Île mystérieuse. English

Chapter 16

Yes! the un­for­tu­nate man had wept! Some rec­ol­lec­tion doubt­less had flashed across his brain, and to use Cyrus Hard­ing’s ex­pres­sion, by those tears he was once more a man.

The colonists left him for some time on the plateau, and with­drew them­selves to a short dis­tance, so that he might feel him­self free; but he did not think of prof­it­ing by this lib­er­ty, and Hard­ing soon brought him back to Gran­ite House. Two days af­ter this oc­cur­rence, the stranger ap­peared to wish grad­ual­ly to min­gle with their com­mon life. He ev­ident­ly heard and un­der­stood, but no less ev­ident­ly was he strange­ly de­ter­mined not to speak to the colonists; for one evening, Pen­croft, lis­ten­ing at the door of his room, heard these words es­cape from his lips:–

“No! here! I! nev­er!”

The sailor re­port­ed these words to his com­pan­ions.

“There is some painful mys­tery there!” said Hard­ing.

The stranger had be­gun to use the la­bor­ing tools, and he worked in the gar­den. When he stopped in his work, as was of­ten the case, he re­mained re­tired with­in him­self, but on the en­gi­neer’s rec­om­men­da­tion, they re­spect­ed the re­serve which he ap­par­ent­ly wished to keep. If one of the set­tlers ap­proached him, he drew back, and his chest heaved with sobs, as if over­bur­dened!

Was it re­morse that over­whelmed him thus? They were com­pelled to be­lieve so, and Gideon Spilett could not help one day mak­ing this ob­ser­va­tion,–

“If he does not speak it is be­cause he has, I fear, things too se­ri­ous to be told!”

They must be pa­tient and wait.

A few days lat­er, on the 3rd of Novem­ber, the stranger, work­ing on the plateau, had stopped, let­ting his spade drop to the ground, and Hard­ing, who was ob­serv­ing him from a lit­tle dis­tance, saw that tears were again flow­ing from his eyes. A sort of ir­re­sistible pity led him to­wards the un­for­tu­nate man, and he touched his arm light­ly.

“My friend!” said he.

The stranger tried to avoid his look, and Cyrus Hard­ing hav­ing en­deav­ored to take his hand, he drew back quick­ly.

“My friend,” said Hard­ing in a firmer voice, “look at me, I wish it!”

The stranger looked at the en­gi­neer, and seemed to be un­der his pow­er, as a sub­ject un­der the in­flu­ence of a mes­merist. He wished to run away. But then his coun­te­nance sud­den­ly un­der­went a trans­for­ma­tion. His eyes flashed. Words strug­gled to es­cape from his lips. He could no longer con­tain him­self! At last he fold­ed his arms; then, in a hol­low voice,–“Who are you?” he asked Cyrus Hard­ing.

“Cast­aways, like you,” replied the en­gi­neer, whose emo­tion was deep. “We have brought you here, among your fel­low-​men.”

“My fel­low-​men!. . . . I have none!”

“You are in the midst of friends.”

“Friends!–for me! friends!” ex­claimed the stranger, hid­ing his face in his hands. “No–nev­er–leave me! leave me!”

Then he rushed to the side of the plateau which over­looked the sea, and re­mained there a long time mo­tion­less.

Hard­ing re­joined his com­pan­ions and re­lat­ed to them what had just hap­pened.

“Yes! there is some mys­tery in that man’s life,” said Gideon Spilett, “and it ap­pears as if he had on­ly re-​en­tered so­ci­ety by the path of re­morse.”

“I don’t know what sort of a man we have brought here,” said the sailor. “He has se­crets–“

“Which we will re­spect,” in­ter­rupt­ed Cyrus Hard­ing quick­ly. “If he has com­mit­ted any crime, he has most fear­ful­ly ex­pi­at­ed it, and in our eyes he is ab­solved.”

