The Mysterious Island Read online

  How can one hope to describe the reception Jenny Montrose had, or the tenderness with which Mme. Zermatt folded her in her arms? While they had to wait for her to tell her story, Jenny had already heard from Fritz the story of New Switzerland and of the shipwrecked passengers on the Landlord.

  The pinnace immediately left Pearl Bay, with all the family, now augmented by the young English girl. On both sides English and German were spoken sufficiently well for mutual understanding, and it was as though Jenny had at once become a member of the Robinson family.

  Of course the Elizabeth carried home the few useful articles which Jenny had made with her own hands during her stay on Burning Rock. It was only natural that she should cling to these things, which had so many memories for her.

  Also there were two living creatures, two faithful companions from which the young girl could never have parted—a cormorant that she had trained to fish, and a tame jackal.

  The Elizabeth was favoured with a fresh breeze which enabled her to carry every stitch of her canvas. The weather was so settled that M. Zermatt could not resist the desire to put in at the various establishments in the Promised Land as each came into view, when the pinnace had rounded False Hope Point.

  The villa on Prospect Hill was the first, situated on that green hill, whence a view extended right to Falconhurst. The night was spent there, and it was a long time since Jenny had enjoyed so quiet a sleep.

  Fritz and Frank, however, started at earliest dawn in the canoe in order to get everything ready at Rock Castle for the proper reception of the young English girl. Some time afterwards the pinnace put to sea again, and put in first at Whale Island, where a colony of rabbits was swarming. M. Zermatt insisted on Jenny accepting this island for her own—a present which she gratefully accepted.

  From this point the passengers on the Elizabeth might have taken the land route and visited the farmstead at Wood Grange and the aerial dwelling, Falconhurst. But M. Zermatt and his wife wanted to leave Fritz the pleasure of taking their new companion to these.

  Accordingly the pinnace continued to follow the windings of the shore as far as the mouth of Jackal River. When she reached the opening into Deliverance Bay she was received with a salute of three guns from the battery on Shark's Island. At the same moment Fritz and Frank hoisted the red and white flag in honour of the young girl.

  When the salute had been returned by the two small guns aboard the pinnace M. Zermatt came alongside just as Fritz and Frank landed from the canoe Then the entire family went up the beach to gain Rock Castle.

  Jenny was overcome with wonder and admiration as she entered the fresh and verdant verandah and saw the arrangement and the furniture of the various rooms; when, too, she saw the dining table carefully laid by Fritz and his brother, with bamboo cups,, cocoanut plates, and ostrich egg vessels side by side with utensils of European manufacture taken from the Landlord.

  The dinner consisted of fresh fish, roast fowl, peccary ham, and fruit, with mead and canary wine as drinks.

  Jenny Montrose was given the place of honour, between M. Zermatt and his wife. Tears of joy sprang to her eyes when, on a banner garlanded with flowers, hung above the table, she read these words:

  "Welcome to Jenny Montrose! God bless her entrance into the home of the Swiss Family Robinson!"

  Then she told her story.

  Jenny was the only child of Major William Montrose, an officer in the Indian army. While she was still quite young, a child indeed, she had followed her father from garrison to garrison. Deprived of her mother at the age of seven, she was brought up under her father's watchful care, and equipped to meet all the struggles of life unaided, if her last support should ever fail her. She was thoroughly instructed in everything right for a girl to know, and physical exercises had been an important part of her education—riding and hunting in particular.

  In the middle of the year 1812 Major Montrose, now promoted Colonel, was ordered to return to Europe on board a man-of-war bringing home time-expired men from the Anglo-Indian army. He had been appointed to the command of a regiment in a distant expedition, and there was every probability that he would not return until he retired. This made it necessary for his daughter, now seventeen, to journey to her native country and make her home with an aunt in London. There she was to await the return of her father when at last he should rest from the fatigues of a life devoted to the service of arms.

  As Jenny could not travel on a troopship, Colonel Montrose put her, with a maid to attend her, in the charge of a friend of his, Captain Greenfield, commander of the Dorcas. This ship sailed a few days before the one which was to take the colonel.

  The voyage was ill-starred from the very first. On leaving the Bay of Bengal the Dorcas encountered storms of fearful violence; later she was chased by a French frigate, and compelled to seek refuge in the harbour of Batavia.

  When the enemy had left these waters, the Dorcas set sail once more, and steered her course for the Cape of Good Hope. Her passage was a most difficult one at this stormy season. Contrary winds continued to blow with astonishing persistence. The Dorcas was put out of her course by a storm which swept up from the south-west. For an entire week Captain Greenfield was unable to take his bearings. In fact he could not have told whereabouts in the Indian Ocean he had been carried by the storm, when during the night his ship struck a reef.

  An unknown coast rose some little distance off and the crew, jumping into the first boat, made an attempt to reach it. Jenny Montrose, with her maid and a few passengers, got into the second boat. The ship was breaking up already, and had to be abandoned as speedily as possible.

