Part 16

Now, indeed, the plateau and the beach were cut transversely by a stream of water that had to be crossed necessarily when one wished to reach the north of the island. To avoid it, the colonists would have been obliged to make a considerable detour and to go back westward beyond the sources of the Red Creek. The simplest course, therefore, was to build, on the plateau and on the beach, two small bridges, twenty to twenty-five feet long, whose entire framework was formed of a few trees merely squared with the axe. This was the work of a few days. The bridges once established, Nab and Pencroff took advantage of them to go as far as the oyster-bed that had been discovered off the dunes. They had dragged after them a sort of rough cart, which replaced the old hurdle, truly too inconvenient, and they brought back some thousands of oysters, whose acclimatization was rapidly effected among those rocks, which formed so many natural enclosures at the mouth of the Mercy. These mollusks were of excellent quality, and the colonists made an almost daily consumption of them.

It is seen that Lincoln Island, although its inhabitants had explored only a very small portion of it, already supplied nearly all their needs. And it was probable that, searched even into its most secret recesses, over all that wooded part extending from the Mercy to the Reptile Promontory, it would yield new treasures. Only one privation still cost the colonists of Lincoln Island. Nitrogenous food was not lacking to them, nor the vegetable products that should temper its use; the woody roots of the dragon-trees, subjected to fermentation, gave them an acidulated drink, a sort of beer much preferable to pure water; they had even manufactured sugar, without canes or beets, by gathering that liquor distilled by the "acer saccharinum," a sort of maple of the family of the acerineae, which thrives under all middle zones, and of which the island possessed a great number; they made a very agreeable tea by using the monardas brought from the warren; finally, they had salt in abundance, the only one of the mineral products that enters into alimentation..., but bread was wanting.

Perhaps, later, the colonists might replace this food by some equivalent, sago flour or bread-fruit starch, and it was possible, indeed, that the forests of the south counted among their species these precious trees, but hitherto they had not been met with.

However, Providence was to, on this occasion, come directly to the aid of the colonists, in an infinitesimal proportion, it is true, but finally Cyrus Smith, with all his intelligence, all his ingenuity, would never have been able to produce what, by the greatest chance, Harbert found one day in the lining of his jacket, which he was occupied in mending.

That day—it was raining in torrents—the colonists were assembled in the great hall of Granite House, when the young boy suddenly cried out:

"Why, Mr. Cyrus. A grain of wheat!"

And he showed his companions a grain, a single grain, which, from his torn pocket, had introduced itself into the lining of his jacket.

The presence of this grain was explained by the habit Harbert had, when at Richmond, of feeding some ringdoves that Pencroff had made him a present of.

"A grain of wheat?" quickly replied the engineer.

"Yes, Mr. Cyrus, but one, only one!"

"Well! my boy," cried Pencroff, smiling, "we are getting on finely, faith! What could we ever do with a single grain of wheat?"

"We will make bread of it," answered Cyrus Smith.

"Bread, cakes, tarts!" replied the sailor. "Come now! The bread that this grain of wheat will furnish won't choke us in a hurry!"

Harbert, attaching little importance to his discovery, was about to throw away the grain in question, but Cyrus Smith took it, examined it, recognized that it was in good condition, and, looking the sailor full in the face:

"Pencroff," he asked him quietly, "do you know how many ears a grain of wheat can produce?"

"One, I suppose!" answered the sailor, surprised at the question.

"Ten, Pencroff. And do you know how many grains an ear bears?"

"Faith, no."

"Eighty on average," said Cyrus Smith. "Therefore, if we plant this grain, at the first harvest we shall reap eight hundred grains, which will produce at the second six hundred and forty thousand, at the third five hundred and twelve millions, at the fourth more than four hundred billions of grains. Such is the proportion."

The companions of Cyrus Smith listened without answering. These figures stupefied them. They were exact, however.

"Yes, my friends," resumed the engineer, "such are the arithmetical progressions of fruitful nature. And yet, what is this multiplication of the grain of wheat, whose ear bears only eight hundred grains, compared to those poppy plants that bear thirty-two thousand seeds, to those tobacco plants that produce three hundred and sixty thousand? In a few years, without the numerous causes of destruction that arrest their fertility, these plants would invade the whole earth."

But the engineer had not finished his little interrogation.

"And now, Pencroff," he resumed, "do you know how many bushels four hundred billions of grains represent?"

"No," answered the sailor, "but what I know is that I am only a brute!"

"Well, that would make more than three millions, at a hundred and thirty thousand to the bushel, Pencroff."

"Three millions!" cried Pencroff.

"Three millions."

"In four years?"

"In four years," answered Cyrus Smith, "and even in two years, if, as I hope, we can, under this latitude, obtain two harvests a year."

Thereupon, according to his habit, Pencroff thought he could reply only with a tremendous hurrah.

