The Mysterious Island (18 page)

"Oh!" replied the engineer, "we might, no doubt, find all these
substances on the island, but a gun is a delicate instrument, and needs
very particular tools. However, we shall see later!"

"Why," cried Pencroft, "were we obliged to throw overboard all the
weapons we had with us in the car, all our implements, even our
pocket-knives?"

"But if we had not thrown them away, Pencroft, the balloon would have
thrown us to the bottom of the sea!" said Herbert.

"What you say is true, my boy," replied the sailor.

Then passing to another idea,—"Think," said he, "how astounded Jonathan
Forster and his companions must have been when, next morning, they found
the place empty, and the machine flown away!"

"I am utterly indifferent about knowing what they may have thought,"
said the reporter.

"It was all my idea, that!" said Pencroft, with a satisfied air.

"A splendid idea, Pencroft!" replied Gideon Spilett, laughing, "and
which has placed us where we are."

"I would rather be here than in the hands of the Southerners," cried the
sailor, "especially since the captain has been kind enough to come and
join us again."

"So would I, truly!" replied the reporter. "Besides, what do we want?
Nothing."

"If that is not—everything!" replied Pencroft, laughing and shrugging
his shoulders. "But, some day or other, we shall find means of going
away!"

"Sooner, perhaps, than you imagine, my friends," remarked the engineer,
"if Lincoln Island is but a medium distance from an inhabited island,
or from a continent. We shall know in an hour. I have not a map of the
Pacific, but my memory has preserved a very clear recollection of
its southern part. The latitude which I obtained yesterday placed New
Zealand to the west of Lincoln Island, and the coast of Chile to the
east. But between these two countries, there is a distance of at least
six thousand miles. It has, therefore, to be determined what point in
this great space the island occupies, and this the longitude will give
us presently, with a sufficient approximation, I hope."

"Is not the archipelago of the Pomoutous the nearest point to us in
latitude?" asked Herbert.

"Yes," replied the engineer, "but the distance which separates us from
it is more than twelve hundred miles."

"And that way?" asked Neb, who followed the conversation with extreme
interest, pointing to the south.

"That way, nothing," replied Pencroft.

"Nothing, indeed," added the engineer.

"Well, Cyrus," asked the reporter, "if Lincoln Island is not more than
two or three thousand miles from New Zealand or Chile?"

"Well," replied the engineer, "instead of building a house we will build
a boat, and Master Pencroft shall be put in command—"

"Well then," cried the sailor, "I am quite ready to be captain—as soon
as you can make a craft that's able to keep at sea!"

"We shall do it, if it is necessary," replied Cyrus Harding.

But while these men, who really hesitated at nothing, were talking,
the hour approached at which the observation was to be made. What Cyrus
Harding was to do to ascertain the passage of the sun at the meridian of
the island, without an instrument of any sort, Herbert could not guess.

The observers were then about six miles from the Chimneys, not far from
that part of the downs in which the engineer had been found after his
enigmatical preservation. They halted at this place and prepared for
breakfast, for it was half-past eleven. Herbert went for some fresh
water from a stream which ran near, and brought it back in a jug, which
Neb had provided.

During these preparations Harding arranged everything for his
astronomical observation. He chose a clear place on the shore, which
the ebbing tide had left perfectly level. This bed of fine sand was as
smooth as ice, not a grain out of place. It was of little importance
whether it was horizontal or not, and it did not matter much whether the
stick six feet high, which was planted there, rose perpendicularly. On
the contrary, the engineer inclined it towards the south, that is to
say, in the direction of the coast opposite to the sun, for it must
not be forgotten that the settlers in Lincoln Island, as the island was
situated in the Southern Hemisphere, saw the radiant planet describe its
diurnal arc above the northern, and not above the southern horizon.

Herbert now understood how the engineer was going to proceed to
ascertain the culmination of the sun, that is to say its passing the
meridian of the island or, in other words, determine due south. It was
by means of the shadow cast on the sand by the stick, a way which, for
want of an instrument, would give him a suitable approach to the result
which he wished to obtain.

