Part 11

The colonists therefore made their way to the plateau, ascending the left bank of the Mercy, and came to position themselves on the edge that ran northwest to southeast, that is to say, on that line of fantastically carved rocks bordering the river.

This part of the plateau rose some fifty feet above the heights of the right bank, which sloped down by a double incline to the tip of Cape Claw and to the southern coast of the island. No obstacle therefore checked the view, which embraced the horizon over a semicircle from the cape to Reptile Point. To the south, this horizon, lit from below by the first glimmers of the moon, stood out sharply against the sky and could be sighted with a certain precision.

At that moment, the Southern Cross presented itself to the observer in an inverted position, the alpha star marking its base, which is nearer to the south pole.

This constellation is not situated as close to the Antarctic pole as the Pole Star is to the Arctic pole. The alpha star is about twenty-seven degrees from it, but Cyrus Smith knew this and had to allow for this distance in his calculation. He also took care to observe it at the moment it crossed the meridian below the pole, which had to simplify his operation.

Cyrus Smith therefore directed one branch of his wooden compass toward the sea horizon, the other toward alpha, as he would have done with the telescopes of a repeating circle, and the opening of the two branches gave him the angular distance separating alpha from the horizon. In order to fix the angle obtained in an unalterable manner, he pinned, by means of thorns, the two small boards of his apparatus onto a third placed transversely, so that their spread was solidly maintained.

This done, nothing remained but to calculate the angle obtained, by reducing the observation to sea level, so as to allow for the dip of the horizon, which required measuring the height of the plateau. The value of this angle would thus give the altitude of alpha, and consequently that of the pole above the horizon, that is to say the latitude of the island, since the latitude of a point on the globe is always equal to the height of the pole above the horizon of that point.

These calculations were put off until the next day, and at ten o'clock everyone was sleeping soundly.

CHAPTER XIV

The next day, April 16 — Easter Sunday — the colonists left the Chimneys at daybreak, and proceeded to wash their linen and clean their clothes. The engineer counted on manufacturing soap as soon as he had procured the raw materials necessary for saponification, soda or potash, grease or oil. The very important question of renewing the wardrobe would also be dealt with in due time and place. In any case, the clothes would last another six months well enough, for they were sturdy and could withstand the fatigues of manual labor. But everything would depend on the situation of the island relative to inhabited lands. This was what would be determined that very day, if the weather permitted.

Now, the sun, rising on a pure horizon, announced a magnificent day, one of those fine autumn days that are like the last farewells of the warm season.

It was therefore a matter of completing the elements of the previous day's observations, by measuring the height of the Grand-View plateau above sea level.

“Do you not need an instrument like the one that served you yesterday?” Harbert asked the engineer.

“No, my boy,” he replied, “we shall proceed differently, and in a manner almost as precise.”

Harbert, who loved to learn all things, followed the engineer, who moved away from the foot of the granite wall, descending to the edge of the beach. Meanwhile, Pencroff, Nab, and the reporter occupied themselves with various tasks.

Cyrus Smith had provided himself with a sort of straight pole, twelve feet long, which he had measured as exactly as possible, comparing it to his own height, the measure of which he knew to within a line. Harbert carried a plumb line that Cyrus Smith had given him, that is to say a simple stone fixed to the end of a flexible fiber.

Having arrived some twenty feet from the edge of the beach, and about five hundred feet from the granite wall, which rose perpendicularly, Cyrus Smith drove the pole two feet into the sand, and, bracing it carefully, he managed, by means of the plumb line, to erect it perpendicular to the plane of the horizon.

This done, he stepped back the necessary distance so that, lying on the sand, the visual ray from his eye just grazed both the tip of the pole and the crest of the wall.

Then he carefully marked this point with a stake.

Then, addressing Harbert:

“Do you know the first principles of geometry?” he asked him.

“A little, Mr. Cyrus,” replied Harbert, who did not wish to overstate.

