was coming back fast. Nature was renewing herself under the rays of the sun, and amid the evergreen foliage of the conifers that lined the edge of the woods, the new leaves of the nettle trees, banksias and deodars were already appearing.
You will remember that Gédéon Spilett and Harbert had several times taken photographic views of Lincoln Island.
Now, on October 17, at about three o'clock in the afternoon, Harbert, tempted by the clearness of the sky, had the idea of photographing the whole of Union Bay, which lay facing Prospect Plateau, from Mandible Cape to Claw Cape.
The horizon stood out beautifully sharp, and the sea, gently rippling under a soft breeze, lay as still in the distance as the waters of a lake, flecked here and there with sparkles of light.
The camera had been set up at one of the windows of the great hall of Granite House, and so it looked down over the beach and the bay. Harbert went about it as he usually did, and once he had his negative on its glass plate, he went to fix it with the chemicals that were kept in a dark little closet of Granite House.
When he came back out into full daylight and examined it carefully, Harbert noticed on the plate a little, almost invisible dot that marked the sea horizon. He tried to make it disappear by washing it again and again, but he could not manage it.
"It's a flaw in the glass," he thought.
And then he was curious enough to examine this flaw with a strong lens, which he unscrewed from one of the telescopes.
But he had hardly looked when he let out a cry, and the plate nearly slipped from his hands.
Running at once to the room where Cyrus Smith was, he held out the plate and the lens to the engineer and pointed to the little spot.
Cyrus Smith examined the dot. Then, seizing his spyglass, he rushed to the window.
The spyglass swept slowly along the horizon and finally stopped on the suspicious point, and Cyrus Smith, lowering it, said only one word:
"A ship!"
And indeed, a ship was in sight of Lincoln Island!
Ruin or rescue? — Ayrton called back — An important discussion — It is not the Duncan — A suspicious ship — Precautions to take — The ship approaches — A cannon shot — The brig anchors in sight of the island — Night falls
For two and a half years the castaways of the balloon had been stranded on Lincoln Island, and in all that time no contact of any kind had been made between them and the rest of humankind. Once, the reporter had tried to get in touch with the inhabited world by entrusting a bird with a note that held the secret of their situation, but that was a chance no one could seriously count on. Only Ayrton, under the circumstances we know, had come to join the members of the little colony. And now, on this very day — October 17 — other men had suddenly appeared within sight of the island, on that sea which was always empty!
There could be no more doubt about it! A ship was out there! But would she pass by out at sea, or would she put in? Within a few hours the colonists would certainly know where they stood.
Cyrus Smith and Harbert had at once called Gédéon Spilett, Pencroff and Nab into the great hall of Granite House and told them what was happening. Pencroff snatched up the spyglass and swept the horizon quickly, then stopped on the point they showed him — the spot that had made the almost invisible speck on the photographic plate.
"A thousand devils! It's a ship, all right!" he said, in a voice that did not sound especially pleased.
"Is she coming toward us?" asked Gédéon Spilett.
"No way of telling yet," answered Pencroff, "because only her masts show above the horizon. You can't see a scrap of her hull!"
"What should we do?" said the boy.
"Wait," answered Cyrus Smith.
And for a good long while the colonists stayed silent, given over to all the thoughts, all the emotions, all the fears, all the hopes that such an event could stir in them — the most serious thing that had happened since they had arrived on Lincoln Island.
Of course, the colonists were not in the position of those castaways left on some barren islet, who fight a cruel, stepmotherly nature for their miserable existence and are eaten up, every moment, by the longing to see inhabited lands again. Pencroff and Nab above all, who found themselves so happy and so rich at once, would not have left their island without regret. Besides, they had grown used to this new life, in the middle of this domain that their intelligence had, so to speak, civilized! But still — that ship meant news from the mainland, in any case. Perhaps it was a piece of their homeland coming out to meet them! She carried human beings like themselves, and anyone will understand how their hearts leaped at the sight of her!
Every so often Pencroff took up the spyglass again and stationed himself at the window. From there he studied the ship with the closest attention. She was twenty miles to the east, so the colonists still had no way at all to signal that they were there. A flag would not have been seen, a gunshot would not have been heard, a fire would not have been visible.
Still, it was certain that the island, with Mount Franklin towering over it, could not have escaped the eyes of the lookouts on board. But why would the ship land there? Wasn't it pure chance that had brought her into this part of the Pacific, where the charts showed no land at all except Tabor Island — and Tabor Island itself lay off the routes that ocean-going ships usually followed from the Polynesian archipelagos, New Zealand and the American coast?
The question everyone was asking himself was suddenly answered by Harbert.
"Could it be the Duncan?" he cried.
The Duncan, as no one will have forgotten, was the yacht of Lord Glenarvan, who had left Ayrton on the islet and who was supposed to come back for him one day. And the islet was not so far from Lincoln Island that a ship sailing for the one could not pass within sight of the other. Only a hundred and fifty miles of longitude separated them, and seventy-five miles of latitude.
"We must let Ayrton know," said Gédéon Spilett, "and send for him right away. He's the only one who can tell us if that's the Duncan."
Everyone agreed, and the reporter went to the telegraph that connected the corral with Granite House and sent this telegram:
"Come as fast as you can."
A few moments later the bell rang.
"I'm coming," Ayrton answered.
Then the colonists went on watching the ship.
"If it's the Duncan," said Harbert, "Ayrton will recognize her easily, since he sailed aboard her for a while."
"And if he does recognize her," added Pencroff, "it'll give him quite a shock!"
"Yes," answered Cyrus Smith, "but Ayrton is worthy now of going back aboard the Duncan, and heaven grant that it really is Lord Glenarvan's yacht, because any other ship would look suspicious to me! These seas have a bad reputation, and I'm always afraid our island will get a visit from Malay pirates."
"We'd defend it!" cried Harbert.
"No doubt, my boy," the engineer answered with a smile, "but it's better not to have to."
"Just one observation," said Gédéon Spilett. "Lincoln Island is unknown to sailors, since it isn't even marked on the most recent charts. Don't you think, Cyrus, that that's a reason for a ship that suddenly finds herself in sight of a new land to try to visit it rather than run away from it?"
"Certainly," answered Pencroff.
"I think so too," added the engineer. "You could even say that it's a captain's duty to report — and therefore to come and survey — any land or island not yet on the lists, and Lincoln Island is exactly that."
"Well, then," said Pencroff, "let's suppose this ship comes in and anchors there, a few cable lengths off our island. What do we do?"
The question, put so bluntly, at first got no answer. But Cyrus Smith, after thinking it over, replied in the calm tone that was usual with him:
"Here is what we'll do, my friends — what we ought to do. We'll make contact with the ship, we'll take passage aboard her, and we'll leave our island, after taking possession of it in the name of the States of the Union. Then we'll come back with everyone who wants to follow us, to colonize it for good and give the American republic a useful station in this part of the Pacific Ocean!"
"Hurrah!" cried Pencroff. "And that'll be no small present we'll be making our country! The colonizing is nearly finished already. Every part of the island has its name. There's a natural harbor, a watering place, roads, a telegraph line, a shipyard, a factory — and all that's left is to put Lincoln Island on the map!"
"But what if somebody takes it from us while we're away?" Gédéon Spilett pointed out.
"A thousand devils!" cried the sailor. "Then I'll stay here all by myself to guard it, and on Pencroff's word, nobody's going to steal it from me like a watch out of some gawker's pocket!"
For an hour it was impossible to say for certain whether the ship they had sighted was or was not heading for Lincoln Island. She had come nearer, though — but on what point of sail? That was something Pencroff could not make out. Still, since the wind was blowing from the northeast, it seemed likely that she was sailing on the starboard tack. Besides, the breeze was right for carrying her in toward the island's shores, and in so calm a sea she had no reason to be afraid of coming close, even though no soundings for those waters were marked on the chart.
At about four o'clock — an hour after he had been sent for — Ayrton arrived at Granite House. He came into the great hall, saying:
"At your service, gentlemen."
Cyrus Smith held out his hand to him, as he always did, and led him over to the window.
"Ayrton," he said, "we've asked you to come for a serious reason. There's a ship in sight of the island."
At first Ayrton went a little pale, and for a moment his eyes clouded. Then he leaned out of the window and swept the horizon, but he saw nothing.
"Take this spyglass," said Gédéon Spilett, "and look carefully, Ayrton, because this ship might be the Duncan, come into these seas to take you home."
"The Duncan!" Ayrton murmured. "Already!"
That last word slipped from Ayrton's lips as though in spite of himself, and he let his head fall into his hands.
So twelve years of abandonment on a desert islet did not seem to him atonement enough? Did the repentant man still not feel forgiven, either in his own eyes or in the eyes of others?
"No," he said, "no! It can't be the Duncan."
"Look, Ayrton," said the engineer then, "because it matters that we know ahead of time where we stand."
Ayrton took the glass and trained it in the direction they showed him. For several minutes he watched the horizon without moving, without saying a single word. Then:
"It's a ship, right enough," he said, "but I don't believe it's the Duncan."
"Why not?" asked Gédéon Spilett.
"Because the Duncan is a steam yacht, and I can't see any trace of smoke, either above that ship or near her."
"Maybe she's just under sail," Pencroff pointed out. "The wind's good for the course she seems to be on, and she'd want to save her coal, being so far from any land."
"You may be right, Mr. Pencroff," answered Ayrton, "and she may have let her fires go out. So let's wait for her to come in toward the coast, and we'll soon know where we stand."
With that, Ayrton went and sat down in a corner of the great hall and stayed there in silence. The colonists went on discussing the unknown ship, but Ayrton took no part in the discussion.
They were all in a state of mind that would not have let them carry on with their work. Gédéon Spilett and Pencroff were strangely on edge, coming and going, unable to keep still. Harbert felt curiosity more than anything. Nab alone kept his usual calm. Wasn't his country wherever his master was? As for the engineer, he remained lost in thought, and deep down he dreaded the ship's arrival more than he wished for it.
Meanwhile the ship had come a little closer to the island. With the help of the spyglass they had been able to make out that she was an ocean-going vessel, and not one of the Malay proas that the pirates of the Pacific usually sail in. So there was reason to believe that the engineer's fears would not turn out to be justified, and that this ship's presence in the waters of Lincoln Island meant no danger to it. Pencroff, after studying her with minute attention, felt he could say for certain that she was rigged as a brig, and that she was running at a slant to the coast on the starboard tack, under her courses, her topsails and her topgallants. Ayrton confirmed it.
But if she kept on that way she would soon disappear behind the tip of Claw Cape, because she was heading southwest, and to watch her then they would have to go up onto the heights above Washington Bay, near Balloon Harbor. That was a nuisance, since it was already five o'clock in the afternoon, and twilight would soon make any observation very difficult.
"What do we do once night comes?" asked Gédéon Spilett. "Do we light a fire to signal that we're here on this coast?"
It was a serious question, and yet, whatever forebodings the engineer still had, it was settled in favor of the fire. During the night the ship might vanish, sail off for good — and once she was gone, would another ever come back into the waters of Lincoln Island? And who could foresee what the future held for the colonists?
"Yes," said the reporter, "we have to let this ship know, whatever she is, that the island is inhabited. If we let this chance slip, we'll be making regrets for ourselves later!"
So it was decided that Nab and Pencroff would go to Balloon Harbor, and that there, once night had fallen, they would light a big fire whose blaze would be sure to catch the attention of the brig's crew.
But just as Nab and the sailor were getting ready to leave Granite House, the ship changed course, bore away and headed straight for the island, making for Union Bay. She was a fast sailer, that brig, for she drew near quickly.
So Nab and Pencroff put off their departure, and the spyglass was handed to Ayrton so that he could say once and for all whether this ship was or was not the Duncan. The Scottish yacht was rigged as a brig too. The question, then, was whether a funnel rose between the two masts of the ship they were watching, which was now only ten miles away.
The horizon was still very clear. The check was easy, and Ayrton soon let the glass drop, saying:
"It isn't the Duncan! It couldn't have been!..."
Pencroff framed the brig in the field of the spyglass once more, and he saw that she was a vessel of three to four hundred tons, wonderfully slender, boldly masted, beautifully built for speed — she had to be a swift runner of the seas. But what nation did she belong to? That was hard to say.
"And yet," added the sailor, "there's a flag flying from her gaff, but I can't make out the colors."
"Within half an hour we'll know about that," answered the reporter. "Anyway, it's obvious that this ship's captain means to put in here, and so, if not today, then tomorrow at the latest, we'll be making his acquaintance."
"Never mind that!" said Pencroff. "It's better to know who you're dealing with, and I wouldn't mind knowing that fellow's colors!"
And all the while he talked, the sailor never took his eye from the glass.
The daylight was beginning to fade, and with it the wind from the sea was dropping too. The brig's flag, no longer stretched out, kept tangling in the halyards and grew harder and harder to see.
"That's not an American flag," Pencroff kept saying every now and then, "and not an English one either — you'd see the red easily — and not French or German colors, and not the white flag of Russia, and not the yellow of Spain... It looks as if it's all one color... Let's see... in these seas... what would we be most likely to meet?... The Chilean flag? But that's three colors... Brazilian? That's green... Japanese? That's black and yellow... whereas this one..."
At that moment a breeze spread out the unknown flag. Ayrton seized the spyglass the sailor had let drop, put it to his eye, and in a hollow voice:
"The black flag!" he cried.
And in fact a dark bunting was unfurling at the brig's gaff, and now there was every reason to regard her as a suspicious ship!
Had the engineer been right in his forebodings, then? Was this a pirate ship? Was she scouring these lower seas of the Pacific, in competition with the Malay proas that still infest them? What had she come looking for off the shores of Lincoln Island? Did she see in it an unknown, unheard-of land, just the place to hide stolen cargoes? Had she come to these coasts for a harbor of refuge in the winter months? Was the colonists' honest domain destined to turn into a vile den — a sort of capital of piracy in the Pacific?
All these ideas came into the colonists' minds by instinct. Besides, there could be no doubt what the color of the flag she flew was meant to signify. It was the flag of the sea raiders, all right! It was the one the Duncan would have been flying if the convicts had succeeded in their criminal plans!
They wasted no time in discussion.
"My friends," said Cyrus Smith, "perhaps this ship means only to look over the island's coastline. Perhaps her crew won't come ashore. That's one chance. Whatever happens, we must do everything we can to hide the fact that we're here. The windmill on Prospect Plateau is far too easy to spot. Ayrton and Nab, go and take its sails down. Let's also cover the windows of Granite House with thicker branches. Put out every fire. Let nothing at all betray that there are human beings on this island!"
"And our boat?" said Harbert.
"Oh," answered Pencroff, "she's sheltered in Balloon Harbor, and I defy those scoundrels to find her there!"
The engineer's orders were carried out at once. Nab and Ayrton went up onto the plateau and took the steps needed to hide every sign that anyone lived there. While they were busy with that job, their companions went to the edge of Jacamar Wood and brought back a great quantity of branches and creepers which, seen from a certain distance, would look like natural foliage and would screen the openings in the granite wall quite well. At the same time the ammunition and the weapons were laid out so that they could be used at a moment's notice in case of a sudden attack.
When all these precautions had been taken:
"My friends," said Cyrus Smith — and you could hear in his voice how moved he was — "if those villains try to seize Lincoln Island, we'll defend it, won't we?"
"Yes, Cyrus," answered the reporter, "and if we have to, we'll all die defending it!"
The engineer held out his hand to his companions, and they gripped it warmly.
Only Ayrton, who had stayed in his corner, had not joined the colonists. Perhaps he, the former convict, still felt unworthy!
Cyrus Smith understood what was going on in Ayrton's soul, and he went over to him.
"And you, Ayrton," he asked him, "what will you do?"
"My duty," answered Ayrton.
Then he went and took up his post by the window and fixed his gaze out through the leaves.
It was half past seven by then. The sun had gone down behind Granite House some twenty minutes before, and so the eastern horizon was slowly darkening. Meanwhile the brig kept on toward Union Bay. She was no more than eight miles off by then, and exactly abreast of Prospect Plateau, because after coming about off Claw Cape she had made a good deal of ground to the north, helped along by the current of the rising tide. You could even say that at that distance she had already entered the vast bay, since a straight line drawn from Claw Cape to Mandible Cape now lay to the west of her, off her starboard quarter.
Would the brig sail deep into the bay? That was the first question. Once inside, would she anchor there? That was the second. Or would she be content to look over the coastline and then head back out to sea without landing her crew? They would know within the hour. So the colonists had nothing to do but wait.
Cyrus Smith had watched the suspicious ship hoist the black flag with deep anxiety. Wasn't it a direct threat to the work that he and his companions had carried through so far? Had these pirates — for there could be no doubt the brig's sailors were that — been to the island before, since they had run up their colors on approaching it? Had they made some landing here in the past, which would explain certain things that had remained inexplicable until now? Was there, in some part of the island not yet explored, an accomplice ready to make contact with them?
Cyrus Smith had no answer to any of the questions he silently asked himself, but he felt that the colony's situation could only be very seriously endangered by the arrival of this brig.
All the same, he and his companions were determined to resist to the very last. Were these pirates many, and better armed than the colonists? That was what it would have been so important to know! But how to get near them?
Night had come. The new moon, lost in the glare of the sun, had gone down with it. Deep darkness wrapped the island and the sea. Heavy clouds, heaped up on the horizon, let no glimmer of light filter through. The wind had died away completely with the dusk. Not a leaf stirred on the trees, not a wave whispered on the shore. Of the ship nothing could be seen. All her lights were blacked out, and if she was still in sight of the island, there was no way even to tell where she lay.
"Eh! Who knows?" said Pencroff then. "Maybe that damned ship will sail off during the night, and we won't find her again at daybreak!"
As if in answer to the sailor's remark, a bright flash burst out at sea, and a cannon shot rang out.
The ship was still there, and she had guns on board.
Six seconds had passed between the flash and the sound.
So the brig was about a mile and a quarter from the coast.
And at the same moment they heard the sound of chains running and grinding through the hawseholes.
The ship had just dropped anchor in sight of Granite House!
Discussions — Forebodings — A proposal from Ayrton — It is accepted — Ayrton and Pencroff on Grant Islet — The convicts of Norfolk Island — Their plans — Ayrton's heroic attempt — His return — Six against fifty
There could be no more doubt about the pirates' intentions. They had dropped anchor a short distance from the island, and it was plain that the next day they meant to come ashore in their boats!
Cyrus Smith and his companions were ready to act, but however determined they were, they must not forget to be careful. Perhaps their presence could still be kept hidden, if the pirates were content to land on the shore without going up into the interior of the island. It was quite possible, after all, that they had no other plan than to take on fresh water at the watering place at the mouth of the Mercy, and it was not impossible that the bridge, a mile and a half upstream, and the fittings of the Chimneys might escape their notice.
But why had that flag been run up to the brig's gaff? Why that cannon shot? Pure bravado, no doubt — unless it was a sign that they were taking possession! Cyrus Smith now knew that the ship was formidably armed. And what did the colonists of Lincoln Island have to answer the pirates' cannon? A few guns, nothing more.
"All the same," Cyrus Smith pointed out, "here we're in a position no one can take. The enemy can't find the mouth of the old spillway now that it's hidden under reeds and grass, so there's no way for them to get into Granite House."
"But our plantings, our poultry yard, our corral — everything, everything!" cried Pencroff, stamping his foot. "They can lay it all waste, wreck it all in a few hours!"
"Everything, Pencroff," answered Cyrus Smith, "and we have no way of stopping them."
"Are there many of them? That's the question," said the reporter then. "If there are only a dozen, we'll know how to stop them. But forty, fifty, maybe more!..."
"Mr. Smith," said Ayrton, stepping up to the engineer, "will you give me permission for something?"
"For what, my friend?"
"To go out to that ship and find out how strong her crew is."
"But, Ayrton..." the engineer answered, hesitating, "you'd be risking your life..."
"Why not, sir?"
"That's more than your duty."
"I have more than my duty to do," answered Ayrton.
"You'd take the canoe out to the ship?" asked Gédéon Spilett.
"No, sir. I'll swim. The canoe couldn't get through where a man can slip along just under the surface."
"Do you realize the brig is a mile and a quarter from the coast?" said Harbert.
"I'm a good swimmer, Mr. Harbert."
"It's risking your life, I tell you," the engineer said again.
"That doesn't matter," answered Ayrton. "Mr. Smith, I'm asking this of you as a favor. It may be a way for me to rise again in my own eyes!"
"Go, Ayrton," answered the engineer, who felt that a refusal would have hurt the former convict deeply — the convict who had become an honest man again.
"I'll come with you," said Pencroff.
"You don't trust me!" Ayrton answered sharply.
Then, more humbly:
"Alas!"
"No! No!" Cyrus Smith broke in warmly. "No, Ayrton! Pencroff doesn't distrust you! You've misunderstood him."
"That's right," answered the sailor. "What I'm proposing is to go with Ayrton as far as the islet, and no farther. It's possible — not likely, but possible — that one of those rascals has landed there, and if so, two men won't be too many to keep him from raising the alarm. I'll wait for Ayrton on the islet, and he'll go on to the ship alone, since that's what he offered to do."
With that settled, Ayrton got ready to go. His plan was daring, but it could succeed, thanks to the darkness of the night. Once he reached the ship, Ayrton could hang on to the bobstays under the bowsprit or to the chainplates where the shrouds were fastened along her side, and from there he could count the convicts and perhaps overhear what they meant to do.
Ayrton and Pencroff went down to the shore, followed by their companions. Ayrton undressed and rubbed himself with grease, so as to suffer less from the water, which was still cold. He might, after all, have to stay in it for several hours.
Meanwhile Pencroff and Nab had gone to fetch the canoe, which was moored a few hundred paces farther up, on the bank of the Mercy, and by the time they came back Ayrton was ready to leave.
A blanket was thrown over Ayrton's shoulders, and the colonists came up to shake his hand.
Ayrton got into the canoe with Pencroff.
It was half past ten at night when the two of them disappeared into the darkness. Their companions went back to the Chimneys to wait for them.
They crossed the channel easily, and the canoe came in to land on the far shore of the islet. They did this with some care, in case pirates were prowling about there. But after a good look around, it seemed certain that the islet was deserted. So Ayrton, with Pencroff behind him, crossed it at a quick pace, startling the birds that nested in the holes in the rocks. Then, without a moment's hesitation, he threw himself into the sea and swam noiselessly toward the ship, whose exact position was now marked by a few lights that had been lit not long before.
As for Pencroff, he crouched in a hollow in the rocks along the shore and waited for his companion to come back.
Meanwhile Ayrton swam with powerful strokes, gliding through the water without making even the faintest ripple. His head barely broke the surface, and his eyes were fixed on the dark mass of the brig, whose lights were reflected in the sea. He thought only of the duty he had promised to carry out, and gave no thought at all to the dangers he was running — not only on board the ship, but in these very waters, where sharks often came. The current was carrying him, and he was moving quickly away from the coast.
Half an hour later, without having been seen or heard, Ayrton slipped in under the surface, reached the ship, and caught hold of the bowsprit's bobstays with one hand. Then he got his breath back, and, pulling himself up by the chains, he managed to reach the very tip of the brig's head, the beak that juts out beneath the bowsprit. A few pairs of sailors' trousers were hanging there to dry. He pulled on a pair. Then, having wedged himself in firmly, he listened.
No one was asleep on board the brig. Quite the opposite. They were arguing, singing, laughing. And these were the remarks, mixed with oaths, that struck Ayrton most:
"Fine bargain we got in this brig!"
"She sails well, the Speedy! She lives up to her name!"
"The whole Norfolk navy can come chasing after her! Let 'em try!"
"Hurrah for her commander!"
"Hurrah for Bob Harvey!"
What Ayrton felt when he heard this scrap of conversation will be understood once it is known that in this Bob Harvey he had just recognized one of his old companions from Australia, a bold seaman who had taken up his own criminal schemes where Ayrton had left them off. Bob Harvey had seized this brig in the waters around Norfolk Island. She had been loaded with weapons, ammunition, utensils and tools of every kind, bound for one of the Sandwich Islands — what we now call Hawaii. His whole gang had gone aboard, and, pirates now after being convicts, these wretches were scouring the Pacific, destroying ships and massacring their crews, fiercer even than the Malay pirates!
The convicts were talking loudly, boasting of their exploits as they drank far more than they should, and this is what Ayrton was able to make out:
The Speedy's present crew was made up entirely of English prisoners who had escaped from Norfolk Island.
And here is what Norfolk Island is.
At latitude 29° 2′ south and longitude 165° 42′ east, to the east of Australia, lies a small island some fifteen miles around, overlooked by Mount Pitt, which rises eleven hundred feet above sea level. That is Norfolk Island, which has become the seat of a penal settlement where the most unmanageable convicts from the English prisons are penned up. There are five hundred of them there, held under iron discipline and the threat of terrible punishments, guarded by a hundred and fifty soldiers and a hundred and fifty officials under the orders of a governor. It would be hard to imagine a worse gathering of villains. Now and then — though it is rare — in spite of the extreme watch kept over them, a number of them manage to escape by seizing ships they take by surprise, and then they roam the island groups of Polynesia.
That is what this Bob Harvey and his companions had done. That is what Ayrton himself had once wanted to do. Bob Harvey had seized the brig Speedy while she lay at anchor in sight of Norfolk Island. Her crew had been massacred, and for a year now the ship, turned pirate vessel, had been beating about the seas of the Pacific under the command of Harvey — once a deep-sea merchant captain, now a sea robber, and a man Ayrton knew well!
Most of the convicts were gathered in the poop, the raised cabin at the stern of the ship, but a few were stretched out on the deck, talking loudly.
As the conversation went on amid shouting and drinking, Ayrton learned that it was pure chance that had brought the Speedy within sight of Lincoln Island.
Bob Harvey had never yet set foot on it. But, just as Cyrus Smith had guessed, when he came across this unknown land in his path, whose position no chart showed, he had made up his mind to look it over, and, if it suited him, to make it the brig's home port.
As for the black flag run up to the Speedy's gaff, and the cannon shot fired, the way warships fire a gun when they hoist their colors — that was pure pirates' bravado. It was not a signal, and as yet there was no connection of any kind between the escaped Norfolk convicts and Lincoln Island.
So the colonists' domain was threatened by an immense danger. Clearly the island — with its easy watering place, its little harbor, its resources of every kind that the colonists had put to such good use, and the hidden depths of Granite House — could only suit the convicts down to the ground. In their hands it would become an excellent hiding place, and, precisely because it was unknown, it would guarantee them safety and freedom from punishment, perhaps for a long time. Clearly, too, the colonists' lives would not be spared, and the first thing Bob Harvey and his accomplices would do would be to massacre them without mercy. So Cyrus Smith and his people did not even have the option of running away and hiding somewhere on the island, since the convicts meant to live there, and since, even if the Speedy left on some raid, a few of her crew would probably stay ashore to settle in. So they would have to fight. They would have to destroy these wretches to the last man — wretches unworthy of pity, against whom any means would be fair.
That was what Ayrton thought, and he knew very well that Cyrus Smith would see it the same way.
But was resistance possible — and, in the end, was victory? That depended on how the brig was armed and how many men she carried.
That was what Ayrton made up his mind to find out at any cost. An hour after he arrived, the bellowing had begun to die down, and a good many of the convicts were already sunk in a drunken sleep. So Ayrton did not hesitate to venture onto the Speedy's deck, which was now in deep darkness, since her lanterns had been put out.
He hauled himself up onto the beak, then made his way along the bowsprit to the brig's forecastle. Slipping between the convicts sprawled here and there, he went all the way around the ship, and found that the Speedy was armed with four cannon that must fire balls of eight to ten pounds. He even made sure, by feeling them, that they were breech-loaders. So these were modern guns, easy to handle and terrible in their effect.
As for the men lying on deck, there must have been about ten of them, but it was reasonable to suppose that others, many more, were asleep below. Besides, from listening to them, Ayrton had gathered that there were about fifty on board. That was a great many for the six colonists of Lincoln Island! But at least, thanks to Ayrton's devotion, Cyrus Smith would not be taken by surprise. He would know the strength of his enemies, and he would make his arrangements accordingly.
So all that was left for Ayrton was to go back and report to his companions on the mission he had taken on, and he got ready to make his way back to the bow of the brig so as to slip down into the sea.
But then, to this man who wanted — he had said so — to do more than his duty, there came a heroic thought. It meant sacrificing his life, but he would save the island and the colonists. Cyrus Smith plainly could not hold out against fifty bandits armed to the teeth, who would get the better of the colonists either by breaking into Granite House by force or by starving them out. And then he pictured his rescuers — the people who had made him a man again, and an honest man, the people to whom he owed everything — killed without pity, their work destroyed, their island turned into a pirates' den! He told himself that he, Ayrton, was when all was said and done the root cause of so much disaster, since his old companion Bob Harvey had only carried out Ayrton's own plans — and a feeling of horror seized his whole being. Then he was gripped by an irresistible urge to blow up the brig, and with her everyone she carried. Ayrton would die in the explosion, but he would have done his duty.
Ayrton did not hesitate. Getting to the powder magazine, which is always located at the stern of a ship, would be easy. A ship in that line of work could not be short of powder, and a single spark would be enough to destroy her in an instant.
Ayrton let himself down carefully to the lower deck, which was strewn with sleepers held heavy more by drink than by sleep. A lantern was burning at the foot of the mainmast, and around the mast hung a rack filled with firearms of every kind.
Ayrton took a revolver from the rack and made sure it was loaded and primed. He needed nothing more to carry out the work of destruction. So he crept toward the stern, so as to get beneath the brig's poop, where the magazine had to be.
But on that lower deck, which was almost pitch-dark, it was hard to crawl along without bumping into some convict who was not quite asleep. Then came curses and blows. More than once Ayrton had to stop and wait. But at last he reached the bulkhead that closed off the stern compartment, and he found the door that must open onto the magazine itself.
Ayrton had no choice but to force it, and he set to work. It was a hard job to do without noise, because it meant breaking a padlock. But under Ayrton's powerful hand the padlock snapped, and the door was open...
At that moment a hand came down on Ayrton's shoulder.
"What are you doing there?" a tall man demanded in a harsh voice, rising up out of the shadows and thrusting a lantern sharply into Ayrton's face.
Ayrton threw himself backward. In a quick flash of the lantern he had recognized his old accomplice, Bob Harvey. But Harvey could not recognize him, since he must have believed Ayrton dead long ago.
"What are you doing there?" said Bob Harvey, seizing Ayrton by the waistband of his trousers.
But Ayrton, without answering, shoved the convicts' leader violently away and tried to dash into the magazine. One revolver shot among those kegs of powder, and it would all have been over!...
"To me, boys!" Bob Harvey had shouted.
Two or three pirates, woken by his voice, had got to their feet, and, throwing themselves on Ayrton, they tried to wrestle him to the floor. The powerful Ayrton broke free of their grip. Two shots from his revolver rang out, and two convicts fell; but a knife thrust that he could not ward off slashed into the flesh of his shoulder.
Ayrton understood that he could no longer carry out his plan. Bob Harvey had shut the magazine door again, and there was a stir on the lower deck that meant the whole pirate crew was waking up. Ayrton had to save himself to fight at Cyrus Smith's side. There was nothing left for him but to run!
But was escape still possible? That was doubtful, though Ayrton was determined to try everything to get back to his companions.
He had four shots left. He fired two of them now. One, aimed at Bob Harvey, did not hit him — or at least not seriously — and Ayrton, taking advantage of a moment when his attackers fell back, rushed for the companion ladder that led up to the brig's deck. As he passed the lantern he smashed it with a blow from the butt of his revolver, and a deep darkness fell, which was bound to help his escape.
Two or three pirates, woken by the noise, were coming down the ladder at that very moment. A fifth shot from Ayrton's revolver sent one of them tumbling down the steps, and the others drew back, not understanding what was going on. In two bounds Ayrton was on the brig's deck, and three seconds later, after firing his revolver one last time into the face of a pirate who had just grabbed him by the neck, he swung over the bulwarks and threw himself into the sea.
Ayrton had not swum six strokes before bullets were crackling around him like hail.
What must Pencroff have felt, sheltering under a rock on the islet — and Cyrus Smith, the reporter, Harbert and Nab, huddled in the Chimneys — when they heard those shots go off on board the brig! They had rushed out onto the beach, and, guns at their shoulders, they stood ready to drive back any attack.
For them there could be no doubt at all! Ayrton had been caught by the pirates and murdered, and perhaps those wretches were going to take advantage of the night to make a landing on the island!
Half an hour went by in mortal dread. The shots had stopped, though, and neither Ayrton nor Pencroff came back. Had the islet been invaded, then? Shouldn't they hurry to help Ayrton and Pencroff? But how? The sea, high at that moment, made the channel impossible to cross. The canoe was not there! Imagine the terrible anxiety that took hold of Cyrus Smith and his companions!
At last, toward half past midnight, a canoe carrying two men came in to the beach. It was Ayrton, slightly wounded in the shoulder, and Pencroff, safe and sound, and their friends received them with open arms.
At once they all took shelter in the Chimneys. There Ayrton told them what had happened, and he did not hide the plan he had tried to carry out, to blow up the brig.
Every hand reached out to Ayrton, who did not hide how grave the situation was. The pirates were on their guard now. They knew Lincoln Island was inhabited. They would land only in force and well armed. They would spare nothing. If the colonists fell into their hands, they could expect no mercy!
"Well, then! We'll know how to die!" said the reporter.
"Let's go in and keep watch," answered the engineer.
"Have we got any chance of coming out of this, Mr. Cyrus?" asked the sailor.
"Yes, Pencroff."
"Hm! Six against fifty!"
"Yes! Six!... Not counting..."
"Who, then?" asked Pencroff.
Cyrus did not answer, but he pointed to the sky.
The fog lifts — The engineer's plan — Three posts — Ayrton and Pencroff — The first boat — Two more boats — On the islet — Six convicts ashore — The brig weighs anchor — The Speedy's cannonballs — A desperate situation — An unexpected ending
The night passed without incident. The colonists had stayed on the alert and had not left their post at the Chimneys. The pirates, for their part, did not seem to have made any attempt to land. Since the last shots fired at Ayrton, not a gunshot, not even a sound, had given away the brig's presence off the island. One might almost have believed that she had weighed anchor, thinking she had met too strong an enemy, and had sailed away from those waters.
But nothing of the kind had happened, and when dawn began to break the colonists could make out a shapeless mass in the morning mist. It was the Speedy.
"My friends," the engineer said then, "here is the plan I think we ought to follow before this fog has lifted completely. It hides us from the pirates' eyes, and we can act without drawing their attention. What matters most is to make the convicts believe that the island has a good many inhabitants, and that those inhabitants are therefore able to fight them off. So I propose that we split into three groups. The first will take up its post right here at the Chimneys, the second at the mouth of the Mercy. As for the third, I think it would be wise to put it on the islet, to prevent any attempt at a landing, or at least to delay it. We have two carbines and four guns between us. So every one of us will be armed, and since we have plenty of powder and bullets, we won't spare our shots. We have nothing to fear from the brig's guns, or even from her cannon. What could they do against these rocks? And since we won't be firing from the windows of Granite House, the pirates won't think of sending shells there, where they might do damage that could never be repaired. What we must fear is having to fight hand to hand, because the convicts have numbers on their side. So it's every landing we must try to stop — but without showing ourselves. Let's not be sparing with our ammunition, then. Let's shoot often, but let's shoot straight. Each of us has eight or ten enemies to kill, and he must kill them!"
Cyrus Smith had laid out the situation in plain figures, speaking all the while in the calmest of voices, as if he were directing a piece of work and not a battle. His companions approved the plan without saying a word. All that was left was for each man to reach his post before the mist had completely cleared.
Nab and Pencroff went straight up to Granite House and brought down enough ammunition. Gédéon Spilett and Ayrton, both of them excellent shots, were given the two precision carbines, which could carry nearly a mile. The four other guns were shared out among Cyrus Smith, Nab, Pencroff and Harbert.
This is how the posts were manned.
Cyrus Smith and Harbert stayed hidden at the Chimneys, and from there they commanded a fairly wide stretch of the beach at the foot of Granite House.
Gédéon Spilett and Nab went to crouch among the rocks at the mouth of the Mercy — the bridge and the little bridges had all been raised — so as to stop any boat from getting through and even any landing on the opposite bank.
As for Ayrton and Pencroff, they pushed the canoe into the water and got ready to cross the channel and occupy two separate posts on the islet. In this way, shots ringing out from four different points would make the convicts think that the island was both well populated and fiercely defended.
If a landing was made that they could not prevent, or even if they saw themselves about to be cut off by one of the brig's boats, Pencroff and Ayrton were to come back in the canoe, regain the shore, and hurry to whichever spot was most threatened.
Before going to their posts, the colonists shook hands one last time. Pencroff managed to master himself enough to hold back his feelings as he hugged Harbert, his boy!... and they parted.
A few moments later Cyrus Smith and Harbert on one side, and the reporter and Nab on the other, had vanished behind the rocks, and five minutes after that Ayrton and Pencroff, having crossed the channel without mishap, landed on the islet and hid themselves in the hollows of its eastern shore.
