Part 2

However, the siege continued, and if the prisoners were eager to escape in order to rejoin Grant's army, some of the besieged were no less eager to flee, so as to reach the secessionist army, and among them a certain Jonathan Forster, a rabid Southerner. For indeed, if the federal prisoners could not leave the city, the Confederates could not either, since the Northern army had them surrounded. The governor of Richmond, for a long time now, had been unable to communicate with General Lee, and it was of the highest importance to make known the situation of the city, so as to hasten the march of the relief army. This Jonathan Forster then had the idea of lifting himself off in a balloon, in order to cross the besieging lines and thus arrive at the camp of the secessionists.

The governor authorized the attempt. An aerostat was made and placed at the disposal of Jonathan Forster, whom five of his companions were to follow through the air. They were furnished with weapons, in case they should have to defend themselves on landing, and with provisions, in case their aerial voyage should be prolonged.

The balloon's departure had been set for March 18. It was to take place during the night, and, with a northwest wind of moderate strength, the aeronauts counted on reaching Lee's headquarters in a few hours.

But this northwest wind was no mere breeze. From the 18th on, it could be seen that it was turning to hurricane. Soon, the storm became such that Forster's departure had to be deferred, for it was impossible to risk the aerostat and those it would carry amid the unleashed elements.

The balloon, inflated in the great square of Richmond, was therefore there, ready to leave at the first lull of the wind, and, in the city, there was great impatience at seeing that the state of the atmosphere did not change.

The 18th, the 19th of March passed without any change occurring in the tempest. They even experienced great difficulty in preserving the balloon, attached to the ground, which the gusts laid flat to the earth.

The night of the 19th to the 20th went by, but, in the morning, the hurricane developed with yet more impetuosity. Departure was impossible.

That day, the engineer Cyrus Smith was accosted in one of the streets of Richmond by a man he did not know. He was a sailor named Pencroff, aged thirty-five to forty years, sturdily built, very sun-tanned, with quick, blinking eyes, but a good face. This Pencroff was a North American, who had sailed all the seas of the globe, and to whom, as for adventures, everything extraordinary that can befall a featherless biped had happened. Needless to say, he was an enterprising nature, ready to dare anything, and who could be astonished at nothing. Pencroff, at the beginning of that year, had gone to Richmond on business with a fifteen-year-old boy, Harbert Brown, of New Jersey, son of his captain, an orphan whom he loved as if he had been his own child. Having been unable to leave the city before the first operations of the siege, he thus found himself blockaded there, to his great displeasure, and he too had but one idea: to escape by every possible means. He knew by reputation the engineer Cyrus Smith. He knew with what impatience that determined man was chafing at the bit. That day, he did not hesitate to approach him, saying without further preamble:

"Mr. Smith, have you had enough of Richmond?"

The engineer looked fixedly at the man who spoke thus to him, and who added in a low voice:

"Mr. Smith, do you wish to flee?"

"When?..." replied the engineer quickly, and it may be affirmed that this answer escaped him, for he had not yet examined the stranger who addressed him.

But after observing with a penetrating eye the loyal face of the sailor, he could not doubt that he had before him an honest man.

"Who are you?" he asked in a curt voice.

Pencroff made himself known.

"Good," answered Cyrus Smith. "And by what means do you propose that I escape?"

"By that lazy balloon they leave there doing nothing, and which seems to me to be waiting for us on purpose!..."

The sailor had not needed to finish his sentence.

The engineer had understood in a word. He seized Pencroff by the arm and drew him to his house.

There, the sailor set forth his project, very simple indeed. One risked only one's life in executing it.

The hurricane was at its full violence, it is true, but a clever and bold engineer, such as Cyrus Smith, would well know how to pilot an aerostat.

If he had known the handling, he, Pencroff, would not have hesitated to leave, — with Harbert, mind you. He had seen far worse, and was no longer one to reckon with a storm!

Cyrus Smith had listened to the sailor without a word, but his gaze shone. The opportunity was there. He was not a man to let it slip. The project was only very dangerous, therefore it was feasible.

At night, despite the watch, one could reach the balloon, slip into the car, then cut the ropes that held it! Certainly, one risked being killed, but, on the other hand, one might succeed, and without this storm... But without this storm, the balloon would already have departed, and the long-sought opportunity would not present itself at this moment!

"I am not alone!..." said Cyrus Smith in conclusion.

"How many persons then do you wish to take?" asked the sailor.

"Two: my friend Spilett and my servant Nab."

"That makes three then," answered Pencroff, "and, with Harbert and me, five. Now, the balloon was to lift six..."

"That is enough. We shall leave!" said Cyrus Smith.

