Part 14

The next day—May 21—at dawn, the miners went to a point forming the eastern shore of Lake Grant, only five hundred paces from the coast. At this spot, the plateau lay below the level of the water, which was held back only by its granite frame. It was therefore evident that if this frame were broken, the waters would escape through this outlet and form a stream which, after flowing down the inclined surface of the plateau, would plunge onto the beach. Consequently, there would be a general lowering of the lake's level and the mouth of the overflow would be laid bare—which was the final aim.

It was therefore the frame that had to be broken.

Under the engineer's direction, Pencroff, armed with a pick that he wielded skillfully and vigorously, attacked the granite on the outer facing. The hole to be bored began on a horizontal ridge of the bank and had to slant inward so as to meet a level noticeably below that of the lake waters. In this way, the explosive force, by displacing the rocks, would allow the waters to pour out widely and therefore to lower sufficiently.

The work was long, for the engineer, wishing to produce a tremendous effect, counted on devoting no less than ten liters of nitro-glycerine to the operation. But Pencroff, relieved by Nab, did so well that by four o'clock in the afternoon the mine hole was finished.

There remained the question of igniting the explosive substance. Usually, nitro-glycerine is ignited by means of fulminate caps which, on detonating, determine the explosion. Indeed, a shock is needed to provoke the explosion, and, simply set alight, this substance would burn without bursting.

Cyrus Smith could certainly have manufactured a cap. Failing fulminate, he could easily obtain a substance analogous to gun-cotton, since he had nitric acid at his disposal.

This substance, pressed into a cartridge and introduced into the nitro-glycerine, would have burst by means of a fuse and determined the explosion.

But Cyrus Smith knew that nitro-glycerine has the property of detonating under shock. He resolved therefore to use this property, ready to employ another means if this one should fail. Indeed, the blow of a hammer on a few drops of nitro-glycerine, spilled on the surface of a hard stone, suffices to provoke the explosion. But the operator could not be there to strike the blow without being a victim of the operation.

Cyrus Smith therefore imagined suspending from a post, above the mine hole, by means of a vegetable fiber, a mass of iron weighing several pounds. Another long fiber, previously sulfur-treated, was attached by one end to the middle of the first, while the other end trailed on the ground to a distance of several feet from the mine hole. Fire being applied to this second fiber, it would burn until it reached the first. The latter, catching fire in turn, would break, and the mass of iron would be precipitated onto the nitro-glycerine.

This apparatus was therefore set up; then the engineer, after having his companions move away, filled the mine hole so that the nitro-glycerine came flush with the opening, and he spilled a few drops on the surface of the rock, below the iron mass already suspended.

This done, Cyrus Smith took the end of the sulfur-treated fiber, lit it, and leaving the place, went back to rejoin his companions at the Chimneys.

The fiber was to burn for twenty-five minutes, and indeed, twenty-five minutes later, an explosion, of which no idea can be given, resounded. It seemed that the whole island trembled on its base. A shower of stones was projected into the air as if vomited by a volcano. The shock produced by the displaced air was such that the rocks of the Chimneys oscillated. The colonists, though more than two miles from the mine, were thrown to the ground.

They got up, climbed onto the plateau, and ran toward the spot where the lake shore must have been torn open by the explosion... A triple hurrah escaped their breasts! The granite frame was split over a wide space! A rapid course of water issued from it, ran foaming across the plateau, reached its crest, and plunged from a height of three hundred feet onto the beach!

CHAPTER XVIII

Cyrus Smith's plan had succeeded; but, according to his habit, without showing any satisfaction, his lips tight, his gaze fixed, he remained motionless. Harbert was enthusiastic; Nab bounded with joy; Pencroff swayed his big head and murmured these words: "Well, our engineer is doing fine!"

Indeed, the nitro-glycerine had acted powerfully. The cut made in the lake was so significant that the volume of water escaping then through this new overflow was at least triple that which had previously passed through the old one. It had to result, therefore, that shortly after the operation, the lake's level would have fallen by two feet at least.