None of them could have been seen, for they themselves could still barely make out the brig in the fog.
It was half past six in the morning.
Soon the fog began to tear apart, little by little, in the upper layers of the air, and the tops of the brig's masts rose out of the vapor. For a few moments more, great rolls of mist tumbled over the surface of the sea. Then a breeze sprang up and quickly scattered the whole bank of fog.
The Speedy appeared in full view, riding at two anchors with her bow to the north and her port quarter turned toward the island. Just as Cyrus Smith had estimated, she lay no more than a mile and a quarter from the shore.
The sinister black flag flew from her gaff.
Through his spyglass the engineer could see that the four cannon that made up her armament had been trained on the island. They were obviously ready to fire at the first signal.
Yet the Speedy stayed silent. Some thirty pirates could be seen coming and going on deck. A few had climbed onto the poop. Two others, perched on the main topgallant crosstrees with long telescopes, were studying the island with the closest attention.
Bob Harvey and his crew, certainly, could have had only a very confused idea of what had happened aboard the brig during the night. That half-naked man who had forced the door of the powder room, whom they had fought, who had emptied his revolver at them six times, who had killed one of their number and wounded two others — had he escaped their bullets? Had he managed to swim back to the coast? Where had he come from? What had he come aboard to do? Had he really meant to blow up the brig, as Bob Harvey believed? All of this must have been fairly muddled in the convicts' minds. But one thing they could no longer doubt: the unknown island off which the Speedy had dropped anchor was inhabited, and there might be a whole colony there ready to defend it. And yet nobody showed himself, either on the beach or on the heights. The shore seemed utterly deserted. In any case there was no sign of any dwelling. Had the inhabitants fled into the interior, then?
That was what the pirate chief must have been asking himself, and no doubt, being a cautious man, he wanted to scout the ground before he committed his gang to it.
For an hour and a half no sign of an attack or a landing could be caught aboard the brig. Bob Harvey was plainly hesitating. Even his best telescopes, no doubt, had not let him make out a single one of the colonists crouching in the rocks. It was not even likely that his attention had been caught by the screen of green branches and creepers that hid the windows of Granite House and stood out against the bare rock wall. After all, how could he have imagined that a dwelling had been hollowed out of the granite mass at that height? From Claw Cape all the way to the Mandible Capes, along the whole sweep of Union Bay, nothing could have told him that the island was occupied, or even could be.
At eight o'clock, however, the colonists noticed a certain stir aboard the Speedy. Men were hauling on the tackles of the boat davits, and a boat was being lowered into the sea. Seven men climbed down into it. They were armed with guns. One of them took the tiller, four took the oars, and the other two, crouching in the bow ready to fire, studied the island. Their aim, no doubt, was to make a first reconnaissance, not to land — for in that case they would have come in greater numbers.
The pirates perched in the rigging as high as the topgallant crosstrees must have been able to see that an islet lay in front of the coast, separated from it by a channel about half a mile wide. But it soon became clear to Cyrus Smith, watching the course the boat was taking, that it would not try to enter the channel at first. It would come alongside the islet instead — a prudent step, and a sensible one.
Pencroff and Ayrton, each hidden on his own in a narrow cleft in the rocks, saw it coming straight at them, and they waited until it was well within range.
The boat came on with extreme caution. The oars dipped into the water only at long intervals. One could see, too, that one of the convicts in the bow was holding a sounding line and was trying to find the channel scoured out by the current of the Mercy. That showed that Bob Harvey meant to bring his brig as close to the coast as he could. Some thirty pirates, scattered through the shrouds, did not miss a single movement of the boat, and they were taking bearings on certain landmarks that would let them come in to shore without danger.
The boat was no more than two cable lengths from the islet when it stopped. The man at the tiller, standing up, was looking for the best place to bring it in.
In an instant two shots rang out. A little puff of smoke swirled above the rocks of the islet. The man at the tiller and the man with the sounding line fell over backward into the boat. Ayrton's and Pencroff's bullets had struck them both at the same moment.
Almost at once a louder explosion was heard. A bright jet of smoke burst from the brig's side, and a cannonball struck the top of the rocks that sheltered Ayrton and Pencroff and sent splinters of stone flying — but neither of the two marksmen had been hit.
Horrible curses had broken out in the boat, which immediately got under way again. The man at the tiller was replaced at once by one of his comrades, and the oars bit sharply into the water.
But instead of going back to the ship, as one might have expected, the boat ran along the shore of the islet so as to round its southern point. The pirates were rowing hard to get out of range of the bullets.
In this way they went on as far as five cable lengths from the hollow in the coastline that ends at Jetsam Point. Then, after swinging round it in a half circle, still covered by the brig's cannon, they headed for the mouth of the Mercy.
Their obvious intention was to get into the channel this way and take the colonists posted on the islet from behind, so that, however many of them there were, they would be caught between the fire of the boat and the fire of the brig, in a very bad position indeed.
A quarter of an hour went by while the boat moved on in that direction. Absolute silence; perfect stillness in the air and on the water.
Pencroff and Ayrton understood that they were in danger of being cut off, yet they had not left their post. Perhaps they did not want to show themselves to the attackers yet and expose themselves to the Speedy's cannon; perhaps they were counting on Nab and Gédéon Spilett, keeping watch at the mouth of the river, and on Cyrus Smith and Harbert, lying in wait among the rocks of the Chimneys.
Twenty minutes after the first shots, the boat was abreast of the Mercy, less than two cable lengths off. The tide was starting to come in with its usual violence, made fiercer by the narrowness of the strait, and the convicts felt themselves being swept toward the river. Only by hard rowing did they manage to keep to the middle of the channel. But as they passed well within range of the mouth of the Mercy, two bullets greeted them on their way, and two more of them were laid flat in the boat. Nab and Spilett had not missed.
At once the brig sent a second cannonball at the post that the gun smoke had given away, but it did nothing more than chip a few rocks.
By now the boat held only three men still fit to fight. Caught by the current, it shot through the channel like an arrow and passed in front of Cyrus Smith and Harbert, who held their fire, judging it not well within range. Then, rounding the northern point of the islet with the two oars it had left, it made its way back toward the brig.
So far the colonists had no cause for complaint. The game was going badly for their enemies. The pirates already counted four men badly wounded, perhaps dead. The colonists, on the other hand, were without a scratch and had not wasted a single bullet. If the pirates kept attacking them this way, if they tried another landing by boat, they could be destroyed one by one.
It is easy to see how well chosen the engineer's plan had been. The pirates might well believe they were up against a large and well-armed enemy, one they would not easily overcome.
Half an hour passed before the boat, which had to fight the current running out to sea, got back to the Speedy. Dreadful shouts rang out when it came alongside with the wounded, and three or four cannon shots were fired that could not possibly have hit anything.
But then other convicts, drunk with rage — and perhaps still drunk from the night before — threw themselves into the boat, a dozen of them.
A second boat was lowered into the sea as well, and eight men took their places in it. While the first headed straight for the islet to drive the colonists out, the second maneuvered to force its way into the mouth of the Mercy.
The situation was obviously becoming very dangerous for Pencroff and Ayrton, and they understood that they had to get back to the mainland.
Still, they waited until the first boat was well within range, and two well-aimed bullets threw its crew into disorder once again. Then Pencroff and Ayrton left their post, not without drawing a dozen shots, ran across the islet as fast as their legs would carry them, threw themselves into the canoe, crossed the channel just as the second boat was reaching the islet's southern point, and ran to take cover in the Chimneys.
They had hardly rejoined Cyrus Smith and Harbert when the islet was overrun, and the pirates from the first boat were searching it from end to end.
Almost at the same moment, new shots broke out at the post on the Mercy, which the second boat had swiftly come up to. Two of the eight men in it were fatally hit by Gédéon Spilett and Nab, and the boat itself, swept helplessly onto the reefs, was smashed to pieces there at the mouth of the Mercy. But the six survivors, holding their weapons above their heads to keep them out of the water, managed to get a footing on the right bank of the river. Then, seeing that they were too close to the post's fire, they ran off as fast as they could toward Jetsam Point, out of range of the bullets.
So this was where things now stood. On the islet were twelve convicts, several of them no doubt wounded, but with a boat still at their disposal. On the island were six who had landed, but who had no way of reaching Granite House, since they could not cross the river, whose bridges were raised.
"It's going well!" Pencroff had said as he rushed into the Chimneys. "It's going well, Mr. Cyrus! What do you think?"
"I think," replied the engineer, "that the fight is about to take a new shape. We can't suppose these convicts are stupid enough to keep it up on terms so bad for them!"
"They still won't get across the channel," said the sailor. "Ayrton's and Mr. Spilett's carbines are there to stop them. You know they carry more than a mile!"
"No doubt," Harbert answered, "but what could two carbines do against the brig's cannon?"
"Ha! The brig isn't in the channel yet, I should think!" Pencroff replied.
"And if she comes in?" said Cyrus Smith.
"She can't. She'd risk running aground and being wrecked!"
"She can," Ayrton answered then. "The convicts can use the high tide to come into the channel, even if it means going aground at low tide. And then, under the fire of their cannon, our posts won't be worth holding."
"By all the thousand devils of hell!" cried Pencroff. "It really looks as if the scoundrels are getting ready to weigh anchor!"
"Maybe we'll be forced to take refuge in Granite House?" Harbert suggested.
"Let's wait!" replied Cyrus Smith.
"But Nab and Mr. Spilett?..." said Pencroff.
"They'll know how to join us in good time. Be ready, Ayrton. It's your carbine and Spilett's that must do the talking now."
It was only too true! The Speedy was beginning to swing round on her anchor and was showing that she meant to move closer to the islet. The tide would go on rising for another hour and a half, and since the flood current had already slackened, it would be easy for the brig to maneuver. But as for entering the channel, Pencroff, against Ayrton's opinion, could not believe that she would dare to try it.
Meanwhile the pirates who held the islet had gradually moved over to its far shore, and now only the channel separated them from the land. Armed with nothing but guns, they could do no harm to the colonists hidden either at the Chimneys or at the mouth of the Mercy. But since they did not know the colonists had long-range carbines, they did not think they were in any danger themselves either. So they walked about the islet in the open and paced along its edge.
Their mistake did not last long. Ayrton's and Gédéon Spilett's carbines spoke up then, and no doubt said something unpleasant to two of those convicts, for the two men fell over backward.
It was a general rout. The ten others did not even take the time to pick up their wounded or dead companions. They rushed back to the other side of the islet, threw themselves into the boat that had brought them, and rowed hard back to the ship.
"Eight fewer!" Pencroff had cried. "Honestly, you'd think Mr. Spilett and Ayrton had agreed to work as a team!"
"Gentlemen," Ayrton answered as he reloaded his carbine, "this is about to get more serious. The brig is getting under way!"
"The anchor's up and down!..." cried Pencroff.
"Yes, and it's already breaking out."
And indeed they could clearly hear the clank of the pawl striking against the windlass as the brig's crew hove in. At first the Speedy had moved up over her anchor. Then, once it had been torn out of the bottom, she began to drift toward the land. The wind was blowing in from the sea. The jib and the fore-topsail were hoisted, and the ship drew closer and closer to the shore.
From both posts, the Mercy and the Chimneys, they watched her maneuver without giving any sign of life — but not without a certain anxiety. The colonists' situation would be a terrible one once they were exposed, at short range, to the fire of the brig's cannon, with no means of answering it to any purpose. How could they stop the pirates from landing then?
Cyrus Smith felt this keenly, and he was asking himself what could be done. Before long he would have to make a decision. But what decision? Shut themselves up in Granite House, let themselves be besieged there, and hold out for weeks — for months, even — since there was food in plenty? Good! But after that? The pirates would be masters of the island all the same, free to lay it waste as they pleased, and in time they would get the better of the prisoners of Granite House.
Still, one chance remained: that Bob Harvey would not risk his ship in the channel and would keep to the outside of the islet. Half a mile would still separate him from the coast, and at that distance his shots might not do too much harm.
"Never," Pencroff kept saying, "never will that Bob Harvey come into the channel — not if he's a good seaman! He knows perfectly well he'd be risking the brig if the sea turned the least bit rough! And what would become of him without his ship?"
Yet the brig had come close to the islet, and they could see that she was trying to reach its lower end. The breeze was light, and since the current had by then lost much of its strength, Bob Harvey was entirely free to maneuver as he pleased.
The course the boats had followed earlier had let him find the deep water, and he had boldly entered it. His plan was only too easy to understand. He meant to moor broadside on in front of the Chimneys and from there answer with shells and cannonballs the bullets that had so far been cutting down his crew.
Soon the Speedy reached the point of the islet. She rounded it easily. Then her spanker was filled, and the brig, hauling close to the wind, found herself abreast of the Mercy.
"The bandits! They're coming in!" cried Pencroff.
At that moment Cyrus Smith, Ayrton, the sailor and Harbert were joined by Nab and Gédéon Spilett.
The reporter and his companion had judged it best to abandon the post at the Mercy, from which they could do nothing more against the ship, and they had acted wisely. It was better that the colonists should be together at the moment when a decisive action was surely about to begin. Gédéon Spilett and Nab had made their way there by slipping along under cover of the rocks, though not without drawing a hail of bullets, none of which had hit them.
"Spilett! Nab!" the engineer had cried. "You're not hurt?"
"No!" answered the reporter. "Just a few bruises — ricochets! But that damned brig is coming into the channel!"
"Yes!" Pencroff answered. "And in less than ten minutes she'll be anchored in front of Granite House!"
"Do you have a plan, Cyrus?" asked the reporter.
"We must take refuge in Granite House while there's still time, and while the convicts can't see us."
"That's my opinion too," Gédéon Spilett answered. "But once we're shut in..."
"We'll be guided by circumstances," replied the engineer.
"Let's go, then, and quickly!" said the reporter.
"You don't want Ayrton and me to stay here, Mr. Cyrus?" asked the sailor.
"What good would that do, Pencroff?" replied Cyrus Smith. "No. Let's not split up!"
There was not a moment to lose. The colonists left the Chimneys. A small jutting angle of the cliff wall kept them out of sight of the brig, but two or three explosions and the crash of cannonballs on the rocks told them that the Speedy was now only a short distance away.
To rush into the elevator, hoist themselves up to the door of Granite House, where Top and Jup had been shut in since the day before, and dash into the great hall was the work of a moment.
It was not a moment too soon, for through the branches the colonists saw the Speedy, wreathed in smoke, gliding up the channel. They even had to stand aside from the windows, because the firing never stopped. The cannonballs from the four guns were pounding blindly both at the post on the Mercy, though no one was there now, and at the Chimneys. The rocks were shattered, and every shot was greeted with cheers.
Still, they could hope that Granite House would be spared, thanks to the precaution Cyrus Smith had taken of hiding its windows — when a cannonball grazed the doorway and came flying into the passage.
"Curse it! Have they found us?" cried Pencroff.
Perhaps the colonists had not been seen, but it was certain that Bob Harvey had seen fit to send a shot through the suspicious foliage that masked that part of the high wall. Soon he was firing harder than ever, for another cannonball tore through the curtain of leaves and laid bare a gaping opening in the granite.
The colonists' situation was desperate. Their refuge had been discovered. They had no way to block these projectiles or to shield the stone, whose splinters were flying around them like grapeshot. There was nothing left for them but to take refuge in the upper passage of Granite House and abandon their home to whatever destruction might come — when a dull roar was heard, followed by dreadful screams!
Cyrus Smith and his companions rushed to one of the windows...
The brig, lifted irresistibly on a kind of waterspout, had just split in two, and in less than ten seconds she had sunk with all her criminal crew!
The colonists on the beach — Ayrton and Pencroff at the salvage work — Talk over lunch — Pencroff's reasoning — A careful inspection of the brig's hull — The powder magazine intact — The new riches — The last of the wreckage — A piece of a broken cylinder
"They've blown up!" cried Harbert.
"Yes! Blown up as if Ayrton had set fire to the powder!" answered Pencroff, throwing himself into the elevator along with Nab and the boy.
"But what happened?" asked Gédéon Spilett, still stunned by this unexpected ending.
"Ah! This time we'll find out!..." the engineer answered quickly.
"Find out what?..."
"Later! Later! Come on, Spilett. What matters is that those pirates have been wiped out!"
And Cyrus Smith, drawing the reporter and Ayrton along with him, joined Pencroff, Nab and Harbert on the beach.
Nothing could be seen of the brig anymore, not even her masts. After being lifted up by that waterspout, she had fallen over on her side and sunk in that position, no doubt because some enormous leak had opened in her. But since the channel at that point was no more than twenty feet deep, it was certain that the sides of the sunken brig would show again at low tide.
A few pieces of wreckage were floating on the surface of the sea. There was a whole raft of spare masts and yards, chicken coops with their birds still alive, and crates and barrels that came bobbing up to the surface little by little after escaping through the hatches. But there was no debris drifting about — no planks from the deck, no planking from the hull — and that made the sudden sinking of the Speedy rather hard to explain.
Meanwhile the two masts, which had snapped a few feet above the deck where they passed through it, breaking their stays and shrouds as they went, soon rose to the surface of the channel with their sails, some spread and some furled. But they could not give the ebb time to carry off all these riches, and Ayrton and Pencroff jumped into the canoe, meaning to tie up all the floating wreckage either to the shore of the island or to the shore of the islet.
But just as they were about to push off, a thought from Gédéon Spilett stopped them.
"And the six convicts who landed on the right bank of the Mercy?" he said.
He was right. They must not forget that the six men whose boat had been smashed on the rocks had come ashore at Jetsam Point.
Everyone looked in that direction. None of the fugitives was in sight. Most likely, after watching the brig go down in the waters of the channel, they had fled into the interior of the island.
"We'll deal with them later," Cyrus Smith said then. "They may still be dangerous, because they're armed, but after all, it's six against six, so the odds are even. Let's see to the most urgent thing first."
Ayrton and Pencroff got into the canoe and rowed hard toward the wreckage.
The sea was at the slack just then, and very high, because the moon had been new for two days. So a good hour at least would have to pass before the hull of the brig came up out of the waters of the channel.
Ayrton and Pencroff had time to make fast the masts and spars with ropes, whose ends were carried to the beach below Granite House. There the colonists, pulling all together, managed to haul the wreckage ashore. Then the canoe picked up everything that was floating — chicken coops, barrels, crates — and it was all carried straight to the Chimneys.
A few bodies were floating too. Among them Ayrton recognized that of Bob Harvey, and he pointed it out to his companion, saying in a voice full of feeling:
"That's what I was, Pencroff!"
"But it's what you aren't anymore, my brave Ayrton!" answered the sailor.
It was rather strange that so few bodies were floating. They counted barely five or six, and the ebb was already starting to carry them out toward the open sea. Very probably the convicts, caught by the sudden sinking, had had no time to get away, and since the ship had gone over on her side, most of them had been trapped under the bulwarks. And so the outgoing tide, which was about to sweep the bodies of these wretched men out to sea, would spare the colonists the grim task of burying them in some corner of their island.
For two hours Cyrus Smith and his companions did nothing but haul the spars up onto the sand, unbend the sails from the yards, and spread them out to dry. The sails were perfectly undamaged. The colonists talked very little, so completely did the work absorb them — but what thoughts went through their minds! Owning this brig, or rather everything she held, was a fortune. A ship is like a small, complete world, and the colony's stock of equipment was about to grow by a great many useful things. It would be the chest found at Jetsam Point all over again, "on a grand scale."
"And besides," Pencroff was thinking, "why couldn't this brig be refloated? If she's got only a leak, well, a leak can be plugged, and a ship of three to four hundred tons — now that's a real ship next to our Bonadventure! You can go a long way in a ship like that! You can go wherever you like! Mr. Cyrus, Ayrton and I will have to look into it. It's worth the trouble!"
And indeed, if the brig was still fit to sail, the colonists' chances of getting home from Lincoln Island would be wonderfully improved. But to settle this important question they would have to wait until the tide was all the way out, so that every part of the brig's hull could be examined.
Once the wreckage was safe on the beach, Cyrus Smith and his companions allowed themselves a few moments for lunch. They were literally dying of hunger. Luckily the pantry was not far away, and Nab could pass for a ship's cook who got things on the table fast. So they ate beside the Chimneys, and during the meal, as you can well imagine, the only subject was the unexpected event that had saved the colony so miraculously.
"Miraculously is the word," Pencroff kept repeating, "because you have to admit those scoundrels blew up at exactly the right moment! Granite House was getting remarkably hard to live in!"
"And can you picture how it happened, Pencroff," asked the reporter, "and what could have set off that explosion on the brig?"
"Eh! Mr. Spilett, nothing simpler," answered Pencroff. "A pirate ship isn't run like a warship! Convicts aren't sailors! The brig's powder rooms must have been open, since they were firing at us nonstop, and it would only take one careless or clumsy fellow to blow the whole contraption sky-high!"
"Mr. Cyrus," said Harbert, "what surprises me is that the explosion didn't do more damage. The bang wasn't very loud, and when you come down to it, there's not much debris and not many planks torn off. It looks as if the ship sank rather than blew up."
"That surprises you, my boy?" asked the engineer.
"Yes, Mr. Cyrus."
"It surprises me too, Harbert," answered the engineer. "But when we inspect the brig's hull, we'll no doubt find the explanation."
"Now look here, Mr. Cyrus," said Pencroff, "you're not going to claim the Speedy simply sank like a ship that's run onto a reef?"
"Why not," Nab put in, "if there are rocks in the channel?"
"Come on, Nab," answered Pencroff. "You didn't have your eyes open at the right moment. An instant before she went down, the brig — I saw it perfectly well — rose up on an enormous wave and fell back, heeling over to port. Now if she'd only struck, she'd have sunk nice and quietly, like an honest ship going to the bottom."
"That's just it — she wasn't an honest ship!" answered Nab.
"Well, we'll see, Pencroff," said the engineer.
"We'll see," the sailor added, "but I'd bet my head there aren't any rocks in the channel. Come on, Mr. Cyrus, honestly — are you trying to tell me there's something marvelous about this business too?"
Cyrus Smith did not answer.
"In any case," said Gédéon Spilett, "collision or explosion, you'll grant, Pencroff, that it happened just in time!"
"Yes!... Yes!..." answered the sailor. "But that's not the question. I'm asking Mr. Smith if he sees anything supernatural in all this."
"I'm not saying either way, Pencroff," said the engineer. "That's all the answer I can give you."
That answer did not satisfy Pencroff in the least. He held to "an explosion," and nothing would shake him off it. He would never agree that there was some unknown reef in that channel, whose bed was fine sand like the beach itself, and which he had often crossed at low tide. Besides, at the moment the brig went down, the tide was high — which meant she had more than enough water under her to pass over, without touching, any rocks that did not show at low tide. Therefore there could not have been a collision. Therefore the ship had not struck. Therefore she had blown up.
And it must be admitted that the sailor's reasoning was not without a certain logic.
Toward half past one the colonists got into the canoe and went out to where the brig lay stranded. It was a pity that the brig's two boats could not have been saved. But one of them, as we know, had been smashed at the mouth of the Mercy and was completely useless, and the other had vanished when the brig went down and, no doubt crushed beneath her, had never come up again.
By now the hull of the Speedy was beginning to show above the water. The brig was lying worse than on her side. After snapping her masts under the weight of her ballast, which had shifted when she fell, she lay almost keel up. She had been truly turned over by that inexplicable but terrifying underwater force, which had at the same time shown itself by throwing up an enormous waterspout.
The colonists went all the way around the hull, and as the sea went down they were able to make out, if not the cause of the disaster, at least its effects.
In the bow, on both sides of the keel, seven or eight feet aft of the point where the stem begins, the brig's sides were horribly torn open along a length of at least twenty feet. There gaped two great holes that it would have been impossible to plug. Not only had the copper sheathing and the planking vanished — ground to powder, no doubt — but of the frames themselves, and of the iron bolts and wooden pegs that held them together, not a trace was left. All along the hull, right back to where it narrowed toward the stern, the strakes — the long rows of planking — were shredded and no longer held. The false keel had been torn away with an inexplicable violence, and the keel itself, ripped from the keelson — the inner timber that runs along on top of it — in several places, was broken along its whole length.
"A thousand devils!" cried Pencroff. "There's a ship that's going to be hard to refloat!"
"It will be impossible," said Ayrton.
"In any case," Gédéon Spilett pointed out to the sailor, "the explosion, if there was an explosion, has had some peculiar effects here! It has burst open the bottom of the ship's hull, instead of blowing off the deck and the upper works! These big holes look much more as if they'd been made by striking a reef than by a magazine blowing up!"
"There's no reef in the channel!" the sailor shot back. "I'll admit anything you like, except hitting a rock!"
"Let's try to get inside the brig," said the engineer. "Maybe we'll find out what to think about the cause of her destruction."
That was the best course to take, and besides, they needed to make an inventory of all the riches on board and arrange for getting everything out.
Getting inside the brig was easy now. The water was still dropping, and the underside of the deck — which, with the hull turned over, had now become the top — could be walked on. The ballast, made of heavy pigs of cast iron, had smashed through it in several places. They could hear the sea gurgling as it drained out through the cracks in the hull.
Cyrus Smith and his companions, axes in hand, made their way forward along the half-wrecked deck. Crates of every kind cluttered it, and since they had been in the water for only a very short time, perhaps their contents were not spoiled.
So they set about getting this whole cargo to a safe place. The tide would not come back for several hours, and those few hours were put to the most profitable use. Ayrton and Pencroff had rigged a block and tackle at the opening in the hull, and with it they hoisted out the barrels and crates. The canoe took them aboard and carried them straight to the beach. They took everything, without picking and choosing, leaving it until later to sort all these things out.
In any case, what the colonists could see at once, to their enormous satisfaction, was that the brig carried a very varied cargo — an assortment of goods of every sort: utensils, manufactured articles, tools, the kind of thing loaded by ships that trade from island to island across Polynesia. Most likely they would find a little of everything here, and you will agree that this was exactly what the colony on Lincoln Island needed.
All the same — and Cyrus Smith noticed it in silent astonishment — not only had the brig's hull, as has been said, suffered enormously from whatever blow had caused the disaster, but the inside of the ship was wrecked as well, especially toward the bow. Bulkheads and stanchions were shattered, as though some tremendous shell had burst inside the brig. The colonists could easily go from bow to stern once they had moved the crates, which were carried out one after another. These were not heavy bales, which would have been hard to shift, but ordinary packages, and in any case there was no telling anymore how they had been stowed.
The colonists then made their way to the stern of the brig, to the part that the poop deck used to cover. It was there, according to Ayrton, that they should look for the powder magazine. Since Cyrus Smith believed it had not exploded, it was possible that a few kegs could be saved, and that the powder, which is usually packed in metal casings, had not been harmed by the water.
And that, in fact, was what had happened. In the midst of a great quantity of shot and shells, they found about twenty kegs lined with copper, and these were carefully brought out. Pencroff saw with his own eyes that the destruction of the Speedy could not be put down to an explosion. The part of the hull where the magazine was located was exactly the part that had suffered least.
"Could be!" answered the stubborn sailor. "But as for a rock — there isn't any rock in the channel!"
"Then what happened?" asked Harbert.
"I have no idea," answered Pencroff. "Mr. Cyrus has no idea, and nobody has any idea, and nobody ever will!"
During all this searching, several hours had gone by, and the flood tide was starting to make itself felt. The salvage work had to be stopped. There was no fear, though, that the sea would carry the brig's carcass away. It was already sunk into the sand and held as firmly as if it had been moored with two anchors.
So they could safely wait for the next ebb to start work again. But as for the ship herself, she was certainly doomed, and they would even have to hurry to save the pieces of her hull, because before long it would disappear into the shifting sands of the channel.
It was five o'clock in the evening. The day had been a hard one for the workers. They ate with a hearty appetite, and however tired they were, after supper they could not resist the urge to look into the crates that made up the Speedy's cargo.
Most of them held ready-made clothes, which, as you can imagine, were very welcome. There was enough there to dress a whole colony — linen for every purpose, shoes for every foot.
"Now we're too rich!" Pencroff exclaimed. "But what are we going to do with all this?"
And every moment the jolly sailor burst out with another hurrah as he recognized kegs of tafia — a cheap rum made from sugarcane — hogsheads of tobacco, firearms and blades, bales of cotton, farming implements, tools for carpenters, joiners and blacksmiths, and boxes of seeds of every kind, which their short stay in the water had not harmed. Ah, two years earlier, how welcome all these things would have been! But even now, when these hardworking colonists had made their own tools, all these riches would find a use.
There was no shortage of room in the storerooms of Granite House, but that day there was no time to put everything away. They could not forget, though, that six survivors from the crew of the Speedy had set foot on the island, that they were very likely scoundrels of the first rank, and that the colonists would have to be on their guard against them. Even though the bridge over the Mercy and the little bridges had been raised, convicts like these were not the sort to let a river or a stream stop them, and driven by despair, such ruffians could be formidable.
They would see later what was best to do about them. Meanwhile, though, someone had to keep watch over the crates and packages piled up near the Chimneys, and the colonists took turns at it all night.
The night passed, however, without the convicts attempting any attack. Master Jup and Top, on guard at the foot of Granite House, would have given the alarm quickly enough.
The next three days, October 19, 20 and 21, were spent saving everything that might be of any value or any use at all, whether from the cargo or from the brig's rigging. At low tide they emptied the hold. At high tide they stored away what they had saved. A large part of the copper sheathing was stripped off the hull, which sank deeper into the sand every day. And before the sands could swallow up the heavy objects that had gone to the bottom, Ayrton and Pencroff dove down to the bed of the channel several times and found the brig's chains and anchors, the iron pigs of her ballast, and even her four cannons. They buoyed the cannons up with empty casks, and so managed to bring them ashore.
So you can see that the colony's arsenal had gained from the salvage no less than the pantries and storerooms of Granite House. Pencroff, always full of enthusiasm for his plans, was already talking about building a battery to command the channel and the mouth of the river. With four cannons, he promised, he would stop any fleet, "however powerful," from venturing into the waters of Lincoln Island!
In the meantime, when nothing was left of the brig but a useless shell, bad weather came along and finished destroying it. Cyrus Smith had meant to blow it up so as to collect the pieces along the shore, but a strong northeast wind and a heavy sea let him save his powder.
In fact, during the night of the 23rd to the 24th, the hull of the brig was completely broken up, and part of the wreckage washed up on the beach.
As for the ship's papers, it goes without saying that Cyrus Smith found no trace of them, even though he had carefully searched the cupboards in the poop. The pirates had obviously destroyed everything that had to do with either the captain or the owner of the Speedy, and since the name of her home port was not painted on her stern, there was nothing to suggest what country she came from. However, from certain lines of her bow, Ayrton and Pencroff seemed to think the brig must have been English-built.
A week after the disaster — or rather after the happy but inexplicable ending to which the colony owed its rescue — nothing more could be seen of the ship, even at low tide. Her remains had been scattered, and Granite House was rich with almost everything she had carried.
All the same, the mystery that hid her strange destruction would no doubt never have been cleared up if, on November 30, Nab, wandering along the beach, had not found a piece of a thick iron cylinder that showed traces of an explosion. The cylinder was twisted and torn along its edges, as if it had been subjected to the force of some explosive substance.
Nab brought this piece of metal to his master, who was busy just then with his companions in the workshop at the Chimneys.
Cyrus Smith examined the cylinder carefully. Then, turning to Pencroff:
"My friend," he said, "do you still insist that the Speedy didn't go down because she struck something?"
"Yes, Mr. Cyrus," answered the sailor. "You know as well as I do there aren't any rocks in the channel."
"But what if she had struck this piece of iron?" said the engineer, holding up the broken cylinder.
"What, this bit of pipe?" cried Pencroff, in a tone of complete disbelief.
"My friends," Cyrus Smith went on, "do you remember that before she sank, the brig rose up on the top of a regular waterspout?"
"Yes, Mr. Cyrus!" answered Harbert.
"Well, would you like to know what threw up that waterspout? This did," said the engineer, holding up the broken tube.
"This?" Pencroff shot back.
"Yes! This cylinder is all that's left of a torpedo — a mine, that is, laid under the water!"
"A torpedo!" cried the engineer's companions.
"And who put it there, this torpedo?" asked Pencroff, who would not give in.
"All I can tell you is that it wasn't me!" answered Cyrus Smith. "But it was there, and you've seen for yourselves how incomparably powerful it was!"
What the engineer affirms — Pencroff's grand theories — A battery in the air — The four shots — About the surviving convicts — Ayrton hesitates — Cyrus Smith's generous feelings — Pencroff gives in reluctantly
So everything was explained by the underwater explosion of that torpedo. Cyrus Smith, who had had occasion during the war for the Union to try out these terrible engines of destruction, could not be mistaken. It was the blast of that cylinder, packed with some explosive substance — nitroglycerin, picrate, or something of the same kind — that had thrown the water of the channel up like a waterspout and torn open the brig's bottom so that she sank on the spot. And that was why it had been impossible to refloat her: the damage to her hull had been so enormous. Against a torpedo that could have destroyed an ironclad frigate as easily as a little fishing boat, the Speedy had never stood a chance!
Yes! Everything was explained, everything... except what that torpedo had been doing in the waters of the channel!
"My friends," Cyrus Smith went on, "we can no longer doubt that some mysterious being is here — a castaway like us, perhaps, abandoned on our island. I say this so that Ayrton will know all the strange things that have happened over the past two years. Who is this unknown benefactor whose help, so fortunate for us, has shown itself on so many occasions? I can't imagine. What reason does he have for acting this way, for hiding himself after doing us so many services? I can't understand it. But his services are no less real for that, and they are the kind that only a man with prodigious power at his command could have done us. Ayrton is in his debt as much as we are. For if it was the stranger who saved me from the waves after the balloon fell, then it was obviously he who wrote the document, who put that bottle in the path of our boat in the channel, and who let us know where our companion was. I will add this: it was he who guided that chest, so well stocked with everything we lacked, and beached it at Jetsam Point; it was he who lit the fire on the heights of the island that let you make land; it was he who fired the lead pellet we found in the peccary's body; it was he who sank the torpedo in the channel that destroyed the brig. In a word, all those inexplicable facts we could never account for are owed to this mysterious being. So whoever he may be, castaway or exile on this island, we would be ungrateful if we thought ourselves released from all gratitude toward him. We have run up a debt, and I hope we will pay it one day."
"You're right to speak that way, my dear Cyrus," replied Gédéon Spilett. "Yes, there is someone, someone almost all-powerful, hidden somewhere on the island, whose influence has been remarkably useful to our colony. I'll add that this stranger seems to me to have means of action at his disposal that would border on the supernatural, if the supernatural could be accepted among the facts of practical life. Is it he who communicates with us in secret through the well of Granite House, and so knows all our plans? Is it he who held out that bottle to us when the canoe made her first trip out to sea? Is it he who threw Top out of the lake and killed the dugong? Is it he — as everything leads us to believe — who saved you from the waves, Cyrus, and in circumstances where anyone who was only a man could have done nothing? If it is, then he has a power that makes him master of the elements."
The reporter's remark was a fair one, and they all felt it.
"Yes," replied Cyrus Smith. "If the intervention of a human being is no longer in doubt, I agree that he has means of action at his disposal beyond those that humanity commands. There is a mystery still. But if we find the man, we'll find the answer to the mystery too. So the question is this: should we respect the incognito of this generous being, or should we do everything we can to reach him? What do you think?"
"What I think," replied Pencroff, "is that whoever he is, he's a good man, and he has my respect!"
"Fair enough," said Cyrus Smith, "but that's not an answer, Pencroff."
"My master," Nab said then, "I have an idea that we can look for this gentleman as long as we like, but we won't find him until he pleases."
"That's not a stupid thing to say, Nab," said Pencroff.
"I agree with Nab," said Gédéon Spilett, "but that's no reason not to try. Whether we find this mysterious being or not, we will at least have done our duty toward him."
"And you, my boy, give us your opinion," said the engineer, turning to Harbert.
"Oh!" cried Harbert, his eyes lighting up. "I'd like to thank him — the one who saved you first, and then saved the rest of us!"
"You and me both, my boy," Pencroff shot back, "and all of us! I'm not the curious sort, but I'd give one of my eyes to see that fellow face to face! I picture him handsome, tall, strong, with a fine beard and hair like rays of light, lying on the clouds with a big ball in his hand!"
"Why, Pencroff," replied Gédéon Spilett, "that's a portrait of God the Father you're painting for us!"
"Could be, Mr. Spilett," the sailor answered, "but that's how I imagine him!"
"And you, Ayrton?" asked the engineer.
"Mr. Smith," replied Ayrton, "I can hardly give you my opinion in this matter. Whatever you do will be well done. Whenever you want me to join your search, I'll be ready to follow you."
"Thank you, Ayrton," said Cyrus Smith, "but I'd like a more direct answer to the question I asked you. You are our companion. You have already risked yourself for us more than once, and like everyone here, you must be consulted when an important decision is to be made. So speak."
