Île mystérieuse. English

Chapter 8

“Poor man!” said Her­bert, who had rushed to the door, but re­turned, hav­ing seen Ayr­ton slide down the rope on the lift and dis­ap­pear in the dark­ness.

“He will come back,” said Cyrus Hard­ing.

“Come, now, cap­tain,” ex­claimed Pen­croft, “what does that mean? What! wasn’t it Ayr­ton who threw that bot­tle in­to the sea? Who was it then?”

Cer­tain­ly, if ev­er a ques­tion was nec­es­sary to be made, it was that one!

“It was he,” an­swered Neb, “on­ly the un­hap­py man was half-​mad.”

“Yes!” said Her­bert, “and he was no longer con­scious of what he was do­ing.”

“It can on­ly be ex­plained in that way, my friends,” replied Hard­ing quick­ly, “and I un­der­stand now how Ayr­ton was able to point out ex­act­ly the sit­ua­tion of Ta­bor Is­land, since the events which had pre­ced­ed his be­ing left on the is­land had made it known to him.”

“How­ev­er,” ob­served Pen­croft, “if he was not yet a brute when he wrote that doc­ument, and if he threw it in­to the sea sev­en or eight years ago, how is it that the pa­per has not been in­jured by damp?”

“That proves,” an­swered Cyrus Hard­ing, “that Ayr­ton was de­prived of in­tel­li­gence at a more re­cent time than he thinks.”

“Of course it must be so,” replied Pen­croft, “with­out that the fact would be un­ac­count­able.”

“Un­ac­count­able in­deed,” an­swered the en­gi­neer, who did not ap­pear de­sirous to pro­long the con­ver­sa­tion.

“But has Ayr­ton told the truth?” asked the sailor.

“Yes,” replied the re­porter. “The sto­ry which he has told is true in ev­ery point. I re­mem­ber quite well the ac­count in the news­pa­pers of the yacht ex­pe­di­tion un­der­tak­en by Lord Gle­nar­van, and its re­sult.”

“Ayr­ton has told the truth,” added Hard­ing. “Do not doubt it, Pen­croft, for it was painful to him. Peo­ple tell the truth when they ac­cuse them­selves like that!”

The next day–the 21st of De­cem­ber–the colonists de­scend­ed to the beach, and hav­ing climbed the plateau they found noth­ing of Ayr­ton. He had reached his house in the cor­ral dur­ing the night and the set­tlers judged it best not to ag­itate him by their pres­ence. Time would doubt­less per­form what sym­pa­thy had been un­able to ac­com­plish.

Her­bert, Pen­croft, and Neb re­sumed their or­di­nary oc­cu­pa­tions. On this day the same work brought Hard­ing and the re­porter to the work­shop at the Chim­neys.

“Do you know, my dear Cyrus,” said Gideon Spilett, “that the ex­pla­na­tion you gave yes­ter­day on the sub­ject of the bot­tle has not sat­is­fied me at all! How can it be sup­posed that the un­for­tu­nate man was able to write that doc­ument and throw the bot­tle in­to the sea with­out hav­ing the slight­est rec­ol­lec­tion of it?”

“Nor was it he who threw it in, my dear Spilett.”

“You think then–“

“I think noth­ing, I know noth­ing!” in­ter­rupt­ed Cyrus Hard­ing. “I am con­tent to rank this in­ci­dent among those which I have not been able to ex­plain to this day!”

“In­deed, Cyrus,” said Spilett, “these things are in­cred­ible! Your res­cue, the case strand­ed on the sand, Top’s ad­ven­ture, and last­ly this bot­tle… Shall we nev­er have the an­swer to these enig­mas?”

“Yes!” replied the en­gi­neer quick­ly, “yes, even if I have to pen­etrate in­to the bow­els of this is­land!”

“Chance will per­haps give us the key to this mys­tery!”

“Chance! Spilett! I do not be­lieve in chance, any more than I be­lieve in mys­ter­ies in this world. There is a rea­son for ev­ery­thing un­ac­count­able which has hap­pened here, and that rea­son I shall dis­cov­er. But in the mean­time we must work and ob­serve.”

The month of Jan­uary ar­rived. The year 1867 com­menced. The sum­mer oc­cu­pa­tions were as­sid­uous­ly con­tin­ued. Dur­ing the days which fol­lowed, Her­bert and Spilett hav­ing gone in the di­rec­tion of the cor­ral, as­cer­tained that Ayr­ton had tak­en pos­ses­sion of the habi­ta­tion which had been pre­pared for him. He bus­ied him­self with the nu­mer­ous flock con­fid­ed to his care, and spared his com­pan­ions the trou­ble of com­ing ev­ery two or three days to vis­it the cor­ral. Nev­er­the­less, in or­der not to leave Ayr­ton in soli­tude for too long a time, the set­tlers of­ten paid him a vis­it.

