Île mystérieuse. English

Chapter 14

Three years had passed away since the es­cape of the pris­on­ers from Rich­mond, and how of­ten dur­ing those three years had they spo­ken of their coun­try, al­ways present in their thoughts!

They had no doubt that the civ­il war was at an end, and to them it ap­peared im­pos­si­ble that the just cause of the North had not tri­umphed. But what had been the in­ci­dents of this ter­ri­ble war? How much blood had it not cost? How many of their friends must have fall­en in the strug­gle? They of­ten spoke of these things, with­out as yet be­ing able to fore­see the day when they would be per­mit­ted once more to see their coun­try. To re­turn thith­er, were it but for a few days, to re­new the so­cial link with the in­hab­it­ed world, to es­tab­lish a com­mu­ni­ca­tion be­tween their na­tive land and their is­land, then to pass the longest, per­haps the best, por­tion of their ex­is­tence in this colony, found­ed by them, and which would then be de­pen­dent on their coun­try, was this a dream im­pos­si­ble to re­al­ize?

There were on­ly two ways of ac­com­plish­ing it–ei­ther a ship must ap­pear off Lin­coln Is­land, or the colonists must them­selves build a ves­sel strong enough to sail to the near­est land.

“Un­less,” said Pen­croft, “our good ge­nius, him­self pro­vides us with the means of re­turn­ing to our coun­try.”

And, re­al­ly, had any one told Pen­croft and Neb that a ship of 300 tons was wait­ing for them in Shark Gulf or at Port Bal­loon, they would not even have made a ges­ture of sur­prise. In their state of mind noth­ing ap­peared im­prob­able.

But Cyrus Hard­ing, less con­fi­dent, ad­vised them to con­fine them­selves to fact, and more es­pe­cial­ly so with re­gard to the build­ing of a ves­sel–a re­al­ly ur­gent work, since it was for the pur­pose of de­posit­ing, as soon as pos­si­ble, at Ta­bor Is­land a doc­ument in­di­cat­ing Ayr­ton’s new res­idence.

As the “Bonad­ven­ture” no longer ex­ist­ed, six months at least would be re­quired for the con­struc­tion of a new ves­sel. Now win­ter was ap­proach­ing, and the voy­age would not be made be­fore the fol­low­ing spring.

“We have time to get ev­ery­thing ready for the fine sea­son,” re­marked the en­gi­neer, who was con­sult­ing with Pen­croft about these mat­ters. “I think, there­fore, my friend, that since we have to re­build our ves­sel it will be best to give her larg­er di­men­sions. The ar­rival of the Scotch yacht at Ta­bor Is­land is very un­cer­tain. It may even be that, hav­ing ar­rived sev­er­al months ago, she has again sailed af­ter hav­ing vain­ly searched for some trace of Ayr­ton. Will it not then he best to build a ship which, if nec­es­sary, could take us ei­ther to the Poly­ne­sian Archipela­go or to New Zealand? What do you think?”

“I think, cap­tain,” an­swered the sailor; “I think that you are as ca­pa­ble of build­ing a large ves­sel as a small one. Nei­ther the wood nor the tools are want­ing. It is on­ly a ques­tion of time.”

“And how many months would be re­quired to build a ves­sel of from 250 to 300 tons?” asked Hard­ing.

“Sev­en or eight months at least,” replied Pen­croft. “But it must not be for­got­ten that win­ter is draw­ing near, and that in se­vere frost wood is dif­fi­cult to work. We must cal­cu­late on sev­er­al weeks de­lay, and if our ves­sel is ready by next Novem­ber we may think our­selves very lucky.”

“Well,” replied Cyrus Hard­ing, “that will be ex­act­ly the most fa­vor­able time for un­der­tak­ing a voy­age of any im­por­tance, ei­ther to Ta­bor Is­land or to a more dis­tant land.”

“So it will, cap­tain,” an­swered the sailor. “Make out your plans then; the work­men are ready, and I imag­ine that Ayr­ton can lend us a good help­ing hand.”

The colonists, hav­ing been con­sult­ed, ap­proved the en­gi­neer’s plan, and it was, in­deed, the best thing to be done. It is true that the con­struc­tion of a ship of from two to three hun­dred tons would be great la­bor, but the colonists had con­fi­dence in them­selves, jus­ti­fied by their pre­vi­ous suc­cess.

