Île mystérieuse. English

Chapter 8

The first week of Jan­uary was de­vot­ed to the man­ufac­ture of the linen gar­ments re­quired by the colony. The nee­dles found in the box were used by stur­dy if not del­icate fin­gers, and we may be sure that what was sewn was sewn firm­ly.

There was no lack of thread, thanks to Cyrus Hard­ing’s idea of re- em­ploy­ing that which had been al­ready used in the cov­er­ing of the bal­loon. This with ad­mirable pa­tience was all un­picked by Gideon Spilett and Her­bert, for Pen­croft had been obliged to give this work up, as it ir­ri­tat­ed him be­yond mea­sure; but he had no equal in the sewing part of the busi­ness. In­deed, ev­ery­body knows that sailors have a re­mark­able ap­ti­tude for tai­lor­ing.

The cloth of which the bal­loon-​case was made was then cleaned by means of so­da and potash, ob­tained by the in­cin­er­ation of plants, in such a way that the cot­ton, hav­ing got rid of the var­nish, re­sumed its nat­ural soft­ness and elas­tic­ity; then, ex­posed to the ac­tion of the at­mo­sphere, it soon be­came per­fect­ly white. Some dozen shirts and sock–the lat­ter not knit­ted, of course, but made of cot­ton–were thus man­ufac­tured. What a com­fort it was to the set­tlers to clothe them­selves again in clean linen, which was doubt­less rather rough, but they were not trou­bled about that! and then to go to sleep be­tween sheets, which made the couch­es at Gran­ite House in­to quite com­fort­able beds!

It was about this time al­so that they made boots of seal-​leather, which were great­ly need­ed to re­place the shoes and boots brought from Amer­ica. We may be sure that these new shoes were large enough and nev­er pinched the feet of the wear­ers.

With the be­gin­ning of the year 1866 the heat was very great, but the hunt­ing in the forests did not stand still. Agouties, pec­ca­ries, capy­baras, kan­ga­roos, game of all sorts, ac­tu­al­ly swarmed there, and Spilett and Her­bert were too good marks­men ev­er to throw away their shot use­less­ly.

Cyrus Hard­ing still rec­om­mend­ed them to hus­band the am­mu­ni­tion, and he took mea­sures to re­place the pow­der and shot which had been found in the box, and which he wished to re­serve for the fu­ture. How did he know where chance might one day cast his com­pan­ions and him­self in the event of their leav­ing their do­main? They should, then, pre­pare for the un­known fu­ture by hus­band­ing their am­mu­ni­tion and by sub­sti­tut­ing for it some eas­ily re­new­able sub­stance.

To re­place lead, of which Hard­ing had found no traces in the is­land, he em­ployed gran­ulat­ed iron, which was easy to man­ufac­ture. These bul­lets, not hav­ing the weight of lead­en bul­lets, were made larg­er, and each charge con­tained less, but the skill of the sports­men made up this de­fi­cien­cy. As to pow­der, Cyrus Hard­ing would have been able to make that al­so, for he had at his dis­pos­al salt­peter, sul­phur, and coal; but this prepa­ra­tion re­quires ex­treme care, and with­out spe­cial tools it is dif­fi­cult to pro­duce it of a good qual­ity. Hard­ing pre­ferred, there­fore, to man­ufac­ture py­rox­yle, that is to say gun-​cot­ton, a sub­stance in which cot­ton is not in­dis­pens­able, as the el­emen­tary tis­sue of veg­eta­bles may be used, and this is found in an al­most pure state, not on­ly in cot­ton, but in the tex­tile fiber of hemp and flax, in pa­per, the pith of the el­der, etc. Now, the el­der abound­ed in the is­land to­wards the mouth of Red Creek, and the colonists had al­ready made cof­fee of the berries of these shrubs, which be­long to the fam­ily of the capri­fo­li­aceae.