It was not unim­por­tant ei­ther, in con­se­quence of some sus­pi­cions en­ter­tained by the en­gi­neer and Gideon Spilett, that this part of the is­land should be sub­ject to a surveil­lance of some sort, and that Ayr­ton, if any in­ci­dent oc­curred un­ex­pect­ed­ly, should not ne­glect to in­form the in­hab­itants of Gran­ite House of it.

Nev­er­the­less it might hap­pen that some­thing would oc­cur which it would be nec­es­sary to bring rapid­ly to the en­gi­neer’s knowl­edge. In­de­pen­dent­ly of facts bear­ing on the mys­tery of Lin­coln Is­land, many oth­ers might hap­pen, which would call for the prompt in­ter­fer­ence of the colonists,–such as the sight­ing of a ves­sel, a wreck on the west­ern coast, the pos­si­ble ar­rival of pi­rates, etc.

There­fore Cyrus Hard­ing re­solved to put the cor­ral in in­stan­ta­neous com­mu­ni­ca­tion with Gran­ite House.

It was on the 10th of Jan­uary that he made known his project to his com­pan­ions.

“Why! how are you go­ing to man­age that, cap­tain?” asked Pen­croft. “Do you by chance hap­pen to think of es­tab­lish­ing a tele­graph?”

“Ex­act­ly so,” an­swered the en­gi­neer.

“Elec­tric?” cried Her­bert.

“Elec­tric,” replied Cyrus Hard­ing. “We have all the nec­es­sary ma­te­ri­als for mak­ing a bat­tery, and the most dif­fi­cult thing will be to stretch the wires, but by means of a draw­plate I think we shall man­age it.”

“Well, af­ter that,” re­turned the sailor, “I shall nev­er de­spair of see­ing our­selves some day rolling along on a rail­way!”

They then set to work, be­gin­ning with the most dif­fi­cult thing, for, if they failed in that, it would be use­less to man­ufac­ture the bat­tery and oth­er ac­ces­sories.

The iron of Lin­coln Is­land, as has been said, was of ex­cel­lent qual­ity, and con­se­quent­ly very fit for be­ing drawn out. Hard­ing com­menced by man­ufac­tur­ing a draw­plate, that is to say, a plate of steel, pierced with con­ical holes of dif­fer­ent sizes, which would suc­ces­sive­ly bring the wire to the wished-​for tenac­ity. This piece of steel, af­ter hav­ing been tem­pered, was fixed in as firm a way as pos­si­ble in a sol­id frame­work plant­ed in the ground, on­ly a few feet from the great fall, the mo­tive pow­er of which the en­gi­neer in­tend­ed to uti­lize. In fact as the fulling- mill was there, al­though not then in use, its beam moved with ex­treme pow­er would serve to stretch out the wire by rolling it round it­self. It was a del­icate op­er­ation, and re­quired much care. The iron, pre­pared pre­vi­ous­ly in long thin rods, the ends of which were sharp­ened with the file, hav­ing been in­tro­duced in­to the largest hole of the draw­plate, was drawn out by the beam which wound it round it­self, to a length of twen­ty-​five or thir­ty feet, then un­rolled, and the same op­er­ation was per­formed suc­ces­sive­ly through the holes of a less size. Fi­nal­ly, the en­gi­neer ob­tained wires from forty to fifty feet long, which could be eas­ily fas­tened to­geth­er and stretched over the dis­tance of five miles, which sep­arat­ed the cor­ral from the bounds of Gran­ite House.

It did not take more than a few days to per­form this work, and in­deed as soon as the ma­chine had been com­menced, Cyrus Hard­ing left his com­pan­ions to fol­low the trade of wire­draw­ers, and oc­cu­pied him­self with man­ufac­tur­ing his bat­tery.

It was nec­es­sary to ob­tain a bat­tery with a con­stant cur­rent. It is known that the el­ements of mod­ern bat­ter­ies are gen­er­al­ly com­posed of re­tort coal, zinc, and cop­per. Cop­per was ab­so­lute­ly want­ing to the en­gi­neer, who, notwith­stand­ing all his re­search­es, had nev­er been able to find any trace of it in Lin­coln Is­land, and was there­fore obliged to do with­out it. Re­tort coal, that is to say, the hard graphite which is found in the re­torts of gas man­ufac­to­ries, af­ter the coal has been de­hy­dro­ge­nized, could have been ob­tained, but it would have been nec­es­sary to es­tab­lish a spe­cial ap­pa­ra­tus, in­volv­ing great la­bor. As to zinc, it may be re­mem­bered that the case found at Flot­sam Point was lined with this met­al, which could not be bet­ter uti­lized than for this pur­pose.