Cyrus Hard­ing then bus­ied him­self in draw­ing the plan of the ves­sel and mak­ing the mod­el. Dur­ing this time his com­pan­ions em­ployed them­selves in felling and cart­ing trees to fur­nish the ribs, tim­bers, and planks. The for­est of the Far West sup­plied the best oaks and elms. They took ad­van­tage of the open­ing al­ready made on their last ex­cur­sion to form a prac­ti­ca­ble road, which they named the Far West Road, and the trees were car­ried to the Chim­neys, where the dock­yard was es­tab­lished. As to the road in ques­tion, the choice of trees had ren­dered its di­rec­tion some­what capri­cious, but at the same time it fa­cil­itat­ed the ac­cess to a large part of the Ser­pen­tine Penin­su­la.

It was im­por­tant that the trees should be quick­ly felled and cut up, for they could not be used while yet green, and some time was nec­es­sary to al­low them to get sea­soned. The car­pen­ters, there­fore, worked vig­or­ous­ly dur­ing the month of April, which was trou­bled on­ly by a few equinoc­tial gales of some vi­olence. Mas­ter Jup aid­ed them dex­ter­ous­ly, ei­ther by climb­ing to the top of a tree to fas­ten the ropes or by lend­ing his stout shoul­ders to car­ry the lopped trunks.

All this tim­ber was piled up un­der a large shed, built near the Chim­neys, and there await­ed the time for use.

The month of April was tol­er­ably fine, as Oc­to­ber of­ten is in the north­ern zone. At the same time oth­er work was ac­tive­ly con­tin­ued, and soon all trace of dev­as­ta­tion dis­ap­peared from the plateau of Prospect Heights. The mill was re­built, and new build­ings rose in the poul­try-​yard. It had ap­peared nec­es­sary to en­large their di­men­sions, for the feath­ered pop­ula­tion had in­creased con­sid­er­ably. The sta­ble now con­tained five on­agers, four of which were well bro­ken, and al­lowed them­selves to be ei­ther driv­en or rid­den, and a lit­tle colt. The colony now pos­sessed a plow, to which the on­agers were yoked like reg­ular York­shire or Ken­tucky ox­en. The colonists di­vid­ed their work, and their arms nev­er tired. Then who could have en­joyed bet­ter health than these work­ers, and what good hu­mor en­livened the evenings in Gran­ite House as they formed a thou­sand plans for the fu­ture!

As a mat­ter of course Ayr­ton shared the com­mon lot in ev­ery re­spect, and there was no longer any talk of his go­ing to live at the cor­ral. Nev­er­the­less he was still sad and re­served, and joined more in the work than in the plea­sures of his com­pan­ions. But he was a valu­able work­man at need–strong, skil­ful, in­ge­nious, in­tel­li­gent. He was es­teemed and loved by all, and he could not be ig­no­rant of it.

In the mean­while the cor­ral was not aban­doned. Ev­ery oth­er day one of the set­tlers, driv­ing the cart or mount­ed on an on­ag­er, went to look af­ter the flock of mus­mons and goats and bring back the sup­ply of milk re­quired by Neb. These ex­cur­sions at the same time af­ford­ed op­por­tu­ni­ties for hunt­ing. There­fore Her­bert and Gideon Spilett, with Top in front, tra­versed more of­ten than their com­pan­ions the road to the cor­ral, and with the cap­ital guns which they car­ried, capy­baras, agouties, kan­ga­roos, and wild pigs for large game, ducks, grouse, ja­ca­mars, and snipe for small game, were nev­er want­ing in the house. The pro­duce of the war­ren, of the oys­ter-​bed, sev­er­al tur­tles which were tak­en, ex­cel­lent salmon which came up the Mer­cy, veg­eta­bles from the plateau, wild fruit from the for­est, were rich­es up­on rich­es, and Neb, the head cook, could scarce­ly by him­self store them away.

The tele­graph­ic wire be­tween the cor­ral and Gran­ite House had of course been re­paired, and it was worked when­ev­er one or oth­er of the set­tlers was at the cor­ral and found it nec­es­sary to spend the night there. Be­sides, the is­land was safe now and no at­tacks were to be feared, at any rate from men.

