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

CHAPTER III CAPE TOWN AND M. VIOT

As John Man­gles in­tend­ed to put in at the Cape of Good Hope for coals, he was obliged to de­vi­ate a lit­tle from the 37th par­al­lel, and go two de­grees north. In less than six days he cleared the thir­teen hun­dred miles which sep­arate the point of Africa from Tris­tan d’Acun­ha, and on the 24th of Novem­ber, at 3 P. M. the Ta­ble Moun­tain was sight­ed. At eight o’clock they en­tered the bay, and cast an­chor in the port of Cape Town. They sailed away next morn­ing at day­break.

Be­tween the Cape and Am­ster­dam Is­land there is a dis­tance of 2,900 miles, but with a good sea and fa­vor­ing breeze, this was on­ly a ten day’s voy­age. The el­ements were now no longer at war with the trav­el­ers, as on their jour­ney across the Pam­pas– air and wa­ter seemed in league to help them for­ward.

“Ah! the sea! the sea!” ex­claimed Pa­ganel, “it is the field _par ex­cel­lence_ for the ex­er­cise of hu­man en­er­gies, and the ship is the true ve­hi­cle of civ­iliza­tion. Think, my friends, if the globe had been on­ly an im­mense con­ti­nent, the thou­sandth part of it would still be un­known to us, even in this nine­teenth cen­tu­ry. See how it is in the in­te­ri­or of great coun­tries. In the steppes of Siberia, in the plains of Cen­tral Asia, in the deserts of Africa, in the prairies of Amer­ica, in the im­mense wilds of Aus­tralia, in the icy soli­tudes of the Poles, man scarce­ly dares to ven­ture; the most dar­ing shrinks back, the most coura­geous suc­cumbs. They can­not pen­etrate them; the means of trans­port are in­suf­fi­cient, and the heat and dis­ease, and sav­age dis­po­si­tion of the na­tives, are im­pass­able ob­sta­cles. Twen­ty miles of desert sep­arate men more than five hun­dred miles of ocean.”

Pa­ganel spoke with such warmth that even the Ma­jor had noth­ing to say against this pan­egyric of the ocean. In­deed, if the find­ing of Har­ry Grant had in­volved fol­low­ing a par­al­lel across con­ti­nents in­stead of oceans, the en­ter­prise could not have been at­tempt­ed; but the sea was there ready to car­ry the trav­el­ers from one coun­try to an­oth­er, and on the 6th of De­cem­ber, at the first streak of day, they saw a fresh moun­tain ap­par­ent­ly emerg­ing from the bo­som of the waves.

This was Am­ster­dam Is­land, sit­uat­ed in 37 de­grees 47 min­utes lat­itude and 77 de­grees 24 min­utes lon­gi­tude, the high cone of which in clear weath­er is vis­ible fifty miles off. At eight o’clock, its form, in­dis­tinct though it still was, seemed al­most a re­pro­duc­tion of Tener­iffe.

“And con­se­quent­ly it must re­sem­ble Tris­tan d’Acun­ha,” ob­served Gle­nar­van.

“A very wise con­clu­sion,” said Pa­ganel, “ac­cord­ing to the ge­omet­ro­graph­ic ax­iom that two is­lands re­sem­bling a third must have a com­mon like­ness. I will on­ly add that, like Tris­tan d’Acun­ha, Am­ster­dam Is­land is equal­ly rich in seals and Robin­sons.”

“There are Robin­sons ev­ery­where, then?” said La­dy He­le­na.

“In­deed, Madam,” replied Pa­ganel, “I know few is­lands with­out some tale of the kind ap­per­tain­ing to them, and the ro­mance of your im­mor­tal coun­try­man, Daniel De­foe, has been of­ten enough re­al­ized be­fore his day.”

“Mon­sieur Pa­ganel,” said Mary, “may I ask you a ques­tion?”

“Two if you like, my dear young la­dy, and I promise to an­swer them.”

“Well, then, I want to know if you would be very much fright­ened at the idea of be­ing cast away alone on a desert is­land.”

“I?” ex­claimed Pa­ganel.

“Come now, my good fel­low,” said the Ma­jor, “don’t go and tell us that it is your most cher­ished de­sire.”

“I don’t pre­tend it is that, but still, af­ter all, such an ad­ven­ture would not be very un­pleas­ant to me. I should be­gin a new life; I should hunt and fish; I should choose a grot­to for my domi­cile in Win­ter and a tree in Sum­mer. I should make store­hous­es for my har­vests: in one word, I should col­onize my is­land.”

“All by your­self?”

“All by my­self if I was obliged. Be­sides, are we ev­er obliged? Can­not one find friends among the an­imals, and choose some tame kid or elo­quent par­rot or ami­able mon­key? And if a lucky chance should send one a com­pan­ion like the faith­ful Fri­day, what more is need­ed? Two friends on a rock, there is hap­pi­ness. Sup­pose now, the Ma­jor and I–“

“Thank you,” replied the Ma­jor, in­ter­rupt­ing him; “I have no in­cli­na­tion in that line, and should make a very poor Robin­son Cru­soe.”

