Île mystérieuse. English

Chapter 8

So the con­victs were still there, watch­ing the cor­ral, and de­ter­mined to kill the set­tlers one af­ter the oth­er. There was noth­ing to be done but to treat them as wild beasts. But great pre­cau­tions must be tak­en, for just now the wretch­es had the ad­van­tage on their side, see­ing, and not be­ing seen, be­ing able to sur­prise by the sud­den­ness of their at­tack, yet not to be sur­prised them­selves. Hard­ing made ar­range­ments, there­fore, for liv­ing in the cor­ral, of which the pro­vi­sions would last for a tol­er­able length of time. Ayr­ton’s house had been pro­vid­ed with all that was nec­es­sary for ex­is­tence, and the con­victs, scared by the ar­rival of the set­tlers, had not had time to pil­lage it. It was prob­able, as Gideon Spilett ob­served, that things had oc­curred as fol­lows:

The six con­victs, dis­em­bark­ing on the is­land, had fol­lowed the south­ern shore, and af­ter hav­ing tra­versed the dou­ble shore of the Ser­pen­tine Penin­su­la, not be­ing in­clined to ven­ture in­to the Far West woods, they had reached the mouth of Falls Riv­er. From this point, by fol­low­ing the right bank of the wa­ter­course, they would ar­rive at the spurs of Mount Franklin, among which they would nat­ural­ly seek a re­treat, and they could not have been long in dis­cov­er­ing the cor­ral, then un­in­hab­it­ed. There they had reg­ular­ly in­stalled them­selves, await­ing the mo­ment to put their abom­inable schemes in­to ex­ecu­tion. Ayr­ton’s ar­rival had sur­prised them, but they had man­aged to over­pow­er the un­for­tu­nate man, and–the rest may be eas­ily imag­ined!

Now, the con­victs,–re­duced to five, it is true, but well armed,–were roam­ing the woods, and to ven­ture there was to ex­pose them­selves to their at­tacks, which could be nei­ther guard­ed against nor pre­vent­ed.

“Wait! There is noth­ing else to be done!” re­peat­ed Cyrus Hard­ing. “When Her­bert is cured, we can or­ga­nize a gen­er­al bat­tle of the is­land, and have sat­is­fac­tion of these con­victs. That will be the ob­ject of our grand ex­pe­di­tion at the same time–“

“As the search for our mys­te­ri­ous pro­tec­tor,” added Gideon Spilett, fin­ish­ing the en­gi­neer’s sen­tence. “An, it must be ac­knowl­edged, my dear Cyrus, that this time his pro­tec­tion was want­ing at the very mo­ment when it was most nec­es­sary to us!”

“Who knows?” replied the en­gi­neer.

“What do you mean?” asked the re­porter.

“That we are not at the end of our trou­ble yet, my dear Spilett, and that his pow­er­ful in­ter­ven­tion may have an­oth­er op­por­tu­ni­ty of ex­er­cis­ing it­self. But that is not the ques­tion now. Her­bert’s life be­fore ev­ery­thing.”

This was the colonists’ sad­dest thought. Sev­er­al days passed, and the poor boy’s state was hap­pi­ly no worse. Cold wa­ter, al­ways kept at a suit­able tem­per­ature, had com­plete­ly pre­vent­ed the in­flam­ma­tion of the wounds. It even seemed to the re­porter that this wa­ter, be­ing slight­ly sul­phurous,–which was ex­plained by the neigh­bor­hood of the vol­cano, had a more di­rect ac­tion on the heal­ing. The sup­pu­ra­tion was much less abun­dant, and thanks to the in­ces­sant care by which he was sur­round­ed!–Her­bert re­turned to life, and his fever abat­ed. He was be­sides sub­ject­ed to a se­vere di­et, and con­se­quent­ly his weak­ness was and would be ex­treme; but there was no want of re­fresh­ing drinks, and ab­so­lute rest was of the great­est ben­efit to him. Cyrus Hard­ing, Gideon Spilett, and Pen­croft had be­come very skil­ful in dress­ing the lad’s wounds. All the linen in the house had been sac­ri­ficed. Her­bert’s wounds, cov­ered with com­press­es and lint, were pressed nei­ther too much nor too lit­tle, so as to cause their ci­ca­triza­tion with­out ef­fect­ing any in­flam­ma­to­ry re­ac­tion. The re­porter used ex­treme care in the dress­ing, know­ing well the im­por­tance of it, and re­peat­ing to his com­pan­ions that which most sur­geons will­ing­ly ad­mit, that it is per­haps rar­er to see a dress­ing well done than an op­er­ation well per­formed.

In ten days, on the 22nd of Novem­ber, Her­bert was con­sid­er­ably bet­ter. He had be­gun to take some nour­ish­ment.

