Part 10

However, the stream was widening noticeably, and Cyrus Smith was inclined to believe that he would soon have reached its mouth. Indeed, upon emerging from a thick cluster of fine trees, it suddenly came into view.

The explorers had arrived on the western shore of Lake Grant. The place was worth beholding. This expanse of water, some seven miles in circumference and two hundred and fifty acres in area, rested within a border of varied trees. Toward the east, through a screen of verdure picturesquely raised in places, there appeared a sparkling horizon of sea. To the north, the lake traced a slightly concave curve, which contrasted with the sharp outline of its lower point. Numerous waterfowl frequented the shores of this little Ontario, whose American namesake's "thousand islands" were represented by a rock that emerged from its surface, a few hundred feet from the southern shore. There, several pairs of kingfishers lived in common, perched upon some stone, grave, motionless, watching for fish as they passed, then, darting forth, plunging with a sharp cry, and reappearing, prey in beak. Elsewhere, upon the banks and on the islet, strutted wild ducks, pelicans, coots, red-bills, philedons, furnished with a tongue shaped like a brush, and one or two specimens of those splendid lyre-birds, whose tail spreads like the graceful uprights of a lyre.

As for the waters of the lake, they were fresh, limpid, somewhat dark, and from certain ripplings, from the concentric circles that crossed upon its surface, one could not doubt that they were abundantly stocked with fish.

"It is truly beautiful, this lake," said Gideon Spilett. "One could live upon its banks!"

"We shall live there!" replied Cyrus Smith.

The colonists, wishing then to return by the shortest way to the Chimneys, descended to the angle formed at the south by the junction of the lake's shores. They made their way, not without difficulty, through these thickets and brambles, which the hand of man had never yet parted, and thus directed themselves toward the coast, so as to arrive north of the Grand-View Plateau. Two miles were traversed in this direction, then, after the last screen of trees, the plateau appeared, carpeted with thick turf, and, beyond, the infinite sea.

To return to the Chimneys, it sufficed to cross the plateau obliquely over a distance of a mile and to descend to the bend formed by the first turn of the Mercy. But the engineer wished to ascertain how and where the overflow of the lake's waters escaped, and the exploration was prolonged beneath the trees for a mile and a half toward the north. It was probable, indeed, that a spillway existed somewhere, and no doubt through a cleft in the granite. This lake was, in short, but an immense basin, which had filled little by little from the creek's discharge, and its overflow must needs flow to the sea by some fall. If such were the case, the engineer thought it might perhaps be possible to utilize this fall and borrow its force, currently lost to no one's profit. They therefore continued to follow the shores of Lake Grant, ascending the plateau; but, after going yet another mile in this direction, Cyrus Smith had been unable to discover the spillway, which must nevertheless have existed.

It was then half past four. The preparations for dinner required the colonists to return to their dwelling. The little troop therefore retraced its steps, and, by the left bank of the Mercy, Cyrus Smith and his companions arrived at the Chimneys.

There, the fire was lit, and Nab and Pencroff, to whom the functions of cooks were naturally allotted, the one in his capacity as negro, the other in his capacity as sailor, lightly prepared some agouti steaks, which were done full justice to.

The meal finished, at the moment when each was about to give himself to sleep, Cyrus Smith drew from his pocket small samples of different mineral species, and confined himself to saying:

"My friends, this is iron ore, this a pyrite, this clay, this lime, this coal. Such is what nature gives us, and such is her share in the common work! — tomorrow ours!"

CHAPTER XIII

"Well, Mr. Cyrus, where shall we begin?" asked Pencroff of the engineer the next morning.

"At the beginning," replied Cyrus Smith.

And indeed, it was at the "beginning" that these colonists would be forced to start. They did not even possess the tools necessary to make tools, and they were not even in the conditions of nature, which, "having time, economizes effort." Time was lacking to them, since they must immediately provide for the needs of their existence, and if, profiting from acquired experience, they had nothing to invent, at least they had everything to fabricate.

