In Search of the Castaways; or the Children of Captain Grant

CHAPTER XXIV PAGANEL’S DISCLOSURE

PRO­FOUND as­ton­ish­ment greet­ed these un­ex­pect­ed words of the learned ge­og­ra­pher. What could he mean? Had he lost his sense? He spoke with such con­vic­tion, how­ev­er, that all eyes turned to­ward Gle­nar­van, for Pa­ganel’s af­fir­ma­tion was a di­rect an­swer to his ques­tion, but Gle­nar­van shook his head, and said noth­ing, though ev­ident­ly he was not in­clined to fa­vor his friend’s views.

“Yes,” be­gan Pa­ganel again, as soon as he had re­cov­ered him­self a lit­tle; “yes, we have gone a wrong track, and read on the doc­ument what was nev­er there.”

“Ex­plain your­self, Pa­ganel,” said the Ma­jor, “and more calm­ly if you can.”

“The thing is very sim­ple, Ma­jor. Like you, I was in er­ror; like you, I had rushed at a false in­ter­pre­ta­tion, un­til about an in­stant ago, on the top of the tree, when I was an­swer­ing your ques­tions, just as I pro­nounced the word ‘Aus­tralia,’ a sud­den flash came across my mind, and the doc­ument be­came clear as day.”

“What!” ex­claimed Gle­nar­van, “you mean to say that Har­ry Grant–“

“I mean to say,” replied Pa­ganel, “that the word AUS­TRAL that oc­curs in the doc­ument is not a com­plete word, as we have sup­posed up till now, but just the root of the word AUS­TRALIE.”

“Well, that would be strange,” said the Ma­jor.

“Strange!” re­peat­ed Gle­nar­van, shrug­ging his shoul­ders; “it is sim­ply im­pos­si­ble.”

“Im­pos­si­ble?” re­turned Pa­ganel. “That is a word we don’t al­low in France.”

“What!” con­tin­ued Gle­nar­van, in a tone of the most pro­found in­creduli­ty, “you dare to con­tend, with the doc­ument in your hand, that the ship­wreck of the BRI­TAN­NIA hap­pened on the shores of Aus­tralia.”

“I am sure of it,” replied Pa­ganel.

“My con­science,” ex­claimed Gle­nar­van, “I must say I am sur­prised at such a dec­la­ra­tion from the Sec­re­tary of a Ge­ograph­ical So­ci­ety!”

“And why so?” said Pa­ganel, touched in his weak point.

“Be­cause, if you al­low the word AUS­TRALIE! you must al­so al­low the word IN­DI­ENS, and In­di­ans are nev­er seen there.”

Pa­ganel was not the least sur­prised at this re­join­der. Doubt­less he ex­pect­ed it, for he be­gan to smile, and said:

“My dear Gle­nar­van, don’t tri­umph over me too fast. I am go­ing to floor you com­plete­ly, and nev­er was an En­glish­man more thor­ough­ly de­feat­ed than you will be. It will be the re­venge for Cressy and Ag­in­court.”

“I wish noth­ing bet­ter. Take your re­venge, Pa­ganel.”

“Lis­ten, then. In the text of the doc­ument, there is nei­ther men­tion of the In­di­ans nor of Patag­onia! The in­com­plete word IN­DI does not mean IN­DI­ENS, but of course, IN­DI­GENES, abo­rig­ines! Now, do you ad­mit that there are abo­rig­ines in Aus­tralia?”

“Bra­vo, Pa­ganel!” said the Ma­jor.

“Well, do you agree to my in­ter­pre­ta­tion, my dear Lord?” asked the ge­og­ra­pher again.

“Yes,” replied Gle­nar­van, “if you will prove to me that the frag­ment of a word GO­NIE, does not re­fer to the coun­try of the Patag­oni­ans.”

“Cer­tain­ly it does not. It has noth­ing to do with Patag­onia,” said Pa­ganel. “Read it any way you please ex­cept that.”

“How?”

“_Cos­mogo­nie, theogo­nie, ag­onie_.”

