Part 41

As in so many other circumstances, the colonists had relied on that logic of plain common sense which had served them so well so many times, and once again, thanks to their general knowledge, they had succeeded! But would the time not come when all their science would fail them? They were alone on this island. Now, men are completed by the social state; they are necessary to one another. Cyrus Smith knew this well, and sometimes he asked himself whether some circumstance might not arise which they would be powerless to overcome!

It seemed to him, moreover, that his companions and he, hitherto so fortunate, had entered upon an unlucky period. For more than two years and a half since they had escaped from Richmond, it may be said that everything had gone as they wished. The island had abundantly supplied them with minerals, vegetables, animals, and if nature had constantly lavished her gifts upon them, their science had known how to make use of what she offered. The material well-being of the colony was, so to speak, complete. Besides, in certain circumstances, an inexplicable influence had come to their aid!... but all this could only last for a time!

In short, Cyrus Smith believed he perceived that fortune seemed to be turning against them. Indeed, the convicts' ship had appeared in the island's waters, and if these pirates had been, so to speak, miraculously destroyed, six of them at least had escaped the catastrophe. They had landed on the island, and the five who survived were well-nigh untraceable there.

Ayrton had been, beyond doubt, massacred by those wretches, who possessed firearms, and, at the first use they made of them, Harbert had fallen, struck almost mortally. Were these then the first blows that adverse fortune dealt the colonists? This is what Cyrus Smith asked himself! This is what he often repeated to the reporter, and it seemed to them also that this so strange but so efficacious intervention, which had served them so well hitherto, was now failing them. That mysterious being, whoever he might be, whose existence they could not deny, had he then abandoned the island? Had he in his turn succumbed?

To these questions, no answer was possible.

But let it not be imagined that Cyrus Smith and his companion, because they talked of such things, were men given to despair! Far from it. They looked the situation in the face, they analyzed the chances, they prepared for any event, they stood firm and upright before the future, and if adversity must at last strike them, it would find in them men prepared to combat it.

CHAPTER IX

The young patient's convalescence progressed regularly. One thing only was now to be desired: that his condition might permit his removal to Granite-House. However well arranged and provisioned the dwelling of the corral might be, one could not find there the comfort of the healthy granite abode. Moreover, it offered not the same security, and its guests, despite their watchfulness, were still under the threat of some shot from the convicts. There, on the contrary, in the midst of that impregnable and inaccessible mass, they would have nothing to fear, and any attempt against their persons must necessarily fail. They were therefore impatiently awaiting the moment when Harbert could be transported without danger to his wound, and they were resolved to effect this transport, although the communications through the jacamar woods were very difficult.

There was no news of Nab, but no anxiety on his account. The courageous negro, well entrenched in the depths of Granite-House, would not allow himself to be surprised. Top had not been sent back to him, and it had seemed useless to expose the faithful dog to some gunshot that would deprive the colonists of their most useful auxiliary.

They were therefore waiting, but the colonists were eager to be reunited at Granite-House. It cost the engineer to see his forces divided, for that was playing into the pirates' hands. Since Ayrton's disappearance, they were only four against five, for Harbert could not yet be counted, and it was not the least of the brave boy's worries, who well understood the difficulties of which he was the cause!

The question of how, in the present conditions, they should act against the convicts, was thoroughly discussed on the 29th of November between Cyrus Smith, Gideon Spilett, and Pencroff, at a moment when Harbert, dozing, could not hear them.

"My friends," said the reporter, after the matter of Nab and the impossibility of communicating with him had been raised, "I believe, as you do, that to venture on the corral road would be to risk receiving a gunshot without being able to return it. But do you not think that what would be fitting to do now would be to give these wretches a fair chase?"

"That is what I was thinking," answered Pencroff. "We are not, I suppose, at the point of fearing a bullet, and, for my part, if Mr. Cyrus approves, I am ready to throw myself into the forest! The devil! One man is as good as another!"

"But is he as good as five?" asked the engineer.

