Île mystérieuse. English

Chapter 13

“Well, cap­tain, where are we go­ing to be­gin?” asked Pen­croft next morn­ing of the en­gi­neer.

“At the be­gin­ning,” replied Cyrus Hard­ing.

And in fact, the set­tlers were com­pelled to be­gin “at the very be­gin­ning.” They did not pos­sess even the tools nec­es­sary for mak­ing tools, and they were not even in the con­di­tion of na­ture, who, “hav­ing time, hus­bands her strength.” They had no time, since they had to pro­vide for the im­me­di­ate wants of their ex­is­tence, and though, prof­it­ing by ac­quired ex­pe­ri­ence, they had noth­ing to in­vent, still they had ev­ery­thing to make; their iron and their steel were as yet on­ly in the state of min­er­als, their earth­en­ware in the state of clay, their linen and their clothes in the state of tex­tile ma­te­ri­al.

It must be said, how­ev­er, that the set­tlers were “men” in the com­plete and high­er sense of the word. The en­gi­neer Hard­ing could not have been sec­ond­ed by more in­tel­li­gent com­pan­ions, nor with more de­vo­tion and zeal. He had tried them. He knew their abil­ities.

Gideon Spilett, a tal­ent­ed re­porter, hav­ing learned ev­ery­thing so as to be able to speak of ev­ery­thing, would con­tribute large­ly with his head and hands to the col­oniza­tion of the is­land. He would not draw back from any task: a de­ter­mined sports­man, he would make a busi­ness of what till then had on­ly been a plea­sure to him.

Her­bert, a gal­lant boy, al­ready re­mark­ably well in­formed in the nat­ural sci­ences, would ren­der greater ser­vice to the com­mon cause.

Neb was de­vo­tion per­son­ified. Clever, in­tel­li­gent, in­de­fati­ga­ble, ro­bust, with iron health, he knew a lit­tle about the work of the forge, and could not fail to be very use­ful in the colony.

As to Pen­croft, he had sailed over ev­ery sea, a car­pen­ter in the dock­yards in Brook­lyn, as­sis­tant tai­lor in the ves­sels of the state, gar­den­er, cul­ti­va­tor, dur­ing his hol­idays, etc., and like all sea­men, fit for any­thing, he knew how to do ev­ery­thing.

It would have been dif­fi­cult to unite five men, bet­ter fit­ted to strug­gle against fate, more cer­tain to tri­umph over it.

“At the be­gin­ning,” Cyrus Hard­ing had said. Now this be­gin­ning of which the en­gi­neer spoke was the con­struc­tion of an ap­pa­ra­tus which would serve to trans­form the nat­ural sub­stances. The part which heat plays in these trans­for­ma­tions is known. Now fu­el, wood or coal, was ready for im­me­di­ate use, an oven must be built to use it.

“What is this oven for?” asked Pen­croft.

“To make the pot­tery which we have need of,” replied Hard­ing.

“And of what shall we make the oven?”

“With bricks.”

“And the bricks?”

“With clay. Let us start, my friends. To save trou­ble, we will es­tab­lish our man­ufac­to­ry at the place of pro­duc­tion. Neb will bring pro­vi­sions, and there will be no lack of fire to cook the food.”

“No,” replied the re­porter; “but if there is a lack of food for want of in­stru­ments for the chase?”

“Ah, if we on­ly had a knife!” cried the sailor.

“Well?” asked Cyrus Hard­ing.

“Well! I would soon make a bow and ar­rows, and then there could be plen­ty of game in the larder!”

“Yes, a knife, a sharp blade.” said the en­gi­neer, as if he was speak­ing to him­self.

At this mo­ment his eyes fell up­on Top, who was run­ning about on the shore. Sud­den­ly Hard­ing’s face be­came an­imat­ed.

“Top, here,” said he.

