Part 7

The sailor, genuinely vexed, sought by every possible means to procure fire. Nab even helped him in this operation. He had found some dry moss, and, by striking two pebbles together, he obtained sparks; but the moss, not being sufficiently inflammable, did not catch, and, moreover, these sparks, which were merely incandescent flint, lacked the consistency of those that fly from the piece of steel in an ordinary tinderbox. The operation therefore failed.

Pencroff, although he had no confidence in the method, then tried to rub two pieces of dry wood against each other, after the manner of savages. Certainly, the exertion that Nab and he gave themselves, if it had been transformed into heat, according to the new theories, would have sufficed to boil a steamship's boiler! The result was nil. The pieces of wood grew warm, that was all, and even much less so than the operators themselves.

After an hour of labor, Pencroff was in a sweat, and he threw the pieces of wood down in vexation.

"When anyone makes me believe that savages light fire that way," said he, "it will be hot, even in winter! I'd sooner set my own arms alight by rubbing them together!"

The sailor was wrong to deny the method. It is certain that savages ignite wood by means of rapid friction. But not every kind of wood is suited to this operation, and then there is "the knack," to use the accepted expression, and it is probable that Pencroff did not have "the knack."

Pencroff's ill humor was not of long duration. The two pieces of wood that he had rejected were taken up again by Harbert, who exerted himself to rub them with renewed vigor. The sturdy sailor could not restrain a burst of laughter, on seeing the efforts of the lad to succeed where he himself had failed.

"Rub away, my boy, rub away!" said he.

"I am rubbing," answered Harbert, laughing, "but I have no other ambition than to warm myself in my turn instead of shivering, and soon I shall be as hot as you, Pencroff!"

Which came to pass. Be that as it may, they were obliged to renounce, for that night, the procuring of fire.

Gédéon Spilett repeated for the twentieth time that Cyrus Smith would not be at a loss for so little.

And, meanwhile, he stretched himself in one of the galleries, on the bed of sand. Harbert, Nab, and Pencroff imitated him, while Top slept at his master's feet.

The next day, the 28th of March, when the engineer awoke, about eight o'clock in the morning, he saw his companions near him, watching for his waking, and, as on the previous day, his first words were:

"Island or continent?"

It will be seen that this was his fixed idea.

"Well!" answered Pencroff, "we know nothing of it, Mr. Smith!"

"You do not know yet?..."

"But we shall know," added Pencroff, "when you have piloted us through this country."

"I think myself able to try it," replied the engineer, who, without too much effort, rose and stood upright.

"That is good!" cried the sailor.

"I was dying chiefly of exhaustion," answered Cyrus Smith. "My friends, a little food, and it will show no more. — You have fire, have you not?"

This question did not obtain an immediate reply.

But, after a few moments:

"Alas! we have no fire," said Pencroff, "or rather, Mr. Cyrus, we have none any longer!"

And the sailor told the story of what had happened the day before. He amused the engineer by relating the history of their single match, then his abortive attempt to procure fire after the fashion of savages.

"We shall see to it," replied the engineer, "and if we do not find a substance akin to tinder..."

"Well?" asked the sailor.

"Well, we shall make matches."

"Chemical?"

"Chemical!"

"It is no harder than that," cried the reporter, clapping the sailor on the shoulder.

The latter did not find the thing so simple, but he did not protest. All went out. The weather had become fine again. A bright sun rose on the horizon of the sea, and speckled with golden spangles the prismatic roughnesses of the enormous wall.

After casting a rapid glance around him, the engineer sat down on a block of rock. Harbert offered him a few handfuls of mussels and sargassum, saying:

"It is all we have, Mr. Cyrus."

"Thank you, my boy," answered Cyrus Smith, "that will suffice, — for this morning, at least."

And he ate with appetite this meager nourishment, which he washed down with a little fresh water, drawn from the river in a large shell.