"Mr. Smith," replied Ayrton, "I think we must do everything we can to find this unknown benefactor. Perhaps he's alone? Perhaps he's suffering? Perhaps there's a life to be renewed? I too, as you said, have a debt of gratitude to pay him. It was he — it can only have been he — who came to Tabor Island, who found the wretch you knew there, who let you know there was an unhappy man to be saved!... So it's thanks to him that I became a man again. No, I will never forget it!"
"Then it's settled," said Cyrus Smith. "We'll begin our search as soon as possible. We won't leave one part of the island unexplored. We'll search it down to its most secret hiding places — and may our unknown friend forgive us, for the sake of our intentions!"
For several days the colonists were hard at work bringing in the hay and the harvest. Before carrying out their plan to explore the parts of the island still unknown, they wanted every essential job finished. This was also the season for gathering the various vegetables grown from the plants brought back from Tabor Island. So everything had to be stored, and fortunately there was no lack of room in Granite House, where they could have stored all the riches of the island. The colony's produce was kept there, methodically arranged and in a safe place — you can believe it — as secure from beasts as from men. There was no damp to fear in the middle of that thick mass of granite. Several of the natural hollows along the upper passage were enlarged or hollowed out, some with the pick, some by blasting, and Granite House became a general warehouse as well, holding the provisions, the ammunition, the spare tools and utensils — in a word, all the colony's equipment.
As for the cannons from the brig, they were handsome pieces of cast steel. At Pencroff's urging they were hoisted with tackles and cranes right up to the doorsill of Granite House. Gunports were cut between the windows, and soon the guns could be seen thrusting their gleaming muzzles out through the granite wall. From that height these pieces of artillery truly commanded the whole of Union Bay. It was a little Gibraltar, and any ship that anchored broadside to the shore off the islet would have been exposed, with no escape, to the fire of this battery in the air.
"Mr. Cyrus," Pencroff said one day — it was November 8 — "now that the guns are mounted, we really have to test their range."
"Do you think that would be useful?" replied the engineer.
"It's more than useful, it's necessary! Otherwise, how will we know how far we can send one of those fine cannonballs we've got such a stock of?"
"Let's try, then, Pencroff," replied the engineer. "But I think we should make the experiment using not ordinary gunpowder, since I want to keep our supply of that intact, but guncotton, which we'll never run short of."
"Can these cannons stand the blast of guncotton?" asked the reporter, who was no less eager than Pencroff to try out the artillery of Granite House.
"I think so. Besides," added the engineer, "we'll go about it carefully."
The engineer had good reason to think the cannons were of excellent make, and he knew what he was talking about. They were made of forged steel and loaded at the breech, so for that very reason they ought to stand a considerable charge, and therefore have an enormous range. For in practical terms, the path the shot travels should be as flat as possible, and that flatness can only be had if the projectile leaves the gun at a very high initial speed.
"Now," Cyrus Smith told his companions, "the initial speed depends on the amount of powder used. In making guns, the whole question comes down to using the strongest metal possible, and of all metals, steel is beyond question the one that holds up best. So I have reason to think our cannons will safely withstand the expanding gases of the guncotton and will give excellent results."
"We'll be a lot surer of that once we've tried it!" replied Pencroff.
It goes without saying that the four cannons were in perfect condition. Ever since they had been hauled out of the water, the sailor had made it his job to clean them conscientiously. How many hours he had spent rubbing them, greasing them, polishing them, cleaning the breech mechanism — the breechblock, the bolt, the clamping screw! And now the guns shone as brightly as if they had been aboard a frigate of the United States Navy.
So that day, in the presence of the whole colony, Master Jup and Top included, the four cannons were tested one after another. They were loaded with guncotton, allowing for its explosive power, which, as we have said, is four times that of ordinary gunpowder. The projectile they were to fire was cylindrical, with a conical nose.
Pencroff, holding the cord of the friction primer, stood ready to fire.
At a sign from Cyrus Smith, the shot went off. The ball, aimed out to sea, passed over the islet and vanished far offshore, at a distance that could not be judged with any accuracy.
The second cannon was trained on the farthest rocks of Jetsam Point, and the projectile struck a sharp-pointed stone nearly three miles from Granite House and blew it to pieces.
It was Harbert who had aimed the cannon and fired it, and he was very proud of his first attempt. Only Pencroff was prouder than he was! A shot like that — and the honor of it went to his dear boy!
The third projectile, fired this time at the dunes that formed the upper shore of Union Bay, struck the sand at a distance of at least four miles; then it ricocheted and was lost at sea in a cloud of spray.
For the fourth gun, Cyrus Smith increased the charge a little, to test its utmost range. Then, with everyone standing well aside in case it burst, the primer was fired by means of a long cord.
There was a violent explosion, but the gun held. The colonists rushed to the window and saw the projectile chip the rocks of Mandible Cape, nearly five miles from Granite House, and disappear into Shark Gulf.
"Well, Mr. Cyrus," cried Pencroff, whose hurrahs could have rivaled the explosions themselves, "what do you say about our battery? All the pirates of the Pacific can come and show themselves in front of Granite House! Not a single one of them will land now without our permission!"
"If you take my advice, Pencroff," replied the engineer, "it's better not to put that to the test."
"By the way," the sailor went on, "what about the six scoundrels prowling around the island? What are we going to do with them? Are we going to let them run loose through our forests, our fields, our meadows? They're real jaguars, those pirates, and it seems to me we shouldn't hesitate to treat them as such. What do you think, Ayrton?" Pencroff added, turning to his companion.
At first Ayrton hesitated to answer, and Cyrus Smith regretted that Pencroff had put the question to him so thoughtlessly. So he was deeply moved when Ayrton answered in a humble voice:
"I was one of those jaguars, Mr. Pencroff, and I have no right to speak..."
And he walked slowly away.
Pencroff had understood.
"What a blasted fool I am!" he cried. "Poor Ayrton! He has as much right to speak here as anybody!..."
"Yes," said Gédéon Spilett, "but his reserve does him credit, and we ought to respect the feeling he has about his unhappy past."
"Understood, Mr. Spilett," replied the sailor, "and you won't catch me at it again! I'd sooner swallow my tongue than hurt Ayrton's feelings! But let's get back to the question. It seems to me those bandits have no right to any pity, and we ought to rid the island of them as soon as we can."
"Is that really your opinion, Pencroff?" asked the engineer.
"Absolutely my opinion."
"And before hunting them down without mercy, you wouldn't wait until they had committed some fresh act of hostility against us?"
"So what they've already done isn't enough?" asked Pencroff, who could make no sense of all this hesitation.
"They may come to feel differently!" said Cyrus Smith. "And perhaps repent..."
"Repent — them!" cried the sailor, shrugging his shoulders.
"Pencroff, think of Ayrton!" Harbert said then, taking the sailor's hand. "He became an honest man again!"
Pencroff looked at his companions one after another. He would never have believed that his proposal could raise the slightest hesitation. His rough nature could not accept any compromise with the scoundrels who had landed on the island, the accomplices of Bob Harvey, the murderers of the Speedy's crew. He thought of them as wild beasts that had to be destroyed without hesitation and without remorse.
"Well, there it is!" he said. "Everybody's against me! You want to be generous with those villains! All right. Let's hope we don't live to regret it!"
"What danger are we in," said Harbert, "if we take care to stay on our guard?"
"Hmm!" said the reporter, who was not committing himself too far. "There are six of them, and well armed. If each of them lay in ambush in some corner and fired at one of us, they'd soon be masters of the colony!"
"Then why haven't they done it?" replied Harbert. "No doubt because it wasn't in their interest to. Besides, there are six of us too."
"Fine! Fine!" replied Pencroff, whom no argument could have convinced. "Let's leave those fine fellows to go about their little business, and not think about them anymore!"
"Come on, Pencroff," said Nab, "don't make yourself out to be so mean! If one of those poor wretches were here, right in front of you, within easy range of your gun, you wouldn't shoot him..."
"I'd shoot him like a mad dog, Nab," Pencroff replied coldly.
"Pencroff," the engineer said then, "you have often shown great respect for my advice. In this case, will you rely on me once again?"
"I'll do as you please, Mr. Smith," replied the sailor, who was not convinced in the least.
"Well then, let's wait, and attack only if we're attacked."
So that was how they decided to act toward the pirates, though Pencroff predicted nothing good from it. They would not attack them, but they would stay on their guard. After all, the island was large and fertile. If any feeling of honesty remained in the depths of their souls, those wretches might perhaps reform. Given the conditions they had to live in, wasn't it in their own best interest to make a new life for themselves? In any case, for humanity's sake if nothing else, they had to wait. The colonists might no longer be able to come and go as freely and trustingly as before. Until now they had only had wild beasts to guard against, and now six convicts, perhaps of the worst kind, were prowling about their island. It was serious, no doubt, and for less courageous people it would have meant the end of all their security.
No matter! For the present, the colonists were right and Pencroff was wrong. Would they be right in the future? Time would tell.
Plans for an expedition — Ayrton at the corral — A visit to Balloon Harbor — Pencroff's remarks aboard the Bonadventure — A telegram sent to the corral — No answer from Ayrton — Setting out the next day — Why the wire no longer works — A gunshot
Meanwhile, the colonists' great concern was to carry out the complete exploration of the island that they had decided on. That exploration would now have two aims: first, to find the mysterious being whose existence could no longer be disputed; and at the same time, to find out what had become of the pirates — what hideout they had chosen, what sort of life they were leading, and what the colonists might have to fear from them.
Cyrus Smith wanted to set out without delay. But since the expedition would last several days, it had seemed sensible to load the cart with camping gear and various utensils that would make it easier to set up their stops along the way. Now, just then one of the onaggas had hurt its leg and could not be harnessed. It needed a few days' rest, and they decided they could put off their departure by a week, to November 20, without any harm done. In that latitude, the month of November corresponds to May in the northern regions. So it was the fine season. The sun was reaching the Tropic of Capricorn and giving the longest days of the year. The time would be ideal for the planned expedition — an expedition which, even if it did not achieve its main goal, could prove rich in discoveries, especially in the island's plants and animals, since Cyrus Smith meant to explore the dense Far West forests that stretched all the way to the tip of Serpentine Peninsula.
It was agreed that during the nine days before their departure they would put the finishing touches on the work on Prospect Plateau.
Ayrton, however, needed to go back to the corral, where the domestic animals required his care. So it was decided that he would spend two days there, and that he would not come back to Granite House until he had well stocked the stables.
Just as he was about to leave, Cyrus Smith asked him whether he would like one of them to go with him, pointing out that the island was less safe than it used to be.
Ayrton answered that there was no need: he could handle the work alone, and besides, he was not afraid of anything. If anything happened at the corral or in the neighborhood, he would warn the colonists at once by sending a telegram to Granite House.
So Ayrton left at dawn on the 9th, taking the cart, harnessed to a single onagga, and two hours later the electric bell announced that he had found everything in order at the corral.
During those two days, Cyrus Smith set about carrying out a project that was to put Granite House beyond the reach of any surprise attack for good. The idea was to hide completely the upper mouth of the old spillway, at the southern corner of Lake Grant. It was already walled up with masonry and half hidden under grass and plants. Nothing could have been easier, since all it took was to raise the level of the lake by two or three feet, and the opening would then be completely under water.
And to raise that level, all they had to do was build a dam across each of the two channels that had been cut from the lake — the ones that fed Glycerin Creek and the creek that ran to the great waterfall. The colonists were all called in to help with this work, and the two dams — which, after all, were no more than seven or eight feet wide and three feet high — were quickly put up out of blocks of stone, well cemented together.
When the job was finished, it would have been impossible to suspect that at that end of the lake there was an underground channel through which the lake's overflow had once poured out.
It goes without saying that the little side channel that kept Granite House's tank supplied and worked the elevator had been carefully preserved, so that they would never in any circumstances run short of water. Once the elevator was raised, this safe and comfortable retreat could defy any surprise or sudden attack.
This work had been dispatched quickly, and Pencroff, Gédéon Spilett and Harbert found time to make a quick trip out to Balloon Harbor. The sailor was very anxious to know whether the convicts had paid a visit to the little cove at the far end of which the Bonadventure lay at anchor.
"The thing is," he pointed out, "those gentlemen came ashore on the south coast, and if they followed the shoreline, I'm afraid they may have found the little harbor. And in that case I wouldn't give you half a dollar for our Bonadventure."
Pencroff's fears were not without some foundation, and a visit to Balloon Harbor seemed very much in order.
So the sailor and his companions set out in the afternoon of November 10, well armed. Pencroff, slipping two balls into each barrel of his gun so that everyone could see, kept shaking his head, which boded no good for anyone who came too close to him — "beast or man," as he said. Gédéon Spilett and Harbert took their guns too, and at about three o'clock all three of them left Granite House.
Nab went with them as far as the bend of the Mercy, and when they had crossed, he raised the bridge. It was agreed that a gunshot would announce the colonists' return, and that at that signal Nab would come back and reconnect the two banks of the river.
The little party went straight down the harbor road toward the south coast of the island. It was a distance of only three and a half miles, but Gédéon Spilett and his companions took two hours to cover it. That was because they searched the whole edge of the road, both on the side of the thick forest and on the side of Shelduck Marsh. They found no trace of the fugitives. No doubt, not yet knowing how many colonists there were or what means of defense they had, the convicts had made for the least accessible parts of the island.
When Pencroff reached Balloon Harbor, he was enormously pleased to see the Bonadventure riding quietly at anchor in the narrow inlet. And in fact, Balloon Harbor was so well hidden among those high rocks that no one could spot it from either the sea or the land — not unless they were right on top of it or right inside it.
"Well," said Pencroff, "those scoundrels haven't been here yet. Tall grass suits snakes better, and it's obviously in the Far West that we'll find them again."
"And a very lucky thing, too," Harbert added. "If they'd found the Bonadventure, they'd have seized her to get away, and that would have kept us from going back to Tabor Island any time soon."
"Indeed," the reporter answered. "It'll be important to take a document there telling where Lincoln Island lies and where Ayrton lives now, in case the Scottish yacht comes back to fetch him."
"Well, the Bonadventure's still right here, Mr. Spilett!" the sailor replied. "She and her crew are ready to sail at the first signal!"
"I think, Pencroff, that's something to do as soon as our expedition around the island is finished. After all, it's possible that this stranger — if we manage to find him — knows a great deal about both Lincoln Island and Tabor Island. Let's not forget that he's unquestionably the author of the document, and perhaps he knows what to expect about the yacht's return!"
"A thousand devils!" cried Pencroff. "Who on earth can he be? He knows us, this character, and we don't know him! If he's just a castaway, why is he hiding? We're decent people, I'd say, and nobody minds the company of decent people! Did he come here of his own free will? Can he leave the island if he feels like it? Is he still here? Is he gone?..."
As they talked, Pencroff, Harbert and Gédéon Spilett had gone aboard and were walking around the deck of the Bonadventure. All of a sudden the sailor, who had been examining the bitt that the anchor cable was made fast to, cried out:
"Well, I'll be! Now that's a strong one!"
"What's the matter, Pencroff?" asked the reporter.
"The matter is, I didn't tie that knot!"
And Pencroff pointed to a rope that lashed the cable to the bitt itself, to keep it from slipping.
"What do you mean, you didn't?" asked Gédéon Spilett.
"No! I'd swear to it. That's a reef knot, and I always tie two half hitches — a knot that never works loose."
"You must have made a mistake, Pencroff."
"I did not make a mistake!" the sailor declared. "You get that in your hands without thinking, and the hand doesn't make mistakes!"
"Then the convicts must have come aboard?" asked Harbert.
"I don't know about that," answered Pencroff, "but one thing's certain: somebody hauled up the Bonadventure's anchor and then dropped it again! And look here! Here's another proof. Somebody's paid out more of the anchor cable, and its chafing gear — the old canvas we wrap around the cable so it won't wear through where it runs out the hawsehole — isn't sitting at the hawsehole anymore. I'm telling you again, somebody has used our boat!"
"But if the convicts had used her, they'd either have plundered her or else they'd have escaped in her..."
"Escaped!... Where to?... Tabor Island?..." Pencroff shot back. "Do you really think they'd have risked it in a boat this small?"
"Besides, we'd have to assume they knew about the islet," the reporter answered.
"Be that as it may," said the sailor, "as sure as I'm Bonadventure Pencroff of the Vineyard, our Bonadventure has been sailing without us!"
The sailor was so positive that neither Gédéon Spilett nor Harbert could argue with what he said. It was clear that the boat had been moved, to some extent, since Pencroff had brought her back to Balloon Harbor. As far as the sailor was concerned, there was no doubt whatever that the anchor had been raised and then sent back down to the bottom. And why would anyone do those two things, unless the boat had been used for some expedition?
"But how could we have failed to see the Bonadventure sailing past the island?" the reporter pointed out. He was determined to raise every possible objection.
"Oh, Mr. Spilett," the sailor answered, "all you have to do is leave at night with a good breeze, and in two hours you're out of sight of the island!"
"All right," Gédéon Spilett went on. "I'll ask it again: what reason would the convicts have had to use the Bonadventure, and why, after using her, would they have brought her back to the harbor?"
"Oh, Mr. Spilett," the sailor answered, "let's just put it down among the inexplicable things and not think about it anymore! What mattered was that the Bonadventure should be here, and she is. The trouble is, if the convicts took her a second time, she might not turn up in her place again!"
"Then, Pencroff," said Harbert, "maybe it would be wise to bring the Bonadventure round to Granite House?"
"Yes and no," Pencroff answered. "Or rather, no. The mouth of the Mercy is a bad place for a boat, and the sea is rough there."
"But if we hauled her up on the sand, right to the foot of the Chimneys?..."
"Maybe... yes..." Pencroff answered. "Anyway, since we've got to leave Granite House for a fairly long expedition, I think the Bonadventure will be safer here while we're away, and we'd do well to leave her here until the island's been cleaned out of those rascals."
"I think so too," said the reporter. "At least if the weather turns bad she won't be exposed the way she would be at the mouth of the Mercy."
"But what if the convicts come to visit her again?" said Harbert.
"Well, my boy," Pencroff answered, "if they didn't find her here, they'd soon go looking for her over by Granite House, and while we're gone there'd be nothing to stop them taking her! So I think, like Mr. Spilett, that we ought to leave her at Balloon Harbor. But when we come back, if we haven't rid the island of those scoundrels, it'll be wise to bring our boat round to Granite House until she has no more nasty visits to fear."
"Agreed. Let's go!" said the reporter.
When Pencroff, Harbert and Gédéon Spilett got back to Granite House, they told the engineer what had happened, and he approved their plans for the present and for the future. He even promised the sailor that he would study the part of the channel lying between the islet and the coast, to see whether it might be possible to make an artificial harbor there by building dams. That way the Bonadventure would always be within reach, under the colonists' eyes, and under lock and key if need be.
That same evening they sent Ayrton a telegram asking him to bring back a couple of goats from the corral, which Nab wanted to get used to living in the meadows of the plateau. Oddly enough, Ayrton did not acknowledge the message the way he usually did. This rather surprised the engineer. But it could be that Ayrton was not at the corral just then, or even that he was already on his way back to Granite House. In fact, two days had gone by since he left, and it had been decided that he would be back on the evening of the 10th, or early on the morning of the 11th at the latest.
So the colonists waited for Ayrton to appear on the heights of Prospect Plateau. Nab and Harbert even kept watch near the bridge, so as to lower it as soon as their companion arrived.
But by ten o'clock that night there was still no sign of Ayrton. So they thought it best to send another telegram, asking for an immediate reply.
The bell at Granite House stayed silent.
Then the colonists grew very uneasy. What had happened? Was Ayrton no longer at the corral? Or if he was still there, was he no longer free to move? Should they go to the corral on such a dark night?
They talked it over. Some wanted to go, others to stay.
"But," said Harbert, "maybe there's been some accident to the telegraph, and it isn't working anymore?"
"That could be," said the reporter.
"Let's wait until tomorrow," answered Cyrus Smith. "It's possible, in fact, that Ayrton didn't receive our message, or even that we didn't receive his."
So they waited — not, as you can imagine, without a certain anxiety.
At the first light of day, on November 11, Cyrus Smith sent the electric current through the wire again, and got no answer.
He tried again. Same result.
"We're off to the corral!" he said.
"And well armed!" Pencroff added.
It was decided at once that Granite House would not be left on its own, and that Nab would stay there. After going with his companions as far as Glycerin Creek, he would raise the bridge, and then, hidden behind a tree, he would watch for their return or for Ayrton's.
If the pirates showed up and tried to force the crossing, he would try to stop them with his gun, and in the last resort he would take refuge in Granite House, where, once the elevator was raised, he would be safe.
Cyrus Smith, Gédéon Spilett, Harbert and Pencroff were to go straight to the corral, and if they did not find Ayrton there, they would beat the woods all around it.
At six o'clock in the morning the engineer and his three companions had crossed Glycerin Creek, and Nab took up his post behind a low bank of earth, topped by a few tall dragon trees, on the left bank of the stream.
After leaving Prospect Plateau, the colonists immediately took the Corral Road. They carried their guns over their arms, ready to fire at the slightest sign of hostility. The two carbines and the two guns had been loaded with ball.
On either side of the road the undergrowth was thick and could easily have hidden criminals, who, thanks to their weapons, would have been truly dangerous.
The colonists walked quickly and in silence. Top went ahead of them, sometimes running along the road, sometimes making a little detour into the woods, but always silent and showing no sign of sensing anything unusual. And they could count on it that the faithful dog would not let himself be taken by surprise, and that he would bark at the slightest hint of danger.
As they followed the road, Cyrus Smith and his companions also followed the telegraph wire that linked the corral with Granite House. After walking about two miles, they had still not noticed any break in it. The poles were in good condition, the insulators intact, the wire evenly stretched. From that point on, however, the engineer noticed that the wire seemed less taut than before. And at last, when they reached pole No. 74, Harbert, who was out in front, stopped and shouted:
"The wire's broken!"
His companions hurried forward and reached the spot where the young man had stopped.
There the pole lay overturned across the road. So the break in the wire was confirmed, and it was obvious that messages from Granite House could not have reached the corral, nor messages from the corral Granite House.
"It wasn't the wind that knocked down this pole," Pencroff observed.
"No," answered Gédéon Spilett. "The earth has been dug out around its foot. It was pulled up by human hands."
"What's more, the wire's broken," Harbert added, pointing to the two ends of the iron wire, which had been violently snapped.
"Is the break fresh?" asked Cyrus Smith.
"Yes," answered Harbert. "It certainly hasn't been long since it was broken."
"To the corral! To the corral!" cried the sailor.
The colonists were now halfway between Granite House and the corral. That meant they still had two and a half miles to go. They broke into a run.
There was good reason to fear that something serious had happened at the corral. No doubt Ayrton might have sent a telegram that had never arrived, and that in itself was not what should worry his companions. But — and this was harder to explain — Ayrton, who had promised to come back the evening before, had not reappeared. And finally, it was not for nothing that all communication between the corral and Granite House had been cut. Who but the convicts had any reason to cut it?
So the colonists ran, their hearts tight with dread. They had grown truly attached to their new companion. Were they about to find him struck down by the very men whose leader he had once been?
Soon they came to the place where the road ran alongside the little stream, branching off Red Creek, that watered the corral's meadows. Here they slowed their pace, so as not to be out of breath at the moment when a fight might become necessary. Their guns were no longer at half-cock but fully cocked. Each man kept watch on one side of the forest. Top was letting out a few low growls, which did not bode well.
At last the palisade appeared through the trees. There was no sign of any damage. The gate was shut, as usual. A deep silence hung over the corral. Neither the usual bleating of the mouflons nor Ayrton's voice could be heard.
"Let's go in!" said Cyrus Smith.
And the engineer stepped forward, while his companions kept watch twenty paces behind him, ready to fire.
Cyrus Smith lifted the inside latch of the gate and was about to push one of its leaves open when Top barked furiously. A shot rang out above the palisade, and a cry of pain answered it.
Harbert, struck by a bullet, lay on the ground!
The reporter and Pencroff in the corral — Harbert carried in — The sailor's despair — The reporter and the engineer confer — The treatment — Some hope returns — How to warn Nab? — A sure and faithful messenger — Nab's answer
At Harbert's cry, Pencroff had dropped his gun and rushed to him.
"They've killed him!" he cried. "My boy! They've killed him!"
Cyrus Smith and Gédéon Spilett had run to Harbert. The reporter listened to find out whether the poor boy's heart was still beating.
"He's alive," he said. "But we've got to move him..."
"To Granite House? That's impossible!" answered the engineer.
"To the corral, then!" cried Pencroff.
"One moment," said Cyrus Smith.
And he dashed off to the left, to work his way around the palisade. There he found himself face to face with a convict, who took aim at him and put a bullet through his hat. A few seconds later, before the man even had time to fire his second shot, he fell, struck to the heart by Cyrus Smith's dagger, which was even surer than his gun.
Meanwhile Gédéon Spilett and the sailor hoisted themselves up at the corners of the palisade, swung their legs over the top, and jumped down inside. They knocked away the props that held the gate shut from within, rushed into the house, which was empty, and soon poor Harbert was lying on Ayrton's bed.
A few moments later Cyrus Smith was beside him.
When he saw Harbert lying there senseless, the sailor's grief was terrible. He sobbed, he wept, he wanted to dash his head against the wall. Neither the engineer nor the reporter could calm him. Their own emotion was choking them. They could not speak.
All the same, they did everything in their power to fight death for the poor boy who lay dying before their eyes. After all the adventures his life had been strewn with, Gédéon Spilett had some practical knowledge of everyday medicine. He knew a little about everything, and more than once he had found himself having to treat wounds made by a blade or by a gun. So, with Cyrus Smith's help, he set about giving Harbert the care his condition called for.
The first thing that struck the reporter was the deep stupor that held the boy, a stupor caused either by loss of blood or else by shock, if the bullet had hit a bone hard enough to jolt the whole body.
Harbert was extremely pale, and his pulse was so weak that Gédéon Spilett could feel it beat only at long intervals, as though it were about to stop. At the same time his senses and his mind seemed almost entirely gone. These were very grave symptoms.
They bared Harbert's chest, stanched the blood with handkerchiefs, and washed the chest with cold water.
The wound appeared: a bruised, torn wound where the bullet had struck. There was an oval hole in the chest between the third and fourth ribs. That was where the bullet had hit Harbert.
Cyrus Smith and Gédéon Spilett then turned the poor boy over. He let out a moan so faint that it might have been his last breath.
A second wound was bleeding on Harbert's back, and the bullet that had struck him dropped out of it at once.
"Thank God!" said the reporter. "The bullet didn't stay in his body, and we won't have to take it out."
"But the heart?..." asked Cyrus Smith.
"The heart wasn't touched, or Harbert would be dead!"
"Dead!" cried Pencroff, with a roar.
The sailor had heard only the reporter's last words.
"No, Pencroff," Cyrus Smith answered. "No! He isn't dead. His pulse is still beating! He even moaned. But for your boy's own sake, calm down. We need to keep our heads. Don't make us lose them, my friend."
Pencroff fell silent, but a reaction set in, and great tears flooded down his face.
Meanwhile Gédéon Spilett was trying to gather his memories and go about things methodically. From what he had seen, he had no doubt that the bullet had gone in at the front and come out at the back. But what damage had it done on its way through? Which vital organs had it reached? That was something a professional surgeon could hardly have said at that moment, let alone the reporter.
Still, he knew one thing: he would have to keep the injured tissue from swelling up and choking itself with inflammation, and then fight the local inflammation and the fever that would follow such a wound — a wound that might well be fatal! And what dressings, what remedies against inflammation could he use? How could he head that inflammation off?
In any case, the important thing was to dress both wounds without delay. Gédéon Spilett did not think it necessary to start the blood flowing again by washing them in warm water and pressing their edges. The bleeding had been very heavy, and Harbert was already far too weak from the loss of blood.
So the reporter decided to do no more than wash the two wounds with cold water.
Harbert was laid on his left side, and they kept him in that position.
"He mustn't move," said Gédéon Spilett. "He's in the best position for the wounds in his back and chest to drain freely, and he needs absolute rest."
"What! We can't carry him to Granite House?" asked Pencroff.
"No, Pencroff," answered the reporter.
"Damnation!" cried the sailor, shaking his fist at the sky.
"Pencroff!" said Cyrus Smith.
Gédéon Spilett had gone back to examining the wounded boy with the greatest care. Harbert was still so dreadfully pale that the reporter felt shaken.
"Cyrus," he said, "I'm not a doctor... I'm terribly unsure what to do... You have to help me with your advice, your experience!..."
"Steady... my friend," answered the engineer, gripping the reporter's hand. "Judge it coolly... think of only one thing: we have to save Harbert!"
These words gave Gédéon Spilett back the self-command that a sharp sense of his responsibility had made him lose in a moment of discouragement. He sat down by the bed. Cyrus Smith stood. Pencroff had torn up his shirt and, without thinking, was picking it apart into lint for dressings.
Gédéon Spilett then explained to Cyrus Smith that, above all, he thought he ought to stop the bleeding — but not close the two wounds or try to make them heal over at once. There had been a puncture inside, and the pus must not be allowed to collect in the chest.
Cyrus Smith agreed completely, and it was decided that they would dress the two wounds without trying to close them by drawing their edges together. Fortunately, it did not seem that they would need to be opened up any further.
And now, did the colonists have anything that would work against the inflammation that was bound to come?
Yes! They had something, for nature has given it out generously. They had cold water — the most powerful soothing agent that can be used against inflamed wounds, the most effective remedy in serious cases, and one that every doctor has now adopted. Cold water has the further advantage of leaving the wound perfectly at rest and sparing it any premature dressing, a considerable advantage, since experience has shown that contact with the air does harm during the first few days.
Gédéon Spilett and Cyrus Smith reasoned it out this way, by plain common sense, and they acted as the best surgeon would have done. Linen compresses were laid on poor Harbert's two wounds, and these had to be kept constantly soaked in cold water.
The sailor had first of all lit a fire in the fireplace of the house, which was well stocked with the necessities of life. Maple sugar and medicinal plants — the very ones the boy had gathered on the banks of Lake Grant — let them make a few cooling herbal teas, and they got him to drink them without his knowing it. His fever was extremely high, and the whole day and the whole night went by without his regaining consciousness. Harbert's life hung by a thread, and that thread might snap at any moment.
The next day, November 12, Cyrus Smith and his companions began to have some hope. Harbert had come out of his long stupor. He opened his eyes. He recognized Cyrus Smith, the reporter, Pencroff. He said two or three words. He did not know what had happened. They told him, and Gédéon Spilett begged him to keep absolutely still, telling him that his life was not in danger and that his wounds would heal over in a few days. Besides, Harbert was in almost no pain, and the cold water they kept pouring over the wounds without a break was holding off all inflammation. The wounds were draining steadily, the fever showed no sign of rising, and there was reason to hope that this terrible wound would not end in disaster. Little by little the weight lifted from Pencroff's heart. He was like a Sister of Charity, like a mother at her child's bedside.
Harbert dozed off again, but his sleep seemed better now.
"Tell me again that you've got hope, Mr. Spilett!" said Pencroff. "Tell me again that you'll save Harbert!"
"Yes, we'll save him!" answered the reporter. "The wound is serious, and the bullet may even have gone through the lung, but a hole in that organ isn't fatal."
"God hear you!" Pencroff said again.
As can easily be imagined, in the twenty-four hours since they had come to the corral, the colonists had had no other thought than caring for Harbert. They had worried neither about the danger that might threaten them if the convicts came back nor about the precautions to take for the future.
But that day, while Pencroff watched at the sickbed, Cyrus Smith and the reporter talked over what ought to be done.
First of all, they went over the whole corral. There was no trace of Ayrton. Had the unfortunate man been dragged off by his former accomplices? Had they taken him by surprise in the corral? Had he fought and been killed in the fight? This last guess was only too likely. As he was climbing the palisade, Gédéon Spilett had clearly seen one of the convicts running away along the southern shoulder of Mount Franklin, with Top racing after him. It was one of the men whose boat had been smashed on the rocks at the mouth of the Mercy. Besides, the one Cyrus Smith had killed, whose body was found outside the palisade, was certainly one of Bob Harvey's gang.
As for the corral, it had not yet been damaged in any way. The gates were shut, and the animals had not been able to scatter into the forest. Nor was there any sign of a struggle, any damage, either to the house or to the palisade. Only the ammunition Ayrton had been supplied with had disappeared along with him.
"The poor man must have been taken by surprise," said Cyrus Smith, "and since he was a man who would defend himself, he must have been killed."
"Yes! That's what I'm afraid of!" answered the reporter. "And then, no doubt, the convicts settled in at the corral, where they found plenty of everything, and they ran off only when they saw us coming. It's obvious, too, that by then Ayrton, dead or alive, wasn't here anymore."
"We'll have to beat the forest," said the engineer, "and rid the island of these scoundrels. Pencroff's instincts weren't wrong when he wanted us to hunt them down like wild beasts. It would have spared us a great deal of misery!"
"Yes," answered the reporter, "but now we have the right to show no mercy!"
"In any case," said the engineer, "we're forced to wait a while and stay at the corral until Harbert can be carried safely to Granite House."
"But what about Nab?" asked the reporter.
"Nab is safe."
"And if he gets worried because we haven't come back, and risks coming here?"
"He mustn't come!" Cyrus Smith answered quickly. "He'd be murdered on the way!"
"But it's very likely he'll try to join us!"
"Ah! If the telegraph were still working, we could warn him! But that's impossible now! And we can't leave Pencroff and Harbert here alone!... All right, I'll go to Granite House by myself."
"No, no, Cyrus!" answered the reporter. "You mustn't put yourself in danger! Your courage wouldn't do any good. Those scoundrels are obviously watching the corral. They're lying in wait in the thick woods all around it, and if you left, we'd soon have two disasters to mourn instead of one!"
"But Nab?" the engineer kept saying. "He's had no news of us for twenty-four hours! He'll want to come!"
"And since he'll be even less on his guard than we would be ourselves," answered Gédéon Spilett, "they'll shoot him!..."
"Is there no way at all to warn him?"
While the engineer was thinking, his eyes fell on Top, who was going back and forth and seemed to be saying, "Well, what about me? Aren't I here?"
"Top!" cried Cyrus Smith.
The dog bounded up at his master's call.
"Yes, Top will go!" said the reporter, who had understood the engineer. "Top will get through where we couldn't! He'll take the news from the corral to Granite House, and he'll bring us back the news from Granite House!"
"Quick!" answered Cyrus Smith. "Quick!"
Gédéon Spilett had swiftly torn a page out of his notebook, and on it he wrote these lines:
"Harbert wounded. We are at the corral. Be on your guard. Do not leave Granite House. Have the convicts shown themselves near you? Answer by Top."
This brief note held everything Nab needed to learn, and at the same time it asked him everything the colonists needed to know. It was folded and tied to Top's collar where it could not be missed.
"Top! Good dog," said the engineer, stroking him. "Nab, Top! Nab! Go! Go!"
Top leaped up at these words. He understood; he guessed what was being asked of him. He knew the Corral Road by heart. He could cover it in less than half an hour, and there was reason to hope that where neither Cyrus Smith nor the reporter could have ventured without danger, Top, running through the grass or along the edge of the woods, would get by unseen.
The engineer went to the gate of the corral and pushed open one of its two halves.
"Nab! Top, Nab!" the engineer said once more, stretching out his hand toward Granite House.
Top sprang outside and vanished almost at once.
"He'll get there!" said the reporter.
"Yes, and he'll come back, the faithful animal!"
"What time is it?" asked Gédéon Spilett.
"Ten o'clock."
"He could be here in an hour. We'll watch for him."
The gate of the corral was shut again. The engineer and the reporter went back into the house. Harbert was sound asleep by then. Pencroff kept his compresses wet all the time.
Seeing that there was nothing more to be done for the moment, Gédéon Spilett busied himself with getting some food ready, while keeping a careful watch on the part of the palisade that backed onto the mountain's shoulder, where an attack might come from.
The colonists waited for Top's return, and not without anxiety. A little before eleven o'clock, Cyrus Smith and the reporter were standing behind the gate, carbines in hand, ready to open it at the first bark of their dog. They had no doubt that if Top had reached Granite House safely, Nab would have sent him straight back.
The two of them had been there for about ten minutes when a shot rang out, followed at once by a burst of barking.
The engineer opened the gate, saw a last wisp of smoke a hundred paces off in the woods, and fired in that direction.
Almost at the same moment Top bounded into the corral, and the gate was quickly shut again.
"Top! Top!" cried the engineer, taking the dog's big, good-natured head in his arms.
A note was tied to his neck, and Cyrus Smith read these words, written in Nab's large handwriting:
"No pirates around Granite House. I won't budge. Poor Mr. Harbert!"
The convicts near the corral — A temporary arrangement — Harbert's treatment continues — Pencroff's first rejoicings — Looking back at the past — What the future holds — Cyrus Smith's ideas on the subject
So the convicts were still there, spying on the corral, determined to kill the colonists one after another! There was nothing left to do but treat them as wild beasts. Yet great precautions had to be taken, because at that moment the wretches held every advantage of position. They could see without being seen. They could take their enemies by surprise with a sudden attack, and they could not be taken by surprise themselves.
