Part 9

The exploration of the island was complete, its configuration determined, its relief charted, its extent calculated, its hydrography and orography surveyed. The layout of forests and plains had been recorded in general on the reporter’s map. There remained only to descend the mountain slopes and to explore the ground from the threefold point of view of its mineral, vegetable, and animal resources.

But before giving his companions the signal to depart, Cyrus Smith said to them in his calm and grave voice:

“Here, my friends, is the narrow corner of land upon which the hand of the Almighty has cast us. This is where we shall live, perhaps for a long time. Perhaps also some unexpected help will reach us, if by chance some ship passes by… I say by chance, for this island is of little importance; it does not even offer a harbor that could serve as a stopping place for vessels, and it is to be feared that it lies outside the routes ordinarily followed, that is to say, too far south for the ships that frequent the archipelagos of the Pacific, too far north for those bound for Australia by doubling Cape Horn. I wish to hide nothing from you of our situation…”

“And you are right, my dear Cyrus,” replied the reporter quickly. “You are dealing with men. They have confidence in you, and you may count on them. — Is that not so, my friends?”

“I will obey you in all things, Mr. Cyrus,” said Harbert, who took the engineer’s hand.

“My master, always and everywhere!” cried Nab.

“As for me,” said the sailor, “may I lose my name if I sulk at the work, and if you please, Mr. Smith, we will make this island a little America! We will build cities there, we will lay railroads, we will install telegraphs, and one fine day, when it is well transformed, well arranged, well civilized, we will go and offer it to the government of the Union! Only, I ask one thing.”

“Which?” replied the reporter.

“It is to no longer consider us as shipwrecked men, but rather as colonists who have come here to colonize!”

Cyrus Smith could not help smiling, and the sailor’s motion was adopted. Then he thanked his companions, and added that he counted on their energy and on the help of heaven.

“Well! off to the Chimneys!” cried Pencroff.

“One moment, my friends,” replied the engineer, “it seems good to me to give a name to this island, as well as to the capes, promontories, and waterways that lie before our eyes.”

“Very good,” said the reporter. “That will simplify for the future the instructions we may have to give or follow.”

“Indeed,” resumed the sailor, “it is already something to be able to say where one is going and where one comes from. At least one appears to be somewhere.”

“The Chimneys, for example,” said Harbert.

“Exactly!” replied Pencroff. “That name was already more convenient, and it came to me all by itself. Shall we keep this name of Chimneys for our first encampment, Mr. Cyrus?”

“Yes, Pencroff, since you baptized it thus.”

“Good. As for the others, it will be easy,” resumed the sailor, who was in high spirits. “Let us give them names as the Robinsons did, whose story Harbert has read to me more than once: ‘Providence Bay,’ ‘Cachalot Point,’ ‘Cape of Deceived Hope’!…”

“Or rather the names of Mr. Smith,” replied Harbert, “of Mr. Spilett, of Nab!…”

“My name!” cried Nab, showing his teeth that shone with whiteness.

“Why not?” rejoined Pencroff. “‘Port Nab’ would sound very well! And ‘Cape Gideon’…”

“I should prefer names borrowed from our country,” replied the reporter, “which would remind us of America.”

“Yes, for the principal ones,” then said Cyrus Smith, “for those of the bays or seas, I willingly admit it. That we give to this vast eastern bay the name of Union Bay, for example, to this wide indentation on the south that of Washington Bay, to the mount that now bears us that of Mount Franklin, to this lake that spreads beneath our gaze that of Lake Grant, nothing better, my friends. These names will remind us of our country and of the great citizens who honored it; but for the rivers, gulfs, capes, and promontories that we perceive from the top of this mountain, let us choose designations that rather recall their particular configuration. They will imprint themselves better in our minds, and will be at the same time more practical. The shape of the island is strange enough that we shall not be embarrassed to imagine names that will do. As for the waterways that we do not know, the various parts of the forest that we shall later explore, the creeks that will be discovered in the sequel, we shall baptize them as they present themselves to us. What do you think, my friends?”

