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

difficulty, of an albatross, which a shot from Herbert’s gun had

slightly wounded in the foot. It was a magnificent bird, measuring ten

feet from wing to wing, and which could traverse seas as wide as the

Pacific.

Herbert would have liked to keep this superb bird, as its wound would

soon heal, and he thought he could tame it; but Spilett explained to

him that they should not neglect this opportunity of attempting to

communicate by this messenger with the lands of the Pacific; for if the

albatross had come from some inhabited region, there was no doubt but

that it would return there so soon as it was set free.

Perhaps in his heart Gideon Spilett, in whom the journalist sometimes

came to the surface, was not sorry to have the opportunity of sending

forth to take its chance an exciting article relating the adventures

of the settlers in Lincoln Island. What a success for the authorized

reporter of the New York Herald, and for the number which should contain

the article, if it should ever reach the address of its editor, the

Honorable James Bennett!

Gideon Spilett then wrote out a concise account, which was placed in a

strong waterproof bag, with an earnest request to whoever might find it

to forward it to the office of the New York Herald. This little bag was

fastened to the neck of the albatross, and not to its foot, for these

birds are in the habit of resting on the surface of the sea; then

liberty was given to this swift courier of the air, and it was not

without some emotion that the colonists watched it disappear in the

misty west.

“Where is he going to?” asked Pencroft.

“Towards New Zealand,” replied Herbert.

“A good voyage to you,” shouted the sailor, who himself did not expect

any great result from this mode of correspondence.

With the winter, work had been resumed in the interior of Granite House,

mending clothes and different occupations, among others making the sails

for their vessel, which were cut from the inexhaustible balloon-case.

During the month of July the cold was intense, but there was no lack of

either wood or coal. Cyrus Harding had established a second fireplace in

the dining-room, and there the long winter evenings were spent. Talking

while they worked, reading when the hands remained idle, the time passed

with profit to all.

It was real enjoyment to the settlers when in their room, well lighted

with candles, well warmed with coal, after a good dinner, elderberry

coffee smoking in the cups, the pipes giving forth an odoriferous smoke,

they could hear the storm howling without. Their comfort would have been

complete, if complete comfort could ever exist for those who are far

from their fellow-creatures, and without any means of communication with

them. They often talked of their country, of the friends whom they had

left, of the grandeur of the American Republic, whose influence could

not but increase; and Cyrus Harding, who had been much mixed up with the

affairs of the Union, greatly interested his auditors by his recitals,

his views, and his prognostics.

It chanced one day that Spilett was led to say--

“But now, my dear Cyrus, all this industrial and commercial movement

to which you predict a continual advance, does it not run the danger of

being sooner or later completely stopped?”

“Stopped! And by what?”

“By the want of coal, which may justly be called the most precious of

minerals.”

“Yes, the most precious indeed,” replied the engineer; “and it would

seem that nature wished to prove that it was so by making the diamond,

which is simply pure carbon crystallized.”

“You don’t mean to say, captain,” interrupted Pencroft, “that we burn

diamonds in our stoves in the shape of coal?”

“No, my friend,” replied Harding.

“However,” resumed Gideon Spilett, “you do not deny that some day the

coal will be entirely consumed?”

“Oh! the veins of coal are still considerable, and the hundred

thousand miners who annually extract from them a hundred millions of

hundredweights have not nearly exhausted them.”

“With the increasing consumption of coal,” replied Gideon Spilett, “it

can be foreseen that the hundred thousand workmen will soon become two

hundred thousand, and that the rate of extraction will be doubled.”

“Doubtless; but after the European mines, which will be soon worked more

thoroughly with new machines, the American and Australian mines will for

a long time yet provide for the consumption in trade.”

“For how long a time?” asked the reporter.

“For at least two hundred and fifty or three hundred years.”

“That is reassuring for us, but a bad look-out for our

great-grandchildren!” observed Pencroft.

“They will discover something else,” said Herbert.

“It is to be hoped so,” answered Spilett, “for without coal there would

be no machinery, and without machinery there would be no railways, no

steamers, no manufactories, nothing of that which is indispensable to

modern civilization!”

“But what will they find?” asked Pencroft. “Can you guess, captain?”

“Nearly, my friend.”

“And what will they burn instead of coal?”

“Water,” replied Harding.

“Water!” cried Pencroft, “water as fuel for steamers and engines! water

to heat water!”

“Yes, but water decomposed into its primitive elements,” replied Cyrus

Harding, “and decomposed doubtless, by electricity, which will then have

become a powerful and manageable force, for all great discoveries, by

some inexplicable laws, appear to agree and become complete at the same

time. Yes, my friends, I believe that water will one day be employed

as fuel, that hydrogen and oxygen which constitute it, used singly or

together, will furnish an inexhaustible source of heat and light, of

an intensity of which coal is not capable. Some day the coalrooms of

steamers and the tenders of locomotives will, instead of coal, be stored

with these two condensed gases, which will burn in the furnaces with

enormous calorific power. There is, therefore, nothing to fear. As long

as the earth is inhabited it will supply the wants of its inhabitants,

and there will be no want of either light or heat as long as the

productions of the vegetable, mineral or animal kingdoms do not fail us.

I believe, then, that when the deposits of coal are exhausted we shall

heat and warm ourselves with water. Water will be the coal of the

future.”

“I should like to see that,” observed the sailor.

“You were born too soon, Pencroft,” returned Neb, who only took part in

the discussion by these words.

However, it was not Neb’s speech which interrupted the conversation, but

Top’s barking, which broke out again with that strange intonation which

had before perplexed the engineer. At the same time Top began to run

round the mouth of the well, which opened at the extremity of the

interior passage.

