The Mysterious Island
lost nearly a third of its weight.
But there was an immense quantity of it; the tongue alone yielded six
thousand pounds of oil, and the lower lip four thousand. Then, besides
the fat, which would insure for a long time a store of stearine and
glycerine, there were still the bones, for which a use could doubtless
be found, although there were neither umbrellas nor stays used at
Granite House. The upper part of the mouth of the cetacean was, indeed,
provided on both sides with eight hundred horny blades, very elastic,
of a fibrous texture, and fringed at the edge like great combs, at which
the teeth, six feet long, served to retain the thousands of animalculae,
little fish, and molluscs, on which the whale fed.
The operation finished, to the great satisfaction of the operators, the
remains of the animal were left to the birds, who would soon make every
vestige of it disappear, and their usual daily occupations were resumed
by the inmates of Granite House.
However, before returning to the dockyard, Cyrus Harding conceived
the idea of fabricating certain machines, which greatly excited the
curiosity of his companions. He took a dozen of the whale’s bones, cut
them into six equal parts, and sharpened their ends.
“This machine is not my own invention, and it is frequently employed
by the Aleutian hunters in Russian America. You see these bones, my
friends; well, when it freezes, I will bend them, and then wet them
with water till they are entirely covered with ice, which will keep them
bent, and I will strew them on the snow, having previously covered them
with fat. Now, what will happen if a hungry animal swallows one of these
baits? Why, the heat of his stomach will melt the ice, and the bone,
springing straight, will pierce him with its sharp points.”
“Well! I do call that ingenious!” said Pencroft.
“And it will spare the powder and shot,” rejoined Cyrus Harding.
“That will be better than traps!” added Neb.
In the meanwhile the boat-building progressed, and towards the end of
the month half the planking was completed. It could already be seen that
her shape was excellent, and that she would sail well.
Pencroft worked with unparalleled ardor, and only a sturdy frame could
have borne such fatigue; but his companions were preparing in secret a
reward for his labors, and on the 31st of May he was to meet with one of
the greatest joys of his life.
On that day, after dinner, just as he was about to leave the table,
Pencroft felt a hand on his shoulder.
It was the hand of Gideon Spilett, who said,--
“One moment, Master Pencroft, you mustn’t sneak off like that! You’ve
forgotten your dessert.”
“Thank you, Mr. Spilett,” replied the sailor, “I am going back to my
work.”
“Well, a cup of coffee, my friend?”
“Nothing more.”
“A pipe, then?”
Pencroft jumped up, and his great good-natured face grew pale when he
saw the reporter presenting him with a ready-filled pipe, and Herbert
with a glowing coal.
The sailor endeavored to speak, but could not get out a word; so,
seizing the pipe, he carried it to his lips, then applying the coal,
he drew five or six great whiffs. A fragrant blue cloud soon arose, and
from its depths a voice was heard repeating excitedly,--
“Tobacco! real tobacco!”
“Yes, Pencroft,” returned Cyrus Harding, “and very good tobacco too!”
“O, divine Providence; sacred Author of all things!” cried the sailor.
“Nothing more is now wanting to our island.”
And Pencroft smoked, and smoked, and smoked.
“And who made this discovery?” he asked at length. “You, Herbert, no
doubt?”
“No, Pencroft, it was Mr. Spilett.”
“Mr. Spilett!” exclaimed the sailor, seizing the reporter, and clasping
him to his breast with such a squeeze that he had never felt anything
like it before.
“Oh Pencroft,” said Spilett, recovering his breath at last, “a truce for
one moment. You must share your gratitude with Herbert, who recognized
the plant, with Cyrus, who prepared it, and with Neb, who took a great
deal of trouble to keep our secret.”
“Well, my friends, I will repay you some day,” replied the sailor. “Now
we are friends for life.”
Chapter 11
Winter arrived with the month of June, which is the December of the
northern zones, and the great business was the making of warm and solid
clothing.
The musmons in the corral had been stripped of their wool, and this
precious textile material was now to be transformed into stuff.
Of course Cyrus Harding, having at his disposal neither carders,
combers, polishers, stretchers, twisters, mule-jenny, nor self-acting
machine to spin the wool, nor loom to weave it, was obliged to proceed
in a simpler way, so as to do without spinning and weaving. And indeed
he proposed to make use of the property which the filaments of wool
possess when subjected to a powerful pressure of mixing together, and of
manufacturing by this simple process the material called felt. This felt
could then be obtained by a simple operation which, if it diminished
the flexibility of the stuff, increased its power of retaining heat in
proportion. Now the wool furnished by the musmons was composed of very
short hairs, and was in a good condition to be felted.
The engineer, aided by his companions, including Pencroft, who was once
more obliged to leave his boat, commenced the preliminary operations,
the subject of which was to rid the wool of that fat and oily substance
with which it is impregnated, and which is called grease. This cleaning
was done in vats filled with water, which was maintained at the
temperature of seventy degrees, and in which the wool was soaked for
four-and-twenty hours; it was then thoroughly washed in baths of soda,
and, when sufficiently dried by pressure, it was in a state to be
compressed, that is to say, to produce a solid material, rough, no
doubt, and such as would have no value in a manufacturing center of
Europe or America, but which would be highly esteemed in the Lincoln
Island markets.
