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

CHAPTER VIII THE GEOGRAPHER’S RESOLUTION

MEAN­TIME the yacht, fa­vored by the cur­rents from the north of Africa, was mak­ing rapid progress to­ward the equa­tor. On the 30th of Au­gust they sight­ed the Madeira group of is­lands, and Gle­nar­van, true to his promise, of­fered to put in there, and land his new guest.

But Pa­ganel said:

“My dear Lord, I won’t stand on cer­emo­ny with you. Tell me, did you in­tend to stop at Madeira be­fore I came on board?”

“No,” replied Gle­nar­van.

“Well, then, al­low me to prof­it by my un­lucky mis­take. Madeira is an is­land too well known to be of much in­ter­est now to a ge­og­ra­pher. Ev­ery thing about this group has been said and writ­ten al­ready. Be­sides, it is com­plete­ly go­ing down as far as wine grow­ing is con­cerned. Just imag­ine no vines to speak of be­ing in Madeira! In 1813, 22,000 pipes of wine were made there, and in 1845 the num­ber fell to 2,669. It is a grievous spec­ta­cle! If it is all the same to you, we might go on to the Ca­nary Isles in­stead.”

“Cer­tain­ly. It will not the least in­ter­fere with our route.”

“I know it will not, my dear Lord. In the Ca­nary Is­lands, you see, there are three groups to study, be­sides the Peak of Tener­iffe, which I al­ways wished to vis­it. This is an op­por­tu­ni­ty, and I should like to avail my­self of it, and make the as­cent of the fa­mous moun­tain while I am wait­ing for a ship to take me back to Eu­rope.”

“As you please, my dear Pa­ganel,” said Lord Gle­nar­van, though he could not help smil­ing; and no won­der, for these is­lands are scarce­ly 250 miles from Madeira, a tri­fling dis­tance for such a quick sail­er as the DUN­CAN.

Next day, about 2 P. M., John Man­gles and Pa­ganel were walk­ing on the poop. The French­man was as­sail­ing his com­pan­ion with all sorts of ques­tions about Chili, when all at once the cap­tain in­ter­rupt­ed him, and point­ing to­ward the south­ern hori­zon, said:

“Mon­sieur Pa­ganel?”

“Yes, my dear Cap­tain.”

“Be so good as to look in this di­rec­tion. Don’t you see any­thing?”

“Noth­ing.”

“You’re not look­ing in the right place. It is not on the hori­zon, but above it in the clouds.”

“In the clouds? I might well not see.”

“There, there, by the up­per end of the bowsprit.”

“I see noth­ing.”

“Then you don’t want to see. Any­way, though we are forty miles off, yet I tell you the Peak of Tener­iffe is quite vis­ible yon­der above the hori­zon.”

But whether Pa­ganel could not or would not see it then, two hours lat­er he was forced to yield to oc­ular ev­idence or own him­self blind.

“You do see it at last, then,” said John Man­gles.

“Yes, yes, dis­tinct­ly,” replied Pa­ganel, adding in a dis­dain­ful tone, “and that’s what they call the Peak of Tener­iffe!”

“That’s the Peak.”

“It doesn’t look much of a height.”

“It is 11,000 feet, though, above the lev­el of the sea.”

“That is not equal to Mont Blanc.”

“Like­ly enough, but when you come to as­cend it, prob­ably you’ll think it high enough.”

“Oh, as­cend it! as­cend it, my dear cap­tain! What would be the good af­ter Hum­boldt and Bon­plan? That Hum­boldt was a great ge­nius. He made the as­cent of this moun­tain, and has giv­en a de­scrip­tion of it which leaves noth­ing un­said. He tells us that it com­pris­es five dif­fer­ent zones–the zone of the vines, the zone of the lau­rels, the zone of the pines, the zone of the Alpine heaths, and, last­ly, the zone of steril­ity. He set his foot on the very sum­mit, and found that there was not even room enough to sit down. The view from the sum­mit was very ex­ten­sive, stretch­ing over an area equal to Spain. Then he went right down in­to the vol­cano, and ex­am­ined the ex­tinct crater. What could I do, I should like you to tell me, af­ter that great man?”

“Well, cer­tain­ly, there isn’t much left to glean. That is vex­ing, too, for you would find it dull work wait­ing for a ves­sel in the Peak of Tener­iffe.”

“But, I say, Man­gles, my dear fel­low, are there no ports in the Cape Verde Is­lands that we might touch at?”

“Oh, yes, noth­ing would be eas­ier than putting you off at Vil­la Praya.”