"I will join Pencroff," replied the reporter, "and the two of us, well armed, accompanied by Top..."

"My dear Spilett, and you, Pencroff," resumed Cyrus Smith, "let us reason coolly. If the convicts were holed up in some part of the island, if that part were known to us, and if it were only a matter of flushing them out, I should understand a direct attack. But is there not reason to fear, on the contrary, that they are assured of firing the first shot?"

"Why, Mr. Cyrus," cried Pencroff, "a bullet does not always hit its mark!"

"The one that struck Harbert did not stray, Pencroff," answered the engineer. "Besides, note that if both of you were to leave the corral, I should remain alone to defend it. Do you answer that the convicts will not see you abandon it, that they will not let you engage in the forest, and that they will not attack it during your absence, knowing that there will be no one here but a wounded boy and a man?"

"You are right, Mr. Cyrus," answered Pencroff, whose breast swelled with a sullen anger, "you are right. They will do all they can to retake the corral, which they know is well provisioned! And alone, you could not hold against them! Ah! If we were at Granite-House!"

"If we were at Granite-House," answered the engineer, "the situation would be very different! There, I should not fear leaving Harbert with one of us, and the other three would go and search the island's forests. But we are at the corral, and it is fitting to remain there until the moment when we can leave it all together!"

There was nothing to answer to Cyrus Smith's reasoning, and his companions understood it well.

"If only Ayrton were still one of us!" said Gideon Spilett. "Poor man! His return to social life will have been but of short duration!"

"If he is dead?..." added Pencroff in a rather singular tone.

"Do you hope then, Pencroff, that those scoundrels spared him?" asked Gideon Spilett.

"Yes! If they had an interest in doing so!"

"What! You would suppose that Ayrton, finding his former accomplices, forgetting all he owes us..."

"Who knows?" answered the sailor, who hazarded this unfortunate supposition not without hesitation.

"Pencroff," said Cyrus Smith, taking the sailor's arm, "you have a bad thought there, and you would grieve me much if you persisted in speaking thus! I vouch for Ayrton's loyalty!"

"I too," quickly added the reporter.

"Yes... yes!... Mr. Cyrus... I am wrong," answered Pencroff. "It is indeed a bad thought I had there, and nothing justifies it! But what would you have? I no longer quite have my head. This imprisonment at the corral weighs horribly on me, and I have never been as worked up as I am now!"

"Be patient, Pencroff," answered the engineer.

"In how long, my dear Spilett, do you think Harbert might be transported to Granite-House?"

"That is difficult to say, Cyrus," replied the reporter, "for an imprudence might entail fatal consequences. But finally, his convalescence is proceeding regularly, and if within a week his strength has returned, well, we shall see!"

A week! That put the return to Granite-House off until the first days of December only.

At that time, spring was already two months old. The weather was fine, and the heat was beginning to become strong. The island's forests were in full leaf, and the time was approaching when the accustomed harvests must be gathered. The return to the Grande-Vue plateau would therefore be followed by great agricultural labors, to be interrupted only by the projected expedition into the island.

One understands therefore how much this sequestration at the corral must harm the colonists. But if they were obliged to bow before necessity, they did not do so without impatience. Once or twice, the reporter ventured onto the road and made the tour of the palisaded enclosure. Top accompanied him, and Gideon Spilett, his carbine loaded, was ready for any event.

He met with no mishap and found no suspicious trace. His dog would have warned him of any danger, and, as Top did not bark, it could be concluded that there was nothing to fear, at this moment at least, and that the convicts were occupied in another part of the island.

However, on his second outing, the 27th of November, Gideon Spilett, who had ventured into the woods for a quarter of a mile, south of the mountain, noticed that Top was scenting something.

The dog no longer had his indifferent gait; he went to and fro, sniffing among the grasses and brushwood, as if his scent had revealed some suspicious object to him.

Gideon Spilett followed Top, encouraged him, urged him on with his voice, while keeping a watchful eye, his carbine to his shoulder, and taking advantage of the shelter of the trees to cover himself. It was not probable that Top had scented the presence of a man, for, in that case, he would have announced it by half-stifled barks and a sort of sullen rage. Now, since he made no growling heard, it was that the danger was neither near nor close.