The dog came at his mas­ter’s call. The lat­ter took Top’s head be­tween his hands, and un­fas­ten­ing the col­lar which the an­imal wore round his neck, he broke it in two, say­ing,–

“There are two knives, Pen­croft!”

Two hur­rahs from the sailor was the re­ply. Top’s col­lar was made of a thin piece of tem­pered steel. They had on­ly to sharp­en it on a piece of sand­stone, then to raise the edge on a fin­er stone. Now sand­stone was abun­dant on the beach, and two hours af­ter the stock of tools in the colony con­sist­ed of two sharp blades, which were eas­ily fixed in sol­id han­dles.

The pro­duc­tion of these their first tools was hailed as a tri­umph. It was in­deed a valu­able re­sult of their la­bor, and a very op­por­tune one. They set out.

Cyrus Hard­ing pro­posed that they should re­turn to the west­ern shore of the lake, where the day be­fore he had no­ticed the clayey ground of which he pos­sessed a spec­imen. They there­fore fol­lowed the bank of the Mer­cy, tra­versed Prospect Heights, and al­ter a walk of five miles or more they reached a glade, sit­uat­ed two hun­dred feet from Lake Grant.

On the way Her­bert had dis­cov­ered a tree, the branch­es of which the In­di­ans of South Amer­ica em­ploy for mak­ing their bows. It was the cre­jim­ba, of the palm fam­ily, which does not bear ed­ible fruit. Long straight branch­es were cut, the leaves stripped off; it was shaped, stronger in the mid­dle, more slen­der at the ex­trem­ities, and noth­ing re­mained to be done but to find a plant fit to make the bow-​string. This was the “hi­bis­cus het­ero­phyl­lus,” which fur­nish­es fibers of such re­mark­able tenac­ity that they have been com­pared to the ten­dons of an­imals. Pen­croft thus ob­tained bows of tol­er­able strength, for which he on­ly want­ed ar­rows. These were eas­ily made with straight stiff branch­es, with­out knots, but the points with which they must be armed, that is to say, a sub­stance to serve in lieu of iron, could not be met with so eas­ily. But Pen­croft said, that hav­ing done his part of the work, chance would do the rest.

The set­tlers ar­rived on the ground which had been dis­cov­ered the day be­fore. Be­ing com­posed of the sort of clay which is used for mak­ing bricks and tiles, it was very use­ful for the work in ques­tion. There was no great dif­fi­cul­ty in it. It was enough to scour the clay with sand, then to mold the bricks and bake them by the heat of a wood fire.

Gen­er­al­ly bricks are formed in molds, but the en­gi­neer con­tent­ed him­self with mak­ing them by hand. All that day and the day fol­low­ing were em­ployed in this work. The clay, soaked in wa­ter, was mixed by the feet and hands of the ma­nip­ula­tors, and then di­vid­ed in­to pieces of equal size. A prac­ticed work­man can make, with­out a ma­chine, about ten thou­sand bricks in twelve hours; but in their two days work the five brick­mak­ers on Lin­coln Is­land had not made more than three thou­sand, which were ranged near each oth­er, un­til the time when their com­plete des­ic­ca­tion would per­mit them to be used in build­ing the oven, that is to say, in three or four days.

It was on the 2nd of April that Hard­ing had em­ployed him­self in fix­ing the ori­en­ta­tion of the is­land, or, in oth­er words, the pre­cise spot where the sun rose. The day be­fore he had not­ed ex­act­ly the hour when the sun dis­ap­peared be­neath the hori­zon, mak­ing al­lowance for the re­frac­tion. This morn­ing he not­ed, no less ex­act­ly, the hour at which it reap­peared. Be­tween this set­ting and ris­ing twelve hours, twen­ty-​four min­utes passed. Then, six hours, twelve min­utes af­ter its ris­ing, the sun on this day would ex­act­ly pass the merid­ian and the point of the sky which it oc­cu­pied at this mo­ment would be the north. At the said hour, Cyrus marked this point, and putting in a line with the sun two trees which would serve him for marks, he thus ob­tained an in­vari­able merid­ian for his ul­te­ri­or op­er­ations.

