Île mystérieuse. English

Chapter 4

“She has blown up!” cried Her­bert.

“Yes! blown up, just as if Ayr­ton had set fire to the pow­der!” re­turned Pen­croft, throw­ing him­self in­to the lift to­geth­er with Neb and the lad.

“But what has hap­pened?” asked Gideon Spilett, quite stunned by this un­ex­pect­ed catas­tro­phe.

“Oh! this time, we shall know–” an­swered the en­gi­neer quick­ly.

“What shall we know?–“

“Lat­er! lat­er! Come, Spilett. The main point is that these pi­rates have been ex­ter­mi­nat­ed!”

And Cyrus Hard­ing, hur­ry­ing away the re­porter and Ayr­ton, joined Pen­croft, Neb, and Her­bert on the beach.

Noth­ing could be seen of the brig, not even her masts. Af­ter hav­ing been raised by the wa­ter-​spout, she had fall­en on her side, and had sunk in that po­si­tion, doubt­less in con­se­quence of some enor­mous leak. But as in that place the chan­nel was not more than twen­ty feet in depth, it was cer­tain that the sides of the sub­merged brig would reap­pear at low wa­ter.

A few things from the wreck float­ed on the sur­face of the wa­ter, a raft could be seen con­sist­ing of spare spars, coops of poul­try with their oc­cu­pants still liv­ing, box­es and bar­rels, which grad­ual­ly came to the sur­face, af­ter hav­ing es­caped through the hatch­ways, but no pieces of the wreck ap­peared, nei­ther planks from the deck, nor tim­ber from the hull,– which ren­dered the sud­den dis­ap­pear­ance of the “Speedy” per­fect­ly in­ex­pli­ca­ble.

How­ev­er, the two masts, which had been bro­ken and es­caped from the shrouds and stays came up, and with their sails, some furled and the oth­ers spread. But it was not nec­es­sary to wait for the tide to bring up these rich­es, and Ayr­ton and Pen­croft jumped in­to the boat with the in­ten­tion of tow­ing the pieces of wreck ei­ther to the beach or to the islet. But just as they were shov­ing off, an ob­ser­va­tion from Gideon Spilett ar­rest­ed them.

“What about those six con­victs who dis­em­barked on the right bank of the Mer­cy?” said he.

In fact, it would not do to for­get that the six men whose boat had gone to pieces on the rocks had land­ed at Flot­sam Point.

They looked in that di­rec­tion. None of the fugi­tives were vis­ible. It was prob­able that, hav­ing seen their ves­sel en­gulfed in the chan­nel, they had fled in­to the in­te­ri­or of the is­land.

“We will deal with them lat­er,” said Hard­ing. “As they are armed, they will still be dan­ger­ous; but as it is six against six, the chances are equal. To the most press­ing busi­ness first.”

Ayr­ton and Pen­croft pulled vig­or­ous­ly to­wards the wreck.

The sea was calm and the tide very high, as there had been a new moon but two days be­fore. A whole hour at least would elapse be­fore the hull of the brig could emerge from the wa­ter of the chan­nel.

Ayr­ton and Pen­croft were able to fas­ten the masts and spars by means of ropes, the ends of which were car­ried to the beach. There, by the unit­ed ef­forts of the set­tlers the pieces of wreck were hauled up. Then the boat picked up all that was float­ing, coops, bar­rels, and box­es, which were im­me­di­ate­ly car­ried to the Chim­neys.

Sev­er­al bod­ies float­ed al­so. Among them, Ayr­ton rec­og­nized that of Bob Har­vey, which he point­ed out to his com­pan­ion, say­ing with some emo­tion,–

“That is what I have been, Pen­croft.”

“But what you are no longer, brave Ayr­ton!” re­turned the sailor warm­ly.

It was sin­gu­lar enough that so few bod­ies float­ed. On­ly five or six were count­ed, which were al­ready be­ing car­ried by the cur­rent to­wards the open sea. Very prob­ably the con­victs had not had time to es­cape, and the ship ly­ing over on her side, the greater num­ber of them had re­mained be­low. Now the cur­rent, by car­ry­ing the bod­ies of these mis­er­able men out to sea, would spare the colonists the sad task of bury­ing them in some cor­ner of their is­land.

For two hours, Cyrus Hard­ing and his com­pan­ions were sole­ly oc­cu­pied in haul­ing up the spars on to the sand, and then in spread­ing the sails which were per­fect­ly un­in­jured, to dry. They spoke lit­tle, for they were ab­sorbed in their work, but what thoughts oc­cu­pied their minds!

