Île mystérieuse. English

Chapter 11

Half an hour lat­er Cyrus Hard­ing and Her­bert had re­turned to the en­camp­ment. The en­gi­neer mere­ly told his com­pan­ions that the land up­on which fate had thrown them was an is­land, and that the next day they would con­sult. Then each set­tled him­self as well as he could to sleep, and in that rocky hole, at a height of two thou­sand five hun­dred feet above the lev­el of the sea, through a peace­ful night, the is­landers en­joyed pro­found re­pose.

The next day, the 30th of March, af­ter a hasty break­fast, which con­sist­ed sole­ly of the roast­ed tragopan, the en­gi­neer wished to climb again to the sum­mit of the vol­cano, so as more at­ten­tive­ly to sur­vey the is­land up­on which he and his com­pan­ions were im­pris­oned for life per­haps, should the is­land be sit­uat­ed at a great dis­tance from any land, or if it was out of the course of ves­sels which vis­it­ed the archipela­goes of the Pa­cif­ic Ocean. This time his com­pan­ions fol­lowed him in the new ex­plo­ration. They al­so wished to see the is­land, on the pro­duc­tions of which they must de­pend for the sup­ply of all their wants.

It was about sev­en o’clock in the morn­ing when Cyrus Hard­ing, Her­bert, Pen­croft, Gideon Spilett, and Neb quit­ted the en­camp­ment. No one ap­peared to be anx­ious about their sit­ua­tion. They had faith in them­selves, doubt­less, but it must be ob­served that the ba­sis of this faith was not the same with Hard­ing as with his com­pan­ions. The en­gi­neer had con­fi­dence, be­cause he felt ca­pa­ble of ex­tort­ing from this wild coun­try ev­ery­thing nec­es­sary for the life of him­self and his com­pan­ions; the lat­ter feared noth­ing, just be­cause Cyrus Hard­ing was with them. Pen­croft es­pe­cial­ly, since the in­ci­dent of the re­light­ed fire, would not have de­spaired for an in­stant, even if he was on a bare rock, if the en­gi­neer was with him on the rock.

“Pshaw,” said he, “we left Rich­mond with­out per­mis­sion from the au­thor­ities! It will be hard if we don’t man­age to get away some day or oth­er from a place where cer­tain­ly no one will de­tain us!”

Cyrus Hard­ing fol­lowed the same road as the evening be­fore. They went round the cone by the plateau which formed the shoul­der, to the mouth of the enor­mous chasm. The weath­er was mag­nif­icent. The sun rose in a pure sky and flood­ed with his rays all the east­ern side of the moun­tain.

The crater was reached. It was just what the en­gi­neer had made it out to be in the dark; that is to say, a vast fun­nel which ex­tend­ed, widen­ing, to a height of a thou­sand feet above the plateau. Be­low the chasm, large thick streaks of la­va wound over the sides of the moun­tain, and thus marked the course of the erup­tive mat­ter to the low­er val­leys which fur­rowed the north­ern part of the is­land.

The in­te­ri­or of the crater, whose in­cli­na­tion did not ex­ceed thir­ty five to forty de­grees, pre­sent­ed no dif­fi­cul­ties nor ob­sta­cles to the as­cent. Traces of very an­cient la­va were no­ticed, which prob­ably had over­flowed the sum­mit of the cone, be­fore this lat­er­al chasm had opened a new way to it.

As to the vol­canic chim­ney which es­tab­lished a com­mu­ni­ca­tion be­tween the sub­ter­ranean lay­ers and the crater, its depth could not be cal­cu­lat­ed with the eye, for it was lost in ob­scu­ri­ty. But there was no doubt as to the com­plete ex­tinc­tion of the vol­cano.

Be­fore eight o’clock Hard­ing and his com­pan­ions were as­sem­bled at the sum­mit of the crater, on a con­ical mound which swelled the north­ern edge.