Cyrus Smith therefore arranged things so that they could live at the corral, whose stores, besides, would last for a fairly long time. Ayrton's house had been furnished with everything needed for daily life, and the convicts, frightened off by the colonists' arrival, had not had time to plunder it. It was likely, as Gédéon Spilett pointed out, that things had happened this way. The six convicts, once landed on the island, had followed its southern coast. After going along both shores of Serpentine Peninsula, and being in no mood to venture into the Far West forests, they had reached the mouth of Fall River. From there they had gone up the right bank of the stream and come to the spurs of Mount Franklin, where it was natural that they should look for some hiding place among them, and they could not have been long in discovering the corral, which was empty at the time. There, very probably, they had settled in to wait for the moment to carry out their abominable plans. Ayrton's arrival had surprised them, but they had managed to seize the unfortunate man, and... what followed was easy enough to guess!
Now the convicts — down to five, it was true, but well armed — were prowling in the woods, and to venture in among the trees was to lay oneself open to their shots, with no way of either warding them off or seeing them coming.
"Wait! There's nothing else we can do!" Cyrus Smith kept repeating. "When Harbert is well again, we can organize a general sweep of the island and settle with these convicts. That will be the purpose of our great expedition, and at the same time..."
"...the search for our mysterious protector," added Gédéon Spilett, finishing the engineer's sentence. "Ah! You have to admit, my dear Cyrus, that this time his protection let us down — and at the very moment we needed it most!"
"Who knows?" answered the engineer.
"What do you mean?" asked the reporter.
"That we haven't come to the end of our troubles, my dear Spilett, and that this powerful intervention may yet have a chance to act. But that isn't the question now. Harbert's life comes before everything."
That was the colonists' most painful concern. Several days went by, and the poor boy's condition, fortunately, had not grown worse. Now, every day won from the illness counted for a great deal. The cold water, always kept at the right temperature, had entirely prevented the wounds from becoming inflamed. It even seemed to the reporter that this water, which was slightly sulfurous — the nearness of the volcano explained that — acted more directly to help the wounds heal over. There was much less pus, and thanks to the unceasing care that surrounded him, Harbert was coming back to life, and his fever was tending to fall. He was kept, besides, on a strict diet, and so his weakness was extreme, as it had to be. But he never lacked for herbal teas, and complete rest was doing him the greatest good.
Cyrus Smith, Gédéon Spilett and Pencroff had become very skillful at dressing the young patient's wounds. Every scrap of linen in the house had been sacrificed. Harbert's wounds were covered with compresses and lint and bound neither too tightly nor too loosely, so as to help them heal without setting off any inflammation. The reporter brought extreme care to these dressings, knowing well how much they mattered, and he kept repeating to his companions what most doctors readily admit: that a well-made dressing is perhaps rarer to see than a well-done operation.
After ten days, on November 22, Harbert was noticeably better. He had begun to take a little food. The color was coming back into his cheeks, and his kind eyes smiled at his nurses. He chatted a little, in spite of the efforts of Pencroff, who talked the whole time himself to keep him from speaking and told him the most unlikely stories. Harbert had asked him about Ayrton, whom he was surprised not to see near him, thinking he must be at the corral. But the sailor, not wanting to distress Harbert, had simply answered that Ayrton had gone to join Nab and help defend Granite House.
"Ha!" he would say. "Those pirates! Those gentlemen have lost all right to any consideration! And Mr. Smith wanted to win them over with kindness! I'll send them some kindness, all right — good lead, the proper caliber!"
"And nobody's seen them since?" asked Harbert.
"No, my boy," answered the sailor, "but we'll find them again, and when you're well, we'll see whether those cowards who shoot people in the back will dare to attack us face to face!"
"I'm still very weak, my poor Pencroff!"
"Eh! Your strength will come back little by little! What's a bullet through the chest? A mere joke! I've seen plenty worse, and I'm none the worse for it!"
In short, things seemed to be going as well as they could, and as long as no complications set in, Harbert's recovery could be considered certain. But what would the colonists' situation have been if his condition had worsened — if, for example, the bullet had stayed lodged in his body, or if his arm or his leg had had to be amputated!
"No," Gédéon Spilett said more than once, "I've never thought of a thing like that without shuddering!"
"And yet, if you'd had to act," Cyrus Smith answered him one day, "you wouldn't have hesitated?"
"No, Cyrus!" said Gédéon Spilett. "But God be thanked for sparing us that!"
As in so many other situations, the colonists had called on that logic of plain common sense which had served them so often, and once again, thanks to their general knowledge, they had succeeded! But would the moment not come when all their science would fail them? They were alone on this island. Yet people complete one another by living in society; they need one another. Cyrus Smith knew that well, and sometimes he wondered whether some circumstance might not arise that they would be powerless to overcome!
It seemed to him, besides, that he and his companions, so fortunate until then, had entered an unlucky period. In the more than two and a half years since they had escaped from Richmond, one could say that everything had gone their way. The island had supplied them generously with minerals, plants and animals, and if nature had showered gifts on them without end, their science had known how to make use of what she offered. The material well-being of the colony was, so to speak, complete. More than that, on certain occasions an inexplicable influence had come to their aid!... But all of that could last only for a time!
In short, Cyrus Smith believed he could see their luck beginning to turn against them.
And indeed, the convicts' ship had appeared in the waters of the island, and if those pirates had been destroyed almost by a miracle, six of them, at least, had escaped the disaster. They had landed on the island, and the five who survived were all but impossible to catch. Ayrton had beyond any doubt been murdered by those wretches, who had firearms, and the very first time they used them, Harbert had fallen, struck almost to death. Were these, then, the first blows that hostile fortune was dealing the colonists? That was what Cyrus Smith asked himself! That was what he often repeated to the reporter. And it seemed to them, too, that the intervention which had been so strange, but so effective, and which had served them so well until now, was failing them at last. This mysterious being, whoever he might be, whose existence they could not deny — had he left the island, then? Had he died in his turn?
To these questions no answer was possible. But let no one imagine that Cyrus Smith and his companion, because they talked over such things, were the kind of men to despair! Far from it. They looked the situation in the face, they weighed the chances, they prepared themselves for whatever might happen, they stood firm and upright before the future, and if adversity was at last to strike them, it would find in them men ready to fight it.
No news of Nab — A proposal by Pencroff and the reporter that is not accepted — A few sorties by Gédéon Spilett — A scrap of cloth — A message — A hasty departure — Arrival at Prospect Plateau
The young patient's recovery was going steadily. Only one thing was left to wish for now: that his condition would allow them to take him back to Granite House. However well fitted out and well stocked the house at the corral might be, it could not offer the comfort of their healthy granite home. Besides, it was not as safe, and the people inside it, for all their watchfulness, were always under the threat of a shot from the convicts. Back there, on the other hand, in the middle of that impregnable, inaccessible mass of rock, they would have nothing to fear, and any attempt against them would be bound to fail. So they were waiting impatiently for the moment when Harbert could be moved without danger to his wound, and they had made up their minds to move him, even though getting through Jacamar Wood was very difficult.
They had no news of Nab, but they were not worried about him. The brave fellow, well entrenched deep inside Granite House, would not let himself be taken by surprise. Top had not been sent back to him. It had seemed pointless to expose the faithful dog to some gunshot that would have robbed the colonists of their most useful helper.
So they waited, but the colonists were in a hurry to be together again at Granite House. It pained the engineer to see his forces divided, because that was playing into the pirates' hands. Since Ayrton's disappearance there were only four of them against five, for Harbert could not be counted yet — and that was not the least of the worries of the brave boy, who understood very well the trouble he was causing!
The question of how to act against the convicts, as things stood, was talked through thoroughly on November 29 by Cyrus Smith, Gédéon Spilett and Pencroff, at a moment when Harbert was dozing and could not hear them.
"My friends," said the reporter, after they had spoken of Nab and of the impossibility of getting in touch with him, "I agree with you that venturing out on the Corral Road would mean risking a bullet without being able to return it. But don't you think that what we ought to do now is go after those wretches openly and hunt them down?"
"That's just what I was thinking," answered Pencroff. "I don't suppose we've come to the point of being afraid of a bullet, and for my part, if Mr. Cyrus agrees, I'm ready to throw myself into the forest! What the devil! One man's as good as another!"
"But is he as good as five?" asked the engineer.
"I'll go with Pencroff," answered the reporter, "and the two of us, well armed, along with Top..."
"My dear Spilett, and you too, Pencroff," Cyrus Smith went on, "let's think this through coolly. If the convicts were holed up in one spot on the island, if we knew where that spot was, and if all we had to do was flush them out of it, I'd understand a direct attack. But isn't there reason to fear, on the contrary, that they'd be sure of firing the first shot?"
"Oh, Mr. Cyrus," cried Pencroff, "a bullet doesn't always reach its address!"
"The one that hit Harbert didn't go astray, Pencroff," answered the engineer. "Besides, notice that if the two of you left the corral, I'd be left here alone to defend it. Can you promise me that the convicts won't see you leave it, that they won't let you go deep into the forest and then attack the corral while you're gone, knowing there's no one here but a wounded boy and one man?"
"You're right, Mr. Cyrus," answered Pencroff, his chest swelling with a smothered anger. "You're right. They'll do anything to take back the corral, because they know it's well stocked! And on your own you couldn't hold out against them! Oh, if only we were at Granite House!"
"If we were at Granite House," answered the engineer, "things would be very different! There I wouldn't be afraid to leave Harbert with one of us, and the other three could go and search the island's forests. But we're at the corral, and the right thing is to stay here until we can all leave it together!"
There was no answer to Cyrus Smith's reasoning, and his companions knew it.
"If only Ayrton were still with us!" said Gédéon Spilett. "Poor man! His return to the society of men didn't last long!"
"If he's dead?..." Pencroff added, in a rather odd tone.
"So, Pencroff, you hope those scoundrels spared him?" asked Gédéon Spilett.
"Yes! If they had some reason to!"
"What! You'd suppose that Ayrton, finding his old accomplices again, forgetting everything he owes us..."
"Who knows?" answered the sailor, who did not put forward this ugly suggestion without hesitating.
"Pencroff," said Cyrus Smith, taking the sailor by the arm, "that's an unworthy thought, and you'd hurt me deeply if you kept on talking that way! I vouch for Ayrton's loyalty!"
"So do I," the reporter put in quickly.
"Yes... yes!... Mr. Cyrus... I'm wrong," answered Pencroff. "That was an unworthy thought I had there, and nothing justifies it! But what do you expect? My head's not quite my own anymore. Being shut up in this corral weighs on me something terrible, and I've never been so worked up in my life!"
"Be patient, Pencroff," answered the engineer. "How soon, my dear Spilett, do you think Harbert can be moved to Granite House?"
"That's hard to say, Cyrus," answered the reporter, "because one careless move could have fatal consequences. But still, his recovery is coming along steadily, and if his strength has come back a week from now — well, we'll see!"
A week! That put off the return to Granite House until the first days of December at the earliest.
By that time spring was already two months old. The weather was fine, and the heat was beginning to grow strong. The island's forests were in full leaf, and the time was coming when the usual harvests would have to be brought in. So their return to Prospect Plateau would be followed by a great deal of farm work, interrupted only by the expedition they had planned across the island.
You can see, then, how much harm this confinement at the corral was doing the colonists. But if they were forced to bow to necessity, they did not do it without impatience.
Once or twice the reporter ventured out onto the road and made a circuit around the palisade. Top went with him, and Gédéon Spilett, his carbine cocked, was ready for anything.
He had no bad encounters and found no suspicious tracks. His dog would have warned him of any danger, and since Top did not bark, it was fair to conclude that there was nothing to fear, at the moment at least, and that the convicts were busy in some other part of the island.
On his second sortie, however, on November 27, Gédéon Spilett, who had ventured a quarter of a mile into the woods south of the mountain, noticed that Top was onto something. The dog had dropped his casual manner. He was running back and forth, nosing through the grass and the brush, as if his sense of smell had told him of something suspicious.
Gédéon Spilett followed Top, egging him on and urging him with his voice, while keeping a sharp lookout, his carbine at his shoulder, and using the trees for cover. It was not likely that Top had scented a man, because in that case he would have announced it with half-held-back barks and a kind of muffled fury. And since he was not growling at all, the danger was neither near nor close at hand.
About five minutes went by like this, with Top nosing about and the reporter cautiously following, when all of a sudden the dog dashed into a thick bush and dragged out a scrap of cloth.
It was a piece of clothing, stained and torn, and Gédéon Spilett brought it straight back to the corral.
There the colonists examined it, and they recognized it as a piece of Ayrton's jacket, a piece of the felt that was made nowhere but in the workshop at Granite House.
"You see, Pencroff," Cyrus Smith pointed out, "the unlucky Ayrton put up a fight. The convicts dragged him off against his will! Do you still doubt his honesty?"
"No, Mr. Cyrus," answered the sailor, "and I got over that moment of distrust a long time ago! But it seems to me there's a conclusion to be drawn from this."
"What's that?" asked the reporter.
"That Ayrton wasn't killed at the corral! That they dragged him off alive, since he fought back! So maybe he's still alive!"
"Maybe so, indeed," answered the engineer, and he stayed lost in thought.
Here was a hope that Ayrton's companions could cling to. Until now they had had to believe that Ayrton, taken by surprise at the corral, had fallen to some bullet, just as Harbert had. But if the convicts had not killed him at once, if they had carried him off alive to some other part of the island, wasn't it possible that he was still their prisoner? Perhaps one of them had even recognized in Ayrton an old companion from Australia — Ben Joyce, the leader of the escaped convicts! And who knows whether they had not formed the impossible hope of winning Ayrton back to their side! He would have been so useful to them if they could have made a traitor of him!...
So this incident was taken as a good sign at the corral, and it no longer seemed impossible that they would find Ayrton again. For his part, if he was only a prisoner, Ayrton would no doubt do everything he could to escape from those bandits' hands, and he would be a powerful ally to the colonists!
"In any case," Gédéon Spilett pointed out, "if by good luck Ayrton manages to get away, he'll go straight to Granite House. He doesn't know about the attempt to murder Harbert, and so he can't imagine we're shut up here at the corral."
"Oh! I wish he were there, at Granite House!" cried Pencroff. "And us too! Because after all, even if those scoundrels can't do anything against our home, they can at least lay waste to the plateau — our plantations, our poultry yard!"
Pencroff had become a real farmer, attached heart and soul to his crops. But it must be said that Harbert was more impatient than any of them to get back to Granite House, because he knew how badly the colonists were needed there. And he was the one keeping them at the corral! So a single idea filled his mind: to leave the corral, to leave it no matter what! He believed he could stand being moved to Granite House. He insisted that his strength would come back faster in his own room, with the sea air and the view of the sea!
Several times he pressed Gédéon Spilett. But the reporter was afraid — and rightly — that Harbert's wounds, still badly healed, would open again on the way, and he did not give the order to leave.
Then something happened that led Cyrus Smith and his two friends to give in to the boy's wishes — and God knows what grief and remorse that decision might bring them!
It was November 29. It was seven o'clock in the morning. The three colonists were talking in Harbert's room when they heard Top barking loudly.
Cyrus Smith, Pencroff and Gédéon Spilett seized their guns, which were always loaded and ready to fire, and went out of the house.
Top had run to the foot of the palisade and was jumping and barking — but with pleasure, not anger.
"Someone's coming!"
"Yes!"
"It isn't an enemy!"
"Nab, maybe?"
"Or Ayrton?"
These words had barely passed between the engineer and his two companions when a body came leaping over the palisade and landed on the ground inside the corral.
It was Jup — Master Jup in person — and Top gave him a true friend's welcome!
"Jup!" cried Pencroff.
"Nab's sent him to us!" said the reporter.
"Then," answered the engineer, "he must have a note on him."
Pencroff rushed over to the orangutan. Clearly, if Nab had had something important to tell his master, he could not have used a surer or swifter messenger — one who could get through where neither the colonists nor perhaps even Top himself could have gone.
Cyrus Smith had not been mistaken. A little bag hung around Jup's neck, and in the bag was a note in Nab's hand.
Imagine the despair of Cyrus Smith and his companions when they read these words:
"Friday, 6 a.m.
Plateau overrun by the convicts!
Nab."
They looked at one another without saying a word, and then they went back into the house. What were they to do? The convicts on Prospect Plateau — that meant disaster, devastation, ruin!
When Harbert saw the engineer, the reporter and Pencroff come back in, he understood that the situation had just taken a turn for the worse, and when he caught sight of Jup, he no longer doubted that some misfortune was threatening Granite House.
"Mr. Cyrus," he said, "I want to go. I can stand the trip! I want to go!"
Gédéon Spilett went over to Harbert. Then, after looking at him for a moment:
"Let's go, then!" he said.
The question of whether Harbert should be carried on a stretcher or in the cart that Ayrton had brought to the corral was quickly settled. The stretcher would have moved more gently for the wounded boy, but it needed two bearers, which meant two guns fewer for their defense if they were attacked on the way.
Couldn't they, on the other hand, use the cart and leave every pair of hands free? Was it really impossible to lay the mattresses Harbert was lying on inside it, and to go forward so carefully that he would be spared every jolt? It could be done.
The cart was brought round. Pencroff harnessed the onagga to it. Cyrus Smith and the reporter lifted Harbert's mattresses and laid them on the floor of the cart, between its two side rails.
The weather was fine. Bright rays of sunlight were slipping through the trees.
"Are the weapons ready?" asked Cyrus Smith.
They were. The engineer and Pencroff, each armed with a double-barreled gun, and Gédéon Spilett, holding his carbine, had only to set off.
"Are you comfortable, Harbert?" asked the engineer.
"Oh, Mr. Cyrus," answered the boy, "don't worry, I won't die on the way!"
As he said this, anyone could see that the poor boy was calling up all his energy, and that by a supreme effort of will he was holding on to a strength that was ready to go out.
The engineer felt his heart clench painfully. He still hesitated to give the signal to leave. But that would have driven Harbert to despair — perhaps killed him.
"Let's go!" said Cyrus Smith.
The gate of the corral was opened. Jup and Top, who knew when to keep quiet, rushed out ahead. The cart went out, the gate was shut again, and the onagga, led by Pencroff, moved forward at a slow walk.
It would certainly have been better to take some road other than the one that ran straight from the corral to Granite House, but the cart would have had great difficulty getting through the woods. So they had to follow that road, even though the convicts were bound to know it.
Cyrus Smith and Gédéon Spilett walked on either side of the cart, ready to answer any attack. Still, it was not likely that the convicts had left Prospect Plateau yet. Nab's note had obviously been written and sent off the moment the convicts showed themselves there. Now, the note was dated six o'clock in the morning, and the nimble orangutan, used to coming to the corral often, had taken barely three quarters of an hour to cover the five miles that lay between it and Granite House. So the road ought to be safe for the moment, and if there was any shooting to be done, it would most likely be only as they drew near Granite House.
All the same, the colonists kept strictly on their guard. Top and Jup — Jup armed with his stick — now ranging ahead, now beating the woods along the sides of the road, gave no sign of danger.
The cart moved slowly forward, with Pencroff at its head. It had left the corral at half past seven. An hour later, four of the five miles had been covered without anything happening.
The road was as deserted as all that part of Jacamar Wood that stretched between the Mercy and the lake. There was no alarm of any kind. The thickets seemed as empty as on the day the colonists first landed on the island.
They were drawing near the plateau. One more mile, and they would see the little bridge over Glycerin Creek. Cyrus Smith had no doubt that this bridge would be down and in place — either because the convicts had come in that way, or because, after crossing one of the streams that closed off the plateau, they had taken the precaution of lowering it to leave themselves a way of retreat.
At last a gap in the last of the trees opened onto a view of the sea's horizon. But the cart kept on going, since none of its defenders could think of leaving it.
At that moment Pencroff stopped the onagga, and in a terrible voice he cried:
"Oh! The villains!"
And he pointed to a thick smoke swirling over the mill, the stables and the buildings of the poultry yard.
A man was moving about in the middle of that smoke.
It was Nab.
His companions gave a shout. He heard them and ran toward them...
The convicts had left the plateau about half an hour before, after laying it waste!
"And Mr. Harbert?" cried Nab.
Gédéon Spilett came back to the cart at that moment.
Harbert had lost consciousness!
Harbert carried to Granite House — Nab tells what happened — Cyrus Smith visits the plateau — Ruin and devastation — The colonists helpless against illness — Willow bark — A deadly fever — Top barks again!
The convicts, the dangers that threatened Granite House, the ruins that covered the plateau — none of it mattered anymore. Harbert's condition outweighed everything. Had the journey done him fatal harm by causing some injury inside? The reporter could not say, but he and his companions were in despair.
The cart was brought to the bend of the river. There a few branches, laid out in the shape of a stretcher, received the mattresses on which Harbert lay unconscious. Ten minutes later Cyrus Smith, Gédéon Spilett and Pencroff were at the foot of the cliff, leaving Nab to take the cart back up to Prospect Plateau.
The elevator was set in motion, and soon Harbert was lying in his own bed in Granite House.
The care they lavished on him brought him back to life. He smiled for a moment when he found himself in his room again, but he could barely murmur a few words, he was so weak.
Gédéon Spilett examined his wounds. He was afraid they had reopened, since they had not fully healed... but they had not. Then where did this collapse come from? Why had Harbert's condition grown worse?
The boy then fell into a kind of feverish sleep, and the reporter and Pencroff stayed by his bed.
Meanwhile Cyrus Smith was telling Nab what had happened at the corral, and Nab was telling his master about the events that had just taken place on the plateau.
It was only the night before that the convicts had shown themselves at the edge of the forest, near Glycerin Creek. Nab, who was keeping watch near the poultry yard, had not hesitated to fire at one of the pirates as he was getting ready to cross the stream; but the night was fairly dark, and he could not tell whether he had hit the wretch. In any case, that had not been enough to drive the gang off, and Nab had only just had time to get back up to Granite House, where at least he was safe.
But what was he to do then? How could he prevent the destruction the convicts were threatening to wreak on the plateau? Did Nab have any way of warning his master? And besides, what situation were the people at the corral in themselves?
Cyrus Smith and his companions had left on November 11, and it was now the 29th. So for nineteen days Nab had had no news except what Top had brought him, and that news was disastrous: Ayrton gone, Harbert badly wounded, the engineer, the reporter and the sailor all but imprisoned in the corral!
What was he to do? poor Nab kept asking himself. For himself he had nothing to fear, since the convicts could not reach him in Granite House. But the buildings, the plantations, everything they had built up, all at the mercy of the pirates! Wouldn't it be right to leave it to Cyrus Smith to judge what had to be done, and at least to warn him of the danger that hung over him?
That was when Nab had the idea of using Jup and trusting him with a note. He knew how extremely intelligent the orangutan was; it had been put to the test many times. Jup understood the word "corral," which had often been spoken in front of him, and, as the reader will remember, he had often driven the cart there with Pencroff. Day had not yet broken. The nimble orangutan would know how to slip through those woods unseen — and in any case the convicts would take him for one of their natural inhabitants.
Nab did not hesitate. He wrote the note, he tied it around Jup's neck, he led the ape to the door of Granite House, let a long rope unroll from it all the way to the ground, and then, several times over, he repeated these words:
"Jup! Jup! Corral! Corral!"
The animal understood, seized the rope, slid quickly down to the beach and disappeared into the darkness, without stirring the convicts' attention in the least.
"You did well, Nab," Cyrus Smith answered, "but perhaps you'd have done even better not to warn us!"
And as he said this, Cyrus Smith was thinking of Harbert, whose recovery the journey seemed to have put in such grave danger.
Nab finished his story. The convicts had not shown themselves on the beach. Not knowing how many people lived on the island, they might suppose that Granite House was defended by a sizable force. They must have remembered that during the attack on the brig they had been met by a heavy fire from both the lower rocks and the upper ones, and no doubt they did not want to expose themselves to it. But Prospect Plateau lay open to them, and the guns of Granite House could not sweep it. So there they gave free rein to their instinct for plunder — looting, burning, doing harm for harm's sake — and they withdrew only half an hour before the colonists arrived, believing them still shut up in the corral.
Nab had rushed out of his refuge. He had climbed back up onto the plateau, at the risk of catching a bullet, he had tried to put out the fire that was devouring the poultry-yard buildings, and he had fought the flames, but in vain, until the moment the cart appeared at the edge of the woods.
Such had been these grave events. The presence of the convicts was a permanent threat to the colonists of Lincoln Island, who had been so happy until then — and who could expect still greater misfortunes to come!
Gédéon Spilett stayed in Granite House with Harbert and Pencroff, while Cyrus Smith, with Nab beside him, went to judge for himself how great the disaster was.
It was lucky that the convicts had not come as far as the foot of Granite House. The workshops at the Chimneys would not have escaped destruction. But then again, that damage might have been easier to repair than the ruins piled up on Prospect Plateau!
Cyrus Smith and Nab made their way toward the Mercy and walked up its left bank without meeting any trace of the convicts' passage. On the other side of the river, in the thick of the woods, they saw no suspicious sign either.
Besides, in all probability, one of two things could be assumed. Either the convicts knew that the colonists had come back to Granite House — they might have seen them go by on the Corral Road — or else, after laying waste the plateau, they had plunged into Jacamar Wood, following the course of the Mercy, and knew nothing of the colonists' return.
In the first case, they would have gone back toward the corral, which was now undefended and held supplies that were precious to them.
In the second, they would have gone back to their camp to wait there for some chance to renew the attack.
So there would be good reason to strike first; but any undertaking meant to rid the island of them still depended on Harbert's condition. Cyrus Smith would need every one of his men, and no one could leave Granite House at that moment.
The engineer and Nab reached the plateau. It was a scene of desolation. The fields had been trampled. The ears of grain, which were just about to be harvested, lay on the ground. The other plantings had suffered no less. The kitchen garden was torn up. Fortunately Granite House held a reserve of seeds that would make it possible to repair the damage.
As for the mill, the poultry-yard buildings and the onaggas' stable, the fire had destroyed them all.
A few frightened animals were wandering across the plateau. The birds, which had taken refuge on the waters of the lake during the fire, were already coming back to their usual places and dabbling along the shore. Here everything would have to be done over again.
Cyrus Smith's face, paler than usual, showed an inner anger he was mastering only with difficulty, but he did not say a word. He took one last look at his ravaged fields and at the smoke still rising from the ruins, and then he went back to Granite House.
The days that followed were the saddest the colonists had yet spent on the island! Harbert was visibly growing weaker. It seemed that a more serious illness, the result of the deep upheaval his body had suffered, was threatening to break out, and Gédéon Spilett foresaw such a turn for the worse that he would be powerless to fight it!
And indeed Harbert lay in an almost continuous drowsiness, and a few signs of delirium began to show. Cooling herbal teas were the only remedies the colonists had. The fever was not yet very high, but soon it seemed bent on settling into regular attacks.
Gédéon Spilett recognized it on December 6. The poor boy's fingers, nose and ears turned extremely pale, and at first he was seized with light chills, with goose flesh, with shivering. His pulse was weak and irregular, his skin dry, his thirst intense. This stage was soon followed by a stage of heat: his face flushed, his skin reddened, his pulse quickened. Then came a heavy sweat, after which the fever seemed to drop. The attack had lasted about five hours.
Gédéon Spilett had not left Harbert's side. The boy now had an intermittent fever — that was only too certain — and this fever had to be cut short at all costs before it grew worse.
"And to cut it short," Gédéon Spilett said to Cyrus Smith, "we need a febrifuge — something that brings fever down."
"A febrifuge!" the engineer answered. "We have no cinchona bark and no quinine sulfate!"
"No," said Gédéon Spilett, "but there are willows on the shore of the lake, and willow bark can sometimes take the place of quinine."
"Then let's try it without losing a moment!" answered Cyrus Smith.
Willow bark, in fact, has rightly been regarded as a substitute for cinchona, like the horse chestnut, holly leaves, snakeroot and others. They obviously had to try it, even though it was not as good as cinchona, and they would have to use it in its natural state, since they had no means of extracting its alkaloid — that is, salicin.
Cyrus Smith went himself to cut a few pieces of bark from the trunk of a kind of black willow. He brought them back to Granite House, ground them to a powder, and that powder was given to Harbert that same evening.
The night passed without any serious incident. Harbert was somewhat delirious, but the fever did not come back in the night, and it did not come back the following day either.
Pencroff began to hope again. Gédéon Spilett said nothing. It might be that the attacks did not come every day — that the fever was tertian, in a word, returning every other day — and that it would come back the day after. So that day was awaited with the keenest anxiety.
It could be noticed, besides, that in the fever-free interval Harbert lay as if shattered, his head heavy and easily dizzy. And there was another symptom that frightened the reporter to the last degree: Harbert's liver was beginning to become congested, and soon a more violent delirium showed that his brain was being affected too.
Gédéon Spilett was appalled by this new complication. He took the engineer aside.
"It's a pernicious fever!" he told him.
"A pernicious fever!" cried Cyrus Smith. "You're mistaken, Spilett. A pernicious fever doesn't break out on its own. You have to have caught the germ of it!"
"I'm not mistaken," answered the reporter. "No doubt Harbert picked up that germ in the island's marshes, and that's enough. He's already had a first attack. If a second one comes, and if we can't prevent the third... he's lost!"
"But the willow bark?"
"It isn't enough," answered the reporter, "and a third attack of pernicious fever that isn't cut short with quinine is always fatal!"
Fortunately Pencroff had heard none of this conversation. It would have driven him mad.
It is easy to imagine the anxiety the engineer and the reporter went through during that day of December 7 and the night that followed.
Toward the middle of the day the second attack came. The crisis was terrible. Harbert felt that he was lost! He stretched out his arms to Cyrus Smith, to Spilett, to Pencroff! He did not want to die!... It was a heartbreaking scene. Pencroff had to be led away.
The attack lasted five hours. It was clear that Harbert would not survive a third.
The night was dreadful. In his delirium Harbert said things that broke his companions' hearts! He raved, he fought the convicts, he called for Ayrton! He pleaded with that mysterious being, that protector who had vanished now and whose image haunted him... then he fell back into a deep prostration that drained the life from him entirely... Several times Gédéon Spilett thought the poor boy was dead!
The next day, December 8, was nothing but one fainting spell after another. Harbert's wasted hands clutched at his sheets. They had given him fresh doses of the ground bark, but the reporter no longer expected anything from it.
"If we haven't given him a stronger febrifuge before tomorrow morning," said the reporter, "Harbert will be dead!"
Night came — the last night, no doubt, of this brave, good, intelligent boy, so far beyond his years, whom they all loved like their own son! The only remedy that existed against this terrible pernicious fever, the only specific that could defeat it, was not to be found on Lincoln Island!
During that night of December 8 to 9, Harbert was seized again by a more violent delirium. His liver was horribly congested, his brain was under attack, and by now it was impossible for him to recognize anyone.
Would he live until the morning, until that third attack that was bound to carry him off? It no longer seemed likely. His strength was exhausted, and between the crises he lay as if lifeless.
Toward three o'clock in the morning Harbert gave a terrifying cry. He seemed to writhe in a final convulsion. Nab, who was beside him, rushed in terror into the next room, where his companions were keeping watch!
At that moment Top barked in a strange way...
They all came back in at once and managed to hold down the dying boy, who was trying to throw himself out of bed, while Gédéon Spilett, taking his arm, felt his pulse slowly rising...
It was five o'clock in the morning. The rays of the rising sun were beginning to slip into the rooms of Granite House. A fine day was dawning, and that day would be poor Harbert's last!...
A ray of light slipped as far as the table that stood near the bed.
Suddenly Pencroff gave a cry and pointed to an object lying on that table...
It was a small oblong box, and on its lid were these words:
Quinine Sulfate.
An inexplicable mystery — Harbert's recovery — The parts of the island still to explore — Preparations for departure — The first day — The night — The second day — The kauris — The pair of cassowaries — Footprints in the forest
Gédéon Spilett took the box and opened it. Inside were about two hundred grains of a white powder. He touched a few specks of it to his lips. Its extreme bitterness could not deceive him. It was indeed the precious alkaloid of cinchona bark, the best febrifuge there is.
They had to give this powder to Harbert without a moment's hesitation. How it had come to be there could be argued about later.
"Coffee," said Gédéon Spilett.
A few moments later Nab brought a cup of the lukewarm brew. Gédéon Spilett stirred about eighteen grains of the quinine into it, and they managed to get Harbert to drink the mixture.
There was still time, for the third attack of the pernicious fever had not yet come!
And, if we may add it here, it was never going to come!
Besides, it must be said, every one of them had found hope again. The mysterious influence had made itself felt once more, and at the supreme moment, just when they had given up hope of it!...
After a few hours Harbert was resting more peacefully. Now the colonists could talk over what had happened. The unknown being's intervention was plainer than ever. But how had he managed to get inside Granite House during the night? It was absolutely inexplicable, and truly the way the "genie of the island" went about things was no less strange than the genie himself.
Throughout that day, roughly every three hours, Harbert was given a dose of the quinine sulfate.
By the very next day Harbert felt a certain improvement. He was certainly not cured. Intermittent fevers are apt to come back, often and dangerously. But he lacked no care. And then, the remedy was there — and no doubt the one who had brought it was not far off! In short, an immense hope came back into every heart.
That hope was not disappointed. Ten days later, on December 20, Harbert began his convalescence. He was still weak, and he had been put on a strict diet, but not a single attack had come back. And the obedient boy followed every order he was given so willingly! He wanted so badly to get well!
Pencroff was like a man who has been pulled up from the bottom of an abyss. He had fits of joy that came close to delirium. Once the hour of the third attack had gone by, he had hugged the reporter so hard he nearly smothered him. From then on he never called him anything but Dr. Spilett.
The real doctor remained to be found.
"We'll find him!" the sailor kept saying.
And certainly that man, whoever he might be, could expect a rough hug from the worthy Pencroff!
December came to an end, and with it the year 1867, in which the colonists of Lincoln Island had been so hard tried. They entered the year 1868 in magnificent weather — splendid heat, a tropical temperature, happily cooled by the sea breeze. Harbert was coming back to life. From his bed, set beside one of the windows of Granite House, he breathed in that healthy air, heavy with the smell of salt, and it gave him back his health. He was beginning to eat, and heaven knows what good little dishes, light and tasty, Nab cooked up for him!
"It was enough to make you wish you'd been dying!" said Pencroff.
During this whole period the convicts did not show themselves near Granite House a single time. Of Ayrton there was no news. The engineer and Harbert still kept some hope of finding him, but their companions no longer doubted that the unfortunate man had been killed. All the same, this uncertainty could not go on, and as soon as the boy was fit, the expedition would be undertaken — and its result was to be of great importance. But they would have to wait perhaps a month, because it would take the colony's full strength to get the better of the convicts.
Meanwhile Harbert was getting better and better. The congestion of the liver had cleared, and his wounds could be considered healed for good.
During that month of January important work was done on Prospect Plateau, but it consisted only of saving what could be saved of the ruined crops, wheat and vegetables alike. Seeds and plants were gathered up, so as to provide a new harvest in the coming season. As for rebuilding the poultry-yard sheds, the mill and the stables, Cyrus Smith preferred to wait. While he and his companions were out hunting the convicts, those villains might very well pay the plateau another visit, and it would not do to give them a reason to go back to their trade of plunderers and arsonists. Once the island had been cleared of these criminals, they would see about rebuilding.
The young convalescent had begun to get up in the second half of January — at first for one hour a day, then two, then three. His strength came back visibly, so vigorous was his constitution. He was eighteen by then. He was tall, and he promised to become a man of fine and noble bearing. From that time on his recovery, though it still called for some care — and Dr. Spilett was very strict — went steadily forward.
By the end of the month Harbert was already walking about Prospect Plateau and the beaches. A few sea baths that he took with Pencroff and Nab did him a world of good. Cyrus Smith thought he could already set the day of departure, and it was fixed for the coming February 15. The nights, very clear at that time of year, would favor the searches they meant to make over the whole island.
So the preparations for this exploration were begun, and they had to be thorough, because the colonists had sworn not to come back to Granite House until their double goal had been reached: on the one hand, to destroy the convicts and find Ayrton, if he was still alive; on the other, to discover the one who watched over the colony's fortunes so effectively.
Of Lincoln Island, the colonists knew thoroughly the whole east coast from Claw Cape to the Mandible Capes, the vast Shelduck Marsh, the surroundings of Lake Grant, Jacamar Wood between the Corral Road and the Mercy, the courses of the Mercy and Red Creek, and finally the spurs of Mount Franklin, among which the corral had been built.
They had explored, but only incompletely, the long shoreline of Washington Bay from Claw Cape to Reptile End, the strip of forest and marsh along the west coast, and those endless dunes that ended at the half-open jaws of Shark Gulf.
But they had not surveyed at all the broad wooded stretches that covered Serpentine Peninsula, the whole right bank of the Mercy, the left bank of Fall River, and the tangle of spurs and side valleys that held up three-quarters of the base of Mount Franklin to the west, north and east — where no doubt there were plenty of deep hiding places. That meant several thousand acres of the island had still escaped their investigations.
