Part 6

At six in the morning, day had broken. The clouds were racing with extreme rapidity in a relatively high zone. The sailor and his companions were then about six miles from the Chimneys. They were following a very flat shore, bordered offshore by a fringe of rocks whose tops alone were then emerging, for it was high tide. On the left, the country, broken by a few dunes bristling with thistles, offered the rather wild aspect of a vast sandy region. The coastline was little indented, and presented no other barrier to the Ocean than a fairly irregular chain of hillocks. Here and there, one or two trees grimaced, lying toward the west, their branches thrown in that direction. Far in the rear, to the southwest, rounded the edge of the last forest. At that moment, Top gave unmistakable signs of agitation. He went ahead, came back to the sailor, and seemed to urge him to quicken his pace. The dog had then left the shore, and, impelled by his admirable instinct, without a single hesitation, had ventured in among the dunes.

He was followed. The country appeared to be absolutely deserted. Not a living being animated it.

The edge of the dunes, very broad, was composed of hillocks, and even of hills very capriciously distributed. It was like a little Switzerland of sand, and nothing less than a prodigious instinct was needed to find one's way there.

Five minutes after leaving the shore, the reporter and his companions arrived before a sort of excavation hollowed out on the reverse slope of a high dune. There, Top stopped and gave a clear bark. Spilett, Harbert, and Pencroff entered this grotto.

Nab was there, kneeling beside a body stretched upon a bed of grasses...

This body was that of the engineer Cyrus Smith.

CHAPTER VIII

Nab did not move. The sailor threw him but a single word.

"Alive!" he cried.

Nab did not answer. Gideon Spilett and Pencroff turned pale. Harbert clasped his hands and remained motionless. But it was evident that the poor negro, absorbed in his grief, had neither seen his companions nor heard the sailor's words.

The reporter knelt beside that motionless body, and laid his ear upon the engineer's chest, whose garments he partly opened. A minute -- a century! -- elapsed, while he sought to catch some beating of the heart.

Nab had raised himself a little and was looking without seeing.

Despair could not have further altered a man's face. Nab was unrecognizable, exhausted by fatigue, broken by sorrow. He believed his master dead.

Gideon Spilett, after a long and attentive observation, rose.

"He lives!" said he.

Pencroff, in his turn, knelt beside Cyrus Smith; his ear also caught a few beatings, and his lips, some breath escaping from the engineer's lips.

Harbert, at a word from the reporter, darted outside to seek water. He found a hundred paces thence a limpid stream, evidently much swollen by the previous day's rains, which filtered through the sand. But nothing to hold this water, not a shell in these dunes! The young boy had to content himself with soaking his handkerchief in the stream, and he came running back toward the grotto.

Happily, this moistened handkerchief sufficed for Gideon Spilett, who only wished to wet the engineer's lips. These molecules of fresh water produced an almost immediate effect. A sigh escaped from Cyrus Smith's chest, and it even seemed that he tried to pronounce a few words.

"We shall save him!" said the reporter.

Nab had taken hope again at these words. He undressed his master, in order to see if the body presented any wound. Neither the head, nor the torso, nor the limbs had contusions, not even scratches, a surprising thing, since the body of Cyrus Smith must have been rolled amid the rocks; the hands themselves were intact, and it was difficult to explain how the engineer bore no trace of the efforts he must have made to cross the line of reefs.

But the explanation of this circumstance would come later. When Cyrus Smith could speak, he would tell what had happened. For the moment, it was a question of recalling him to life, and it was probable that friction would bring about this result.

This was done with the sailor's jacket.

The engineer, warmed by this rough massage, moved his arm slightly, and his respiration began to re-establish itself more regularly. He was dying of exhaustion, and certainly, but for the arrival of the reporter and his companions, all would have been over with Cyrus Smith.

"Did you then believe him dead, your master?" asked the sailor of Nab.

