Part 18

Pencroff therefore returned to Granite House, delighted with his catch, and, as always, the sailor made a great show of his hunting.

“Come now! We shall have a fine meal, Mr. Cyrus!” he cried. “And you too, Mr. Spilett, you shall eat of it!”

“I am willing to eat of it,” replied the reporter, “but what shall I be eating?”

“Suckling pig.”

“Ah! Truly, suckling pig, Pencroff? From your talk, I thought you were bringing back a truffled partridge!”

“What!” cried Pencroff. “Would you turn up your nose at suckling pig, by any chance?”

“No,” answered Gédéon Spilett, without showing any enthusiasm, “provided one does not overdo it...”

“Very well, very well, Mr. Journalist,” retorted the sailor, who did not like to hear his hunt depreciated, “you are being difficult? And seven months ago, when we landed on the island, you would have been only too happy to come across such game!...”

“There, there,” replied the reporter. “Man is never either perfect or content.”

“At last,” resumed Pencroff, “I hope Nab will distinguish himself. See! These two little peccaries are not even three months old! They will be tender as quails! Come, Nab, come! I shall personally oversee their cooking.”

And the sailor, followed by Nab, went to the kitchen and immersed himself in his culinary labors.

They left him to do it his way. Nab and he therefore prepared a magnificent meal: the two little peccaries, a kangaroo soup, a smoked ham, pine nuts, dragon-tree beverage, Oswego tea — in short, all that was best; but among all the dishes, the savory peccaries, stewed, were to hold the foremost place.

At five o’clock, dinner was served in the hall of Granite House. The kangaroo soup steamed on the table. It was found excellent. After the soup came the peccaries, which Pencroff insisted on carving himself, and of which he served monstrous portions to each of the guests.

These suckling pigs were truly delicious, and Pencroff was devouring his share with superb relish, when suddenly a cry and an oath escaped him.

“What is it?” asked Cyrus Smith.

“It is... it is... that I have just broken a tooth!” answered the sailor.

“Come now! Are there stones in your peccaries, then?” said Gédéon Spilett.

“It must be believed,” replied Pencroff, withdrawing from his lips the object that had cost him a molar!...

It was not a stone... It was a lead pellet.

PART 2

THE CASTAWAY

CHAPTER I

It was seven months, to the day, since the balloon passengers had been cast upon Lincoln Island. Since that time, despite all their searching, no human being had shown himself to them. Never had a smoke betrayed the presence of man on the surface of the island.

Never had any manual labor attested his passage there, either in ancient or recent times. Not only did it not seem to be inhabited, but it must be believed that it had never been so. And now, behold, all this scaffolding of deductions fell before a simple grain of metal, found in the body of an inoffensive rodent!

For indeed, this lead had come from a firearm, and what other than a human being could have made use of that weapon?

When Pencroff had laid the lead pellet on the table, his companions looked at it with profound astonishment. All the consequences of this incident, considerable despite its apparent insignificance, had suddenly seized their minds.

The sudden apparition of a supernatural being would not have impressed them more vividly.

Cyrus Smith did not hesitate to formulate at once the hypotheses that this fact, as surprising as unexpected, must provoke. He took the lead pellet, turned it, turned it over, felt it between thumb and forefinger. Then:

“Are you in a position to affirm,” he asked Pencroff, “that the peccary, wounded by this lead pellet, was scarcely three months old?”

“Scarcely, Mr. Cyrus,” replied Pencroff. “It was still suckling its mother when I found it in the pit.”

“Well,” said the engineer, “it is thereby proved that, at most three months ago, a gunshot was fired on Lincoln Island.”

“And that a lead pellet,” added Gédéon Spilett, “struck, but not fatally, this little animal.”

“That is indubitable,” resumed Cyrus Smith, “and here are the consequences that should be deduced from this incident: either the island was inhabited before our arrival, or men have landed there at most three months ago. Have these men arrived voluntarily or involuntarily, by a landing or a shipwreck? That point can only be elucidated later. As to what they are, Europeans or Malays, enemies or friends of our race, nothing can allow us to guess, and whether they still inhabit the island, or have left it, we know no better. But these questions interest us too directly for us to remain longer in uncertainty.”