How­ev­er, that which had hap­pened might hap­pen again. A de­scent of pi­rates, or even of es­caped con­victs, was al­ways to be feared. It was pos­si­ble that com­pan­ions or ac­com­plices of Bob Har­vey had been in the se­cret of his plans, and might be tempt­ed to im­itate him. The colonists, there­fore, were care­ful to ob­serve the sea around the is­land, and ev­ery day their tele­scope cov­ered the hori­zon en­closed by Union and Wash­ing­ton Bays. when they went to the cor­ral they ex­am­ined the sea to the west with no less at­ten­tion, and by climb­ing the spur their gaze ex­tend­ed over a large sec­tion of the west­ern hori­zon.

Noth­ing sus­pi­cious was dis­cerned, but still it was nec­es­sary for them to be on their guard.

The en­gi­neer one evening im­part­ed to his friends a plan which he had con­ceived for for­ti­fy­ing the cor­ral. It ap­peared pru­dent to him to height­en the pal­isade and to flank it with a sort of block­house, which, if nec­es­sary, the set­tlers could hold against the en­emy. Gran­ite House might, by its very po­si­tion, be con­sid­ered im­preg­nable; there­fore the cor­ral with its build­ings, its stores, and the an­imals it con­tained, would al­ways be the ob­ject of pi­rates, who­ev­er they were, who might land on the is­land, and should the colonists be obliged to shut them­selves up there they ought al­so to be able to de­fend them­selves with­out any dis­ad­van­tage. This was a project which might be left for con­sid­er­ation, and they were, be­sides, obliged to put off its ex­ecu­tion un­til the next spring.

About the 15th of May the keel of the new ves­sel lay along the dock­yard, and soon the stem and stern-​post, mor­tised at each of its ex­trem­ities, rose al­most per­pen­dic­ular­ly. The keel, of good oak, mea­sured 110 feet in length, this al­low­ing a width of five-​and-​twen­ty feet to the mid­ship beam. But this was all the car­pen­ters could do be­fore the ar­rival of the frosts and bad weath­er. Dur­ing the fol­low­ing week they fixed the first of the stern tim­bers, but were then obliged to sus­pend work.

Dur­ing the last days of the month the weath­er was ex­treme­ly bad. The wind blew from the east, some­times with the vi­olence of a tem­pest. The en­gi­neer was some­what un­easy on ac­count of the dock­yard shed–which be­sides, he could not have es­tab­lished in any oth­er place near to Gran­ite House–for the islet on­ly im­per­fect­ly shel­tered the shore from the fury of the open sea, and in great storms the waves beat against the very foot of the gran­ite cliff.

But, very for­tu­nate­ly, these fears were not re­al­ized. The wind shift­ed to the south­east, and there the beach of Gran­ite House was com­plete­ly cov­ered by Flot­sam Point.

Pen­croft and Ayr­ton, the most zeal­ous work­men at the new ves­sel, pur­sued their la­bor as long as they could. They were not men to mind the wind tear­ing at their hair, nor the rain wet­ting them to the skin, and a blow from a ham­mer is worth just as much in bad as in fine weath­er. But when a se­vere frost suc­ceed­ed this wet pe­ri­od, the wood, its fibers ac­quir­ing the hard­ness of iron, be­came ex­treme­ly dif­fi­cult to work, and about the 10th of June ship­build­ing was obliged to be en­tire­ly dis­con­tin­ued.

Cyrus Hard­ing and his com­pan­ions had not omit­ted to ob­serve how se­vere was the tem­per­ature dur­ing the win­ters of Lin­coln Is­land. The cold was com­pa­ra­ble to that ex­pe­ri­enced in the States of New Eng­land, sit­uat­ed at al­most the same dis­tance from the equa­tor. In the north­ern hemi­sphere, or at any rate in the part oc­cu­pied by British Amer­ica and the north of the Unit­ed States, this phe­nomenon is ex­plained by the flat con­for­ma­tion of the ter­ri­to­ries bor­der­ing on the pole, and on which there is no in­tu­mes­cence of the soil to op­pose any ob­sta­cle to the north winds; here, in Lin­coln Is­land, this ex­pla­na­tion would not suf­fice.