  Half an hour later the second boat was capsized by a huge wave just as the first boat was disappearing in the darkness.

  When Jenny recovered consciousness she found herself upon a beach where the surf had laid her, probably the sole survivor of the wreck of the Dorcas.

  The girl did not know what length of time had elapsed since the boat was swamped. It was almost a miracle that she had strength enough left to drag herself into a cave, where, after she had eaten a few eggs, she found a little rest in sleep.

  When she awoke she dried in the sun the man's clothes which she had put on at the time the ship struck, in order to be less hampered in her movements, and in one of the pockets of which there was a tinder-box which would enable her to make a fire.

  Jenny walked all along the shore of the island but could not see any of her shipmates. There was nothing but fragments of the ship, a few pieces of wood from which she used to keep up her fire.

  But, so great was the physical and moral strength of this young girl, so potent was the influence of her almost masculine education, that despair never took hold of her. She set her home within the cave in order. A few nails taken from the wreckage of the Dorcas were her only tools. Clever with her fingers, and of an inventive mind, she contrived the few things that were absolutely necessary. She succeeded in making a bow and fastening a few arrows, with which to hunt the furred and feathered game, and so provide for her daily food. There were a few animals which she was able to tame, a jackal and a cormorant, for instance, and these never left her side.

  In the centre of the little island upon which she had been cast by the sea there rose a volcanic mountain from whose crater smoke and flames constantly belched. Jenny climbed to the top of this, a hundred fathoms or so above the level of the sea, but could see no glimpse of land on the horizon.

  Burning Rock, which was about five miles in circumference, had on its eastern side only a narrow valley through which a little stream ran. Trees of various kinds sheltered here from too keen winds, covered it with their thick boughs and foliage; and on one of these mangroves Jenny established her dwelling place, just as the Zermatt family had done at Falconhurst.

  Hunting in the valley and neighbourhood, fishing in the stream and among the rocks with hooks fashioned out of nails, edible pods, and berries from different trees—these, supplemented by a few cases of preserved food and ca
sks of wine, cast up on the shore during the three or four days following the wreck, enabled the young English girl to make an addition to the roots and shellfish which were her only food at first.

  How many months had Jenny Montrose lived in this fashion on Burning Rock until the hour of her deliverance came?

  At the beginning she had not thought of keeping count of time. But she was able to calculate roughly that two years and a half had passed since the wreck of the Dorcas.

  Throughout all those months, rainy season and hot weather alike, not a day passed when she did not search the horizon. But never once did a sail appear on the background of the sky. From the highest point of the island, however, when the atmosphere was clear, she fancied two or three times that she could detect land to the eastward. But how was she to cover the intervening distance? And what was this land?

  Although in this intertropical region the cold was not severe, Jenny's sufferings were great during the rainy season. Ensconced within her cave, which she was unable to leave either to hunt or to fish, she was still obliged to find food for herself. Happily the eggs, of which there were numbers among the rocks, the shellfish densely packed at the mouth of the cave, and the fruit stored in readiness for this season, made her food supply secure.

  More than two years had passed when the idea occurred to her, like an inspiration from on high, to fasten to the foot of an albatross which she had caught a note telling of her deserted state upon the Burning Rock. She was quite unable to indicate its position. As soon as she set the bird free it took flight towards the north-east. What likelihood was there of its ever coming back to Burning Rock?

  Several days went by without its reappearing. The faint hope the girl had had from this venture gradually faded away. But she would not lose all hope. If the help that she waited for did not come from this source, it would from some other.

  Such was the story which Jenny told to the Zermatts.

  They still had to learn the circumstances in which Fritz had discovered the Burning Rock.

  When the boat left Pearl Bay, Fritz, who was in front of it in his canoe, passed a note to his father acquainting him with his intention to go to find the young English girl. So after passing the archway, instead of following the coast to the east, he went off in the opposite direction.

  The shore was sown with reefs and fringed by enormous rocks. Beyond were masses of trees as fine as those at Wood Grange and Eberfurt. Numerous watercourses found their outlet in little bays. This north-west coast was unlike that between Deliverance Bay and Nautilus Bay.

  Fritz was compelled by the heat, which was very great the first day, to go ashore in order to find a little shade. He had to be rather cautious, for the hippopotami which lived at the mouth of the streams could easily have reduced the canoe to fragments.

  Arriving at the outskirts of a dense wood, Fritz drew his light boat to the foot of a tree. Then, tired out he sank to sleep.

  Next morning the voyage was continued until midday. When he put in to shore on this occasion Fritz was obliged to repulse the attack of a tiger which he wounded in the flank while his eagle tried to tear out the eyes of the brute. Two pistol shots stretched it dead at his feet.

  But, to Fritz's bitter regret, the eagle, disembowelled by a blow from the tiger's claw, had ceased to breathe. Poor Blitz was buried in the sand, and his master resumed his voyage, grieved by the loss of his faithful hunting companion.