“No! A hundred times no! A thousand times no!” cried the sailor, rising from the table. “There are no other men than us on Lincoln Island! The devil!”

The island is not large, and, if it had been inhabited, we should well have caught sight of some of its inhabitants by now!

“The contrary, indeed, would be very astonishing,” said Harbert.

“But it would be much more astonishing, I suppose,” observed the reporter, “that this peccary was born with a lead pellet in its body!”

“Unless,” said Nab seriously, “Pencroff had...”

“Just look at that, Nab,” retorted Pencroff. “I would have, without noticing it, for some five or six months now, a lead pellet in my jaw! But where would it have hidden?” added the sailor, opening his mouth so as to show the magnificent thirty-two teeth that furnished it. “Look well, Nab, and if you find a hollow tooth in that set, I give you leave to pull out half a dozen of them!”

“Nab’s hypothesis is inadmissible, indeed,” replied Cyrus Smith, who, despite the gravity of his thoughts, could not restrain a smile. “It is certain that a gunshot has been fired on the island, at most three months ago. But I would be inclined to admit that the whatever beings who landed on this coast have been there only a very short time or merely passed through, for if, at the time when we were exploring the island from the top of Mount Franklin, it had been inhabited, we should have seen it or been seen. It is therefore probable that, only some weeks ago, castaways were thrown by a tempest onto some point of the coast. Be that as it may, it is important for us to be settled on this point.”

“I think we should act prudently,” said the reporter.

“That is my view,” replied Cyrus Smith, “for it is unhappily to be feared that they are Malay pirates who have landed on the island!”

“Mr. Cyrus,” asked the sailor, “would it not be fitting, before going to reconnoiter, to build a boat that would allow us, either to go up the river, or, if need be, to round the coast? We must not be taken unawares.”

“Your idea is good, Pencroff,” answered the engineer, “but we cannot wait. Now, it would take at least a month to build a boat...”

“A real boat, yes,” replied the sailor, “but we do not need a vessel meant to stand the open sea, and, in five days at most, I undertake to build a pirogue sufficient to navigate on the Mercy.”

“In five days!” cried Nab. “Make a boat?”

“Yes, Nab, a boat in the Indian style.”

“In wood?” asked the negro with an unconvinced air.

“In wood,” answered Pencroff, “or rather in bark. I repeat to you, Mr. Cyrus, in five days the thing can be done!”

“In five days, so be it!” replied the engineer.

“But until then, we shall do well to guard ourselves strictly!” said Harbert.

“Very strictly, my friends,” replied Cyrus Smith, “and I beg you to limit your hunting excursions to the vicinity of Granite House.”

Dinner ended less gaily than Pencroff had hoped.

Thus, then, the island was or had been inhabited by others than the colonists. Since the incident of the lead pellet, it was a fact henceforth incontestable, and such a revelation could only provoke lively uneasiness among the colonists.

Cyrus Smith and Gédéon Spilett, before giving themselves to rest, spoke at length of these matters.

They asked themselves if, by chance, this incident might not have some connection with the inexplicable circumstances of the engineer’s rescue and other strange peculiarities that had already struck them several times. However, Cyrus Smith, after discussing the pros and cons of the question, ended by saying:

“In short, would you like to know my opinion, my dear Spilett?”

“Yes, Cyrus.”

“Well, here it is: however minutely we explore the island, we shall find nothing!”

The next day, Pencroff set to work. It was not a question of building a boat with frame and planking, but simply a floating apparatus, flat-bottomed, which would be excellent for navigating the Mercy, especially near its sources, where the water would be of little depth. Pieces of bark, sewn one to another, were to suffice to form the light craft, and in case a portage became necessary owing to natural obstacles, it would be neither heavy nor cumbersome.

Pencroff counted on forming the seam of the bark strips by means of riveted nails, and, with their adherence, to assure the perfect watertightness of the apparatus.