The colonists returned to the Chimneys, to take picks, iron-tipped pikes, fiber ropes, a tinderbox and some amadou; then they went back to the plateau. Top accompanied them.

On the way, the sailor could not help saying to the engineer:

"But do you know well, Mr. Cyrus, that by means of this charming liquor you have manufactured, one could blow up our whole island?"

"Without any doubt, the island, the continents, and the earth itself," answered Cyrus Smith. "It is only a question of quantity."

"Could you not employ this nitro-glycerine for loading firearms?" asked the sailor.

"No, Pencroff, for it is too shattering a substance. But it would be easy to manufacture gun-cotton, or even ordinary powder, since we have nitric acid, saltpeter, sulfur and charcoal. Unfortunately, it is the weapons that we do not have."

"Oh! Mr. Cyrus," answered the sailor, "with a little good will!..."

Decidedly, Pencroff had erased the word "impossible" from the dictionary of Lincoln Island.

The colonists, arrived at the Grande-Vue plateau, directed themselves immediately toward the point of the lake, near which opened the mouth of the old overflow, which now must be laid bare.

The overflow would therefore have become passable, since the waters no longer rushed into it, and it would be easy no doubt to examine its interior arrangement. In a few moments, the colonists had reached the lower angle of the lake, and a glance sufficed to establish that the result had been obtained. Indeed, in the granite wall of the lake, and now above the water level, appeared the long-sought orifice. A narrow ledge, left bare by the retreat of the waters, allowed one to reach it. This orifice measured about twenty feet in width, but only two in height. It was like a gutter mouth at the edge of a sidewalk. This orifice could not therefore have offered easy passage to the colonists; but Nab and Pencroff took their picks, and in less than an hour had given it sufficient height.

The engineer then approached and observed that the walls of the overflow, in its upper part, showed a slope of no more than thirty to thirty-five degrees. They were therefore passable, and, provided their declivity did not increase, it would be easy to descend them to the level of the sea itself. If therefore, as was very probable, some vast cavity existed inside the granite mass, one might perhaps find means to make use of it.

"Well, Mr. Cyrus, what is stopping us?" asked the sailor, impatient to venture into the narrow corridor. "You see that Top has preceded us!"

"Very well," answered the engineer. "But we must see clearly.—Nab, go cut some resinous branches."

Nab and Harbert ran toward the shores of the lake, shaded by pines and other evergreen trees, and they soon returned with branches which they arranged in the form of torches. These torches were lit at the tinderbox fire, and, Cyrus Smith in the lead, the colonists entered the dark passage which the overflow of waters had lately filled.

Contrary to what might have been supposed, the diameter of this passage widened as it went, so that the explorers, almost immediately, could stand upright as they descended. The granite walls, worn by the waters since infinite time, were slippery, and falls had to be guarded against. Also, the colonists had tied themselves to one another by means of a rope, as mountain climbers do. Happily, some projections of the granite, forming veritable steps, made the descent less perilous. Droplets, still hanging from the rocks, iridesced here and there under the torchlight, and one might have believed the walls were lined with innumerable stalactites.

The engineer observed this black granite. He saw in it no stratum, no fissure. The mass was compact and of extremely close grain. This passage therefore dated from the very origin of the island. It was not the waters that had gradually hollowed it. Pluto, and not Neptune, had bored it with his own hand, and one could distinguish on the wall traces of eruptive work that the washing of the waters had not been able wholly to efface.

The colonists descended only very slowly. They were not without experiencing a certain emotion, thus venturing into the depths of this mass, which human beings were evidently visiting for the first time. They spoke not, but they reflected, and this reflection must have come to more than one, that some octopus or other gigantic cephalopod might occupy the inner cavities, which communicated with the sea. It was necessary therefore to venture only with a certain prudence.

Besides, Top kept the head of the little troop, and one could rely on the dog's sagacity, who would not fail to give the alarm, should the case arise.