The engineer’s proposal was unanimously admitted by his companions. The island was there before their eyes like a spread-out map, and there was only a name to put to all its reentrant or projecting angles, as to all its reliefs. Gideon Spilett would inscribe them as they went, and the geographical nomenclature of the island would be definitively adopted.

First, they named Union Bay, Washington Bay, and Mount Franklin, the two bays and the mountain, as the engineer had done.

“Now,” said the reporter, “to this peninsula that projects to the southwest of the island, I propose to give the name of Serpentine Peninsula, and to the curved tail that terminates it that of Reptile End, for it is truly a reptile’s tail.”

“Adopted,” said the engineer.

“At present,” said Harbert, “this other extremity of the island, this gulf that so singularly resembles an open jaw, let us call it Shark Gulf.”

“Well found!” cried Pencroff, “and we shall complete the image by naming Mandible Cape the two parts of the jaw.”

“But there are two capes,” observed the reporter.

“Well!” replied Pencroff, “we shall have North Mandible Cape and South Mandible Cape.”

“They are inscribed,” replied Gideon Spilett.

“There remains to name the point at the southeast extremity of the island,” said Pencroff.

“That is to say the end of Union Bay?” replied Harbert.

“Claw Cape!” immediately cried Nab, who also wished, he, to be godfather to some piece of his domain.

And, in truth, Nab had found an excellent designation, for this cape well represented the powerful claw of the fantastic animal that this strangely drawn island figured.

Pencroff was delighted with the turn things were taking, and the imaginations, a little overexcited, soon gave:

To the river that supplied the colonists with drinking water, and near which the balloon had cast them, the name of the Mercy — a true thanksgiving to Providence; to the islet on which the shipwrecked men had first set foot, the name of Safety Island; to the plateau that crowned the high granite wall, above the Chimneys, and from which the eye could embrace the whole vast bay, the name of Prospect Plateau; finally, to all that mass of impenetrable woods that covered the Serpentine Peninsula, the name of the Far-West Forests.

The nomenclature of the visible and known parts of the island was thus terminated, and later it would be completed as new discoveries were made.

As for the orientation of the island, the engineer had determined it approximately by the height and position of the sun, which placed Union Bay and the whole of Prospect Plateau to the east. But the next day, by taking the exact time of the sun’s rising and setting, and noting its position at the half-time elapsed between this rising and setting, he counted on fixing exactly the north of the island, for, by reason of its situation in the southern hemisphere, the sun, at the precise moment of its culmination, passed to the north, and not to the south, as, in its apparent movement, it seems to do for places situated in the northern hemisphere.

All was therefore terminated, and the colonists had only to descend Mount Franklin to return to the Chimneys, when Pencroff cried out:

“Well! we are famous scatterbrains!”

“Why so?” asked Gideon Spilett, who had closed his notebook, and was rising to depart.

“And our island? How! We forgot to baptize it!”

Harbert was about to propose giving it the engineer’s name, and all his companions would have applauded, when Cyrus Smith said simply:

“Let us call it by the name of a great citizen, my friends, of him who now struggles to defend the unity of the American republic! Let us call it Lincoln Island!”

Three hurrahs were the response to the engineer’s proposal.

And that evening, before falling asleep, the new colonists spoke of their absent country; they spoke of that terrible war that was drenching it in blood; they could not doubt that the South would soon be reduced, and that the cause of the North, the cause of justice, would triumph, thanks to Grant, thanks to Lincoln!

Now, this took place on March 30, 1865, and they little knew that, sixteen days later, a frightful crime would be committed at Washington, and that, on Good Friday, Abraham Lincoln would fall under the bullet of a fanatic.

CHAPTER XII

The colonists of Lincoln Island cast a last look around them, they made the tour of the crater by its narrow ridge, and, half an hour later, they had descended to the first plateau, to their night encampment.

Pencroff thought it was time for breakfast, and, on this subject, it was proposed to regulate the two watches of Cyrus Smith and the reporter.