His companions looked at him without speaking. Then, after satisfying his hunger as best he could, Cyrus Smith, crossing his arms, said:

"So, my friends, you do not yet know whether fate has cast us upon a continent or upon an island?"

"No, Mr. Cyrus," answered the young lad.

"We shall know tomorrow," resumed the engineer. "Until then, there is nothing to be done."

"Yes, there is," replied Pencroff.

"What?"

"Fire," said the sailor, who, too, had his fixed idea.

"We shall make it, Pencroff," answered Cyrus Smith. "While you were carrying me yesterday, did I not catch sight, to the west, of a mountain that dominates this region?"

"Yes," answered Gédéon Spilett, "a mountain that must be rather high..."

"Good," resumed the engineer. "Tomorrow, we shall climb to its summit, and we shall see whether this land is an island or a continent. Until then, I repeat, nothing to be done."

"Yes, fire!" said the obstinate sailor again.

"But fire shall be made!" replied Gédéon Spilett. "A little patience, Pencroff!"

The sailor looked at Gédéon Spilett with an air that seemed to say: "If it is left to you to make it, we shall not taste roast meat any too soon!" But he held his tongue.

Meanwhile Cyrus Smith had made no answer. He seemed very little preoccupied with this question of fire. For some moments he remained absorbed in his reflections. Then, taking up the word again:

"My friends," said he, "our situation is perhaps deplorable, but, in any case, it is very simple.

Either we are on a continent, and then, at the price of more or less fatigue, we shall reach some inhabited point, or else we are on an island. In the latter case, one of two things: if the island is inhabited, we shall see to getting along with its inhabitants; if it is deserted, we shall see to getting along by ourselves."

"It is certain that nothing is simpler," answered Pencroff.

"But, whether it be a continent or an island," asked Gédéon Spilett, "where do you think, Cyrus, this hurricane has cast us?"

"Exactly, I cannot know," answered the engineer, "but the presumptions are for a land of the Pacific. Indeed, when we left Richmond, the wind was blowing from the northeast, and its very violence proves that its direction could not have varied. If this direction was maintained from northeast to southwest, we have crossed the states of North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, the Gulf of Mexico, Mexico itself, in its narrow part, then a portion of the Pacific Ocean. I estimate at no less than six or seven thousand miles the distance traversed by the balloon, and, if the wind had varied by half a point, it must have borne us either upon the archipelago of Mendana, or upon the Pomotou, or even, if it had a greater velocity than I suppose, as far as the lands of New Zealand. If this last hypothesis has been realized, our return home will be easy. English or Maoris, we shall always find someone to speak to. If, on the contrary, this coast belongs to some deserted island of a Micronesian archipelago, perhaps we may recognize it from the top of that cone which dominates the region, and then we shall see to establishing ourselves here, as if we were never to leave it!"

"Never!" cried the reporter. "You say: never! my dear Cyrus?"

"It is better to put the worst first at once," answered the engineer, "and reserve to oneself only the surprise of better."

"Well said!" replied Pencroff. "And we must hope also that this island, if such it be, is not precisely situated outside the route of ships! That would indeed be to play the part of the unfortunate!"

"We shall know where we stand only after having made, and before all else, the ascent of the mountain," answered the engineer.

"But tomorrow, Mr. Cyrus," asked Harbert, "will you be in a state to bear the fatigues of this ascent?"

"I hope so," answered the engineer, "but on condition that master Pencroff and you, my child, show yourselves intelligent and dexterous hunters."

"Mr. Cyrus," answered the sailor, "since you speak of game, if, on my return, I were as certain of being able to roast it as I am certain of bringing it back..."

"Bring it back anyway, Pencroff," answered Cyrus Smith.

It was therefore agreed that the engineer and the reporter should spend the day at the Chimneys, in order to examine the shore and the upper plateau. During this time, Nab, Harbert, and the sailor should return to the forest, renew the supply of wood there, and lay hands on any feathered or furred beast that came within their reach.

