Part 50

Would the island hold until then? Pencroff and Cyrus Smith's intention was to proceed with the launching of the vessel as soon as its hull was sufficiently watertight. The deck, the rigging, the interior fittings, and the spars would be done afterward, but the important thing was that the colonists should have a assured refuge outside the island. Perhaps it would even be advisable to take the ship to Balloon Harbor, that is to say, as far as possible from the eruptive center, for, at the mouth of the Mercy, between the islet and the granite wall, it ran the risk of being crushed, in case of dislocation. All the efforts of the workers therefore tended toward the completion of the hull.

Thus they arrived at March 3, and they could reckon that the launching operation would take place in about ten days.

Hope returned to the hearts of these colonists, so sorely tried during this fourth year of their stay on Lincoln Island! Pencroff himself seemed to emerge somewhat from that dark taciturnity into which the ruin and devastation of his domain had plunged him. He thought no more then, it is true, than of this ship, upon which all his hopes were concentrated.

"We shall finish it," he said to the engineer, "we shall finish it, Mr. Cyrus, and it is time, for here is the season advancing, and we shall soon be in full equinox. Well, if need be, we will put in at Tabor Island to pass the winter there! But Tabor Island after Lincoln Island! Ah! Misery of my life! Did I ever think to see such a thing!

"Let us hurry!" the engineer invariably replied.

And they worked without losing a moment.

"My master," Nab asked a few days later, "if Captain Nemo were still alive, do you think all this would have happened?"

"Yes, Nab," replied Cyrus Smith.

"Well, I do not believe it!" murmured Pencroff in Nab's ear.

"Nor I!" Nab answered seriously.

During the first week of March, Mount Franklin became threatening again. Thousands of glass threads, made of fluid lavas, fell like rain upon the soil. The crater filled anew with lavas that overflowed on all the slopes of the volcano. The torrent ran over the surface of the hardened tuffs, and finished destroying the meager skeletons of trees that had resisted the first eruption. The current, following this time the southwest shore of Lake Grant, carried beyond the glycerine creek and invaded the Grande-Vue plateau. This last blow, struck at the work of the colonists, was terrible. Of the mill, the poultry-yard buildings, the stables, nothing remained. The fowls, terrified, disappeared in all directions. Top and Jup gave signs of the greatest fright, and their instinct warned them that a catastrophe was near. A good number of the island's animals had perished during the first eruption. Those that had survived found no other refuge than the sheldrake marsh, except some few to whom the Grande-Vue plateau offered asylum. But this last retreat was at length closed to them, and the river of lavas, overflowing the crest of the granite wall, began to precipitate its cataracts of fire upon the beach. The sublime horror of this spectacle defies all description. During the night, it would have been a Niagara of liquid metal, with its incandescent vapors above and its boiling masses below!

The colonists were forced into their last entrenchment, and, although the upper seams of the ship were not yet caulked, they resolved to launch it into the sea!

Pencroff and Ayrton therefore proceeded with the preparations for the launching, which was to take place the next day, in the morning of March 9.

But, during this night of the 8th to the 9th, an enormous column of vapors, escaping from the crater, rose amid frightful detonations to more than three thousand feet in height. The wall of the Dakkar cavern had evidently given way under the pressure of the gases, and the sea, precipitating itself down the central chimney into the fiery gulf, was suddenly vaporized. But the crater could not give sufficient outlet to these vapors. An explosion, that would have been heard a hundred miles off, shook the strata of the air. Pieces of mountains fell back into the Pacific, and, in a few minutes, the ocean covered the place where Lincoln Island had been.

CHAPTER XX

An isolated rock, thirty feet long, fifteen wide, emerging barely ten, such was the only solid point that the waves of the Pacific had not invaded.