Some five minutes passed thus, Top sniffing, the reporter following him with caution, when, suddenly, the dog precipitated himself toward a thick bush and drew from it a scrap of cloth.

It was a piece of clothing, soiled, torn, which Gideon Spilett immediately brought back to the corral.

There, the colonists examined it, and they recognized that it was a piece of Ayrton's jacket, a piece of that felt exclusively manufactured in the Granite-House workshop.

"You see, Pencroff," observed Cyrus Smith, "there was resistance on the part of the unhappy Ayrton. The convicts dragged him away despite himself! Do you still doubt his honesty?"

"No, Mr. Cyrus," answered the sailor, "and I long ago came back from my momentary distrust! But there is, it seems to me, a consequence to be drawn from this fact."

"Which?" asked the reporter.

"It is that Ayrton was not killed at the corral! It is that he was dragged away alive, since he resisted! Now, perhaps he still lives!"

"Perhaps, indeed," answered the engineer, who remained thoughtful.

There was a hope there, on which Ayrton's companions might seize again. Indeed, they had been obliged to believe that, surprised at the corral, Ayrton had fallen under some bullet, as Harbert had fallen. But, if the convicts had not killed him at first, if they had taken him alive to some other part of the island, could it not be admitted that he was still their prisoner? Perhaps even one of them had found in Ayrton a former companion from Australia, Ben Joyce, the chief of the escaped convicts? And who knows if they had not conceived the impossible hope of bringing Ayrton back to their side!

How useful he would have been to them, if they could have made a traitor of him!...

This incident was therefore favorably interpreted at the corral, and it no longer seemed impossible that Ayrton might be found again. For his part, if he were but a prisoner, Ayrton would doubtless do all to escape the hands of those bandits, and that would be a powerful auxiliary for the colonists!

"In any case," observed Gideon Spilett, "if, by good fortune, Ayrton manages to escape, it is to Granite-House that he will go directly, for he does not know of the murder attempt of which Harbert was the victim, and, consequently, he cannot believe that we are imprisoned at the corral."

"Ah! I wish he were there, at Granite-House!" cried Pencroff, "and that we were there too! For, after all, if the scoundrels can attempt nothing against our dwelling, at least they can sack the plateau, our plantations, our poultry-yard!"

Pencroff had become a true farmer, attached at heart to his crops. But it must be said that Harbert was more than anyone impatient to return to Granite-House, for he knew how necessary the colonists' presence there was. And it was he who kept them at the corral! Thus this single idea occupied his mind: leave the corral, leave it at any cost! He believed he could bear the transport to Granite-House. He assured them that his strength would return more quickly in his room, with the air and the view of the sea!

Several times he pressed Gideon Spilett, but the latter, fearing, with reason, that Harbert's wounds, ill healed, might reopen on the way, did not give the order to depart.

However, an incident occurred, which led Cyrus Smith and his two friends to yield to the young boy's wishes, and God knows what pains and remorse this determination might cause them!

It was the 29th of November. It was seven o'clock in the morning. The three colonists were talking in Harbert's room, when they heard Top utter eager barks.

Cyrus Smith, Pencroff, and Gideon Spilett seized their rifles, always ready to fire, and they went out of the house.

Top, having run to the foot of the palisaded enclosure, jumped, barked, but it was contentment, not anger.

"Someone is coming!"

"Yes!"

"It is not an enemy!"

"Nab, perhaps?"

"Or Ayrton?"

Scarcely had these words been exchanged between the engineer and his two companions, when a body bounded over the palisade and fell back onto the corral ground.

It was Jup, Master Jup in person, whom Top greeted as a true friend!

"Jup!" cried Pencroff.

"It is Nab who sends him to us!" said the reporter.

"Then," answered the engineer, "he must have some note on him."