It is known that Gideon Spilett’s had been respected by the seawater, since the reporter had been thrown at first upon the sand, out of reach of the waves. It was an instrument built in excellent condition, a true pocket chronometer, which Gideon Spilett had never forgotten to wind carefully each day.

As for the engineer’s watch, it had necessarily stopped during the time Cyrus Smith had spent in the dunes.

The engineer wound it therefore, and, estimating approximately by the height of the sun that it must be about nine o’clock in the morning, he set his watch to that hour.

Gideon Spilett was about to imitate him, when the engineer, stopping him with his hand, said to him:

“No, my dear Spilett, wait. You have kept Richmond time, have you not?”

“Yes, Cyrus.”

“Consequently, your watch is set to the meridian of that city, a meridian which is approximately that of Washington?”

“No doubt.”

“Well, keep it thus. Content yourself with winding it very exactly, but do not touch the hands. That may serve us.”

“What good?” thought the sailor.

They ate, and so well that the reserve of game and almonds was totally exhausted. But Pencroff was not in the least anxious. They would re-provision on the way. Top, whose portion had been very scanty, would well know how to find some new game under cover of the thickets. Moreover, the sailor was thinking of simply asking the engineer to manufacture powder, one or two hunting rifles, and he thought that would suffer no difficulty. On leaving the plateau, Cyrus Smith proposed to his companions to take a new route to return to the Chimneys. He wished to reconnoiter that Lake Grant so magnificently framed in its border of trees. They followed therefore the crest of one of the spurs, between which the creek that fed it probably took its source. In talking, the colonists already employed only the proper names they had just chosen, and that singularly facilitated the exchange of their ideas. Harbert and Pencroff — the one young and the other a bit childish — were enchanted, and, while walking, the sailor said:

“Eh! Harbert! how it goes! Impossible to lose ourselves, my boy, since, whether we follow the road of Lake Grant, or whether we rejoin the Mercy across the Far-West woods, we shall necessarily arrive at Prospect Plateau, and consequently at Union Bay!”

It had been agreed that, without forming a compact troop, the colonists would not stray too far from one another. Very certainly, some dangerous animals inhabited these thick forests of the island, and it was prudent to be on one’s guard. Most generally, Pencroff, Harbert, and Nab marched in advance, preceded by Top, who searched the slightest corners. The reporter and the engineer went in company, Gideon Spilett, ready to note any incident, the engineer, silent most of the time, and diverging from his route only to pick up, now one thing, now another, mineral or vegetable substance, which he put in his pocket without making any remark.

“What the devil is he picking up thus?” murmured Pencroff. “I look as hard as I can, and I see nothing worth the trouble of stooping for!”

Toward ten o’clock, the little troop was descending the last ramps of Mount Franklin. The ground was still strewn only with bushes and rare trees. They walked on a yellowish and calcined earth, forming a plain about a mile long, which preceded the edge of the woods. Large blocks of that basalt which, according to Bischof’s experiments, required three hundred and fifty million years to cool, littered the plain, very broken in places. However, there was no trace of the lavas, which had more particularly spread over the northern slopes.

Cyrus Smith therefore believed he would reach, without incident, the course of the creek, which, according to him, must unfold beneath the trees, at the edge of the plain, when he saw Harbert return precipitately, while Nab and the sailor hid behind the rocks.

“What is it, my boy?” asked Gideon Spilett.

“A smoke,” replied Harbert. “We saw a smoke rise between the rocks, a hundred paces from us.”

“Men in this place?” cried the reporter.

“Let us avoid showing ourselves before knowing whom we have to deal with,” replied Cyrus Smith. “I dread the natives more, if there are any on this island, than I desire them. Where is Top?”

“Top is in advance.”

“And he does not bark?”

“No.”

“That is strange. Nevertheless, let us try to recall him.”

In a few instants, the engineer, Gideon Spilett, and Harbert had rejoined their two companions, and, like them, they faded behind fragments of basalt. Thence they perceived, very visibly, a smoke that whirled as it rose in the air, a smoke whose yellowish color was very marked.