“My dear Mon­sieur Pa­ganel,” said La­dy He­le­na, “you are let­ting your imag­ina­tion run away with you, as usu­al. But the dream is very dif­fer­ent from the re­al­ity. You are think­ing of an imag­inary Robin­son’s life, thrown on a picked is­land and treat­ed like a spoiled child by na­ture. You on­ly see the sun­ny side.”

“What, madam! You don’t be­lieve a man could be hap­py on a desert is­land?”

“I do not. Man is made for so­ci­ety and not for soli­tude, and soli­tude can on­ly en­gen­der de­spair. It is a ques­tion of time. At the out­set it is quite pos­si­ble that ma­te­ri­al wants and the very ne­ces­si­ties of ex­is­tence may en­gross the poor ship­wrecked fel­low, just snatched from the waves; but af­ter­ward, when he feels him­self alone, far from his fel­low men, with­out any hope of see­ing coun­try and friends again, what must he think, what must he suf­fer? His lit­tle is­land is all his world. The whole hu­man race is shut up in him­self, and when death comes, which ut­ter lone­li­ness will make ter­ri­ble, he will be like the last man on the last day of the world. Be­lieve me, Mon­sieur Pa­ganel, such a man is not to be en­vied.”

Pa­ganel gave in, though re­gret­ful­ly, to the ar­gu­ments of La­dy He­le­na, and still kept up a dis­cus­sion on the ad­van­tages and dis­ad­van­tages of Iso­la­tion, till the very mo­ment the DUN­CAN dropped an­chor about a mile off Am­ster­dam Is­land.

This lone­ly group in the In­di­an Ocean con­sists of two dis­tinct is­lands, thir­ty-​three miles apart, and sit­uat­ed ex­act­ly on the merid­ian of the In­di­an penin­su­la. To the north is Am­ster­dam Is­land, and to the south St. Paul; but they have been of­ten con­found­ed by ge­og­ra­phers and nav­iga­tors.

At the time of the DUN­CAN’S vis­it to the is­land, the pop­ula­tion con­sist­ed of three peo­ple, a French­man and two mu­lat­toes, all three em­ployed by the mer­chant pro­pri­etor. Pa­ganel was de­light­ed to shake hands with a coun­try­man in the per­son of good old Mon­sieur Viot. He was far ad­vanced in years, but did the hon­ors of the place with much po­lite­ness. It was a hap­py day for him when these kind­ly strangers touched at his is­land, for St. Pe­ter’s was on­ly fre­quent­ed by seal-​fish­ers, and now and then a whaler, the crews of which are usu­al­ly rough, coarse men.

M. Viot pre­sent­ed his sub­jects, the two mu­lat­toes. They com­posed the whole liv­ing pop­ula­tion of the is­land, ex­cept a few wild boars in the in­te­ri­or and myr­iads of pen­guins. The lit­tle house where the three soli­tary men lived was in the heart of a nat­ural bay on the south­east, formed by the crum­bling away of a por­tion of the moun­tain.

Twice over in the ear­ly part of the cen­tu­ry, Am­ster­dam Is­land be­came the coun­try of de­sert­ed sailors, prov­iden­tial­ly saved from mis­ery and death; but since these events no ves­sel had been lost on its coast. Had any ship­wreck oc­curred, some frag­ments must have been thrown on the sandy shore, and any poor suf­fer­ers from it would have found their way to M. Viot’s fish­ing-​huts. The old man had been long on the is­land, and had nev­er been called up­on to ex­er­cise such hos­pi­tal­ity. Of the BRI­TAN­NIA and Cap­tain Grant he knew noth­ing, but he was cer­tain that the dis­as­ter had not hap­pened on Am­ster­dam Is­land, nor on the islet called St. Paul, for whalers and fish­ing-​ves­sels went there con­stant­ly, and must have heard of it.

Gle­nar­van was nei­ther sur­prised nor vexed at the re­ply; in­deed, his ob­ject in ask­ing was rather to es­tab­lish the fact that Cap­tain Grant had not been there than that he had. This done, they were ready to pro­ceed on their voy­age next day.

They ram­bled about the is­land till evening, as its ap­pear­ance was very invit­ing. Its FAU­NA and FLO­RA, how­ev­er, were poor in the ex­treme. The on­ly spec­imens of quadrupeds, birds, fish and cetacea were a few wild boars, stormy pe­trels, al­ba­tross­es, perch and seals. Here and there ther­mal springs and chaly­beate wa­ters es­caped from the black la­va, and thin dark va­pors rose above the vol­canic soil. Some of these springs were very hot. John Man­gles held his ther­mome­ter in one of them, and found the tem­per­ature was 176 de­grees Fahren­heit. Fish caught in the sea a few yards off, cooked in five min­utes in these all but boil­ing wa­ters, a fact which made Pa­ganel re­solve not to at­tempt to bathe in them.

To­ward evening, af­ter a long prom­enade, Gle­nar­van and his par­ty bade adieu to the good old M. Viot, and re­turned to the yacht, wish­ing him all the hap­pi­ness pos­si­ble on his desert is­land, and re­ceiv­ing in re­turn the old man’s bless­ing on their ex­pe­di­tion.