"Yes! dead!" answered Nab, "and if Top had not found you, if you had not come, I would have buried my master and died beside him!"

One sees how narrowly Cyrus Smith's life had been preserved!

Nab then related what had passed. The day before, after leaving the Chimneys at dawn, he had gone up the coast in a north-northeast direction and reached the part of the shore he had already visited.

There, without any hope, he acknowledged, Nab had searched on the bank, amid the rocks, on the sand, for the slightest indications that might guide him.

He had examined especially that part of the shore which high water did not cover, for, on its edge, ebb and flow must have effaced all trace. Nab no longer hoped to find his master alive. It was to the discovery of a corpse that he was thus going, a corpse which he wished to bury with his own hands!

Nab had searched long. His efforts remained fruitless. It did not seem that this deserted coast had ever been frequented by a human being. The shellfish, those the sea could not reach, -- and which were met by millions beyond the reach of the tides, -- were intact. Not a shell crushed. Over a space of two or three hundred yards, there existed no trace of a landing, neither ancient nor recent.

Nab had therefore decided to go up the coast for some miles. It might be that the currents had borne a body upon some more distant point.

When a corpse floats at a little distance from a flat shore, it is very rare that the surf does not cast it there sooner or later. Nab knew this, and he wished to see his master once more.

"I skirted the coast for two miles more, I visited the whole line of reefs at low water, the whole shore at high water, and I was despairing of finding anything, when yesterday, toward five in the evening, I noticed on the sand the imprints of steps.

"Imprints of steps?" cried Pencroff.

"Yes!" answered Nab.

"And did these imprints begin at the reefs themselves?" asked the reporter.

"No," answered Nab, "at the tide line only, for between the tide line and the reefs, the others must have been effaced."

"Continue, Nab," said Gideon Spilett.

"When I saw those imprints, I became like one mad. They were very recognizable, and directed toward the dunes. I followed them for a quarter of a mile, running, but taking care not to efface them. Five minutes after, as night was falling, I heard the barking of a dog. It was Top, and Top led me here, near my master!"

Nab ended his account by telling what had been his grief at finding that lifeless body. He had tried to catch in him some remnant of life!

Now that he had found him dead, he wished him alive! All his efforts had been useless! He had nothing left but to render the last duties to him he so loved!

Nab had then thought of his companions. These would doubtless wish to see the unfortunate one once more! Top was there. Could he not trust to the sagacity of this faithful animal? Nab pronounced several times the name of the reporter, that of the engineer's companions whom Top knew best. Then, he showed him the south of the coast, and the dog darted in the direction indicated to him.

One knows how, guided by an instinct that may be regarded as almost supernatural, for the animal had never been to the Chimneys, Top arrived there nevertheless.

The companions of Nab had listened to this account with extreme attention.

There was for them something inexplicable in that Cyrus Smith, after the efforts he must have made to escape the waves, in crossing the reefs, had not a trace of a scratch. And what was no more explicable was that the engineer could have gained, more than a mile from the coast, this grotto lost amid the dunes.

"So, Nab," said the reporter, "it was not you who carried your master to this place?"

"No, it was not I," answered Nab.

"It is very evident that Mr. Smith came here alone," said Pencroff.

"It is evident, indeed," observed Gideon Spilett, "but it is not believable!"

One could have the explanation of this fact only from the engineer's mouth. It was necessary to wait for that until speech returned to him. Happily, life was already resuming its course. The friction had re-established the circulation of the blood. Cyrus Smith moved his arms again, then his head, and a few incomprehensible words once more escaped his lips.

Nab, bent over him, called to him, but the engineer did not seem to hear, and his eyes were still closed. Life revealed itself in him only by movement. The senses had yet no part in it.

Pencroff much regretted having neither fire, nor means to procure it, for he had unfortunately forgotten to bring the burnt linen, which he could easily have inflamed by the striking of two pebbles. As for the engineer's pockets, they were absolutely empty, save that of his waistcoat, which contained his watch. It was therefore necessary to transport Cyrus Smith to the Chimneys, and as soon as possible. This was the advice of all.