The col­or was re­turn­ing to his cheeks, and his bright eyes smiled at his nurs­es. He talked a lit­tle, notwith­stand­ing Pen­croft’s ef­forts, who talked in­ces­sant­ly to pre­vent him from be­gin­ning to speak, and told him the most im­prob­able sto­ries. Her­bert had ques­tioned him on the sub­ject of Ayr­ton, whom he was as­ton­ished not to see near him, think­ing that he was at the cor­ral. But the sailor, not wish­ing to dis­tress Her­bert, con­tent­ed him­self by re­ply­ing that Ayr­ton had re­joined Neb, so as to de­fend Gran­ite House.

“Humph!” said Pen­croft, “these pi­rates! they are gen­tle­men who have no right to any con­sid­er­ation! And the cap­tain want­ed to win them by kind­ness! I’ll send them some kind­ness, but in the shape of a good bul­let!”

“And have they not been seen again?” asked Her­bert.

“No, my boy,” an­swered the sailor, “but we shall find them, and when you are cured we shall see if the cow­ards who strike us from be­hind will dare to meet us face to face!”

“I am still very weak, my poor Pen­croft!”

“Well! your strength will re­turn grad­ual­ly! What’s a ball through the chest? Noth­ing but a joke! I’ve seen many, and I don’t think much of them!”

At last things ap­peared to be go­ing on well, and if no com­pli­ca­tion oc­curred, Her­bert’s re­cov­ery might be re­gard­ed as cer­tain. But what would have been the con­di­tion of the colonists if his state had been ag­gra­vat­ed, –if, for ex­am­ple, the ball had re­mained in his body, if his arm or his leg had had to be am­pu­tat­ed?

“No,” said Spilett more than once, “I have nev­er thought of such a con­tin­gen­cy with­out shud­der­ing!”

“And yet, if it had been nec­es­sary to op­er­ate,” said Hard­ing one day to him, “you would not have hes­itat­ed?”

“No, Cyrus!” said Gideon Spilett, “but thank God that we have been spared this com­pli­ca­tion!”

As in so many oth­er con­jec­tures, the colonists had ap­pealed to the log­ic of that sim­ple good sense of which they had made use so of­ten, and once more, thanks to their gen­er­al knowl­edge, it had suc­ceed­ed! But might not a time come when all their sci­ence would be at fault? They were alone on the is­land. Now, men in all states of so­ci­ety are nec­es­sary to each oth­er. Cyrus Hard­ing knew this well, and some­times he asked if some cir­cum­stance might not oc­cur which they would be pow­er­less to sur­mount. It ap­peared to him be­sides, that he and his com­pan­ions, till then so for­tu­nate, had en­tered in­to an un­lucky pe­ri­od. Dur­ing the two years and a half which had elapsed since their es­cape from Rich­mond, it might be said that they had had ev­ery­thing their own way. The is­land had abun­dant­ly sup­plied them with min­er­als, veg­eta­bles, an­imals, and as Na­ture had con­stant­ly load­ed them, their sci­ence had known how to take ad­van­tage of what she of­fered them.

The well­be­ing of the colony was there­fore com­plete. More­over, in cer­tain oc­cur­rences an in­ex­pli­ca­ble in­flu­ence had come to their aid!… But all that could on­ly be for a time.

In short, Cyrus Hard­ing be­lieved that for­tune had turned against them.

In fact, the con­victs’ ship had ap­peared in the wa­ters of the is­land, and if the pi­rates had been, so to speak, mirac­ulous­ly de­stroyed, six of them, at least, had es­caped the catas­tro­phe. They had dis­em­barked on the is­land, and it was al­most im­pos­si­ble to get at the five who sur­vived. Ayr­ton had no doubt been mur­dered by these wretch­es, who pos­sessed firearms, and at the first use that they had made of them, Her­bert had fall­en, wound­ed al­most mor­tal­ly. Were these the first blows aimed by ad­verse for­tune at the colonists? This was of­ten asked by Hard­ing. This was of­ten re­peat­ed by the re­porter; and it ap­peared to him al­so that the in­ter­ven­tion, so strange, yet so ef­fi­ca­cious, which till then had served them so well, had now failed them. Had this mys­te­ri­ous be­ing, what­ev­er he was, whose ex­is­tence could not be de­nied, aban­doned the is­land? Had he in his turn suc­cumbed?

No re­ply was pos­si­ble to these ques­tions. But it must not be imag­ined that be­cause Hard­ing and his com­pan­ions spoke of these things, they were men to de­spair. Far from that. They looked their sit­ua­tion in the face, they an­alyzed the chances, they pre­pared them­selves for any event, they stood firm and straight be­fore the fu­ture, and if ad­ver­si­ty was at last to strike them, it would find in them men pre­pared to strug­gle against it.