The set­tlers em­ployed the two days be­fore the oven was built in col­lect­ing fu­el. Branch­es were cut all round the glade, and they picked up all the fall­en wood un­der the trees. They were al­so able to hunt with greater suc­cess, since Pen­croft now pos­sessed some dozen ar­rows armed with sharp points. It was Top who had fam­ished these points, by bring­ing in a por­cu­pine, rather in­fe­ri­or eat­ing, but of great val­ue, thanks to the quills with which it bris­tled. These quills were fixed firm­ly at the ends of the ar­rows, the flight of which was made more cer­tain by some cock­atoos’ feath­ers. The re­porter and Her­bert soon be­came very skil­ful archers. Game of all sorts in con­se­quence abound­ed at the Chim­neys, capy­baras, pi­geons, agouties, grouse, etc. The greater part of these an­imals were killed in the part of the for­est on the left bank of the Mer­cy, to which they gave the name of Ja­ca­mar Wood, in re­mem­brance of the bird which Pen­croft and Her­bert had pur­sued when on their first ex­plo­ration.

This game was eat­en fresh, but they pre­served some capy­bara hams, by smok­ing them above a fire of green wood, af­ter hav­ing per­fumed them with sweet-​smelling leaves. How­ev­er, this food, al­though very strength­en­ing, was al­ways roast up­on roast, and the par­ty would have been de­light­ed to hear some soup bub­bling on the hearth, but they must wait till a pot could be made, and, con­se­quent­ly, till the oven was built.

Dur­ing these ex­cur­sions, which were not ex­tend­ed far from the brick- field, the hunters could dis­cern the re­cent pas­sage of an­imals of a large size, armed with pow­er­ful claws, but they could not rec­og­nize the species. Cyrus Hard­ing ad­vised them to be very care­ful, as the for­est prob­ably en­closed many dan­ger­ous beasts.

And he did right. In­deed, Gideon Spilett and Her­bert one day saw an an­imal which re­sem­bled a jaguar. Hap­pi­ly the crea­ture did not at­tack them, or they might not have es­caped with­out a se­vere wound. As soon as he could get a reg­ular weapon, that is to say, one of the guns which Pen­croft begged for, Gideon Spilett re­solved to make des­per­ate war against the fe­ro­cious beasts, and ex­ter­mi­nate them from the is­land.

The Chim­neys dur­ing these few days was not made more com­fort­able, for the en­gi­neer hoped to dis­cov­er, or build if nec­es­sary, a more con­ve­nient dwelling. They con­tent­ed them­selves with spread­ing moss and dry leaves on the sand of the pas­sages, and on these prim­itive couch­es the tired work­ers slept sound­ly.

They al­so reck­oned the days they had passed on Lin­coln Is­land, and from that time kept a reg­ular ac­count. The 5th of April, which was Wednes­day, was twelve days from the time when the wind threw the cast­aways on this shore.

On the 6th of April, at day­break, the en­gi­neer and his com­pan­ions were col­lect­ed in the glade, at the place where they were go­ing to per­form the op­er­ation of bak­ing the bricks. Nat­ural­ly this had to be in the open air, and not in a kiln, or rather, the ag­glom­er­ation of bricks made an enor­mous kiln, which would bake it­self. The fu­el, made of well-​pre­pared fagots, was laid on the ground and sur­round­ed with sev­er­al rows of dried bricks, which soon formed an enor­mous cube, to the ex­te­ri­or of which they con­trived air- holes. The work last­ed all day, and it was not till the evening that they set fire to the fagots. No one slept that night, all watch­ing care­ful­ly to keep up the fire.