Cyrus Hard­ing, af­ter ma­ture con­sid­er­ation, de­cid­ed to man­ufac­ture a very sim­ple bat­tery, re­sem­bling as near­ly as pos­si­ble that in­vent­ed by Bec­quer­el in 1820, and in which zinc on­ly is em­ployed. The oth­er sub­stances, azot­ic acid and potash, were all at his dis­pos­al.

The way in which the bat­tery was com­posed was as fol­lows, and the re­sults were to be at­tained by the re­ac­tion of acid and potash on each oth­er. A num­ber of glass bot­tles were made and filled with azot­ic acid. The en­gi­neer corked them by means of a stop­per through which passed a glass tube, bored at its low­er ex­trem­ity, and in­tend­ed to be plunged in­to the acid by means of a clay stop­per se­cured by a rag. In­to this tube, through its up­per ex­trem­ity, he poured a so­lu­tion of potash, pre­vi­ous­ly ob­tained by burn­ing and re­duc­ing to ash­es var­ious plants, and in this way the acid and potash could act on each oth­er through the clay.

Cyrus Hard­ing then took two slips of zinc, one of which was plunged in­to azot­ic acid, the oth­er in­to a so­lu­tion of potash. A cur­rent was im­me­di­ate­ly pro­duced, which was trans­mit­ted from the slip of zinc in the bot­tle to that in the tube, and the two slips hav­ing been con­nect­ed by a metal­lic wire the slip in the tube be­came the pos­itive pole, and that in the bot­tle the neg­ative pole of the ap­pa­ra­tus. Each bot­tle, there­fore, pro­duced as many cur­rents as unit­ed would be suf­fi­cient to pro­duce all the phe­nom­ena of the elec­tric tele­graph. Such was the in­ge­nious and very sim­ple ap­pa­ra­tus con­struct­ed by Cyrus Hard­ing, an ap­pa­ra­tus which would al­low them to es­tab­lish a tele­graph­ic com­mu­ni­ca­tion be­tween Gran­ite House and the cor­ral.

On the 6th of Febru­ary was com­menced the plant­ing along the road to the cor­ral, of posts fur­nished with glass in­su­la­tors, and in­tend­ed to sup­port the wire. A few days af­ter, the wire was ex­tend­ed, ready to pro­duce the elec­tric cur­rent at a rate of twen­ty thou­sand miles a sec­ond.

Two bat­ter­ies had been man­ufac­tured, one for Gran­ite House, the oth­er for the cor­ral; for if it was nec­es­sary the cor­ral should be able to com­mu­ni­cate with Gran­ite House it might al­so be use­ful that Gran­ite House should be able to com­mu­ni­cate with the cor­ral.

As to the re­ceiv­er and ma­nip­ula­tor, they were very sim­ple. At the two sta­tions the wire was wound round a mag­net, that is to say, round a piece of soft iron sur­round­ed with a wire. The com­mu­ni­ca­tion was thus es­tab­lished be­tween the two poles; the cur­rent, start­ing from the pos­itive pole, tra­versed the wire, passed through the mag­net which was tem­porar­ily mag­ne­tized, and re­turned through the earth to the neg­ative pole. If the cur­rent was in­ter­rupt­ed, the mag­net im­me­di­ate­ly be­came un­mag­ne­tized. It was suf­fi­cient to place a plate of soft iron be­fore the mag­net, which, at­tract­ed dur­ing the pas­sage of the cur­rent, would fall back when the cur­rent was in­ter­rupt­ed. This move­ment of the plate thus ob­tained, Hard­ing could eas­ily fas­ten to it a nee­dle ar­ranged on a di­al, bear­ing the let­ters of the al­pha­bet, and in this way com­mu­ni­cate from one sta­tion to the oth­er.

All was com­plete­ly ar­ranged by the 12th of Febru­ary. On this day, Hard­ing, hav­ing sent the cur­rent through the wire, asked if all was go­ing on well at the cor­ral, and re­ceived in a few mo­ments a sat­is­fac­to­ry re­ply from Ayr­ton. Pen­croft was wild with joy, and ev­ery morn­ing and evening he sent a tele­gram to the cor­ral, which al­ways re­ceived an an­swer.