"Thus, Harbert," added the engineer, "you have made there a discovery of extreme importance to us. Everything, my friends, everything may serve us in the conditions we are in. I beg of you, do not forget it."

"No, Mr. Cyrus, no, we shall not forget it," answered Pencroff, "and if ever I find one of those tobacco seeds, that multiply by three hundred and sixty thousand, I assure you I will not throw it to the wind! And now, do you know what remains for us to do?"

"We have to plant this grain," answered Harbert.

"Yes," added Gideon Spilett, "and with all the respect due to it, for it bears our future harvests within it."

"Provided it grows!" cried the sailor.

"It will grow," answered Cyrus Smith.

It was the 20th of June. The moment was therefore propitious for sowing this unique and precious grain of wheat. It was first proposed to plant it in a pot; but, after reflection, it was resolved to trust more frankly to nature, and to confide it to the earth. This was done the same day, and it is useless to add that all precautions were taken that the operation might succeed.

The weather having slightly cleared, the colonists climbed the heights of Granite House. There, on the plateau, they chose a spot well sheltered from the wind, and to which the noonday sun was to pour all its heat. The spot was cleaned, carefully weeded, even dug over, to drive out insects or worms; a layer of good earth amended with a little lime was put there; it was surrounded with a palisade; then, the grain was pressed into the humid layer.

Did it not seem that these colonists were laying the first stone of an edifice? This recalled to Pencroff the day when he had lighted his single match, and all the care he had bestowed on that operation. But this time the thing was more serious. Indeed, the castaways would always have managed to procure fire, by one means or another, but no human power would give them back that grain of wheat, if, unhappily, it came to perish!

CHAPTER XXI

From that moment, not a single day passed without Pencroff going to visit what he seriously called his "wheat field." And woe to the insects that ventured there! They had no mercy to expect.

Towards the end of the month of June, after interminable rains, the weather decidedly turned cold, and, on the 29th, a Fahrenheit thermometer would certainly have indicated only twenty degrees above zero (6.67 degrees centigrade below freezing).

The next day, June 30, a day corresponding to December 31 of the boreal year, was a Friday. Nab observed that the year was ending on an unlucky day; but Pencroff answered him that naturally the other was beginning on a good one—which was better. In any case, it began with a very sharp cold. Ice-floes piled up at the mouth of the Mercy, and the lake was soon frozen over its whole extent.

They had, several times, to renew the supply of fuel. Pencroff had not waited for the river to be frozen to convey enormous trains of wood to their destination. The current was an indefatigable motor, and it was employed to float driftwood until the cold came to chain it. To the fuel so abundantly furnished by the forest, they joined also several cartloads of coal, which had to be fetched from the foot of the spurs of Mount Franklin. This powerful heat of mineral coal was keenly appreciated under a low temperature, which, on July 4, fell to eight degrees Fahrenheit (13 degrees centigrade below zero). A second chimney had been established in the dining-room, and there they worked in common.

During this period of cold, Cyrus Smith had only to congratulate himself on having diverted to Granite House a small stream of the waters of Lake Grant. Taken from below the icy surface, then conducted by the old spillway, they retained their liquidity and arrived at an interior reservoir, which had been dug at the angle of the back-storeroom, and whose overflow escaped by the well to the sea.

About that time, the weather being extremely dry, the colonists, as well clothed as possible, resolved to devote a day to the exploration of the part of the island lying to the southeast between the Mercy and Cape Claw. It was a vast marshy ground, and some good hunting might present itself, for aquatic birds must abound there.

There were eight to nine miles to reckon going, as many returning, and, consequently, the day would be well employed. As it was also a question of exploring an unknown portion of the island, the whole colony must take part. Wherefore, on July 5, at six o'clock in the morning, the dawn scarcely breaking, Cyrus Smith, Gideon Spilett, Harbert, Nab, Pencroff, armed with spears, snares, bows and arrows, and provided with sufficient provisions, left Granite House, preceded by Top, who frisked before them.

They took the shortest way, and the shortest was to cross the Mercy on the ice-floes that then encumbered it.

"But," justly observed the reporter, "that cannot replace a serious bridge!" accordingly, the construction of a "serious" bridge was noted in the series of works to come.

It was the first time the colonists set foot on the right bank of the Mercy, and ventured amid those great and superb conifers, then covered with snow.

But they had not gone half a mile, when, from a thick thicket, there escaped a whole family of quadrupeds, that had made it their home, and whose barking Top provoked to flight.

"Ah! they look like foxes!" cried Harbert, when he saw the whole band decamp at full speed.

They were foxes, indeed, but foxes of very large size, that uttered a sort of bark, at which Top himself seemed much astonished, for he stopped in his pursuit, and gave these rapid animals time to disappear.