“Do you remember well what the properties of two similar triangles are?”

“Yes,” answered Harbert. “Their homologous sides are proportional.”

“Well, my boy, I have just constructed two similar triangles, both right-angled: the first, the smaller, has for its sides the perpendicular pole, the distance separating the stake from the foot of the pole, and my visual ray for hypotenuse; the second has for its sides the perpendicular wall, the height of which is to be measured, the distance separating the stake from the foot of this wall, and my visual ray likewise forming its hypotenuse — which happens to be the prolongation of that of the first triangle.”

“Ah! Mr. Cyrus, I understand!” cried Harbert. “Just as the distance from the stake to the pole is proportional to the distance from the stake to the base of the wall, so the height of the pole is proportional to the height of that wall.”

“That is exactly it, Harbert,” replied the engineer, “and when we have measured the first two distances, knowing the height of the pole, we shall only have a proportion to calculate, which will give us the height of the wall and spare us the trouble of measuring it directly.”

The two horizontal distances were taken, by means of the pole itself, the length of which above the sand was exactly ten feet.

The first distance was fifteen feet between the stake and the point where the pole was driven into the sand.

The second distance, between the stake and the base of the wall, was five hundred feet.

These measurements finished, Cyrus Smith and the young boy returned to the Chimneys.

There, the engineer took a flat stone that he had brought back from his previous excursions, a sort of slate schist, on which it was easy to trace figures by means of a sharp shell.

He therefore established the following proportion:

15 : 500 :: 10 : x 500 times 10 = 5000 5000 over 15 = 333.33.

Whence it was established that the granite wall measured three hundred thirty-three feet in height.

Cyrus Smith then took up the instrument he had made the day before, and whose two boards, by their spread, gave him the angular distance of the star alpha from the horizon. He measured very exactly the opening of this angle on a circumference that he divided into three hundred sixty equal parts. Now, this angle, by adding the twenty-seven degrees that separate alpha from the Antarctic pole, and by reducing to sea level the height of the plateau on which the observation had been made, was found to be fifty-three degrees. These fifty-three degrees being subtracted from the ninety degrees — distance from the pole to the equator — there remained thirty-seven degrees. Cyrus Smith therefore concluded that Lincoln Island was situated on the thirty-seventh degree of southern latitude, or, allowing, in view of the imperfection of his operations, for a margin of five degrees, that it must be situated between the thirty-fifth and fortieth parallels.

There remained to obtain the longitude, to complete the coordinates of the island. This the engineer would attempt to determine that very day, at noon, that is to say at the moment the sun crossed the meridian.

It was decided that this Sunday would be employed in a walk, or rather in an exploration of that part of the island situated between the north of the lake and Shark Gulf, and if the weather permitted, they would push this reconnaissance as far as the northern slope of South Mandible Cape. They were to lunch on the dunes and not return until evening.

At half past eight in the morning, the little troop followed the edge of the channel. On the other side, on Safety Islet, numerous birds were walking about gravely. They were divers, of the penguin species, very recognizable by their unpleasant cry, which resembles the braying of a donkey.

Pencroff considered them only from the edible point of view, and learned not without a certain satisfaction that their flesh, though blackish, is quite eatable.

One could also see crawling on the sand large amphibians, seals no doubt, who seemed to have chosen the islet for a refuge. It was hardly possible to examine these animals from the alimentary point of view, for their oily flesh is detestable; however, Cyrus Smith observed them attentively, and, without making his idea known, he announced to his companions that very soon they would pay a visit to the islet.

The shore, followed by the colonists, was strewn with innumerable shells, some of which would have delighted an amateur of malacology. There were, among others, phasianellas, terebratulas, trigonias, etc. But what was to be more useful was a vast oyster-bed, discovered at low tide, that Nab pointed out among the rocks, about four miles from the Chimneys.

“Nab will not have lost his day,” cried Pencroff, observing the bank of oysters stretching out to sea.