In fact, the moment when this shadow would reach its minimum of length
would be exactly twelve o'clock, and it would be enough to watch the
extremity of the shadow, so as to ascertain the instant when, after
having successively diminished, it began to lengthen. By inclining his
stick to the side opposite to the sun, Cyrus Harding made the shadow
longer, and consequently its modifications would be more easily
ascertained. In fact, the longer the needle of a dial is, the more
easily can the movement of its point be followed. The shadow of the
stick was nothing but the needle of a dial. The moment had come, and
Cyrus Harding knelt on the sand, and with little wooden pegs, which he
stuck into the sand, he began to mark the successive diminutions of the
stick's shadow. His companions, bending over him, watched the operation
with extreme interest. The reporter held his chronometer in his hand,
ready to tell the hour which it marked when the shadow would be at its
shortest. Moreover, as Cyrus Harding was working on the 16th of April,
the day on which the true and the average time are identical, the hour
given by Gideon Spilett would be the true hour then at Washington, which
would simplify the calculation. Meanwhile as the sun slowly advanced,
the shadow slowly diminished, and when it appeared to Cyrus Harding that
it was beginning to increase, he asked, "What o'clock is it?"

"One minute past five," replied Gideon Spilett directly. They had now
only to calculate the operation. Nothing could be easier. It could be
seen that there existed, in round numbers, a difference of five hours
between the meridian of Washington and that of Lincoln Island, that is
to say, it was midday in Lincoln Island when it was already five o'clock
in the evening in Washington. Now the sun, in its apparent movement
round the earth, traverses one degree in four minutes, or fifteen
degrees an hour. Fifteen degrees multiplied by five hours give
seventy-five degrees.

Then, since Washington is 77deg 3' 11" as much as to say seventy-seven
degrees counted from the meridian of Greenwich which the Americans
take for their starting-point for longitudes concurrently with the
English—it followed that the island must be situated seventy-seven and
seventy-five degrees west of the meridian of Greenwich, that is to say,
on the hundred and fifty-second degree of west longitude.

Cyrus Harding announced this result to his companions, and taking into
consideration errors of observation, as he had done for the latitude, he
believed he could positively affirm that the position of Lincoln Island
was between the thirty-fifth and the thirty-seventh parallel, and
between the hundred and fiftieth and the hundred and fifty-fifth
meridian to the west of the meridian of Greenwich.

The possible fault which he attributed to errors in the observation was,
it may be seen, of five degrees on both sides, which, at sixty miles
to a degree, would give an error of three hundred miles in latitude and
longitude for the exact position.

But this error would not influence the determination which it was
necessary to take. It was very evident that Lincoln Island was at such a
distance from every country or island that it would be too hazardous to
attempt to reach one in a frail boat.

In fact, this calculation placed it at least twelve hundred miles from
Tahiti and the islands of the archipelago of the Pomoutous, more than
eighteen hundred miles from New Zealand, and more than four thousand
five hundred miles from the American coast!

And when Cyrus Harding consulted his memory, he could not remember in
any way that such an island occupied, in that part of the Pacific, the
situation assigned to Lincoln Island.

The next day, the 17th of April, the sailor's first words were addressed
to Gideon Spilett.

"Well, sir," he asked, "what shall we do to-day?"

"What the captain pleases," replied the reporter.

Till then the engineer's companions had been brickmakers and potters,
now they were to become metallurgists.

The day before, after breakfast, they had explored as far as the point
of Mandible Cape, seven miles distant from the Chimneys. There, the long
series of downs ended, and the soil had a volcanic appearance. There
were no longer high cliffs as at Prospect Heights, but a strange and
capricious border which surrounded the narrow gulf between the two
capes, formed of mineral matter, thrown up by the volcano. Arrived at
this point the settlers retraced their steps, and at nightfall entered
the Chimneys; but they did not sleep before the question of knowing
whether they could think of leaving Lincoln Island or not was definitely
settled.