They set out then, about ten o'clock in the morning, Harbert confident, Nab joyous, Pencroff murmuring to himself:

"If, on my return, I find fire at home, it is that thunder in person will have come to light it!"

All three went up the bank, and, arriving at the bend formed by the river, the sailor, stopping, said to his two companions:

"Shall we begin by being hunters or woodcutters?"

"Hunters," answered Harbert. "There is Top already on the scent."

"Let us hunt then," resumed the sailor; "then we shall come back here to make our provision of wood."

This said, Harbert, Nab, and Pencroff, after tearing three sticks from the trunk of a young fir, followed Top, who was bounding through the tall grasses.

This time, the hunters, instead of following the course of the river, struck more directly into the very heart of the forest. They were still the same trees, belonging for the most part to the family of pines. In certain places, less crowded, isolated in clumps, these pines presented considerable dimensions, and seemed to indicate, by their development, that this region was more elevated in latitude than the engineer supposed. Some clearings, bristling with stumps gnawed by time, were covered with dead wood, and thus formed inexhaustible reserves of fuel. Then, the clearing passed, the thicket closed in and became almost impenetrable.

To guide oneself amid these masses of trees, without any beaten path, was rather difficult. Also, the sailor, from time to time, marked his route by making a few blazes that were to be easily recognizable. But perhaps he had been wrong not to go up the watercourse, as Harbert and he had done during their first excursion, for, after an hour's march, not a single beast had yet shown itself. Top, running under the low branches, gave the alarm only to birds that could not be approached. The couroucous themselves were absolutely invisible, and it was probable that the sailor would be forced to return to that marshy part of the forest, in which he had so happily carried on his grouse-fishing.

"Eh! Pencroff," said Nab in a somewhat sarcastic tone, "if that is all the game you promised to bring back to my master, it will not take much fire to roast it!"

"Patience, Nab," answered the sailor, "it is not game that will be lacking on the return!"

"You have then no confidence in Mr. Smith?"

"Yes."

"But you do not believe he will make fire?"

"I shall believe it when the wood flames in the hearth."

"It will flame, since my master has said so!"

"We shall see!"

Meanwhile, the sun had not yet reached the highest point of its course above the horizon.

The exploration continued, therefore, and was usefully marked by the discovery that Harbert made of a tree whose fruits were edible. It was the pigeon pine, which produces an excellent almond, highly esteemed in the temperate regions of America and Europe. These almonds were in a perfect state of maturity, and Harbert pointed them out to his two companions, who regaled themselves thereon.

"Come," said Pencroff, "seaweed instead of bread, raw mussels instead of meat, and almonds for dessert, that is indeed the dinner of folks who no longer have a single match in their pocket!"

"One must not complain," answered Harbert.

"I do not complain, my boy," answered Pencroff. "Only, I repeat that meat is a little too economized in this sort of meal!"

"Top has seen something!..." cried Nab, who ran toward a thicket in the midst of which the dog had disappeared, barking.

To Top's barks were mingled singular gruntings.

The sailor and Harbert had followed Nab. If there was game there, it was not the moment to discuss how one might cook it, but rather how one might seize it.

The hunters, scarcely entered into the thicket, saw Top grappling with an animal that he held by an ear. This quadruped was a species of hog some two feet and a half long, of a blackish brown but less dark on the belly, having a hard and thin coat of hair, and whose toes, then strongly applied to the ground, seemed joined by membranes.

Harbert thought he recognized in this animal a capybara, that is to say, one of the largest specimens of the order of rodents.

However, the capybara did not struggle against the dog. It rolled its big eyes, deeply set in a thick layer of fat, stupidly. Perhaps it saw men for the first time.

However, Nab, having secured his stick in his hand, was about to knock down the rodent, when the latter, tearing itself from Top's teeth, who kept only a bit of its ear, gave a vigorous grunt, threw itself upon Harbert, half overthrew him, and disappeared through the woods.