The pos­ses­sion of this brig, or rather all that she con­tained, was a per­fect mine of wealth. In fact, a ship is like a lit­tle world in minia­ture, and the stores of the colony would be in­creased by a large num­ber of use­ful ar­ti­cles. It would be, on a large scale, equiv­alent to the chest found at Flot­sam Point.

“And be­sides,” thought Pen­croft, “why should it be im­pos­si­ble to re­float the brig? If she has on­ly a leak, that may be stopped up; a ves­sel from three to four hun­dred tons, why she is a reg­ular ship com­pared to our ‘Bonad­ven­ture’! And we could go a long dis­tance in her! We could go any­where we liked! Cap­tain Hard­ing, Ayr­ton and I must ex­am­ine her! She would be well worth the trou­ble!”

In fact, if the brig was still fit to nav­igate, the colonists’ chances of re­turn­ing to their na­tive land were sin­gu­lar­ly in­creased. But, to de­cide this im­por­tant ques­tion, it was nec­es­sary to wait un­til the tide was quite low, so that ev­ery part of the brig’s hull might be ex­am­ined.

When their trea­sures had been safe­ly con­veyed on shore, Hard­ing and his com­pan­ions agreed to de­vote some min­utes to break­fast. They were al­most fam­ished; for­tu­nate­ly, the larder was not far off, and Neb was not­ed for be­ing an ex­pe­di­tious cook. They break­fast­ed, there­fore, near the Chim­neys, and dur­ing their repast, as may be sup­posed, noth­ing was talked of but the event which had so mirac­ulous­ly saved the colony.

“Mirac­ulous is the word,” re­peat­ed Pen­croft, “for it must be ac­knowl­edged that those ras­cals blew up just at the right mo­ment! Gran­ite House was be­gin­ning to be un­com­fort­able as a habi­ta­tion!”

“And can you guess, Pen­croft,” asked the re­porter, “how it hap­pened, or what can have oc­ca­sioned the ex­plo­sion?”

“Oh! Mr. Spilett, noth­ing is more sim­ple,” an­swered Pen­croft. “A con­vict ves­sel is not dis­ci­plined like a man-​of-​war! Con­victs are not sailors. Of course the pow­der-​mag­azine was open, and as they were fir­ing in­ces­sant­ly, some care­less or clum­sy fel­low just blew up the ves­sel!”

“Cap­tain Hard­ing,” said Her­bert, “what as­ton­ish­es me is that the ex­plo­sion has not pro­duced more ef­fect. The re­port was not loud, and be­sides there are so few planks and tim­bers torn out. It seems as if the ship had rather foundered than blown up.”

“Does that as­ton­ish you, my boy?” asked the en­gi­neer.

“Yes, cap­tain.”

“And it as­ton­ish­es me al­so, Her­bert,” replied he, “but when we vis­it the hull of the brig, we shall no doubt find the ex­pla­na­tion of the mat­ter.”

“Why, cap­tain,” said Pen­croft, “you don’t sup­pose that the ‘Speedy’ sim­ply foundered like a ship which has struck on a rock?”

“Why not,” ob­served Neb, “if there are rocks in the chan­nel?”

“Non­sense, Neb,” an­swered Pen­croft, “you did not look at the right mo­ment. An in­stant be­fore she sank, the brig, as I saw per­fect­ly well, rose on an enor­mous wave, and fell back on her lar­board side. Now, if she had on­ly struck, she would have sunk qui­et­ly and gone to the bot­tom like an hon­est ves­sel.”

“It was just be­cause she was not an hon­est ves­sel!” re­turned Neb.

“Well, we shall soon see, Pen­croft,” said the en­gi­neer.

“We shall soon see,” re­joined the sailor, “but I would wa­ger my head there are no rocks in the chan­nel. Look here, cap­tain, to speak can­did­ly, do you mean to say that there is any­thing mar­velous in the oc­cur­rence?”

Cyrus Hard­ing did not an­swer.

“At any rate,” said Gideon Spilett, “whether rock or ex­plo­sion, you will agree, Pen­croft, that it oc­curred just in the nick of time!”

“Yes! yes!” replied the sailor, “but that is not the ques­tion. I ask Cap­tain Hard­ing if he sees any­thing su­per­nat­ural in all this.”

“I can­not say, Pen­croft,” said the en­gi­neer. “That is all the an­swer I can make.”

A re­ply which did not sat­is­fy Pen­croft at all. He stuck to “an ex­plo­sion,” and did not wish to give it up. He would nev­er con­sent to ad­mit that in that chan­nel, with its fine sandy bed, just like the beach, which he had of­ten crossed at low wa­ter, there could be an un­known rock.