This "we" committed the reporter, but the reporter was not a man to draw back, and when the project was communicated to him, he approved it without reserve. What astonished him was that so simple an idea had not already come to him. As for Nab, he followed his master wherever his master wished to go.

"This evening then," said Pencroff. "We will all five stroll about there, as curious onlookers!"

"This evening, ten o'clock," answered Cyrus Smith, "and may heaven grant that this storm does not calm before our departure!"

Pencroff took leave of the engineer, and returned to his lodgings, where the young Harbert Brown had remained. This courageous child knew the sailor's plan, and it was not without a certain anxiety that he awaited the result of the step taken with the engineer. As may be seen, they were five determined men who were thus about to launch themselves into the turmoil, in full hurricane!

No! The hurricane did not calm, and neither Jonathan Forster nor his companions could think of braving it in that frail car! The day was terrible. The engineer feared but one thing: that the aerostat, held to the ground and laid low before the wind, might tear in a thousand pieces. For several hours, he prowled about the nearly deserted square, watching the apparatus. Pencroff did the same on his side, hands in pockets, and yawning as need be, like a man who knows not how to kill time, but also dreading lest the balloon come to tear or even break its bonds and flee into the air.

Evening came. The night fell very dark. Thick mists passed like clouds close to the ground. A rain mixed with snow fell. The weather was cold. A sort of fog weighed upon Richmond. It seemed that the violent tempest had made a sort of truce between the besiegers and the besieged, and that the cannon wished to fall silent before the formidable detonations of the hurricane. The streets of the city were deserted. It had not even seemed necessary, in such horrible weather, to guard the square in the midst of which the aerostat was struggling.

Everything favored the prisoners' departure, evidently; but this voyage, amid the unleashed gusts!...

"Ugly tide!" said Pencroff to himself, striking his hat with his fist as the wind wrested it from his head. "But bah! We'll get through all the same!"

At half past nine, Cyrus Smith and his companions slipped in by various sides upon the square, which the gas lanterns, extinguished by the wind, left in profound obscurity. One did not even see the enormous aerostat, almost entirely flattened upon the ground.

Independently of the bags of ballast that held the net ropes, the car was retained by a strong cable passed through a ring set in the pavement, and whose double led back aboard.

The five prisoners met near the car. They had not been perceived, and so deep was the darkness that they could not see one another.

Without uttering a word, Cyrus Smith, Gideon Spilett, Nab and Harbert took their places in the car, while Pencroff, at the engineer's order, successively detached the bags of ballast. This was the work of a few instants, and the sailor rejoined his companions.

The aerostat was then held only by the double of the cable, and Cyrus Smith had only to give the order for departure. At this moment, a dog bounded into the car.

It was Top, the engineer's dog, who, having broken his chain, had followed his master. Cyrus Smith, fearing an excess of weight, wished to send the poor animal back.

"Bah! One more!" said Pencroff, lightening the car of two bags of sand.

Then, he cast off the double of the cable, and the balloon, departing in an oblique direction, disappeared, after striking its car against two chimneys which it knocked down in the fury of its departure.

The hurricane then broke loose with frightful violence. The engineer, during the night, could not think of descending, and when day came, all view of the earth was intercepted from him by the mists. It was only five days later that a clearing allowed the immense sea to be seen below this aerostat, which the wind was carrying away with a fearful speed!

It is known how, of these five men, departed on March 20, four were cast, on March 24, upon a desert coast, more than six thousand miles from their country!

And he who was missing, he to whose rescue the four survivors of the balloon at once ran, was their natural chief, was the engineer Cyrus Smith!

CHAPTER III

The engineer, through the meshes of the net which had given way, had been carried off by a sea wave.

His dog had likewise disappeared. The faithful animal had voluntarily thrown itself to the rescue of its master.

"Forward!" cried the reporter.

And all four, Gideon Spilett, Harbert, Pencroff and Nab, forgetting exhaustion and fatigues, began their search.

Poor Nab wept with rage and despair at once, at the thought of having lost all he loved in the world.

Not two minutes had elapsed between the moment when Cyrus Smith disappeared and the instant when his companions had reached land. These then could hope to arrive in time to save him.

"Search! search!" cried Nab.

"Yes, Nab," answered Gideon Spilett, "and we shall find him!"

"Alive?"

"Alive!"

"Does he know how to swim?" asked Pencroff.

"Yes!" answered Nab. "And besides, Top is there!..."

The sailor, hearing the sea roar, shook his head!

It was in the north of the coast, and about half a mile from the place where the shipwrecked men had just landed, that the engineer had disappeared. If he had been able to reach the nearest point of the shore, it was therefore at half a mile at most that this point must be situated.