"Ah! the scoundrel!" cried Pencroff.

Immediately all three had launched themselves on Top's tracks, and at the moment when they were about to rejoin him, the animal disappeared under the waters of a vast pool, shaded by great secular pines.

Nab, Harbert, Pencroff had stopped, motionless. Top had thrown himself into the water, but the capybara, hidden at the bottom of the pool, no longer appeared.

"Let us wait," said the young lad, "for it will soon come up to breathe at the surface."

"Will it not drown?" asked Nab.

"No," answered Harbert, "since it has webbed feet, and it is almost an amphibian. But let us watch for it."

Top had remained swimming. Pencroff and his two companions went to occupy each a point on the bank, in order to cut off all retreat to the capybara, which the dog sought by swimming at the surface of the pool.

Harbert was not mistaken. After a few minutes, the animal came up above the waters. Top with a bound was upon it, and prevented it from diving again. A moment later, the capybara, dragged to the bank, was knocked down by a blow of Nab's stick.

"Hurrah!" cried Pencroff, who willingly employed this cry of triumph. "Only a glowing coal, and this rodent will be gnawed to the bones!"

Pencroff loaded the capybara on his shoulder, and, judging by the height of the sun that it must be about two o'clock, he gave the signal for return.

Top's instinct was not useless to the hunters, who, thanks to the intelligent animal, were able to find the already traversed path. Half an hour later, they arrived at the bend of the river.

As he had done the first time, Pencroff rapidly established a raft of wood, although, for lack of fire, this seemed to him a useless task, and, the raft following the current, they returned toward the Chimneys.

But, the sailor was not at fifty paces when he stopped, uttered a new formidable hurrah, and, pointing his hand toward the angle of the cliff:

"Harbert! Nab! Look!" cried he.

A smoke was escaping and whirling above the rocks!

CHAPTER X

A few moments later, the three hunters found themselves before a crackling hearth. Cyrus Smith and the reporter were there. Pencroff looked at them one and the other, without saying a word, his capybara in hand.

"Well, yes, my brave," cried the reporter. "Fire, true fire, which will perfectly roast this magnificent game of which we shall regale ourselves presently!"

"But who lit it?..." asked Pencroff.

"The sun!"

Gédéon Spilett's answer was exact. It was the sun that had furnished this heat at which Pencroff marveled. The sailor would not believe his eyes, and he was so astounded that he did not think to question the engineer.

"You had then a lens, sir?" asked Harbert of Cyrus Smith.

"No, my child," answered the latter, "but I made one."

And he showed the apparatus that had served him as a lens. They were simply the two glasses that he had taken from the reporter's watch and his own. After filling them with water and making their edges adherent by means of a little clay, he had thus fabricated a veritable lens, which, concentrating the solar rays upon a well-dried moss, had determined its combustion.

The sailor considered the apparatus, then he looked at the engineer without pronouncing a word. Only, his glance said much! If, for him, Cyrus Smith was not a god, he was assuredly more than a man. At last speech returned to him, and he cried:

"Note that, Mr. Spilett, note that on your paper!"

"It is noted," answered the reporter.

Then, Nab helping, the sailor arranged the spit, and the capybara, properly cleaned, soon grilled, like a simple sucking-pig, before a clear and crackling flame.

The Chimneys had become more habitable, not only because the galleries were warming at the fire of the hearth, but because the partitions of stones and sand had been restored.

It will be seen that the engineer and his companion had well employed the day. Cyrus Smith had almost entirely recovered his strength, and had tried himself by mounting to the upper plateau. From this point, his eye, accustomed to evaluating heights and distances, had long fixed itself on that cone whose summit he wished to reach the next day. The mount, situated some six miles to the northwest, appeared to him to measure three thousand five hundred feet above the level of the sea. Consequently, the gaze of an observer posted at its summit could traverse the horizon in a radius of fifty miles at least.