However, the care lavished upon the engineer was to restore his consciousness more quickly than could have been hoped. The water with which his lips were moistened revived him little by little. Pencroff also had the idea of mixing with this water the juice of that flesh of grouse which he had brought. Harbert, having run to the shore, returned with two large bivalve shells. The sailor composed a sort of mixture, and introduced it between the engineer's lips, who appeared to drink avidly this blend.

His eyes then opened. Nab and the reporter had bent over him.

"My master! my master!" cried Nab.

The engineer heard him. He recognized Nab and Spilett, then his two other companions, Harbert and the sailor, and his hand pressed theirs lightly. A few words again escaped his mouth, -- words he had already pronounced, doubtless, and which indicated what thoughts tormented, even then, his mind. These words were understood, this time.

"Island or continent?" he murmured.

"Ah!" cried Pencroff, who could not restrain this exclamation. "The devil take it, we care little for that, provided you live, Mr. Cyrus! Island or continent? We shall see later."

The engineer made a slight affirmative sign, and appeared to fall asleep.

This sleep was respected, and the reporter immediately made his arrangements so that the engineer might be transported in the best conditions. Nab, Harbert, and Pencroff left the grotto and directed themselves toward a high dune crowned with a few rickety trees. And, by the way, the sailor could not refrain from repeating:

"Island or continent! To think of that when one has but the breath left! what a man!"

Arrived at the summit of the dune, Pencroff and his two companions, with no other tools than their arms, stripped of its principal branches a rather puny tree, a sort of maritime pine emaciated by the winds; then, of these branches, they made a litter which, once covered with leaves and grasses, would permit of transporting the engineer.

This was the work of about forty minutes, and it was ten o'clock when the sailor, Nab, and Harbert returned to Cyrus Smith, whom Gideon Spilett had not left.

The engineer was then waking from this sleep, or rather from that slumber in which he had been found. Color was returning to his cheeks, which until then had had the pallor of death. He raised himself a little, looked around him, and seemed to ask where he was.

"Can you hear me without fatiguing yourself, Cyrus?" said the reporter.

"Yes," answered the engineer.

"It seems to me," then said the sailor, "that Mr. Smith will hear you still better, if he returns to this grouse jelly, -- for it is grouse, Mr. Cyrus," added he, presenting him some of this jelly, to which he this time mingled particles of flesh.

Cyrus Smith chewed these morsels of grouse, the remains of which were shared among his three companions, who suffered from hunger, and found the breakfast rather meager.

"Good!" said the sailor, "the victuals await us at the Chimneys, for it is well that you should know it, Mr. Cyrus, we have there, in the south, a house with rooms, beds, and hearth, and, in the larder, some dozens of birds that our Harbert calls couroucous. Your litter is ready, and, as soon as you feel the strength for it, we shall transport you to our dwelling.

"Thanks, my friend," answered the engineer, "another hour or two, and we may set out... And now, speak, Spilett."

The reporter then gave the account of what had passed. He told those events which Cyrus Smith must be ignorant of, the last fall of the balloon, the landing on this unknown land, which seemed deserted, whatever it was, island or continent, the discovery of the Chimneys, the searches undertaken to find the engineer, the devotion of Nab, all that was owed to the intelligence of the faithful Top, etc.

"But," asked Cyrus Smith in a still weakened voice, "you did not then pick me up on the shore?"

"No," answered the reporter.

"And it was not you who brought me into this grotto?"

"No."

"At what distance is this grotto from the reefs?"

"About half a mile," answered Pencroff, "and if you are astonished, Mr. Cyrus, we are no less surprised ourselves to see you in this place!"

"Indeed," answered the engineer, who was reviving little by little and taking interest in these details, "indeed, that is singular!"

