Part 32

“This man, as he spoke thus, had a frank voice and a steady gaze. One could not doubt his words. The Irishman, who had had him in his service for more than a year, vouched for him. Lord Glenarvan believed in the man’s loyalty, and, thanks to his advice, he resolved to cross Australia following the thirty-seventh parallel. Lord Glenarvan, his wife, the two children, the major, the Frenchman, Captain Mangles, and a few sailors were to make up the little troop under Ayrton’s guidance, while the Duncan, under the orders of the mate, Tom Austin, was to proceed to Melbourne, where she would await Lord Glenarvan’s instructions.

“They set out on December 23, 1854.

“It is time to say that this Ayrton was a traitor. He was, in fact, the boatswain of the Britannia; but, following disputes with his captain, he had tried to incite his crew to mutiny and to seize the ship, and Captain Grant had put him ashore on April 8, 1852, on the west coast of Australia, and then sailed away, abandoning him—which was no more than justice.

“Thus, this wretch knew nothing of the wreck of the Britannia. He had just learned of it from Glenarvan’s account! Since his abandonment, he had become, under the name of Ben Joyce, the chief of escaped convicts, and, if he shamelessly maintained that the wreck had taken place on the east coast, if he urged Lord Glenarvan to launch himself in that direction, it was because he hoped to separate him from his ship, to seize the Duncan, and to make of that yacht a pirate of the Pacific.”

Here the stranger paused for a moment. His voice trembled, but he resumed in these terms:

“The expedition departed and made its way across the Australian land. It was naturally ill-fated, since Ayrton or Ben Joyce, as one may choose to call him, was leading it, now preceding, now followed by his band of convicts, who had been warned of the blow to strike.

“Meanwhile the Duncan had been sent to Melbourne to refit. It was therefore a question of inducing Lord Glenarvan to order her to leave Melbourne and proceed to the east coast of Australia, where it would be easy to seize her. After leading the expedition near enough to that coast, in the midst of vast forests where all resources were lacking, Ayrton obtained a letter which he had charged himself to carry to the mate of the Duncan, a letter ordering the yacht to proceed immediately to the east coast, to Twofold Bay, that is to say, a few days’ march from the spot where the expedition had halted. It was there that Ayrton had appointed a rendezvous with his accomplices.

“At the moment when this letter was about to be handed to him, the traitor was unmasked and had nothing left but to flee. But this letter, which was to deliver the Duncan to him, must be had at any cost. Ayrton managed to seize it, and, two days later, he arrived at Melbourne.

“Until then the criminal had succeeded in his odious schemes. He was about to be able to conduct the Duncan to that Twofold Bay, where it would be easy for the convicts to seize her, and, her crew massacred, Ben Joyce would become master of those seas… God was to stop him at the conclusion of his fatal designs.

“Ayrton, arrived at Melbourne, gave the letter to the mate, Tom Austin, who read it and set sail at once; but judge of Ayrton’s disappointment and rage when, on the day after sailing, he learned that the mate was conducting the ship, not to the east coast of Australia, to Twofold Bay, but to the east coast of New Zealand. He wished to oppose it; Austin showed him the letter!… And, in fact, through a providential error of the French geographer who had drafted the letter, the east coast of New Zealand was indicated as the place of destination.

“All Ayrton’s plans failed! He wished to rebel. He was confined. He was therefore carried to the coast of New Zealand, knowing no longer what would become of his accomplices, nor what would become of Lord Glenarvan.

“The Duncan remained cruising off that coast until March 3. On that day, Ayrton heard detonations. They were the carronades of the Duncan firing, and, soon, Lord Glenarvan and all his people came aboard.

“Here is what had happened.

“After a thousand fatigues, a thousand dangers, Lord Glenarvan had been able to complete his journey and arrive at the east coast of Australia, at Twofold Bay. No Duncan! He telegraphed to Melbourne. He was answered: ‘Duncan departed since the 18th of this month for an unknown destination.’

“Lord Glenarvan could think but one thing: that the honest yacht had fallen into Ben Joyce’s hands and had become a pirate ship!