It was therefore probable that Cyrus Smith would easily resolve this question "of continent or island," to which he gave, not without reason, precedence over all others.

They supped suitably. The flesh of the capybara was declared excellent. The sargassum and the almonds of the stone pine completed this meal, during which the engineer spoke little. He was preoccupied with the projects of the morrow. Once or twice, Pencroff emitted some ideas on what it would be fitting to do, but Cyrus Smith, who was evidently a methodical spirit, contented himself with shaking his head.

"Tomorrow," he repeated, "we shall know where we stand, and we shall act accordingly."

The meal ended, new armfuls of wood were thrown on the hearth, and the guests of the Chimneys, including the faithful Top, fell asleep in a deep slumber. No incident troubled this peaceful night, and the next day, — the 29th of March, — fresh and fit, they awoke, ready to undertake this excursion which was to fix their fate.

All was ready for departure. The remains of the capybara could nourish Cyrus Smith and his companions for twenty-four hours more. Besides, they hoped to revictual on the way. As the glasses had been put back into the watches of the engineer and the reporter, Pencroff burned a little of that linen which was to serve as tinder. As for flint, it could not be lacking in these terrains of plutonian origin.

It was half-past seven in the morning, when the explorers, armed with sticks, left the Chimneys. Following Pencroff's advice, it seemed good to take the already traversed path through the forest, free to return by another route. It was also the most direct way to reach the mountain. They turned the southern angle, and followed the left bank of the river, which was abandoned at the point where it bent toward the southwest. The trail, already beaten under the green trees, was found again, and, at nine o'clock, Cyrus Smith and his companions reached the western edge of the forest.

The ground, until then little broken, marshy at first, dry and sandy afterward, showed a slight slope, which rose from the shore toward the interior of the country. A few animals, very shy, had been glimpsed under the woods. Top put them up briskly, but his master recalled him at once, for the moment was not come to pursue them. Later, they would see. The engineer was not a man to let himself be distracted from his fixed idea. One would not even have been mistaken in affirming that he observed the country neither in its configuration nor in its natural productions. His sole objective was that mount which he purposed to climb, and he went straight to it.

At ten o'clock, a halt of some minutes was made. On issuing from the forest, the orographic system of the country had appeared to view. The mount was composed of two cones. The first, truncated at a height of about two thousand five hundred feet, was supported by capricious buttresses, which seemed to ramify like the claws of an immense talon applied to the soil. Between these buttresses opened as many narrow valleys, bristling with trees, whose last clumps rose to the truncation of the first cone. However, the vegetation appeared less abundant on the part of the mountain exposed to the northeast, and there were perceived rather deep striations, which must be lava flows. Upon the first cone rested a second cone, slightly rounded at its summit, and which stood a little askew. One would have said a vast round hat placed on the ear. It seemed formed of a denuded earth, pierced in many places by reddish rocks.

It was the summit of this second cone that it behooved to reach, and the crest of the buttresses must offer the best route for arriving there.

"We are on volcanic terrain," had said Cyrus Smith, and his companions, following him, began to rise little by little upon the back of a buttress, which, by a sinuous line and consequently more easily passable, led to the first plateau.

The swellings were numerous on this soil, which the plutonian forces had evidently convulsed. Here and there, erratic blocks, numerous debris of basalt, pumice stones, obsidians. In isolated clumps, rose some of those conifers, which, a few hundred feet lower, at the bottom of the narrow gorges, formed thick masses, almost impenetrable to the rays of the sun.

During this first part of the ascent on the lower slopes, Harbert remarked imprints which indicated the recent passage of large animals, wild or otherwise.

"Those beasts will perhaps not yield their domain to us voluntarily?" said Pencroff.

"Well," answered the reporter, who had already hunted the tiger in India and the lion in Africa, "we shall see to ridding ourselves of them. But, meanwhile, let us be on our guard!"

“Stories of the world, in your language.”