After descending some hundred feet, following a rather winding route, Cyrus Smith, who marched in front, stopped, and his companions joined him. The place where they halted was hollowed out, so as to form a cavern of moderate dimensions. Drops of water fell from its vault, but they came not from a seepage through the mass. They were simply the last traces left by the torrent that had so long roared in this cavern, and the air, slightly humid, emitted no mephitic emanation.

"Well, dear Cyrus?" said then Gideon Spilett. "Here is a retreat very unknown, very hidden in these depths, but, after all, it is uninhabitable."

"Why uninhabitable?" asked the sailor.

"Because it is too small and too dark."

"Can we not enlarge it, dig it out, make openings for light and air?" answered Pencroff, who doubted nothing more.

"Let us continue," answered Cyrus Smith, "let us continue our exploration. Perhaps, lower down, nature will have spared us this work."

"We are still only at a third of the height," observed Harbert.

"At about a third," answered Cyrus Smith, "for we have descended a hundred feet since the orifice, and it is not impossible that at a hundred feet lower..."

"Where is Top?..." asked Nab, interrupting his master.

They searched the cavern. The dog was not there.

"He has probably continued his route," said Pencroff.

"Let us rejoin him," answered Cyrus Smith.

The descent was resumed. The engineer observed with care the deviations the overflow underwent, and, despite so many turnings, he made out fairly easily its general direction, which went toward the sea.

The colonists had lowered themselves another fifty feet perpendicularly, when their attention was attracted by distant sounds coming from the depths of the mass. They stopped and listened. These sounds, carried through the corridor like a voice through an acoustic tube, arrived clearly at the ear.

"They are Top's barks!" cried Harbert.

"Yes," answered Pencroff, "and our brave dog is barking even furiously!"

"We have our iron-tipped pikes," said Cyrus Smith. "Let us be on our guard, and forward!"

"This is more and more interesting," murmured Gideon Spilett in the sailor's ear, who made an affirmative sign.

Cyrus Smith and his companions hurried to come to the dog's aid. Top's barks became more and more perceptible. One felt in his broken voice a strange rage.

Was he then grappling with some animal whose retreat he had disturbed? It may be said that, without thinking of the danger to which they exposed themselves, the colonists now felt seized by an irresistible curiosity. They no longer descended the corridor, they let themselves, so to speak, slide down its wall, and, in a few minutes, sixty feet lower, they had rejoined Top.

There, the corridor ended at a vast and magnificent cavern. There, Top, going and coming, barked with fury. Pencroff and Nab, shaking their torches, cast great bursts of light on all the asperities of the granite, and, at the same time, Cyrus Smith, Gideon Spilett, Harbert, their pikes raised, held ready for any event.

The enormous cavern was empty. The colonists traversed it in every direction. There was nothing, not an animal, not a living being! And yet Top continued to bark. Neither caresses nor threats could silence him.

"There must be somewhere an outlet by which the lake waters went to the sea," said the engineer.

"Indeed," answered Pencroff, "and let us take care not to fall into a hole."

"Go, Top, go!" cried Cyrus Smith.

The dog, excited by his master's words, ran toward the end of the cavern, and there his barks redoubled.

They followed him, and, in the torchlight, appeared the orifice of a veritable well opening in the granite. It was indeed by there that the exit of the waters formerly engaged in the mass was effected, and, this time, it was no longer an oblique and passable corridor, but a perpendicular well, into which it would have been impossible to venture.

The torches were leaned over the orifice.

They saw nothing. Cyrus Smith detached a flaming branch and threw it into this abyss. The resplendent resin, whose illuminating power increased still further by the rapidity of its fall, illuminated the interior of the well, but nothing appeared yet. Then, the flame went out with a slight shudder indicating that it had reached the water layer, that is to say the level of the sea.

The engineer, calculating the time employed in the fall, could estimate the depth of the well, which proved to be about ninety feet.

The floor of the cavern was therefore situated ninety feet above the level of the sea.