This sort of material must have been known from the most ancient times,
and, in fact, the first woolen stuffs were manufactured by the process
which Harding was now about to employ. Where Harding’s engineering
qualifications now came into play was in the construction of the machine
for pressing the wool; for he knew how to turn ingeniously to profit
the mechanical force, hitherto unused, which the waterfall on the beach
possessed to move a fulling-mill.
Nothing could be more rudimentary. The wool was placed in troughs, and
upon it fell in turns heavy wooden mallets; such was the machine in
question, and such it had been for centuries until the time when the
mallets were replaced by cylinders of compression, and the material was
no longer subjected to beating, but to regular rolling.
The operation, ably directed by Cyrus Harding, was a complete success.
The wool, previously impregnated with a solution of soap, intended on
the one hand to facilitate the interlacing, the compression, and the
softening of the wool, and on the other to prevent its diminution by
the beating, issued from the mill in the shape of thick felt cloth. The
roughnesses with which the staple of wool is naturally filled were so
thoroughly entangled and interlaced together that a material was formed
equally suitable either for garments or bedclothes. It was certainly
neither merino, muslin, cashmere, rep, satin, alpaca, cloth, nor
flannel. It was “Lincolnian felt,” and Lincoln Island possessed yet
another manufacture. The colonists had now warm garments and thick
bedclothes, and they could without fear await the approach of the winter
of 1866-67.
The severe cold began to be felt about the 20th of June, and, to his
great regret, Pencroft was obliged to suspend his boat-building, which
he hoped to finish in time for next spring.
The sailor’s great idea was to make a voyage of discovery to Tabor
Island, although Harding could not approve of a voyage simply for
curiosity’s sake, for there was evidently nothing to be found on this
desert and almost arid rock. A voyage of a hundred and fifty miles in a
comparatively small vessel, over unknown seas, could not but cause him
some anxiety. Suppose that their vessel, once out at sea, should be
unable to reach Tabor Island, and could not return to Lincoln Island,
what would become of her in the midst of the Pacific, so fruitful of
disasters?
Harding often talked over this project with Pencroft, and he found him
strangely bent upon undertaking this voyage, for which determination he
himself could give no sufficient reason.
“Now,” said the engineer one day to him, “I must observe, my friend,
that after having said so much, in praise of Lincoln Island, after
having spoken so often of the sorrow you would feel if you were obliged
to forsake it, you are the first to wish to leave it.”
“Only to leave it for a few days,” replied Pencroft, “only for a few
days, captain. Time to go and come back, and see what that islet is
like!”
“But it is not nearly as good as Lincoln Island.”
“I know that beforehand.”
“Then why venture there?”
“To know what is going on in Tabor Island.”
“But nothing is going on there; nothing could happen there.”
“Who knows?”
“And if you are caught in a hurricane?”
“There is no fear of that in the fine season,” replied Pencroft.
“But, captain, as we must provide against everything, I shall ask your
permission to take Herbert only with me on this voyage.”
“Pencroft,” replied the engineer, placing his hand on the sailor’s
shoulder, “if any misfortune happens to you, or to this lad, whom
chance has made our child, do you think we could ever cease to blame
ourselves?”
“Captain Harding,” replied Pencroft, with unshaken confidence, “we
shall not cause you that sorrow. Besides, we will speak further of this
voyage, when the time comes to make it. And I fancy, when you have seen
our tight-rigged little craft, when you have observed how she behaves at
sea, when we sail round our island, for we will do so together--I fancy,
I say, that you will no longer hesitate to let me go. I don’t conceal
from you that your boat will be a masterpiece.”
“Say ‘our’ boat, at least, Pencroft,” replied the engineer, disarmed for
the moment. The conversation ended thus, to be resumed later on, without
convincing either the sailor or the engineer.
The first snow fell towards the end of the month of June. The corral had
previously been largely supplied with stores, so that daily visits to
it were not requisite; but it was decided that more than a week should
never be allowed to pass without someone going to it.
Traps were again set, and the machines manufactured by Harding were
tried. The bent whalebones, imprisoned in a case of ice, and covered
with a thick outer layer of fat, were placed on the border of the forest
at a spot where animals usually passed on their way to the lake.
To the engineer’s great satisfaction, this invention, copied from the
Aleutian fishermen, succeeded perfectly. A dozen foxes, a few wild
boars, and even a jaguar, were taken in this way, the animals being
found dead, their stomachs pierced by the unbent bones.
An incident must here be related, not only as interesting in itself, but
because it was the first attempt made by the colonists to communicate
with the rest of mankind.
Gideon Spilett had already several times pondered whether to throw into
the sea a letter enclosed in a bottle, which currents might perhaps
carry to an inhabited coast, or to confide it to pigeons.
But how could it be seriously hoped that either pigeons or bottles could
cross the distance of twelve hundred miles which separated the island
from any inhabited land? It would have been pure folly.
But on the 30th of June the capture was effected, not without