Pencroff rushed toward the orangutan. Evidently, if Nab had had some important fact to make known to his master, he could employ no surer and swifter messenger, who could pass where neither the colonists nor Top himself would perhaps have been able to.

Cyrus Smith had not been mistaken. Around Jup's neck hung a small bag, and in this bag was a note traced by Nab's hand. Let one judge of the despair of Cyrus Smith and his companions, when they read these words:

"Friday, 6 a.m. "Plateau invaded by the convicts! "Nab."

They looked at one another without uttering a word, then they went back into the house. What were they to do?

The convicts on the Grande-Vue plateau, that was disaster, devastation, ruin!

Harbert, on seeing the engineer, the reporter, and Pencroff return, understood that the situation had just worsened, and when he caught sight of Jup, he no longer doubted that some misfortune threatened Granite-House.

"Mr. Cyrus," said he, "I wish to leave. I can bear the road! I wish to leave!"

Gideon Spilett approached Harbert. Then, after having looked at him.

"Let us depart then!" said he.

The question was quickly decided as to whether Harbert should be transported on a litter or in the cart which Ayrton had brought to the corral. The litter would have had gentler movements for the wounded man, but it required two bearers, that is to say two rifles would be lacking to the defense, if an attack occurred on the way.

Could one not, on the contrary, by employing the cart, leave all arms available? Was it then impossible to place there the mattresses on which Harbert rested and to advance with such precaution that all jolting was avoided? It could be done.

The cart was brought. Pencroff harnessed the onagga to it.

Cyrus Smith and the reporter lifted Harbert's mattresses, and they laid them on the bottom of the cart between the two sideboards.

The weather was fine. Vivid sunbeams slipped through the trees.

"Are the weapons ready?" asked Cyrus Smith.

They were. The engineer and Pencroff, each armed with a two-barreled rifle, and Gideon Spilett, holding his carbine, had only to depart.

"Are you well, Harbert?" asked the engineer.

"Ah! Mr. Cyrus," answered the young boy, "be easy, I shall not die on the way!"

In speaking thus, one saw that the poor child was calling upon all his energy, and that, by a supreme will, he held back his forces ready to fade.

The engineer felt his heart tighten painfully.

He still hesitated to give the signal for departure. But that would have been to despair Harbert, to kill him perhaps.

"On the road!" said Cyrus Smith.

The corral gate was opened. Jup and Top, who knew how to be silent at the right time, rushed forward. The cart went out, the gate was closed again, and the onagga, directed by Pencroff, advanced at a slow pace.

Certainly, it would have been better to take a road other than that which went directly from the corral to Granite-House, but the cart would have experienced great difficulties in moving through the woods. It was necessary therefore to follow this way, although it must be known to the convicts.

Cyrus Smith and Gideon Spilett walked on each side of the cart, ready to answer any attack. However, it was not probable that the convicts had already abandoned the Grande-Vue plateau. Nab's note had evidently been written and sent as soon as the convicts showed themselves there. Now, this note was dated six o'clock in the morning, and the agile orangutan, accustomed to coming frequently to the corral, had taken barely three quarters of an hour to cross the five miles that separated it from Granite-House. The road must therefore be safe at this moment, and, if there was to be a firing of guns, it would probably be only at the approaches to Granite-House.

However, the colonists kept themselves severely on their guard. Top and Jup, the latter armed with his stick, now in advance, now beating the wood on the sides of the path, signaled no danger.

The cart advanced slowly, under Pencroff's direction. It had left the corral at half past seven. An hour later, four miles out of five had been covered, without any incident having occurred.

The road was deserted like all that part of the jacamar wood which extends between the Mercy and the lake. No alarm took place. The thickets seemed as deserted as on the day the colonists landed on the island.

They were approaching the plateau. One more mile, and they would see the footbridge of the glycerine creek. Cyrus Smith did not doubt that this footbridge was in place, whether the convicts had entered by that spot, or whether, after crossing one of the watercourses that closed the enclosure, they had taken the precaution of lowering it, in order to secure themselves a retreat. Finally, the opening of the last trees revealed the sea horizon. But the cart continued its march, for none of its defenders could think of abandoning it. At this moment, Pencroff stopped the onagga, and in a terrible voice:

"Ah! The wretches!" cried he.