And be­sides, at the time the brig foundered, it was high wa­ter, that is to say, there was enough wa­ter to car­ry the ves­sel clear over any rocks which would not be un­cov­ered at low tide. There­fore, there could not have been a col­li­sion. There­fore, the ves­sel had not struck. So she had blown up.

And it must be con­fessed that the sailor’s ar­gu­ments were rea­son­able.

To­wards half-​past one, the colonists em­barked in the boat to vis­it the wreck. It was to be re­gret­ted that the brig’s two boats had not been saved; but one, as has been said, had gone to pieces at the mouth of the Mer­cy, and was ab­so­lute­ly use­less; the oth­er had dis­ap­peared when the brig went down, and had not again been seen, hav­ing doubt­less been crushed.

The hull of the “Speedy” was just be­gin­ning to is­sue from the wa­ter. The brig was ly­ing right over on her side, for her masts be­ing bro­ken, pressed down by the weight of the bal­last dis­placed by the shock, the keel was vis­ible along her whole length. She had been reg­ular­ly turned over by the in­ex­pli­ca­ble but fright­ful sub­ma­rine ac­tion, which had been at the same time man­ifest­ed by an enor­mous wa­ter-​spout.

The set­tlers rowed round the hull, and in pro­por­tion as the tide went down, they could as­cer­tain, if not the cause which had oc­ca­sioned the catas­tro­phe, at least the ef­fect pro­duced.

To­wards the bows, on both sides of the keel, sev­en or eight feet from the be­gin­ning of the stem, the sides of the brig were fright­ful­ly torn. Over a length of at least twen­ty feet there opened two large leaks, which would be im­pos­si­ble to stop up. Not on­ly had the cop­per sheath­ing and the planks dis­ap­peared, re­duced, no doubt, to pow­der, but al­so the ribs, the iron bolts, and treenalls which unit­ed them. From the en­tire length of the hull to the stern the false keel had been sep­arat­ed with an un­ac­count­able vi­olence, and the keel it­self, torn from the car­line in sev­er­al places, was split in all its length.

“I’ve a no­tion!” ex­claimed Pen­croft, “that this ves­sel will be dif­fi­cult to get afloat again.”

“It will be im­pos­si­ble,” said Ayr­ton.

“At any rate,” ob­served Gideon Spilett to the sailor, “the ex­plo­sion, if there has been one, has pro­duced sin­gu­lar ef­fects! It has split the low­er part of the hull, in­stead of blow­ing up the deck and top­sides! These great rents ap­pear rather to have been made by a rock than by the ex­plo­sion of a pow­der-​mag­azine.”

“There is not a rock in the chan­nel!” an­swered the sailor. “I will ad­mit any­thing you like, ex­cept the rock.”

“Let us try to pen­etrate in­to the in­te­ri­or of the brig,” said the en­gi­neer; “per­haps we shall then know what to think of the cause of her de­struc­tion.”

This was the best thing to be done, and it was agreed, be­sides, to take an in­ven­to­ry of all the trea­sures on board, and to ar­range their preser­va­tion.

Ac­cess to the in­te­ri­or of the brig was now easy. The tide was still go­ing down and the deck was prac­ti­ca­ble. The bal­last, com­posed of heavy mass­es of iron, had bro­ken through in sev­er­al places. The noise of the sea could be heard as it rushed out at the holes in the hull.

Cyrus Hard­ing and his com­pan­ions, hatch­ets in hand, ad­vanced along the shat­tered deck. Cas­es of all sorts en­cum­bered it, and, as they had been but a very short time in the wa­ter, their con­tents were per­haps un­in­jured.

They then bus­ied them­selves in plac­ing all this car­go in safe­ty. The wa­ter would not re­turn for sev­er­al hours, and these hours must be em­ployed in the most prof­itable way. Ayr­ton and Pen­croft had, at the en­trance made in the hull, dis­cov­ered tack­le, which would serve to hoist up the bar­rels and chests. The boat re­ceived them and trans­port­ed them to the shore. They took the ar­ti­cles as they came, in­tend­ing to sort them af­ter­wards.

At any rate, the set­tlers saw at once, with ex­treme sat­is­fac­tion, that the brig pos­sessed a very var­ied car­go–an as­sort­ment of all sorts of ar­ti­cles, uten­sils, man­ufac­tured goods, and tools–such as the ships which make the great coast­ing-​trade of Poly­ne­sia are usu­al­ly laden with. It was prob­able that they would find a lit­tle of ev­ery­thing, and they agreed that it was ex­act­ly what was nec­es­sary for the colony of Lin­coln Is­land.