So it was decided that the expedition would cross the Far West, so as to take in the whole region lying on the right bank of the Mercy.
It might perhaps have been better to head first for the corral, where it was feared the convicts had taken refuge again, either to plunder it or to settle in. But either the corral had already been laid waste, and it was too late to prevent it, or the convicts had found it worth their while to dig in there, and there would always be time to go and drive them out of their hideout.
So, after some discussion, the first plan was kept, and the colonists resolved to make their way through the woods to Reptile End. They would cut their way with axes, and so lay out the first track of a road that would link Granite House with the tip of the peninsula, over a distance of sixteen or seventeen miles.
The cart was in perfect condition. The onaggas, well rested, could manage a long haul. Food, camping gear, the portable stove and various utensils were loaded onto the cart, along with weapons and ammunition chosen with care from Granite House's arsenal, so well stocked now. But they could not forget that the convicts might be roaming the woods, and that in the middle of those thick forests a shot was quickly fired — and quickly taken. So the little band of colonists had to stay together and not split up on any pretext.
It was also decided that no one would stay behind at Granite House. Even Top and Jup were to be part of the expedition. The inaccessible dwelling could guard itself.
February 14, the day before they left, was a Sunday. It was given over entirely to rest and made holy by the thanksgiving the colonists offered to the Creator. Harbert, completely cured but still a little weak, would have a place kept for him on the cart.
The next day, at daybreak, Cyrus Smith took the measures needed to keep Granite House safe from any invasion. The ladders that had once been used to climb up were carried to the Chimneys and buried deep in the sand, so that they could serve for the return — because the drum of the elevator was taken apart, and nothing was left of the machine. Pencroff stayed in Granite House last, to finish the job, and he came down by means of a doubled rope whose other end was held at the bottom. Once the rope had been pulled down to the ground, there was no longer any link at all between the upper landing and the beach.
The weather was magnificent.
"It's going to be a hot day!" said the reporter cheerfully.
"Bah! Dr. Spilett," answered Pencroff, "we'll be walking in the shade of the trees, and we won't even see the sun!"
"Let's go!" said the engineer.
The cart was waiting on the shore in front of the Chimneys. The reporter had insisted that Harbert ride in it, at least for the first few hours of the trip, and the boy had to obey his doctor's orders.
Nab went at the head of the onaggas. Cyrus Smith, the reporter and the sailor walked ahead. Top frisked about happily. Harbert had offered Jup a seat in his carriage, and Jup had accepted without any fuss. The moment of departure had come, and the little band set off.
The cart first rounded the corner at the river mouth. Then, after going a mile up the left bank of the Mercy, it crossed the bridge where the road to Balloon Harbor began. There the explorers left that road on their left and began to push in under the cover of the immense woods that made up the Far West.
For the first two miles the trees were widely spaced, and the cart could move about freely. Now and then they had to cut through a few creepers and thickets of brush, but nothing serious stopped the colonists' progress.
The thick branches overhead kept a cool shade on the ground. Deodars, Douglas firs, casuarinas, banksias, gum trees, dragon trees and other species they already knew followed one another as far as the eye could see. All the birds familiar on the island were there in full force — grouse, jacamars, pheasants, lories, and the whole chattering family of cockatoos, parakeets and parrots. Agoutis, kangaroos and capybaras darted through the grass, and all of it reminded the colonists of their first excursions when they had arrived on the island.
"All the same," Cyrus Smith pointed out, "I notice that these animals, four-footed and feathered alike, are shyer than they used to be. So these woods have been gone through recently by the convicts, and we're sure to find traces of them."
And indeed, in many places they could make out where a band of men had passed, more or less recently. Here, branches broken on the trees, perhaps to mark the way; there, the ashes of a dead fire, and footprints kept by patches of clayey ground. But all in all, nothing that looked like a permanent camp.
The engineer had told his companions not to hunt. Gunshots might have alerted the convicts, who were perhaps prowling the forest. Besides, the hunters would inevitably have been drawn some distance from the cart, and walking alone was strictly forbidden.
In the second part of the day, about six miles from Granite House, the going became rather hard. To get through certain thickets they had to fell trees and clear a path. Before going into these dense copses, Cyrus Smith took care to send Top and Jup in first, and they carried out their task conscientiously. When the dog and the orangutan came back without having raised any alarm, it meant there was nothing to fear, either from the convicts or from the wild beasts — two kinds of creature in the animal kingdom whose savage instincts put them on the same level.
On the evening of that first day the colonists camped about nine miles from Granite House, on the bank of a little tributary of the Mercy that they had not known existed. It must have belonged to the network of waters to which this soil owed its astonishing fertility.
They ate a hearty supper, for the colonists' appetites were very sharp, and measures were taken so that the night would pass without trouble. If the engineer had had to deal only with wild animals, jaguars or others, he would simply have lit fires around his camp, which would have been enough to protect it. But the convicts would have been drawn by those flames rather than kept off, and in that case it was better to wrap themselves in deep darkness.
The watch, besides, was strictly organized. Two of the colonists were to keep watch together, and it was agreed that they would be relieved by their comrades every two hours. Since Harbert, in spite of his protests, was let off guard duty, Pencroff and Gédéon Spilett on the one hand, and the engineer and Nab on the other, took turns standing guard at the approaches to the camp.
As it happened, there were barely a few hours of night. The darkness came more from the thickness of the branches than from the setting of the sun. The silence was hardly broken except by the hoarse howls of jaguars and the cackling of monkeys, which seemed to get on Master Jup's nerves in particular.
The night passed without incident, and the next day, February 16, the march through the forest resumed — slow rather than hard.
That day they could cover only six miles, because at every moment they had to hack out a road with the ax. Like true settlers, the colonists spared the tall, handsome trees — felling them would have cost them enormous effort anyway — and sacrificed the small ones. But the result was that the road did not run very straight and grew longer with many detours.
During that day Harbert discovered new species whose presence had not yet been noted on the island: tree ferns, their drooping fronds seeming to spill over like the water from a fountain basin, and carob trees, whose long pods the onaggas browsed greedily and which gave a sweet pulp with an excellent taste. There, too, the colonists came across magnificent kauris again, standing in groups, their cylindrical trunks, crowned with a cone of greenery, rising to a height of two hundred feet. These were indeed the royal trees of New Zealand, as famous as the cedars of Lebanon.
As for the animals, they showed no specimens other than those the hunters already knew. However, they caught a glimpse, without being able to get near them, of a pair of those large birds found only in Australia — a kind of cassowary called the emu — which stand five feet tall, have brown plumage, and belong to the order of wading birds. Top dashed after them as fast as his four legs would carry him, but the cassowaries easily left him behind, so prodigious was their speed.
As for the traces the convicts had left in the forest, a few more were found. Near a fire that seemed to have been put out recently, the colonists noticed footprints, and these were studied with the greatest attention. By measuring them one after another, length and breadth, they easily made out the tracks of five men's feet. The five convicts had clearly camped at this spot. But — and this was the whole point of so careful an examination! — they could not find a sixth footprint, which in that case would have been Ayrton's.
"Ayrton wasn't with them!" said Harbert.
"No," answered Pencroff, "and if he wasn't with them, it's because those villains had already killed him! But don't these scoundrels have a den, so we can go and hunt them down like tigers?"
"No," answered the reporter. "It's more likely they're wandering wherever chance takes them. It's in their interest to keep roaming like that until the moment they're masters of the island."
"Masters of the island!" cried the sailor. "Masters of the island!..." he repeated, and his voice was choked, as if an iron fist had seized him by the throat. Then, more calmly:
"Do you know, Mr. Cyrus," he said, "what bullet I've loaded into my gun?"
"No, Pencroff!"
"It's the bullet that went through Harbert's chest, and I promise you that one won't miss its mark!"
But that just revenge could not bring Ayrton back to life, and from this examination of the prints left on the ground they had, alas, to conclude that there was no longer any hope at all of ever seeing him again!
That evening the camp was set up fourteen miles from Granite House, and Cyrus Smith reckoned that it could not be more than five miles from Reptile End.
And in fact, the next day, they reached the tip of the peninsula, and the forest had been crossed from end to end. But not a single clue had led them to the hideout where the convicts had taken refuge — nor to the one, no less secret, that sheltered the mysterious stranger.
Exploring Serpentine Peninsula — Camp at the mouth of Fall River — Six hundred paces from the corral — Gédéon Spilett and Pencroff scout ahead — Their return — Everyone forward! — An open gate — A lighted window — By the light of the moon
The next day, February 18, was given over to exploring the whole wooded stretch that made up the coast from Reptile End to Fall River. The colonists were able to search this forest thoroughly, since it was only three to four miles wide, lying as it did between the two shores of Serpentine Peninsula. The trees, with their great height and their thick spreading branches, bore witness to the power of the soil to make things grow, and here it was more astonishing than anywhere else on the island. It looked like a corner of the virgin forests of America or Central Africa, carried bodily into this temperate zone. All of which suggested that these magnificent trees found in the soil, damp in its upper layer but heated from within by volcanic fires, a warmth that could not belong to a temperate climate. The commonest kinds were exactly those kauris and eucalyptus trees, which grew here to gigantic size.
But the colonists had not come to admire these splendors of the plant world. They already knew that in this respect Lincoln Island would have deserved a place among the Canaries, whose first name was the Fortunate Isles. Now, alas, their island no longer belonged wholly to them. Others had taken possession of it; scoundrels were treading its soil, and they had to be destroyed to the last man.
On the west coast they found no further traces, however carefully they looked. No more footprints, no more broken branches on the trees, no more cold ashes, no more abandoned camps.
"That doesn't surprise me," Cyrus Smith told his companions. "The convicts landed somewhere near Jetsam Point, and they went straight into the Far West forests after crossing Shelduck Marsh. So they followed more or less the route we took when we left Granite House. That explains the traces we found in the woods. But once they reached the coast, the convicts saw clearly that they wouldn't find a decent hideout there, and that's when they headed back north and discovered the corral..."
"Where they may have gone back..." said Pencroff.
"I don't think so," answered the engineer, "because they must guess that our search will turn in that direction. For them the corral is only a place to get supplies, not a permanent camp."
"I agree with Cyrus," said the reporter. "In my opinion, it's among the spurs of Mount Franklin that the convicts will have looked for a den."
"Then straight to the corral, Mr. Cyrus!" cried Pencroff. "We've got to finish this, and so far we've wasted our time!"
"No, my friend," answered the engineer. "You're forgetting that we needed to know whether the Far West forests might hold some dwelling. Our exploration has a double purpose, Pencroff. If on the one hand we must punish crime, on the other we have a debt of gratitude to pay!"
"Well spoken, Mr. Cyrus," answered the sailor. "All the same, it's my belief we won't find that gentleman unless he wants us to!"
And really, Pencroff was only saying what they all thought. It was likely that the stranger's hiding place would prove no less mysterious than the stranger himself!
That evening the cart stopped at the mouth of Fall River. They set up camp for the night in the usual way and took the usual precautions. Harbert, once again the strong, healthy boy he had been before his illness, was making the most of this open-air life between the ocean breezes and the bracing air of the forests. His place was no longer in the cart but at the head of the caravan.
The next day, February 19, the colonists left the coast, where beyond the river's mouth basalt rocks of every shape were piled up so picturesquely, and went up the river along its left bank. The way had been partly cleared already by earlier trips made from the corral to the west coast. The colonists were now six miles from Mount Franklin.
The engineer's plan was this: to examine with great care the whole valley whose lowest line formed the bed of the river, and to approach the neighborhood of the corral cautiously. If the corral was occupied, they would take it by force. If it was not, they would dig in there and make it the base for operations whose goal would be the exploration of Mount Franklin.
The colonists approved this plan unanimously, and indeed they were impatient to have their island wholly back in their own hands!
So they made their way along the narrow valley that separated two of the mightiest spurs of Mount Franklin. The trees crowded the banks of the river but grew sparser toward the upper slopes of the volcano. It was hilly, rather broken ground, made for ambushes, and they ventured across it only with the greatest caution. Top and Jup went ahead as scouts, plunging to right and left into the thick undergrowth, each trying to outdo the other in cleverness and skill. But nothing showed that anyone had been along the banks of the stream lately; nothing announced that the convicts were there or anywhere near.
At about five in the evening the cart stopped roughly six hundred paces from the palisade. A half-circle curtain of tall trees still hid it from view.
The thing to do, then, was to scout the corral and find out whether it was occupied. To go there openly, in broad daylight, would be asking to be shot, if the convicts were lying in wait there at all — just as had happened to Harbert. It was better to wait until night had fallen.
Gédéon Spilett, however, wanted to look over the approaches to the corral without any more delay, and Pencroff, at the end of his patience, offered to go with him.
"No, my friends," answered the engineer. "Wait for nightfall. I won't let any of you expose himself in broad daylight."
"But, Mr. Cyrus..." the sailor replied, not much inclined to obey.
"I'm asking you, Pencroff," said the engineer.
"Have it your way!" answered the sailor, who found another outlet for his anger by treating the convicts to the roughest names in the whole seafaring vocabulary.
So the colonists stayed close to the cart and kept a careful watch on the nearby parts of the forest.
Three hours went by like that. The wind had dropped, and an absolute silence reigned under the great trees. The snap of the thinnest twig, a footstep on dry leaves, a body sliding through the grass, would all have been heard easily. Everything was quiet. Besides, Top, lying on the ground with his head stretched out on his paws, showed no sign of uneasiness.
At eight o'clock the evening seemed far enough along for the scouting to be done under good conditions. Gédéon Spilett said he was ready to go, with Pencroff. Cyrus Smith agreed. Top and Jup had to stay behind with the engineer, Harbert and Nab, because a bark or a cry at the wrong moment must not give the alarm.
"Don't take any rash chances," Cyrus Smith told the sailor and the reporter. "You're not there to take the corral, only to find out whether it's occupied or not."
"Agreed," answered Pencroff.
And the two of them set off.
Under the trees, because the foliage was so thick, a certain darkness already made it impossible to see anything more than thirty or forty feet away. The reporter and Pencroff moved forward with the most extreme care, stopping the moment any sound seemed suspicious to them.
They walked some distance apart, to make a smaller target for gunfire. And to tell the whole truth, they expected a shot to ring out at any moment.
Five minutes after leaving the cart, Gédéon Spilett and Pencroff reached the edge of the woods, facing the clearing at the far end of which the palisade rose.
They stopped. A little faint light still washed over the treeless meadow. Thirty paces away stood the gate of the corral, which seemed to be shut. Those thirty paces they would have to cross between the edge of the woods and the palisade were the danger zone, to borrow an expression from the science of gunnery. One or more bullets fired from the top of the palisade would have knocked down anyone who ventured into that zone.
Gédéon Spilett and the sailor were not men to hang back, but they knew that any recklessness on their part, though they would be its first victims, would fall afterward on their companions. If the two of them were killed, what would become of Cyrus Smith, Nab and Harbert?
But Pencroff, worked up at feeling himself so close to the corral, where he supposed the convicts had taken refuge, was about to push forward when the reporter held him back with a firm hand.
"In a few moments it'll be completely dark," Gédéon Spilett whispered in Pencroff's ear, "and that will be the time to act."
Pencroff, his hand clenched tight on the stock of his gun, held himself in and waited, grumbling.
Soon the last glimmers of twilight faded away entirely. The darkness, which seemed to pour out of the thick forest, flooded the clearing. Mount Franklin rose like an enormous screen against the western horizon, and night came on quickly, as it does in regions already fairly low in latitude. This was the moment.
Ever since they had taken up their post at the edge of the woods, the reporter and Pencroff had not taken their eyes off the palisade. The corral seemed to be completely deserted. The top of the palisade made a line a little blacker than the surrounding shadow, and nothing broke its sharp edge. Still, if the convicts were there, they would have had to post one of their number as a lookout, to protect themselves against any surprise.
Gédéon Spilett pressed his companion's hand, and the two of them crawled toward the corral, their guns ready to fire.
They reached the gate of the enclosure without a single streak of light cutting through the darkness.
Pencroff tried to push the gate, which, as he and the reporter had supposed, was shut. However, the sailor was able to make sure that the outside bars had not been put in place.
From this they could conclude that the convicts were in the corral at that moment, and that they had most likely made the gate fast from the inside so that it could not be forced.
Gédéon Spilett and Pencroff listened.
Not a sound inside the enclosure. The mouflons and the goats, no doubt asleep in their stables, did nothing at all to disturb the calm of the night.
Hearing nothing, the reporter and the sailor wondered whether they ought to climb the palisade and get into the corral. That would be going against Cyrus Smith's instructions.
True, the attempt might succeed — but it might fail, too. And if the convicts suspected nothing, if they knew nothing of the expedition launched against them, if in short there was at this moment a chance of taking them by surprise, ought they to throw that chance away by rashly venturing over the palisade?
The reporter thought not. He judged it sensible to wait until the colonists were all together before trying to get into the corral. One thing was certain: it was possible to get right up to the palisade without being seen, and the enclosure did not seem to be guarded. With that settled, all that remained was to go back to the cart and decide what to do.
Pencroff probably shared this view, for he raised no objection to following the reporter when the reporter fell back into the woods.
A few minutes later the engineer had been told how matters stood.
"Well," he said, after thinking it over, "I now have reason to believe that the convicts are not at the corral."
"We'll find out soon enough," answered Pencroff, "once we've climbed the palisade."
"To the corral, my friends!" said Cyrus Smith.
"Do we leave the cart in the woods?" asked Nab.
"No," answered the engineer. "It's our supply wagon for ammunition and food, and if need be it will serve us as a breastwork."
"Forward, then!" said Gédéon Spilett.
The cart came out of the woods and began to roll silently toward the palisade. The darkness was deep now, the silence as complete as when Pencroff and the reporter had crawled away over the ground. The thick grass smothered the sound of their footsteps entirely.
The colonists were ready to fire. Jup, on Pencroff's orders, kept to the rear. Nab held Top on a leash so that he would not dash ahead.
The clearing soon came into view. It was deserted. Without hesitating, the little band headed for the enclosure. In a short space of time they had crossed the danger zone. Not a shot had been fired. When the cart reached the palisade, it stopped. Nab stayed at the onaggas' heads to keep them still. The engineer, the reporter, Harbert and Pencroff then went toward the gate, to see whether it was barricaded on the inside...
One of the two halves of the gate was open!
"But what were you telling me?" asked the engineer, turning to the sailor and Gédéon Spilett.
The two of them were dumbfounded.
"On my soul," said Pencroff, "that gate was shut a little while ago!"
At that the colonists hesitated. Had the convicts been in the corral, then, at the very moment Pencroff and the reporter were scouting it? There could be no doubt of it, since the gate, which had been shut then, could only have been opened by them! Were they still inside, or had one of them just gone out?
All these questions leaped into everyone's mind at once, but how were they to answer them?
At that moment Harbert, who had gone a few steps inside the enclosure, drew back hastily and seized Cyrus Smith's hand.
"What is it?" asked the engineer.
"A light!"
"In the house?"
"Yes!"
All five of them moved up to the gate, and sure enough, through the panes of the window facing them, they saw a faint glimmer flickering.
Cyrus Smith made up his mind quickly.
"It's a unique chance," he told his companions, "to find the convicts shut up in that house, expecting nothing! They're ours! Forward!"
The colonists slipped into the enclosure, guns ready to raise to their shoulders. The cart had been left outside in the care of Jup and Top, who had been tied to it as a precaution.
Cyrus Smith, Pencroff and Gédéon Spilett on one side, Harbert and Nab on the other, moved along the palisade and looked over that part of the corral, which was completely dark and deserted.
In a few moments they were all near the house, in front of its door, which was shut.
Cyrus Smith signaled to his companions with his hand not to move, and he went up to the window, which was faintly lit by the light inside.
He looked into the single room that made up the ground floor of the house.
On the table a lantern was burning. Beside the table was the bed that Ayrton used to sleep in.
On the bed lay the body of a man.
Suddenly Cyrus Smith drew back, and in a stifled voice he cried:
"Ayrton!"
At once the door was burst in rather than opened, and the colonists rushed into the room.
Ayrton seemed to be asleep. His face showed that he had suffered long and cruelly. On his wrists and ankles there were broad bruises.
Cyrus Smith bent over him.
"Ayrton!" cried the engineer, gripping the arm of the man he had just found again in such unexpected circumstances.
At the sound of his name Ayrton opened his eyes, and, looking straight at Cyrus Smith, then at the others, he cried:
"You? You?"
"Ayrton! Ayrton!" Cyrus Smith repeated.
"Where am I?"
"In the house at the corral!"
"Alone?"
"Yes!"
"But they're coming back!" cried Ayrton. "Defend yourselves! Defend yourselves!"
And Ayrton fell back, exhausted.
"Spilett," the engineer said then, "we may be attacked at any moment. Bring the cart into the corral. Then barricade the gate, and all of you come back here."
Pencroff, Nab and the reporter hurried to carry out the engineer's orders. There was not a moment to lose. Perhaps the cart was already in the convicts' hands!
In an instant the reporter and his two companions had crossed the corral and reached the gate in the palisade, behind which they could hear Top growling low.
The engineer, leaving Ayrton for a moment, went out of the house, ready to shoot. Harbert was at his side. Both of them kept watch on the crest of the spur that overlooked the corral. If the convicts were lying in wait up there, they could pick the colonists off one after another.
At that moment the moon appeared in the east above the black curtain of the forest, and a white sheet of light spread across the inside of the enclosure. The whole corral lit up, with its clumps of trees, the little stream that watered it, and its broad carpet of grass. On the mountain side, the house and part of the palisade stood out white. On the opposite side, toward the gate, the enclosure remained dark.
Soon a black mass came into view. It was the cart, rolling into the circle of light, and Cyrus Smith could hear the sound of the gate as his companions shut it and made its two halves fast from the inside.
But at that moment Top, snapping his leash with a violent jerk, began to bark furiously and rushed toward the far end of the corral, to the right of the house.
"Look out, my friends! Take aim!..." shouted Cyrus Smith.
The colonists had shouldered their guns and were waiting for the moment to fire. Top was still barking, and Jup, running toward the dog, gave a series of shrill whistles.
The colonists followed him and came out on the bank of the little brook, shaded by tall trees.
And there, in the full light of the moon, what did they see?
Five bodies, stretched out on the bank!
They were the bodies of the convicts who, four months before, had landed on Lincoln Island!
Ayrton's story — The plans of his former accomplices — They settle in at the corral — Lincoln Island's dispenser of justice — The Bonadventure — Searching around Mount Franklin — The upper valleys — Rumblings underground — An answer from Pencroff — At the bottom of the crater — Home again
What had happened? Who had struck the convicts down? Could it have been Ayrton? No, since only a moment before he had been dreading their return!
But Ayrton was by then sunk in a deep sleep, and there was no longer any way to rouse him from it. After the few words he had spoken, a crushing torpor had taken hold of him, and he had fallen back on his bed without moving.
The colonists, a prey to a thousand confused thoughts and in a state of violent excitement, waited all through the night without leaving Ayrton's house and without going back to the place where the bodies of the convicts lay. As for the circumstances in which those men had met their deaths, Ayrton would most likely be unable to tell them anything, since he had not even known that he was in the house at the corral. But at least he would be able to tell them what had happened before that terrible execution.
The next day Ayrton came out of his torpor, and his companions warmly showed him all the joy they felt at seeing him again, more or less safe and sound, after a hundred and four days apart.
Ayrton then told them in a few words what had happened, or at least what he knew.
On the day after he arrived at the corral — November 10 of the year before — at nightfall, he had been taken by surprise by the convicts, who had climbed over the palisade. They tied him up and gagged him, and then he was carried off to a dark cave at the foot of Mount Franklin, where the convicts had taken refuge.
They had decided on his death, and the next day he was about to be killed when one of the convicts recognized him and called him by the name he had gone by in Australia. These wretches had been ready to murder Ayrton. They spared Ben Joyce!
But from that moment on, Ayrton was hounded day and night by his former accomplices. They wanted to win him back to their side, and they were counting on him to help them seize Granite House, to get inside that unreachable dwelling, and to make themselves masters of the island after murdering the colonists!
Ayrton refused. The former convict, repentant and forgiven, would sooner have died than betray his companions.
Bound, gagged, and watched every moment, Ayrton lived in that cave for four months.
The convicts, meanwhile, had found the corral not long after they landed on the island, and since then they had been living off its stores, though they did not live in it. On November 11, two of these bandits, caught off guard by the colonists' unexpected arrival, fired on Harbert, and one of them came back boasting that he had killed one of the island's inhabitants. But he came back alone. His companion, as we know, had fallen under Cyrus Smith's dagger.
Imagine Ayrton's anxiety and despair when he heard that news of Harbert's death! The colonists were only four now, and so, you might say, at the mercy of the convicts!
After that, and for the whole time the colonists stayed at the corral, held there by Harbert's illness, the pirates did not leave their cave. Even after they had plundered Prospect Plateau, they did not think it wise to abandon it.
The ill treatment they gave Ayrton grew worse then. His hands and feet still bore the bloody marks of the ropes that bound him day and night. At every moment he expected a death that it did not seem he could possibly escape.
So it went on until the third week of February. Still watching for a good opportunity, the convicts seldom left their hiding place, and made only a few hunting trips, either into the interior of the island or as far as the south coast. Ayrton had no more news of his friends, and he no longer hoped to see them again!
At last, weakened by ill treatment, the unhappy man fell into a deep prostration in which he could no longer see or hear anything. And so from that point on — that is, for the past two days — he could not even say what had happened.
"But, Mr. Smith," he added, "if I was a prisoner in that cave, how is it that I find myself back at the corral?"
"How is it that the convicts are lying out there dead, in the middle of the enclosure?" answered the engineer.
"Dead!" cried Ayrton, and weak as he was, he half raised himself.
His companions held him up. He wanted to get to his feet. They let him, and all of them went toward the little stream.
It was broad daylight.
There on the bank, in the very positions in which a death that must have been as sudden as a lightning stroke had caught them, lay the five bodies of the convicts!
Ayrton was stunned. Cyrus Smith and his companions watched him without saying a word.
At a sign from the engineer, Nab and Pencroff examined the bodies, which were already stiff with the cold.
They bore no visible trace of any wound.
But after looking them over carefully, Pencroff noticed on the forehead of one, on the chest of another, on the back of this one, on the shoulder of that one, a small red spot — a kind of bruise, barely visible, and impossible to account for.
"That's where they were struck!" said Cyrus Smith.
"But with what weapon?" cried the reporter.
"A weapon that strikes like lightning, and whose secret we don't have!"
"And who struck them down?" asked Pencroff.
"The island's dispenser of justice," answered Cyrus Smith. "The one who carried you here, Ayrton. The one whose influence has just made itself felt once again. The one who does for us everything we can't do for ourselves, and who then, once it's done, slips away from us."
"Then let's find him!" cried Pencroff.
"Yes, let's look for him," answered Cyrus Smith. "But the superior being who works such wonders — we'll find him only if he finally chooses to call us to him!"
This invisible protection, which reduced their own efforts to nothing, both irritated and touched the engineer. The relative inferiority it made plain was the kind that can wound a proud soul. A generosity that arranges things so as to dodge every mark of gratitude suggested a sort of disdain for the people it obliged, and in Cyrus Smith's eyes that spoiled, to some degree, the value of the kindness.
"Let's search," he went on, "and God grant that one day we may be allowed to prove to this haughty protector that he isn't dealing with ungrateful people! What wouldn't I give for us to be able to repay him, by doing him some great service in our turn, even at the cost of our lives!"
From that day on, this search was the one concern of the inhabitants of Lincoln Island. Everything drove them to find the answer to the riddle, and that answer could only be the name of a man gifted with a truly inexplicable and, in a way, superhuman power.
After a few moments the colonists went back into the house at the corral, where their care soon restored Ayrton's strength of mind and body.
Nab and Pencroff carried the convicts' bodies into the forest, some distance from the corral, and buried them deep.
Then Ayrton was told everything that had happened while he was held prisoner. He heard about Harbert's adventures, and about the whole series of trials the colonists had been through. As for them, they had given up hope of ever seeing Ayrton again, and had feared that the convicts had murdered him without mercy.
"And now," said Cyrus Smith, as he finished his account, "we still have a duty to carry out. Half our task is done. But if the convicts are no longer to be feared, it isn't to ourselves that we owe being masters of the island again."
"Well, then," answered Gédéon Spilett, "let's search the whole labyrinth of Mount Franklin's spurs! Let's not leave a single hollow, a single hole unexplored! Ah! If ever a reporter found himself face to face with a thrilling mystery, my friends, it's the one talking to you now!"
"And we won't go back to Granite House," said Harbert, "until we've found our benefactor."
"Yes!" said the engineer. "We'll do everything that's humanly possible... but I'll say it again — we'll find him only if he's willing to let us!"
"Do we stay at the corral?" asked Pencroff.
"Let's stay here," answered Cyrus Smith. "There are plenty of provisions, and we're right at the center of the circle we have to search. Besides, if need be, the cart can get to Granite House quickly."
"Good," answered the sailor. "Only, one remark."
"What's that?"
"The fine season's coming on, and we mustn't forget we have a crossing to make."
"A crossing?" said Gédéon Spilett.
"Yes! To Tabor Island," answered Pencroff. "We have to take a notice over there giving the position of our island, and saying that Ayrton is here now, in case the Scottish yacht comes back to pick him up. Who knows if it isn't already too late?"
"But, Pencroff," asked Ayrton, "how do you plan to make that crossing?"
"In the Bonadventure!"
"The Bonadventure!" cried Ayrton. "She doesn't exist anymore."
"My Bonadventure doesn't exist anymore!" roared Pencroff, leaping to his feet.
"No!" answered Ayrton. "The convicts found her in her little harbor barely a week ago. They put to sea, and..."
"And?" said Pencroff, his heart pounding.
"And with no Bob Harvey to handle her, they ran her onto the rocks, and the boat was smashed to pieces!"
"Oh, the wretches! The bandits! The low-down scoundrels!" cried Pencroff.
"Pencroff," said Harbert, taking the sailor's hand, "we'll build another Bonadventure — a bigger one! We have all the brig's ironwork and all her rigging to use!"
"But do you know," answered Pencroff, "that it takes five or six months at least to build a boat of thirty to forty tons?"
"We'll take our time," answered the reporter, "and we'll give up making the crossing to Tabor Island this year."
"What can you do, Pencroff? We have to resign ourselves," said the engineer. "And I hope this delay won't do us any harm."
"Oh, my Bonadventure! My poor Bonadventure!" cried Pencroff, truly heartbroken at the loss of the boat he had been so proud of.
The destruction of the Bonadventure was obviously a regrettable thing for the colonists, and they agreed that the loss would have to be made good as soon as possible. Once that was settled, their only concern was to carry through the exploration of the most hidden parts of the island.
The search began that very day, February 19, and went on for a whole week. The base of the mountain, between its spurs and their many branches, formed a labyrinth of valleys and side valleys laid out in the most haphazard way. It was obviously there, at the bottom of those narrow gorges, or perhaps even inside the mass of Mount Franklin itself, that the search ought to be pursued. No part of the island would have been better suited to hide a dwelling whose occupant wished to remain unknown. But the spurs were so tangled together that Cyrus Smith had to explore them with strict method.
The colonists first went over the whole valley that opened to the south of the volcano and collected the first waters of Fall River. It was there that Ayrton showed them the cave where the convicts had taken refuge and where he had been held prisoner until he was carried to the corral. The cave was exactly as Ayrton had left it. They found there a certain quantity of ammunition and food that the convicts had carried off, meaning to lay in a store of their own.
The whole valley that led to the cave, shaded by fine trees, mostly conifers, was explored with the greatest care. Then, after rounding the tip of the southwest spur, the colonists made their way into a narrower gorge that began at that very picturesque heap of basalt columns along the shore.
Here the trees were scarcer. Stone took the place of grass. Wild goats and mouflons skipped about among the rocks. This was where the barren part of the island began. They could already see that of the many valleys branching out at the foot of Mount Franklin, only three were wooded and rich in pasture like the valley of the corral, which bordered the valley of Fall River on the west and the valley of Red Creek on the east. Those two streams, which turned into rivers farther down by taking in a few tributaries, were formed from all the waters of the mountain, and so they were what made its southern part fertile. As for the Mercy, it was fed more directly by plentiful springs hidden under the cover of Jacamar Wood, and it was springs of the same kind, spilling out in a thousand little trickles, that watered the soil of Serpentine Peninsula.
Now, of these three valleys where there was no shortage of water, any one could have served as a retreat for some solitary man, who would have found everything there that he needed to live. But the colonists had already explored them, and nowhere had they found any sign of a human presence.
Was it, then, at the bottom of those barren gorges, among the rockfalls, in the rugged ravines of the north, between the lava flows, that the hiding place and its occupant would be found?
At its base, the northern part of Mount Franklin consisted of nothing but two valleys, broad, shallow, without a trace of green, strewn with stray boulders, streaked with long moraines, paved with lava, bulging here and there with great mineral swellings, and sprinkled with obsidian and labradorite. This part called for long and difficult exploration. A thousand hollows had been dug out there — not very comfortable, no doubt, but perfectly hidden and hard to get into. The colonists even went through dark tunnels that dated from the age when fire shaped the earth, still blackened by the fires that had passed through them long ago, and that ran deep into the mass of the mountain. They went along those dark galleries, carrying blazing torches of resin; they searched the smallest hollows and sounded the smallest depths. But everywhere there was silence and darkness. It did not seem that a human being had ever set foot in those ancient passages, or that any arm had ever moved a single one of those blocks. They lay just as the volcano had flung them up when the island rose above the waters.
And yet, though these underground vaults seemed to be entirely deserted, and though the darkness in them was complete, Cyrus Smith was forced to admit that complete silence did not reign there.
On reaching the far end of one of those dark hollows, which ran several hundred feet into the mountain, he was surprised to hear dull rumblings, made louder by the echoing rock.
Gédéon Spilett, who was with him, heard those distant murmurs too, and they pointed to a reawakening of the underground fires. Several times the two of them stopped to listen, and they agreed that some chemical reaction was working itself out in the depths of the earth.
"So the volcano isn't completely extinct?" said the reporter.
"It's possible," answered Cyrus Smith, "that since we explored the crater some change has taken place in the lower layers. Any volcano, even one that's thought to be extinct, can obviously light up again."
"But if Mount Franklin were getting ready to erupt," asked Gédéon Spilett, "wouldn't Lincoln Island be in danger?"
"I don't think so," answered the engineer. "The crater — that is, the safety valve — is there, and the overflow of vapors and lava will escape, as it used to, through its usual outlet."
"Unless the lava cuts itself a new way out toward the fertile parts of the island!"
"Why, my dear Spilett," answered Cyrus Smith, "why wouldn't it follow the road that's naturally laid out for it?"
"Well! Volcanoes are unpredictable!" answered the reporter.
"Notice," the engineer went on, "that the slope of the whole mass of Mount Franklin favors an outflow of material toward the valleys we're exploring right now. It would take an earthquake shifting the mountain's center of gravity for that outflow to change course."
"But an earthquake is always to be feared in conditions like these," Gédéon Spilett pointed out.
"Always," answered the engineer, "especially when the forces underground are beginning to wake, and the insides of the globe may have become blocked up after a long rest. So, my dear Spilett, an eruption would be a serious matter for us, and it would be far better if this volcano had no wish to wake up! But there's nothing we can do about it, is there? In any case, whatever happens, I don't believe our domain on Prospect Plateau can be seriously threatened. Between the plateau and the mountain the ground dips noticeably, and if the lava ever took the road toward the lake, it would be thrown off onto the dunes and the nearby parts of Shark Gulf."
"We haven't yet seen any smoke at the top of the mountain to suggest an eruption is coming," said Gédéon Spilett.
"No," answered Cyrus Smith. "Not a wisp of vapor is coming out of the crater — I was looking at its summit only yesterday. But it's possible that over time rocks, ashes, and hardened lava have piled up in the lower part of the volcanic chimney, and that the safety valve I spoke of is overloaded for the moment. Still, at the first serious push, every obstacle will be swept away, and you can be sure, my dear Spilett, that neither the island, which is the boiler, nor the volcano, which is the smokestack, will burst under the pressure of the gases. All the same, I repeat, it would be better if there were no eruption."
"And yet we aren't mistaken," the reporter went on. "We can definitely hear dull rumblings in the very depths of the volcano!"
"Indeed," answered the engineer, listening again with the closest attention, "there's no mistaking it... some reaction is taking place there, and we can't judge how great it is or how it will end."
When they came out, Cyrus Smith and Gédéon Spilett rejoined their companions and told them how matters stood.
"Fine!" cried Pencroff. "So this volcano wants to get up to its tricks! Well, let it try! It'll find its master!..."
"Who's that?" asked Nab.
"Our genie, Nab, our genie! He'll gag its crater for it if it so much as looks like opening it!"
As you can see, the sailor's faith in his island's own private god was absolute. And certainly the hidden power that had shown itself so far through so many inexplicable acts seemed to have no limits. But it also knew how to escape the colonists' painstaking search, because in spite of all their efforts, in spite of the zeal — more than zeal, the stubbornness — they brought to their exploration, the strange hiding place could not be found.