For two hours the stranger re­mained alone on the shore, ev­ident­ly un­der the in­flu­ence of rec­ol­lec­tions which re­called all his past life–a melan­choly life doubt­less–and the colonists, with­out los­ing sight of him, did not at­tempt to dis­turb his soli­tude. How­ev­er, af­ter two hours, ap­pear­ing to have formed a res­olu­tion, he came to find Cyrus Hard­ing. His eyes were red with the tears he had shed, but he wept no longer. His coun­te­nance ex­pressed deep hu­mil­ity. He ap­peared anx­ious, tim­orous, ashamed, and his eyes were con­stant­ly fixed on the ground.

“Sir,” said he to Hard­ing, “your com­pan­ions and you, are you En­glish?”

“No,” an­swered the en­gi­neer, “we are Amer­icans.”

“Ah!” said the stranger, and he mur­mured, “I pre­fer that!”

“And you, my friend?” asked the en­gi­neer.

“En­glish,” replied he hasti­ly.

And as if these few words had been dif­fi­cult to say, he re­treat­ed to the beach, where he walked up and down be­tween the cas­cade and the mouth of the Mer­cy, in a state of ex­treme ag­ita­tion.

Then, pass­ing one mo­ment close to Her­bert, he stopped and in a sti­fled voice,–

“What month?” he asked.

“De­cem­ber,” replied Her­bert.

“What year?”

“1866.”

“Twelve years! twelve years!” he ex­claimed.

Then he left him abrupt­ly.

Her­bert re­port­ed to the colonists the ques­tions and an­swers which had been made.

“This un­for­tu­nate man,” ob­served Gideon Spilett, “was no longer ac­quaint­ed with ei­ther months or years!”

“Yes!” added Her­bert, “and he had been twelve years al­ready on the islet when we found him there!”

“Twelve years!” re­joined Hard­ing. “Ah! twelve years of soli­tude, af­ter a wicked life, per­haps, may well im­pair a man’s rea­son!”

“I am in­duced to think,” said Pen­croft, “that this man was not wrecked on Ta­bor Is­land, but that in con­se­quence of some crime he was left there.”

“You must be right, Pen­croft,” replied the re­porter, “and if it is so it is not im­pos­si­ble that those who left him on the is­land may re­turn to fetch him some day!”

“And they will no longer find him,” said Her­bert.

“But then,” added Pen­croft, “they must re­turn, and–“

“My friends,” said Cyrus Hard­ing, “do not let us dis­cuss this ques­tion un­til we know more about it. I be­lieve that the un­hap­py man has suf­fered, that he has severe­ly ex­pi­at­ed his faults, what­ev­er they may have been, and that the wish to un­bur­den him­self sti­fles him. Do not let us press him to tell us his his­to­ry! He will tell it to us doubt­less, and when we know it, we shall see what course it will be best to fol­low. He alone be­sides can tell us, if he has more than a hope, a cer­tain­ty, of re­turn­ing some day to his coun­try, but I doubt it!”

“And why?” asked the re­porter.

“Be­cause that, in the event of his be­ing sure of be­ing de­liv­ered at a cer­tain time, he would have wait­ed the hour of his de­liv­er­ance and would not have thrown this doc­ument in­to the sea. No, it is more prob­able that he was con­demned to die on that islet, and that he nev­er ex­pect­ed to see his fel­low-​crea­tures again!”

“But,” ob­served the sailor, “there is one thing which I can­not ex­plain.”

“What is it?”

“If this man had been left for twelve years on Ta­bor Is­land, one may well sup­pose that he had been sev­er­al years al­ready in the wild state in which we found him!”

“That is prob­able,” replied Cyrus Hard­ing.

“It must then be many years since he wrote that doc­ument!”

“No doubt,” and yet the doc­ument ap­pears to have been re­cent­ly writ­ten!

“Be­sides, how do you know that the bot­tle which en­closed the doc­ument may not have tak­en sev­er­al years to come from Ta­bor Is­land to Lin­coln Is­land?”