The dog had a right to be surprised, since he did not know natural history. But, by their barking, these foxes, reddish-gray of coat, with black tails terminated by a white tuft, had betrayed their origin. Also, Harbert gave them, without hesitation, their true name of "culpeo." These culpeos are frequently met with in Chili, the Malouines, and all those American regions crossed by the thirtieth and fortieth parallels. Harbert much regretted that Top had not been able to seize one of these carnivores.

"Is that good to eat?" asked Pencroff, who never considered the representatives of the island's fauna except from a special point of view.

"No," answered Harbert, "but zoologists have not yet recognized whether the pupil of these foxes is diurnal or nocturnal, and whether it is not fitting to rank them in the genus dog properly so called."

Cyrus Smith could not refrain from smiling on hearing the reflection of the young boy, which attested a serious mind. As for the sailor, since these foxes could not be classed in the eatable genus, little it mattered to him. However, when a poultry-yard should be established at Granite House, he observed that it would be well to take some precautions against the probable visit of these four-footed plunderers. Which no one disputed.

After turning the point of the wreck, the colonists found a long beach bathed by the vast sea. It was then eight o'clock in the morning. The sky was very pure, as happens in prolonged great colds; but, warmed by their march, Cyrus Smith and his companions did not too keenly feel the bites of the atmosphere.

Moreover, there was no wind, a circumstance which renders infinitely more supportable the strong falls of temperature. A brilliant sun, but without calorific action, then issued from the Ocean, and its enormous disk balanced on the horizon. The sea formed a tranquil and blue sheet like that of a Mediterranean gulf, when the sky is pure. Cape Claw, curved in the shape of a yatagan, tapered off clearly at about four miles towards the southeast. On the left, the edge of the marsh was abruptly stopped by a small point that the solar rays then outlined with a line of fire.

Certainly, in this part of Union Bay, which nothing covered from the offing, not even a sandbank, ships, beaten by the east winds, would have found no shelter. One felt, by the tranquillity of the sea, whose waters no shoal troubled, by its uniform color stained by no yellowish shade, by the absence of all reef finally, that this coast was steep, and that the Ocean there covered deep abysses. Behind, towards the west, developed, but at a distance of four miles, the first lines of trees of the Far-West forests. One would have thought oneself, so to speak, on the desolate coast of some island of the Antarctic regions that ice-floes had invaded. The colonists halted in this place to breakfast. A fire of brushwood and dried wrack was lighted, and Nab prepared the breakfast of cold meat, to which he joined some cups of Oswego tea.

While eating, they looked about. This part of Lincoln Island was really sterile and contrasted with all the western region. Which led the reporter to make this reflection, that if chance had at first cast the castaways on this beach, they would have formed a deplorable idea of their future domain.

"I believe even that we could not have reached it," answered the engineer, "for the sea is deep, and it offered us not a rock to take refuge on. Before Granite House, at least, there were banks, an islet, which multiplied the chances of safety. Here, nothing but the abyss!"

"It is rather singular," observed Gideon Spilett, "that this island, relatively small, presents a soil so varied. This diversity of aspect logically belongs only to continents of a certain extent. One would really say that the western part of Lincoln Island, so rich and fertile, is bathed by the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico, and that its shores of the north and southeast extend on a sort of Arctic sea."

"You are right, my dear Spilett," answered Cyrus Smith, "it is an observation I have made also. This island, in its form as in its nature, I find it strange. One would say a summary of all the aspects presented by a continent, and I should not be surprised if it had been a continent formerly."

"What! a continent in the middle of the Pacific?" cried Pencroff.

"Why not?" answered Cyrus Smith. "Why should not Australia, New Ireland, all that the English geographers call Australasia, joined to the archipelagos of the Pacific, have formerly formed a sixth part of the world, as important as Europe or Asia, as Africa or the two Americas? My mind does not refuse to admit that all the islands, emerged from this vast Ocean, are only the summits of a continent now engulfed, but which dominated the waters in antehistoric epochs."

"Like the Atlantis of old," answered Harbert.

"Yes, my child... if it ever existed, however."

"And Lincoln Island would have formed part of that continent?" asked Pencroff.

"It is probable," answered Cyrus Smith, "and that would sufficiently explain this diversity of productions seen on its surface."

"And the considerable number of animals that still inhabit it," added Harbert.

"Yes, my child," answered the engineer, "and you furnish me there a new argument in support of my thesis. It is certain, according to what we have seen, that animals are numerous in the island, and, what is more bizarre, that the species there are extremely varied. There is a reason for that, and for me, it is that Lincoln Island may formerly have formed part of some vast continent that has gradually sunk below the Pacific."

"Then, one fine day," replied Pencroff, who did not seem to be absolutely convinced, "what remains of this ancient continent may disappear in its turn, and there will be nothing more between America and Asia?"