From February 19 to 25, the circle of the search was widened to take in the whole northern region of Lincoln Island, and its most secret nooks were ransacked. The colonists went so far as to sound every rock wall, the way police officers tap the walls of a suspect house. The engineer even made a very exact survey of the mountain, and pushed his search down to the lowest foundations that supported it. In the same way it was explored up as high as the truncated cone that topped the first tier of rock, and then right up to the upper rim of that enormous hat at the bottom of which the crater opened.
They did more: they went down into the pit. It was still extinct, but rumblings could be distinctly heard in its depths. Yet not a puff of smoke, not a wisp of vapor, not the least warming of the rock walls pointed to an eruption to come. But neither there nor in any other part of Mount Franklin did the colonists find any trace of the one they were looking for.
Next, the search turned to the whole region of the dunes. They went carefully over the high lava walls of Shark Gulf, from bottom to top, though it was extremely hard even to get down to the level of the gulf itself. No one! Nothing!
In the end, those two words summed up so much fatigue spent for nothing, so much stubbornness that came to nothing, and there was a sort of anger in the disappointment of Cyrus Smith and his companions.
So they had to think about going back, since this search could not go on forever. The colonists had every right to believe now that the mysterious being did not live on the surface of the island, and then the wildest theories haunted their overexcited imaginations. Pencroff and Nab especially were no longer content with the strange, and let themselves be carried off into the world of the supernatural.
On February 25 the colonists returned to Granite House. By means of the double rope, which an arrow carried back up to the doorsill, they restored the link between their home and the ground below.
A month later, on the twenty-fifth day of March, they celebrated the third anniversary of their arrival on Lincoln Island!
Three years have passed — The question of the new ship — What is decided — The colony prospers — The shipyard — The cold of the southern hemisphere — Pencroff resigns himself — Washing the linen — Mount Franklin
Three years had gone by since the prisoners of Richmond made their escape, and how often, in those three years, they had talked of their homeland, which was never far from their thoughts!
They had no doubt that the Civil War was over by now, and it seemed impossible to them that the just cause of the North had not won. But what had happened in that terrible war? How much blood had it cost? Which of their own friends had fallen in the struggle? That was what they often talked about, without yet glimpsing the day when they would be allowed to see their country again. To go back, if only for a few days; to tie the social bond with the inhabited world once more; to open a line of communication between their homeland and their island; and then to spend the longest and perhaps the best part of their lives in this colony they had founded, which would then belong to the mother country — was that, after all, a dream that could never come true?
But there were only two ways to make that dream come true. Either a ship would one day appear in the waters of Lincoln Island, or the colonists would build a vessel themselves, one strong enough to hold the sea as far as the nearest land.
"Unless," Pencroff would say, "our genie hands us the means of getting home himself!"
And truly, if someone had come and told Pencroff and Nab that a ship of three hundred tons was waiting for them in Shark Gulf or at Balloon Harbor, they would not even have made a gesture of surprise. Along those lines, they were ready for anything.
But Cyrus Smith, less trusting, advised them to come back down to earth. That was over the question of building a ship — a truly urgent job, since they needed to leave a notice on Tabor Island as soon as possible, telling where Ayrton was now living.
The Bonadventure was gone, and building a new ship would take six months at the very least. Now, winter was on its way, and the voyage could not be made before the following spring.
"So we have time to get ready for the fine season," said the engineer, who was talking these things over with Pencroff. "Now, my friend, since we have to build our boat over again, I think it would be better to make her considerably bigger. Whether the Scottish yacht will ever come to Tabor Island is very doubtful. She may even have come months ago and left again, after searching in vain for some trace of Ayrton. So wouldn't it be wise to build a ship that could carry us, if it came to that, either to the island groups of Polynesia or to New Zealand? What do you think?"
"I think, Mr. Cyrus," the sailor answered, "I think you're every bit as able to build a big ship as a little one. We're short of neither timber nor tools. It's only a question of time."
"And how many months would it take to build a ship of two hundred and fifty to three hundred tons?" asked Cyrus Smith.
"Seven or eight months at least," answered Pencroff. "But we mustn't forget that winter's coming, and in hard frost wood is difficult to work. So let's count on a few weeks of idleness, and if our ship is ready by next November we ought to think ourselves very lucky."
"Well," replied Cyrus Smith, "that would be exactly the right season to undertake a voyage of any length, whether to Tabor Island or to some land farther away."
"Just so, Mr. Cyrus," answered the sailor. "So draw up your plans. The workmen are ready, and I expect Ayrton can give us a good hand with it."
The colonists were consulted, and they approved the engineer's plan, which was, in truth, the best thing they could do. Building a ship of two to three hundred tons was a big undertaking, it is true, but the colonists had a confidence in themselves that many successes had already justified.
So Cyrus Smith set to work drawing the ship's plan and fixing her lines. Meanwhile his companions busied themselves felling and hauling the trees that were to supply the knees, the frames and the planking. It was the Far West forest that yielded the best kinds of oak and elm. They took advantage of the gap already cut during their last expedition to open a usable road, which took the name of the Far West Road, and the trees were carried to the Chimneys, where the shipyard was set up. As for the road itself, its course wandered somewhat whimsically, for it was more or less the choice of timber that laid it out; but it made a sizable part of Serpentine Peninsula easy to reach.
It was important to cut and saw the timber quickly, because it could not be used green; time had to be left to season and harden it. So the carpenters worked hard all through April, which was disturbed only by a few rather violent equinoctial gales. Master Jup helped them nimbly, either climbing to the top of a tree to fasten the felling ropes, or lending his sturdy shoulders to carry off the trimmed trunks.
All this timber was stacked under a large plank shed built beside the Chimneys, and there it waited for the moment it would be put to use.
April was quite fine, as October often is in the northern zone. At the same time, the farm work was pushed forward energetically, and soon every trace of the devastation had vanished from Prospect Plateau. The mill was rebuilt, and new buildings went up on the site of the poultry yard. It had seemed necessary to rebuild them on a larger scale, because the bird population was growing considerably. The stables now held five onaggas: four strong ones, well broken, that would let themselves be harnessed or ridden, and a little one just born. The colony's equipment had gained a plow, and the onaggas were put to plowing, just like real Yorkshire or Kentucky oxen. Each of the colonists took his share of the work, and nobody's hands sat idle. And what fine health these workers enjoyed, and what good humor they brought to their evenings in Granite House, making a thousand plans for the future!
It goes without saying that Ayrton shared the common life completely, and there was no longer any question of his going to live at the corral. Still, he remained sad and kept to himself, and joined in his companions' work more readily than in their pleasures. But he was a powerful worker on any job — strong, skillful, inventive, intelligent. He was respected and loved by everyone, and he could not have failed to know it.
The corral, however, was not abandoned. Every other day one of the colonists, driving the cart or riding one of the onaggas, went to look after the flock of mouflons and goats and brought back the milk that stocked Nab's pantry. These trips were also chances to hunt. So Harbert and Gédéon Spilett — with Top out in front — ran along the Corral Road more often than any of their companions, and with the excellent guns they now had at their disposal, the house was never short of game: capybaras, agoutis, kangaroos, wild boars and wild pigs for the large game; ducks, grouse, heath cocks, jacamars and snipe for the small. What came out of the warren, what came out of the oyster bed, a few turtles they caught, a new haul of those excellent salmon that once again came crowding into the waters of the Mercy, the vegetables from Prospect Plateau, the wild fruits of the forest — it was riches upon riches, and Nab, the head cook, could barely find room to store them all.
It goes without saying that the telegraph wire strung between the corral and Granite House had been repaired, and it was put to work whenever one or another of the colonists was at the corral and thought it necessary to spend the night there. Besides, the island was safe now, and no attack was to be feared — at least, not from men.
Still, what had happened once could happen again. A landing by pirates, or even by escaped convicts, was always to be feared. It was possible that companions of Bob Harvey's, accomplices still held on Norfolk Island, had been in on the secret of his plans and might be tempted to follow his example. So the colonists did not fail to watch the approaches to the island, and every day their spyglass swept the wide horizon that closed off Union Bay and Washington Bay. When they went to the corral, they studied the western part of the sea with no less care, and by climbing the mountain's shoulder they could take in a wide sweep of the western horizon.
Nothing suspicious appeared, but they still had to keep on their guard at all times.
So one evening the engineer told his friends about a plan he had formed for fortifying the corral. It seemed wise to him to raise its palisade and to flank it with a sort of blockhouse, in which, if it came to that, the colonists could hold out against an enemy band. Granite House had to be considered impregnable by its very position. The corral, then, with its buildings, its stores and the animals it held, would always be the target of any pirates, whoever they were, who landed on the island; and if the colonists were forced to shut themselves up there, they had to be able to hold out on equal terms.
That was a plan to be thought through, and in any case it had to be put off until the following spring.
Around May 15, the keel of the new ship lay stretched out in the shipyard, and soon the stem and the sternpost, mortised into each end of it, rose up from it almost vertically. This keel, made of good oak, was a hundred and ten feet long, which would allow the ship a beam of twenty-five feet at her widest point. But that was all the carpenters could manage before the cold and the bad weather arrived. During the following week they still managed to put the first frames of the stern in place; then the work had to stop.
During the last days of the month the weather was extremely bad. The wind blew from the east, sometimes with the violence of a hurricane. The engineer was somewhat worried about the shipyard's sheds — though he could not have put them anywhere else near Granite House — because the islet sheltered the shore only imperfectly against the fury of the open sea, and in great storms the waves broke straight against the foot of the granite wall.
But, very fortunately, these fears came to nothing. The wind backed instead toward the southeast, and in those conditions the shore below Granite House was completely sheltered by the jutting spur of Jetsam Point.
Pencroff and Ayrton, the two keenest builders of the new ship, kept at their work as long as they could. They were not men to be bothered by the wind twisting their hair or the rain soaking them to the bone, and a hammer blow is as good in foul weather as in fair. But when a very sharp cold followed that wet spell, the wood, whose fibers took on the hardness of iron, became extremely difficult to work, and around June 10 the building of the ship had to be given up for good.
Cyrus Smith and his companions had not failed to notice how harsh the winters of Lincoln Island were. The cold was comparable to what the states of New England feel, and they lie at about the same distance from the equator as the island. In the northern hemisphere — or at least in the part of it taken up by British North America and the northern United States — the cold is explained by the flatness of the lands that stretch toward the pole, where no rise in the ground stands in the way of the Arctic winds. But here, where Lincoln Island was concerned, that explanation could not hold.
"It's even been observed," Cyrus Smith told his companions one day, "that at the same latitude, islands and coastal regions suffer less from the cold than inland countries. I've often heard it said that the winters of Lombardy, for example, are harsher than those of Scotland, and that would be because the sea gives back in winter the heat it took in during the summer. So islands are in the best position to profit from that giving back."
"But then, Mr. Cyrus," asked Harbert, "why does Lincoln Island seem to escape the general rule?"
"That's hard to explain," replied the engineer. "Still, I'd be inclined to think that this oddity comes from the island's position in the southern hemisphere, which, as you know, my boy, is colder than the northern hemisphere."
"That's true," said Harbert, "and floating ice is found at lower latitudes in the south of the Pacific than in the north."
"So it is," said Pencroff, "and when I was in the whaling trade I saw icebergs as far up as off Cape Horn."
"Then perhaps," said Gédéon Spilett, "the hard cold that strikes Lincoln Island could be explained by ice floes or pack ice relatively close by."
"Your opinion is a very reasonable one, my dear Spilett," answered Cyrus Smith, "and it's clearly to the nearness of the pack ice that we owe our hard winters. But let me point out to you that a purely physical cause also makes the southern hemisphere colder than the northern. Since the sun is closer to this hemisphere during its summer, it is necessarily farther away during its winter. That explains why the temperature runs to extremes in both directions, and if we find the winters very cold on Lincoln Island, let's not forget that the summers here are very hot instead."
"But why, if you please, Mr. Smith," asked Pencroff, frowning, "why should our hemisphere, as you call it, get such a poor share? That isn't fair!"
"Friend Pencroff," answered the engineer, laughing, "fair or not, we have to put up with it, and here's where the peculiarity comes from. The earth doesn't travel around the sun in a circle, but in an ellipse, as the laws of mechanics require. The earth occupies one of the foci of the ellipse, and so at one point in its path the earth is at its apogee — that is, at its greatest distance from the sun — and at another point it's at its perigee — that is, at its shortest distance. Now, it so happens that it's precisely during the winter of the southern lands that the earth is at the point farthest from the sun, and therefore in just the conditions to make those regions suffer the greatest cold. There's nothing to be done about it, and men, Pencroff, however learned they may be, will never be able to change anything at all in the order of the heavens that God himself has set."
"And yet," Pencroff added, who showed a certain difficulty in resigning himself, "the world knows such a lot! What a big book you could make, Mr. Cyrus, out of everything people know!"
"And what a much bigger book out of everything they don't know," answered Cyrus Smith.
In any case, for one reason or another, June brought back the cold with its usual violence, and the colonists were confined to Granite House most of the time.
Ah, how hard that confinement seemed to all of them, and perhaps to Gédéon Spilett most of all!
"You see," he said to Nab one day, "I'd sign over to you, before a notary, every inheritance that's ever coming to me, if you'd be a good enough fellow to go off somewhere — anywhere — and take out a subscription to a newspaper for me — any newspaper! There's no doubt about it: what my happiness misses most is knowing every morning what happened the day before, somewhere other than here!"
Nab had burst out laughing.
"My word," he had answered, "what keeps me busy is the day's work!"
The truth is that indoors and out, there was no shortage of work.
The colony of Lincoln Island had now reached the height of its prosperity, and three years of steady labor had made it what it was. The episode of the destroyed brig had been a fresh source of riches. To say nothing of her complete rigging, which would serve the ship on the stocks, the storerooms of Granite House were now crammed with utensils and tools of every kind, arms and ammunition, clothes and instruments. There had been no further need even to make coarse felt cloth. If the colonists had suffered from the cold during their first winter, now the bad season could come without their having to dread its hardships. There was plenty of linen as well, and it was looked after with extreme care. From sodium chloride, which is nothing other than sea salt, Cyrus Smith had easily extracted soda and chlorine. The soda, which was easy to turn into sodium carbonate, and the chlorine, from which he made chloride of lime and other chlorides, were put to various household uses, and in particular to bleaching the linen. Besides, they now did only four big washes a year, as families used to do in the old days; and it may be added that Pencroff and Gédéon Spilett — the reporter while he waited for the mailman to bring him his newspaper — proved to be first-class laundrymen.
So the winter months went by: June, July and August. They were very harsh, and the average of the thermometer readings came to no more than eight degrees Fahrenheit, lower than the temperature of the winter before. And what a good fire blazed all the time in the fireplaces of Granite House, whose smoke streaked the granite wall with long black stripes! They did not spare the fuel, which grew naturally a few steps away. Besides, the leftover timber cut for building the ship let them save on coal, which was harder to haul.
Men and animals were all in good health. Master Jup did show himself a bit sensitive to the cold, it must be admitted. It was perhaps his only fault, and he had to be made a good, well-padded dressing gown. But what a servant — skillful, eager, tireless, not nosy, not a chatterbox! He could rightly have been held up as a model to all his two-legged fellow servants in the Old World and the New.
"After all," Pencroff would say, "when you've got four hands at your service, the least you can do is your work properly!"
And indeed, the intelligent four-handed creature did it well!
During the seven months that passed after the last searches around the mountain, and during September, which brought back the fine days, there was no question of the genie of the island at all. His hand did not show itself on any occasion. True, it would have been useless, for nothing happened that put the colonists to any painful test.
Cyrus Smith even observed that if by chance some communication had ever been established through the mass of granite between the stranger and the residents of Granite House, and if Top's instinct had somehow sensed it, there was no more of it during this period. The dog's growling had stopped completely, and so had the orangutan's uneasiness. The two friends — for friends they were — no longer prowled around the mouth of the inner well; they did not bark, and they no longer whined in that strange way that had put the engineer on the alert from the very beginning. But could he be sure that this was the end of the riddle, and that he would never find its answer? Could he be certain that some turn of events would not come about again and bring the mysterious being back onto the scene? Who could tell what the future held in store?
At last the winter came to an end. But an event whose consequences might well prove serious occurred in the very first days that marked the return of spring.
On September 7, Cyrus Smith, looking at the summit of Mount Franklin, saw smoke curling above the crater, its first wisps rising into the air.
The volcano wakes — The fine season — Work resumes — The evening of October 15 — A telegram — A question — An answer — Off to the corral — The note — The extra wire — The basalt coast — At high tide — At low tide — The cavern — A dazzling light
The engineer had called out to the colonists. They had stopped their work and stood looking in silence at the summit of Mount Franklin.
So the volcano had woken up, and the vapors had broken through the layer of mineral matter heaped up at the bottom of the crater. But would the underground fires bring on some violent eruption? That was a possibility no one could guard against.
And yet, even supposing there were an eruption, it was likely that Lincoln Island as a whole would not suffer from it. Outpourings of volcanic matter are not always disastrous. The island had already been through this ordeal once, as the lava flows that striped the northern slopes of the mountain bore witness. Besides, the shape of the crater, with the great notch broken out of its upper rim, ought to throw whatever it spewed out toward the side opposite the fertile parts of the island.
Still, the past did not necessarily promise anything about the future. At the summits of volcanoes, old craters often close and new ones open. It has happened in both the Old World and the New — at Etna, at Popocatépetl, at Orizaba — and on the eve of an eruption anything may be feared. All it would take, in short, was an earthquake — a thing that sometimes goes along with volcanic outpourings — to change the inner layout of the mountain and clear new paths for the white-hot lava.
Cyrus Smith explained all this to his companions, and without making the situation sound worse than it was, he laid out the arguments on both sides.
After all, there was nothing they could do about it. Granite House did not seem to be in any danger, unless an earthquake shook the ground itself. But the corral would have everything to fear if some new crater opened in the southern flanks of Mount Franklin.
From that day on, the vapors never stopped crowning the top of the mountain like a plume, and it was even possible to see that they were growing taller and thicker, though no flame mixed with their heavy coils. The activity was still confined to the lower part of the central chimney.
Meanwhile, with the fine weather, the work had started up again. They pushed on with building the ship as fast as they could, and Cyrus Smith used the waterfall on the beach to set up a water-powered sawmill, which cut the tree trunks into planks and beams much more quickly. The machinery was as simple as that of the rustic sawmills that run in Norway. One horizontal motion to push the log forward, one vertical motion to work the saw up and down — that was all he needed to produce, and the engineer managed it with a wheel, two cylinders and some pulleys, properly arranged.
Toward the end of September the skeleton of the ship, which was to be rigged as a schooner, stood on the stocks in the shipyard. The frames were almost all in place, and since they were held together by temporary battens, the lines of the vessel could already be judged. This schooner, sharp at the bow and very clean in her run aft, would obviously be fit for a fairly long voyage if it came to that. But laying the planking, the inner planking and the deck would still take a good deal of time. Very luckily, the ironwork of the old brig had been saved after the underwater explosion. Pencroff and Ayrton had pulled the bolts and a great quantity of copper nails out of the damaged planks and knees. That was so much work saved for the blacksmiths, but the carpenters had plenty to do.
The shipbuilding had to be broken off for a week for the harvest, the haymaking and the bringing in of the various crops that grew in abundance on Prospect Plateau. Once that job was done, every moment from then on went to finishing the schooner.
When night came, the workers were truly worn out. So as not to lose any time, they had changed their mealtimes: they ate dinner at noon and did not have supper until the daylight gave out. Then they went back up to Granite House and hurried off to bed.
Sometimes, though, when the talk turned to some interesting subject, it kept them up a little past bedtime. The colonists let themselves talk about the future, and they liked to discuss the changes a voyage of the schooner to the nearest inhabited lands would bring to their situation. But in the middle of all these plans, one thought always came first: that they would come back to Lincoln Island afterward. They would never abandon this colony, founded with so much toil and so much success, to which a link with America would give a new life.
Pencroff and Nab especially fully expected to end their days there.
"Harbert," the sailor would say, "you'll never abandon Lincoln Island, will you?"
"Never, Pencroff — especially if you make up your mind to stay here!"
"It's made up, my boy," Pencroff would answer. "I'll wait for you! You'll bring me back your wife and your children, and I'll turn your little ones into a fine pack of rascals!"
"It's a deal," Harbert would reply, laughing and blushing at the same time.
"And you, Mr. Cyrus," Pencroff would go on, carried away, "you'll always be governor of the island! Now look here, how many people can she feed? Ten thousand at least!"
They would talk on like that, letting Pencroff run on, and one thing leading to another, the reporter would end up founding a newspaper — the New Lincoln Herald!
Such is the human heart. The need to make a work that lasts, that will outlive him, is the sign of man's superiority over everything else that lives here below. It is what has founded his dominion, and it is what justifies that dominion throughout the world.
After that, who knows whether Jup and Top did not have their own little dreams of the future too?
Ayrton, silent, would tell himself that he wanted to see Lord Glenarvan again and show himself to everyone, redeemed.
One evening, October 15, the conversation, launched among all these speculations, had gone on longer than usual. It was nine o'clock at night. Long yawns, badly hidden, were already announcing bedtime, and Pencroff had just headed for his bed when the electric bell set up in the great hall suddenly rang.
Everyone was there: Cyrus Smith, Gédéon Spilett, Harbert, Ayrton, Pencroff, Nab. So not one of the colonists was at the corral.
Cyrus Smith had stood up. His companions looked at one another, thinking they must have heard wrong.
"What does that mean?" cried Nab. "Is it the devil ringing?"
No one answered.
"The weather's stormy," Harbert pointed out. "Couldn't the electricity in the air..."
Harbert did not finish his sentence. The engineer, toward whom every eye had turned, was shaking his head.
"Let's wait," said Gédéon Spilett then. "If it's a signal, whoever is making it will make it again."
"But who do you think it could be?" cried Nab.
"Why," answered Pencroff, "the one who..."
The sailor's sentence was cut off by a fresh quivering of the hammer on the bell.
Cyrus Smith went over to the apparatus, sent the current along the wire, and dispatched this question to the corral:
"What do you want?"
A few moments later the needle, moving around the alphabet dial, gave the occupants of Granite House this answer:
"Come to the corral with all speed."
"At last!" cried Cyrus Smith.
Yes! At last! The mystery was going to be revealed! In the face of the overwhelming interest that was going to drive them to the corral, all the colonists' weariness vanished, all need of rest was gone. Without a word spoken, in a few moments they had left Granite House and were down on the beach. Only Jup and Top stayed behind. They could do without them.
The night was black. The moon, new that very day, had set along with the sun. As Harbert had pointed out, great storm clouds made a low, heavy vault overhead that blotted out every gleam of starlight. A few flashes of heat lightning, reflections of a distant storm, lit up the horizon.
It was possible that within a few hours the thunder would be crashing over the island itself. It was a threatening night.
But the darkness, however deep, could not stop people who knew the Corral Road as well as they did. They went up the left bank of the Mercy, reached the plateau, crossed the bridge over Glycerin Creek and pushed on through the forest.
They walked at a good pace, gripped by strong emotion. For them there was no doubt about it: they were at last going to learn the long-sought answer to the riddle, the name of that mysterious being who had entered so deeply into their lives, so generous in his influence, so powerful in his acts! Didn't this stranger have to be mixed up in their existence, didn't he have to know its smallest details, didn't he have to hear everything that was said in Granite House, to have always been able to act at exactly the right moment?
Each of them, lost in his thoughts, hurried on. Under that vault of trees the darkness was so thick that they could not even see the edge of the road. There was no sound in the forest, either. Beasts and birds, weighed down by the heaviness of the air, were still and silent. Not a breath stirred the leaves. Only the colonists' footsteps rang out in the dark on the hardened ground.
During the first quarter of an hour of the walk, the silence was broken only by this remark from Pencroff:
"We should have brought a lantern."
And by this reply from the engineer:
"We'll find one at the corral."
Cyrus Smith and his companions had left Granite House at twelve minutes past nine. At nine forty-seven they had covered three miles of the five that separated the mouth of the Mercy from the corral.
At that moment great whitish flashes of lightning were bursting over the island, cutting out the jagged shapes of the leaves in black. These intense flashes dazzled and blinded them. The storm obviously could not hold off much longer. Little by little the lightning came faster and brighter. Distant rumblings rolled through the depths of the sky. The air was stifling.
The colonists went on as though some irresistible force were pushing them forward.
At a quarter past nine a bright flash showed them the palisade, and they had not yet passed through the gate when the thunder broke with tremendous violence.
In an instant they had crossed the corral, and Cyrus Smith stood before the house.
It was possible that the stranger was in the house, since it was from the house itself that the telegram must have been sent. Yet no light shone in its window.
The engineer knocked at the door.
No answer.
Cyrus Smith opened the door, and the colonists went into the room, which was pitch dark.
Nab struck a light with his flint and steel, and a moment later the lantern was lit and carried into every corner of the room...
There was no one there. Everything was just as they had left it.
"Have we been taken in by an illusion?" murmured Cyrus Smith.
No! It wasn't possible! The telegram had plainly said:
"Come to the corral with all speed."
They went over to the table set aside for working the line. Everything on it was in place — the battery and the box that held it, as well as the receiver and the transmitter.
"Who was the last one here?" asked the engineer.
"I was, Mr. Smith," answered Ayrton.
"And that was...?"
"Four days ago."
"Look — a note!" cried Harbert, pointing to a sheet of paper lying on the table.
On that paper these words were written, in English:
"Follow the new wire."
"Let's go!" cried Cyrus Smith. He understood that the message had not been sent from the corral at all, but from the mysterious hiding place, which an extra wire, spliced onto the old one, connected directly with Granite House.
Nab took the lighted lantern, and they all left the corral.
The storm was now raging with tremendous violence. The gap between each flash of lightning and each clap of thunder was growing noticeably shorter. Soon the storm would be right over Mount Franklin and the whole island. By the glare of the flickering flashes they could see the summit of the volcano crowned with its plume of vapor.
In the part of the corral between the house and the palisade there was no telegraph line at all. But once he was through the gate, the engineer ran straight to the first pole, and by the light of a flash he saw a new wire hanging down from the insulator to the ground.
"There it is!" he said.
This wire lay along the ground, but along its whole length it was covered in an insulating substance, the way an undersea cable is, so that the current could travel freely through it. To judge by its direction, it seemed to make its way through the woods and the southern spurs of the mountain, and so it ran toward the west.
"Let's follow it!" said Cyrus Smith.
And now by the light of the lantern, now in the middle of the blazing lightning, the colonists set off along the path the wire laid out for them.
By then the rolling of the thunder was continuous, and so violent that no word could have been heard. Anyway, this was no time for talking, only for pressing on.
Cyrus Smith and his people first climbed the spur that rose between the valley of the corral and the valley of Fall River, and they crossed the river at its narrowest point. The wire, sometimes stretched over the low branches of the trees, sometimes running along the ground, guided them without fail.
The engineer had supposed that the wire might stop at the bottom of the valley, and that the unknown hiding place would be there.
Not at all. They had to climb the southwest spur and come down again onto that barren plateau which ended in the wall of strangely heaped-up basalt. Every so often one or another of the colonists bent down, felt the wire with his hand and corrected their course if need be. But there was no longer any doubt that the wire ran straight to the sea. There, no doubt, somewhere deep in the volcanic rock, lay the dwelling they had searched for in vain until now.
The sky was on fire. One flash did not wait for the next. Several struck the summit of the volcano and plunged into the crater through the thick smoke. At moments you might have thought the mountain was throwing out flames.
At a few minutes before ten the colonists reached the high edge that looked down over the ocean to the west. The wind had risen. The surf was roaring five hundred feet below.
Cyrus Smith worked out that he and his companions had covered a mile and a half since leaving the corral.
At this point the wire plunged in among the rocks, following the fairly steep slope of a narrow ravine that twisted every which way.
The colonists started down it, at the risk of setting off a slide of loosely balanced rocks and being hurled into the sea. The descent was extremely dangerous, but they took no account of the danger. They were no longer masters of themselves, and an irresistible pull drew them toward that mysterious spot, as a magnet draws iron.
So they went down that ravine almost without knowing it — a ravine that would have been all but impassable even in broad daylight. Stones rolled away and blazed like fiery meteors as they passed through the zones of light. Cyrus Smith was in the lead. Ayrton brought up the rear. Here they went step by step; there they slid on the smooth rock; then they picked themselves up and kept going.
At last the wire turned sharply and touched the rocks of the shore, a regular scattering of reefs that the high tides must pound. The colonists had reached the bottom of the basalt wall.
Here a narrow ledge ran level along the face, parallel to the sea. The wire followed it, and so did the colonists. They had not gone a hundred paces before the ledge, sloping gently downward, came right down to the level of the waves.
The engineer took hold of the wire and saw that it disappeared into the sea.
His companions, standing beside him, were dumbfounded.
A cry of disappointment, almost a cry of despair, burst from them! Were they going to have to throw themselves into the water and look for some undersea cavern? In the state of mental and physical overexcitement they were in, they would not have hesitated to do it.
A remark from the engineer stopped them.
Cyrus Smith led his companions under a hollow in the rocks, and there he said:
"Let's wait. The tide's high. At low tide the way will be open."
"But what makes you think...?" asked Pencroff.
"He wouldn't have called us if there were no way for us to reach him!"
Cyrus Smith had spoken with such conviction that no one raised an objection. And his reasoning was logical. They had to suppose that an opening, passable at low tide and blocked by the sea at that moment, lay at the foot of the wall.
That meant a wait of a few hours. So the colonists stayed huddled in silence under a kind of deep porch hollowed out of the rock. The rain was starting to fall by now, and soon the clouds, torn open by the lightning, were coming down in torrents. The echoes threw back the crash of the thunder and gave it a tremendous resonance.
The colonists' emotion was intense. A thousand strange, supernatural thoughts went through their minds, and they imagined some great, superhuman apparition — the only thing that could have lived up to the idea they had formed of the mysterious genie of the island.
At midnight Cyrus Smith took the lantern and went down to the level of the shore to look at how the rocks lay. The tide had already been going out for two hours.
The engineer had not been mistaken. The curve of a huge vault was beginning to show above the water. There the wire bent at a right angle and went in through that gaping mouth.
Cyrus Smith came back to his companions and said simply:
"In an hour the opening will be passable."
"So it does exist?" asked Pencroff.
"Did you doubt it?" answered Cyrus Smith.
"But this cave will be full of water up to a certain height," Harbert pointed out.
"Either the cave dries out completely," answered Cyrus Smith, "and in that case we'll walk through it, or it doesn't dry out, and some way of getting through it will be put at our disposal."
An hour went by. They all went down through the rain to the water's edge. In three hours the tide had dropped fifteen feet. The top of the arch stood at least eight feet above the water now. It was like the arch of a bridge, with the water flowing under it, flecked with foam.
Leaning over, the engineer saw a black object floating on the surface of the sea. He drew it toward him.
It was a boat, moored by a rope to some projection on the inside of the rock wall. It was made of bolted sheet iron. Two oars lay in the bottom, under the thwarts.
"Let's get in," said Cyrus Smith.
A moment later the colonists were in the boat. Nab and Ayrton took the oars, Pencroff the tiller. Cyrus Smith sat in the bow with the lantern set on the stem, lighting the way.
The roof was very low where the boat first passed under it, but then it rose sharply. Yet the darkness was too deep, and the lantern's light too weak, for them to make out how big the cave was — its width, its height, its depth. In the middle of this vault of basalt an imposing silence reigned. No sound from outside got in, and the crashes of the thunder could not pierce its thick walls.
There are, in a few parts of the globe, immense caverns of this kind, natural crypts of a sort that date from the geological ages of the earth. Some are invaded by the waters of the sea; others hold whole lakes inside them. Such is Fingal's Cave on the island of Staffa, one of the Hebrides; such are the caves of Morgat on the bay of Douarnenez in Brittany, the caves of Bonifacio in Corsica, and those of the Lysefjord in Norway; such is the immense Mammoth Cave in Kentucky, five hundred feet high and more than twenty miles long! In many places on the globe, nature has hollowed out these crypts and preserved them for man to marvel at.
As for the cave the colonists were now exploring — did it really reach all the way to the center of the island? For a quarter of an hour the boat had been moving forward, winding this way and that as the engineer called the turns to Pencroff in a few curt words, when all at once he gave the order:
"More to starboard!"
The boat changed course and at once ran along close to the right-hand wall. The engineer wanted, quite rightly, to make sure the wire was still running along that wall.
The wire was there, hooked onto the jutting rock.
"Go ahead!" said Cyrus Smith.
And the two oars, dipping into the black water, sent the boat on.
The boat went on for another quarter of an hour, and since the mouth of the cave it must have covered half a mile, when Cyrus Smith's voice was heard once more.
"Stop!" he said.
The boat stopped, and the colonists saw a brilliant light flooding the enormous crypt, hollowed out so deep in the bowels of the island.
Now they could look at this cavern, whose existence nothing had ever let them suspect.
A hundred feet up curved a vault, resting on shafts of basalt that all seemed to have been cast in the same mold. Irregular arches and fanciful ribs sprang from these columns, which nature had set up by the thousands in the earliest ages of the world's making. The basalt sections, fitted one into the other, stood forty to fifty feet high, and the water, calm despite the turmoil outside, lapped at their bases. The glare of the light the engineer had pointed out caught every edge of every prism and pricked it with points of fire. It seemed to shine right through the walls, as if they had been transparent, and it turned the least projection of the vault into a glittering polished gem.
By reflection, the water repeated all this brilliance on its surface, so that the boat seemed to float between two layers of sparkling light.
There was no mistaking the nature of the radiance pouring out from that bright center, whose sharp, straight rays broke against every angle and every rib of the crypt. This light came from an electric source; its white color gave away where it came from. It was the sun of this cavern, and it filled the whole of it.
At a sign from Cyrus Smith the oars dipped again, throwing up a perfect shower of sparkling gems, and the boat headed toward the source of the light, until it was soon no more than half a cable length away.
At this point the stretch of water was about three hundred and fifty feet wide, and beyond the dazzling center they could make out an enormous wall of basalt that closed off every way out on that side. So the cave had widened a great deal here, and the sea formed a little lake inside it. But the vault, the side walls, the wall at the far end, all those prisms, all those cylinders, all those cones were so bathed in the electric fluid that the glow seemed to be their own. You could have said of those stones, cut in facets like priceless diamonds, that they were sweating light!
In the middle of the lake a long, spindle-shaped object floated on the surface of the water, silent and motionless. The glow that came from it poured out of its sides, as if from two furnace mouths heated to a welding white heat. This machine, which looked like the body of an enormous whale, was about two hundred and fifty feet long and rose ten to twelve feet above the level of the sea.
The boat drew slowly nearer. In the bow, Cyrus Smith had risen to his feet. He was staring, gripped by violent agitation. Then, all at once, he seized the reporter's arm.
"But it's him! It can only be him!" he cried. "Him!..."
Then he dropped back onto his seat, murmuring a name that only Gédéon Spilett heard.
The reporter evidently knew that name, for it had an extraordinary effect on him, and he answered in a hollow voice:
"Him! An outlaw!"
"Him!" said Cyrus Smith.
At the engineer's order, the boat came up alongside this strange floating machine. It touched on the port quarter, where a beam of light streamed out through a thick pane of glass.
Cyrus Smith and his companions climbed onto the platform. A hatch stood open there. They all rushed through the opening.
At the bottom of the ladder a passageway ran inside, lit by electricity. At the end of the passageway was a door, which Cyrus Smith pushed open.
The colonists hurried through a richly decorated room that led into a library, where a luminous ceiling poured down a flood of light.
At the far end of the library was a wide door, also closed. The engineer opened it.
A vast salon, a kind of museum crammed with all the treasures of the mineral world, with works of art and marvels of industry, appeared before the colonists' eyes. They must have thought they had been carried off by magic into the world of dreams.
Stretched out on a rich divan they saw a man, who did not seem to notice they were there.
Then Cyrus Smith raised his voice, and to the utter amazement of his companions, he spoke these words:
"Captain Nemo, you asked for us? Here we are."
Captain Nemo — His first words — The story of a hero of independence — His hatred of the invaders — His companions — Life beneath the sea — Alone — The Nautilus's last refuge at Lincoln Island — The mysterious genie of the island
At these words the man lying on the divan raised himself, and his face came into the full light: a magnificent head, a high forehead, a proud gaze, a white beard, and thick hair swept back from his brow.
He leaned with one hand on the back of the divan he had just left. His gaze was calm. It was plain that some slow illness had been wearing him down little by little, but his voice still sounded strong when he spoke, in English, in a tone of the utmost surprise:
"I have no name, sir."
"I know you!" answered Cyrus Smith.
Captain Nemo fixed a burning look on the engineer, as though he meant to annihilate him.
Then, sinking back onto the cushions of the divan, he murmured:
"What does it matter, after all? I am going to die!"
Cyrus Smith went up to Captain Nemo, and Gédéon Spilett took his hand, which he found burning hot. Ayrton, Pencroff, Harbert and Nab stood respectfully apart in a corner of that magnificent salon, whose air was charged with electricity.