“AG­ONIE,” said the Ma­jor.

“I don’t care which,” re­turned Pa­ganel. “The word is quite unim­por­tant; I will not even try to find out its mean­ing. The main point is that AUS­TRAL means AUS­TRALIE, and we must have gone blind­ly on a wrong track not to have dis­cov­ered the ex­pla­na­tion at the very be­gin­ning, it was so ev­ident. If I had found the doc­ument my­self, and my judg­ment had not been mis­led by your in­ter­pre­ta­tion, I should nev­er have read it dif­fer­ent­ly.”

A burst of hur­rahs, and con­grat­ula­tions, and com­pli­ments fol­lowed Pa­ganel’s words. Austin and the sailors, and the Ma­jor and Robert, most all over­joyed at this fresh hope, ap­plaud­ed him hearti­ly; while even Gle­nar­van, whose eyes were grad­ual­ly get­ting open, was al­most pre­pared to give in.

“I on­ly want to know one thing more, my dear Pa­ganel,” he said, “and then I must bow to your per­spi­cac­ity.”

“What is it?”

“How will you group the words to­geth­er ac­cord­ing to your new in­ter­pre­ta­tion? How will the doc­ument read?”

“Eas­ily enough an­swered. Here is the doc­ument,” replied Pa­ganel, tak­ing out the pre­cious pa­per he had been study­ing so con­sci­en­tious­ly for the last few days.

For a few min­utes there was com­plete si­lence, while the wor­thy SA­VANT took time to col­lect his thoughts be­fore com­ply­ing with his lord­ship’s re­quest. Then putting his fin­ger on the words, and em­pha­siz­ing some of them, he be­gan as fol­lows:

“‘_Le 7 juin_ 1862 _le trois-​mats Bri­tan­nia de Glas­gow a som­bre apres_,’– put, if you please, ‘_deux jours, trois jours_,’ or ‘_une longue ag­onie_,’ it doesn’t sig­ni­fy, it is quite a mat­ter of in­dif­fer­ence,–’_sur les cotes de l’Aus­tralie. Se dirigeant a terre, deux matelots et le Cap­itaine Grant vont es­say­er d’abor­der_,’ or ‘_ont abor­de le con­ti­nent ou ils seront_,’ or, ‘_sont pris­on­niers de cru­els in­di­genes. Ils ont jete ce doc­uments_,’ etc. Is that clear?”

“Clear enough,” replied Gle­nar­van, “if the word con­ti­nent can be ap­plied to Aus­tralia, which is on­ly an is­land.”

“Make your­self easy about that, my dear Gle­nar­van; the best ge­og­ra­phers have agreed to call the is­land the Aus­tralian Con­ti­nent.”

V. IV Verne

“Then all I have now to say is, my friends,” said Gle­nar­van, “away to Aus­tralia, and may Heav­en help us!”

“To Aus­tralia!” echoed his com­pan­ions, with one voice.

“I tell you what, Pa­ganel,” added Gle­nar­van, “your be­ing on board the DUN­CAN is a per­fect prov­idence.”

“All right. Look on me as a mes­sen­ger of prov­idence, and let us drop the sub­ject.”

So the con­ver­sa­tion end­ed–a con­ver­sa­tion which great re­sults were to fol­low; it com­plete­ly changed the moral con­di­tion of the trav­el­ers; it gave the clew of the labyrinth in which they had thought them­selves hope­less­ly en­tan­gled, and, amid their ru­ined projects, in­spired them with fresh hope. They could now quit the Amer­ican Con­ti­nent with­out the least hes­ita­tion, and al­ready their thoughts had flown to the Aus­tralias. In go­ing on board the DUN­CAN again they would not bring de­spair with them, and La­dy He­le­na and Mary Grant would not have to mourn the ir­re­vo­ca­ble loss of Cap­tain Grant. This thought so filled them with joy that they for­got all the dan­gers of their ac­tu­al sit­ua­tion, and on­ly re­gret­ted that they could not start im­me­di­ate­ly.