“That is not ab­so­lute­ly im­pos­si­ble,” replied the re­porter.

“Might it not have been a long time al­ready on the coast of the is­land?”

“No,” an­swered Pen­croft, “for it was still float­ing. We could not even sup­pose that af­ter it had stayed for any length of time on the shore, it would have been swept off by the sea, for the south coast is all rocks, and it would cer­tain­ly have been smashed to pieces there!”

“That is true,” re­joined Cyrus Hard­ing thought­ful­ly.

“And then,” con­tin­ued the sailor, “if the doc­ument was sev­er­al years old, if it had been shut up in that bot­tle for sev­er­al years, it would have been in­jured by damp. Now, there is noth­ing of the kind, and it was found in a per­fect state of preser­va­tion.”

The sailor’s rea­son­ing was very just, and point­ed out an in­com­pre­hen­si­ble fact, for the doc­ument ap­peared to have been re­cent­ly writ­ten, when the colonists found it in the bot­tle. More­over, it gave the lat­itude and lon­gi­tude of Ta­bor Is­land cor­rect­ly, which im­plied that its au­thor had a more com­plete knowl­edge of hy­drog­ra­phy than could be ex­pect­ed of a com­mon sailor.

“There is in this, again, some­thing un­ac­count­able,” said the en­gi­neer, “but we will not urge our com­pan­ions to speak. When he likes, my friends, then we shall be ready to hear him!”

Dur­ing the fol­low­ing days the stranger did not speak a word, and did not once leave the precincts of the plateau. He worked away, with­out los­ing a mo­ment, with­out tak­ing a minute’s rest, but al­ways in a re­tired place. At meal times he nev­er came to Gran­ite House, al­though in­vit­ed sev­er­al times to do so, but con­tent­ed him­self with eat­ing a few raw veg­eta­bles. At night­fall he did not re­turn to the room as­signed to him, but re­mained un­der some clump of trees, or when the weath­er was bad crouched in some cleft of the rocks. Thus he lived in the same man­ner as when he had no oth­er shel­ter than the forests of Ta­bor Is­land, and as all per­sua­sion to in­duce him to im­prove his life was in vain, the colonists wait­ed pa­tient­ly. And the time was near, when, as it seemed, al­most in­vol­un­tar­ily urged by his con­science, a ter­ri­ble con­fes­sion es­caped him.

On the 10th of Novem­ber, about eight o’clock in the evening, as night was com­ing on, the stranger ap­peared un­ex­pect­ed­ly be­fore the set­tlers, who were as­sem­bled un­der the ve­ran­da. His eyes burned strange­ly, and he had quite re­sumed the wild as­pect of his worst days.

Cyrus Hard­ing and his com­pan­ions were as­tound­ed on see­ing that, over­come by some ter­ri­ble emo­tion, his teeth chat­tered like those of a per­son in a fever. What was the mat­ter with him? Was the sight of his fel­low-​crea­tures in­sup­port­able to him? Was he weary of this re­turn to a civ­ilized mode of ex­is­tence? Was he pin­ing for his for­mer sav­age life? It ap­peared so, as soon he was heard to ex­press him­self in these in­co­her­ent sen­tences:–

“Why am I here?…. By what right have you dragged me from my islet?…. Do you think there could be any tie be­tween you and me?…. Do you know who I am–what I have done–why I was there–alone? And who told you that I was not aban­doned there–that I was not con­demned to die there?…. Do you know my past?…. How do you know that I have not stolen, mur­dered–that I am not a wretch–an ac­cursed be­ing–on­ly fit to live like a wild beast, far from all–speak–do you know it?”

The colonists lis­tened with­out in­ter­rupt­ing the mis­er­able crea­ture, from whom these bro­ken con­fes­sions es­caped, as it were, in spite of him­self. Hard­ing wish­ing to calm him, ap­proached him, but he hasti­ly drew back.

