The Mysterious Island Read online

  It is unnecessary to describe in detail all the work which was undertaken and successfully accomplished during these two months. They had to go from one farm to another, store all the grain and fodder in the barns, gather all the ripe fruit and make all arrangements to protect the birds in the poultry-yards from the inclemency of the rainy season.

  Thanks to the irrigation from Swan Lake, which was abundantly supplied by the canal, the yield of the farms had increased appreciably. This district of the Promised Land could have provided a hundred colonists with a safe living, and its present inhabitants had plenty of work to get in all the harvest.

  In anticipation of the stormy weather, which would last for eight or nine weeks, they also had to safeguard the farmsteads, against damage by wind or rain. The gates and fences of the yards and fields, and the doors and windows of the buildings were tightly closed, caulked, and shored up. The roofs were weighted with heavy logs, to resist the fierce easterly squalls. Like precautions were taken in the case of the outhouses, barns, sheds, and fowl-houses, whose occupants, two-legged and four-legged, were too numerous to be brought into the outbuildings at Rock Castle. Moreover, the various buildings on Whale Island and Shark's Island were put into condition to withstand the tremendous gales to which they were directly exposed by their situation near the shore.

  On Whale Island the resinous trees, the evergreen sea-pines, now formed thick woods. The nursery plantations of cocoa-trees and other species had thriven, since they had been protected by thorn hedges. There had been no risk of damage since then from the hundreds of rabbits which in the early days used to devour all the shoots. These voracious rodents found plenty of food among the seawrack. Jenny would certainly find the island, of which M. Zermatt had given her the sole possession, in perfect condition.

  In the case of Shark's Island again, the plantations of cocoa-trees, mangroves, and pines had prospered greatly. The enclosures for the antelopes that were being tamed had to be strengthened. Of grass and leaves, which form the food of these ruminants, there would be no lack during the winter. Fresh water, thanks to the inexhaustible spring discovered at the far end of the island, would not run short. M. Zermatt had built a central shed of stout planks in which provisions of every kind were stored. Finally, the battery erected on the flat top of the little hill was covered in with a solid roof and protected by the trees over which the flagstaff rose.

  On the occasion of this visit, in accordance with the custom at the beginning as at the end of the rainy season, Ernest and Jack fired the regulation two guns. This time no answering report was heard from the open sea, such as had happened six months before after the arrival of the English corvette.

  When the two guns had been reloaded and primed, Jack exclaimed:

  "Now it will be our turn to answer the Unicorn, when she salutes New Switzerland, and think of the delight with which we shall send her our answer 1"

  It was not long before the last crops were got into the barns and storerooms of Rock Castle; wheat, barley, rye, rice, maize, oats, millet, tapioca, sago, and sweet potatoes. Peas, kidney beans, broad beans, carrots, turnips, leeks, lettuce, and endive would be supplied in abundance from the kitchen garden, which had been rendered extraordinarily productive by proper attention to the rotation of the crops. Fields of sugar-cane and orchards of fruit trees were within a stone's throw of the dwelling place, on both banks of the stream. The gathering of the grapes in the vineyard at Falconhurst was finished in due time, and for the making of mead there was no lack of honey, or of the spices and rye-cakes required to assist its process of fermentation. There was also plenty of palm wine, not to mention the reserve store of Canary. Of the brandy left by Lieutenant Littlestone there were several kegs in the cool basement of the rocky cave. Fuel for the kitchen stove was provided by dry wood piled in the wood-sheds, and further, the gales might be relied upon to strew the beaches outside Rock Castle with branches, while the flood tides drove more onto the shore of Deliverance Bay. Moreover, there was no need to use this fuel to warm the hall and rooms. In the tropics, below the nineteenth parallel, the cold is never distressing. Fires were only needed for cooking, washing, and other housework.

  The second fortnight of May arrived, and it was time for all this work to be finished. There was no mistaking the signs that heralded the approach of the bad weather. Each sunset the sky was covered with mists, which grew denser day by day. The wind gradually settled in the east, and when it blew from that quarter all the storms at sea swept madly upon the island.

  Before withdrawing into Rock Castle M. Zermatt determined to spend the whole day of the 24th on a trip to the hermitage at Eberfurt, and Mr. Wolston and Jack were to go with him.

  It was desirable to make sure that the defile of Cluse was effectively closed against the invasion of wild beasts. It was of the utmost importance to prevent their breaking through and causing wholesale destruction of the plantations.

  This farmstead, the most remote one, was seven or eight miles from Rock Castle.

  The party, mounted on the buffalo, the onager, and the ostrich, arrived at the hermitage in less than two hours. The enclosures were found to be in a good state of repair, but it was deemed prudent to strengthen the entrance with a few stout cross-bars. An invasion of carnivorous animals or pachyderms was not to be feared so long as they could not make their way through the defile.

  No suspicious marks or tracks were detected, much to Jack's disappointment. That keen sportsman was always promising himself that he would capture at least a young elephant. After he had tamed and domesticated it he would certainly break it in for his own riding.