“What can Top be barking in that way for?” asked Pencroft.

“And Jup be growling like that?” added Herbert.

In fact the orang, joining the dog, gave unequivocal signs of agitation,

and, singular to say, the two animals appeared more uneasy than angry.

“It is evident,” said Gideon Spilett, “that this well is in direct

communication with the sea, and that some marine animal comes from time

to time to breathe at the bottom.”

“That’s evident,” replied the sailor, “and there can be no other

explanation to give. Quiet there, Top!” added Pencroft, turning to the

dog, “and you, Jup, be off to your room!”

The ape and the dog were silent. Jup went off to bed, but Top remained

in the room, and continued to utter low growls at intervals during the

rest of the evening. There was no further talk on the subject, but the

incident, however, clouded the brow of the engineer.

During the remainder of the month of July there was alternate rain and

frost. The temperature was not so low as during the preceding winter,

and its maximum did not exceed eight degrees Fahrenheit. But although

this winter was less cold, it was more troubled by storms and squalls;

the sea besides often endangered the safety of the Chimneys. At times

it almost seemed as if an under-current raised these monstrous billows

which thundered against the wall of Granite House.

When the settlers, leaning from their windows, gazed on the huge watery

masses breaking beneath their eyes, they could not but admire the

magnificent spectacle of the ocean in its impotent fury. The waves

rebounded in dazzling foam, the beach entirely disapppearing under the

raging flood, and the cliff appearing to emerge from the sea itself, the

spray rising to a height of more than a hundred feet.

During these storms it was difficult and even dangerous to venture out,

owing to the frequently falling trees; however, the colonists never

allowed a week to pass without having paid a visit to the corral.

Happily, this enclosure, sheltered by the southeastern spur of Mount

Franklin, did not greatly suffer from the violence of the hurricanes,

which spared its trees, sheds, and palisades; but the poultry-yard on

Prospect Heights, being directly exposed to the gusts of wind from the

east, suffered considerable damage. The pigeon-house was twice unroofed

and the paling blown down. All this required to be remade more solidly

than before, for, as may be clearly seen, Lincoln Island was situated in

one of the most dangerous parts of the Pacific. It really appeared as if

it formed the central point of vast cyclones, which beat it perpetually

as the whip does the top, only here it was the top which was motionless

and the whip which moved. During the first week of the month of August

the weather became more moderate, and the atmosphere recovered the calm

which it appeared to have lost forever. With the calm the cold again

became intense, and the thermometer fell to eight degrees Fahrenheit,

below zero.

On the 3rd of August an excursion which had been talked of for several

days was made into the southeastern part of the island, towards Tadorn

Marsh. The hunters were tempted by the aquatic game which took up their

winter quarters there. Wild duck, snipe, teal and grebe abounded there,

and it was agreed that a day should be devoted to an expedition against

these birds.

Not only Gideon Spilett and Herbert, but Pencroft and Neb also took part

in this excursion. Cyrus Harding alone, alleging some work as an excuse,

did not join them, but remained at Granite House.

The hunters proceeded in the direction of Port Balloon, in order to

reach the marsh, after having promised to be back by the evening. Top

and Jup accompanied them. As soon as they had passed over the Mercy

Bridge, the engineer raised it and returned, intending to put into

execution a project for the performance of which he wished to be alone.

Now this project was to minutely explore the interior well, the mouth

of which was on a level with the passage of Granite House, and which

communicated with the sea, since it formerly supplied a way to the

waters of the lake.

Why did Top so often run round this opening? Why did he utter such

strange barks when a sort of uneasiness seemed to draw him towards this

well? Why did Jup join Top in a sort of common anxiety? Had this well

branches besides the communication with the sea? Did it spread towards

other parts of the island? This is what Cyrus Harding wished to know. He

had resolved, therefore, to attempt the exploration of the well during

the absence of his companions, and an opportunity for doing so had now

presented itself.

It was easy to descend to the bottom of the well by employing the rope

ladder which had not been used since the establishment of the lift. The

engineer drew the ladder to the hole, the diameter of which measured

nearly six feet, and allowed it to unroll itself after having securely

fastened its upper extremity. Then, having lighted a lantern, taken a

revolver, and placed a cutlass in his belt, he began the descent.

The sides were everywhere entire; but points of rock jutted out here and

there, and by means of these points it would have been quite possible

for an active creature to climb to the mouth of the well.

The engineer remarked this; but although he carefully examined these

points by the light of his lantern, he could find no impression, no

fracture which could give any reason to suppose that they had either

recently or at any former time been used as a staircase. Cyrus Harding

descended deeper, throwing the light of his lantern on all sides.

He saw nothing suspicious.

When the engineer had reached the last rounds he came upon the water,

which was then perfectly calm. Neither at its level nor in any other

part of the well, did any passage open, which could lead to the interior

of the cliff. The wall which Harding struck with the hilt of his cutlass

sounded solid. It was compact granite, through which no living being

could force a way. To arrive at the bottom of the well and then climb

up to its mouth it was necessary to pass through the channel under the

rocky subsoil of the beach, which placed it in communication with the

sea, and this was only possible for marine animals. As to the question

of knowing where this channel ended, at what point of the shore, and at

what depth beneath the water, it could not be answered.

Then Cyrus Harding, having ended his survey, re-ascended, drew up the

ladder, covered the mouth of the well, and returned thoughtfully to the

diningroom, saying to himself,--

“I have seen nothing, and yet there is something there!”