This mode of com­mu­ni­ca­tion pre­sent­ed two very re­al ad­van­tages: first­ly, be­cause it en­abled them to as­cer­tain that Ayr­ton was at the cor­ral; and sec­ond­ly, that he was thus not left com­plete­ly iso­lat­ed. Be­sides, Cyrus Hard­ing nev­er al­lowed a week to pass with­out go­ing to see him, and Ayr­ton came from time to time to Gran­ite House, where he al­ways found a cor­dial wel­come.

The fine sea­son passed away in the midst of the usu­al work. The re­sources of the colony, par­tic­ular­ly in veg­eta­bles and corn, in­creased from day to day, and the plants brought from Ta­bor Is­land had suc­ceed­ed per­fect­ly.

The plateau of Prospect Heights pre­sent­ed an en­cour­ag­ing as­pect. The fourth har­vest had been ad­mirable and it may be sup­posed that no one thought of count­ing whether the four hun­dred thou­sand mil­lions of grains du­ly ap­peared in the crop. How­ev­er, Pen­croft had thought of do­ing so, but Cyrus Hard­ing hav­ing told him that even if he man­aged to count three hun­dred grains a minute, or nine thou­sand an hour, it would take him near­ly five thou­sand five-​hun­dred years to fin­ish his task, the hon­est sailor con­sid­ered it best to give up the idea.

The weath­er was splen­did, the tem­per­ature very warm in the day time, but in the evening the sea-​breezes tem­pered the heat of the at­mo­sphere and pro­cured cool nights for the in­hab­itants of Gran­ite House. There were, how­ev­er, a few storms, which, al­though they were not of long du­ra­tion, swept over Lin­coln Is­land with ex­traor­di­nary fury. The light­ning blazed and the thun­der con­tin­ued to roll for some hours.

At this pe­ri­od the lit­tle colony was ex­treme­ly pros­per­ous.

The ten­ants of the poul­try-​yard swarmed, and they lived on the sur­plus, but it be­came nec­es­sary to re­duce the pop­ula­tion to a more mod­er­ate num­ber. The pigs had al­ready pro­duced young, and it may be un­der­stood that their care for these an­imals ab­sorbed a great part of Neb and Pen­croft’s time. The on­agers, who had two pret­ty colts, were most of­ten mount­ed by Gideon Spilett and Her­bert, who had be­come an ex­cel­lent rid­er un­der the re­porter’s in­struc­tion, and they al­so har­nessed them to the cart ei­ther for car­ry­ing wood and coal to Gran­ite House, or dif­fer­ent min­er­al pro­duc­tions re­quired by the en­gi­neer.

Sev­er­al ex­pe­di­tions were made about this time in­to the depths of the Far West Forests. The ex­plor­ers could ven­ture there with­out hav­ing any­thing to fear from the heat, for the sun’s rays scarce­ly pen­etrat­ed through the thick fo­liage spread­ing above their heads. They thus vis­it­ed all the left bank of the Mer­cy, along which ran the road from the cor­ral to the mouth of Falls Riv­er.

But in these ex­cur­sions the set­tlers took care to be well armed, for they met with sav­age wild boars, with which they of­ten had a tus­sle. They al­so, dur­ing this sea­son, made fierce war against the jaguars. Gideon Spilett had vowed a spe­cial ha­tred against them, and his pupil Her­bert sec­ond­ed him well. Armed as they were, they no longer feared to meet one of those beasts. Her­bert’s courage was su­perb, and the re­porter’s sang-​froid as­ton­ish­ing. Al­ready twen­ty mag­nif­icent skins or­na­ment­ed the din­ing-​room of Gran­ite House, and if this con­tin­ued, the jaguar race would soon be ex­tinct in the is­land, the ob­ject aimed at by the hunters.

The en­gi­neer some­times took part in the ex­pe­di­tions made to the un­known parts of the is­land, which he sur­veyed with great at­ten­tion. It was for oth­er traces than those of an­imals that he searched the thick­ets of the vast for­est, but noth­ing sus­pi­cious ev­er ap­peared. Nei­ther Top nor Jup, who ac­com­pa­nied him, ev­er be­trayed by their be­hav­ior that there was any­thing strange there, and yet more than once again the dog barked at the mouth of the well, which the en­gi­neer had be­fore ex­plored with­out re­sult.

At this time Gideon Spilett, aid­ed by Her­bert, took sev­er­al views of the most pic­turesque parts of the is­land, by means of the pho­to­graph­ic ap­pa­ra­tus found in the cas­es, and of which they had not as yet made any use.