The on­ly thing to be col­lect­ed, there­fore, was el­der-​pith, for as to the oth­er sub­stance nec­es­sary for the man­ufac­ture of py­rox­yle, it was on­ly fum­ing azot­ic acid. Now, Hard­ing hav­ing sul­phuric acid at his dis­pos­al, had al­ready been eas­ily able to pro­duce azot­ic acid by at­tack­ing the salt­peter with which na­ture sup­plied him. He ac­cord­ing­ly re­solved to man­ufac­ture and em­ploy py­rox­yle, al­though it has some in­con­ve­niences, that is to say, a great in­equal­ity of ef­fect, an ex­ces­sive in­flamma­bil­ity, since it takes fire at one hun­dred and sev­en­ty de­grees in­stead of two hun­dred and forty, and last­ly, an in­stan­ta­neous de­fla­gra­tion which might dam­age the firearms. On the oth­er hand, the ad­van­tages of py­rox­yle con­sist in this, that it is not in­jured by damp, that it does not make the gun-​bar­rels dirty, and that its force is four times that of or­di­nary pow­der.

To make py­rox­yle, the cot­ton must be im­mersed in the fum­ing azot­ic acid for a quar­ter of an hour, then washed in cold wa­ter and dried. Noth­ing could be more sim­ple.

Cyrus Hard­ing had on­ly at his dis­pos­al the or­di­nary azot­ic acid and not the fum­ing or mono­hy­drate azot­ic acid, that is to say, acid which emits white va­pors when it comes in con­tact with damp air; but by sub­sti­tut­ing for the lat­ter or­di­nary azot­ic acid, mixed, in the pro­por­tion of from three to five vol­umes of con­cen­trat­ed sul­phuric acid, the en­gi­neer ob­tained the same re­sult. The sports­men of the is­land there­fore soon had a per­fect­ly pre­pared sub­stance, which, em­ployed dis­creet­ly, pro­duced ad­mirable re­sults.

About this time the set­tlers cleared three acres of the plateau, and the rest was pre­served in a wild state, for the ben­efit of the on­agers. Sev­er­al ex­cur­sions were made in­to the Ja­ca­mar Wood and the forests of the Far West, and they brought back from thence a large col­lec­tion of wild veg­eta­bles, spinach, cress, radish­es, and turnips, which care­ful cul­ture would soon im­prove, and which would tem­per the reg­imen on which the set­tlers had till then sub­sist­ed. Sup­plies of wood and coal were al­so cart­ed. Each ex­cur­sion was at the same time a means of im­prov­ing the roads, which grad­ual­ly be­came smoother un­der the wheels of the cart.

The rab­bit-​war­ren still con­tin­ued to sup­ply the larder of Gran­ite House. As for­tu­nate­ly it was sit­uat­ed on the oth­er side of Creek Glyc­er­ine, its in­hab­itants could not reach the plateau nor rav­age the new­ly-​made plan­ta­tion. The oys­ter-​bed among the rocks was fre­quent­ly re­newed and fur­nished ex­cel­lent mol­luscs. Be­sides that, the fish­ing, ei­ther in the lake or the Mer­cy, was very prof­itable, for Pen­croft had made some lines, armed with iron hooks, with which they fre­quent­ly caught fine trout, and a species of fish whose sil­very sides were speck­led with yel­low, and which were al­so ex­treme­ly sa­vory. Mas­ter Neb, who was skilled in the culi­nary art, knew how to vary agree­ably the bill of fare. Bread alone was want­ing at the ta­ble of the set­tlers, and as has been said, they felt this pri­va­tion great­ly.

The set­tlers hunt­ed too the tur­tles which fre­quent­ed the shores of Cape Mandible. At this place the beach was cov­ered with lit­tle mounds, con­ceal­ing per­fect­ly spher­ical tur­tles’ eggs, with white hard shells, the al­bu­men of which does not co­ag­ulate as that of birds’ eggs. They were hatched by the sun, and their num­ber was nat­ural­ly con­sid­er­able, as each tur­tle can lay an­nu­al­ly two hun­dred and fifty.

“A reg­ular egg-​field,” ob­served Gideon Spilett, “and we have noth­ing to do but to pick them up.”

But not be­ing con­tent­ed with sim­ply the pro­duce, they made chase af­ter the pro­duc­ers, the re­sult of which was that they were able to bring back to Gran­ite House a dozen of these ch­elo­ni­ans, which were re­al­ly valu­able from an al­imen­ta­ry point of view. The tur­tle soup, fla­vored with aro­mat­ic herbs, of­ten gained well-​mer­it­ed prais­es for its pre­par­er, Neb.