But Captain Nemo at once drew his hand away, and with a gesture he asked the engineer and the reporter to sit down.
They all looked at him with real emotion. So here he was, the one they had called "the genie of the island," the powerful being whose help had come so effectively on so many occasions, the benefactor to whom they owed so great a debt of gratitude! Before their eyes they had only a man, where Pencroff and Nab had expected to find something close to a god — and that man was about to die!
But how did Cyrus Smith come to know Captain Nemo? And why had the captain started up so sharply on hearing that name, which he must have believed unknown to everyone?...
The captain had settled back on the divan and, propped on his arm, he was looking at the engineer, who sat beside him.
"You know the name I once bore, sir?" he asked.
"I know it," answered Cyrus Smith, "just as I know the name of this wonderful submarine machine..."
"The Nautilus?" said the captain, with half a smile.
"The Nautilus."
"But do you know... do you know who I am?"
"I know."
"And yet it has been thirty years since I had any communication with the inhabited world — thirty years that I have lived in the depths of the sea, the only place where I have found independence! Who, then, can have betrayed my secret?"
"A man who had never made you any promise, Captain Nemo, and who therefore cannot be accused of betrayal."
"That Frenchman whom chance threw aboard my ship sixteen years ago?"
"The same."
"Then that man and his two companions did not die in the Maelström, where the Nautilus had been caught?"
"They did not die. And a book has appeared, under the title Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, that contains your story."
"My story for a few months only, sir!" the captain answered sharply.
"That's true," Cyrus Smith went on, "but a few months of that strange life were enough to make you known..."
"As a great criminal, no doubt?" answered Captain Nemo, letting a haughty smile pass over his lips. "Yes — a rebel, an outlaw cast out from humanity, perhaps!"
The engineer did not answer.
"Well, sir?"
"It is not for me to judge Captain Nemo," answered Cyrus Smith, "at least as far as his past life is concerned. Like everyone else, I don't know what drove him to so strange an existence, and I cannot judge the effects without knowing the causes. But what I do know is that a kindly hand has been stretched out over us ever since we came to Lincoln Island. I know that every one of us owes his life to a being who is good, generous and powerful — and that this being, so powerful, so generous and so good, is you, Captain Nemo!"
"It is I," the captain answered simply.
The engineer and the reporter had risen. Their companions had drawn closer, and the gratitude that was overflowing their hearts was about to pour out in gestures and words...
Captain Nemo stopped them with a sign, and in a voice more moved than he would have wished, no doubt, he said:
"When you have heard me."
And in a few sentences, clear and hurried, the captain told them the whole of his life.
His story was brief, and yet he had to gather into himself all the strength he had left to tell it to the end. It was obvious that he was struggling against an extreme weakness. Several times Cyrus Smith urged him to rest a little, but he shook his head like a man to whom tomorrow no longer belongs, and when the reporter offered to tend him, he answered:
"It is useless. My hours are numbered."
Captain Nemo was an Indian, Prince Dakkar, the son of a rajah of the then independent territory of Bundelkhand, and nephew of the Indian hero Tipu Sultan. When the boy was ten years old, his father sent him to Europe to receive a complete education there — with the secret intention that one day he might fight on equal terms against the men he regarded as the oppressors of his country.
From the age of ten to thirty, Prince Dakkar, superbly gifted, great of heart and of mind, made himself master of everything. In the sciences, in literature and in the arts he carried his studies high and far.
Prince Dakkar traveled throughout Europe. His birth and his fortune made him sought after everywhere, but the attractions of society never drew him. Young and handsome, he remained serious and somber, devoured by a thirst for learning, with an implacable resentment riveted to his heart.
Prince Dakkar hated. He hated the one country where he had always refused to set foot, the one nation whose advances he rejected again and again: he hated England — and all the more because, on more than one point, he admired her.
For this Indian carried in himself all the fierce hatred of the conquered for the conqueror. The invader could find no forgiveness in the invaded. He was the son of one of those sovereigns whose servitude the United Kingdom had managed to secure only in name; a prince of the family of Tipu Sultan, raised on ideas of reclaiming what had been taken and of vengeance, bound by an inescapable love to his poetic land weighed down with English chains. He would never set foot on that accursed soil to which India owed its enslavement.
Prince Dakkar became an artist whom the wonders of art stirred nobly, a scientist to whom nothing in the higher sciences was foreign, a statesman schooled in the courts of Europe. To those who observed him only superficially, he may perhaps have passed for one of those cosmopolitans, curious to know but disdainful of acting — one of those wealthy travelers, proud and detached spirits, who wander the world endlessly and belong to no country.
It was nothing of the kind. This artist, this scientist, this man had remained Indian at heart, Indian in his longing for revenge, Indian in the hope he nourished of one day reclaiming his country's rights, driving out the foreigner and giving it back its independence.
And so Prince Dakkar returned to Bundelkhand in the year 1849. He married a noble Indian woman whose heart bled, as his did, for the misfortunes of their homeland. They had two children, whom he cherished. But happiness at home could not make him forget India's enslavement. He waited for his opportunity. It came.
The English yoke had perhaps pressed too heavily on the peoples of India. Prince Dakkar gave voice to the discontented. He poured into their minds all the hatred he felt for the foreigner. He traveled not only through the regions of the Indian peninsula that were still independent, but also through the lands directly under English rule. He reminded the people of the great days of Tipu Sultan, who had died a hero's death at Seringapatam defending his homeland.
In 1857 the great Sepoy Rebellion broke out. Prince Dakkar was its soul. He organized that immense uprising. He put his talents and his wealth at the service of the cause. He did not spare himself: he fought in the front rank; he risked his life like the humblest of those heroes who had risen to free their country; he was wounded ten times in twenty battles, and still had not found death when the last soldiers of independence fell beneath English bullets.
Never had British power in India been in such danger. And if, as they had hoped, the sepoys had found help from outside, the influence and the dominion of the United Kingdom in Asia might well have come to an end.
The name of Prince Dakkar was famous then. The hero who bore it did not hide; he fought in the open. A price was put on his head, and though no traitor could be found to hand it over, his father, his mother, his wife, his children paid for him, before he could even know of the dangers they were running because of him...
Right, once again, had fallen before might. But civilization never retreats, and it seems to borrow every right from necessity. The sepoys were defeated, and the land of the old rajahs fell back under England's tighter rule.
Prince Dakkar, who had not been able to die, went back into the mountains of Bundelkhand. There, alone from then on, seized by an immense disgust for everything that bore the name of man, filled with hatred and horror for the civilized world and wishing to flee it forever, he turned what was left of his fortune into money, gathered some twenty of his most faithful companions, and one day they all vanished.
Where, then, had Prince Dakkar gone to look for the independence that the inhabited earth refused him? Beneath the waters, in the depths of the sea, where no one could follow him.
The man of war gave way to the man of science. A deserted island in the Pacific served him as a shipyard, and there a submarine boat was built to his designs. Electricity, whose immeasurable mechanical power he had learned to harness by means that will one day be known, and which he drew from inexhaustible sources, was put to every use his floating machine required: it drove her, lit her and heated her. The sea, with its infinite treasures, its myriads of fish, its harvests of seaweed and sargassum, its enormous mammals — and not only everything that nature kept there but everything that men had lost there too — amply supplied the needs of the prince and his crew. And that fulfilled his dearest wish, since he wanted no more communication of any kind with the land. He named his submarine machine the Nautilus, he called himself Captain Nemo, and he disappeared beneath the seas.
For many years the captain roamed every ocean, from one pole to the other. A pariah from the inhabited world, he gathered admirable treasures in those unknown realms. The millions lost in Vigo Bay in 1702 by the Spanish galleons gave him an inexhaustible mine of wealth, which he always spent, anonymously, on behalf of peoples fighting for the independence of their countries — the Cretans in their rising among them.
At last, when he had had no communication with his fellow men for a long time, three men were thrown aboard his ship during the night of November 6, 1866: a French professor, his servant and a Canadian fisherman. These three men had been hurled into the sea by a collision between the Nautilus and the United States frigate Abraham Lincoln, which was hunting her.
Captain Nemo learned from this professor that the Nautilus — taken sometimes for a giant mammal of the whale family, sometimes for a submarine machine carrying a crew of pirates — was being pursued on every sea.
Captain Nemo could have given those three men back to the ocean, men whom chance had flung so suddenly across his mysterious existence. He did not. He kept them prisoner, and for seven months they were able to gaze on all the wonders of a voyage that went on for twenty thousand leagues under the sea.
One day, June 22, 1867, these three men, who knew nothing of Captain Nemo's past, managed to escape after seizing the Nautilus's dinghy. But since at that moment the Nautilus was being dragged toward the coast of Norway in the whirlpools of the Maelström, the captain was bound to believe that the fugitives had drowned in those terrifying eddies and met their death at the bottom of the abyss. So he did not know that the Frenchman and his two companions had been miraculously thrown up on the shore, that fishermen of the Lofoten Islands had taken them in, and that the professor, on his return to France, had published the book in which seven months of the Nautilus's strange and adventurous voyage were told and delivered up to public curiosity.
For a long time still, Captain Nemo went on living in the same way, roaming the seas. But little by little his companions died and went to rest in their coral cemetery at the bottom of the Pacific. The Nautilus grew empty, and at last Captain Nemo was left alone, the only one remaining of all those who had taken refuge with him in the depths of the ocean.
Captain Nemo was sixty years old by then. When he found himself alone, he managed to bring his Nautilus back to one of the undersea harbors he sometimes used as ports of call.
One of these harbors was hollowed out beneath Lincoln Island, and it was the one now sheltering the Nautilus.
The captain had been there for six years, no longer sailing, waiting for death — that is, for the moment when he would be reunited with his companions — when chance made him a witness to the fall of the balloon that was carrying the Southerners' prisoners. He was walking under the water in his diving suit, a few cable lengths from the island's shore, when the engineer was flung into the sea. A generous impulse carried the captain away... and he saved Cyrus Smith.
At first he meant to flee from these five castaways. But his harbor of refuge was closed. Because the basalt had been heaved up under the action of the volcano, he could no longer pass through the entrance to the crypt. Where there was still enough water for a light boat to cross the bar, there was no longer enough for the Nautilus, which drew a comparatively great depth of water.
So Captain Nemo stayed. Then he watched these men, thrown without resources onto a deserted island, but he did not want to be seen. Little by little, when he saw that they were honest and full of energy, bound to one another by a brotherly friendship, he took an interest in their efforts. Almost in spite of himself, he came to know all the secrets of their lives. With the diving suit it was easy for him to reach the bottom of the inner well of Granite House, and by climbing the projections of the rock up to its upper mouth he could hear the colonists talking over the past and studying the present and the future. From them he learned of America's immense effort against America itself, to abolish slavery. Yes! These were men worthy to reconcile Captain Nemo with the humanity they represented so honestly on the island!
Captain Nemo had saved Cyrus Smith. It was he, too, who brought the dog back to the Chimneys; who flung Top out of the waters of the lake; who ran aground at Jetsam Point the chest that held so many useful things for the colonists; who sent the canoe back down the current of the Mercy; who threw down the rope from the top of Granite House when the monkeys attacked; who made Ayrton's presence on Tabor Island known by means of the document sealed in the bottle; who blew up the brig with a torpedo laid at the bottom of the channel; who saved Harbert from certain death by bringing the quinine sulfate; and it was he, finally, who struck down the convicts with those electric bullets whose secret he alone possessed and which he used in his hunts beneath the sea. That explained so many incidents that must have seemed supernatural, and that all bore witness to the captain's generosity and power.
And yet this great misanthrope thirsted to do good. He still had useful advice to give the people he had protected. And besides, feeling his heart, restored to itself by the approach of death, beating once more, he summoned the colonists from Granite House, as the reader knows, by means of a wire with which he had connected the corral to the Nautilus, which was fitted with an alphabet dial... Perhaps he would not have done it had he known that Cyrus Smith knew enough of his story to greet him by the name of Nemo.
The captain had finished the story of his life. Then Cyrus Smith spoke. He recalled all the incidents that had had so beneficial an influence on the colony, and in his companions' name as well as his own he thanked the generous being to whom they owed so much.
But Captain Nemo had no thought of claiming any reward for the services he had rendered. One last thought was troubling his mind, and before he took the hand the engineer held out to him, he said:
"Now, sir — now that you know my life, judge it!"
In speaking this way, the captain was clearly alluding to a grave incident that the three strangers flung aboard his ship had witnessed — an incident the French professor would necessarily have told in his book, and which must have caused a terrible stir.
And indeed, a few days before the professor and his two companions escaped, the Nautilus, chased by a frigate in the North Atlantic, had hurled herself like a battering ram against that frigate and sunk her without mercy.
Cyrus Smith understood the allusion and made no reply.
"It was an English frigate, sir!" cried Captain Nemo, for a moment Prince Dakkar again. "An English frigate, do you hear me? She was attacking me! I was hemmed in, in a narrow, shallow bay!... I had to get through, and... I got through!"
Then, in a calmer voice, he added:
"I was in the right, and justice was on my side. Everywhere I have done the good I could — and the harm I had to do as well. Not all justice lies in forgiveness!"
A few moments of silence followed this answer, and Captain Nemo spoke the same words again:
"What do you think of me, gentlemen?"
Cyrus Smith held out his hand to the captain, and in answer to his question he said in a grave voice:
"Captain, your mistake was to believe that the past could be brought back to life, and you fought against necessary progress. It was one of those errors that some admire and others condemn, which God alone can judge, and which human reason must absolve. A man who goes wrong with an intention he believes to be good may be fought, but he does not lose our esteem. Your error is one that does not rule out admiration, and your name has nothing to fear from the judgment of history. History loves heroic follies, even while it condemns the consequences they bring."
Captain Nemo's chest heaved, and his hand reached toward the sky.
"Was I wrong? Was I right?" he murmured.
Cyrus Smith went on:
"All great deeds go back to God, for they come from Him! Captain Nemo, the honest men here, whom you have helped, will mourn you forever!"
Harbert had come close to the captain. He knelt, took his hand and kissed it.
A tear slid from the dying man's eyes.
"My child," he said, "may you be blessed!..."
The last hours of Captain Nemo — The wishes of a dying man — A keepsake for his friends of a day — Captain Nemo's coffin — Some advice to the colonists — The supreme moment — At the bottom of the sea
Day had come. Not a ray of it reached that deep crypt. The sea, at high tide just then, blocked its opening. But the artificial light that streamed out in long beams through the sides of the Nautilus had not weakened, and the sheet of water still glowed all around the floating vessel.
By now an extreme weariness had overwhelmed Captain Nemo, who had sunk back onto the divan. There could be no thought of carrying him to Granite House. He had made it plain that he wished to stay among these marvels of the Nautilus, which millions could not have bought, and there to wait for a death that could not be long in coming.
Through a fairly long collapse that left him almost unconscious, Cyrus Smith and Gédéon Spilett watched the sick man's condition closely. It was plain that the captain was fading little by little. Strength was about to fail that body, once so powerful and now the frail shell of a soul about to escape. All the life left in him was gathered in his heart and his head.
The engineer and the reporter had consulted in low voices. Was there any care they could give this dying man? If they could not save him, could they at least prolong his life for a few days? He himself had said that there was no remedy, and he was waiting calmly for death, which he did not fear.
"There's nothing we can do," said Gédéon Spilett.
"But what's he dying of?" asked Pencroff.
"He's burning out," answered the reporter.
"Still," the sailor went on, "if we carried him out into the open air, into the full sun, maybe he'd revive?"
"No, Pencroff," answered the engineer, "there's nothing to try! Besides, Captain Nemo would never agree to leave his ship. He's lived aboard the Nautilus for thirty years, and it's aboard the Nautilus that he means to die."
Captain Nemo must have heard Cyrus Smith's answer, for he raised himself a little, and in a weaker voice, but one still perfectly clear, he said:
"You are right, sir. I must die here, and I wish to. And so I have a request to make of you."
Cyrus Smith and his companions had come closer to the divan, and they arranged its cushions so that the dying man was better supported.
Then they could see his gaze come to rest on all the marvels of that salon, lit by electric rays softened through the arabesques of a luminous ceiling. One after another he looked at the paintings that hung on the splendid tapestries of the walls, those masterpieces of the Italian, Flemish, French and Spanish masters; at the marble and bronze statuettes standing on their pedestals; at the magnificent organ set against the after bulkhead; then at the glass cases arranged around a central basin, in which the most wonderful products of the sea were on display — marine plants, zoophytes, strings of pearls beyond price. And at last his eyes stopped on the motto inscribed over the doorway of this museum, the motto of the Nautilus:
Mobilis in Mobili.
It seemed as though he wanted to caress with his eyes, one last time, these masterpieces of art and nature to which he had limited his horizon through so many years spent in the depths of the seas!
Cyrus Smith had respected the silence Captain Nemo was keeping. He waited for the dying man to speak again.
After a few minutes, during which, no doubt, he saw his whole life pass before him once more, Captain Nemo turned toward the colonists and said to them:
"You believe, gentlemen, that you owe me some gratitude?..."
"Captain, we would give our lives to prolong yours!"
"Good," Captain Nemo went on, "good!... Promise me that you will carry out my last wishes, and I shall be repaid for everything I have done for you."
"We promise," answered Cyrus Smith.
And with that promise he bound his companions and himself alike.
"Gentlemen," the captain resumed, "tomorrow I shall be dead."
With a sign he stopped Harbert, who wanted to protest.
"Tomorrow I shall be dead, and I wish to have no other tomb than the Nautilus. She is my coffin — mine! All my friends rest at the bottom of the sea, and I wish to rest there too."
A deep silence met these words of Captain Nemo's.
"Listen to me carefully, gentlemen," he went on. "The Nautilus is imprisoned in this cave, whose entrance has been raised up. But if she cannot leave her prison, she can at least sink into the abyss beneath it and keep my mortal remains there."
The colonists listened to the dying man's words with reverence.
"Tomorrow, after my death, Mr. Smith," the captain went on, "you and your companions will leave the Nautilus, for all the riches she contains must disappear with me. Only one keepsake will remain to you of Prince Dakkar, whose story you now know. This casket... there... holds several millions' worth of diamonds — most of them mementos of the time when, as a father and a husband, I almost believed in happiness — and a collection of pearls gathered by my friends and me at the bottom of the sea. With this treasure you will be able, when the day comes, to do good things. In hands like yours and your companions', Mr. Smith, money cannot be a danger. So from up there I shall be a partner in your works, and I have no fear of them!"
After a few moments of rest, made necessary by his extreme weakness, Captain Nemo went on in these words:
"Tomorrow you will take this casket and leave this salon, closing its door behind you. Then you will climb back up onto the platform of the Nautilus, and you will close the hatch and fasten it down with its bolts."
"We will, Captain," answered Cyrus Smith.
"Good. You will then go aboard the boat that brought you here. But before you leave the Nautilus, go to the stern, and there open two large valves that are set at the waterline. The water will flow into the tanks, and the Nautilus will sink little by little beneath the surface, to come to rest at the bottom of the abyss."
And at a gesture from Cyrus Smith, the captain added:
"Have no fear! You will be burying only a dead man!"
Neither Cyrus Smith nor any of his companions would have thought it right to raise any objection with Captain Nemo. These were his last wishes he was handing on to them, and all they had to do was carry them out.
"I have your promise, gentlemen?" Captain Nemo added.
"You have it, Captain," answered the engineer.
The captain made a sign of thanks and asked the colonists to leave him alone for a few hours. Gédéon Spilett insisted on staying near him in case a crisis came on, but the dying man refused, saying:
"I shall live until tomorrow, sir!"
They all left the salon, passed through the library and the dining room, and came forward to the engine room, where the electrical apparatus was installed that supplied the Nautilus with mechanical power as well as heat and light.
The Nautilus was a masterpiece that held masterpieces, and the engineer was filled with wonder.
The colonists climbed up onto the platform, which rose seven or eight feet above the water. There they stretched out beside a thick lens-shaped pane of glass that closed off a kind of great eye, from which a sheaf of light was pouring. Behind this eye lay a hollowed-out cabin that held the wheels of the rudder, where the helmsman stood when he steered the Nautilus through the layers of the deep — layers that the electric rays must have lit up over a considerable distance.
At first Cyrus Smith and his companions stayed silent, for they were deeply moved by what they had just seen and what they had just heard. Their hearts ached when they thought that the man whose arm had come to their rescue so many times, this protector they would have known for barely a few hours, was on the eve of death!
Whatever judgment posterity might pass on the deeds of that existence — an existence, so to speak, beyond the human — Prince Dakkar would always remain one of those strange figures whose memory can never fade.
"There's a man for you!" said Pencroff. "Can you believe he lived like that, at the bottom of the ocean? And when I think that maybe he didn't find any more peace down there than anywhere else!"
"The Nautilus," Ayrton observed then, "might have let us leave Lincoln Island and reach some inhabited land."
"A thousand devils!" cried Pencroff. "I'm not the man who'd ever risk steering a boat like that. Sailing on the sea — fine! But under the sea — no!"
"I'd think," the reporter answered, "that handling an underwater machine like this Nautilus must be very easy, Pencroff, and that we'd soon get used to it. No storms, no collisions to fear. A few feet below the surface, the waters of the sea are as calm as a lake's."
"Could be!" the sailor shot back. "But I'd rather have a good stiff blow aboard a well-rigged ship. A boat is made to go on the water, not under it."
"My friends," the engineer answered, "there's no point — at least where the Nautilus is concerned — in arguing over this question of underwater ships. The Nautilus isn't ours, and we have no right to dispose of her. Nor could she be of any use to us in any case. Besides the fact that she can no longer get out of this cavern, whose entrance is now closed by the uplift of the basalt rocks, Captain Nemo wants her to go down with him after his death. His wish is explicit, and we will carry it out."
After a conversation that went on a while longer, Cyrus Smith and his companions went back down inside the Nautilus. There they took some food and then returned to the salon.
Captain Nemo had come out of the collapse that had overwhelmed him, and his eyes had regained their brilliance. Something like a smile could be seen forming on his lips.
The colonists went up to him.
"Gentlemen," the captain said to them, "you are brave men, honest and good. You have all given yourselves without reserve to the common work. I have often watched you. I have loved you — I love you!... Your hand, Mr. Smith!"
Cyrus Smith held out his hand to the captain, who pressed it warmly.
"That is good!" he murmured.
Then, going on:
"But that is enough talk of me! I have to talk to you of yourselves, and of Lincoln Island, where you have found refuge... You are thinking of leaving it?"
"To come back to it, Captain!" Pencroff answered quickly.
"Come back to it?... Indeed, Pencroff," the captain answered with a smile, "I know how much you love this island. It has been transformed by your efforts, and it is truly yours!"
"Our plan, Captain," Cyrus Smith said then, "would be to make a gift of it to the United States, and to found on it a port of call for our navy — one that would be very well placed in this part of the Pacific."
"You are thinking of your country, gentlemen," the captain answered. "You are working for its prosperity, for its glory. You are right. One's country!... That is where one must return! That is where one ought to die!... And I — I am dying far from everything I have loved!"
"Do you have any last wish to pass on?" the engineer asked quickly. "Any keepsake to give to the friends you may have left behind in those mountains of India?"
"No, Mr. Smith. I have no friends left! I am the last of my race... and I have been dead a long time to everyone I ever knew... But let us come back to you. Solitude, isolation, are sad things, beyond human strength... I am dying of having believed that a man could live alone!... So you must try everything to leave Lincoln Island and to see again the land where you were born. I know that those wretches destroyed the boat you had built..."
"We're building a ship," said Gédéon Spilett, "a ship big enough to carry us to the nearest lands. But if we do manage to leave, sooner or later we'll come back to Lincoln Island. Too many memories bind us to it for us ever to forget it!"
"It is here that we came to know Captain Nemo," said Cyrus Smith.
"It's only here that we'll find the whole memory of you!" Harbert added.
"And it is here that I shall rest in the eternal sleep, if..." the captain answered.
He hesitated, and instead of finishing his sentence he simply said:
"Mr. Smith, I would like to speak with you... with you alone!"
The engineer's companions, respecting the dying man's wish, withdrew.
Cyrus Smith stayed shut in with Captain Nemo for only a few minutes, and soon he called his friends back. But he told them nothing of the secret things the dying man had wished to confide to him.
Gédéon Spilett then watched the sick man with the closest attention. It was obvious that the captain was now held up by nothing but strength of spirit, which would soon be unable to fight back against his physical decline.
The day ended without any change appearing. The colonists did not leave the Nautilus for a moment. Night had come, though there was no way to tell it in that crypt.
Captain Nemo was not in pain, but he was sinking. His noble face, paled by the approach of death, was calm. From his lips there sometimes escaped words that could barely be made out, touching on various incidents of his strange existence. They could feel the life withdrawing little by little from that body, whose hands and feet were already cold.
Once or twice more he spoke to the colonists gathered beside him, and he smiled at them with that last smile that lasts on even into death.
At last, a little after midnight, Captain Nemo made one supreme movement, and he managed to cross his arms over his chest, as though he wished to die in that attitude.
By about one o'clock in the morning, all the life left in him had taken refuge in his eyes alone. A last fire shone in those eyes, from which so many flames had once flashed. Then, murmuring the words "God and country!", he gently breathed his last.
Cyrus Smith bent down and closed the eyes of the man who had been Prince Dakkar and who was now no longer even Captain Nemo.
Harbert and Pencroff were weeping. Ayrton wiped away a furtive tear. Nab was on his knees beside the reporter, turned to stone.
Cyrus Smith raised his hand above the dead man's head.
"May God have his soul!" he said, and, turning to his friends, he added:
"Let us pray for the one we have lost!"
.........................
A few hours later the colonists were keeping the promise they had made to the captain. They were carrying out the dead man's last wishes.
Cyrus Smith and his companions left the Nautilus, taking with them the one keepsake their benefactor had left them, that casket which held a hundred fortunes.
The marvelous salon, still flooded with light, had been carefully closed. Then the sheet-iron door of the hatch was bolted down, so that not a drop of water could get into the rooms of the Nautilus.
Then the colonists went down into the boat, which was moored alongside the submarine vessel.
The boat was brought round to the stern. There, at the waterline, were the two large valves that connected with the tanks used to make the vessel dive.
The valves were opened, the tanks filled, and the Nautilus, sinking little by little, disappeared beneath the surface.
But the colonists could still follow her down through the deep layers of water. Her powerful light lit up the clear water, while the crypt went dark again. Then that vast outpouring of electric radiance faded at last, and soon the Nautilus, now Captain Nemo's coffin, lay at rest at the bottom of the sea.
Each one's thoughts — The shipbuilding resumed — January 1, 1869 — A plume on the top of the volcano — First signs of an eruption — Ayrton and Cyrus Smith at the corral — Exploring the Dakkar Crypt — What Captain Nemo had told the engineer
At daybreak the colonists made their way back in silence to the mouth of the cavern, which they named "the Dakkar Crypt" in memory of Captain Nemo. The tide was low now, and they could pass easily under the arch, where the water was lapping at the foot of its basalt pillar.
The sheet-iron boat was left there, placed so that the waves could not get at it. As an extra precaution, Pencroff, Nab and Ayrton hauled it up onto the little beach that ran along one side of the crypt, in a spot where it was in no danger at all.
The storm had ended with the night. The last rolls of thunder were dying away in the west. It was no longer raining, but the sky was still heavy with clouds. All in all, this month of October, the beginning of the southern spring, was not getting off to a promising start, and the wind kept jumping from one point of the compass to another, so that no one could count on settled weather.
On leaving the Dakkar Crypt, Cyrus Smith and his companions had set off back along the Corral Road. As they went, Nab and Harbert took care to free the wire the captain had strung between the corral and the crypt, since it might be useful later on.
The colonists said little as they walked. The events of that night of October 15 to 16 had struck them very deeply. The stranger whose influence had protected them so well, the man their imagination had turned into a genie — Captain Nemo — was gone. He and his Nautilus lay buried at the bottom of an abyss. It seemed to each of them that they were more alone than before. They had grown used, so to speak, to counting on that powerful help which they no longer had, and neither Gédéon Spilett nor even Cyrus Smith himself escaped the feeling. And so they all kept a deep silence as they followed the Corral Road.
At about nine in the morning the colonists were back at Granite House.
It had been firmly agreed that the building of the ship would be pushed forward as hard as possible, and Cyrus Smith gave it more of his time and care than ever. No one knew what the future held. And it would be a real safeguard for the colonists to have at their disposal a solid vessel, one that could keep the sea even in heavy weather, and big enough to attempt a voyage of some length if need be. Even if, once the vessel was finished, the colonists did not yet decide to leave Lincoln Island and make for one of the Polynesian archipelagos of the Pacific or the coast of New Zealand, they must at the very least go to Tabor Island as soon as possible and leave there the notice about Ayrton. It was an essential precaution in case the Scottish yacht should come back to these seas, and nothing was to be neglected on that score.
So the work was taken up again. Cyrus Smith, Pencroff and Ayrton, helped by Nab, Gédéon Spilett and Harbert whenever some other urgent job did not call them away, worked without a break. The new vessel had to be ready in five months — that is, by the beginning of March — if they wanted to visit Tabor Island before the equinoctial gales made the crossing impossible. So the carpenters did not lose a moment. They did not, for that matter, have to worry about making any rigging, since the Speedy's had been saved whole. Above all else, then, it was the hull of the ship that had to be finished.
The end of the year 1868 slipped by amid this important work, almost to the exclusion of everything else. After two and a half months the frames had been set in place and the first planks of the hull fitted. It was already clear that the plans Cyrus Smith had drawn were excellent and that the ship would handle well at sea. Pencroff threw himself into the work with a devouring energy, and he did not hesitate to grumble whenever one or another of them laid down the carpenter's ax for the hunter's gun. All the same, the stores of Granite House had to be kept up, with the coming winter in mind. No matter. The good sailor was not happy when there were hands missing from the shipyard. On those occasions, grumbling all the while, he did the work of six men — out of sheer temper.
The whole summer season was a bad one. For some days at a time the heat was crushing, and the air, saturated with electricity, would discharge itself only in violent storms that churned up the layers of the atmosphere. Hardly a day went by without the distant rolling of thunder. It was like a low but never-ending murmur, the kind heard in the equatorial regions of the globe.
January 1, 1869, was even marked by a storm of extreme violence, and lightning struck the island several times. Big trees were hit by the electric fluid and shattered, among them one of the enormous nettle trees that shaded the poultry yard at the southern end of the lake. Did this display in the sky have any connection with what was going on in the bowels of the earth? Was there some kind of link between the disturbances in the air and the disturbances deep inside the globe? Cyrus Smith was inclined to think so, for as these storms grew, the volcanic symptoms grew stronger too.
It was on January 3 that Harbert, who had gone up to Prospect Plateau at dawn to saddle one of the onaggas, saw an enormous plume unrolling from the top of the volcano.
Harbert at once alerted the colonists, who came straight away to look at the summit of Mount Franklin.
"Hey!" cried Pencroff. "That's not steam this time! Looks to me like the giant isn't satisfied with breathing anymore — he's smoking!"
The sailor's image described exactly the change that had taken place at the mouth of the volcano. For three months already the crater had been giving off steam, sometimes more, sometimes less, but it had come only from the minerals boiling inside. This time the steam had given way to a thick smoke, rising in a grayish column more than three hundred feet wide at its base, which spread out like an immense mushroom seven or eight hundred feet above the top of the mountain.
"The chimney's on fire," said Gédéon Spilett.
"And we can't put it out!" answered Harbert.
"Somebody ought to sweep out volcanoes," Nab remarked, apparently in the most serious way in the world.
"Good, Nab!" cried Pencroff. "Will you be the one to take on that sweeping job?"
And Pencroff let out a great roar of laughter.
Cyrus Smith was watching closely the thick smoke that Mount Franklin was throwing up, and he was even listening hard, as though he hoped to catch some distant rumbling. Then he came back to his companions, from whom he had moved a little way apart.
"You're right, my friends. An important change has taken place — there's no point in hiding it from ourselves. The volcanic matter isn't just boiling anymore. It has caught fire, and we are very certainly threatened with an eruption before long!"
"Well then, Mr. Smith, we'll watch the eruption," cried Pencroff, "and we'll applaud it if it's a good one! I don't see anything there for us to worry about!"
"No, Pencroff," answered Cyrus Smith, "because the old path of the lava is still open, and the way the crater is shaped, it has always poured its lava out toward the north until now. And yet..."
"And yet, since there's nothing to be gained from an eruption, it would be better if it didn't happen," said the reporter.
"Who knows?" answered the sailor. "Maybe there's some useful, valuable stuff in that volcano that it'll be kind enough to spit up, and we'll put it to good use!"
Cyrus Smith shook his head like a man who expected nothing good from something that had developed so suddenly. He did not take the consequences of an eruption as lightly as Pencroff did. Even if the lava, because of the way the crater faced, did not directly threaten the wooded and cultivated parts of the island, other complications could arise. Eruptions, in fact, are quite often accompanied by earthquakes. And an island like Lincoln Island, made of such different materials — basalt on one side, granite on the other, lava to the north, loose soil to the south — materials that could not, therefore, be solidly bound to one another, would run the risk of being broken apart. So even if the outpouring of volcanic matter was no very serious danger, any movement in the earth's framework that shook the island could lead to extremely grave consequences.
"It seems to me," said Ayrton, who had lain down so as to put his ear to the ground, "it seems to me I can hear a dull rumbling, like a wagon loaded with iron bars."
The colonists listened with the closest attention and could tell that Ayrton was not mistaken. Now and then the rumbling was mixed with underground roars that swelled into a kind of "rinforzando," as musicians say, and then died slowly away, as though some violent wind had blown through the depths of the globe. But no actual explosion could be heard yet. So they could conclude that the steam and smoke were finding a free way out through the central chimney, and that, since the safety valve was wide enough, nothing would break apart and no explosion was to be feared.
"Now look here!" said Pencroff then. "Aren't we going back to work? Mount Franklin can smoke, bawl, groan, spit out fire and flames as much as it pleases — that's no reason to do nothing! Come on, Ayrton, Nab, Harbert, Mr. Cyrus, Mr. Spilett — today everybody has to lend a hand! We're going to fit the wales, and a dozen arms won't be too many. Within two months I want our new Bonadventure — because we'll keep that name for her, won't we? — floating on the waters of Balloon Harbor! So, not an hour to lose!"
All the colonists, whose arms Pencroff was calling for, went down to the shipyard and set about fitting the wales — the thick planks that run around a ship like a belt and bind the frames of her skeleton firmly together. It was heavy, hard work, and every one of them had to take part.
So they worked steadily all that day of January 3, without worrying about the volcano, which in any case could not be seen from the beach below Granite House. But once or twice great shadows, veiling the sun as it traveled its daily arc across an extremely clear sky, showed that a thick cloud of smoke was passing between its disk and the island. The wind, blowing in from the sea, was carrying all these vapors off to the west. Cyrus Smith and Gédéon Spilett noticed these passing darkenings perfectly well, and more than once they talked over the obvious progress the volcano was making, but the work did not stop. It was, besides, of the greatest importance from every point of view that the vessel should be finished as soon as possible. Whatever might happen, the colonists' safety would be all the better assured by it. Who knew whether this ship might not one day be their only refuge?
That evening, after supper, Cyrus Smith, Gédéon Spilett and Harbert climbed back up to Prospect Plateau. Night had already fallen, and the darkness should let them see whether flames, or red-hot matter thrown up by the volcano, were mixed with the steam and smoke piled up at the mouth of the crater.
"The crater's on fire!" cried Harbert, who, being nimbler than his companions, had reached the plateau first.
Mount Franklin, about six miles away, now looked like a gigantic torch, with a few sooty flames twisting at its top. So much smoke, so much cinder and perhaps ash was mixed with them that their glow, greatly dimmed, did not stand out sharply against the darkness of the night. But a kind of tawny light spread over the island and picked out, dimly, the wooded masses in the foreground. Immense whirling clouds darkened the heights of the sky, and through them a few stars twinkled.
"It's moving fast!" said the engineer.
"That's not surprising," answered the reporter. "The volcano has been waking up for some time already. You remember, Cyrus, that the first steam appeared at about the time we were searching the mountain's spurs for Captain Nemo's hiding place. That was around October 15, if I'm not mistaken?"
"Yes!" answered Harbert. "Two and a half months ago already!"
"So the underground fires have been smoldering for ten weeks," Gédéon Spilett went on, "and it's no wonder they're growing so violent now!"
"Don't you feel a kind of vibration in the ground?" asked Cyrus Smith.
"I do," answered Gédéon Spilett, "but from that to an earthquake..."
"I'm not saying we're threatened with an earthquake," answered Cyrus Smith, "and God keep us from one! No. These vibrations come from the seething of the central fire. The earth's crust is nothing more than the wall of a boiler, and you know that the wall of a boiler, under the pressure of the gases, vibrates like a sounding board. That's what is happening right now."
"What magnificent sprays of fire!" cried Harbert.