“No! no!” he ex­claimed; “one word on­ly–am I free?”

“You are free,” an­swered the en­gi­neer.

“Farewell, then!” he cried, and fled like a mad­man.

Neb, Pen­croft, and Her­bert ran al­so to­wards the edge of the wood–but they re­turned alone.

“We must let him alone!” said Cyrus Hard­ing.

“He will nev­er come back!” ex­claimed Pen­croft.

“He will come back,” replied the en­gi­neer.

Many days passed; but Hard­ing–was it a sort of pre­sen­ti­ment? –pre­sen­ti­ment in the fixed idea that soon­er or lat­er the un­hap­py man would re­turn.

“It is the last re­volt of his wild na­ture,” said he, “which re­morse has touched, and which re­newed soli­tude will ter­ri­fy.”

In the mean­while, works of all sorts were con­tin­ued, as well on Prospect Heights as at the cor­ral, where Hard­ing in­tend­ed to build a farm. It is un­nec­es­sary to say that the seeds col­lect­ed by Her­bert on Ta­bor Is­land had been care­ful­ly sown. The plateau thus formed one im­mense kitchen-​gar­den, well laid out and care­ful­ly tend­ed, so that the arms of the set­tlers were nev­er in want of work. There was al­ways some­thing to be done. As the es­cu­lents in­creased in num­ber, it be­came nec­es­sary to en­large the sim­ple beds, which threat­ened to grow in­to reg­ular fields and re­place the mead­ows. But grass abound­ed in oth­er parts of the is­land, and there was no fear of the on­agers be­ing obliged to go on short al­lowance. It was well worth while, be­sides, to turn Prospect Heights in­to a kitchen-​gar­den, de­fend­ed by its deep belt of creeks, and to re­move them to the mead­ows, which had no need of pro­tec­tion against the depre­da­tions of quadru­mana and quadrapeds.

On the 15th of Novem­ber, the third har­vest was gath­ered in. How won­der­ful­ly had the field in­creased in ex­tent, since eigh­teen months ago, when the first grain of wheat was sown! The sec­ond crop of six hun­dred thou­sand grains pro­duced this time four thou­sand bushels, or five hun­dred mil­lions of grains!

The colony was rich in corn, for ten bushels alone were suf­fi­cient for sow­ing ev­ery year to pro­duce an am­ple crop for the food both of men and beasts. The har­vest was com­plet­ed, and the last fort­night of the month of Novem­ber was de­vot­ed to the work of con­vert­ing it in­to food for man. In fact, they had corn, but not flour, and the es­tab­lish­ment of a mill was nec­es­sary. Cyrus Hard­ing could have uti­lized the sec­ond fall which flowed in­to the Mer­cy to es­tab­lish his mo­tive pow­er, the first be­ing al­ready oc­cu­pied with mov­ing the felt­ing mill, but, af­ter some con­sul­ta­tion, it was de­cid­ed that a sim­ple wind­mill should be built on Prospect Heights. The build­ing of this pre­sent­ed no more dif­fi­cul­ty than the build­ing of the for­mer, and it was more­over cer­tain that there would be no want of wind on the plateau, ex­posed as it was to the sea breezes.

“Not to men­tion,” said Pen­croft, “that the wind­mill will be more live­ly and will have a good ef­fect in the land­scape!”

They set to work by choos­ing tim­ber for the frame and ma­chin­ery of the mill. Some large stones, found at the north of the lake, could be eas­ily trans­formed in­to mill­stones, and as to the sails, the in­ex­haustible case of the bal­loon fur­nished the nec­es­sary ma­te­ri­al.