“It has even been ob­served,” re­marked Hard­ing one day to his com­pan­ions, “that in equal lat­itudes the is­lands and coast re­gions are less tried by the cold than in­land coun­tries. I have of­ten heard it as­sert­ed that the win­ters of Lom­bardy, for ex­am­ple, are not less rig­or­ous than those of Scot­land, which re­sults from the sea restor­ing dur­ing the win­ter the heat which it re­ceived dur­ing the sum­mer. Is­lands are, there­fore, in a bet­ter sit­ua­tion for ben­efit­ing by this resti­tu­tion.”

“But then, Cap­tain Hard­ing,” asked Her­bert, “why does Lin­coln Is­land ap­pear to es­cape the com­mon law?”

“That is dif­fi­cult to ex­plain,” an­swered the en­gi­neer. “How­ev­er, I should be dis­posed to con­jec­ture that this pe­cu­liar­ity re­sults from the sit­ua­tion of the is­land in the South­ern Hemi­sphere, which, as you know, my boy, is cold­er than the North­ern Hemi­sphere.”

“Yes,” said Her­bert, “and ice­bergs are met with in low­er lat­itudes in the south than in the north of the Pa­cif­ic.”

“That is true,” re­marked Pen­croft, “and when I have been serv­ing on board whalers I have seen ice­bergs off Cape Horn.”

“The se­vere cold ex­pe­ri­enced in Lin­coln Is­land,” said Gideon Spilett, “may then per­haps be ex­plained by the pres­ence of floes or ice­bergs com­par­ative­ly near to Lin­coln Is­land.”

“Your opin­ion is very ad­mis­si­ble in­deed, my dear Spilett,” an­swered Cyrus Hard­ing, “and it is ev­ident­ly to the prox­im­ity of ice­bergs that we owe our rig­or­ous win­ters. I would draw your at­ten­tion al­so to an en­tire­ly phys­ical cause, which ren­ders the South­ern cold­er than the North­ern Hemi­sphere. In fact, since the sun is near­er to this hemi­sphere dur­ing the sum­mer, it is nec­es­sar­ily more dis­tant dur­ing the win­ter. This ex­plains then the ex­cess of tem­per­ature in the two sea­sons, for, if we find the win­ters very cold in Lin­coln Is­land, we must not for­get that the sum­mers here, on the con­trary, are very hot.”

“But why, if you please, cap­tain,” asked Pen­croft, knit­ting his brows, “why should our hemi­sphere, as you say, be so bad­ly di­vid­ed? It isn’t just, that!”

“Friend Pen­croft,” an­swered the en­gi­neer, laugh­ing, “whether just or not, we must sub­mit to it, and here lies the rea­son for this pe­cu­liar­ity. The earth does not de­scribe a cir­cle around the sun, but an el­lipse, as it must by the laws of ra­tio­nal me­chan­ics. Now, the earth oc­cu­pies one of the fo­ci of the el­lipse, and so at one point in its course is at its apogee, that is, at its far­thest from the sun, and at an­oth­er point it is at its perigee, or near­est to the sun. Now it hap­pens that it is dur­ing the win­ter of the south­ern coun­tries that it is at its most dis­tant point from the sun, and con­se­quent­ly, in a sit­ua­tion for those re­gions to feel the great­est cold. Noth­ing can be done to pre­vent that, and men, Pen­croft, how­ev­er learned they may be, can nev­er change any­thing of the cos­mo­graph­ical or­der es­tab­lished by God Him­self.”

“And yet,” added Pen­croft, “the world is very learned. what a big book, cap­tain, might be made with all that is known!”

“And what a much big­ger book still with all that is not known!” an­swered Hard­ing.

At last, for one rea­son or an­oth­er, the month of June brought the cold with its ac­cus­tomed in­ten­si­ty, and the set­tlers were of­ten con­fined to Gran­ite House. Ah! how weari­some this im­pris­on­ment was to them, and more par­tic­ular­ly to Gideon Spilett.

“Look here,” said he to Neb one day, “I would give you by no­tar­ial deed all the es­tates which will come to me some day, if you were a good enough fel­low to go, no mat­ter where, and sub­scribe to some news­pa­per for me! De­cid­ed­ly the thing that is most es­sen­tial to my hap­pi­ness is the know­ing ev­ery morn­ing what has hap­pened the day be­fore in oth­er places than this!”

Neb be­gan to laugh.

“‘Pon my word,” he replied, “the on­ly thing I think about is my dai­ly work!”

The truth was that in­doors as well as out there was no want of work.

