The Mysterious Island
thick forests of the island were inhabited by dangerous animals, and it
was prudent to be on their guard. In general, Pencroft, Herbert, and Neb
walked first, preceded by Top, who poked his nose into every bush. The
reporter and the engineer went together, Gideon Spilett ready to note
every incident, the engineer silent for the most part, and only stepping
aside to pick up one thing or another, a mineral or vegetable substance,
which he put into his pocket, without making any remark.
“What can he be picking up?” muttered Pencroft. “I have looked in vain
for anything that’s worth the trouble of stooping for.”
Towards ten o’clock the little band descended the last declivities of
Mount Franklin. As yet the ground was scantily strewn with bushes and
trees. They were walking over yellowish calcinated earth, forming a
plain of nearly a mile long, which extended to the edge of the wood.
Great blocks of that basalt, which, according to Bischof, takes three
hundred and fifty millions of years to cool, strewed the plain, very
confused in some places. However, there were here no traces of lava,
which was spread more particularly over the northern slopes.
Cyrus Harding expected to reach, without incident, the course of the
creek, which he supposed flowed under the trees at the border of the
plain, when he saw Herbert running hastily back, while Neb and the
sailor were hiding behind the rocks.
“What’s the matter, my boy?” asked Spilett.
“Smoke,” replied Herbert. “We have seen smoke among the rocks, a hundred
paces from us.”
“Men in this place?” cried the reporter.
“We must avoid showing ourselves before knowing with whom we have to
deal,” replied Cyrus Harding. “I trust that there are no natives on this
island; I dread them more than anything else. Where is Top?”
“Top is on before.”
“And he doesn’t bark?”
“No.”
“That is strange. However, we must try to call him back.”
In a few moments, the engineer, Gideon Spilett, and Herbert had rejoined
their two companions, and like them, they kept out of sight behind the
heaps of basalt.
From thence they clearly saw smoke of a yellowish color rising in the
air.
Top was recalled by a slight whistle from his master, and the latter,
signing to his companions to wait for him, glided away among the
rocks. The colonists, motionless, anxiously awaited the result of this
exploration, when a shout from the engineer made them hasten forward.
They soon joined him, and were at once struck with a disagreeable odor
which impregnated the atmosphere.
The odor, easily recognized, was enough for the engineer to guess what
the smoke was which at first, not without cause, had startled him.
“This fire,” said he, “or rather, this smoke is produced by nature alone.
There is a sulphur spring there, which will cure all our sore throats.”
“Captain!” cried Pencroft. “What a pity that I haven’t got a cold!”
The settlers then directed their steps towards the place from which the
smoke escaped. They there saw a sulphur spring which flowed abundantly
between the rocks, and its waters discharged a strong sulphuric acid
odor, after having absorbed the oxygen of the air.
Cyrus Harding, dipping in his hand, felt the water oily to the touch.
He tasted it and found it rather sweet. As to its temperature, that he
estimated at ninety-five degrees Fahrenheit. Herbert having asked on
what he based this calculation,--
“Its quite simple, my boy,” said he, “for, in plunging my hand into the
water, I felt no sensation either of heat or cold. Therefore it has the
same temperature as the human body, which is about ninety-five degrees.”
The sulphur spring not being of any actual use to the settlers, they
proceeded towards the thick border of the forest, which began some
hundred paces off.
There, as they had conjectured, the waters of the stream flowed clear
and limpid between high banks of red earth, the color of which betrayed
the presence of oxide of iron. From this color, the name of Red Creek
was immediately given to the watercourse.
It was only a large stream, deep and clear, formed of the mountain
water, which, half river, half torrent, here rippling peacefully over
the sand, there falling against the rocks or dashing down in a cascade,
ran towards the lake, over a distance of a mile and a half, its breadth
varying from thirty to forty feet. Its waters were sweet, and it was
supposed that those of the lake were so also. A fortunate circumstance,
in the event of their finding on its borders a more suitable dwelling
than the Chimneys.
As to the trees, which some hundred feet downwards shaded the banks of
the creek, they belonged, for the most part, to the species which abound
in the temperate zone of America and Tasmania, and no longer to those
coniferae observed in that portion of the island already explored
to some miles from Prospect Heights. At this time of the year, the
commencement of the month of April, which represents the month of
October, in this hemisphere, that is, the beginning of autumn, they
were still in full leaf. They consisted principally of casuarinas and
eucalypti, some of which next year would yield a sweet manna, similar to
the manna of the East. Clumps of Australian cedars rose on the sloping
banks, which were also covered with the high grass called “tussac” in
New Holland; but the cocoanut, so abundant in the archipelagoes of the
Pacific, seemed to be wanting in the island, the latitude, doubtless,
being too low.
“What a pity!” said Herbert, “such a useful tree, and which has such
beautiful nuts!”
As to the birds, they swarmed among the scanty branches of the eucalypti
and casuarinas, which did not hinder the display of their wings.