Cyrus Hard­ing made his mod­el, and the site of the mill was cho­sen a lit­tle to the right of the poul­try-​yard, near the shore of the lake. The frame was to rest on a piv­ot sup­port­ed with strong tim­bers, so that it could turn with all the ma­chin­ery it con­tained ac­cord­ing as the wind re­quired it. The work ad­vanced rapid­ly. Neb and Pen­croft had be­come very skil­ful car­pen­ters, and had noth­ing to do but to copy the mod­els pro­vid­ed by the en­gi­neer.

Soon a sort of cylin­dri­cal box, in shape like a pep­per-​pot, with a point­ed roof, rose on the spot cho­sen. The four frames which formed the sails had been firm­ly fixed in the cen­ter beam, so as to form a cer­tain an­gle with it, and se­cured with iron clamps. As to the dif­fer­ent parts of the in­ter­nal mech­anism, the box des­tined to con­tain the two mill­stones, the fixed stone and the mov­ing stone, the hop­per, a sort of large square trough, wide at the top, nar­row at the bot­tom, which would al­low the grain to fall on the stones, the os­cil­lat­ing spout in­tend­ed to reg­ulate the pass­ing of the grain, and last­ly the bolt­ing ma­chine, which by the op­er­ation of sift­ing, sep­arates the bran from the flour, were made with­out dif­fi­cul­ty. The tools were good, and the work not dif­fi­cult, for in re­al­ity, the ma­chin­ery of a mill is very sim­ple. This was on­ly a ques­tion of time.

Ev­ery one had worked at the con­struc­tion of the mill, and on the 1st of De­cem­ber it was fin­ished. As usu­al, Pen­croft was de­light­ed with his work, and had no doubt that the ap­pa­ra­tus was per­fect.

“Now for a good wind,” said he, “and we shall grind our first har­vest splen­did­ly!”

“A good wind, cer­tain­ly,” an­swered the en­gi­neer, “but not too much, Pen­croft.”

“Pooh! our mill would on­ly go the faster!”

“There is no need for it to go so very fast,” replied Cyrus Hard­ing. “It is known by ex­pe­ri­ence that the great­est quan­ti­ty of work is per­formed by a mill when the num­ber of turns made by the sails in a minute is six times the num­ber of feet tra­versed by the wind in a sec­ond. A mod­er­ate breeze, which pass­es over twen­ty-​four feet to the sec­ond, will give six­teen turns to the sails dur­ing a minute, and there is no need of more.”

“Ex­act­ly!” cried Her­bert, “a fine breeze is blow­ing from the north­east, which will soon do our busi­ness for us.”

There was no rea­son for de­lay­ing the in­au­gu­ra­tion of the mill, for the set­tlers were ea­ger to taste the first piece of bread in Lin­coln Is­land. On this morn­ing two or three bushels of wheat were ground, and the next day at break­fast a mag­nif­icent loaf, a lit­tle heavy per­haps, al­though raised with yeast, ap­peared on the ta­ble at Gran­ite House. Ev­ery one munched away at it with a plea­sure which may be eas­ily un­der­stood.

In the mean­while, the stranger had not reap­peared. Sev­er­al times Gideon Spilett and Her­bert searched the for­est in the neigh­bor­hood of Gran­ite House, with­out meet­ing or find­ing any trace of him. They be­came se­ri­ous­ly un­easy at this pro­longed ab­sence. Cer­tain­ly, the for­mer sav­age of Ta­bor is­land could not be per­plexed how to live in the for­est, abound­ing in game, but was it not to be feared that he had re­sumed his habits, and that this free­dom would re­vive in him his wild in­stincts? How­ev­er, Hard­ing, by a sort of pre­sen­ti­ment, doubt­less, al­ways per­sist­ed in say­ing that the fugi­tive would re­turn.

“Yes, he will re­turn!” he re­peat­ed with a con­fi­dence which his com­pan­ions could not share. “When this un­for­tu­nate man was on Ta­bor Is­land, he knew him­self to be alone! Here, he knows that fel­low-​men are await­ing him! Since he has par­tial­ly spo­ken of his past life, the poor pen­itent will re­turn to tell the whole, and from that day he will be­long to us!”