"Here is our dwelling," said Cyrus Smith.

"But it was occupied by some being or other," answered Gideon Spilett, who found his curiosity unsatisfied.

"Well, the being or other, amphibious or not, has fled by this outlet," answered the engineer, "and has yielded us the place."

"No matter," added the sailor, "I would have liked to be Top, a quarter of an hour ago, for after all he did not bark without reason!"

Cyrus Smith looked at his dog, and that one of his companions who had approached him would have heard him murmur these words:

"Yes, I well believe that Top knows more than we do about many things!"

Meanwhile, the colonists' wishes were found in large part realized. Chance, aided by the marvelous sagacity of their chief, had happily served them. They had there, at their disposal, a vast cavern, whose capacity they could not yet estimate by the insufficient light of the torches, but which it would certainly be easy to divide into rooms, by means of brick partitions, and to adapt, if not as a house, at least as a spacious apartment. The waters had abandoned it and could not return.

The place was free.

There remained two difficulties: first, the possibility of lighting this excavation hollowed in a solid block; second, the necessity of making access to it easier. For lighting, it was not to be thought of establishing it from above, since an enormous thickness of granite roofed above it; but perhaps one could pierce the front wall, which faced the sea. Cyrus Smith, who, during the descent, had approximately appreciated the obliquity and consequently the length of the overflow, was justified in believing that the front part of the wall must be but little thick. If lighting were thus obtained, access would be too, for it was as easy to pierce a door as windows, and to establish an exterior ladder.

Cyrus Smith made his ideas known to his companions.

"Then, Mr. Cyrus, to work!" answered Pencroff. "I have my pick, and I shall know well how to make my way through this wall. Where must I strike?"

"Here," answered the engineer, indicating to the vigorous sailor a rather considerable recess in the wall, which must diminish its thickness.

Pencroff attacked the granite, and for half an hour, by the light of the torches, he made its fragments fly around him. The rock sparkled under his pick. Nab relieved him, then Gideon Spilett after Nab.

This work had already lasted two hours, and one could therefore fear that at this spot the wall exceeded the length of the pick, when, at a last blow struck by Gideon Spilett, the instrument, passing through the wall, fell outside.

"Hurrah! always hurrah!" cried Pencroff.

The wall measured there only three feet in thickness.

Cyrus Smith came to apply his eye to the opening, which overlooked the ground by eighty feet. Before him stretched the edge of the shore, the islet, and, beyond, the immense sea.

But through this rather wide hole, for the rock had disaggregated notably, the light entered in floods and produced a magical effect in flooding this splendid cavern! If, in its left part, it measured no more than thirty feet high and wide over a length of a hundred feet, on the contrary, at its right part, it was enormous, and its vault rounded to more than eighty feet in height. In several places, pillars of granite, irregularly disposed, supported its fallings like those of a cathedral nave.

Resting on kinds of lateral jamb-walls, here curving into arches, there rising on ogival ribs, losing itself in obscure bays whose capricious arcades were glimpsed in the shadow, abundantly ornamented with projections forming as many pendentives, this vault offered a picturesque mixture of all that Byzantine, Romanesque and Gothic architectures have produced under the hand of man. And here, however, it was only the work of nature! She alone had hollowed this fairy Alhambra in a mass of granite!

The colonists were stupefied with admiration. Where they believed they would find only a narrow cavity, they found a sort of marvelous palace, and Nab had uncovered himself, as if he had been transported into a temple! Cries of admiration had issued from all mouths. The hurrahs resounded and went to lose themselves from echo to echo to the bottom of the dark naves.

"Ah! my friends," cried Cyrus Smith, "when we shall have largely lighted the interior of this mass, when we shall have disposed our rooms, our stores, our offices in its left part, there will still remain for us this splendid cavern, of which we shall make our study hall and our museum!"

"And we shall call it?..." asked Harbert.

"Granite-House," answered Cyrus Smith, a name which his companions saluted again with their hurrahs.