It was about four o’clock in the af­ter­noon, and they de­ter­mined to have sup­per at six. Pa­ganel wished to get up a splen­did spread in hon­or of the oc­ca­sion, but as the ma­te­ri­als were very scanty, he pro­posed to Robert to go and hunt in the neigh­bor­ing for­est. Robert clapped his hands at the idea, so they took Thal­cave’s pow­der flask, cleaned the re­volvers and load­ed them with small shot, and set off.

“Don’t go too far,” said the Ma­jor, grave­ly, to the two hunters.

Af­ter their de­par­ture, Gle­nar­van and Mc­Nabbs went down to ex­am­ine the state of the wa­ter by look­ing at the notch­es they had made on the tree, and Wil­son and Mul­rady re­plen­ished the fire.

No sign of de­crease ap­peared on the sur­face of the im­mense lake, yet the flood seemed to have reached its max­imum height; but the vi­olence with which it rushed from the south to north proved that the equi­lib­ri­um of the Ar­gen­tine rivers was not re­stored. Be­fore get­ting low­er the liq­uid mass must re­main sta­tion­ary, as in the case with the ocean be­fore the ebb tide com­mences.

While Gle­nar­van and his cousin were mak­ing these ob­ser­va­tions, the re­port of firearms re­sound­ed fre­quent­ly above their heads, and the ju­bi­lant out­cries of the two sports­men–for Pa­ganel was ev­ery whit as much a child as Robert. They were hav­ing a fine time of it among the thick leaves, judg­ing by the peals of laugh­ter which rang out in the boy’s clear tre­ble voice and Pa­ganel’s deep bass. The chase was ev­ident­ly suc­cess­ful, and won­ders in culi­nary art might be ex­pect­ed. Wil­son had a good idea to be­gin with, which he had skil­ful­ly car­ried out; for when Gle­nar­van came back to the brasi­er, he found that the brave fel­low had ac­tu­al­ly man­aged to catch, with on­ly a pin and a piece of string, sev­er­al dozen small fish, as del­icate as smelts, called MO­JAR­RAS, which were all jump­ing about in a fold of his pon­cho, ready to be con­vert­ed in­to an exquisite dish.

At the same mo­ment the hunters reap­peared. Pa­ganel was care­ful­ly car­ry­ing some black swal­lows’ eggs, and a string of spar­rows, which he meant to serve up lat­er un­der the name of field larks. Robert had been clever enough to bring down sev­er­al brace of HILGUEROS, small green and yel­low birds, which are ex­cel­lent eat­ing, and great­ly in de­mand in the Mon­te­video mar­ket. Pa­ganel, who knew fifty ways of dress­ing eggs, was obliged for this once to be con­tent with sim­ply hard­en­ing them on the hot em­bers. But notwith­stand­ing this, the viands at the meal were both dain­ty and var­ied. The dried beef, hard eggs, grilled MO­JAR­RAS, spar­rows, and roast HILGUEROS, made one of those gala feasts the mem­ory of which is im­per­ish­able.

The con­ver­sa­tion was very an­imat­ed. Many com­pli­ments were paid Pa­ganel on his twofold tal­ents as hunter and cook, which the SA­VANT ac­cept­ed with the mod­esty which char­ac­ter­izes true mer­it. Then he turned the con­ver­sa­tion on the pe­cu­liar­ities of the OM­BU, un­der whose canopy they had found shel­ter, and whose depths he de­clared were im­mense.

“Robert and I,” he added, jest­ing­ly, “thought our­selves hunt­ing in the open for­est. I was afraid, for the minute, we should lose our­selves, for I could not find the road. The sun was sink­ing be­low the hori­zon; I sought vain­ly for foot­marks; I be­gan to feel the sharp pangs of hunger, and the gloomy depths of the for­est re­sound­ed al­ready with the roar of wild beasts. No, not that; there are no wild beasts here, I am sor­ry to say.”

“What!” ex­claimed Gle­nar­van, “you are sor­ry there are no wild beasts?”

“Cer­tain­ly I am.”

“And yet we should have ev­ery rea­son to dread their fe­roc­ity.”