Black, white, or gray cockatoos, paroquets, with plumage of all colors,
kingfishers of a sparkling green and crowned with red, blue lories,
and various other birds appeared on all sides, as through a prism,
fluttering about and producing a deafening clamor. Suddenly, a strange
concert of discordant voices resounded in the midst of a thicket. The
settlers heard successively the song of birds, the cry of quadrupeds,
and a sort of clacking which they might have believed to have escaped
from the lips of a native. Neb and Herbert rushed towards the bush,
forgetting even the most elementary principles of prudence. Happily,
they found there, neither a formidable wild beast nor a dangerous
native, but merely half a dozen mocking and singing birds, known as
mountain pheasants. A few skillful blows from a stick soon put an end to
their concert, and procured excellent food for the evening’s dinner.
Herbert also discovered some magnificent pigeons with bronzed wings,
some superbly crested, others draped in green, like their congeners at
Port-Macquarie; but it was impossible to reach them, or the crows and
magpies which flew away in flocks.
A charge of small shot would have made great slaughter among these
birds, but the hunters were still limited to sticks and stones, and
these primitive weapons proved very insufficient.
Their insufficiency was still more clearly shown when a troop of
quadrupeds, jumping, bounding, making leaps of thirty feet, regular
flying mammiferae, fled over the thickets, so quickly and at such a
height, that one would have thought that they passed from one tree to
another like squirrels.
“Kangaroos!” cried Herbert.
“Are they good to eat?” asked Pencroft.
“Stewed,” replied the reporter, “their flesh is equal to the best
venison!--”
Gideon Spilett had not finished this exciting sentence when the sailor,
followed by Neb and Herbert, darted on the kangaroos tracks. Cyrus
Harding called them back in vain. But it was in vain too for the hunters
to pursue such agile game, which went bounding away like balls. After a
chase of five minutes, they lost their breath, and at the same time all
sight of the creatures, which disappeared in the wood. Top was not more
successful than his masters.
“Captain,” said Pencroft, when the engineer and the reporter had
rejoined them, “Captain, you see quite well we can’t get on unless we
make a few guns. Will that be possible?”
“Perhaps,” replied the engineer, “but we will begin by first
manufacturing some bows and arrows, and I don’t doubt that you will
become as clever in the use of them as the Australian hunters.”
“Bows and arrows!” said Pencroft scornfully. “That’s all very well for
children!”
“Don’t be proud, friend Pencroft,” replied the reporter. “Bows and
arrows were sufficient for centuries to stain the earth with blood.
Powder is but a thing of yesterday, and war is as old as the human
race--unhappily.”
“Faith, that’s true, Mr. Spilett,” replied the sailor, “and I always
speak too quickly. You must excuse me!”
Meanwhile, Herbert constant to his favorite science, Natural History,
reverted to the kangaroos, saying,--
“Besides, we had to deal just now with the species which is most
difficult to catch. They were giants with long gray fur; but if I am not
mistaken, there exist black and red kangaroos, rock kangaroos, and rat
kangaroos, which are more easy to get hold of. It is reckoned that there
are about a dozen species.”
“Herbert,” replied the sailor sententiously, “there is only one species
of kangaroos to me, that is ‘kangaroo on the spit,’ and it’s just the
one we haven’t got this evening!”
They could not help laughing at Master Pencroft’s new classification.
The honest sailor did not hide his regret at being reduced for dinner to
the singing pheasants, but fortune once more showed itself obliging to
him.
In fact, Top, who felt that his interest was concerned went and ferreted
everywhere with an instinct doubled by a ferocious appetite. It was even
probable that if some piece of game did fall into his clutches, none
would be left for the hunters, if Top was hunting on his own account;
but Neb watched him and he did well.
Towards three o’clock the dog disappeared in the brushwood and gruntings
showed that he was engaged in a struggle with some animal. Neb rushed
after him, and soon saw Top eagerly devouring a quadruped, which ten
seconds later would have been past recognizing in Top’s stomach. But
fortunately the dog had fallen upon a brood, and besides the victim he
was devouring, two other rodents--the animals in question belonged to
that order--lay strangled on the turf.
Neb reappeared triumphantly holding one of the rodents in each hand.
Their size exceeded that of a rabbit, their hair was yellow, mingled
with green spots, and they had the merest rudiments of tails.
The citizens of the Union were at no loss for the right name of these
rodents. They were maras, a sort of agouti, a little larger than their
congeners of tropical countries, regular American rabbits, with long
ears, jaws armed on each side with five molars, which distinguish the
agouti.
“Hurrah!” cried Pencroft, “the roast has arrived! and now we can go
home.”
The walk, interrupted for an instant, was resumed. The limpid waters of
the Red Creek flowed under an arch of casuarinas, banksias, and gigantic
gum-trees. Superb lilacs rose to a height of twenty feet. Other
arborescent species, unknown to the young naturalist, bent over the
stream, which could be heard murmuring beneath the bowers of verdure.
Meanwhile the stream grew much wider, and Cyrus Harding supposed that
they would soon reach its mouth. In fact, on emerging from beneath a
thick clump of beautiful trees, it suddenly appeared before their eyes.
The explorers had arrived on the western shore of Lake Grant. The place
was well worth looking at. This extent of water, of a circumference of
nearly seven miles and an area of two hundred and fifty acres, reposed
in a border of diversified trees. Towards the east, through a curtain