We must here men­tion an­oth­er for­tu­nate cir­cum­stance by which new stores for the win­ter were laid in. Shoals of salmon en­tered the Mer­cy, and as­cend­ed the coun­try for sev­er­al miles. It was the time at which the fe­males, go­ing to find suit­able places in which to spawn, pre­cede the males and make a great noise through the fresh wa­ter. A thou­sand of these fish, which mea­sured about two feet and a half in length, came up the riv­er, and a large quan­ti­ty were re­tained by fix­ing dams across the stream. More than a hun­dred were thus tak­en, which were salt­ed and stored for the time when win­ter, freez­ing up the streams, would ren­der fish­ing im­prac­ti­ca­ble. By this time the in­tel­li­gent Jup was raised to the du­ty of valet. He had been dressed in a jack­et, white linen breech­es, and an apron, the pock­ets of which were his de­light. The clever orang had been mar­velous­ly trained by Neb, and any one would have said that the Ne­gro and the ape un­der­stood each oth­er when they talked to­geth­er. Jup had be­sides a re­al af­fec­tion for Neb, and Neb re­turned it. When his ser­vices were not re­quired, ei­ther for car­ry­ing wood or for climb­ing to the top of some tree, Jup passed the great­est part of his time in the kitchen, where he en­deav­ored to im­itate Neb in all that he saw him do. The black showed the great­est pa­tience and even ex­treme zeal in in­struct­ing his pupil, and the pupil ex­hib­it­ed re­mark­able in­tel­li­gence in prof­it­ing by the lessons he re­ceived from his mas­ter.

Judge then of the plea­sure Mas­ter Jup gave to the in­hab­itants of Gran­ite House when, with­out their hav­ing had any idea of it, he ap­peared one day, nap­kin on his arm, ready to wait at ta­ble. Quick, at­ten­tive, he ac­quit­ted him­self per­fect­ly, chang­ing the plates, bring­ing dish­es, pour­ing out wa­ter, all with a grav­ity which gave in­tense amuse­ment to the set­tlers, and which en­rap­tured Pen­croft.

“Jup, some soup!”

“Jup, a lit­tle agouti!”

“Jup, a plate!”

“Jup! Good Jup! Hon­est Jup!”

Noth­ing was heard but that, and Jup with­out ev­er be­ing dis­con­cert­ed, replied to ev­ery one, watched for ev­ery­thing, and he shook his head in a know­ing way when Pen­croft, re­fer­ring to his joke of the first day, said to him,–

“De­cid­ed­ly, Jup, your wages must be dou­bled.”

It is use­less to say that the orang was now thor­ough­ly do­mes­ti­cat­ed at Gran­ite House, and that he of­ten ac­com­pa­nied his mas­ters to the for­est with­out show­ing any wish to leave them. It was most amus­ing to see him walk­ing with a stick which Pen­croft had giv­en him, and which he car­ried on his shoul­der like a gun. If they wished to gath­er some fruit from the sum­mit of a tree, how quick­ly he climbed for it. If the wheel of the cart stuck in the mud, with what en­er­gy did Jup with a sin­gle heave of his shoul­der put it right again.

“What a jol­ly fel­low he is!” cried Pen­croft of­ten. “If he was as mis­chievous as he is good, there would be no do­ing any­thing with him!”

It was to­wards the end of Jan­uary the colonists be­gan their labors in the cen­ter of the is­land. It had been de­cid­ed that a cor­ral should be es­tab­lished near the sources of the Red Creek, at the foot of Mount Franklin, des­tined to con­tain the ru­mi­nants, whose pres­ence would have been trou­ble­some at Gran­ite House, and es­pe­cial­ly for the mus­mons, who were to sup­ply the wool for the set­tlers’ win­ter gar­ments.

Each morn­ing, the colony, some­times en­tire, but more of­ten rep­re­sent­ed on­ly by Hard­ing, Her­bert, and Pen­croft, pro­ceed­ed to the sources of the Creek, a dis­tance of not more than five miles, by the new­ly beat­en road to which the name of Cor­ral Road had been giv­en.