“However, Lord Glenarvan would not abandon the undertaking. He was an intrepid and generous man. He embarked on a merchant vessel, had himself taken to the west coast of New Zealand, crossed it on the thirty-seventh parallel, without meeting any trace of Captain Grant; but, on the other coast, to his great surprise, and by the will of heaven, he found the Duncan, under the orders of the mate, who had been awaiting him for five weeks!

“It was March 3, 1855. Lord Glenarvan was therefore aboard the Duncan, but Ayrton was there also. He appeared before the lord, who wished to draw from the bandit all that he might know regarding Captain Grant. Ayrton refused to speak. Lord Glenarvan then told him that at the first port of call he would be delivered to the English authorities. Ayrton remained silent.

“The Duncan resumed the route of the thirty-seventh parallel. However, Lady Glenarvan undertook to overcome the bandit’s resistance. At length, her influence prevailed, and Ayrton, in exchange for what he might tell, proposed to Lord Glenarvan to abandon him on one of the islands of the Pacific, instead of delivering him to the English authorities. Lord Glenarvan, determined to do anything to learn what concerned Captain Grant, consented.

“Ayrton then related his whole life, and it was established that he knew nothing since the day Captain Grant had put him ashore on the Australian coast.

“Nevertheless, Lord Glenarvan kept the word he had given. The Duncan continued her route and arrived at Tabor Island. It was there that Ayrton was to be set down, and it was there also that, by a true miracle, Captain Grant and his two men were found, precisely on that thirty-seventh parallel. The convict was therefore to replace them on that desert islet, and here, at the moment he left the yacht, are the words Lord Glenarvan spoke: ‘—Here, Ayrton, you will be far from all land and without possible communication with your fellow men. You will not be able to flee this islet where the Duncan leaves you. You will be alone, under the eye of a God who reads the depths of hearts, but you will be neither lost nor unknown as was Captain Grant. However unworthy you may be of the memory of men, men will remember you. I know where you are, Ayrton, and I know where to find you. I shall never forget it!’

“And the Duncan, setting sail, soon disappeared.

“It was March 18, 1855.

“Ayrton was alone, but neither ammunition, nor arms, nor tools, nor seeds were wanting to him. His, the convict’s, at his disposal, was the house built by the honest Captain Grant. He had only to let himself live and to expiate in isolation the crimes he had committed.

“Gentlemen, he repented, he was ashamed of his crimes, and he was very unhappy! He said to himself that if men should come to seek him some day on that islet, he must be worthy to return among them! How he suffered, the wretch! How he labored to remake himself through work! How he prayed to regenerate himself through prayer!

“For two years, three years, it was thus; but Ayrton, broken by isolation, ever watching if some ship should not appear on the horizon of his island, asking himself if the time of expiation was soon complete, suffered as one has never suffered! Ah! how cruel is that solitude, for a soul gnawed by remorse!

“But no doubt heaven did not find him sufficiently punished, the unhappy man, for he felt by degrees that he was becoming a savage! He felt by degrees brutishness seizing him! He cannot tell you if it was after two or four years of abandonment, but at length he became the wretch you found!

“I need not tell you, gentlemen, that Ayrton or Ben Joyce and I are one and the same!”

Cyrus Smith and his companions had risen at the end of this narrative. It is difficult to say to what extent they were moved! So much misery, so much sorrow and despair laid bare before them!

“Ayrton,” said Cyrus Smith then, “you have been a great criminal, but heaven must certainly find that you have expiated your crimes! It has proved it by bringing you back among your fellow men. Ayrton, you are forgiven! And now, will you be our companion?”

Ayrton had drawn back.

“Here is my hand!” said the engineer.

Ayrton threw himself upon the hand that Cyrus Smith held out to him, and great tears flowed from his eyes.

“Will you live with us?” asked Cyrus Smith.

“Mr. Smith, leave me yet a while,” answered Ayrton, “leave me alone in this dwelling of the corral!”