How­ev­er–and Cyrus Hard­ing ob­served it in silent as­ton­ish­ment–not on­ly, as has been said, had the hull of the brig enor­mous­ly suf­fered from the shock, what­ev­er it was, that had oc­ca­sioned the catas­tro­phe, but the in­te­ri­or ar­range­ments had been de­stroyed, es­pe­cial­ly to­wards the bows. Par­ti­tions and stan­chions were smashed, as if some tremen­dous shell had burst in the in­te­ri­or of the brig. The colonists could eas­ily go fore and aft, af­ter hav­ing re­moved the cas­es as they were ex­tri­cat­ed. They were not heavy bales, which would have been dif­fi­cult to re­move, but sim­ple pack­ages, of which the stowage, be­sides, was no longer rec­og­niz­able.

The colonists then reached the stern of the brig–the part for­mer­ly sur­mount­ed by the poop. It was there that, fol­low­ing Ayr­ton’s di­rec­tions, they must look for the pow­der-​mag­azine. Cyrus Hard­ing thought that it had not ex­plod­ed; that it was pos­si­ble some bar­rels might be saved, and that the pow­der, which is usu­al­ly en­closed in met­al cov­er­ings might not have suf­fered from con­tact with the wa­ter.

This, in fact, was just what had hap­pened. They ex­tri­cat­ed from among a large num­ber of shot twen­ty bar­rels, the in­sides of which were lined with cop­per. Pen­croft was con­vinced by the ev­idence of his own eyes that the de­struc­tion of the “Speedy” could not be at­tribut­ed to an ex­plo­sion. That part of the hull in which the mag­azine was sit­uat­ed was, more­over, that which had suf­fered least.

“It may be so,” said the ob­sti­nate sailor; “but as to a rock, there is not one in the chan­nel!”

“Then, how did it hap­pen?” asked Her­bert.

“I don’t know,” an­swered Pen­croft, “Cap­tain Hard­ing doesn’t know, and no­body knows or ev­er will know!”

Sev­er­al hours had passed dur­ing these re­search­es, and the tide be­gan to flow. Work must be sus­pend­ed for the present. There was no fear of the brig be­ing car­ried away by the sea, for she was al­ready fixed as firm­ly as if moored by her an­chors.

They could, there­fore, with­out in­con­ve­nience, wait un­til the next day to re­sume op­er­ations; but, as to the ves­sel it­self, she was doomed, and it would be best to has­ten to save the re­mains of her hull, as she would not be long in dis­ap­pear­ing in the quick­sands of the chan­nel.

It was now five o’clock in the evening. It had been a hard day’s work for the men. They ate with good ap­petite, and notwith­stand­ing their fa­tigue, they could not re­sist, af­ter din­ner, their de­sire of in­spect­ing the cas­es which com­posed the car­go of the “Speedy.”

Most of them con­tained clothes, which, as may be be­lieved, was well re­ceived. There were enough to clothe a whole colony–linen for ev­ery one’s use, shoes for ev­ery one’s feet.

“We are too rich!” ex­claimed Pen­croft, “But what are we go­ing to do with all this?”

And ev­ery mo­ment burst forth the hur­rahs of the de­light­ed sailor when he caught sight of the bar­rels of gun­pow­der, firearms and sidearms, balls of cot­ton, im­ple­ments of hus­bandry, car­pen­ter’s, join­er’s, and black­smith’s tools, and box­es of all kinds of seeds, not in the least in­jured by their short so­journ in the wa­ter. Ah, two years be­fore, how these things would have been prized! And now, even though the in­dus­tri­ous colonists had pro­vid­ed them­selves with tools, these trea­sures would find their use.

There was no want of space in the store-​rooms of Gran­ite House, but that day­time would not al­low them to stow away the whole. It would not do al­so to for­get that the six sur­vivors of the “Speedy’s” crew had land­ed on the is­land, for they were in all prob­abil­ity scoundrels of the deep­est dye, and it was nec­es­sary that the colonists should be on their guard against them. Al­though the bridges over the Mer­cy were raised, the con­victs would not be stopped by a riv­er or a stream and, ren­dered des­per­ate, these wretch­es would be ca­pa­ble of any­thing.

They would see lat­er what plan it would be best to fol­low; but in the mean­time it was nec­es­sary to mount guard over cas­es and pack­ages heaped up near the Chim­neys, and thus the set­tlers em­ployed them­selves in turn dur­ing the night.