It was therefore a question of choosing trees whose bark, supple and tenacious, would lend itself to this work.

Now, precisely, the last hurricane had thrown down a certain quantity of Douglas firs, which were perfectly suited to this kind of construction. Some of these pines lay on the ground, and there was nothing left but to strip them, but that was the most difficult part, given the imperfection of the tools the colonists possessed. In short, they got through with it.

While the sailor, seconded by the engineer, thus occupied himself without losing an hour, Gédéon Spilett and Harbert did not remain idle. They had made themselves the purveyors of the colony. The reporter could not tire of admiring the young boy, who had acquired remarkable dexterity in handling the bow or the spear.

Harbert also showed great boldness, with much of that coolness which might justly be called “the reasoning of bravery.” The two hunting companions, moreover taking account of Cyrus Smith’s recommendations, no longer went beyond a radius of two miles around Granite House, but the first slopes of the forest furnished a sufficient tribute of agoutis, capybaras, kangaroos, peccaries, etc., and if the yield of the traps had been slight since the cold had ceased, at least the warren gave its accustomed contingent, which might have fed the whole colony of Lincoln Island.

Often, during these hunts, Harbert spoke with Gédéon Spilett of that incident of the lead pellet, and of the consequences the engineer had drawn from it, and one day — it was the 26th of October — he said to him:

“But, Mr. Spilett, do you not find it very extraordinary that, if some castaways have landed on this island, they have not yet shown themselves toward Granite House?”

“Very astonishing, if they are still there,” replied the reporter, “but not astonishing at all, if they are no longer there!”

“So you think those people have already left the island?” resumed Harbert.

“It is more than probable, my boy, for if their stay had been prolonged there, and above all if they were still there, some incident would have ended by betraying their presence.”

“But if they could depart again,” observed the young boy, “they were not castaways?”

“No, Harbert, or, at least, they were what I would call provisional castaways. It is very possible, indeed, that a gust of wind threw them onto the island, without disabling their vessel, and that, the gust having passed, they put to sea again.”

“One thing must be admitted,” said Harbert, “that Mr. Smith has always seemed rather to dread than desire the presence of human beings on our island.”

“Indeed,” replied the reporter, “he sees scarcely but Malays who could frequent these seas, and those gentlemen are bad knaves whom it is well to avoid.”

“It is not impossible, Mr. Spilett,” resumed Harbert, “that we shall find, one day or another, traces of their landing, and perhaps we shall be settled in that regard?”

“I do not say no, my boy. An abandoned encampment, an extinguished fire, may put us on the track, and that is what we shall seek in our next exploration.”

The day the two hunters thus conversed, they found themselves in a portion of the forest near the Mercy, remarkable for trees of great beauty. There, among others, rose, to a height of nearly two hundred feet above the ground, some of those superb conifers to which the natives give the name of “kauris” in New Zealand.

“An idea, Mr. Spilett,” said Harbert. “If I climbed to the top of one of these kauris, I might perhaps observe the country within a fairly wide radius?”

“The idea is good,” replied the reporter, “but can you scramble to the top of those giants?”

“I shall at least try,” answered Harbert.

The young boy, agile and adroit, sprang onto the first branches, whose arrangement made the ascent of the kauri rather easy, and, in a few minutes, he had reached its summit, which emerged from that immense plain of verdure formed by the rounded foliage of the forest. From that elevated point, the eye could range over the whole southern portion of the island, from Cape Claw, to the southeast, to Reptile Peninsula, to the southwest. To the northwest rose Mount Franklin, which hid a great quarter of the horizon.

But Harbert, from the height of his observatory, could precisely observe all that still unknown portion of the island, which might have given or was giving refuge to the strangers whose presence was suspected.

The young boy looked with extreme attention. On the sea first, nothing in sight. Not a sail, either on the horizon or off the island’s landings.

However, as the mass of trees hid the shoreline, it was possible that a vessel, especially a vessel disabled of its masts, had approached the land very closely, and, consequently, was invisible to Harbert. Amid the woods of the Far-West, nothing either. The forest formed an impenetrable dome, measuring several square miles, without a clearing, without an opening. It was even impossible to follow the course of the Mercy and to recognize the point of the mountain where it took its source.