The op­er­ation last­ed forty-​eight hours, and suc­ceed­ed per­fect­ly. It then be­came nec­es­sary to leave the smok­ing mass to cool, and dur­ing this time Neb and Pen­croft, guid­ed by Cyrus Hard­ing, brought, on a hur­dle made of in­ter­laced branch­es, loads of car­bon­ate of lime and com­mon stones, which were very abun­dant, to the north of the lake. These stones, when de­com­posed by heat, made a very strong quick­lime, great­ly in­creased by slack­ing, at least as pure as if it had been pro­duced by the cal­ci­na­tion of chalk or mar­ble. Mixed with sand the lime made ex­cel­lent mor­tar.

The re­sult of these dif­fer­ent works was, that, on the 9th of April, the en­gi­neer had at his dis­pos­al a quan­ti­ty of pre­pared lime and some thou­sands of bricks.

With­out los­ing an in­stant, there­fore, they be­gan the con­struc­tion of a kiln to bake the pot­tery, which was in­dis­pens­able for their do­mes­tic use. They suc­ceed­ed with­out much dif­fi­cul­ty. Five days af­ter, the kiln was sup­plied with coal, which the en­gi­neer had dis­cov­ered ly­ing open to the sky to­wards the mouth of the Red Creek, and the first smoke es­caped from a chim­ney twen­ty feet high. The glade was trans­formed in­to a man­ufac­to­ry, and Pen­croft was not far wrong in be­liev­ing that from this kiln would is­sue all the prod­ucts of mod­ern in­dus­try.

In the mean­time what the set­tlers first man­ufac­tured was a com­mon pot­tery in which to cook their food. The chief ma­te­ri­al was clay, to which Hard­ing added a lit­tle lime and quartz. This paste made reg­ular “pipe-​clay,” with which they man­ufac­tured bowls, cups mold­ed on stones of a prop­er size, great jars and pots to hold wa­ter, etc. The shape of these ob­jects was clum­sy and de­fec­tive, but af­ter they had been baked in a high tem­per­ature, the kitchen of the Chim­neys was pro­vid­ed with a num­ber of uten­sils, as pre­cious to the set­tlers as the most beau­ti­ful­ly enam­eled chi­na. We must men­tion here that Pen­croft, de­sirous to know if the clay thus pre­pared was wor­thy of its name of pipe-​clay, made some large pipes, which he thought charm­ing, but for which, alas! he had no to­bac­co, and that was a great pri­va­tion to Pen­croft. “But to­bac­co will come, like ev­ery­thing else!” he re­peat­ed, in a burst of ab­so­lute con­fi­dence.

This work last­ed till the 15th of April, and the time was well em­ployed. The set­tlers, hav­ing be­come pot­ters, made noth­ing but pot­tery. When it suit­ed Cyrus Hard­ing to change them in­to smiths, they would be­come smiths. But the next day be­ing Sun­day, and al­so East­er Sun­day, all agreed to sanc­ti­fy the day by rest. These Amer­icans were re­li­gious men, scrupu­lous ob­servers of the pre­cepts of the Bible, and their sit­ua­tion could not but de­vel­op sen­ti­ments of con­fi­dence to­wards the Au­thor of all things.

On the evening of the 15th of April they re­turned to the Chim­neys, car­ry­ing with them the pot­tery, the fur­nace be­ing ex­tin­guished un­til they could put it to a new use. Their re­turn was marked by a for­tu­nate in­ci­dent; the en­gi­neer dis­cov­ered a sub­stance which re­placed tin­der. It is known that a spongy, vel­vety flesh is pro­cured from a cer­tain mush­room of the genus poly­porous. Prop­er­ly pre­pared, it is ex­treme­ly in­flammable, es­pe­cial­ly when it has been pre­vi­ous­ly sat­urat­ed with gun­pow­der, or boiled in a so­lu­tion of ni­trate or chlo­rate of potash. But, till then, they had not found any of these poly­pores or even any of the morels which could re­place them. On this day, the en­gi­neer, see­ing a plant be­long­ing to the worm­wood genus, the prin­ci­pal species of which are ab­sinthe, balm-​mint, tar­ragon, etc., gath­ered sev­er­al tufts, and, pre­sent­ing them to the sailor, said,–

“Here, Pen­croft, this will please you.”