The twelve hundred miles which separated the island from the Pomoutous
Island was a considerable distance. A boat could not cross it,
especially at the approach of the bad season. Pencroft had expressly
declared this. Now, to construct a simple boat even with the necessary
tools, was a difficult work, and the colonists not having tools they
must begin by making hammers, axes, adzes, saws, augers, planes, etc.,
which would take some time. It was decided, therefore, that they
would winter at Lincoln Island, and that they would look for a more
comfortable dwelling than the Chimneys, in which to pass the winter
months.

Before anything else could be done it was necessary to make the iron
ore, of which the engineer had observed some traces in the northwest
part of the island, fit for use by converting it either into iron or
into steel.

Metals are not generally found in the ground in a pure state. For the
most part they are combined with oxygen or sulphur. Such was the case
with the two specimens which Cyrus Harding had brought back, one of
magnetic iron, not carbonated, the other a pyrite, also called sulphuret
of iron. It was, therefore the first, the oxide of iron, which they must
reduce with coal, that is to say, get rid of the oxygen, to obtain it in
a pure state. This reduction is made by subjecting the ore with coal to
a high temperature, either by the rapid and easy Catalan method,
which has the advantage of transforming the ore into iron in a single
operation, or by the blast furnace, which first smelts the ore, then
changes it into iron, by carrying away the three to four per cent. of
coal, which is combined with it.

Now Cyrus Harding wanted iron, and he wished to obtain it as soon as
possible. The ore which he had picked up was in itself very pure and
rich. It was the oxydulous iron, which is found in confused masses of a
deep gray color; it gives a black dust, crystallized in the form of the
regular octahedron. Native lodestones consist of this ore, and iron
of the first quality is made in Europe from that with which Sweden and
Norway are so abundantly supplied. Not far from this vein was the vein
of coal already made use of by the settlers. The ingredients for the
manufacture being close together would greatly facilitate the treatment
of the ore. This is the cause of the wealth of the mines in Great
Britain, where the coal aids the manufacture of the metal extracted from
the same soil at the same time as itself.

"Then, captain," said Pencroft, "we are going to work iron ore?"

"Yes, my friend," replied the engineer, "and for that—something which
will please you—we must begin by having a seal hunt on the islet."

"A seal hunt!" cried the sailor, turning towards Gideon Spilett. "Are
seals needed to make iron?"

"Since Cyrus has said so!" replied the reporter.

But the engineer had already left the Chimneys, and Pencroft prepared
for the seal hunt, without having received any other explanation.

Cyrus Harding, Herbert, Gideon Spilett, Neb, and the sailor were
soon collected on the shore, at a place where the channel left a ford
passable at low tide. The hunters could therefore traverse it without
getting wet higher than the knee.

Harding then put his foot on the islet for the first, and his companions
for the second time.

On their landing some hundreds of penguins looked fearlessly at them.
The hunters, armed with sticks, could have killed them easily, but they
were not guilty of such useless massacre, as it was important not to
frighten the seals, who were lying on the sand several cable lengths
off. They also respected certain innocent-looking birds, whose wings
were reduced to the state of stumps, spread out like fins, ornamented
with feathers of a scaly appearance. The settlers, therefore, prudently
advanced towards the north point, walking over ground riddled with
little holes, which formed nests for the sea-birds. Towards the
extremity of the islet appeared great black heads floating just above
the water, having exactly the appearance of rocks in motion.

These were the seals which were to be captured. It was necessary,
however, first to allow them to land, for with their close, short
hair, and their fusiform conformation, being excellent swimmers, it is
difficult to catch them in the sea, while on land their short, webbed
feet prevent their having more than a slow, waddling movement.

Pencroft knew the habits of these creatures, and he advised waiting till
they were stretched on the sand, when the sun, before long, would send
them to sleep. They must then manage to cut off their retreat and knock
them on the head.