Top, recalled by a slight whistle from his master, returned, and the latter, making sign to his companions to wait, glided between the rocks.

The colonists, motionless, awaited with some anxiety the result of this exploration, when a call from Cyrus Smith made them run up. They rejoined him at once, and were at first struck by the unpleasant odor that impregnated the atmosphere.

This odor, easily recognizable, had sufficed for the engineer to guess what this smoke was, which, at first, had reason to alarm him.

“This fire,” said he, “or rather this smoke, nature alone pays for it. There is only a sulfurous spring here, which will permit us to treat our laryngitis effectively.”

“Good!” cried Pencroff. “What a pity I am not cold-ridden!”

The colonists then directed themselves toward the spot whence the smoke escaped. There they saw a sodic sulfurous spring, which flowed rather abundantly between the rocks, and whose waters gave off a strong odor of sulfhydric acid, after having absorbed the oxygen of the air.

Cyrus Smith, dipping his hand in it, found these waters unctuous to the touch. He tasted them, and recognized that their flavor was somewhat sweetish. As for their temperature, he estimated it at ninety-five degrees Fahrenheit (thirty-five degrees centigrade above zero). And Harbert having asked him on what he based this evaluation:

“Simply, my child,” said he, “because, in plunging my hand into this water, I experienced no sensation of cold or heat. Therefore, it is at the same temperature as the human body, which is about ninety-five degrees.”

Then, the sulfurous spring offering no immediate use, the colonists directed themselves toward the thick edge of the forest, which spread a few hundred paces away.

There, as had been presumed, the stream wandered its lively and limpid waters between high banks of red earth, whose color betrayed the presence of iron oxide. This color immediately caused the watercourse to be named Red Creek.

It was but a wide brook, deep and clear, formed of the mountain waters, which, half rio, half torrent, here flowing peaceably on the sand, there roaring over rock heads or precipitating in cascade, ran thus toward the lake over a length of a mile and a half and a variable width of thirty to forty feet. Its waters were fresh, which should make one suppose those of the lake were also. A happy circumstance, for the case where one might find on its banks a dwelling more suitable than the Chimneys.

As for the trees which, a few hundred feet downstream, shaded the banks of the creek, they belonged mostly to the species that abound in the temperate zone of Australia or Tasmania, and no longer to those conifers that bristled the portion of the island already explored some miles from Prospect Plateau. At this time of year, at the beginning of this month of April, which represents in this hemisphere the month of October, that is to say at the beginning of autumn, the foliage was not yet lacking to them. They were more particularly casuarinas and eucalyptus, some of which were to furnish next spring a sugary manna quite analogous to the manna of the Orient. Clumps of Australian cedars also rose in the clearings, clothed with that tall grass called “tussac” in New Holland; but the coconut palm, so abundant in the archipelagos of the Pacific, seemed wanting to the island, whose latitude was doubtless too low.

“What a pity!” said Harbert, “so useful a tree and with such fine nuts!”

As for the birds, they swarmed among these rather meager branches of the eucalyptus and casuarinas, which did not hinder the deployment of their wings. Black, white, or gray cockatoos, parrots and parakeets, with plumage shaded all colors, “kings,” of dazzling green and crowned with red, blue lorises, “blue-mountains,” seemed to show themselves only through a prism, and fluttered amid a deafening chatter.

Suddenly, a bizarre concert of discordant voices resounded in the midst of a thicket. The colonists heard successively the song of birds, the cry of quadrupeds, and a sort of clapping that they might have believed escaped the lips of a native. Nab and Harbert had sprung toward this bush, forgetting the principles of the most elementary prudence. Very happily, there was there neither redoubtable wild beast nor dangerous native, but simply a half-dozen of those mocking and singing birds, which were recognized as “mountain pheasants.” A few blows of the stick, adroitly delivered, terminated the scene of imitation, which procured an excellent game for the evening dinner.