“As you wish, Ayrton,” replied Cyrus Smith.

Ayrton was about to withdraw, when the engineer put a last question to him:

“One word more, my friend. Since your design was to live in isolation, why then did you throw into the sea that document which put us on your track?”

“A document?” replied Ayrton, who seemed not to know what he was being spoken of.

“Yes, that document enclosed in a bottle which we found, and which gave the exact situation of Tabor Island!”

Ayrton passed his hand over his forehead. Then, after reflecting:

“I never threw any document into the sea!” he answered.

“Never?” cried Pencroff.

“Never!”

And Ayrton, bowing, regained the door and departed.

CHAPTER XVIII

“The poor man!” said Harbert, who, after rushing to the door, came back, having seen Ayrton slip down the elevator rope and disappear in the darkness.

“He will return,” said Cyrus Smith.

“Ah, Mr. Cyrus,” cried Pencroff, “what does that mean? How! It was not Ayrton who threw that bottle into the sea? But who then?”

Surely, if ever a question was to be asked, it was that one!

“It was he,” answered Nab, “only the unhappy man was already half mad.”

“Yes!” said Harbert, “and he no longer had consciousness of what he was doing.”

“That can be explained only thus, my friends,” replied Cyrus Smith quickly, “and I now understand how Ayrton could have exactly indicated the situation of Tabor Island, since the very events that preceded his abandonment on the island made him know it.”

“However,” observed Pencroff, “if he was not yet a brute at the moment he drafted his document, and if it is seven or eight years since he threw it into the sea, how is it this paper has not been altered by dampness?”

“That proves,” answered Cyrus Smith, “that Ayrton was deprived of intelligence only at a much more recent period than he believes.”

“It must be thus,” answered Pencroff; “otherwise the thing would be inexplicable.”

“Inexplicable, indeed,” replied the engineer, who seemed not to wish to prolong the conversation.

“But did Ayrton tell the truth?” asked the sailor.

“Yes,” replied the reporter. “The story he told is true in every point. I remember very well that the newspapers reported the attempt made by Lord Glenarvan and the result he obtained.”

“Ayrton told the truth,” added Cyrus Smith, “doubt it not, Pencroff, for it was cruel enough to him. One tells the truth when one accuses oneself thus!”

The next day—December 21—the colonists had gone down to the beach, and, having climbed the plateau, they found Ayrton no longer there. Ayrton had gained during the night his house of the corral, and the colonists judged it well not to importune him with their presence. Time would no doubt do what encouragement had not been able to do.

Harbert, Pencroff, and Nab then resumed their accustomed occupations. Precisely, on that day, the same works brought Cyrus Smith and the reporter together at the chimney workshop.

“Do you know, my dear Cyrus,” said Gideon Spilett, “that the explanation you gave yesterday regarding that bottle did not satisfy me at all! How admit that this unhappy man could have written that document and thrown that bottle into the sea, without having kept any memory of it?”

“It was not he who threw it, then, my dear Spilett.”

“Then, you still believe…”

“I believe nothing, I know nothing!” replied Cyrus Smith, interrupting the reporter. “I content myself with ranking this incident among those which I have not been able to explain up to this day!”

“In truth, Cyrus,” said Gideon Spilett, “these things are incredible! Your rescue, the case stranded on the sand, the adventures of Top, this bottle finally… shall we never have the word of these enigmas?”

“Yes!” replied the engineer quickly. “Yes, if I must ransack this island even to its entrails!”

“Chance will perhaps give us the key to this mystery!”

“Chance! Spilett! I little believe in chance, no more than I believe in mysteries in this world. There is a cause for all that happens here inexplicably, and that cause I shall discover. But meanwhile, let us observe and work.”

The month of January arrived. It was the year 1867 that was beginning. The summer works were carried on assiduously. During the following days, Harbert and Gideon Spilett having gone toward the corral, could ascertain that Ayrton had taken possession of the dwelling prepared for him. He occupied himself with the numerous flock committed to his care, and he was to spare his companions the fatigue of coming every two or three days to visit the corral.

