The Floating Island (10 page)

These various properties all
belonged to the Floating Island Company. Those who lived in them were only
tenants whatever the amount of their fortune might be. Care had been taken to
provide for all the requirements of comfort demanded by these extraordinarily rich
Americans, by the side of whom the sovereigns of Europe and the nabobs of India
cut but a sorry figure.

If the statistics are correct
which give the stock of gold accumulated in the world at eighteen millions and
that of silver at twenty millions, it must be admitted that the inhabitants of
the Pearl of the Pacific had their fair share.

From the outset the financial
side of the enterprise had been kept well in view. The hotels and houses had
been let at fabulous prices. The rents amounted to millions, and many of the
families could without inconvenience afford this payment for annual lodging.
Hence, under this head alone the Company secured a good revenue. Evidently the
capital of Floating Island justified the name it bore in geographical
nomenclature.

Setting aside these opulent
families, there were several hundreds paying a rental of from four to eight
thousand a year. The surplus of the population comprised the professors,
tradesmen, shopmen, and servants, and the foreigners, who were not very numerous,
and were not allowed to settle in Milliard City or in the island. Lawyers were
very few, and lawsuits consequently rare; doctors were fewer, and the death
rate was consequently absurdly low. Every inhabitant knew his constitution
exactly, his muscular force measured by the dynamometer, his pulmonary capacity
measured by the spirometer, his power of cardial contraction measured by the
sphygmometer, his degree of vital force measured by the magnetometer. In the
town there were neither bars nor cafés, nor drinking saloons, nothing to
encourage alcoholism. Never was there a case of dipsomania
—
let us say
drunkenness, to be understood by those who do not know Greek. The municipal
departments distributed electric energy, light, power, warmth, compressed air,
rarefied air, cold air, water under pressure, as well as pneumatic telegrams
and telephonic messages. If you died on this Floating Island, regularly
withdrawn from intemperate climates and sheltered from every microbic
influence, it was because you had to die after the springs of life had been
worked to a centenarian old age.

Were there any soldiers in
Floating Island? Yes, a body of five hundred men under the orders of Colonel
Stewart, for it had to be remembered that some parts of the Pacific are not
always safe. In approaching certain groups of islands it is prudent to be
prepared against any attack by pirates. That this militia was highly paid, that
every man received a salary superior to that of a full general in old Europe,
need not occasion surprise. The recruiting of these soldiers, lodged, boarded,
and clothed at the expense of the administration, took place under excellent
conditions, controlled by chiefs who were as rich as Crœsus; the candidates
were numerous enough to be embarrassing.

Were there any police on Floating
Island? Yes, a few companies, and they sufficed to keep the peace of a town
which had no reason to be troubled. To reside there, permission was necessary
from the municipal administration. The shores of the island were watched day
and night by custom-house officers. You could only land at the ports. How could
rascals get in there? And as to those who went wrong on the island, they were
arrested at once, sentenced, and put ashore in the west or east of the Pacific,
on any corner of the old or new continent, without the possibility of ever
returning to Floating Island.

We
said the ports of Floating Island. Were there many of them, then? There were
two, situated at the extremity of the smaller diameter of the oval. One of
these was called Starboard Harbour, the other Larboard Harbour. In this way
there was no danger of regular communications being interrupted. If, owing to
bad weather, one of these harbours was unavailable, the other was open to
ships, which could thus reach the island in all winds. It was through these
harbours that the island was supplied with goods, with petroleum brought by
special steamers, with flour and cereals, wines, beers and other drinks, tea,
coffee, cocoa, groceries, preserves, etc. At these were landed the cattle,
sheep, and pigs from the best markets of America. Thus was assured a full
supply of fresh meat and everything required by the most exacting gourmet.
There were also landed the dress materials, linen, and fashions required by the
most refined dandy or the most elegant lady. These things were bought from the
tradesmen in the island at prices we dare not name, for fear of exciting the
incredulity of the reader.

It may be asked how a regular
service of steamers could be established between the American coast and an
island which constantly changed its position
—
one
day in one position, next day twenty miles away. The reply is very simple.
Floating Island did not cruise about at a venture. Its position was in
accordance with a programme drawn up by the adminstration, at the advice of the
meteorologists of the observatory. It was a voyage
—
open to modifications, however
—
across that part of
the Pacific containing the most beautiful archipelagoes, avoiding as much as
possible sudden bursts of cold or heat, which are the causes of so many
pulmonary affections. ~ It was this which enabled Calistus Munbar to say, with
regard to winter, “we know it not!” Floating Island only manœuvred between the
thirty-fifth parallels of north and south latitude. Seventy degrees to
traverse, over four thousand sea miles. What a magnificent field of navigation!
Ships always knew where to find the Pearl of the Pacific, for its movements
were arranged in advance among the various groups of these delightful islands,
which form the oases in the desert of this mighty ocean.

But, in any case, vessels were
not reduced to having to find Floating Island by chance. The company did not
care to avail themselves of the twenty-five cables, six thousand miles long,
belonging to the Eastern Extension, Australia and China Company. No! Floating
Island must not be dependent on anybody! Scattered about the surface of the sea
were a few hundred buoys, supporting the ends of electric cables connected with
Madeleine Bay. One of these buoys would be picked up, the cable attached to the
instruments in the observatory, and the agents in the Bay informed of the
present latitude and longitude of Floating Island, the shipping service being
consequently conducted with railway regularity.

There is, however, an important
question which is worth dealing with at length.

How was enough fresh water
procured for the wants of the island?