“And then I should have one ad­van­tage, which is by no means in­con­sid­er­able–I should find fel­low-​coun­try­men at Sene­gal, and that is not far away from those is­lands. I am quite aware that the group is said to be de­void of much in­ter­est, and wild, and un­healthy; but ev­ery­thing is cu­ri­ous in the eyes of a ge­og­ra­pher. See­ing is a sci­ence. There are peo­ple who do not know how to use their eyes, and who trav­el about with as much in­tel­li­gence as a shell-​fish. But that’s not in my line, I as­sure you.”

“Please your­self, Mon­sieur Pa­ganel. I have no doubt ge­ograph­ical sci­ence will be a gain­er by your so­journ in the Cape Verde Is­lands. We must go in there any­how for coal, so your dis­em­barka­tion will not oc­ca­sion the least de­lay.”

The cap­tain gave im­me­di­ate or­ders for the yacht to con­tin­ue her route, steer­ing to the west of the Ca­nary group, and leav­ing Tener­iffe on her lar­board. She made rapid progress, and passed the Trop­ic of Can­cer on the sec­ond of Septem­ber at 5 A. M.

The weath­er now be­gan to change, and the at­mo­sphere be­came damp and heavy. It was the rainy sea­son, “_le tem­po das aguas_,” as the Span­ish call it, a try­ing sea­son to trav­el­ers, but use­ful to the in­hab­itants of the African Is­lands, who lack trees and con­se­quent­ly wa­ter. The rough weath­er pre­vent­ed the pas­sen­gers from go­ing on deck, but did not make the con­ver­sa­tion any less an­imat­ed in the sa­loon.

On the 3d of Septem­ber Pa­ganel be­gan to col­lect his lug­gage to go on shore. The DUN­CAN was al­ready steam­ing among the Is­lands. She passed Sal, a com­plete tomb of sand ly­ing bar­ren and des­olate, and went on among the vast coral reefs and athwart the Isle of St. Jacques, with its long chain of basaltic moun­tains, till she en­tered the port of Vil­la Praya and an­chored in eight fath­oms of wa­ter be­fore the town. The weath­er was fright­ful, and the surf ex­ces­sive­ly vi­olent, though the bay was shel­tered from the sea winds. The rain fell in such tor­rents that the town was scarce­ly vis­ible through it. It rose on a plain in the form of a ter­race, but­tressed on vol­canic rocks three hun­dred feet high. The ap­pear­ance of the is­land through the thick veil of rain was mourn­ful in the ex­treme.

La­dy He­le­na could not go on shore as she had pur­posed; in­deed, even coal­ing was a dif­fi­cult busi­ness, and the pas­sen­gers had to con­tent them­selves be­low the poop as best they might. Nat­ural­ly enough, the main top­ic of con­ver­sa­tion was the weath­er. Ev­ery­body had some­thing to say about it ex­cept the Ma­jor, who sur­veyed the uni­ver­sal del­uge with the ut­most in­dif­fer­ence. Pa­ganel walked up and down shak­ing his head.

“It is clear enough, Pa­ganel,” said Lord Gle­nar­van, “that the el­ements are against you.”

“I’ll be even with them for all that,” replied the French­man.

“You could not face rain like that, Mon­sieur Pa­ganel,” said La­dy He­le­na.

“Oh, quite well, madam, as far as I my­self am con­cerned. It is for my lug­gage and in­stru­ments that I am afraid. Ev­ery­thing will be ru­ined.”

“The dis­em­bark­ing is the worst part of the busi­ness. Once at Vil­la Praya you might man­age to find pret­ty good quar­ters. They wouldn’t be over clean, and you might find the mon­keys and pigs not al­ways the most agree­able com­pan­ions. But trav­el­ers are not too par­tic­ular, and, more­over, in sev­en or eight months you would get a ship, I dare say, to take you back to Eu­rope.”

“Sev­en or eight months!” ex­claimed Pa­ganel.

“At least. The Cape Verde Is­lands are not much fre­quent­ed by ships dur­ing the rainy sea­son. But you can em­ploy your time use­ful­ly. This archipela­go is still but lit­tle known.”

“You can go up the large rivers,” sug­gest­ed La­dy He­le­na.

“There are none, madam.”

“Well, then, the small ones.”

“There are none, madam.”

“The run­ning brooks, then.”

“There are no brooks, ei­ther.”

“You can con­sole your­self with the forests if that’s the case,” put in the Ma­jor.