There a site was cho­sen, at the back of the south­ern ridge of the moun­tain. It was a mead­ow land, dot­ted here and there with clumps of trees, and wa­tered by a lit­tle stream, which sprung from the slopes which closed it in on one side. The grass was fresh, and it was not too much shad­ed by the trees which grew about it. This mead­ow was to be sur­round­ed by a pal­isade, high enough to pre­vent even the most ag­ile an­imals from leap­ing over. This en­clo­sure would be large enough to con­tain a hun­dred mus­mons and wild goats, with all the young ones they might pro­duce.

The perime­ter of the cor­ral was then traced by the en­gi­neer, and they would then have pro­ceed­ed to fell the trees nec­es­sary for the con­struc­tion of the pal­isade, but as the open­ing up of the road had al­ready ne­ces­si­tat­ed the sac­ri­fice of a con­sid­er­able num­ber, those were brought and sup­plied a hun­dred stakes, which were firm­ly fixed in the ground.

The con­struc­tion of this cor­ral did not take less than three weeks, for be­sides the pal­isade, Cyrus Hard­ing built large sheds, in which the an­imals could take shel­ter. These build­ings had al­so to be made very strong, for mus­mons are pow­er­ful an­imals, and their first fury was to be feared. The stakes, sharp­ened at their up­per end and hard­ened by fire, had been fixed by means of cross-​bars, and at reg­ular dis­tances props as­sured the so­lid­ity of the whole.

The cor­ral fin­ished, a raid had to be made on the pas­tures fre­quent­ed by the ru­mi­nants. This was done on the 7th of Febru­ary, on a beau­ti­ful sum­mer’s day, and ev­ery one took part in it. The on­agers, al­ready well trained, were rid­den by Spilett and Her­bert, and were of great use.

The ma­neu­ver con­sist­ed sim­ply in sur­round­ing the mus­mons and goats, and grad­ual­ly nar­row­ing the cir­cle around them. Cyrus Hard­ing, Pen­croft, Neb, and Jup, post­ed them­selves in dif­fer­ent parts of the wood, while the two cav­aliers and Top gal­loped in a ra­dius of half a mile round the cor­ral.

The mus­mons were very nu­mer­ous in this part of the is­land. These fine an­imals were as large as deer; their horns were stronger than those of the ram, and their gray-​col­ored fleece was mixed with long hair.

This hunt­ing day was very fa­tigu­ing. Such go­ing and com­ing, and run­ning and rid­ing and shout­ing! Of a hun­dred mus­mons which had been sur­round­ed, more than two-​thirds es­caped, but at last, thir­ty of these an­imals and ten wild goats were grad­ual­ly driv­en back to­wards the cor­ral, the open door of which ap­pear­ing to of­fer a means of es­cape, they rushed in and were pris­on­ers.

In short, the re­sult was sat­is­fac­to­ry, and the set­tlers had no rea­son to com­plain. There was no doubt that the flock would pros­per, and that at no dis­tant time not on­ly wool but hides would be abun­dant.

That evening the hunters re­turned to Gran­ite House quite ex­haust­ed. How­ev­er, notwith­stand­ing their fa­tigue, they re­turned the next day to vis­it the cor­ral. The pris­on­ers had been try­ing to over­throw the pal­isade, but of course had not suc­ceed­ed, and were not long in be­com­ing more tran­quil.

Dur­ing the month of Febru­ary, no event of any im­por­tance oc­curred. The dai­ly labors were pur­sued me­thod­ical­ly, and, as well as im­prov­ing the roads to the cor­ral and to Port Bal­loon, a third was com­menced, which, start­ing from the en­clo­sure, pro­ceed­ed to­wards the west­ern coast. The yet un­known por­tion of Lin­coln Is­land was that of the wood-​cov­ered Ser­pen­tine Penin­su­la, which shel­tered the wild beasts, from which Gideon Spilett was so anx­ious to clear their do­main.