It was made by distillation in
two special establishments, and was brought in pipes to the inhabitants of
Milliard City, or led under the fields and country around. In this way it was
provided for house and street service, and fell in beneficent rain on the
fields and lawns, which were thus independent of the caprices of the sky. And
not only was this water fresh, it was distilled, electrolyzed, more hygienic
than the purest springs of both continents, of which a drop the size of a pin’s
head may contain fifteen milliards of microbes.

But we have still to describe how
the island was moved. Great speed was unnecessary, as for six months it was not
intended to leave the region comprised between the tropics and the hundred and
thirtieth and hundred and eightieth meridians. From fifteen to twenty miles a
day was all that Floating Island required. This speed it would have been
possible to obtain by towage, by having a cable made of the Indian plant known
as bastin, which is very strong and light, and would float just below the
surface so as not to be damaged by shoals. This cable could be passed over
pulleys at the extremities of the island, which could be towed backwards and
forwards as barges are towed up and down certain rivers. And this cable would
have had to be of enormous size for such a mass, and it would have been subject
to many injuries. And the freedom would be that of an island in chains, obliged
to follow a definite line; and such freedom the citizens of free America
revolted at.

At this period electricians had
fortunately so far advanced that they could obtain almost anything from
electricity. And it was to it they entrusted the locomotion of their island.
Two establishments were enough to drive dynamos of enormous power, furnishing
electrical energy by continuous current under a moderate voltage of two
thousand volts. These dynamos drove a powerful system by screws, placed near
the two ports. They each developed five millions of horse-power, by means of
their hundreds of boilers fed with petroleum briquettes, which are less
cumbersome, less dirty than oil, and richer in caloric. These works were under
the direction of the two chief engineers, Watson and Somwah, assisted by a
numerous staff of engineers and stokers under the supreme command of Commodore Ethel
Simcoe. From his residence in the observatory, the commodore was in telephonic
communication with the works. From him came the orders for advance or retreat,
according to the programme. It was owing to him that, during the night of the
25th, the order to start had been given just as Floating Island was in the
vicinity of the Californian coast, at the commencement of its annual campaign.

The maximum speed to which the
island could attain, when the engines were developing their ten million
horse-power, was eight knots an hour. The most powerful waves, when raised by a
storm, could have no influence on it. Its size rendered it unaffected by the
undulations of the surge. Fear of sea-sickness there could be none. For the
first few days just a slight thrill could be perceived, which the rotation of
the screws communicated to its subsoil. Terminated by rams extending at each
end for some sixty yards, dividing the waters without effort, it passed without
shock or jolt over the immense liquid field open to its excursions.

The electrical energy produced at
the works was employed for other purposes than the locomotion of Floating
Island. It lighted the country, the park, and the city. It gave the luminant
for the lighthouse, whose beams signalled from afar the presence of the island
and prevented all chance of collision. It furnished the various currents
required by the telegraphs, telephotes, telautographs, telephones used in the
private houses and business establishments. It fed the artificial moons, of
five thousand candle-power, which lighted an area of five hundred square yards.

This extraordinary construction
was now on its second voyage across the Pacific. A month before it had left
Madeleine Bay and coasted up to the thirty-fifth parallel, so as to be in the latitude
of the Sandwich Islands. It was off the coast of Lower California when Calistus
Munbar, learning by telephone that the Concert Quartette had left San
Francisco, had started for San Diego to secure those eminent artistes. We know
the way he effected this, how he brought them on to Floating Island, then
moored a few cable lengths off the coast, and how, thanks to this peculiarly
smart proceeding, the dilettanti of Floating Island were to be charmed with
chamber music.

Such was this new wonder of the world,
this masterpiece of human genius, worthy of the twentieth century, of which two
violins, an alto, and a ‘cello were the guests, and which was bearing them to
the west across the Pacific.

Even
supposing that Sebastien Zorn, Frascolin, Yvernès, and Pinchinat were men who
could be astonished at nothing, it would have been difficult for them to resist
a legitimate outburst of anger, and a desire to spring at Calistus Munbar’s
throat. To have every reason to think that they were in North America, and yet
to be really in mid ocean! To believe that they were within twenty miles of San
Diego, where they were expected to give a concert next day, and to suddenly
learn that they were moving away from it on an artificial island! Really their
anger was excusable.

Fortunately for himself, the
American had taken care to get out of the way. Profiting by the surprise, or
rather the amazement of the quartette, he had left the platform and gone down
in the lift, where he was for the moment out of range of the recriminations and
exuberances of the four Parisians.

“Rascal!” exclaimed the ‘cellist.

“Animal!” exclaimed the alto.

“Suppose that, thanks to him, we
are to see wonders!”  remarked the solo violin.

“Are you going to make excuses
for him, then?” asked the second violin.

“No excuses!” said Pinchinat. “If
there is a magistrate on Floating Island, we will have this Yankee hoaxer sent
to prison.”

“And if there is an executioner,’
said Zorn, “we will have him hanged.”

But to obtain their different
results it was first necessary to descend to the level of the inhabitants of
Milliard City, the police not acting at a hundred and fifty feet in the air.
And that they would have done in a few moments, if descent had been possible.
But the cage of the lift had not come up again, and there was nothing like a
staircase. At the summit of this tower the quartette found themselves cut off
from communication with the rest of humanity.

After their first outburst of
vexation and anger, Sebastien Zorn, Pinchinat, and Frascolin left Yvernès to
his admirations and remained silent, and finally motionless. Above them rose
the flagstaff on which the flag floated.

Zorn experienced a furious desire
to cut the halliards, and bring down the flag, as a ship lowers its colours.
But as this might lead to trouble, his comrades restrained him at the moment
when his hand was brandishing a bowie-knife.

“Do not put us in the wrong,”
said the wise Frascolin.