“The sea, the sea ev­ery­where!” they cried, as if their lips could not re­strain the words which made is­landers of them.

The sea, in­deed, formed an im­mense cir­cu­lar sheet of wa­ter all around them! Per­haps, on climb­ing again to the sum­mit of the cone, Cyrus Hard­ing had had a hope of dis­cov­er­ing some coast, some is­land shore, which he had not been able to per­ceive in the dark the evening be­fore. But noth­ing ap­peared on the far­thest verge of the hori­zon, that is to say over a ra­dius of more than fifty miles. No land in sight. Not a sail. Over all this im­mense space the ocean alone was vis­ible–the is­land oc­cu­pied the cen­ter of a cir­cum­fer­ence which ap­peared to be in­fi­nite.

The en­gi­neer and his com­pan­ions, mute and mo­tion­less, sur­veyed for some min­utes ev­ery point of the ocean, ex­am­in­ing it to its most ex­treme lim­its. Even Pen­croft, who pos­sessed a mar­velous pow­er of sight, saw noth­ing; and cer­tain­ly if there had been land at the hori­zon, if it ap­peared on­ly as an in­dis­tinct va­por, the sailor would un­doubt­ed­ly have found it out, for na­ture had placed reg­ular tele­scopes un­der his eye­brows.

From the ocean their gaze re­turned to the is­land which they com­mand­ed en­tire­ly, and the first ques­tion was put by Gideon Spilett in these terms:

“About what size is this is­land?”

Tru­ly, it did not ap­pear large in the midst of the im­mense ocean.

Cyrus Hard­ing re­flect­ed a few min­utes; he at­ten­tive­ly ob­served the perime­ter of the is­land, tak­ing in­to con­sid­er­ation the height at which he was placed; then,–

“My friends,” said he, “I do not think I am mis­tak­en in giv­ing to the shore of the is­land a cir­cum­fer­ence of more than a hun­dred miles.”

“And con­se­quent­ly an area?”

“That is dif­fi­cult to es­ti­mate,” replied the en­gi­neer, “for it is so un­even.”

If Cyrus Hard­ing was not mis­tak­en in his cal­cu­la­tion, the is­land had al­most the ex­tent of Mal­ta or Zante, in the Mediter­ranean, but it was at the same time much more ir­reg­ular and less rich in capes, promon­to­ries, points, bays, or creeks. Its strange form caught the eye, and when Gideon Spilett, on the en­gi­neer’s ad­vice, had drawn the out­line, they found that it re­sem­bled some fan­tas­tic an­imal, a mon­strous leviathan, which lay sleep­ing on the sur­face of the Pa­cif­ic.

This was in fact the ex­act shape of the is­land, which it is of con­se­quence to know, and a tol­er­ably cor­rect map of it was im­me­di­ate­ly drawn by the re­porter.

The east part of the shore, where the cast­aways had land­ed, formed a wide bay, ter­mi­nat­ed by a sharp cape, which had been con­cealed by a high point from Pen­croft on his first ex­plo­ration. At the north­east two oth­er capes closed the bay, and be­tween them ran a nar­row gulf, which looked like the half-​open jaws of a formidable dog-​fish.

From the north­east to the south­west the coast was round­ed, like the flat­tened cra­ni­um of an an­imal, ris­ing again, form­ing a sort of pro­tu­ber­ance which did not give any par­tic­ular shape to this part of the is­land, of which the cen­ter was oc­cu­pied by the vol­cano.

From this point the shore ran pret­ty reg­ular­ly north and south, bro­ken at two-​thirds of its perime­ter by a nar­row creek, from which it end­ed in a long tail, sim­ilar to the cau­dal ap­pendage of a gi­gan­tic al­li­ga­tor.

This tail formed a reg­ular penin­su­la, which stretched more than thir­ty miles in­to the sea, reck­on­ing from the cape south­east of the is­land, al­ready men­tioned; it curled round, mak­ing an open road­stead, which marked out the low­er shore of this strange­ly-​formed land.