"But," resumed the sailor, "can you tell us what happened after you were carried off by the sea wave?"

Cyrus Smith recalled his memories. He knew little. The sea wave had torn him from the net of the balloon. He sank first to some fathoms' depth. Returned to the surface of the sea, in that half-darkness, he felt a living being stirring near him. It was Top, who had precipitated himself to his rescue. Raising his eyes, he no longer perceived the balloon, which, lightened of his weight and that of the dog, had departed like an arrow. He saw himself, amid those angry waves, at a distance from the coast which could not be less than half a mile. He attempted to struggle against the billows by swimming vigorously. Top supported him by his garments; but a current of lightning seized him, pushed him toward the north, and, after half an hour of efforts, he sank, dragging Top with him into the abyss. From that moment until the moment he had just found himself in the arms of his friends, he had no further memory of anything.

"However," resumed Pencroff, "it must be that you were cast upon the shore, and that you had the strength to walk hither, since Nab found the imprints of your steps!"

"Yes... it must be..." answered the engineer, reflecting. "And you saw no trace of human beings on this coast?"

"No trace," answered the reporter. "Besides, if by chance some savior had met there, just in time, to rescue you from the waves, why would he have abandoned you after snatching you from them?"

"You are right, my dear Spilett. -- Tell me, Nab," added the engineer, turning toward his servant, "it was not you who... you would not have had a moment's absence... during which... No, that is absurd... Do there still exist some of those imprints?" asked Cyrus Smith.

"Yes, my master," answered Nab, "see, at the entrance, on the very reverse slope of this dune, in a place sheltered from wind and rain. The others have been effaced by the storm."

"Pencroff," answered Cyrus Smith, "will you take my shoes, and see if they apply exactly to those imprints!"

The sailor did as the engineer requested. Harbert and he, guided by Nab, went to the spot where the imprints were, while Cyrus Smith said to the reporter:

"There have passed there things inexplicable!"

"Inexplicable, indeed!" answered Gideon Spilett.

"But let us not insist on it at this moment, my dear Spilett, we shall speak of it later."

An instant after, the sailor, Nab, and Harbert returned.

There was no doubt possible. The engineer's shoes applied exactly to the preserved imprints. Therefore, it was Cyrus Smith who had left them on the sand.

"Come," said he, "it is I who experienced that hallucination, that absence which I put to Nab's account! I must have walked like a sleepwalker, without consciousness of my steps, and it is Top who, in his instinct, will have led me here, after snatching me from the waves... Come, Top! Come, my dog!"

The magnificent animal bounded to his master, barking, and caresses were not spared him.

It will be agreed that there was no other explanation to give to the facts which had brought about the saving of Cyrus Smith, and that to Top returned all the honor of the affair.

Toward noon, Pencroff having asked Cyrus Smith if he might be transported, Cyrus Smith, as his only answer, and by an effort which attested the most energetic will, rose.

But he had to lean on the sailor, for he would have fallen.

"Good! good!" said Pencroff. "-- The litter of Mr. Engineer."

The litter was brought. The transverse branches had been covered with mosses and long grasses. They stretched Cyrus Smith upon it, and directed themselves toward the coast, Pencroff at one end of the shafts, Nab at the other.

It was eight miles to cover, but as they could not go quickly, and would perhaps have to stop frequently, one must count on a lapse of at least six hours, before reaching the Chimneys.

The wind was still violent, but happily it no longer rained. Though lying down, the engineer, leaning on his arm, observed the coast, especially in the part opposite the sea. He spoke not, but he looked, and certainly the plan of this country with its accidents of terrain, its forests, its diverse productions, was graven in his mind.

However, after two hours of road, fatigue prevailed, and he fell asleep upon the litter.

At half past five, the little troop arrived at the cut corner, and, a little after, before the Chimneys.

All stopped, and the litter was deposited on the sand. Cyrus Smith slept profoundly and did not wake.