Their iron, their steel were still only in the state of ore, their pottery in the state of clay, their linen and their clothes in the state of textile matter.

It must be said, moreover, that these colonists were "men" in the fine and powerful acceptation of the word. Engineer Smith could not have been seconded by more intelligent companions, nor with more devotion and zeal. He had interrogated them. He knew their aptitudes.

Gideon Spilett, a reporter of great talent, having learned everything in order to be able to speak of everything, was to contribute largely with head and hand to the colonization of the island. He would shrink from no task, and, a passionate hunter, he would make a profession of what, until then, had been for him but a pleasure.

Harbert, a brave boy, already remarkably learned in the natural sciences, was to furnish a serious addition to the common cause.

Nab was devotion personified. Dexterous, intelligent, indefatigable, robust, of iron health, he understood something of forge work and could only be very useful to the colony.

As for Pencroff, he had been a sailor on all the oceans, a carpenter in the shipyards of Brooklyn, a ship's tailor's assistant on government vessels, a gardener, a cultivator, during his leaves, etc., and like seamen, fit for anything, he knew how to do everything.

It would truly have been difficult to bring together five men more fit to struggle against fate, more assured of triumphing over it.

"At the beginning," Cyrus Smith had said. Now, this beginning of which the engineer spoke was the construction of an apparatus that could serve to transform natural substances. We know the role that heat plays in these transformations. Now, the fuel, wood or coal, was immediately usable. It was therefore a question of building a furnace to utilize it.

"What will this furnace be used for?" asked Pencroff.

"To make the pottery we need," replied Cyrus Smith.

"And with what shall we make the furnace?"

"With bricks."

"And the bricks?"

"With clay. Onward, my friends. To avoid transport, we shall establish our workshop at the very place of production. Nab will bring provisions, and fire will not be lacking for the cooking of food."

"No," replied the reporter, "but if food comes to fail, for lack of hunting instruments!"

"Ah! if we only had a knife!" cried the sailor.

"Well?" asked Cyrus Smith.

"Well! I would soon have made a bow and arrows, and game would abound in the larder!"

"Yes, a knife, a cutting blade..." said the engineer, as if speaking to himself.

At that moment, his gaze fell upon Top, who was going to and fro on the shore.

Suddenly, Cyrus Smith's look brightened.

"Top, here!" said he.

The dog ran at his master's call. The latter took Top's head between his hands, and, detaching the collar that the animal wore about his neck, he broke it in two, saying: "There are two knives, Pencroff!" Two hurrahs from the sailor answered him. Top's collar was made of a thin blade of tempered steel. It sufficed therefore to whet it first upon a sandstone, so as to bring out the angle of the edge, then to remove the burr upon a finer grit stone. Now, this kind of arenaceous rock was found abundantly on the beach, and, two hours later, the colony's tooling consisted of two cutting blades which had been easily hafted in a solid grip.

The conquest of this first tool was hailed as a triumph. A precious conquest indeed, and one that came opportunely.

They set out. Cyrus Smith's intention was to return to the western shore of the lake, there where he had noticed the day before that clayey ground of which he possessed a sample. They therefore took by the bank of the Mercy, crossed the Grand-View Plateau, and, after a march of at most five miles, arrived at a clearing situated two hundred paces from Lake Grant.

On the way, Harbert had discovered a tree whose branches the Indians of South America employ to make their bows. It was the "crejimba," of the palm family, which bears no edible fruit. Long and straight branches were cut, stripped of leaves, shaped, stronger in their middle, weaker at their extremities, and there was nothing left but to find a plant fit to form the bowstring. It was a species belonging to the mallow family, an "hibiscus heterophyllus," which furnished fibers of remarkable tenacity, that might have been compared to animal sinews.

Pencroff thus obtained bows of fairly great power, to which only arrows were lacking. These were easy to make with straight and rigid branches, without knots, but the point that was to arm them, that is to say a substance fit to replace iron, was not to be met with so easily. But Pencroff said to himself that having furnished, he, his part in the work, chance would do the rest.