Perhaps other creeks ran toward the west, but nothing allowed it to be ascertained.

But, at least, if every index of encampment escaped Harbert, could he not surprise in the air some smoke that would reveal the presence of man? The atmosphere was pure, and the slightest vapor would have detached itself clearly against the background of the sky.

For an instant, Harbert thought he saw a light smoke rise in the west, but closer observation showed him he was mistaken. He looked with extreme care, and his sight was excellent... no, decidedly, there was nothing.

Harbert came down to the foot of the kauri, and the two hunters returned to Granite House. There, Cyrus Smith listened to the young boy’s account, shook his head and said nothing. It was well evident that one could not pronounce on this question until after a complete exploration of the island.

The day after next — 28th October — another incident occurred, whose explanation was still to leave something to be desired. While roaming on the beach, two miles from Granite House, Harbert and Nab were fortunate enough to capture a magnificent specimen of the order of chelonians. It was a green turtle of the genus mydas, whose carapace offered admirable green reflections.

Harbert caught sight of this turtle slipping between the rocks to gain the sea.

“Come, Nab, come!” he cried.

Nab ran up.

“The fine animal!” said Nab, “but how shall we take it?”

“Nothing is easier, Nab,” replied Harbert. “We will turn this turtle on its back, and it will not be able to bury itself. Take your spear and imitate me.”

The reptile, feeling the danger, had withdrawn between its carapace and its plastron. Neither its head nor its feet were any longer visible, and it was immobile as a rock.

Harbert and Nab then engaged their sticks under the animal’s sternum, and, uniting their efforts, they managed, not without difficulty, to turn it onto its back. This turtle, which measured three feet in length, must have weighed at least four hundred pounds.

“Good!” cried Nab, “this will rejoice friend Pencroff!” Indeed, friend Pencroff could not fail to be rejoiced, for the flesh of these turtles, which feed on zostera, is extremely savory. At this moment, the creature no longer showed but its small, flattened head, though very widened posteriorly by large temporal fossae, hidden under an osseous vault.

“And now, what shall we do with our game?” said Nab. “We cannot drag it to Granite House!”

“Let us leave it here, since it cannot turn over,” replied Harbert, “and we will come back for it with the cart.”

“Agreed.”

However, for greater precaution, Harbert took the care, which Nab judged superfluous, of wedging the animal with large pebbles. After which, the two hunters returned to Granite House, following the beach that the tide, then low, laid widely bare.

Harbert, wishing to surprise Pencroff, said nothing to him of the “magnificent specimen of chelonians”

That he had turned over on the sand; but two hours later, Nab and he were back, with the cart, at the place where they had left it. The “magnificent specimen of chelonians” was no longer there.

Nab and Harbert looked at each other first, then they looked around them. It was certainly at this spot that the turtle had been left. The young boy even found again the pebbles he had used, and, consequently, he was sure not to be mistaken.

“Come now!” said Nab, “do those beasts turn themselves over, then?”

“It appears so,” replied Harbert, who could make nothing of it and looked at the pebbles scattered on the sand.

“Well, Pencroff will not be pleased!”

“And Mr. Smith will perhaps be much embarrassed to explain this disappearance!” thought Harbert.

“Good,” said Nab, who wished to hide his mishap, “we shall not speak of it.”

“On the contrary, Nab, we must speak of it,” replied Harbert.

And both, taking up the cart, which they had brought uselessly, returned to Granite House.

Arrived at the yard, where the engineer and the sailor were working together, Harbert told what had happened.

“Ah! The clumsy fellows!” cried the sailor. “To have let escape at least fifty soups!”

“But, Pencroff,” replied Nab, “it is not our fault if the beast escaped, since I tell you we had turned it over!”

“Then you had not turned it over enough!” pleasantly retorted the intractable sailor.

“Not enough!” cried Harbert.

And he told how he had taken care to wedge the turtle with pebbles.