Harbert also signaled magnificent pigeons, with bronze wings, some surmounted by a superb crest, others draped in green, like their congeners of Port Macquarie; but it was impossible to reach them, any more than crows and magpies, which fled in bands. A shot of small shot would have made a hecatomb of these fowls, but the hunters were still reduced, as missile weapons, to the stone, as weapons of hand, to the stick, and these primitive engines were not a little insufficient.

Their insufficiency was yet more clearly demonstrated, when a troop of quadrupeds, hopping, bounding, making leaps of thirty feet, true flying mammals, fled over the thickets, so nimbly and at such heights, that one might have believed they passed from tree to tree, like squirrels.

“Kangaroos!” cried Harbert.

“And that is eaten?” replied Pencroff.

“Prepared in a stew,” replied the reporter, “it is worth the best venison!…”

Gideon Spilett had not finished this exciting phrase, when the sailor, followed by Nab and Harbert, had launched on the traces of the kangaroos. Cyrus Smith recalled them, in vain. But it was to be in vain also that the hunters were going to pursue this elastic game, which rebounded like a ball. After five minutes of running, they were out of breath, and the band disappeared in the brushwood.

Top had no more success than his masters.

“Mr. Cyrus,” said Pencroff, when the engineer and the reporter had rejoined him, “Mr. Cyrus, you see well that it is indispensable to manufacture rifles. Will that be possible?”

“Perhaps,” replied the engineer, “but we shall begin first by manufacturing bows and arrows, and I do not doubt that you will become as adroit at handling them as Australian hunters.”

“Arrows, bows!” said Pencroff with a disdainful grimace. “That is good for children!”

“Do not put on airs, friend Pencroff,” replied the reporter. “Bows and arrows sufficed, for centuries, to make the world bleed. Powder is but of yesterday, and war is as old as the human race — unfortunately!”

“That is gospel true, Mr. Spilett,” replied the sailor, “and I always speak too fast. You must excuse me!”

Meanwhile, Harbert, all in his favorite science, natural history, reverted to the kangaroos, saying:

“Besides, we had to do there with the most difficult species to take. They were giants with long gray fur; but, if I am not mistaken, there exist black and red kangaroos, rock kangaroos, rat kangaroos, which it is easier to seize. A dozen species are counted…”

“Harbert,” replied sententiously the sailor, “there is for me but one species of kangaroo, the ‘kangaroo on the spit,’ and it is precisely that which will be lacking to us this evening!”

One could not help laughing at hearing master Pencroff’s new classification. The worthy sailor hid not his regret at being reduced for dinner to the singing pheasants; but fortune was to show herself once more complaisant toward him. Indeed, Top, who felt well that his interest was at stake, went and sniffed everywhere with an instinct doubled by a ferocious appetite. It was even probable that if some piece of game fell under his tooth, little would remain to the hunters, and that Top hunted then on his own account; but Nab watched him, and he did well.

Toward three o’clock, the dog disappeared in the brushwood, and hollow growlings soon indicated that he was grappling with some animal.

Nab sprang forward, and, indeed, he perceived Top devouring with avidity a quadruped, and which, ten seconds later, it would have been impossible to recognize in Top’s stomach. But, very happily, the dog had fallen on a litter; he had made a triple coup, and two other rodents — the animals in question belonged to that order — lay strangled on the ground.

Nab therefore reappeared triumphantly, holding in each hand one of these rodents, whose size exceeded that of a hare. Their yellow fur was mixed with greenish spots, and their tail existed only in a rudimentary state. Citizens of the Union could not hesitate to give these rodents the fitting name.

They were “maras,” a sort of agouti, a little larger than their congeners of the tropical countries, true American rabbits, with long ears, with jaws armed on each side with five molars, which precisely distinguishes them from agoutis.

“Hurrah!” cried Pencroff. “The roast is arrived! And now, we can return home!”

The march, for a moment interrupted, was resumed. Red Creek still rolled its limpid waters under the vault of casuarinas, banksias, and gigantic gum trees. Superb liliaceous plants rose to a height of twenty feet.

Other arborescent species, unknown to the young naturalist, leaned over the stream, which was heard murmuring under these bowers of verdure.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”