"Yes," answered Cyrus Smith, "there will be the new continents, that billions of billions of animalcules are at work building at this moment."

"And who are these masons?" asked Pencroff.

"The infusoria of the coral," answered Cyrus Smith. "It is they who have fabricated, by a continuous work, Clermont-Tonnerre Island, the atolls, and other numerous coral islands that the Pacific Ocean counts. It takes forty-seven millions of these infusoria to weigh a grain, and yet, with the marine salts they absorb, with the solid elements of the water they assimilate, these animalcules produce the limestone, and this limestone forms enormous submarine foundations, whose hardness and solidity equal those of granite. Formerly, in the first epochs of creation, nature, employing fire, produced lands by upheaval; but now it charges microscopic animals to replace this agent, whose dynamic power, inside the globe, has evidently diminished—which proves it by the great number of volcanoes now extinct on the surface of the earth. And I well believe that, the centuries succeeding the centuries and the infusoria succeeding the infusoria, this Pacific may change some day into a vast continent, that new generations will inhabit and civilize in their turn."

"That will be long!" said Pencroff.

"Nature has time on its side," answered the engineer.

"But what is the use of new continents?" asked Harbert. "It seems to me that the present extent of habitable countries is sufficient for humanity. Now, nature does nothing useless."

"Nothing useless, indeed," resumed the engineer, "but here is how one might explain in the future the necessity of new continents, and precisely on this tropical zone occupied by the coral islands. At least, this explanation seems plausible to me."

"We are listening to you, Mr. Cyrus," answered Harbert.

"Here is my thought: savants generally admit that one day our globe will end, or rather that animal and vegetable life will no longer be possible there, by reason of the intense cooling it will undergo. On what they are not agreed is on the cause of this cooling. Some think it will proceed from the lowering of temperature that the sun will experience after millions of years; others, from the gradual extinction of the internal fires of our globe, which have over it an influence more pronounced than is generally supposed. I hold, myself, for this latter hypothesis, basing myself on this fact that the moon is truly a cooled astre, which is no longer habitable, although the sun continues always to pour on its surface the same sum of heat. If therefore the moon has cooled, it is because those internal fires to which, as well as all the astres of the stellar world, it owed its origin, are completely extinguished. Finally, whatever the cause, our globe will cool one day, but this cooling will operate only little by little. What will then happen? It is that the temperate zones, in an epoch more or less remote, will be no more habitable than are now the polar regions. Therefore, the populations of men, as the aggregations of animals, will flow back towards the latitudes more directly subjected to solar influence. An immense emigration will be accomplished. Europe, central Asia, North America will be gradually abandoned, just as Australasia or the low parts of South America. Vegetation will follow the human emigration. The flora will retreat towards the equator at the same time as the fauna. The central parts of South America and Africa will become the inhabited continents par excellence. The Lapps and Samoyeds will find the climatic conditions of the polar sea on the shores of the Mediterranean. Who tells us that, at this epoch, the equatorial regions will not be too small to contain terrestrial humanity and nourish it? Now, why should not the provident nature, in order to give refuge to all the vegetable and animal emigration, cast, from this present, under the equator, the bases of a new continent, and should it not have charged the infusoria to construct it? I have often reflected on all these things, my friends, and I seriously believe that the aspect of our globe will be one day completely transformed, that, by reason of the upheaval of new continents, the seas will cover the old, and that, in future centuries, Columbs will go to discover the islands of Chimborazo, of the Himalayas or of Mont Blanc, remains of an engulfed America, Asia and Europe. Then finally, these new continents, in their turn, will become uninhabitable; heat will be extinguished like the heat of a body that the soul has just abandoned, and life will disappear, if not definitively from the globe, at least momentarily. Perhaps then our spheroid will rest, will remake itself in death to resurrect one day in superior conditions! But all that, my friends, is the secret of the Author of all things, and, apropos of the work of the infusoria, I have perhaps let myself be drawn a little far in scrutinizing the secrets of the future."

"My dear Cyrus," answered Gideon Spilett, "these theories are for me prophecies, and they will be accomplished one day."

"It is the secret of God," said the engineer.

"All that is fine and good," said then Pencroff, who had listened with both his ears, "but will you teach me, Mr. Cyrus, if Lincoln Island has been constructed by your infusoria?"

"No," answered Cyrus Smith, "it is purely of volcanic origin."

"Then, it will disappear one day?"

"It is probable."

"I hope well that we shall no longer be there."

"No, reassure yourself, Pencroff, we shall no longer be there, since we have no desire to die there and we shall perhaps end by getting out of it."

"Meanwhile," answered Gideon Spilett, "let us install ourselves as for eternity. One must never do anything by halves."

This ended the conversation. The breakfast was finished. The exploration was resumed, and the colonists arrived at the limit where the marshy region began.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”