At the nar­row­est part, that is to say be­tween the Chim­neys and the creek on the west­ern shore, which cor­re­spond­ed to it in lat­itude, the is­land on­ly mea­sured ten miles; but its great­est length, from the jaws at the north­east to the ex­trem­ity of the tail of the south­west, was not less than thir­ty miles.

As to the in­te­ri­or of the is­land, its gen­er­al as­pect was this, very woody through­out the south­ern part from the moun­tain to the shore, and arid and sandy in the north­ern part. Be­tween the vol­cano and the east coast Cyrus Hard­ing and his com­pan­ions were sur­prised to see a lake, bor­dered with green trees, the ex­is­tence of which they had not sus­pect­ed. Seen from this height, the lake ap­peared to be on the same lev­el as the ocean, but, on re­flec­tion, the en­gi­neer ex­plained to his com­pan­ions that the al­ti­tude of this lit­tle sheet of wa­ter must be about three hun­dred feet, be­cause the plateau, which was its basin, was but a pro­lon­ga­tion of the coast.

“Is it a fresh­wa­ter lake?” asked Pen­croft.

“Cer­tain­ly,” replied the en­gi­neer, “for it must be fed by the wa­ter which flows from the moun­tain.”

“I see a lit­tle riv­er which runs in­to it,” said Her­bert, point­ing out a nar­row stream, which ev­ident­ly took its source some­where in the west.

“Yes,” said Hard­ing; “and since this stream feeds the lake, most prob­ably on the side near the sea there is an out­let by which the sur­plus wa­ter es­capes. We shall see that on our re­turn.”

This lit­tle wind­ing wa­ter­course and the riv­er al­ready men­tioned con­sti­tut­ed the wa­ter-​sys­tem, at least such as it was dis­played to the eyes of the ex­plor­ers. How­ev­er, it was pos­si­ble that un­der the mass­es of trees which cov­ered two-​thirds of the is­land, form­ing an im­mense for­est, oth­er rivers ran to­wards the sea. It might even be in­ferred that such was the case, so rich did this re­gion ap­pear in the most mag­nif­icent spec­imens of the flo­ra of the tem­per­ate zones. There was no in­di­ca­tion of run­ning wa­ter in the north, though per­haps there might be stag­nant wa­ter among the marsh­es in the north­east; but that was all, in ad­di­tion to the downs, sand, and arid­ity which con­trast­ed so strong­ly with the lux­uri­ant veg­eta­tion of the rest of the is­land.

The vol­cano did not oc­cu­py the cen­tral part; it rose, on the con­trary, in the north­west­ern re­gion, and seemed to mark the bound­ary of the two zones. At the south­west, at the south, and the south­east, the first part of the spurs were hid­den un­der mass­es of ver­dure. At the north, on the con­trary, one could fol­low their ram­ifi­ca­tions, which died away on the sandy plains. It was on this side that, at the time when the moun­tain was in a state of erup­tion, the dis­charge had worn away a pas­sage, and a large heap of la­va had spread to the nar­row jaw which formed the north­east­ern gulf.

Cyrus Hard­ing and his com­pan­ions re­mained an hour at the top of the moun­tain. The is­land was dis­played un­der their eyes, like a plan in re­lief with dif­fer­ent tints, green for the forests, yel­low for the sand, blue for the wa­ter. They viewed it in its tout-​en­sem­ble, noth­ing re­mained con­cealed but the ground hid­den by ver­dure, the hol­lows of the val­leys, and the in­te­ri­or of the vol­canic chasms.

One im­por­tant ques­tion re­mained to be solved, and the an­swer would have a great ef­fect up­on the fu­ture of the cast­aways.

Was the is­land in­hab­it­ed?

It was the re­porter who put this ques­tion, to which af­ter the close ex­am­ina­tion they had just made, the an­swer seemed to be in the neg­ative.