At this moment, the torches were almost entirely consumed, and as, to return, it was necessary to regain the top of the plateau by remounting the corridor, it was decided that the works relative to the fitting of the new dwelling would be put off until the next day.

Before leaving, Cyrus Smith came to lean once more over the dark well, which sank perpendicularly to the level of the sea. He listened attentively. No sound was produced, not even that of the waters, which the undulations of the swell must sometimes agitate in these depths. A flaming resin was again thrown. The walls of the well lit up for an instant but, no more this time than the first, nothing suspicious was revealed.

If some marine monster had been inadvertently surprised by the retreat of the waters, it had now regained the open sea by the subterranean conduit which extended under the beach, and which the overflow of the lake followed, before a new outlet had been offered to it.

However, the engineer, motionless, the ear attentive, the gaze plunged into the gulf, uttered not a single word.

The sailor approached him, then, and, touching him on the arm:

"Mr. Smith?" said he.

"What do you want, my friend?" answered the engineer, as if he had returned from the land of dreams.

"The torches are about to go out."

"On the way!" answered Cyrus Smith.

The little troop left the cavern and began its ascent through the dark overflow. Top brought up the rear, and still made heard singular growlings. The ascent was rather painful. The colonists stopped a few moments at the upper grotto, which formed a sort of landing, at mid-height of this long granite staircase. Then they began to climb again.

Soon a fresher air made itself felt. The droplets, dried by evaporation, no longer scintillated on the walls. The smoky clarity of the torches paled. That which Nab carried went out, and, not to venture into a profound obscurity, haste was necessary.

This was done, and, a little before four o'clock, at the moment when the sailor's torch went out in turn, Cyrus Smith and his companions emerged by the orifice of the overflow.

CHAPTER XIX

The next day, May 22, were begun the works destined for the special fitting of the new dwelling. The colonists were eager indeed to exchange, for this vast and healthy retreat, hollowed in solid rock, sheltered from the waters of the sea and sky, their insufficient shelter of the Chimneys. These, however, were not to be entirely abandoned, and the engineer's plan was to make of them a workshop for heavy works.

Cyrus Smith's first care was to ascertain on what precise point the facade of Granite-House developed. He went onto the beach, at the foot of the enormous wall, and, as the pick, escaped from the reporter's hands, must have fallen perpendicularly, it sufficed to find this pick again to recognize the spot where the hole had been pierced in the granite.

The pick was easily found again, and, indeed, a hole opened in perpendicular line above the point where it had stuck in the sand, about eighty feet above the beach. Some rock pigeons already entered and exited by this narrow opening. It truly seemed that it was for them that Granite-House had been discovered!

The engineer's intention was to divide the right portion of the cavern into several rooms preceded by an entrance corridor, and to light it by means of five windows and a door pierced in the facade.

Pencroff admitted well the five windows, but he did not understand the utility of the door, since the old overflow offered a natural staircase, by which it would always be easy to have access to Granite-House.

"My friend," answered Cyrus Smith, "if it is easy for us to reach our dwelling by the overflow, that will be equally easy for others than us. I count, on the contrary, to obstruct this overflow at its orifice, to plug it hermetically."

"And how shall we enter?" asked the sailor.

"By an exterior ladder," answered Cyrus Smith, "a rope ladder, which, once withdrawn, will render the access to our dwelling impossible."

"But why so many precautions?" said Pencroff. "Until now the animals have not seemed to us very formidable. As for being inhabited by natives, our island is not!"

"Are you quite sure of it, Pencroff?" asked the engineer, looking at the sailor.

"We shall be sure of it, evidently, only when we shall have explored it in all its parts," answered Pencroff.

"Yes," said Cyrus Smith, "for we still know only a small portion of it. But, in any case, if we have no enemies within, they may come from without, for these are bad quarters, these quarters of the Pacific. Let us therefore take our precautions against any eventuality."}

“Stories of the world, in your language.”