“It is indeed a fortunate discovery,” said the reporter, “and if, as is claimed, each oyster produces from fifty to sixty thousand eggs a year, we shall have there an inexhaustible reserve.”

“Only, I believe the oyster is not very nourishing,” said Harbert.

“No,” replied Cyrus Smith. “The oyster contains very little nitrogenous matter, and for a man who would feed on it exclusively, it would take no less than fifteen to sixteen dozen a day.”

“Good!” answered Pencroff. “We can swallow dozens of dozens, before exhausting the bank. Shall we take some for our lunch?”

And without waiting for a reply to his proposal, knowing well it was approved in advance, the sailor and Nab detached a certain quantity of these mollusks. They put them in a sort of net of hibiscus fibers, which Nab had made, and which already contained the menu of the meal; then they continued up the coast between the dunes and the sea. From time to time, Cyrus Smith consulted his watch, so as to prepare in time for the solar observation, which was to be made at precisely noon.

All this portion of the island was very arid as far as that point which closed Union Bay, and which had received the name of South Mandible Cape.

There was nothing to be seen but sand and shells, mixed with debris of lava. A few sea birds frequented this desolate coast, gulls, large albatrosses, as well as wild ducks, which rightly excited Pencroff's covetousness.

He did indeed try to bring them down with arrows, but without result, for they seldom alighted, and he would have had to hit them on the wing.

Which led the sailor to repeat to the engineer:

“You see, Mr. Cyrus, as long as we have not one or two hunting rifles, our equipment will leave something to be desired!”

“No doubt, Pencroff,” replied the reporter, “but it is up to you! Procure us iron for the barrels, steel for the locks, saltpeter, charcoal and sulfur for the powder, mercury and nitric acid for the fulminate, finally lead for the balls, and Cyrus will make us first-rate rifles.”

“Oh!” replied the engineer, “all these substances we can no doubt find in the island, but a firearm is a delicate instrument and requires tools of great precision. Anyway, we shall see later.”

“Why is it,” cried Pencroff, “why is it that we threw overboard all those weapons the gondola carried with us, and our utensils, and even our pocket-knives!”

“But, if we had not thrown them, Pencroff, it is we whom the balloon would have thrown to the bottom of the sea!” said Harbert.

“That is indeed true what you say there, my boy!” replied the sailor.

Then, passing to another thought:

“But, I am thinking,” he added, “what must have been the bewilderment of Jonathan Forster and his companions, when, the next morning, they found the place empty and the machine flown!”

“The last of my cares is to know what they may have thought!” said the reporter.

“And yet it was I who had that idea!” said Pencroff with a satisfied air.

“A fine idea, Pencroff,” replied Gideon Spilett laughing, “and which has put us where we are!”

“I would rather be here than in the hands of the Southerners!” cried the sailor, especially since Mr. Cyrus had the kindness to come and join us!”

“And so would I, indeed!” replied the reporter. “Besides, what do we lack? Nothing!”

“If not… everything!” answered Pencroff, who burst out laughing, shaking his broad shoulders. “But, one day or another, we shall find the means to get away!”

“And perhaps sooner than you imagine, my friends,” said the engineer then, “if Lincoln Island is only at a moderate distance from an inhabited archipelago or a continent. Within an hour, we shall know. I have no map of the Pacific, but my memory has kept a very clear recollection of its southern portion. The latitude I obtained yesterday places Lincoln Island abreast of New Zealand to the west, and the coast of Chile to the east. But between these two lands, the distance is at least six thousand miles. It remains therefore to determine what point the island occupies on this broad expanse of sea, and this the longitude will give us presently with sufficient approximation, I hope.”

“Is it not,” asked Harbert, “the Pomotou Archipelago that is nearest to us in latitude?”

“Yes,” replied the engineer, “but the distance separating us from it is more than twelve hundred miles.”

“And that way?” said Nab, who followed the conversation with extreme interest, and whose hand indicated the direction of the south.