The colonists had arrived on the ground reconnoitered the day before. It was composed of that potter's clay which serves to make bricks and tiles, clay, consequently, very suitable for the operation that was to be carried through successfully. The manual labor presented no difficulty. It sufficed to free this clay of grease with sand, to mold the bricks and to fire them at the heat of a wood fire.

Ordinarily, bricks are pressed in molds, but the engineer contented himself with making them by hand. The whole day and the next were employed in this work. The clay, soaked with water, then kneaded with the feet and wrists of the workers, was divided into prisms of equal size. An experienced workman can make, without a machine, up to ten thousand bricks in twelve hours; but in their two working days, the five brickmakers of Lincoln Island made no more than three thousand, which were ranged near one another, until the moment when their complete drying should permit their firing, that is to say in three or four days.

It was during the day of April 2 that Cyrus Smith occupied himself with fixing the orientation of the island.

The day before, he had noted exactly the hour at which the sun had disappeared below the horizon, allowing for refraction. That morning, he noted no less exactly the hour at which it reappeared. Between this setting and this rising, twelve hours twenty-four minutes had elapsed. Therefore, six hours twelve minutes after its rising, the sun, that day, would pass exactly at the meridian, and the point of the sky that it would occupy at that moment would be the north.

At the said hour, Cyrus noted this point, and, by placing one with the other, with the sun, two trees that were to serve him as markers, he thus obtained an invariable meridian for his later operations.

During the two days that preceded the firing of the bricks, they occupied themselves with laying in a supply of fuel. Branches were cut around the clearing, and all the wood fallen under the trees was gathered. This was not done without some hunting in the vicinity, all the better since Pencroff now possessed some dozens of arrows armed with very sharp points. It was Top who had furnished these points, by bringing back a porcupine, rather mediocre as game, but of incontestable value, thanks to the quills with which it was bristled. These quills were solidly fitted to the extremity of the arrows, whose direction was assured by a feathering of cockatoo plumes. The reporter and Harbert soon became very dexterous archers. Also, fur and feather game abounded at the Chimneys, cavies, pigeons, agoutis, grouse, etc. Most of these animals were killed in the part of the forest situated on the left bank of the Mercy, and to which was given the name of Jacamar Wood, in memory of the bird that Pencroff and Harbert had pursued during their first exploration.

This game was eaten fresh, but the cavy hams were preserved, by smoking them above a green-wood fire, after aromatizing them with fragrant leaves. However, this very fortifying nourishment was still roast upon roast, and the guests would have been happy to hear a simple pot-au-feu singing on the hearth; but they must wait until the pot was fabricated, and, consequently, until the furnace was built.

During these excursions, which were made only within a very restricted radius around the brickyard, the hunters were able to note the recent passage of large-sized animals, armed with powerful claws, whose species they could not recognize.

Cyrus Smith therefore recommended extreme prudence to them, for it was probable that the forest enclosed some dangerous wild beasts.

And he did well. Indeed, Gideon Spilett and Harbert caught sight one day of an animal that resembled a jaguar. This wild beast, happily, did not attack them, for they would perhaps not have escaped without some grave wound. But as soon as he should have a serious weapon, that is to say one of those rifles that Pencroff called for, Gideon Spilett promised himself well to make a fierce war upon the ferocious beasts and to purge the island of them.

The Chimneys, during these few days, were not arranged more comfortably, for the engineer counted on discovering or building, if need be, a more suitable dwelling. They contented themselves with spreading upon the sand of the galleries a fresh litter of mosses and dry leaves, and, upon these somewhat primitive beds, the workers, exhausted, slept a perfect sleep.

They also made a reckoning of the days elapsed in Lincoln Island, since the colonists had been cast there, and from then on kept a regular account of them. April 5, which was a Wednesday, was twelve days since the wind had thrown the shipwrecked men upon that coast.