  The second day had been spent following the winding coastline. No smoke out at sea indicated the presence of the Burning Rock. Now, as the sea was calm, Fritz determined to go farther out, in order to see if any smoke was visible above the southwestern horizon. Accordingly he drove his canoe in that direction. His sail bellied out in the brisk breeze off the land. After sailing for a couple of hours he was preparing to put about when he thought he could perceive a faint smoke.

  At once Fritz forgot everything, the uneasiness his prolonged absence would cause at Rock Castle, his own fatigue, and the risks he would run in venturing out so far to sea. Driven by paddle as well as the wind, the canoe flew over the sea.

  An hour later Fritz found himself within half-a-dozen cable-lengths of an island topped by a volcano, from which smoke and flame were escaping.

  The eastern coast of the island seemed to be quite barren. But as he wound round it Fritz saw that it was intersected by the mouth of a stream at the extremity of a green valley.

  The canoe was driven into a narrow creek and pulled up on the strand.

  On the right hand was a cave, at the entrance to which a human being was lying, sunk in a deep sleep.

  Fritz gazed at her with profound emotion. She was a girl of seventeen or eighteen, dressed in coarse sailcloth, which yet was clean and decently arranged. Her features were charming, and her face was very gentle. Fritz did not dare to waken her, and yet it was salvation which would greet her when she woke.

  At last the girl opened her eyes. At the sight of a stranger she uttered a cry of alarm.

  Fritz reassured her with a gesture, and then said in English:

  "Do not be frightened, miss. I intend you no harm. I have come to save you."

  And before she had time to reply he told her how an albatross had fallen into his hands, bearing a note begging help for the Englishwoman on the Burning Rock. He told her that a few miles to the east there was a land where a whole shipwrecked family was living.

  Then, after throwing herself on her knees to thank God, the girl stretched out her hands to him in gratitude. She told her story briefly and invited Fritz to visit her wretched abode.

  Fritz accepted the invitation, but stipulated that the visit must be a short one. Time pressed, and he was longing to take the young English girl to Rock Castle.

  "To-morrow," she said, "we will start to-morrow, Mr. Fritz. Let me pass this one night more upon Burning Rock, since I shall never see it again."

  "Very well, to-morrow," the young man answered.

  And together they shared a meal provided from Jenny's stores, and the food carried in the canoe.

  At length Jenny said her evening prayers and withdrew inside the cave, while Fritz lay down at the entrance to it, like a faithful watchdog.

  Next day at earliest dawn they put into the canoe the little articles which Jenny did not want to leave behind, not forgetting her cormorant and her jackal. The young girl, in her man's dress, took the stern seat in the light vessel. The sail was hoisted, the paddles were wielded, and an hour later the last trails of smoke from the Burning Rock were lost on the far horizon.

  Fritz had intended to make direct for False Hope Point. But the canoe, being heavily loaded, struck a snag of rock, and it was necessary to repair it. So Fritz was obliged to put into Pearl Bay, and he took his companion to the island, where the pinnace picked them up.

  That was the narrative which Fritz related.

  The addition of Jenny Montrose to the family circle increased its happiness. The weeks went by, busy with the up-keep of the farmsteads and the care of the animals. A beautiful avenue of fruit trees now connected Jackal River with Falconhurst. Improvements had been carried out at Wood Grange, at Sugar-cane Grove, at the hermitage at Eberfurt, and at Prospect Hill. Many delightful hours were spent in this last-named villa, built of bamboo on the plan of the Swiss chalet. From the top of the hill the eye could range on one side over a large part of the Promised Land, and on the other over a vista of twenty-five miles, bounded by the line where sea and sky met.

  June brought again the heavy rains. It was necessary to leave Falconhurst and return to Rock Castle. These two or three months were always rather trying, made depressing, as they were, by the constant bad weather. A few trips to the farms to attend to the animals, and a few hours hunting which took Fritz and Jack out into the immediate neighbourhood of Rock Castle, represented the whole of the outdoor business of each day.

  But they were not idle. Work went on under the direction of Mme. Zermatt. Jenny helped her, bringing to bear all her ingenious Anglo-Saxon
energy, which was different from the rather more methodical Swiss system. And while the young girl studied German with M. Zermatt, the family studied English with her, Fritz speaking that language fluently at the end of a few weeks. How could they have made any but rapid progress with such a teacher?

  So there was no complaint of dull days during the rainy season. Jenny's presence lent the evenings a new charm. No one was in a hurry for bed now. Mme. Zermatt and Jenny busied themselves with needlework. Sometimes the young girl was asked to sing, for she possesesd a charming voice. She learned the songs of Switzerland, those mountain melodies which will never grow old, and it was enchanting to hear them from her lips. Music was varied by reading aloud, when Ernest drew upon the best works in the library, and it seemed that time for bed always came too soon.