At that moment there burst from the crater a sort of fireworks display whose brilliance the steam could not dim. Thousands of glowing fragments and bright points of light were flung out in every direction. Some of them shot past the dome of smoke, pierced it in a swift streak, and left behind them a real dust of glowing sparks. This burst of fire was accompanied by explosion after explosion, like the ripping fire of a battery of machine guns.
After an hour on Prospect Plateau, Cyrus Smith, the reporter and the boy went back down to the beach and returned to Granite House. The engineer was thoughtful, even worried, so much so that Gédéon Spilett felt he should ask him whether he foresaw some danger close at hand, for which the eruption would be either the direct or the indirect cause.
"Yes and no," answered Cyrus Smith.
"All the same," the reporter went on, "the greatest disaster that could happen to us — wouldn't that be an earthquake that turned the island upside down? And I don't think that's to be feared, since the steam and the lava have found a free way out."
"And so," answered Cyrus Smith, "I'm not afraid of an earthquake in the usual sense of the word — the convulsions of the ground caused by the expansion of underground vapors. But other causes can bring about great disasters."
"Which ones, my dear Cyrus?"
"I don't quite know... I need to see... to go over the mountain... In a few days I'll be sure about it."
Gédéon Spilett did not press him, and soon, in spite of the volcano's explosions, which were growing louder and which the echoes of the island repeated, the occupants of Granite House were sound asleep.
Three days went by: January 4, 5 and 6. They kept working on the boat, and the engineer, without explaining himself any further, pushed the work along with all his might. Mount Franklin was now hooded in a dark, sinister-looking cloud, and along with its flames it was spewing out red-hot rocks, some of which fell back into the crater itself. That led Pencroff, who was determined to see only the funny side of the thing, to say:
"Look at that! The giant's playing cup-and-ball! The giant's juggling!"
And in fact the matter it spewed out was falling back into the abyss, and it did not seem that the lava, swollen by the pressure inside, had yet risen as high as the mouth of the crater. At any rate, the breach in the crater's rim to the northeast, which was partly visible, was not pouring any stream down the northern slope of the mountain.
And yet, however urgent the shipbuilding was, other tasks required the colonists' presence at various points on the island. First of all, someone had to go to the corral, where the flock of mouflons and goats was penned, and renew the animals' supply of fodder. So it was agreed that Ayrton would go there the next day, January 7. And since he could manage this job perfectly well alone — he was used to it — Pencroff and the others were a little surprised when they heard the engineer say to Ayrton:
"Since you're going to the corral tomorrow, I'll go with you."
"Hey, Mr. Cyrus!" cried the sailor. "Our working days are numbered, and if you go too, that's four arms fewer!"
"We'll be back the day after," answered Cyrus Smith, "but I need to go to the corral... I want to find out how far the eruption has gone."
"The eruption! The eruption!" answered Pencroff, looking none too pleased. "A fine important thing, this eruption — and one that doesn't worry me much!"
Whatever the sailor thought of it, the engineer's planned expedition was kept for the next day. Harbert would have liked very much to go with Cyrus Smith, but he did not want to annoy Pencroff by being away.
The next day, at sunrise, Cyrus Smith and Ayrton climbed into the cart drawn by the two onaggas, took the Corral Road and drove along it at a brisk trot.
Above the forest passed great clouds which the crater of Mount Franklin kept feeding with sooty matter. These clouds, rolling heavily through the air, were obviously made of mixed substances. It was not the volcano's smoke alone that made them so strangely thick and heavy. Cinders reduced to dust — such as powdered pozzolana — and grayish ashes as fine as the finest flour hung suspended in their dense coils. These ashes are so fine that they have sometimes been seen to stay in the air for whole months. After the eruption of 1783 in Iceland, for more than a year the atmosphere was so loaded with volcanic dust that the sun's rays could hardly get through.
But more often this powdered matter falls back down, and that is what happened on this occasion. Cyrus Smith and Ayrton had hardly reached the corral when a kind of blackish snow, like fine gunpowder, came down and instantly changed the look of the ground. Trees, meadows — everything vanished under a layer several inches thick. But very luckily the wind was blowing from the northeast, and most of the cloud went off to break up over the sea.
"Now that's strange, Mr. Smith," said Ayrton.
"It's serious," answered the engineer. "This pozzolana, this powdered pumice — all this mineral dust, in a word — shows how deep the disturbance goes in the lower layers of the volcano."
"But isn't there anything to be done?"
"Nothing, except to keep track of how it's progressing. So you see to the corral, Ayrton. Meanwhile I'll climb up past the sources of Red Creek and look at the state of the mountain on its northern slope. Then..."
"Then... Mr. Smith?"
"Then we'll pay a visit to the Dakkar Crypt... I want to see... Well, I'll come back for you in two hours."
Ayrton then went into the yard of the corral, and while he waited for the engineer to come back he busied himself with the mouflons and goats, which seemed rather uneasy at these first signs of an eruption.
Meanwhile Cyrus Smith had ventured out along the crest of the eastern spurs. He went around Red Creek and came to the place where he and his companions had found a sulfur spring on their first exploration.
How things had changed! Instead of a single column of smoke, he counted thirteen of them shooting out of the ground, as if some piston were driving them violently upward. It was plain that at this point on the globe the earth's crust was under a terrifying pressure. The air was saturated with sulfurous gas, hydrogen and carbonic acid, mixed with water vapor. Cyrus Smith could feel a trembling in the volcanic tuff that lay scattered over the plain — rock that was nothing but powdery ash which time had hardened into solid blocks — but he could not yet see any trace of new lava.
The engineer was able to confirm this more thoroughly when he looked over the whole northern side of Mount Franklin. Whirls of smoke and flame were pouring out of the crater, and a hail of cinders was falling on the ground, but no lava was flowing from the crater's throat — which proved that the level of the volcanic matter had not yet reached the upper opening of the central chimney.
"And I'd rather it had!" Cyrus Smith said to himself. "At least I'd be sure the lava had taken its usual path again. Who knows whether it won't pour out through some new mouth? But that's not where the danger lies! Captain Nemo foresaw it clearly! No! The danger isn't there!"
Cyrus Smith went on as far as the enormous causeway of lava whose far end framed the narrow Shark Gulf. So he was able to examine the old streaks the lava had left on that side well enough. He had no doubt at all that the last eruption went back a very long way.
Then he turned back, listening to the underground rumblings, which rolled on like continuous thunder, with sharp, ringing explosions standing out against it. At nine in the morning he was back at the corral.
Ayrton was waiting for him.
"The animals are seen to, Mr. Smith," said Ayrton.
"Good, Ayrton."
"They seem uneasy, Mr. Smith."
"Yes. Instinct is speaking in them, and instinct doesn't lie."
"Whenever you're ready..."
"Take a lantern and the flint and steel, Ayrton," answered the engineer, "and let's go."
Ayrton did as he was told. The onaggas had been unharnessed and were wandering about the corral. The gate was shut from the outside, and Cyrus Smith, walking ahead of Ayrton, took the narrow path that led west toward the coast.
The two of them walked over ground padded as if with cotton by the powdery matter that had fallen from the cloud. Not a single four-footed animal showed itself in the woods. Even the birds had fled. Every so often a passing breeze stirred up the layer of ash, and the two colonists, caught in a thick swirl of it, could no longer see each other. Then they took care to hold a handkerchief over their eyes and mouths, for they ran the risk of being blinded and choked.
Under these conditions Cyrus Smith and Ayrton could not walk fast. Besides, the air was heavy, as though part of its oxygen had been burned up and it had become unfit to breathe. Every hundred paces they had to stop and get their breath back. So it was after ten o'clock when the engineer and his companion reached the crest of that huge pile of basalt and porphyry rocks that formed the northwest coast of the island.
Ayrton and Cyrus Smith began to climb down this steep coast, following more or less the dreadful path that had led them to the Dakkar Crypt on that stormy night. In broad daylight the descent was less dangerous, and besides, the layer of ash that covered the polished rock let them plant their feet more firmly on its sloping surfaces.
They soon reached the ledge that ran along the shore at a height of about forty feet. Cyrus Smith remembered that this ledge sloped gently down to sea level. Although the tide was low just then, no beach was showing, and the waves, dirtied by the volcanic dust, were beating straight against the basalt of the shore.
Cyrus Smith and Ayrton found the opening of the Dakkar Crypt without difficulty, and they stopped beneath the last rock, which formed the lowest step of the ledge.
"The sheet-iron boat ought to be here?" said the engineer.
"It is, Mr. Smith," answered Ayrton, drawing toward him the light craft, which was sheltered under the curve of the arch.
"Let's get in, Ayrton."
The two colonists climbed into the boat. A gentle swell of the waves carried it farther in under the very low arch of the crypt, and there Ayrton struck a light with the flint and steel and lit the lantern. Then he took up the two oars, and the lantern was set on the bow so as to throw its light ahead, while Cyrus Smith took the tiller and steered into the darkness of the crypt.
The Nautilus was no longer there to set this gloomy cavern ablaze with its lights. Perhaps its electric glow, still fed by its powerful source, was spreading even now through the depths of the water, but no gleam rose out of the abyss where Captain Nemo lay at rest.
The lantern's light, weak as it was, still allowed the engineer to make his way forward, keeping to the right-hand wall of the crypt. A deathly silence reigned beneath that vault — in its front part, at least — for soon Cyrus Smith could clearly hear the rumblings coming up from the bowels of the mountain.
"It's the volcano," he said.
Soon, along with the noise, the chemical reactions gave themselves away by a sharp smell, and sulfurous fumes caught the engineer and his companion by the throat.
"That's what Captain Nemo feared!" murmured Cyrus Smith, and his face went a little pale. "But we have to go all the way to the end."
"Let's go!" answered Ayrton, who bent over his oars and drove the boat on toward the far end of the crypt.
Twenty-five minutes after passing through the opening, the boat reached the end wall and stopped.
Then Cyrus Smith, standing up on his seat, moved the lantern over the different parts of the wall that separated the crypt from the central chimney of the volcano. How thick was that wall? Was it a hundred feet, or ten? No one could have said. But the underground noises were too easy to hear for it to be very thick.
After exploring the wall along a horizontal line, the engineer fastened the lantern to the end of an oar and moved it over the basalt wall again, higher up.
There, through cracks that could barely be seen, through the badly fitted columns of basalt, an acrid smoke was seeping that poisoned the air of the cavern. Fractures streaked the wall, and a few of them, more sharply marked than the rest, ran down to within only two or three feet of the water in the crypt.
At first Cyrus Smith stayed lost in thought. Then he murmured these words again:
"Yes! The captain was right! That's where the danger lies, and a terrible danger!"
Ayrton said nothing, but at a sign from Cyrus Smith he took up his oars again, and half an hour later he and the engineer came out of the Dakkar Crypt.
Cyrus Smith's account of his exploration — The shipbuilding is pushed on — A last visit to the corral — The battle between fire and water — What is left on the surface of the island — They decide to launch the ship — The night of March 8 to 9
The next morning, January 8, after a day and a night spent at the corral, with everything there put in order, Cyrus Smith and Ayrton came back to Granite House.
At once the engineer gathered his companions together and told them that Lincoln Island was in terrible danger, a danger no human power could avert.
"My friends," he said — and his voice betrayed a deep emotion — "Lincoln Island is not one of those islands that will last as long as the globe itself. It is doomed to be destroyed, sooner or later. The cause lies inside it, and nothing can save it!"
The colonists looked at one another, and then at the engineer. They could not understand him.
"Explain yourself, Cyrus!" said Gédéon Spilett.
"I will," answered Cyrus Smith. "Or rather, I'll simply pass on to you the explanation Captain Nemo gave me during the few minutes we spoke in private."
"Captain Nemo!" cried the colonists.
"Yes. It was the last service he wanted to do us before he died!"
"The last service!" cried Pencroff. "The last service! You'll see — dead as he is, he'll do us more!"
"But what did Captain Nemo tell you?" asked the reporter.
"Here it is, then, my friends," answered the engineer. "Lincoln Island is not built like the other islands of the Pacific. Captain Nemo told me of a particular feature of its structure, and sooner or later that feature must break apart the island's framework under the sea."
"Break apart! Lincoln Island! Come on, now!" cried Pencroff, and for all the respect he had for Cyrus Smith, he could not help shrugging his shoulders.
"Listen to me, Pencroff," the engineer went on. "This is what Captain Nemo had observed, and what I observed for myself yesterday, when I explored the Dakkar Crypt. That cave runs on under the island as far as the volcano, and the only thing separating it from the volcano's central chimney is the wall that closes off its far end. Now, that wall is scored with cracks and fissures, and they are already letting through the sulfurous gases that build up inside the volcano."
"Well?" asked Pencroff, his forehead deeply furrowed.
"Well, I found that those cracks were widening under the pressure from inside. The basalt wall is splitting little by little, and before very long it will give way and let in the seawater that fills the cave."
"Good!" replied Pencroff, trying to joke one more time. "The sea will put out the volcano, and that'll be the end of it!"
"Yes, that will be the end of it!" answered Cyrus Smith. "The day the sea bursts through that wall and pours down the central chimney into the bowels of the island, where the molten matter is boiling — on that day, Pencroff, Lincoln Island will blow up, just as Sicily would blow up if the Mediterranean rushed down into Etna!"
The colonists made no answer to so positive a statement. They understood what danger hung over them.
And it must be said that Cyrus Smith was not exaggerating in the least. Plenty of people have had the idea that volcanoes — nearly all of which rise on the shores of seas or lakes — might perhaps be put out by opening a channel to let the water in. What they did not know was that this would risk blowing up a piece of the globe, the way a boiler bursts when its steam is suddenly driven up by a blast of heat. Water rushing into a closed space whose temperature may run to thousands of degrees would turn to steam with such sudden force that no casing in the world could hold it.
There was no doubt, then, that the island, threatened with a frightful upheaval that could not be far off, would last only as long as the wall of the Dakkar Crypt lasted. It was not even a question of months, or of weeks. It was a question of days — perhaps of hours!
The colonists' first feeling was deep grief! They did not think of the danger to themselves. They thought of the destruction of this ground that had given them shelter — this island they had made fruitful, this island they loved, which they had hoped to see flourishing one day! So much toil spent for nothing, so much work lost!
Pencroff could not hold back a big tear that slid down his cheek, and he made no attempt to hide it.
The conversation went on for some time longer. They talked over whatever chances the colonists could still cling to. But in the end they agreed that there was not an hour to lose: the building and fitting out of the ship must be pushed on with tremendous energy, and that, now, was the one chance of rescue for the inhabitants of Lincoln Island!
So every pair of hands was called to the work. What good would it do now to reap, to harvest, to hunt, to add to the stores of Granite House? What was still in the storeroom and the pantries would be enough, and more than enough, to provision the ship for a voyage, however long it might be! What mattered was that the ship should be ready for the colonists before the inevitable catastrophe came.
The work was taken up again with feverish zeal. By about January 23 the ship was half planked. Until then, nothing had changed at the summit of the volcano. There were still the same vapors and smoke, mixed with flames and shot through with red-hot stones, pouring out of the crater. But during the night of January 23 to 24, under the thrust of the lava, which had risen to the level of the volcano's first plateau, the volcano had its top knocked off: the cone that sat on it like a hat. There was a frightful crash. At first the colonists thought the island was breaking apart. They rushed out of Granite House.
It was about two o'clock in the morning.
The sky was on fire. The upper cone — a mass a thousand feet high, weighing billions of pounds — had been hurled down onto the island, and the ground shook. Luckily, that cone had been leaning to the north, and it fell on the plain of sand and tuff that stretched between the volcano and the sea. The crater, gaping wide now, threw up such an intense light toward the sky that, simply by its glare reflecting off the clouds, the whole atmosphere seemed to be glowing red-hot. At the same time a torrent of lava swelled up at the new summit and spilled over in long cascades, like water overflowing a basin that is too full, and a thousand serpents of fire went crawling down the volcano's slopes.
"The corral! The corral!" cried Ayrton.
It was indeed toward the corral that the lava was heading, because of the way the new crater faced. And so it was the fertile parts of the island — the sources of Red Creek, Jacamar Wood — that were threatened with immediate destruction.
At Ayrton's cry the colonists had dashed to the onaggas' stable. The cart was harnessed. They all had a single thought: to race to the corral and set free the animals penned up inside it.
Before three o'clock in the morning they had reached the corral. Frightful bellowing told them plainly enough how terrified the mouflons and the goats were. Already a torrent of red-hot matter, of liquefied minerals, was pouring down from the mountain's shoulder onto the meadow and eating away that side of the palisade. Ayrton flung the gate open, and the maddened animals bolted in every direction.
An hour later the boiling lava filled the corral. It turned the water of the little stream that ran through it to steam, set the house on fire so that it blazed up like a heap of straw, and devoured the palisade down to the very last post. Of the corral, nothing was left!
The colonists had wanted to fight this invasion. They had tried — but madly and uselessly, for man is helpless in the face of such great cataclysms.
Day had come — January 24. Before going back to Granite House, Cyrus Smith and his companions wanted to see what direction this flood of lava would finally take. The ground sloped down overall from Mount Franklin toward the east coast, and there was reason to fear that, in spite of the dense cover of Jacamar Wood, the torrent might spread as far as Prospect Plateau.
"The lake will protect us," said Gédéon Spilett.
"I hope so!" answered Cyrus Smith, and that was all he answered.
The colonists would have liked to go as far as the plain where the upper cone of Mount Franklin had come crashing down, but by then the lava barred their way. It was flowing down the valley of Red Creek on one side, and down the valley of Fall River on the other, boiling both streams away as it went. There was no possibility of crossing that torrent. On the contrary, they had to fall back before it. The volcano, with its crown knocked off, was unrecognizable. It now ended in a sort of flat table that had replaced the old crater. Two gaps, gouged out of its rim on the south and the east, poured out lava without a pause, so that it ran down in two separate streams. Above the new crater a cloud of smoke and ash blended with the vapors massed in the sky over the island. Great claps of thunder burst out and mingled with the rumbling of the mountain. From its mouth flew blazing rocks, hurled more than a thousand feet up, which burst in the clouds and scattered like grapeshot. The sky answered the eruption with flash after flash of lightning.
By about seven o'clock in the morning the colonists, who had taken refuge at the edge of Jacamar Wood, could no longer hold their position. Not only were the flying rocks starting to rain down around them, but the lava, overflowing the bed of Red Creek, threatened to cut the Corral Road. The first rows of trees caught fire, and their sap, suddenly turned to steam, made them burst like fireworks, while others, not so full of moisture, stood untouched in the middle of the flood.
The colonists had started back along the Corral Road. They walked slowly — backward, so to speak. But because of the slope of the ground the torrent was gaining fast toward the east, and as soon as the lower layers of lava hardened, fresh boiling sheets of it immediately flowed over them.
Meanwhile the main stream, the one in the valley of Red Creek, grew more and more threatening. That whole part of the forest was ablaze, and enormous rolls of smoke billowed above the trees, whose roots were already crackling in the lava.
The colonists stopped near the lake, half a mile from the mouth of Red Creek. A question of life or death was about to be decided for them.
Cyrus Smith, who was used to reckoning up a serious situation, and who knew he was speaking to men able to hear the truth, whatever it might be, now said:
"Either the lake will stop this stream, and part of the island will be saved from total devastation, or the stream will overrun the Far West forests, and not one tree, not one plant will be left on the face of the ground. Then all we'll have to look forward to on these bare rocks is death — and the explosion of the island won't keep us waiting long for it!"
"Then," cried Pencroff, crossing his arms and stamping his foot on the ground, "there's no use working on the boat, is there?"
"Pencroff," answered Cyrus Smith, "a man must do his duty to the very end!"
At that moment the river of lava, having cut its way through the fine trees it was devouring, reached the edge of the lake. At that spot the ground rose somewhat — a ridge that might perhaps have been enough to hold back the torrent, if only it had been higher.
"To work!" cried Cyrus Smith.
They understood the engineer's idea at once.
They had to dam up the torrent, so to speak, and so force it to spill over into the lake.
The colonists ran to the shipyard. They brought back shovels, picks and axes, and there, by heaping up earth and felling trees, they managed in a few hours to raise a dike three feet high and a few hundred paces long. When they had finished, it seemed to them that they had been working for only a few minutes!
It was just in time. Almost at once the molten matter reached the foot of the ridge. The stream swelled like a river in full flood trying to burst its banks, and it threatened to top the one obstacle that could keep it from overrunning the whole Far West... But the dike held it back, and after a minute's hesitation — a terrible minute — it plunged into Lake Grant over a fall twenty feet high.
Breathless, without making a move, without saying a word, the colonists stood and watched that struggle between the two elements.
What a sight it was, that battle between water and fire! What pen could describe that scene of marvelous horror, and what brush could paint it? The water hissed as it boiled away at the touch of the seething lava. The steam, shot into the air, whirled up to a height beyond all measuring, as if the safety valves of some immense boiler had suddenly been thrown open. But however vast the mass of water in the lake, it was bound to be used up in the end, since nothing was replacing it, while the torrent, fed from a source that could never run dry, kept rolling in fresh waves of red-hot matter.
The first lava to fall into the lake hardened instantly and piled up, so that it soon rose above the surface. Over it slid more lava, which turned to stone in its turn, but a little farther out toward the middle. In this way a jetty formed and threatened to fill the lake in completely. The lake could not overflow, because whatever water it had to spare was being spent as steam. Hissing and sizzling tore the air with a deafening noise, and the clouds of vapor, carried off by the wind, fell back as rain over the sea. The jetty grew longer and longer, and blocks of hardened lava piled up one on top of another. Where calm water had once spread out, there now rose an enormous heap of smoking rocks, as if an upheaval of the ground had thrown up thousands of reefs. Imagine those waters churned up by a hurricane and then suddenly frozen solid by a cold of four degrees below zero, and you will have some idea of how the lake looked three hours after the unstoppable torrent burst into it.
This time water was bound to be beaten by fire.
All the same, it was a stroke of luck for the colonists that the flow of lava had been turned toward Lake Grant. It gave them a few days' breathing space. Prospect Plateau, Granite House and the shipyard were spared for the moment. And those few days had to be used to finish planking the ship and caulking her carefully. Then they would launch her and take refuge aboard, and rig her once she was afloat in her own element. With the threat of an explosion that might destroy the island, there was no longer any safety in staying on land. Granite House, that retreat so secure until now, might close its granite walls on them at any minute!
For the next six days, from January 25 to 30, the colonists worked on the ship as hard as twenty men could have done. They barely took any rest, and the glare of the flames leaping out of the crater let them keep going night and day. The volcano was still pouring out lava, though perhaps less of it. That was fortunate, because Lake Grant was almost completely filled in, and if fresh lava had slid over the surface of the old, it would certainly have spread over Prospect Plateau, and from there down onto the beach.
But if the island was partly protected on that side, the same was not true of its western part.
For the second stream of lava, the one that had followed the valley of Fall River, could not meet any obstacle there: it was a wide valley, and the ground sloped away on either side of the stream. So the red-hot liquid had spread out through the Far West forest. At that time of year, when the trees were dried out by the scorching heat, the forest caught fire instantly, so that the blaze spread both along the bases of the trunks and through the high branches, whose interlacing helped the fire along. It even seemed that the stream of flame was racing faster through the treetops than the stream of lava along the ground.
And so the animals, maddened with terror, wild beasts and others alike — jaguars, wild boars, capybaras, koulas, game with fur and game with feathers — fled toward the Mercy and into Shelduck Marsh, beyond the road to Balloon Harbor. But the colonists were too busy with their work to pay any attention even to the most dangerous of these animals. Besides, they had left Granite House. They had not even wanted to take shelter in the Chimneys, and they were camping in a tent near the mouth of the Mercy.
Every day Cyrus Smith and Gédéon Spilett climbed up to Prospect Plateau. Sometimes Harbert went with them — never Pencroff, who could not bear to see the island in its new shape, laid waste so utterly!
It was a heartbreaking sight indeed. The whole wooded part of the island was now stripped bare. A single clump of green trees still stood at the tip of Serpentine Peninsula. Here and there a few blackened stumps, their branches gone, twisted up like grimaces. The ground where the forests had been was more barren than Shelduck Marsh. The invasion of the lava had been complete. Where all that wonderful greenery had once grown, the ground was now nothing but a wild jumble of volcanic tuff. The valleys of Fall River and of the Mercy no longer sent a single drop of water to the sea, and the colonists would have had no way to quench their thirst if Lake Grant had dried up completely. But luckily its southern tip had been spared and made a sort of pond, holding all that was left of the drinkable water on the island. To the northwest the spurs of the volcano stood out in harsh, sharp ridges, like a gigantic claw pressed down on the ground. What a painful sight, what a dreadful view, and what grief for these colonists! They had had a fertile estate, covered with forests, watered by streams, rich with crops, and in an instant they found themselves set down on a devastated rock where, without their stores, they would not even have found enough to live on!
"It breaks your heart!" said Gédéon Spilett one day.
"Yes, Spilett," answered the engineer. "May Heaven give us time to finish that ship, our only refuge now!"
"Don't you think, Cyrus, that the volcano seems to be calming down? It's still throwing out lava, but less of it, if I'm not mistaken!"
"That makes no difference," answered Cyrus Smith. "The fire is still burning hot in the bowels of the mountain, and the sea may rush in at any moment. We're like passengers on a ship that's being eaten up by a fire they can't put out, who know that sooner or later it will reach the powder magazine! Come, Spilett, come, and let's not lose an hour!"
For eight more days — that is, until February 7 — the lava went on spreading, but the eruption kept within the limits already described. What Cyrus Smith feared above all was that the molten matter might pour out onto the beach, and in that case the shipyard would not have been spared. About that time, however, the colonists felt tremors in the framework of the island, and these alarmed them in the highest degree.
It was now February 20. It would take another month before the ship was fit to go to sea. Would the island hold out till then? Pencroff and Cyrus Smith meant to launch the ship as soon as her hull was watertight enough. The deck, the upperworks, the fitting out of the inside and the rigging could all be done afterward. What mattered was that the colonists should have a sure refuge off the island. It might even be wise to take the ship round to Balloon Harbor — that is, as far as possible from the center of the eruption — because at the mouth of the Mercy, between the islet and the granite wall, she ran the risk of being crushed if the island broke apart. So all the workers' efforts went toward finishing the hull.
In this way they reached March 3, and they could count on the launch taking place in about ten days.
Hope came back into the hearts of these colonists, who had been so sorely tried during this fourth year of their stay on Lincoln Island! Even Pencroff seemed to come a little way out of the dark, silent gloom into which the ruin and devastation of his domain had plunged him. It is true that by then he could think of nothing but the ship, on which all his hopes were fixed.
"We'll finish her," he said to the engineer. "We'll finish her, Mr. Cyrus, and it's high time, because the season's getting on, and we'll soon be right in the middle of the equinox. Well, if we have to, we'll put in at Tabor Island and spend the winter there! But Tabor Island, after Lincoln Island! Ah, the misery of it! Who'd ever have thought I'd live to see such a thing!"
"Let's hurry!" the engineer would always answer.
And they worked without losing a moment.
"My master," Nab asked a few days later, "if Captain Nemo were still alive, do you think all this would have happened?"
"Yes, Nab," answered Cyrus Smith.
"Well, I don't believe it!" Pencroff murmured in Nab's ear.
"Neither do I!" Nab answered seriously.
During the first week of March, Mount Franklin became menacing again. Thousands of threads of glass, spun from the fluid lava, fell like rain on the ground. The crater filled with lava once more, and it spilled over down every side of the volcano. The torrent ran over the surface of the hardened tuff and finished off the thin skeletons of trees that had survived the first eruption. This time the stream followed the southwest shore of Lake Grant, ran on past Glycerin Creek and overran Prospect Plateau. This last blow to the colonists' work was a terrible one. Of the mill, the poultry-yard buildings and the stables, nothing was left. The terrified birds scattered in every direction. Top and Jup showed signs of the greatest fear, and their instinct warned them that a catastrophe was near. A good many of the island's animals had died in the first eruption. Those that survived found no other refuge than Shelduck Marsh, apart from a few that Prospect Plateau had sheltered. But that last retreat was finally closed to them too, and the river of lava, spilling over the edge of the granite wall, began to pour its cataracts of fire down onto the beach. The sublime horror of that sight is beyond all description. At night it looked like a Niagara of molten iron, with glowing vapors above it and boiling masses below!
The colonists were driven into their last stronghold, and although the upper seams of the ship were not yet caulked, they resolved to launch her!
So Pencroff and Ayrton made the preparations for the launch, which was to take place the next day, the morning of March 9.
But during that night of March 8 to 9, an enormous column of steam burst out of the crater and rose, amid frightful detonations, more than three thousand feet into the air. The wall of the Dakkar Crypt had obviously given way under the pressure of the gases, and the sea, rushing down the central chimney into that fiery abyss, had turned to steam all at once. But the crater could not give that steam a wide enough outlet. An explosion that could have been heard a hundred miles away shook the layers of the air. Pieces of mountains fell back into the Pacific, and within a few minutes the ocean covered the place where Lincoln Island had been.
A lone rock in the Pacific — The last refuge of the colonists of Lincoln Island — Death in sight — Unexpected help — Why and how it comes — The last kindness — An island on solid ground — The tomb of Captain Nemo
A lone rock thirty feet long and fifteen wide, barely ten feet out of the water — that was the only solid point the waves of the Pacific had not swallowed.
It was all that was left of the great block of Granite House! The wall had been toppled and then broken apart, and some of the rocks of the great hall had piled up in such a way as to form this highest point. Everything around it had vanished into the abyss: the lower cone of Mount Franklin, torn open by the explosion; the lava jaws of Shark Gulf; Prospect Plateau; Safety Islet; the granite of Balloon Harbor; the basalt of the Dakkar Crypt; the long Serpentine Peninsula, even though it lay so far from the center of the eruption! Of Lincoln Island, nothing could be seen now but this narrow rock, which served as a refuge for the six colonists and their dog Top.
The animals had perished in the catastrophe too, the birds as well as every other member of the island's wildlife, all of them crushed or drowned. Even poor Jup, alas, had met his death in some crevice of the ground!
If Cyrus Smith, Gédéon Spilett, Harbert, Pencroff, Nab and Ayrton had survived, it was because they had been together in their tent at the time, and had been flung into the sea at the moment when the fragments of the island were raining down on every side.
When they came back up to the surface, all they could see, half a cable length away, was this heap of rocks. They swam to it and climbed onto it.
They had been living on this bare rock for nine days! A few provisions taken from the storeroom of Granite House before the catastrophe, and a little fresh water that the rain had left in a hollow of the rock — that was all the unfortunate men possessed. Their last hope, their ship, had been smashed. They had no way of leaving this reef. They had no fire, and nothing to make one with. They were doomed to die!
That day, March 18, they had only two days' worth of preserved food left, even though they had eaten no more than the bare minimum. All their science, all their intelligence, could do nothing in such a situation. They were entirely in the hands of God.
Cyrus Smith was calm. Gédéon Spilett, more on edge, and Pencroff, in the grip of a smoldering anger, paced back and forth on the rock. Harbert never left the engineer's side, and kept looking at him as though asking him for help that he could not give. Nab and Ayrton were resigned to their fate.
"Oh, misery! Misery!" Pencroff would say again and again. "If only we had a nutshell — anything at all — to carry us to Tabor Island! But nothing! Nothing!"
"Captain Nemo did well to die!" Nab said once.
For the next five days Cyrus Smith and his unlucky companions lived with the most extreme economy, eating only just enough to keep from collapsing with hunger. They were dreadfully weak. Harbert and Nab began to show some signs of delirium.
In that situation, could they keep even a shadow of hope? No! What was their only chance? That a ship might pass within sight of the reef? But they knew very well from experience that ships never visited this part of the Pacific! Could they count on some truly providential coincidence bringing the Scottish yacht to Tabor Island to look for Ayrton at precisely this moment? It was unlikely. And besides, even supposing it did come, the colonists had never been able to leave a notice there explaining what had changed in Ayrton's situation. So the yacht's commander, after searching the islet and finding nothing, would put to sea again and head back to lower latitudes.
No! They could keep no hope at all of being saved, and a horrible death, death by hunger and thirst, awaited them on this rock!
And already they were lying stretched out on the rock, motionless, no longer aware of what was going on around them. Only Ayrton, by a last supreme effort, still lifted his head now and then and cast a despairing look over that empty sea!...
But then, on the morning of March 24, Ayrton's arms stretched out toward a point in the distance. He raised himself, first to his knees, then to his feet, and his hand seemed to be making a signal...
A ship was in sight of the island! This ship was not roaming the sea at random. The reef was her goal. She was making straight for it, under full steam, and the unfortunate castaways would have seen her hours before if they had still had the strength to watch the horizon!
"The Duncan!" murmured Ayrton, and he fell back without moving.
.........................
.........................
When Cyrus Smith and his companions came to, thanks to the care that had been lavished on them, they found themselves in a cabin aboard a steamer, with no idea how they had escaped death.
One word from Ayrton was enough to tell them everything.
"The Duncan!" he murmured.
"The Duncan!" Cyrus Smith answered.
And raising his arms toward the sky, he cried out:
"Almighty God! So it was your will that we should be saved!"
It was indeed the Duncan, Lord Glenarvan's yacht, now commanded by Robert, the son of Captain Grant. She had been sent to Tabor Island to find Ayrton and bring him home after his twelve years of atonement!...
The colonists were saved. They were already on their way home!
"Captain Robert," Cyrus Smith asked, "what on earth gave you the idea, after you left Tabor Island and found Ayrton gone, to sail a hundred miles from there to the northeast?"
"Mr. Smith," Robert Grant replied, "I was coming to find not only Ayrton, but your companions and you!"
"My companions and me?"
"Of course! On Lincoln Island!"
"Lincoln Island!" cried Gédéon Spilett, Harbert, Nab and Pencroff all together, utterly astonished.
"How do you know about Lincoln Island," asked Cyrus Smith, "when the island isn't even on the charts?"
"I learned of it from the notice you left on Tabor Island," Robert Grant answered.
"A notice?" cried Gédéon Spilett.
"Of course. Here it is," Robert Grant replied, holding out a document that gave the position of Lincoln Island in longitude and latitude, and described it as "the present home of Ayrton and five American colonists."
"Captain Nemo!..." said Cyrus Smith, when he had read the notice and recognized that it was in the same hand that had written the document found at the corral.
"Ah!" said Pencroff. "So it was him who took our Bonadventure — him who risked the trip to Tabor Island, all alone!..."
"To leave this notice there!" Harbert answered.
"So I was right," cried the sailor, "when I said that even after his death the captain would do us one last service!"
"My friends," said Cyrus Smith, in a voice deeply moved, "may the God of all mercies receive the soul of Captain Nemo, our savior!"
The colonists had bared their heads at Cyrus Smith's last words, and they murmured the captain's name.
At that moment Ayrton came up to the engineer and said simply:
"Where should I put this casket?"
It was the casket Ayrton had saved at the risk of his life at the moment the island was sinking, and now he had come to hand it over faithfully to the engineer.
"Ayrton! Ayrton!" said Cyrus Smith, deeply moved.
Then, turning to Robert Grant, he added:
"Sir, where you left a guilty man, you find a man whom atonement has made honest again, and I am proud to shake his hand!"
Robert Grant was then told the whole strange story of Captain Nemo and the colonists of Lincoln Island. Then, after taking the bearings of what was left of the reef, which from now on would have to be marked on the charts of the Pacific, he gave the order to come about.
Two weeks later the colonists landed in America, and they found their country at peace again, after the terrible war that had ended in the triumph of justice and right.
Of the riches in the casket that Captain Nemo had left to the colonists of Lincoln Island, the greater part went to buy a large estate in the state of Iowa. A single pearl, the most beautiful one, was set aside from the treasure and sent to Lady Glenarvan, in the name of the castaways the Duncan had brought home.
There, on that estate, the colonists called to work — that is, to fortune and happiness — all those to whom they had meant to offer the hospitality of Lincoln Island. There a great colony was founded, and they gave it the name of the island that had vanished into the depths of the Pacific. It had a river, which was called the Mercy; a mountain, which took the name of Franklin; a little lake, which became Lake Grant; and forests, which became the forests of the Far West. It was like an island on solid ground.
There, under the intelligent hand of the engineer and his companions, everything prospered. Not one of the old colonists of Lincoln Island was missing, for they had sworn always to live together: Nab wherever his master was; Ayrton ready to sacrifice himself at any opportunity; Pencroff more of a farmer than he had ever been a sailor; Harbert, who finished his studies under Cyrus Smith's guidance; and Gédéon Spilett himself, who founded the New Lincoln Herald, which became the best-informed newspaper in the whole world.
There Cyrus Smith and his companions were visited several times by Lord and Lady Glenarvan; by Captain John Mangles and his wife, Robert Grant's sister; by Robert Grant himself; by Major McNabbs; by all those who had played a part in the twin stories of Captain Grant and Captain Nemo.
There, at last, they were all happy, united in the present as they had been in the past. But they were never to forget that island where they had arrived poor and naked, the island that for four years had supplied all their needs, and of which nothing now remained but a block of granite beaten by the waves of the Pacific — the tomb of the man who had been Captain Nemo!