Pencroff, to his extreme surprise, could then ascertain that the frightful tempest of the day before had modified the aspect of the places. Considerable landslides had occurred. Great blocks of rock lay on the shore, and a thick carpet of sea grasses, wracks and algae, covered all the bank. It was evident that the sea, passing over the islet, had borne itself to the foot of the enormous granite curtain. Before the orifice of the Chimneys, the ground, deeply gullied, had undergone a violent assault of the waves.

Pencroff had like a presentiment which crossed his mind. He precipitated himself into the corridor.

Almost immediately, he came out of it, and remained motionless, looking at his companions...

The fire was extinguished. The drowned ashes were no more than mud. The burnt linen, which was to serve as tinder, had disappeared. The sea had penetrated to the bottom of the corridors, and all overturned, all destroyed within the Chimneys!

CHAPTER IX

In a few words, Gideon Spilett, Harbert, and Nab were made aware of the situation. This accident, which might have very grave consequences, -- at least Pencroff so viewed it, -- produced diverse effects upon the companions of the honest sailor.

Nab, wholly given to the joy of having found his master, did not listen, or rather would not even concern himself with what Pencroff said.

Harbert, he, seemed to share in some measure the sailor's apprehensions.

As for the reporter, to Pencroff's words he simply answered:

"Upon my faith, Pencroff, that is all the same to me!

"But, I repeat to you that we have no more fire!

"Pooh!

"Nor any means of relighting it.

"Bah!

"Yet, Mr. Spilett...

"Is not Cyrus there?" answered the reporter. "Is not our engineer alive? He will well find the means to make us fire, he!"

"And with what?"

"With nothing."

What would Pencroff have answered? He would not have answered, for, at bottom, he shared the confidence his companions had in Cyrus Smith. The engineer was for them a microcosm, a compound of all science and all human intelligence! It was as good as being with Cyrus in a desert island as without Cyrus in the most industrious villa of the Union. With him, one could lack nothing.

With him, one could not despair. One might come tell these brave folk that a volcanic eruption was about to annihilate this land, that this land was about to sink into the abysses of the Pacific, they would have imperturbably answered: "Cyrus is there! See Cyrus!"

In the meantime, however, the engineer was still plunged in a new prostration determined by the transport, and one could not appeal to his ingenuity at this moment. The supper must necessarily be very meager. Indeed, all the grouse flesh had been consumed, and there existed no means of cooking any game whatever.

Besides, the couroucous which served as reserve had disappeared. It was therefore necessary to take counsel.

Above all, Cyrus Smith was transported into the central corridor. There, they managed to arrange him a bed of algae and wracks remained almost dry.

The profound sleep which had seized him could only rapidly repair his strength, and better, doubtless, than would have done an abundant nourishment.

Night had come, and, with it, the temperature, modified by a shift of the wind to the northeast, cooled seriously. Now, as the sea had destroyed the partitions established by Pencroff at certain points of the corridors, currents of air became established, which rendered the Chimneys little habitable. The engineer would therefore have found himself in rather bad conditions, if his companions, stripping themselves of their jacket or their sailor's coat, had not carefully covered him.

The supper, that evening, was composed only of those inevitable lithodomes, of which Harbert and Nab made an ample harvest on the shore. However, to these mollusks the young boy joined a certain quantity of edible algae, which he gathered on high rocks whose walls the sea could only wet at the epoch of the great tides. These algae, belonging to the family of fucaceae, were species of sargasso which, dry, furnish a gelatinous matter rather rich in nutritive elements. The reporter and his companions, after having absorbed a considerable quantity of lithodomes, therefore sucked these sargassos, to which they found a very supportable taste, and it must be said that, on the Asiatic shores, they enter for a notable proportion into the alimentation of the natives.

"No matter!" said the sailor, "it is time that Mr. Cyrus came to our aid."

However the cold became very keen and, unhappily, there was no means of combating it.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”