However, so as no longer to leave Ayrton too long isolated, the colonists visited him fairly often.

It was not indifferent either—given certain suspicions shared by the engineer and Gideon Spilett—that this part of the island should be subjected to a certain surveillance, and Ayrton, if any incident should occur, would not neglect to inform the inhabitants of Granite-House.

However, it might be that the incident would be sudden and require to be rapidly brought to the engineer’s knowledge. Apart even from all facts relating to the mystery of Lincoln Island, many others might occur, which would call for prompt intervention of the colonists, such as the appearance of a ship passing offshore and in sight of the west coast, a wreck on the west landings, the possible arrival of pirates, etc. So Cyrus Smith resolved to put the corral in instantaneous communication with Granite-House.

It was on January 10 that he made his project known to his companions.

“Ah, how will you manage it, Mr. Cyrus?” asked Pencroff. “Are you by chance thinking of installing a telegraph?”

“Precisely,” answered the engineer.

“Electric?” cried Harbert.

“Electric,” answered Cyrus Smith. “We have all the necessary elements to make a battery, and the most difficult will be to draw out iron wire, but by means of a drawplate, I think we shall succeed.”

“Well, after that,” replied the sailor, “I no longer despair of seeing us rolling in a railway someday!”

They therefore set to work, beginning with the most difficult, that is to say, the making of the wire, for if they had failed, it became useless to manufacture the battery and other accessories.

The iron of Lincoln Island, it is known, was of excellent quality, and, consequently, very fit to be drawn. Cyrus Smith began by making a drawplate, that is to say, a steel plate, which was pierced with conical holes of various calibers that were to bring the wire successively to the desired fineness. This piece of steel, after being tempered “through and through,” as is said in metallurgy, was fixed immovably on a solid frame sunk into the ground, a few feet only from the great fall, whose motive power the engineer was again going to utilize. In fact, there was the fulling mill, which was not then working, but whose lay shaft, moved with extreme power, could serve to draw the wire, by winding it around itself.

The operation was delicate and demanded much care.

The iron, previously prepared in long and thin rods, whose ends had been thinned with the file, having been introduced into the large caliber of the drawplate, was drawn by the lay shaft, wound on a length of twenty-five to thirty feet, then unwound and presented successively to the smaller calibers! Finally, the engineer obtained wires forty to fifty feet long, which it was easy to join and stretch over that distance of five miles which separated the corral from the enclosure of Granite-House.

Only a few days were needed to bring this task to a good end, and even, as soon as the machine was set going, Cyrus Smith left his companions to do the job of wire-drawers and occupied himself with making his battery.

It was a question, in the case, of obtaining a constant-current battery. It is known that the elements of modern batteries are generally composed of retort charcoal, zinc, and copper. Copper was absolutely lacking to the engineer, who, despite his researches, had found no trace of it in Lincoln Island, and he must do without it. Retort charcoal, that is to say this hard graphite which is found in gasworks retorts, after the coal has been dehydrogenated, might have been produced, but it would have been necessary to install special apparatus, which would have been heavy work. As for zinc, it will be remembered that the case found at the wreck point was lined with an envelope of this metal, which could not be better utilized than in this circumstance.

Cyrus Smith, after mature reflection, therefore resolved to manufacture a very simple battery, approaching that which Becquerel devised in 1820, and in which zinc alone is employed. As for the other substances, nitric acid and potash, all that was at his disposal.

Here, then, is how this battery was composed, whose effects were to be produced by the reaction of the acid and the potash upon each other. A certain number of glass flasks were made and filled with nitric acid. The engineer stopped them with a cork through which passed a glass tube closed at its lower end and intended to plunge into the acid by means of a clay wad held by linen. In this tube, by its upper end, he then poured a solution of potash which he had previously obtained by the incineration of divers plants, and, in this way, the acid and the pure potash were able to react upon each other through the clay.