“That way, nothing,” replied Pencroff.

“Nothing, indeed,” added the engineer.

“Well, Cyrus,” asked the reporter, “if Lincoln Island is only two or three hundred miles from New Zealand or from Chile?…”

“Well,” replied the engineer, “instead of building a house, we shall build a boat, and master Pencroff will undertake to command her…”

“Why certainly, Mr. Cyrus,” cried the sailor, “I am quite ready to pass captain… as soon as you have found the means to construct a craft seaworthy enough!”

“We shall do it, if necessary!” replied Cyrus Smith.

But while these men, who truly doubted nothing, talked, the hour approached at which the observation was to take place. How would Cyrus Smith ascertain the passage of the sun across the island's meridian, without any instrument? This Harbert could not guess.

The observers then found themselves at a distance of six miles from the Chimneys, not far from that part of the dunes in which the engineer had been found again, after his enigmatic rescue. They halted at this spot, and everything was prepared for lunch, for it was half past eleven. Harbert went to fetch fresh water from the stream flowing nearby, and brought it back in a jug that Nab had provided himself with.

During these preparations, Cyrus Smith arranged everything for his astronomical observation. He chose on the beach a very clean place, which the retreating sea had perfectly leveled. This layer of very fine sand was smoothed like a mirror, without a grain rising above another. It mattered little, moreover, whether this layer was horizontal or not, and it mattered no more that the stick, six feet high, planted there, stood perpendicular. On the contrary, even, the engineer inclined it toward the south, that is to say the side opposite the sun, for it must not be forgotten that the colonists of Lincoln Island, by the very fact that the island was situated in the southern hemisphere, saw the radiant orb describe its diurnal arc above the northern horizon, and not above the southern horizon.

Harbert then understood how the engineer was going to proceed to ascertain the culmination of the sun, that is to say its passage across the island's meridian, or, in other words, the local noon. It was by means of the shadow cast on the sand by the stick, a method which, for want of an instrument, would give him a suitable approximation for the result he wished to obtain. Indeed, the moment when this shadow reached its minimum length would be the exact noon, and it would suffice to follow the end of this shadow, in order to recognize the instant when, after having successively diminished, it began again to lengthen. By inclining his stick opposite the sun, Cyrus Smith made the shadow longer, and, consequently, its modifications would be easier to ascertain. Indeed, the larger the hand of a dial, the more easily one can follow the movement of its tip. The shadow of the stick was nothing other than the hand of a dial.

When he thought the moment had arrived, Cyrus Smith knelt on the sand, and, by means of small wooden pegs that he stuck into the sand, he began to mark the successive shrinkings of the shadow of the stick. His companions, leaning over him, followed the operation with extreme interest.

The reporter held his chronometer in his hand, ready to note the hour it would mark, when the shadow was at its shortest. Moreover, as Cyrus Smith was operating on April 16, the day on which true time and mean time coincide, the hour given by Gideon Spilett would be the true hour it then was at Washington, which would simplify the calculation.

Meanwhile the sun advanced slowly; the shadow of the stick diminished little by little, and when it appeared to Cyrus Smith that it was beginning to grow again:

“What time?” said he.

“Five o'clock and one minute,” replied Gideon Spilett at once.

There was nothing left but to figure the operation. Nothing was easier. There existed, as can be seen, in round numbers, five hours of difference between the meridian of Washington and that of Lincoln Island, that is to say it was noon at Lincoln Island, when it was already five o'clock in the evening at Washington. Now, the sun, in its apparent movement around the earth, traverses one degree per four minutes, or fifteen degrees per hour. Fifteen degrees multiplied by five hours gave seventy-five degrees.

Therefore, since Washington is at 77°3'11, that is to say seventy-seven degrees counted from the meridian of Greenwich — which the Americans take as the starting point of longitudes, concurrently with the English — it followed that the island was situated at seventy-seven degrees plus seventy-five degrees west of the meridian of Greenwich, that is to say at the fifty-second degree of west longitude.