The event jus­ti­fied Cyrus Hard­ing’s pre­dic­tions. On the 3rd of De­cem­ber, Her­bert had left the plateau to go and fish on the south­ern bank of the lake. He was un­armed, and till then had nev­er tak­en any pre­cau­tions for de­fense, as dan­ger­ous an­imals had not shown them­selves on that part of the is­land.

Mean­while, Pen­croft and Neb were work­ing in the poul­try-​yard, while Hard­ing and the re­porter were oc­cu­pied at the Chim­neys in mak­ing so­da, the store of soap be­ing ex­haust­ed.

Sud­den­ly cries re­sound­ed,–

“Help! help!”

Cyrus Hard­ing and the re­porter, be­ing at too great a dis­tance, had not been able to hear the shouts. Pen­croft and Neb, leav­ing the poul­try-​yard in all haste, rushed to­wards the lake.

But be­fore then, the stranger, whose pres­ence at this place no one had sus­pect­ed, crossed Creek Glyc­er­ine, which sep­arat­ed the plateau from the for­est, and bound­ed up the op­po­site bank.

Her­bert was there face to face with a fierce jaguar, sim­ilar to the one which had been killed on Rep­tile End. Sud­den­ly sur­prised, he was stand­ing with his back against a tree, while the an­imal gath­er­ing it­self to­geth­er was about to spring.

But the stranger, with no oth­er weapon than a knife, rushed on the formidable an­imal, who turned to meet this new ad­ver­sary.

The strug­gle was short. The stranger pos­sessed im­mense strength and ac­tiv­ity. He seized the jaguar’s throat with one pow­er­ful hand, hold­ing it as in a vise, with­out heed­ing the beast’s claws which tore his flesh, and with the oth­er he plunged his knife in­to its heart.

The jaguar fell. The stranger kicked away the body, and was about to fly at the mo­ment when the set­tlers ar­rived on the field of bat­tle, but Her­bert, cling­ing to him, cried,–

“No, no! you shall not go!”

Hard­ing ad­vanced to­wards the stranger, who frowned when he saw him ap­proach­ing. The blood flowed from his shoul­der un­der his torn shirt, but he took no no­tice of it.

“My friend,” said Cyrus Hard­ing, “we have just con­tract­ed a debt of grat­itude to you. To save our boy you have risked your life!”

“My life!” mur­mured the stranger. “What is that worth? Less than noth­ing!”

“You are wound­ed?”

“It is no mat­ter.”

“Will you give me your hand?”

And as Her­bert en­deav­ored to. seize the hand which had just saved him, the stranger fold­ed his arms, his chest heaved, his look dark­ened, and he ap­peared to wish to es­cape, but mak­ing a vi­olent ef­fort over him­self, and in an abrupt tone,–

“Who are you?” he asked, “and what do you claim to be to me?”

It was the colonists’ his­to­ry which he thus de­mand­ed, and for the first time. Per­haps this his­to­ry re­count­ed, he would tell his own.

In a few words Hard­ing re­lat­ed all that had hap­pened since their de­par­ture from Rich­mond; how they had man­aged, and what re­sources they now had at their dis­pos­al.

The stranger lis­tened with ex­treme at­ten­tion.

Then the en­gi­neer told who they all were, Gideon Spilett, Her­bert, Pen­croft, Neb, him­self, and, he added, that the great­est hap­pi­ness they had felt since their ar­rival in Lin­coln Is­land was on the re­turn of the ves­sel from Ta­bor Is­land, when they had been able to in­clude among them a new com­pan­ion.

At these words the stranger’s face flushed, his head sunk on his breast, and con­fu­sion was de­pict­ed on his coun­te­nance.

“And now that you know us,” added Cyrus Hard­ing, “will you give us your hand?”

“No,” replied the, stranger in a hoarse voice; “no! You are hon­est men! And I–“