And with his hand he pointed to a thick smoke that whirled above the mill, the stables, and the poultry-yard buildings. A man was moving amid those vapors.

It was Nab.

His companions uttered a cry. He heard them and ran to them...

The convicts had abandoned the plateau about half an hour before, after having devastated it!

"And Mr. Harbert?" cried Nab.

Gideon Spilett came back at that moment to the cart.

Harbert had lost consciousness!

CHAPTER X

Of the convicts, of the dangers that threatened Granite-House, of the ruins with which the plateau was covered, there was no longer any question. Harbert's condition dominated all. Had the transport been fatal to him, provoking some internal lesion? The reporter could not say, but his companions and he were in despair.

The cart was brought to the bend of the river. There, some branches, arranged in the form of a litter, received the mattresses on which Harbert, fainting, rested. Ten minutes later, Cyrus Smith, Gideon Spilett, and Pencroff were at the foot of the wall, leaving to Nab the care of taking the cart back to the Grande-Vue plateau.

The elevator was set in motion, and soon Harbert was stretched upon his cot in Granite-House.

The cares lavished upon him brought him back to life. He smiled for an instant on finding himself in his room again, but he could barely murmur a few words, so great was his weakness.

Gideon Spilett examined his wounds. He feared lest they had reopened, being imperfectly healed... it was nothing of the sort.

Whence then came this prostration? Why had Harbert's state worsened?

The young boy then fell into a sort of feverish slumber, and the reporter and Pencroff remained near his bed.

During this time, Cyrus Smith was putting Nab in touch with what had passed at the corral, and Nab was relating to his master the events of which the plateau had just been the theater.

It was only during the previous night that the convicts had shown themselves on the edge of the forest, at the approaches of the glycerine creek. Nab, who was watching near the poultry-yard, had not hesitated to fire upon one of those pirates, who was preparing to cross the watercourse; but, in that rather dark night, he had not been able to know if that wretch had been hit. In any case, that had not sufficed to drive off the band, and Nab had only time to climb back to Granite-House, where he found himself, at least, in safety.

But what to do then? How to prevent the devastations with which the convicts threatened the plateau? Had Nab a means of warning his master? And besides, in what situation were the hosts of the corral themselves?

Cyrus Smith and his companions had departed since the 11th of November, and it was the 29th. There were therefore nineteen days that Nab had had no other news than that which Top had brought him, disastrous news: Ayrton disappeared, Harbert gravely wounded, the engineer, the reporter, the sailor, so to speak, imprisoned in the corral! What to do? asked poor Nab. For him personally, he had nothing to fear, for the convicts could not reach him in Granite-House.

But the buildings, the plantations, all those arrangements at the mercy of the pirates! Was it not fitting to leave Cyrus Smith judge of what he would have to do and to warn him, at least, of the danger that threatened him?

Nab then had the thought of employing Jup and confiding a note to him. He knew the extreme intelligence of the orangutan, which had often been put to the test. Jup understood that word corral, which had often been pronounced before him, and it is even remembered that many a time he had driven the cart there in company with Pencroff. Day had not yet broken. The agile orangutan would know well how to pass unnoticed in those woods, which the convicts, besides, must believe to be one of its natural inhabitants.

Nab did not hesitate. He wrote the note, he attached it to Jup's neck, he led the monkey to the door of Granite-House, from which he let down a long rope to the ground; then, several times, he repeated these words:

"Jup! Jup! Corral! Corral!"

The animal understood, seized the rope, let himself slide rapidly to the shore and disappeared in the shadow, without the attention of the convicts having been in any way aroused.

"You did well, Nab," answered Cyrus Smith, "but, by not warning us, perhaps you would have done even better!"

And, in speaking thus, Cyrus Smith thought of Harbert, whose transport seemed to have so gravely compromised his convalescence.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”