It was then near six o'clock. The mist had just lifted and made the night very obscure. The shipwrecked men walked following northward the east coast of this land upon which chance had cast them, — unknown land, of which they could not even suspect the geographical situation. They trod underfoot a sandy soil, mixed with stones, which appeared destitute of all vegetation.

This soil, very uneven, very rough, seemed in certain places riddled with small sink-holes, which made the march very painful. From these holes escaped at every instant heavy-flying birds, fleeing in all directions, which the darkness prevented seeing. Others, more agile, rose in flocks and passed like clouds.

The sailor thought he recognized gulls and terns, whose shrill whistlings struggled with the roarings of the sea. From time to time, the shipwrecked men stopped, called with loud cries, and listened whether some call might not be heard from the side of the Ocean.

They must indeed think that if they had been near the place where the engineer might have landed, the barkings of the dog Top, in case Cyrus Smith had been unable to give sign of existence, would have reached them. But no cry detached itself upon the rumbling of the waves and the clatter of the surf. Then, the little troop resumed its advance, and searched the slightest crevices of the shore.

After a run of twenty minutes, the four shipwrecked men were suddenly stopped by a foaming fringe of waves. Solid ground was lacking. They found themselves at the extremity of a sharp point, upon which the sea broke with fury.

"It is a promontory," said the sailor. "We must retrace our steps keeping to our right, and thus we shall gain the open land."

"But if he is there!" answered Nab, pointing to the Ocean, whose enormous billows whitened in the shadow.

"Well then, let us call him!"

And all, uniting their voices, launched a vigorous call, but nothing answered. They waited for a lull. They began again. Nothing yet.

The shipwrecked men then returned, following the opposite side of the promontory, upon a soil equally sandy and rocky. However, Pencroff observed that the shore was steeper, that the ground rose, and he supposed that it must rejoin, by a rather long slope, a high coast whose mass confusedly outlined itself in the shadow. The birds were less numerous on this part of the bank. The sea also showed itself less heavy, less noisy, and it was even remarkable that the agitation of the waves diminished sensibly. One could scarcely hear the noise of the surf. No doubt, this side of the promontory formed a semi-circular cove, which its sharp point protected against the swell of the open sea.

But, in following this direction, one walked toward the south, and it was to go opposite to that portion of the coast upon which Cyrus Smith might have set foot. After a course of a mile and a half, the shore still presented no curve that permitted returning toward the north. It must nevertheless be that this promontory, around whose point they had gone, reattached itself to the open land.

The shipwrecked men, although their forces were exhausted, still marched with courage, hoping to find at every moment some abrupt angle that would put them back in the first direction. What then was their disappointment, when, after having traversed about two miles, they saw themselves once more stopped by the sea upon a rather elevated point, made of slippery rocks.

"We are on an islet!" said Pencroff. "And we have walked it from one end to the other!"

The sailor's observation was just. The shipwrecked men had been cast, not upon a continent, not even upon an island, but upon an islet which measured no more than two thousand in length, and whose width was evidently slight.

This arid islet, strewn with stones, without vegetation, desolate refuge of some sea birds, was it attached to a more important archipelago? One could not affirm it. The passengers of the balloon, when, from their car, they caught sight of the land through the mists, had not been able sufficiently to recognize its extent. However, Pencroff, with his sailor's eyes accustomed to piercing the shadow, thought he could just then distinguish in the west confused masses, which announced an elevated coast.

But, then, one could not, in this obscurity, determine to what system, simple or complex, the islet belonged. One could not either get out of it, since the sea surrounded it. It was necessary therefore to put off until the next day the search for the engineer, who had, alas! signaled his presence by no cry.

"Cyrus's silence proves nothing," said the reporter. "He may be fainting, wounded, unable to answer momentarily, but let us not despair."

The reporter then emitted the idea of lighting upon some point of the islet some fire which might serve as a signal to the engineer. But they sought vainly for wood or dry brush. Sand and stones, there was nothing else.

One understands what must have been the grief of Nab and that of his companions, who had quickly attached themselves to this intrepid Cyrus Smith. It was too evident that they were powerless then to succor him. They must wait for daylight. Either the engineer had been able to save himself alone, and already he had found refuge upon some point of the coast, or he was lost forever!

These were long and painful hours to pass. The cold was sharp. The shipwrecked men suffered cruelly, but they scarcely perceived it. They did not even think of taking an instant of rest.

Forgetting themselves for their chief, hoping, wishing always to hope, they went and came upon this arid islet, incessantly returning to its northern point, there where they must be nearer to the place of the catastrophe. They listened, they cried, they sought to surprise some supreme appeal, and their voices must have carried far, for a certain calm then reigned in the atmosphere, and the noises of the sea began to fall with the swell. One of Nab's cries seemed even, at a certain moment, to reproduce itself in echo. Harbert pointed this out to Pencroff, adding:

"That would prove that there exists in the west a coast rather near."