Nowhere could the work of a hu­man hand be per­ceived. Not a group of huts, not a soli­tary cab­in, not a fish­ery on the shore. No smoke curl­ing in the air be­trayed the pres­ence of man. It is true, a dis­tance of near­ly thir­ty miles sep­arat­ed the ob­servers from the ex­treme points, that is, of the tail which ex­tend­ed to the south­west, and it would have been dif­fi­cult, even to Pen­croft’s eyes, to dis­cov­er a habi­ta­tion there. Nei­ther could the cur­tain of ver­dure, which cov­ered three-​quar­ters of the is­land, be raised to see if it did not shel­ter some strag­gling vil­lage. But in gen­er­al the is­landers live on the shores of the nar­row spaces which emerge above the wa­ters of the Pa­cif­ic, and this shore ap­peared to be an ab­so­lute desert.

Un­til a more com­plete ex­plo­ration, it might be ad­mit­ted that the is­land was un­in­hab­it­ed. But was it fre­quent­ed, at least oc­ca­sion­al­ly, by the na­tives of neigh­bor­ing is­lands? It was dif­fi­cult to re­ply to this ques­tion. No land ap­peared with­in a ra­dius of fifty miles. But fifty miles could be eas­ily crossed, ei­ther by Malay proas or by the large Poly­ne­sian ca­noes. Ev­ery­thing de­pend­ed on the po­si­tion of the is­land, of its iso­la­tion in the Pa­cif­ic, or of its prox­im­ity to archipela­goes. Would Cyrus Hard­ing be able to find out their lat­itude and lon­gi­tude with­out in­stru­ments? It would be dif­fi­cult. Since he was in doubt, it was best to take pre­cau­tions against a pos­si­ble de­scent of neigh­bor­ing na­tives.

The ex­plo­ration of the is­land was fin­ished, its shape de­ter­mined, its fea­tures made out, its ex­tent cal­cu­lat­ed, the wa­ter and moun­tain sys­tems as­cer­tained. The dis­po­si­tion of the forests and plains had been marked in a gen­er­al way on the re­porter’s plan. They had now on­ly to de­scend the moun­tain slopes again, and ex­plore the soil, in the triple point of view, of its min­er­al, veg­etable, and an­imal re­sources.

But be­fore giv­ing his com­pan­ions the sig­nal for de­par­ture, Cyrus Hard­ing said to them in a calm, grave voice,–

Here, my friends, is the small cor­ner of land up­on which the hand of the Almighty has thrown us. We are go­ing to live here; a long time, per­haps. Per­haps, too, un­ex­pect­ed help will ar­rive, if some ship pass­es by chance. I say by chance, be­cause this is an unim­por­tant is­land; there is not even a port in which ships could an­chor, and it is to be feared that it is sit­uat­ed out of the route usu­al­ly fol­lowed, that is to say, too much to the south for the ships which fre­quent the archipela­goes of the Pa­cif­ic, and too much to the north for those which go to Aus­tralia by dou­bling Cape Horn. I wish to hide noth­ing of our po­si­tion from you–“

“And you are right, my dear Cyrus,” replied the re­porter, with an­ima­tion. “You have to deal with men. They have con­fi­dence in you, and you can de­pend up­on them. Is it not so, my friends?”

“I will obey you in ev­ery­thing, cap­tain,” said Her­bert, seiz­ing the en­gi­neer’s hand.

“My mas­ter al­ways, and ev­ery­where!” cried Neb.

“As for me,” said the sailor, “if I ev­er grum­ble at work, my name’s not Jack Pen­croft, and if you like, cap­tain, we will make a lit­tle Amer­ica of this is­land! We will build towns, we will es­tab­lish rail­ways, start tele­graphs, and one fine day, when it is quite changed, quite put in or­der and quite civ­ilized, we will go and of­fer it to the gov­ern­ment of the Union. On­ly, I ask one thing.”

“What is that?” said the re­porter.