Pen­croft looked at­ten­tive­ly at the plant, cov­ered with long silky hair, the leaves be­ing clothed with soft down.

“What’s that, cap­tain?” asked Pen­croft. “Is it to­bac­co?”

“No,” replied Hard­ing, “it is worm­wood; Chi­nese worm­wood to the learned, but to us it will be tin­der.”

When the worm­wood was prop­er­ly dried it pro­vid­ed them with a very in­flammable sub­stance, es­pe­cial­ly af­ter­wards when the en­gi­neer had im­preg­nat­ed it with ni­trate of potash, of which the is­land pos­sessed sev­er­al beds, and which is in truth salt­peter.

The colonists had a good sup­per that evening. Neb pre­pared some agouti soup, a smoked capy­bara ham, to which was added the boiled tu­ber­cules of the “cal­adi­um macrorhizum,” an herba­ceous plant of the arum fam­ily. They had an ex­cel­lent taste, and were very nu­tri­tious, be­ing some­thing sim­ilar to the sub­stance which is sold in Eng­land un­der the name of “Port­land sa­go”; they were al­so a good sub­sti­tute for bread, which the set­tlers in Lin­coln Is­land did not yet pos­sess.

When sup­per was fin­ished, be­fore sleep­ing, Hard­ing and his com­pan­ions went to take the air on the beach. it was eight o’clock in the evening; the night was mag­nif­icent. The moon, which had been full five days be­fore, had not yet risen, but the hori­zon was al­ready sil­vered by those soft, pale shades which might be called the dawn of the moon. At the south­ern zenith glit­tered the cir­cum­po­lar con­stel­la­tions, and above all the South­ern Cross, which some days be­fore the en­gi­neer had greet­ed on the sum­mit of Mount Franklin.

Cyrus Hard­ing gazed for some time at this splen­did con­stel­la­tion, which has at its sum­mit and at its base two stars of the first mag­ni­tude, at its left arm a star of the sec­ond, and at its right arm a star of the third mag­ni­tude.

Then, af­ter some min­utes thought–

“Her­bert,” he asked of the lad, “is not this the 15th of April?”

“Yes, cap­tain,” replied Her­bert.

“Well, if I am not mis­tak­en, to-​mor­row will be one of the four days in the year in which the re­al time is iden­ti­cal with av­er­age time; that is to say, my boy, that to-​mor­row, to with­in some sec­onds, the sun will pass the merid­ian just at mid­day by the clocks. If the weath­er is fine I think that I shall ob­tain the lon­gi­tude of the is­land with an ap­prox­ima­tion of some de­grees.”

“With­out in­stru­ments, with­out sex­tant?” asked Gideon Spilett.

“Yes,” replied the en­gi­neer. “Al­so, since the night is clear, I will try, this very evening, to ob­tain our lat­itude by cal­cu­lat­ing the height of the South­ern Cross, that is, from the south­ern pole above the hori­zon. You un­der­stand, my friends, that be­fore un­der­tak­ing the work of in­stal­la­tion in earnest it is not enough to have found out that this land is an is­land; we must, as near­ly as pos­si­ble, know at what dis­tance it is sit­uat­ed, ei­ther from the Amer­ican con­ti­nent or Aus­tralia, or from the prin­ci­pal archipela­goes of the Pa­cif­ic.”

“In fact,” said the re­porter, “in­stead of build­ing a house it would be more im­por­tant to build a boat, if by chance we are not more than a hun­dred miles from an in­hab­it­ed coast.”

“That is why,” re­turned Hard­ing, “I am go­ing to try this evening to cal­cu­late the lat­itude of Lin­coln Is­land, and to-​mor­row, at mid­day, I will try to cal­cu­late the lon­gi­tude.”