The sailor made an affirmative sign. Besides, his eyes could not deceive him. If he had, however little, distinguished a land, it was that a land was there.

But this distant echo was the only response provoked by the cries of Nab, and the immensity, over the whole eastern part of the islet, remained silent.

However, the sky was gradually clearing. Toward midnight, some stars shone, and if the engineer had been there, near his companions, he would have been able to remark that these stars were no longer those of the northern hemisphere. Indeed, the Polar star did not appear upon this new horizon, the zenith constellations were no longer those he was accustomed to observe in the northern part of the new continent, and the Southern Cross resplended then at the austral pole of the world.

The night passed. Toward five o'clock in the morning, March 25, the heights of the sky were slightly tinted. The horizon remained dark still, but, with the first gleams of day, an opaque mist rose from the sea, such that the visual ray could not extend more than some twenty paces. The fog unrolled in great volutes which moved heavily.

It was a setback. The shipwrecked men could distinguish nothing around them. While the glances of Nab and the reporter projected upon the Ocean, the sailor and Harbert sought the coast in the west. But not a bit of land was visible.

"No matter," said Pencroff, "if I do not see the coast, I feel it... it is there... there... as sure as we are no longer at Richmond!"

But the fog was not to be long in lifting.

It was but a fair-weather mist. A good sun warmed its upper layers, and this heat filtered down to the surface of the islet. Indeed, toward half past six, three quarters of an hour after sunrise, the mist became more transparent. It thickened above, but dissipated below. Soon the whole islet appeared, as if it had descended from a cloud; then, the sea showed itself following a circular plane, infinite in the east, but bounded in the west by an elevated and abrupt coast.

Yes! The land was there. There, safety, provisionally assured, at least. Between the islet and the coast, separated by a channel half a mile wide, an extremely rapid current spread with noise.

However, one of the shipwrecked men, consulting only his heart, precipitated himself at once into the current, without taking the advice of his companions, without even saying a single word. It was Nab. He was in haste to be upon that coast and to ascend it northward. No one could have held him back. Pencroff called him, but in vain.

The reporter prepared to follow Nab.

Pencroff, going to him:

"You wish to cross this channel?" he asked.

"Yes," answered Gideon Spilett.

"Well then, wait, believe me," said the sailor. "Nab will suffice to carry aid to his master. If we engaged in this channel, we should risk being carried out to sea by the current, which is of extreme violence. Now, if I am not mistaken, it is an ebb current. See, the tide is falling upon the sand. Let us therefore have patience, and, at low water, it is possible that we may find a fordable passage..."

"You are right," answered the reporter. "Let us separate as little as we can..."

During this time, Nab struggled vigorously against the current. He crossed it following an oblique direction. One saw his black shoulders emerge at each stroke. He drifted with extreme speed, but he also gained toward the coast. This half mile which separated the islet from the land, he took more than half an hour to cross it, and he landed only several thousand feet from the place facing the point from which he had started.

Nab set foot at the base of a high wall of granite and shook himself vigorously; then, all dripping, he soon disappeared behind a point of rocks, which projected into the sea, about at the height of the northern extremity of the islet.

The companions of Nab had followed with anguish his daring attempt, and, when he was out of sight, they turned their looks back upon this land to which they were going to ask refuge, while eating some shellfish with which the sand was strewn. It was a meager meal, but, finally, it was one.

The opposite coast formed a vast bay, terminated, to the south, by a very sharp point, destitute of all vegetation and of a very wild aspect. This point came to weld itself to the shore by a rather capricious line and braced itself against high granite rocks. Toward the north, on the contrary, the bay, widening, formed a more rounded coast, which ran from the southwest to the northeast and ended in a slender cape. Between these two extreme points, upon which the arc of the bay rested, the distance might be eight miles. At half a mile from the shore, the islet occupied a narrow band of sea, and resembled an enormous cetacean, of which it represented the much-enlarged carcass. Its extreme width did not exceed a quarter of a mile. Before the islet, the littoral was composed, in first plane, of a sandy beach, strewn with blackish rocks, which, at this moment, reappeared little by little under the descending tide. In the second plane, detached itself a sort of granite curtain, cut sheer, crowned by a capricious ridge at a height of three hundred feet at least. It outlined itself thus over a length of three miles, and ended abruptly at the right by a cut face that one would have thought carved by the hand of man. On the left, on the contrary, above the promontory, this sort of irregular cliff, crumbling into prismatic fragments, and made of agglomerated rocks and debris, lowered by a long slope which gradually merged with the rocks of the southern point. Upon the upper plateau of the coast, no tree.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”