It was all that remained of the Granite House mass! The wall had been overthrown, then dislocated, and some of the rocks of the great hall had piled up so as to form this culminating point. Everything had disappeared into the abyss around it: the lower cone of Mount Franklin, torn by the explosion, the lava jaws of Shark Gulf, the Grande-Vue plateau, the Salvation Islet, the granites of Balloon Harbor, the basalts of the Dakkar crypt, the long serpentine peninsula, so far removed nevertheless from the eruptive center! Of Lincoln Island, there was to be seen no more than this narrow rock which then served as refuge to the six colonists and their dog Top.

The animals had likewise perished in the catastrophe, the birds as well as the other representatives of the island's fauna, all crushed or drowned, and poor Jup himself had, alas! found death in some crevice of the soil!

If Cyrus Smith, Gideon Spilett, Harbert, Pencroff, Nab, Ayrton had survived, it was because, gathered then under their tent, they had been precipitated into the sea, at the moment when the debris of the island rained from all sides.

When they returned to the surface, they no longer saw, half a cable's length off, than this heap of rocks, toward which they swam, and on which they gained a footing.

It was on this bare rock that they had been living for nine days! A few provisions taken from the Granite House store before the catastrophe, a little fresh water that the rain had poured into a hollow of the rock, that was all these unfortunates possessed. Their last hope, their ship, had been broken. They had no means of leaving this reef. No fire nor aught to make it with. They were destined to perish!

That day, March 18, they had no more preserved food than for two days, although they had consumed only the strict necessary. All their science, all their intelligence could do nothing in this situation. They were solely in the hands of God.

Cyrus Smith was calm. Gideon Spilett, more nervous, and Pencroff, prey to a sullen anger, went and came upon this rock. Harbert did not leave the engineer, and looked at him, as if to ask a help that the latter could not give. Nab and Ayrton were resigned to their fate.

"Ah! Misery! Misery!" Pencroff often repeated. "If we had, were it but a nutshell, to take us to Tabor Island! But nothing, nothing!

"Captain Nemo did well to die!" said Nab once.

During the five days that followed, Cyrus Smith and his unhappy companions lived with the utmost parsimony, eating just what was needed not to succumb to hunger. Their weakness was extreme. Harbert and Nab began to show some signs of delirium.

In this situation, could they keep even a shadow of hope? No! What was their only chance? That a ship should pass in sight of the reef? But they knew well, by experience, that vessels never visited this portion of the Pacific! Could they count that, by a truly providential coincidence, the Scottish yacht should come precisely at this time to seek Ayrton at Tabor Island? It was improbable, and, besides, admitting even that it came there, as the colonists had not been able to leave a notice indicating the changes that had occurred in Ayrton's situation, the commander of the yacht, after having searched the islet without result, would resume the sea and regain lower latitudes.

No! They could preserve no hope of being saved, and a horrible death, death by hunger and by thirst, awaited them on this rock!

And, already, they lay stretched upon this rock, lifeless, no longer having consciousness of what passed around them. Alone, Ayrton, by a supreme effort, still raised his head and cast a desperate glance over that deserted sea!...

But behold, in the morning of March 24, Ayrton's arms extended toward a point in space, he raised himself, first on his knees, then standing, his hand seemed to make a signal... a ship was in sight of the island! This ship was not roaming the sea at random. The reef was for it a goal toward which it steered in a straight line, forcing its steam, and the unfortunates would have perceived it several hours earlier already, if they had still had the strength to observe the horizon!

"The Duncan!" murmured Ayrton, and he fell back motionless.

When Cyrus Smith and his companions had regained consciousness, thanks to the care with which they were overwhelmed, they found themselves in a cabin of a steamer, without being able to understand how they had escaped death. A word from Ayrton sufficed to tell them all.

"The Duncan!" he murmured.

"The Duncan!" replied Cyrus Smith.

And, raising his arms to heaven, he cried:

"Ah! Almighty God! Thou hast then willed that we should be saved!"

It was the Duncan, indeed, Lord Glenarvan's yacht, then commanded by Robert, Captain Grant's son, which had been dispatched to Tabor Island to seek Ayrton and repatriate him after twelve years of expiation!...

The colonists were saved, they were already on the way back!