If the en­gi­neer had pos­sessed a sex­tant, an ap­pa­ra­tus with which the an­gu­lar dis­tance of ob­jects can be mea­sured with great pre­ci­sion, there would have been no dif­fi­cul­ty in the op­er­ation. This evening by the height of the pole, the next day by the pass­ing of the sun at the merid­ian, he would ob­tain the po­si­tion of the is­land. But as they had not one he would have to sup­ply the de­fi­cien­cy.

Hard­ing then en­tered the Chim­neys. By the light of the fire he cut two lit­tle flat rulers, which he joined to­geth­er at one end so as to form a pair of com­pass­es, whose legs could sep­arate or come to­geth­er. The fas­ten­ing was fixed with a strong aca­cia thorn which was found in the wood pile. This in­stru­ment fin­ished, the en­gi­neer re­turned to the beach, but as it was nec­es­sary to take the height of the pole from above a clear hori­zon, that is, a sea hori­zon, and as Claw Cape hid the south­ern hori­zon, he was obliged to look for a more suit­able sta­tion. The best would ev­ident­ly have been the shore ex­posed di­rect­ly to the south; but the Mer­cy would have to be crossed, and that was a dif­fi­cul­ty. Hard­ing re­solved, in con­se­quence, to make his ob­ser­va­tion from Prospect Heights, tak­ing in­to con­sid­er­ation its height above the lev­el of the sea–a height which he in­tend­ed to cal­cu­late next day by a sim­ple pro­cess of el­emen­tary ge­om­etry.

The set­tlers, there­fore, went to the plateau, as­cend­ing the left bank of the Mer­cy, and placed them­selves on the edge which looked north­west and south­east, that is, above the cu­ri­ous­ly-​shaped rocks which bor­dered the riv­er.

This part of the plateau com­mand­ed the heights of the left bank, which sloped away to the ex­trem­ity of Claw Cape, and to the south­ern side of the is­land. No ob­sta­cle in­ter­cept­ed their gaze, which swept the hori­zon in a se­mi-​cir­cle from the cape to Rep­tile End. To the south the hori­zon, light­ed by the first rays of the moon, was very clear­ly de­fined against the sky.

At this mo­ment the South­ern Cross pre­sent­ed it­self to the ob­serv­er in an in­vert­ed po­si­tion, the star Al­pha mark­ing its base, which is near­er to the south­ern pole.

This con­stel­la­tion is not sit­uat­ed as near to the antarc­tic pole as the Po­lar Star is to the arc­tic pole. The star Al­pha is about twen­ty-​sev­en de­grees from it, but Cyrus Hard­ing knew this and made al­lowance for it in his cal­cu­la­tion. He took care al­so to ob­serve the mo­ment when it passed the merid­ian be­low the pole, which would sim­pli­fy the op­er­ation.

Cyrus Hard­ing point­ed one leg of the com­pass­es to the hori­zon, the oth­er to Al­pha, and the space be­tween the two legs gave him the an­gu­lar dis­tance which sep­arat­ed Al­pha from the hori­zon. In or­der to fix the an­gle ob­tained, he fas­tened with thorns the two pieces of wood on a third placed trans­verse­ly, so that their sep­ara­tion should be prop­er­ly main­tained.

That done, there was on­ly the an­gle to cal­cu­late by bring­ing back the ob­ser­va­tion to the lev­el of the sea, tak­ing in­to con­sid­er­ation the de­pres­sion of the hori­zon, which would ne­ces­si­tate mea­sur­ing the height of the cliff. The val­ue of this an­gle would give the height of Al­pha, and con­se­quent­ly that of the pole above the hori­zon, that is to say, the lat­itude of the is­land, since the lat­itude of a point of the globe is al­ways equal to the height of the pole above the hori­zon of this point.

The cal­cu­la­tions were left for the next day, and at ten o’clock ev­ery one was sleep­ing sound­ly.