“Their fe­roc­ity is non-​ex­is­tent, sci­en­tif­ical­ly speak­ing,” replied the learned ge­og­ra­pher.

“Now come, Pa­ganel,” said the Ma­jor, “you’ll nev­er make me ad­mit the util­ity of wild beasts. What good are they?”

“Why, Ma­jor,” ex­claimed Pa­ganel, “for pur­pos­es of clas­si­fi­ca­tion in­to or­ders, and fam­ilies, and species, and sub-​species.”

“A mighty ad­van­tage, cer­tain­ly!” replied Mc­Nabbs, “I could dis­pense with all that. If I had been one of Noah’s com­pan­ions at the time of the del­uge, I should most as­sured­ly have hin­dered the im­pru­dent pa­tri­arch from putting in pairs of li­ons, and tigers, and pan­thers, and bears, and such an­imals, for they are as malev­olent as they are use­less.”

“You would have done that?” asked Pa­ganel.

“Yes, I would.”

“Well, you would have done wrong in a zo­olog­ical point of view,” re­turned Pa­ganel.

“But not in a hu­man­itar­ian one,” re­joined the Ma­jor.

“It is shock­ing!” replied Pa­ganel. “Why, for my part, on the con­trary, I should have tak­en spe­cial care to pre­serve megath­eri­ums and ptero­dactyles, and all the an­te­dilu­vian species of which we are un­for­tu­nate­ly de­prived by his ne­glect.”

“And I say,” re­turned Mc­Nabbs, “that Noah did a very good thing when he aban­doned them to their fate–that is, if they lived in his day.”

“And I say he did a very bad thing,” re­tort­ed Pa­ganel, “and he has just­ly mer­it­ed the male­dic­tion of SA­VANTS to the end of time!”

The rest of the par­ty could not help laugh­ing at hear­ing the two friends dis­put­ing over old Noah. Con­trary to all his prin­ci­ples, the Ma­jor, who all his life had nev­er dis­put­ed with any­one, was al­ways spar­ring with Pa­ganel. The ge­og­ra­pher seemed to have a pe­cu­liar­ly ex­cit­ing ef­fect on him.

Gle­nar­van, as usu­al, al­ways the peace­mak­er, in­ter­fered in the de­bate, and said:

“Whether the loss of fe­ro­cious an­imals is to be re­gret­ted or not, in a sci­en­tif­ic point of view, there is no help for it now; we must be con­tent to do with­out them. Pa­ganel can hard­ly ex­pect to meet with wild beasts in this aeri­al for­est.”

“Why not?” asked the ge­og­ra­pher.

“Wild beasts on a tree!” ex­claimed Tom Austin.

“Yes, un­doubt­ed­ly. The Amer­ican tiger, the jaguar, takes refuge in the trees, when the chase gets too hot for him. It is quite pos­si­ble that one of these an­imals, sur­prised by the in­un­da­tion, might have climbed up in­to this OM­BU, and be hid­ing now among its thick fo­liage.”

“You haven’t met any of them, at any rate, I sup­pose?” said the Ma­jor.

“No,” replied Pa­ganel, “though we hunt­ed all through the wood. It is vex­ing, for it would have been a splen­did chase. A jaguar is a blood­thirsty, fe­ro­cious crea­ture. He can twist the neck of a horse with a sin­gle stroke of his paw. When he has once tast­ed hu­man flesh he scents it greed­ily. He likes to eat an In­di­an best, and next to him a ne­gro, then a mu­lat­to, and last of all a white man.”

“I am de­light­ed to hear we come num­ber four,” said Mc­Nabbs.

“That on­ly proves you are in­sipid,” re­tort­ed Pa­ganel, with an air of dis­dain.

“I am de­light­ed to be in­sipid,” was the Ma­jor’s re­ply.

“Well, it is hu­mil­iat­ing enough,” said the in­tractable Pa­ganel. “The white man pro­claimed him­self chief of the hu­man race; but Mr. Jaguar is of a dif­fer­ent opin­ion it seems.”