  At last, on the 25th, when the first rains began to fall upon the island, the two families finally left Falconhurst and settled down in Rock Castle.

  No country could have offered a more secluded abode, sheltered from all inclemency of weather, or one more delightfully arranged. Endless had been the improvements since the day when Jack's pickaxe had "gone through the mountain"! The salt cavern had become a comfortable dwelling place. In the forefront of the rocky mass there was still the same arrangement of rooms en suite, with doors and windows cut through. The library, so dear to Ernest's heart, with two bays open to the east on the Jackal River side, was surmounted by a graceful pigeon-house. The vast saloon, with windows draped with green material lightly coated with india-rubber, and furnished with the principal articles, taken from the Landlord, still continued to serve as an oratory, pending the time when Mr. Wolston should have built his chapel.

  Above the rooms was a terrace, to which two pathways gave access, and in front a verandah, with a sloping roof supported by fourteen bamboo pillars. Along these pillars pepper plants twined their shoots, with other shrubs which exhaled a pleasant scent of vanilla, mingled with bindweeds and climbing plants now in their full verdure.

  On the other side of the cave, following up the course of the river, the private gardens of Rock Castle spread. They were surrounded by thorn hedges, and were divided into square beds of vegetables, fancy beds of flowers, and plantations of pistachios, almonds, walnuts, oranges, lemons, bananas, guavas, and every other species of fruit found in hot countries. The trees proper to the temperate climes of Europe, such as cherries, pears, wild cherries and figs, were to be found in the grand alley, which they lined the whole way to Falconhurst.

  From the 25th onwards the rains never ceased. And with them burst the lashing, hissing squalls which drove from the sea over the table-lands of Cape East. All excursions out of doors were impossible thenceforward, and only the various occupations of the household could be carried on. But it was important work, the care and attention that had to be given to the animals, to the buffaloes, onager, cows, calves, and asses, and to the pets, like the monkey, Nip the Second; Jack's jackal, and Jenny's jackal, and cormorant, these last being especially pampered for her sake. Lastly, there was all the housework and preserve-making to attend to, and sometimes, when, very occasionally, the weather cleared for a short time, a little fishing cou
ld be got at the mouth of Jackal River and at the foot of the rocks below Rock Castle.

  In the first week of June there was a vast increase in the gales and rains. It was imprudent to go out, except in water-proof oil-skins.

  The entire neighbourhood, kitchen garden, plantations, and fields, was swamped under these torrential downpours, and from the top of the cliff above Rock Castle a thousand tiny streams broke away, making a noise like so many cascades.

  Although no one set foot outside the house unless it was absolutely necessary, there was no dullness.

  One evening M. Zermatt made the following calculation:

  "Here we are at the 15th of June. The Unicorn left us on the 20th of October last year, so that is eight full months. Therefore she ought to be on the point of leaving European waters for the Indian Ocean."

  "What do you think, Ernest?" Mme. Zermatt asked.

  "If you take her stay at the Cape into account," Ernest answered, "I think the corvette might have reached an English port in three months. It will take her the same time to come back, and as it was understood that she was. to be back in a year, that means that she will have had to remain half a year in Europe. So my conclusion is that she is still there."

  "But probably on the eve of sailing," Hannah remarked.

  "Most likely, Hannah dear," Ernest replied.

  "After all," said Mrs. Wolston, "she might have cut her stay in England short."

  "She might have done so, certainly," Mr. Wolston answered, "although six months would not be too long for all that she had to do. Our Lords of the Admiralty are not remarkably expeditious."

  "Oh, but when it is a question of taking possession!" M. Zermatt exclaimed.

  "That gets done!" Jack laughed. "Are you aware that it is a very handsome present we are making to your country, Mr. Wolston?"

  "I quite agree, my dear boy."

  "And yet," the young man went on, "what a chance it would have been for our dear old Switzerland to embark upon a career of colonial expansion! An island which possesses all the animal and vegetable wealth of the torrid zone—an island so admirably situated in the very middle of the Indian Ocean for trade with the Far East and the Pacific!"

  "There goes Jack, off again, as if he were careering on Grumbler or Lightfoot!" Mr. Wolston said.

  "But, Ernest," Hannah interposed, "what are we to conclude from your calculations about the Unicorn?"

  "Why, that it will be in the first few days of July at latest that she will set sail on her voyage here with our dear ones and the colonists who may have decided to come with them. She will put in at the Cape, Hannah, and that will probably delay her until about the middle of August. So I do not expect to see her off False Hope Point before the middle of October."

  "Four more long months!" Mme. Zermatt sighed. "We need patience when we think of all those whom we love upon the sea! May God guard them!"

  The women, busy with their household work, never wasted a minute, but it must not be supposed that the men were idle. The rumbling of the forge and the purring of the lathe were constantly to be heard. Mr. Wolston was a very clever engineer, and, assisted M. Zermatt, sometimes by Ernest, and on rarer occasions by Jack, who was always out of doors if there was the least sign of the weather clearing up, he made a number of useful articles to complete the fittings of Rock Castle.