Cyrus Smith then took two plates of zinc, one of which was plunged into the nitric acid, the other into the potash solution. Immediately a current was produced, which went from the plate of the flask to that of the tube, and these two plates having been connected by a metal wire, the plate of the tube became the positive pole and that of the flask the negative pole of the apparatus.

Each flask therefore produced as many currents, which, united, were to suffice to provoke all the phenomena of electric telegraphy.

Such was the ingenious and very simple apparatus that Cyrus Smith constructed, an apparatus which was to permit him to establish a telegraphic communication between Granite-House and the corral.

It was on February 6 that the planting of the posts was begun, furnished with glass insulators, and intended to support the wire, which was to follow the corral road. A few days later, the wire was stretched, ready to produce, with a speed of one hundred thousand kilometers per second, the electric current which the earth would charge itself with returning to its point of departure. Two batteries had been made, one for Granite-House, the other for the corral, for if the corral was to communicate with Granite-House, it might also be useful that Granite-House should communicate with the corral.

As for the receiver and the manipulator, they were very simple. At the two stations, the wire wound around an electro-magnet, that is to say, around a piece of soft iron surrounded by a wire. Was the communication established between the two poles, the current, departing from the positive pole, traversed the wire, passed into the electro-magnet, which was temporarily magnetized, and returned by the ground to the negative pole. Was the current interrupted, the electro-magnet was immediately demagnetized. It sufficed therefore to place a plate of soft iron before the electro-magnet, which, attracted during the passage of the current, fell back when the current was interrupted. This movement of the plate thus obtained, Cyrus Smith could very easily attach to it a needle arranged on a dial, which bore on its face the letters of the alphabet, and, in this way, correspond from one station to the other.

The whole was completely installed on February 12. On that day, Cyrus Smith, having launched the current through the wire, asked if all was well at the corral, and received, a few moments after, a satisfactory answer from Ayrton.

Pencroff could not contain his joy, and each morning and each evening he launched a telegram to the corral, which never remained without answer.

This mode of communication presented two very real advantages, first because it permitted ascertaining Ayrton’s presence at the corral, and next because it did not leave him in complete isolation. Besides, Cyrus Smith never let a week pass without going to see him, and Ayrton came from time to time to Granite-House, where he always found good welcome.

The fine season thus flowed by amid the habitual works. The resources of the colony, particularly in vegetables and cereals, increased day by day, and the plants brought from Tabor Island had perfectly succeeded. The plateau of Prospect Heights presented a very reassuring aspect. The fourth wheat harvest had been admirable, and, it is well thought, no one bethought himself to count if the four hundred billion grains figured in the crop. However, Pencroff had had the idea of doing so, but Cyrus Smith having informed him that, even if he managed to count three hundred grains per minute, that is nine thousand per hour, it would take him about five thousand five hundred years to complete his operation, the worthy sailor believed he ought to renounce it.

The weather was magnificent, the temperature very warm in the daytime; but, in the evening, the breezes from the open sea came to temper the ardor of the atmosphere and procured cool nights to the inhabitants of Granite-House. However, there were some storms, which, if they were not of long duration, fell at least on Lincoln Island with extraordinary force. For some hours, the lightning never ceased to set the sky afire and the rollings of thunder were uninterrupted.

Toward this epoch, the little colony was extremely prosperous. The guests of the poultry-yard swarmed, and one lived on its surplus, for it became urgent to bring its population back to a more moderate figure. The pigs had already produced young, and it is understood that the care to be given to these animals absorbed a great part of Nab’s and Pencroff’s time. The onaggas, which had given two pretty beasts, were most often ridden by Gideon Spilett and Harbert, become an excellent horseman under the reporter’s direction, and they were also harnessed to the cart, either to transport to Granite-House the wood and coal, or the divers mineral products the engineer employed.

Several reconnaissances were pushed, toward this epoch, even into the depths of the Far-West forests. The explorers could hazard themselves there without having to dread the excesses of temperature, for the solar rays scarcely pierced the thick foliage that interlaced above their heads. They thus visited all the left bank of the Mercy, which was bordered by the road going from the corral to the mouth of the Fall River.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”