“Be that as it may, my brave Pa­ganel, see­ing there are nei­ther In­di­ans, nor ne­groes, nor mu­lat­toes among us, I am quite re­joiced at the ab­sence of your beloved jaguars. Our sit­ua­tion is not so par­tic­ular­ly agree­able.”

“What! not agree­able!” ex­claimed Pa­ganel, jump­ing at the word as like­ly to give a new turn to the con­ver­sa­tion. “You are com­plain­ing of your lot, Gle­nar­van.”

“I should think so, in­deed,” replied Gle­nar­van. “Do you find these un­com­fort­able hard branch­es very lux­uri­ous?”

“I have nev­er been more com­fort­able, even in my study. We live like the birds, we sing and fly about. I be­gin to be­lieve men were in­tend­ed to live on trees.”

“But they want wings,” sug­gest­ed the Ma­jor.

“They’ll make them some day.”

“And till then,” put in Gle­nar­van, “with your leave, I pre­fer the grav­el of a park, or the floor of a house, or the deck of a ship, to this aeri­al dwelling.”

“We must take things as they come, Gle­nar­van,” re­turned Pa­ganel. “If good, so much the bet­ter; if bad, nev­er mind. Ah, I see you are wish­ing you had all the com­forts of Mal­colm Cas­tle.”

“No, but–“

“I am quite cer­tain Robert is per­fect­ly hap­py,” in­ter­rupt­ed Pa­ganel, ea­ger to in­sure one par­ti­san at least.

“Yes, that I am!” ex­claimed Robert, in a joy­ous tone.

“At his age it is quite nat­ural,” replied Gle­nar­van.

“And at mine, too,” re­turned the ge­og­ra­pher. “The few­er one’s com­forts, the few­er one’s needs; and the few­er one’s needs, the greater one’s hap­pi­ness.”

“Now, now,” said the Ma­jor, “here is Pa­ganel run­ning a tilt against rich­es and gilt ceil­ings.”

“No, Mc­Nabbs,” replied the SA­VANT, “I’m not; but if you like, I’ll tell you a lit­tle Ara­bi­an sto­ry that comes in­to my mind, very APRO­POS this minute.”

“Oh, do, do,” said Robert.

“And what is your sto­ry to prove, Pa­ganel?” in­quired the Ma­jor.

“Much what all sto­ries prove, my brave com­rade.”

“Not much then,” re­joined Mc­Nabbs. “But go on, Scheherazade, and tell us the sto­ry.”

“There was once,” said Pa­ganel, “a son of the great Haroun-​al-​Raschid, who was un­hap­py, and went to con­sult an old Dervish. The old sage told him that hap­pi­ness was a dif­fi­cult thing to find in this world. ‘How­ev­er,’ he added, ‘I know an in­fal­li­ble means of procur­ing your hap­pi­ness.’ ‘What is it?’ asked the young Prince. ‘It is to put the shirt of a hap­py man on your shoul­ders.’ Where­upon the Prince em­braced the old man, and set out at once to search for his tal­is­man. He vis­it­ed all the cap­ital cities in the world. He tried on the shirts of kings, and em­per­ors, and princes and no­bles; but all in vain: he could not find a man among them that was hap­py. Then he put on the shirts of artists, and war­riors, and mer­chants; but these were no bet­ter. By this time he had trav­eled a long way, with­out find­ing what he sought. At last he be­gan to de­spair of suc­cess, and be­gan sor­row­ful­ly to re­trace his steps back to his fa­ther’s palace, when one day he heard an hon­est peas­ant singing so mer­ri­ly as he drove the plow, that he thought, ‘Sure­ly this man is hap­py, if there is such a thing as hap­pi­ness on earth.’ Forth­with he ac­cost­ed him, and said, ‘Are you hap­py?’ ‘Yes,’ was the re­ply. ‘There is noth­ing you de­sire?’ ‘Noth­ing.’ ‘You would not change your lot for that of a king?’ ‘Nev­er!’ ‘Well, then, sell me your shirt.’ ‘My shirt! I haven’t one!’”