The Mysterious Island. Jules Verne
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about everything, could contribute with his mind and body to the island’s colonization. He would not recoil before any task and, being a passionate hunter, he would make a business out of what had been until then a sport for him.
Harbert, a courageous lad, already remarkably educated in the natural sciences, would make a substantial contribution to the common cause.
Neb was devotion personified. Skillful, intelligent, tireless, robust, with a constitution of iron, he understood a little about blacksmithing and would be very useful to the colony.
As for Pencroff, he had sailed on all the oceans, had been a carpenter in the Brooklyn dockyards, a tailor’s aide in the Navy, gardener, farmer during his furloughs, etc., and like a true man of the sea, he was prepared for anything and knew how to do everything.
It would truly be difficult to unite five men more suitable to battle fate and to be more assured of triumphing against it.
“At the beginning,” Cyrus Smith said. Now this beginning that the engineer referred to was the construction of an apparatus which would serve to transform natural substances. It is known that heat plays a role in these transformations. Now the fuel, wood or coal, was available for immediate use and they must proceed to make a furnace for using it.
“What is the purpose of the furnace?” asked Pencroff.
“To make the pottery that we need,” replied Cyrus Smith.
“And with what will we make the furnace?”
“With bricks.”
“And the bricks?”
“With clay. Let’s go, my friends. In order to avoid transportation problems, we’ll establish our workshop at the very place of production. Neb will bring the provisions, and there will be no lack of fire for cooking food.”
“But,” replied the reporter, “if there’s to be no lack of food, then we’ll have to make some hunting weapons.”
“Ah! If we only had a knife,” shouted the sailor.
“What then?” asked Cyrus Smith.
“Then I would quickly make a bow and arrows, and there would be plenty of game in the pantry.”
“Yes, a knife, a sharp blade …,” the engineer said as if speaking to himself.
At this moment he turned his attention toward Top who was prowling around the beach.
Suddenly Cyrus Smith appeared to have an idea.
“Here, Top,” he said.
The dog ran up at his master’s call. He took Top’s head between his hands, detached the collar the animal carried on his neck and broke it in two parts, saying:
“Here are two knives, Pencroff!”
The sailor responded with two hurrahs. Top’s collar was made of a thin band of tempered steel. All that was needed was to first grind it on a sandstone so as to give it a keen sharp edge, and then to remove the burr on a finer sandstone. Now this type of sandy rock existed in abundance on the beach and, two hours later, the colony’s stock of tools was composed of two sharp blades which fit easily into sturdy handles.
The conquest of this first tool was saluted like a triumph, and one that had come just in time.
They left. It was Cyrus Smith’s intention to return to the eastern shore of the lake. On the previous day, he had noticed clay soil, and taken a sample. They walked along the bank of the Mercy, crossed Grand View Plateau and, after a walk of five miles, they arrived at a clearing situated 200 feet from Lake Grant.
On the way, Harbert discovered a tree whose branches are used by the Indians of South America to make their bows. It was the “crejimba”1 of the palm tree family which bears no edible fruit. Some long straight branches were cut, stripped of leaves, pruned, made thicker in the center and thinner at the extremities, and all that remained was to find a suitable plant for the cord of the bow. This was a species belonging to the mallow family, the “hibiscus heterophyllus,”2 which furnishes fibers of remarkable tenacity that can be compared to the tendons of animals. Pencroff thus made some quite strong bows and now he only needed arrows. These were easy to make with some straight and rigid branches without knots. But it would not be very easy to find an iron-like substance to use on the points. But Pencroff said that he had done his share of the work, and chance would do the rest.
The colonists arrived on terrain that they recognized from the previous day. It was composed of this figuline clay which can be used to make bricks and tiles, and it would therefore be very useful in carrying out the operation. The manual labor required would not present any great difficulty. It sufficed to thin this clay with some sand, mold the bricks, and bake them in the heat of a wood fire.
Ordinarily, bricks are pressed into molds but the engineer was content to form them by hand. All that day and the following were employed with this work. The clay, mixed with water, was then puddled with the hands and feet of the men, and then divided into blocks of equal size. A skilled workman could make, without a machine, up to 10,000 bricks in twelve hours; but, in their two days of work, the five brickmakers of Lincoln Island made about 3,000 which were laid out alongside each other until the time, three or four days later, when they would be dry and ready for baking.
On April 2nd, Cyrus Smith determined the geographical position of the island.
On the previous evening, he had noted exactly the time when the sun disappeared below the horizon, taking into account refraction. This morning, he noted no less exactly the time when it reappeared. Between the setting and the rising, twelve hours less twenty four minutes elapsed. Thus six hours and twelve minutes after today’s sunrise, the sun would exactly pass the meridian and the point in the sky that it would occupy at that moment would be north.*
Three thousand bricks were laid out.
At the indicated hour, Cyrus noted this point by lining up two trees with the sun which would serve as a reference mark. He thus obtained a fixed meridian for subsequent operations.
The men spent the two days preceding the baking of the bricks looking for fuel. They cut off branches around the clearing and gathered all the wood that had fallen under the trees. They also hunted a little in the vicinity, more efficiently since Pencroff possessed several dozen arrows armed with very sharp points. It was Top who had furnished these points. He brought in a porcupine, mediocre as food, but of incontestable value thanks to its quills. These quills were securely attached to the ends of the arrows and their stability was assured by a tail made with the feathers of cockatoos. The reporter and Harbert promptly became skillful archers. Game of both fur and feathers was abundant at the Chimneys: capybaras, pigeons, agoutis, heather cocks, etc. For the most part, these animals were killed in the part of the forest situated on the left bank of the Mercy which they gave the name Jacamar Woods in remembrance of the bird that Pencroff and Harbert had pursued during their first exploration.
This game was eaten fresh, but they saved the legs of the capybara which they smoked over a fire of green wood after having aromatized it with fragrant leaves. This food was fortifying, but it was always roast upon roast, and the diners would have been happy to hear the sound of beef boiling on the hearth. For this, however, they would have to wait until pots were made and consequently until the oven was built.
During these excursions, which were made only within a restricted radius around the brickyard, the hunters were able to verify the recent passage of large animals with powerful claws of a species they did not recognize. Cyrus Smith urged them to be extremely prudent because it was likely that the forest concealed several dangerous beasts.
And it was well that they did. One day, Gideon Spilett and Harbert saw an animal that resembled a jaguar. It was fortunate that this animal did not attack them because they might not have gotten away without some serious wounds. But as soon as they could get their hands on a real weapon,