  One scheme which was exhaustively discussed and finally agreed upon was the building of a chapel.

  The question of the site furnished the subject for several debates. Some thought that the selected site ought to front the sea and be on one of the cliffs halfway between Rock Castle and Falconhurst, so that it could be reached from both houses without too long a walk. Others thought that on such a site the chapel would be too much exposed to the gales blowing in from the sea, and that it would be better to build it near Jackal River, below the fall. Mme. Zermatt, however, and Mrs. Wolston thought that that would be too far away. So it was decided to build the chapel at the far end of the kitchen garden, on a spot that was well sheltered by lofty rocks.

  Mr. Wolston then suggested that more solid and durable material than wood and bamboo should be employed. Why not use blocks of limestone, or even pebbles from the beach, in the fashion often seen in sea-side villages? Lime could be produced from the shells and reef-coral which existed in such quantity on the shore, by raising them to a red heat to extract the carbonic acid. The work would be begun when weather permitted, and two or three months would be ample to bring it to a satisfactory conclusion.

  In July, which was the heart of the rainy season in this latitude, the violence of the storms was intensified. It was seldom possible to venture out of doors. Squalls and gales lashed the coast with tremendous fury. One might fancy oneself bombarded with grape-shot when the hail fell. The sea towered in enormous rolling waves, roaring as they broke in the chasms of the coast. Often the spray swept right over the cliff and fell in thick sheets at the foot of the trees. There were occasions when the wind and the tide combined to produce a kind of tidal wave which drove the water of Jackal River right back to the foot of the fall.

  M. Zermatt was in a continual state of anxiety about the adjacent fields. They even had to cut the pipes which connected the river with Swan Lake, to prevent the overplus of water from swamping the land round Wood Grange. The position of the pinnace and the longboat in the creek also gave rise to some apprehension. On many occasions they had to make sure that the anchors were holding, and to double the hawsers to prevent collision with the rocks. As a matter of fact, no damage was done in this particular. But what kind of state must the farms be in, especially Wood Grange and Prospect Hill, which were more exposed than the others owing to their proximity to the shore, which the hurricanes lashed with positively terrifying fury?

  So M. Zermatt, Ernest, Jack and Mr. Wolston determined to take advantage of a day which gave a brief respite from the storm, to go as far as False Hope Point.

  Their fears were only too well founded. The two farms had suffered much, and required a great deal of strengthening and repair which could not be undertaken at this season and was therefore postponed until the end of the rains.

  It was in the library that the two families usually spent their evenings. As has been said, there were plenty of books there, some brought from the Land' lord; others, more modern works, given by Lieutenant Littlestone, including books of travel and works on natural history, zoology and botany, which were read over and over again by Ernest; others, again, which belonged to Mr. Wolston, manuals of mechanics, meteorology, physics and chemistry. There were also books about hunting and sport in India and Africa which filled Jack with longing to go out to those countries.

  While the storm moaned and roared outside, indoors they read aloud. They conversed, sometimes in English, sometimes in German—two languages which both families now spoke fluently, although they sometimes had to use their dictionaries. There were evenings when only one language was employed, English, Swiss, or German, or, though in this they had less facility, Swiss French. Ernest and Hannah were the only two who had made much progress in this beautiful language, which is so pure, so precise, so flexible, so happily fitted to express the inspiration of poetry, and so accurately adapted to everything relating to science and art. It was quite a pleasure to hear the young man and the girl conversing in French, although all that they said was not always understood by the others.

  As had been said, July is the worst month in this portion of the Indian Ocean. When the storms abated, there supervened thick fogs, which enveloped the entire island. If a ship had passed within only a few cables' lengths, she could not have seen either the inland heights or the capes along the coast. It was not without reason that they feared lest some other ship might perish in these seas as the Landlord and the Dorcas had perished. The future would certainly make it incumbent upon the new colonists to light the coasts of New Switzerland and so make it easier to effect a landing there, at any rate in the north.

  "Why should we not build a lighthouse
?" Jack enquired. "Let us see: a lighthouse on False Hope Point, perhaps, and another on Cape East! Then, with signal guns from Shark's Island, ships would have no difficulty in getting into Deliverance Bay."

  "It will be done, my dear boy," M. Zermatt answered, "for everything gets done in time. Fortunately, Lieutenant Littlestone did not need any lighthouses to see our island, nor any guns to help him to anchor opposite Rock Castle."

  "Anyhow," Jack went on, "we should be quite equal, I imagine, to lighting the coast."

  "Jack is certainly not afraid of attempting big things," Mr. Wolston said.

  "Why should I be, Mr. Wolston, after all we have done as yet, and all we shall do under your instructions?"

  "You know how to pay compliments, my boy," M. Zermatt remarked.

  "And I am not forgetting Mrs. Wolston, or Hannah," Jack added.