April 6, at dawn, the engineer and his companions were assembled in the clearing, at the place where the firing of the bricks was to be carried out.

Naturally, this operation must be done in the open air, and not in furnaces, or rather, the agglomeration of the bricks would be but an enormous furnace that would fire itself. The fuel, made of well-prepared fagots, was disposed upon the ground, and surrounded with several rows of dried bricks, which soon formed a large cube, at the exterior of which vents were contrived. This work lasted the whole day, and only in the evening was fire set to the fagots.

That night, no one went to bed, and they watched carefully that the fire should not slacken.

The operation lasted forty-eight hours and succeeded perfectly. It was then necessary to let the smoking mass cool, and, during this time, Nab and Pencroff, guided by Cyrus Smith, carted, upon a hurdle made of interlaced branches, several loads of carbonate of lime, very common stones, which were found abundantly north of the lake. These stones, decomposed by heat, gave a quicklime, very rich, foaming much upon slaking, as pure finally as if it had been produced by the calcination of chalk or marble. Mixed with sand, whose effect is to attenuate the shrinkage of the paste as it solidifies, this lime furnished an excellent mortar. From these various works, it resulted that, on April 9, the engineer had at his disposal a certain quantity of fully prepared lime, and some thousands of bricks.

They therefore began, without losing an instant, the construction of a furnace, which was to serve for the firing of the various potteries indispensable for domestic uses. They succeeded in this without too much difficulty. Five days later, the furnace was charged with that coal whose outcrop the engineer had discovered in the open air near the mouth of Red Creek, and the first smokes escaped from a chimney twenty feet high. The clearing was transformed into a factory, and Pencroff was not far from believing that from this furnace were to issue all the products of modern industry. Meanwhile, what the colonists fabricated first was a common pottery, but very fit for the cooking of foods. The raw material was this same clay of the soil, to which Cyrus Smith had some lime and quartz added. In reality, this paste thus constituted the true "pipe-clay," with which were made pots, cups that had been molded upon pebbles of suitable shapes, plates, large jars and vats to hold water, etc.

The form of these objects was awkward, defective; but, after they had been fired at a high temperature, the kitchen of the Chimneys found itself provided with a certain number of utensils as precious as if the finest kaolin had entered into their composition.

It must be mentioned here that Pencroff, desirous of knowing if this clay, thus prepared, justified its name of "pipe-clay," made himself some rather coarse pipes, which he found charming, but to which tobacco was lacking, alas! And, it must be said, it was a great deprivation for Pencroff.

"But tobacco will come, like all things!" he repeated in his outbursts of absolute confidence.

These works lasted until April 15, and one understands that this time was conscientiously employed.

The colonists, become potters, did nothing but pottery. When it should suit Cyrus Smith to change them into blacksmiths, they would be blacksmiths. But, the next day being a Sunday, and even Easter Sunday, all agreed to sanctify this day by rest. These Americans were religious men, scrupulous observers of the precepts of the Bible, and the situation in which they were placed could only develop their sentiments of confidence toward the Author of all things.

The evening of April 15, they therefore returned definitively to the Chimneys. The rest of the pottery was carried off, and the furnace was extinguished awaiting a new destination. The return was marked by a happy incident, the discovery that the engineer made of a substance fit to replace tinder. We know that this spongy and velvety flesh proceeds from a certain fungus of the polypore genus. Conveniently prepared, it is extremely inflammable, especially when it has been previously saturated with gunpowder or boiled in a solution of nitrate or chlorate of potash. But, until then, they had found none of these polypores, nor even any of those morels that can replace them. That day, the engineer, having recognized a certain plant belonging to the wormwood genus, which counts among its principal species absinthe, lemon verbena, tarragon, mugwort, etc., pulled up several tufts, and, presenting them to the sailor:

"Here, Pencroff," said he, "this will please you."

Pencroff looked attentively at the plant, clothed in silky and long hairs, whose leaves were covered with a cottony down.