The colony of Lin­coln Is­land was now at its high­est point of pros­per­ity, achieved by three years of con­tin­ued hard work. The de­struc­tion of the brig had been a new source of rich­es. With­out speak­ing of the com­plete rig which would serve for the ves­sel now on the stocks, uten­sils and tools of all sorts, weapons and am­mu­ni­tion, clothes and in­stru­ments, were now piled in the store­rooms of Gran­ite House. It had not even been nec­es­sary to re­sort again to the man­ufac­ture of the coarse felt ma­te­ri­als. Though the colonists had suf­fered from cold dur­ing their first win­ter, the bad sea­son might now come with­out their hav­ing any rea­son to dread its sever­ity. Linen was plen­ti­ful al­so, and be­sides, they kept it with ex­treme care. From chlo­ride of sodi­um, which is noth­ing else than sea salt, Cyrus Hard­ing eas­ily ex­tract­ed the so­da and chlo­rine. The so­da, which it was easy to change in­to car­bon­ate of so­da, and the chlo­rine, of which he made chlo­ride of lime, were em­ployed for var­ious do­mes­tic pur­pos­es, and es­pe­cial­ly in bleach­ing linen. Be­sides, they did not wash more than four times a year, as was done by fam­ilies in the old­en times, and it may be added, that Pen­croft and Gideon Spilett, while wait­ing for the post­man to bring him his news­pa­per, dis­tin­guished them­selves as wash­er­men.

So passed the win­ter months, June, Ju­ly, and Au­gust. They were se­vere, and the av­er­age ob­ser­va­tions of the ther­mome­ter did not give more than eight de­grees of Fahren­heit. It was there­fore low­er in tem­per­ature than the pre­ced­ing win­ter. But then, what splen­did fires blazed con­tin­ual­ly on the hearths of Gran­ite House, the smoke mark­ing the gran­ite wall with long, ze­bra-​like streaks! Fu­el was not spared, as it grew nat­ural­ly a few steps from them. Be­sides, the chips of the wood des­tined for the con­struc­tion of the ship en­abled them to econ­omize the coal, which re­quired more trou­ble to trans­port.

Men and an­imals were all well. Mas­ter Jup was a lit­tle chilly, it must be con­fessed. This was per­haps his on­ly weak­ness, and it was nec­es­sary to make him a well-​padded dress­ing-​gown. But what a ser­vant he was, clever, zeal­ous, in­de­fati­ga­ble, not in­dis­creet, not talkative, and he might have been with rea­son pro­posed as a mod­el for all his biped broth­ers in the Old and New Worlds!

“As for that,” said Pen­croft, “when one has four hands at one’s ser­vice, of course one’s work ought to be done so much the bet­ter!”

And in­deed the in­tel­li­gent crea­ture did it well.

Dur­ing the sev­en months which had passed since the last re­search­es made round the moun­tain, and dur­ing the month of Septem­ber, which brought back fine weath­er, noth­ing was heard of the ge­nius of the is­land. His pow­er was not man­ifest­ed in any way. It is true that it would have been su­per­flu­ous, for no in­ci­dent oc­curred to put the colonists to any painful tri­al.

Cyrus Hard­ing even ob­served that if by chance the com­mu­ni­ca­tion be­tween the un­known and the ten­ants of Gran­ite House had ev­er been es­tab­lished through the gran­ite, and if Top’s in­stinct had as it were felt it, there was no fur­ther sign of it dur­ing this pe­ri­od. The dog’s growl­ing had en­tire­ly ceased, as well as the un­easi­ness of the orang. The two friends– for they were such–no longer prowled round the open­ing of the in­ner well, nor did they bark or whine in that sin­gu­lar way which from the first the en­gi­neer had no­ticed. But could he be sure that this was all that was to be said about this enig­ma, and that he should nev­er ar­rive at a so­lu­tion? Could he be cer­tain that some con­junc­ture would not oc­cur which would bring the mys­te­ri­ous per­son­age on the scene? who could tell what the fu­ture might have in re­serve?

At last the win­ter was end­ed, but an event, the con­se­quences of which might be se­ri­ous oc­curred in the first days of the re­turn­ing spring.

On the 7th of Septem­ber, Cyrus Hard­ing, hav­ing ob­served the crater, saw smoke curl­ing round the sum­mit of the moun­tain, its first va­pors ris­ing in the air.