The morn­ing came, how­ev­er, with­out the con­victs hav­ing at­tempt­ed any at­tack. Mas­ter Jup and Top, on guard at the foot of Gran­ite House, would have quick­ly giv­en the alarm. The three fol­low­ing day–the 19th, 20th, and 21st of Oc­to­ber–were em­ployed in sav­ing ev­ery­thing of val­ue, or of any use what­ev­er, ei­ther from the car­go or rig­ging of the brig. At low tide they over­hauled the hold–at high tide they stowed away the res­cued ar­ti­cles. A great part of the cop­per sheath­ing had been torn from the hull, which ev­ery day sank low­er. But be­fore the sand had swal­lowed the heavy things which had fall­en through the bot­tom, Ayr­ton and Pen­croft, div­ing to the bed of the chan­nel, re­cov­ered the chains and an­chors of the brig, the iron of her bal­last, and even four guns, which, float­ed by means of emp­ty casks, were brought to shore.

It may be seen that the ar­se­nal of the colony had gained by the wreck, as well as the store­rooms of Gran­ite House. Pen­croft, al­ways en­thu­si­as­tic in his projects, al­ready spoke of con­struct­ing a bat­tery to com­mand the chan­nel and the mouth of the riv­er. With four guns, he en­gaged to pre­vent any fleet, “how­ev­er pow­er­ful it might be,” from ven­tur­ing in­to the wa­ters of Lin­coln Is­land!

In the mean­time, when noth­ing re­mained of the brig but a use­less hulk, bad weath­er came on, which soon fin­ished her. Cyrus Hard­ing had in­tend­ed to blow her up, so as to col­lect the re­mains on the shore, but a strong gale from the north­east and a heavy sea com­pelled him to econ­omize his pow­der.

In fact, on the night of the 23rd, the hull en­tire­ly broke up, and some of the wreck was cast up on the beach.

As to the pa­pers on board, it is use­less to say that, al­though he care­ful­ly searched the lock­ers of the poop, Hard­ing did not dis­cov­er any trace of them. The pi­rates had ev­ident­ly de­stroyed ev­ery­thing that con­cerned ei­ther the cap­tain or the own­ers of the “Speedy,” and, as the name of her port was not paint­ed on her counter, there was noth­ing which would tell them her na­tion­al­ity. How­ev­er, by the shape of her boats Ayr­ton and Pen­croft be­lieved that the brig was of En­glish build.

A week af­ter the cas­tro­phe–or, rather, af­ter the for­tu­nate, though in­ex­pli­ca­ble, event to which the colony owed its preser­va­tion–noth­ing more could be seen of the ves­sel, even at low tide. The wreck had dis­ap­peared, and Gran­ite House was en­riched by near­ly all it had con­tained.

How­ev­er, the mys­tery which en­veloped its strange de­struc­tion would doubt­less nev­er have been cleared away if, on the 30th of Novem­ber, Neb, strolling on the beach, had not found a piece of a thick iron cylin­der, bear­ing traces of ex­plo­sion. The edges of this cylin­der were twist­ed and bro­ken, as if they had been sub­ject­ed to the ac­tion of some ex­plo­sive sub­stance.

Neb brought this piece of met­al to his mas­ter, who was then oc­cu­pied with his com­pan­ions in the work­shop of the Chim­neys.

Cyrus Hard­ing ex­am­ined the cylin­der at­ten­tive­ly, then, turn­ing to Pen­croft,–

“You per­sist, my friend,” said he, “in main­tain­ing that the ‘Speedy’ was not lost in con­se­quence of a col­li­sion?”

“Yes, cap­tain,” an­swered the sailor. “You know as well as I do that there are no rocks in the chan­nel.”

“But sup­pose she had run against this piece of iron?” said the en­gi­neer, show­ing the bro­ken cylin­der.

“What, that bit of pipe!” ex­claimed Pen­croft in a tone of per­fect in­creduli­ty.

“My friends,” re­sumed Hard­ing, “you re­mem­ber that be­fore she foundered the brig rose on the sum­mit of a reg­ular wa­ter­spout?”

“Yes, cap­tain,” replied Her­bert.

“Well, would you like to know what oc­ca­sioned that wa­ter­spout? It was this,” said the en­gi­neer, hold­ing up the bro­ken tube.

“That?” re­turned Pen­croft.

“Yes! This cylin­der is all that re­mains of a tor­pe­do!”

“A tor­pe­do!” ex­claimed the en­gi­neer’s com­pan­ions.

“And who put the tor­pe­do there?” de­mand­ed Pen­croft, who did not like to yield.

“All that I can tell you is, that it was not I,” an­swered Cyrus Hard­ing; “but it was there, and you have been able to judge of its in­com­pa­ra­ble pow­er!”