Cyrus Smith announced this result to his companions, and allowing for errors of observation, as he had done for the latitude, he believed he could affirm that the bearing of Lincoln Island was between the thirty-fifth and thirty-seventh parallels, and between the one hundred fiftieth and one hundred fifty-fifth meridians west of the meridian of Greenwich.

The possible margin he attributed to errors of observation was, as can be seen, five degrees in both directions, which, at sixty miles per degree, could give an error of three hundred miles in latitude or in longitude for the exact bearing.

But this error was not to influence the course to be taken. It was quite evident that Lincoln Island was at such a distance from any land or archipelago, that one could not hazard crossing that distance in a simple and fragile skiff. Indeed, its bearing placed it at least twelve hundred miles from Tahiti and the islands of the Pomotou Archipelago, more than eighteen hundred miles from New Zealand, more than four thousand five hundred miles from the American coast!

And when Cyrus Smith consulted his memory, he recalled in no way that any island whatever occupied, in this part of the Pacific, the situation assigned to Lincoln Island.

CHAPTER XV

The next day, April 17, the sailor's first word was for Gideon Spilett.

“Well, sir,” he asked him, “what shall we be today?”

“Whatever Cyrus pleases,” replied the reporter.

Now, from brick-makers and potters as they had been until then, the engineer's companions were to become metallurgists.

The day before, after lunch, the exploration had been carried as far as the tip of Mandible Cape, distant nearly seven miles from the Chimneys. There ended the long series of dunes, and the ground took on a volcanic appearance. These were no longer high walls, as on the Grand-View plateau, but a bizarre and capricious border framing that narrow gulf comprised between the two capes, formed of the mineral matters vomited by the volcano. Arrived at this point, the colonists had retraced their steps, and, at nightfall, they returned to the Chimneys, but they did not fall asleep before the question of whether they must think of leaving Lincoln Island or not had been definitively resolved.

It was a considerable distance, that of these twelve hundred miles separating the island from the Pomotou Archipelago. A skiff would not have sufficed to cross it, especially with the bad season approaching.

Pencroff had formally declared it. Now, to build a simple skiff, even having the necessary tools, was a difficult work, and, the colonists having no tools, they had to begin by manufacturing hammers, axes, adzes, saws, augers, planes, etc., which would require a certain time. It was therefore decided that they would winter at Lincoln Island, and that they would seek a more comfortable dwelling than the Chimneys in which to pass the winter months.

Before all things, it was a matter of utilizing the iron ore, of which the engineer had observed some deposits in the northwest part of the island, and of changing this ore into either iron or steel.

The soil generally does not contain metals in a state of purity. For the most part, they are found combined with oxygen or with sulfur.

Precisely, the two samples brought back by Cyrus Smith were, one of magnetic iron, non-carbonated, the other of pyrite, otherwise called iron sulfide. It was therefore the first, the iron oxide, that had to be reduced by charcoal, that is to say freed of oxygen, to obtain it in a state of purity. This reduction is done by subjecting the ore in the presence of charcoal to a high temperature, either by the rapid and easy “Catalan method,” which has the advantage of transforming the ore directly into iron in a single operation, or by the method of blast furnaces, which first changes the ore into pig iron, then the pig iron into iron, by removing the three to four percent of charcoal that is combined with it.

Now, what did Cyrus Smith need? Iron and not pig iron, and he had to seek the most rapid method of reduction. Besides, the ore he had gathered was itself very pure and very rich. It was this oxiduled ore which, occurring in confused masses of a dark gray, gives a black powder, crystallizes in regular octahedrons, furnishes natural magnets, and serves in Europe to manufacture those first-quality irons, with which Sweden and Norway are so abundantly provided. Not far from this deposit were the beds of coal already worked by the colonists. Hence, great facility for the treatment of the ore, since the elements of the manufacture were close together.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”