“You can’t make forests with­out trees, and there are no trees.”

“A charm­ing coun­try!” said the Ma­jor.

“Com­fort your­self, my dear Pa­ganel, you’ll have the moun­tains at any rate,” said Gle­nar­van.

“Oh, they are nei­ther lofty nor in­ter­est­ing, my Lord, and, be­side, they have been de­scribed al­ready.”

“Al­ready!” said Lord Gle­nar­van.

“Yes, that is al­ways my luck. At the Ca­nary Is­lands, I saw my­self an­tic­ipat­ed by Hum­boldt, and here by M. Charles Sainte-​Claire Dev­ille, a ge­ol­ogist.”

“Im­pos­si­ble!”

“It is too true,” replied Pa­ganel, in a dole­ful voice. “Mon­sieur Dev­ille was on board the gov­ern­ment corvette, La De­cidee, when she touched at the Cape Verde Is­lands, and he ex­plored the most in­ter­est­ing of the group, and went to the top of the vol­cano in Isle Fo­go. What is left for me to do af­ter him?”

“It is re­al­ly a great pity,” said He­le­na. “What will be­come of you, Mon­sieur Pa­ganel?”

Pa­ganel re­mained silent.

“You would cer­tain­ly have done much bet­ter to have land­ed at Madeira, even though there had been no wine,” said Gle­nar­van.

Still the learned sec­re­tary was silent.

“I should wait,” said the Ma­jor, just as if he had said, “I should not wait.”

Pa­ganel spoke again at length, and said:

“My dear Gle­nar­van, where do you mean to touch next?”

“At Con­cep­cion.”

“Plague it! That is a long way out of the road to In­dia.”

“Not it! From the mo­ment you pass Cape Horn, you are get­ting near­er to it.”

“I doubt it much.”

“Be­side,” re­sumed Lord Gle­nar­van, with per­fect grav­ity, “when peo­ple are go­ing to the In­dies it doesn’t mat­ter much whether it is to the East or West.”

“What! it does not mat­ter much?”

“With­out tak­ing in­to ac­count the fact that the in­hab­itants of the Pam­pas in Patag­onia are as much In­di­ans as the na­tives of the Pun­jaub.”

“Well done, my Lord. That’s a rea­son that would nev­er have en­tered my head!”

“And then, my dear Pa­ganel, you can gain the gold medal any­way. There is as much to be done, and sought, and in­ves­ti­gat­ed, and dis­cov­ered in the Cordilleras as in the moun­tains of Thi­bet.”

“But the course of the Yarou-​Dzang­bo-​Tchou–what about that?”

“Go up the Rio Col­orado in­stead. It is a riv­er but lit­tle known, and its course on the map is marked out too much ac­cord­ing to the fan­cy of ge­og­ra­phers.”

“I know it is, my dear Lord; they have made grave mis­takes. Oh, I make no ques­tion that the Ge­ograph­ical So­ci­ety would have sent me to Patag­onia as soon as to In­dia, if I had sent in a re­quest to that ef­fect. But I nev­er thought of it.”

“Just like you.”

“Come, Mon­sieur Pa­ganel, will you go with us?” asked La­dy He­le­na, in her most win­ning tone.

“Madam, my mis­sion?”

“We shall pass through the Straits of Mag­el­lan, I must tell you,” said Lord Gle­nar­van.

“My Lord, you are a tempter.”

“Let me add, that we shall vis­it Port Famine.”

“Port Famine!” ex­claimed the French­man, be­sieged on all sides. “That fa­mous port in French an­nals!”

“Think, too, Mon­sieur Pa­ganel, that by tak­ing part in our en­ter­prise, you will be link­ing France with Scot­land.”

“Un­doubt­ed­ly.”

“A ge­og­ra­pher would be of much use to our ex­pe­di­tion, and what can be no­bler than to bring sci­ence to the ser­vice of hu­man­ity?”

“That’s well said, madam.”

“Take my ad­vice, then, and yield to chance, or rather prov­idence. Fol­low our ex­am­ple. It was prov­idence that sent us the doc­ument, and we set out in con­se­quence. The same prov­idence brought you on board the DUN­CAN. Don’t leave her.”

“Shall I say yes, my good friends? Come, now, tell me, you want me very much to stay, don’t you?” said Pa­ganel.

“And you’re dy­ing to stay, now, aren’t you, Pa­ganel?” re­turned Gle­nar­van.

“That’s about it,” con­fessed the learned ge­og­ra­pher; “but I was afraid it would be in­con­sid­er­ate.”