"Captain Robert," asked Cyrus Smith, "who then could have given you the thought, after leaving Tabor Island, where you had no longer found Ayrton, to make course a hundred miles thence to the northeast?"

"Mr. Smith," replied Robert Grant, "it was to go seek, not only Ayrton, but your companions and you!"

"My companions and me?"

"Doubtless! at Lincoln Island!"

"Lincoln Island!" cried at once Gideon Spilett, Harbert, Nab, and Pencroff, in the utmost astonishment.

"How do you know Lincoln Island?" asked Cyrus Smith, "since this island is not even on the charts?"

"I knew it by the notice you had left at Tabor Island," replied Robert Grant.

"A notice?" cried Gideon Spilett.

"Doubtless, and here it is," replied Robert Grant, presenting a document which indicated in longitude and latitude the situation of Lincoln Island, "present residence of Ayrton and five American colonists."

"Captain Nemo!..." said Cyrus Smith, after having read the notice and recognized that it was of the same hand which had written the document found at the corral!

"Ah!" said Pencroff, "it was then he who had taken our Bonadventure, he who had ventured, alone, as far as Tabor Island!..."

"To leave this notice there!" replied Harbert.

"I was then right to say," cried the sailor, "that, even after his death, the captain would still render us a last service!"

"My friends," said Cyrus Smith in a deeply moved voice, "may the God of all mercies receive the soul of Captain Nemo, our savior!"

The colonists had uncovered at this last phrase of Cyrus Smith and murmured the captain's name. At this moment, Ayrton, approaching the engineer, said to him simply:

"Where must this casket be placed!"

It was the casket that Ayrton had saved at the peril of his life, at the moment when the island sank, and which he came faithfully to return to the engineer.

"Ayrton! Ayrton!" said Cyrus Smith with profound emotion.

Then, addressing Robert Grant:

"Sir," he added, "where you had left a guilty man, you find a man whom expiation has made honest again, and to whom I am proud to give my hand!"

Robert Grant was then made acquainted with this strange history of Captain Nemo and the colonists of Lincoln Island. Then, having taken the bearings of what remained of this reef which was thenceforth to figure on the charts of the Pacific, he gave the order to put about.

Fifteen days later, the colonists landed in America, and they found their pacified country, after this terrible war which had brought the triumph of justice and right. Of the riches contained in the casket bequeathed by Captain Nemo to the colonists of Lincoln Island, the greater part was employed in the acquisition of a vast domain in the state of Iowa. A single pearl, the finest, was withdrawn from this treasure and sent to Lady Glenarvan, in the name of the shipwrecked men repatriated by the Duncan.

There, on this domain, the colonists called to work, that is to say, to fortune and happiness, all those to whom they had counted on offering the hospitality of Lincoln Island. There was founded a vast colony to which they gave the name of the island vanished in the depths of the Pacific. There was found a river which was called the Mercy, a mountain which took the name of Franklin, a small lake which was Lake Grant, forests which became the forests of the Far-West. It was like an island on the mainland.

There, under the intelligent hand of the engineer and his companions, all prospered. Not one of the former colonists of Lincoln Island was missing, for they had sworn always to live together, Nab where his master was, Ayrton ready to sacrifice himself on every occasion, Pencroff more farmer than he had ever been sailor, Harbert, whose studies were completed under the direction of Cyrus Smith, Gideon Spilett himself, who founded the New Lincoln Herald, which was the best-informed journal in the whole world.

There, Cyrus Smith and his companions received on several occasions the visit of Lord and Lady Glenarvan, of Captain John Mangles and his wife, sister of Robert Grant, of Robert Grant himself, of Major Mac Nabbs, of all those who had been mixed up in the double history of Captain Grant and Captain Nemo.

There, in fine, all were happy, united in the present as they had been in the past; but never should they forget this island, on which they had arrived, poor and naked, this island which, for four years, had sufficed for their needs, and of which there remained no more than a piece of granite beaten by the waves of the Pacific, tomb of him who was Captain Nemo!

“Stories of the world, in your language.”