Be­fore the cold sea­son should ap­pear the most as­sid­uous care was giv­en to the cul­ti­va­tion of the wild plants which had been trans­plant­ed from the for­est to Prospect Heights. Her­bert nev­er re­turned from an ex­cur­sion with­out bring­ing home some use­ful veg­etable. One day, it was some spec­imens of the chico­ry tribe, the seeds of which by pres­sure yield an ex­cel­lent oil; an­oth­er, it was some com­mon sor­rel, whose an­ti­scor­bu­tic qual­ities were not to be de­spised; then, some of those pre­cious tu­bers, which have at all times been cul­ti­vat­ed in South Amer­ica, pota­toes, of which more than two hun­dred species are now known. The kitchen gar­den, now well stocked and care­ful­ly de­fend­ed from the birds, was di­vid­ed in­to small beds, where grew let­tuces, kid­ney pota­toes, sor­rel, turnips, radish­es, and oth­er coneifer­ae. The soil on the plateau was par­tic­ular­ly fer­tile, and it was hoped that the har­vests would be abun­dant.

They had al­so a va­ri­ety of dif­fer­ent bev­er­ages, and so long as they did not de­mand wine, the most hard to please would have had no rea­son to com­plain. To the Os­wego tea, and the fer­ment­ed liquor ex­tract­ed from the roots of the drag­onnier, Hard­ing had added a reg­ular beer, made from the young shoots of the spruce-​fir, which, af­ter hav­ing been boiled and fer­ment­ed, made that agree­able drink called by the An­glo-​Amer­icans spring- beer.

To­wards the end of the sum­mer, the poul­try-​yard was pos­sessed of a cou­ple of fine bus­tards, which be­longed to the houbara species, char­ac­ter­ized by a sort of feath­ery man­tle; a dozen shov­el­ers, whose up­per mandible was pro­longed on each side by a mem­bra­ne­ous ap­pendage; and al­so some mag­nif­icent cocks, sim­ilar to the Mozam­bique cocks, the comb, carun­cle, and epi­der­mis be­ing black. So far, ev­ery­thing had suc­ceed­ed, thanks to the ac­tiv­ity of these coura­geous and in­tel­li­gent men. Na­ture did much for them, doubt­less; but faith­ful to the great pre­cept, they made a right use of what a boun­ti­ful Prov­idence gave them.

Af­ter the heat of these warm sum­mer days, in the evening when their work was fin­ished and the sea-​breeze be­gan to blow, they liked to sit on the edge of Prospect Heights, in a sort of ve­ran­da, cov­ered with creep­ers, which Neb had made with his own hands. There they talked, they in­struct­ed each oth­er, they made plans, and the rough good-​hu­mor of the sailor al­ways amused this lit­tle world, in which the most per­fect har­mo­ny had nev­er ceased to reign.

They of­ten spoke of their coun­try, of their dear and great Amer­ica. What was the re­sult of the War of Se­ces­sion? It could not have been great­ly pro­longed. Rich­mond had doubt­less soon fall­en in­to the hands of Gen­er­al Grant. The tak­ing of the cap­ital of the Con­fed­er­ates must have been the last ac­tion of this ter­ri­ble strug­gle. Now the North had tri­umphed in the good cause, how wel­come would have been a news­pa­per to the ex­iles in Lin­coln Is­land! For eleven months all com­mu­ni­ca­tion be­tween them and the rest of their fel­low-​crea­tures had been in­ter­rupt­ed, and in a short time the 24th of March would ar­rive, the an­niver­sary of the day on which the bal­loon had thrown them on this un­known coast. They were then mere cast­aways, not even know­ing how they should pre­serve their mis­er­able lives from the fury of the el­ements! And now, thanks to the knowl­edge of their cap­tain, and their own in­tel­li­gence, they were reg­ular colonists, fur­nished with arms, tools, and in­stru­ments; they had been able to turn to their prof­it the an­imals, plants, and min­er­als of the is­land, that is to say, the three king­doms of Na­ture.

Yes; they of­ten talked of all these things and formed still more plans.

As to Cyrus Hard­ing he was for the most part silent, and lis­tened to his com­pan­ions more of­ten than he spoke to them. Some­times he smiled at Her­bert’s ideas or Pen­croft’s non­sense, but al­ways and ev­ery­where he pon­dered over those in­ex­pli­ca­ble facts, that strange enig­ma, of which the se­cret still es­caped him!