This ap­pa­ra­tus, pro­vid­ed with a pow­er­ful ob­ject-​glass, was very com­plete. Sub­stances nec­es­sary for the pho­to­graph­ic re­pro­duc­tion, col­lo­di­on for prepar­ing the glass plate, ni­trate of sil­ver to ren­der it sen­si­tive, hy­po­sul­fate of so­da to fix the prints ob­tained, chlo­ride of am­mo­ni­um in which to soak the pa­per des­tined to give the pos­itive proof, ac­etate of so­da and chlo­ride of gold in which to im­merse the pa­per, noth­ing was want­ing. Even the pa­pers were there, all pre­pared, and be­fore lay­ing in the print­ing-​frame up­on the neg­atives, it was suf­fi­cient to soak them for a few min­utes in the so­lu­tion of ni­trate of sil­ver.

The re­porter and his as­sis­tant be­came in a short time very skil­ful op­er­ators, and they ob­tained fine views of the coun­try, such as the is­land, tak­en from Prospect Heights with Mount Franklin in the dis­tance, the mouth of the Mer­cy, so pic­turesque­ly framed in high rocks, the glade and the cor­ral, with the spurs of the moun­tain in the back­ground, the cu­ri­ous de­vel­op­ment of Claw Cape, Flot­sam Point, etc.

Nor did the pho­tog­ra­phers for­get to take the por­traits of all the in­hab­itants of the is­land, leav­ing out no one.

“It mul­ti­plies us,” said Pen­croft.

And the sailor was en­chant­ed to see his own coun­te­nance, faith­ful­ly re­pro­duced, or­na­ment­ing the walls of Gran­ite House, and he stopped as will­ing­ly be­fore this ex­hi­bi­tion as he would have done be­fore the rich­est shop-​win­dows in Broad­way.

But it must be ac­knowl­edged that the most suc­cess­ful por­trait was in­con­testably that of Mas­ter Jup. Mas­ter Jup had sat with a grav­ity not to be de­scribed, and his por­trait was life­like!

“He looks as if he was just go­ing to grin!” ex­claimed Pen­croft.

And if Mas­ter Jup had not been sat­is­fied, he would have been very dif­fi­cult to please; but he was quite con­tent­ed and con­tem­plat­ed his own coun­te­nance with a sen­ti­men­tal air which ex­pressed some small amount of con­ceit.

The sum­mer heat end­ed with the month of March. The weath­er was some­times rainy, but still warm. The month of March, which cor­re­sponds to the Septem­ber of north­ern lat­itudes, was not so fine as might have been hoped. Per­haps it an­nounced an ear­ly and rig­or­ous win­ter.

It might have been sup­posed one morn­ing–the 21 st–that the first snow had al­ready made its ap­pear­ance. In fact Her­bert look­ing ear­ly from one of the win­dows of Gran­ite House, ex­claimed,–

“Hal­lo! the islet is cov­ered with snow!”

“Snow at this time?” an­swered the re­porter, join­ing the boy.

Their com­pan­ions were soon be­side them, but could on­ly as­cer­tain one thing, that not on­ly the islet but all the beach be­low Gran­ite House was cov­ered with one uni­form sheet of white.

“It must be snow!” said Pen­croft.

“Or rather it’s very like it!” replied Neb.

“But the ther­mome­ter marks fifty-​eight de­grees!” ob­served Gideon Spilett.

Cyrus Hard­ing gazed at the sheet of white with­out say­ing any­thing, for he re­al­ly did not know how to ex­plain this phe­nomenon, at this time of year and in such a tem­per­ature.

“By Jove!” ex­claimed Pen­croft, “all our plants will be frozen!”

And the sailor was about to de­scend, when he was pre­ced­ed by the nim­ble Jup, who slid down to the sand.

But the orang had not touched the ground, when the snowy sheet arose and dis­persed in the air in such in­nu­mer­able flakes that the light of the sun was ob­scured for some min­utes.

“Birds!” cried Her­bert.

They were in­deed swarms of sea-​birds, with daz­zling white plumage. They had perched by thou­sands on the islet and on the shore, and they dis­ap­peared in the dis­tance, leav­ing the colonists amazed as if they had been present at some trans­for­ma­tion scene, in which sum­mer suc­ceed­ed win­ter at the touch of a fairy’s wand. Un­for­tu­nate­ly the change had been so sud­den, that nei­ther the re­porter nor the lad had been able to bring down one of these birds, of which they could not rec­og­nize the species.

A few days af­ter came the 26th of March, the day on which, two years be­fore, the cast­aways from the air had been thrown up­on Lin­coln Is­land.