“It is then a miracle!” replied Pencroff.

“I thought, Mr. Cyrus,” said Harbert, “that turtles, once placed on their backs, could not get onto their feet again, especially when they were of large size?”

“That is true, my child,” replied Cyrus Smith.

“Then, how could it have happened...?”

“At what distance from the sea had you left this turtle?” asked the engineer, who, having suspended his work, reflected on this incident.

“At fifteen feet at most,” replied Harbert.

“And the tide was low, at that moment?”

“Yes, Mr. Cyrus.”

“Well,” replied the engineer, “what the turtle could not do on the sand, it may have done in the water. It will have turned over when the flood took it again, and it will have quietly regained the high sea.”

“Ah! Clumsy that we are!” cried Nab.

“That is precisely what I had the honor of telling you!” replied Pencroff.

Cyrus Smith had given this explanation, which was admissible no doubt. But was he well convinced of the correctness of this explanation? One would not dare affirm it.

CHAPTER II

On the 29th of October, the bark canoe was entirely finished. Pencroff had kept his promise, and a sort of pirogue, whose hull was framed by means of flexible crejimba twigs, had been built in five days. A bench at the stern, a second bench in the middle, to maintain the spread, a third bench at the bow, a gunwale to support the thole-pins of two oars, a steering paddle to govern, completed this craft, twelve feet long, and which did not weigh two hundred pounds. As for the launching operation, it was extremely simple. The light pirogue was carried onto the sand, at the edge of the shore, before Granite House, and the rising wave lifted it.

Pencroff, who immediately jumped into it, maneuvered it with the steering paddle, and could ascertain that it was very suitable for the use they wished to make of it.

“Hurrah!” cried the sailor, who did not disdain thus to celebrate his own triumph. “With that, one could go around...”

“The world?” asked Gédéon Spilett.

“No, the island. A few stones for ballast, a mast at the bow, and a bit of sail that Mr. Smith will make us one day, and one would go far! Well! Mr. Cyrus, and you, Mr. Spilett, and you, Harbert, and you, Nab, are you not coming to try our new vessel? The devil! One must at least see if it can carry all five of us!”

Indeed, it was an experiment to make. Pencroff, with a stroke of the steering paddle, brought the craft near the beach by a narrow passage that the rocks left between them, and it was agreed that they would make, that very day, the trial of the pirogue, following the shore to the first point where the rocks of the south ended. At the moment of embarking, Nab cried:

“But your vessel takes in a good deal of water, Pencroff!”

“It is nothing, Nab,” replied the sailor. “The wood must tighten! In two days it will show no more, and our pirogue will have no more water in its belly than there is in the stomach of a drunkard. Embark!”

They therefore embarked, and Pencroff pushed off shore.

The weather was magnificent, the sea calm as if its waters had been contained within the narrow banks of a lake, and the pirogue could brave it with as much security as if it had been ascending the tranquil current of the Mercy. Of the two oars, Nab took one, Harbert the other, and Pencroff remained at the stern of the craft, in order to direct it with the steering paddle.

The sailor first crossed the channel and went to skim the south point of the islet. A light breeze blew from the south. No swell, either in the channel or offshore. A few long undulations that the pirogue scarcely felt, for it was heavily loaded, regularly swelled the surface of the sea. They moved about half a mile from the coast, so as to perceive all the development of Mount Franklin.

Then, Pencroff, veering, returned toward the mouth of the river. The pirogue then followed the shore, which, rounding to the extreme point, hid all the marshy plain of the Sheldrakes.

This point, whose distance was increased by the curvature of the coast, was about three miles from the Mercy. The colonists resolved to go to its extremity and to pass beyond it only so far as should be needful to take a rapid view of the coast as far as Cape Claw.

The canoe therefore followed the littoral at a distance of two cable-lengths at most, avoiding the reefs with which these landings were strewn and which the rising tide was beginning to cover. The wall went on lowering from the mouth of the river to the point. It was a heap of granites, capriciously distributed, very different from the curtain that formed the plateau of Prospect Heights, and of an extremely wild aspect.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”