“It is, that we do not con­sid­er our­selves cast­aways, but colonists, who have come here to set­tle.” Hard­ing could not help smil­ing, and the sailor’s idea was adopt­ed. He then thanked his com­pan­ions, and added, that he would re­ly on their en­er­gy and on the aid of Heav­en.

“Well, now let us set off to the Chim­neys!” cried Pen­croft.

“One minute, my friends,” said the en­gi­neer. “It seems to me it would be a good thing to give a name to this is­land, as well as to, the capes, promon­to­ries, and wa­ter­cours­es, which we can see.

“Very good,” said the re­porter. “In the fu­ture, that will sim­pli­fy the in­struc­tions which we shall have to give and fol­low.”

“In­deed,” said the sailor, “al­ready it is some­thing to be able to say where one is go­ing, and where one has come from. At least, it looks like some­where.”

“The Chim­neys, for ex­am­ple,” said Her­bert.

“Ex­act­ly!” replied Pen­croft. “That name was the most con­ve­nient, and it came to me quite of my­self. Shall we keep the name of the Chim­neys for our first en­camp­ment, cap­tain?”

“Yes, Pen­croft, since you have so chris­tened it.”

“Good! as for the oth­ers, that will be easy,” re­turned the sailor, who was in high spir­its. “Let us give them names, as the Robin­sons did, whose sto­ry Her­bert has of­ten read to me; Prov­idence Bay, Whale Point, Cape Dis­ap­point­ment!”

“Or, rather, the names of Cap­tain Hard­ing,” said Her­bert, “of Mr. Spilett, of Neb!–“

“My name!” cried Neb, show­ing his sparkling white teeth.

“Why not?” replied Pen­croft. “Port Neb, that would do very well! And Cape Gideon–“

“I should pre­fer bor­row­ing names from our coun­try,” said the re­porter, “which would re­mind us of Amer­ica.”

“Yes, for the prin­ci­pal ones,” then said Cyrus Hard­ing; “for those of the bays and seas, I ad­mit it will­ing­ly. We might give to that vast bay on the east the name of Union Bay, for ex­am­ple; to that large hol­low on the south, Wash­ing­ton Bay; to the moun­tain up­on which we are stand­ing, that of Mount Franklin; to that lake which is ex­tend­ed un­der our eyes, that of Lake Grant; noth­ing could be bet­ter, my friends. These names will re­call our coun­try, and those of the great cit­izens who have hon­ored it; but for the rivers, gulfs, capes, and promon­to­ries, which we per­ceive from the top of this moun­tain, rather let us choose names which will re­call their par­tic­ular shape. They will im­press them­selves bet­ter on our mem­ory, and at the same time will be more prac­ti­cal. The shape of the is­land is so strange that we shall not be trou­bled to imag­ine what it re­sem­bles. As to the streams which we do not know as yet, in dif­fer­ent parts of the for­est which we shall ex­plore lat­er, the creeks which af­ter­wards will he dis­cov­ered, we can chris­ten them as we find them. What do you think, my friends?”

The en­gi­neer’s pro­pos­al was unan­imous­ly agreed to by his com­pan­ions. The is­land was spread out un­der their eyes like a map, and they had on­ly to give names to all its an­gles and points. Gideon Spilett would write them down, and the ge­ograph­ical nomen­cla­ture of the is­land would be def­inite­ly adopt­ed. First, they named the two bays and the moun­tain, Union Bay, Wash­ing­ton Bay, and Mount Franklin, as the en­gi­neer had sug­gest­ed.

“Now,” said the re­porter, “to this penin­su­la at the south­west of the is­land, I pro­pose to give the name of Ser­pen­tine Penin­su­la, and that of Rep­tile-​end to the bent tail which ter­mi­nates it, for it is just like a rep­tile’s tail.”

“Adopt­ed,” said the en­gi­neer.