"Why, what is that, Mr. Cyrus?" asked Pencroff. "Goodness of heaven! Is it tobacco?"

"No," replied Cyrus Smith, "it is artemisia, Chinese mugwort for scientists, and for us others, it will be tinder."

And, indeed, this mugwort, suitably dried, furnished a very inflammable substance, especially when later the engineer impregnated it with that nitrate of potash of which the island possessed several beds, and which is none other than saltpeter.

That evening, all the colonists, gathered in the central chamber, supped conveniently. Nab had prepared an agouti pot-au-feu, an aromatized cavy ham, to which were joined the boiled tubers of the "caladium macrorhizum," a sort of herbaceous plant of the arum family, and which, under the tropical zone, would have taken an arborescent form. These rhizomes were of excellent taste, very nutritious, almost similar to that substance which is sold in England under the name of "Portland sago," and they could, to a certain extent, replace the bread which was still lacking to the colonists of Lincoln Island.

Supper finished, before giving themselves to sleep, Cyrus Smith and his companions came to take the air upon the beach. It was eight o'clock in the evening. The night promised magnificently. The moon, which had been full five days before, was not yet risen, but the horizon was already silvered with those soft and pale shades that might be called the lunar dawn. At the southern zenith, the circumpolar constellations resplended, and, among all, that Southern Cross which the engineer, some days before, had hailed at the summit of Mount Franklin.

Cyrus Smith observed for some time this splendid constellation, which bears at its top and at its base two stars of the first magnitude, at its left arm a star of the second, at its right arm a star of the third magnitude.

Then, after reflecting:

"Harbert," he asked the young boy, "are we not on April 15?"

"Yes, Mr. Cyrus," replied Harbert.

"Well, if I am not mistaken, tomorrow will be one of the four days of the year for which true time merges with mean time, that is to say, my child, that tomorrow, to a few seconds near, the sun will pass at the meridian just at noon by the clocks. If therefore the weather is fine, I think that I shall be able to obtain the longitude of the island with an approximation of some degrees."

"Without instruments, without a sextant?" asked Gideon Spilett.

"Yes," resumed the engineer. "Also, since the night is pure, I am going to try, this very evening, to obtain our latitude by calculating the height of the Southern Cross, that is to say of the austral pole, above the horizon. You understand well, my friends, that before undertaking serious installation works, it is not enough to have ascertained that this land is an island, it must, as much as possible, be recognized at what distance it is situated, whether from the American continent, or from the Australian continent, or from the principal archipelagos of the Pacific."

"Indeed," said the reporter, "instead of constructing a house, we may have interest in constructing a boat, if by chance we are but a hundred miles from an inhabited coast."

"That is why," resumed Cyrus Smith, "I am going to try, this evening, to obtain the latitude of Lincoln Island, and tomorrow, at noon, I shall try to calculate its longitude."

If the engineer had possessed a sextant, an apparatus which permits measuring with great precision the angular distance of objects by reflection, the operation would have offered no difficulty. That evening, by the height of the pole, the next day, by the passage of the sun at the meridian, he would have obtained the coordinates of the island. But, the apparatus lacking, it must be supplied.

Cyrus Smith therefore re-entered the Chimneys. By the light of the hearth, he shaped two small flat rulers which he joined one to the other at one of their extremities, so as to form a sort of compass whose branches could be separated or brought together. The point of attachment was fixed by means of a strong acacia thorn, furnished by the dead wood of the fire.

This instrument finished, the engineer returned to the beach; but as he must take the height of the pole above a clearly drawn horizon, that is to say a sea horizon, and as Claw Cape hid the southern horizon from him, he had to go seek a more suitable station. The best would evidently have been the shore directly exposed to the south, but it would have been necessary to cross the Mercy, then deep, and that was a difficulty.

Cyrus Smith resolved, consequently, to go make his observation upon the Grand-View Plateau, reserving to himself to take account of its height above the level of the sea, — a height that he counted on calculating the next day by a simple process of elementary geometry.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”