“Now,” said Her­bert, point­ing to the oth­er ex­trem­ity of the is­land, “let us call this gulf which is so sin­gu­lar­ly like a pair of open jaws, Shark Gulf.”

“Cap­ital!” cried Pen­croft, “and we can com­plete the re­sem­blance by nam­ing the two parts of the jaws Mandible Cape.”

“But there are two capes,” ob­served the re­porter.

“Well,” replied Pen­croft, “we can have North Mandible Cape and South Mandible Cape.”

“They are in­scribed,” said Spilett.

“There is on­ly the point at the south­east­ern ex­trem­ity of the is­land to be named,” said Pen­croft.

“That is, the ex­trem­ity of Union Bay?” asked Her­bert.

“Claw Cape,” cried Neb di­rect­ly, who al­so wished to be god­fa­ther to some part of his do­main.

In truth, Neb had found an ex­cel­lent name, for this cape was very like the pow­er­ful claw of the fan­tas­tic an­imal which this sin­gu­lar­ly-​shaped is­land rep­re­sent­ed.

Pen­croft was de­light­ed at the turn things had tak­en, and their imag­ina­tions soon gave to the riv­er which fur­nished the set­tlers with drink­ing wa­ter and near which the bal­loon had thrown them, the name of the Mer­cy, in true grat­itude to Prov­idence. To the islet up­on which the cast­aways had first land­ed, the name of Safe­ty Is­land; to the plateau which crowned the high gran­ite precipice above the Chim­neys, and from whence the gaze could em­brace the whole of the vast bay, the name of Prospect Heights.

Last­ly, all the mass­es of im­pen­etra­ble wood which cov­ered the Ser­pen­tine Penin­su­la were named the forests of the Far West.

The nomen­cla­ture of the vis­ible and known parts of the is­land was thus fin­ished, and lat­er, they would com­plete it as they made fresh dis­cov­er­ies.

As to the points of the com­pass, the en­gi­neer had rough­ly fixed them by the height and po­si­tion of the sun, which placed Union Bay and Prospect Heights to the east. But the next day, by tak­ing the ex­act hour of the ris­ing and set­ting of the sun, and by mark­ing its po­si­tion be­tween this ris­ing and set­ting, he reck­oned to fix the north of the is­land ex­act­ly, for, in con­se­quence of its sit­ua­tion in the South­ern Hemi­sphere, the sun, at the pre­cise mo­ment of its cul­mi­na­tion, passed in the north and not in the south, as, in its ap­par­ent move­ment, it seems to do, to those places sit­uat­ed in the North­ern Hemi­sphere.

Ev­ery­thing was fin­ished, and the set­tlers had on­ly to de­scend Mount Franklin to re­turn to the Chim­neys, when Pen­croft cried out,–

“Well! we are pre­cious­ly stupid!”

“Why?” asked Gideon Spilett, who had closed his note­book and risen to de­part.

“Why! our is­land! we have for­got­ten to chris­ten it!”

Her­bert was go­ing to pro­pose to give it the en­gi­neer’s name and all his com­pan­ions would have ap­plaud­ed him, when Cyrus Hard­ing said sim­ply,–

“Let us give it the name of a great cit­izen, my friend; of him who now strug­gles to de­fend the uni­ty of the Amer­ican Re­pub­lic! Let us call it Lin­coln Is­land!”

The en­gi­neer’s pro­pos­al was replied to by three hur­rahs.

And that evening, be­fore sleep­ing, the new colonists talked of their ab­sent coun­try; they spoke of the ter­ri­ble war which stained it with blood; they could not doubt that the South would soon be sub­dued, and that the cause of the North, the cause of jus­tice, would tri­umph, thanks to Grant, thanks to Lin­coln!

Now this hap­pened the 30th of March, 1865. They lit­tle knew that six­teen days af­ter­wards a fright­ful crime would be com­mit­ted in Wash­ing­ton, and that on Good Fri­day Abra­ham Lin­coln would fall by the hand of a fa­nat­ic.