CHAPTER XXI.
Explore the bottom of the ocean in the vicinity of the island with my submarine boat. Discover pearl-oysters, and invent a great improvement to my boat.
I arose early the next day, and started in my canoe, accompanied by mytwo goats, to the mouth of Stillwater Cove. It was a beautiful day, andone just suited for my purpose. I had made up my mind to make my wayout of the cove into the open ocean, and along the coast line of thebreakwater, taking care, if possible, not to get too near in, so asto be troubled with the undertow. To enable me to do this I was firstobliged to land on the breakwater, and with my compass to lay out someof the bearings and directions of the land and shore line--so as to beable to make a kind of chart--upon a piece of birch bark that I hadbrought for that purpose, to enable me to find my way back into thecove, or, missing that, at least to bring up somewhere on the shoresof Perseverance Bay. Having gotten everything arranged, I went onboard of my boat, which I found floating and in perfect order, havingfirst recovered my anchor in the stream and taken that also on board.Once in the interior I shipped the hanging shelves and distributed theweights in their usual places. My goats evidently took everything asa matter of course, and quietly remained where I had fastened them,near the treadmill. I put my movable deck in good order, saw that myfresh water, provisions, and candles were all right, with a bundle ofhay for the goats also. I then carefully examined all the stopcocks,the steering apparatus, and spray-wheel, and finding everything inorder, and a fine, sunshiny day overhead, I made fast the "Fairy" toa ringbolt on the outside of the boat, and paid out a long scope ofrawhide rope, so that I could sink at least forty fathoms withoutdrawing her after me. Then, giving one more look at everything, andlighting a candle in case I should need one in any emergency, I shippedmy propeller, attached the band to the treadmill, cast off my moorings,started the goats, and got under way, standing out in a westerlydirection into the ocean.
As soon as I was clear of Point Deliverance, and when about a hundredfathoms seaward to the eastward, I changed my course to the northward,all this time moving along with the manhole wide open, out of whichI often looked to see how I was proceeding, and in what direction tosteer. But I had scarcely got the head of the boat to the eastwardbefore a heavy sea broke all over me, and came dashing down themanhole, but did me no harm, falling back, as it did, in the interior,into its own element. The inside deck was rather spattered, to be sure,and the goats evidently began to be surprised, if not frightened, atthe motion of the boat, and I saw that the time had come to submergeit; but I kept on, for I was determined to keep above the surface, ifpossible, till I found myself opposite the place on the breakwater atwhich I had first been cast on shore, and which I well knew; for it wasthere that I determined to make my first descent, and see if I couldnot find some remains of the articles that were in the whaleboat when Iwas cast away. So to keep out the water I closed the manhole cover, butonce in a while ran up the ladder, opened it and looked about me, tillI at last found myself opposite the spot, and not more than a quarterof a mile distant.
I then, by a word, stopped the goats, and shut down the cover of themanhole, and screwed up the set-screws, opened the water-pipe, andplaced my hand upon the air-tank stopcock and allowed some of the airto escape. In one instant the boat that had before been buffeting aboutupon the billows was as quiet and steady as a rock. I did not descendfar before I shut off the escape of air, and sat down to think. In thefirst place I saw that by a series of experiments I could easily, inthe future, tell just how far I was descending by the rise of the waterinside of the boat upon the sides of the tanks; for, as I descended,the pressure upon the air was of course increased, and thereforecompressed, so that the water rose higher within, and nearer to themovable deck.
Having examined my compass I started the goats again, and made forthe outside of the breakwater, hoping to strike the very place wherethe whaleboat had formerly been destroyed. As I advanced towards theshore I found that I was not deep enough down to see the bottom, soI again descended till I could plainly see it below me, not ten feetdistant. I spoke to my goats and had them relax their speed, and movedslowly forward. The bottom laid out to my view was composed of sand,rocks, and an infinite variety of sea plants. How can I expect toconvey to anyone the beauties of this submarine view. The water--by itstransparency and the light that I obtained by reflection--could nothave been more than six fathoms deep, and in fact I knew that it wasin that neighborhood, for I had often, in my canoe, been outside ofthe breakwater before, fishing and for other purposes, and I knew verynearly what water I ought to have.
Although anxious to explore I could not resist the temptation to stopand gaze upon the beauties that lay before me, in all their marvellousfreshness, unseen before by the eyes of mortal man since their creationby the Almighty. Many of the plants before me, that seemed likesparkling gems, I knew well would look so only as they now stood, intheir native garden, surrounded by water, and that, taken from theelement or cast on shore, would fade ten times quicker than any landplant. Fishes of various sizes darted in every direction, and simply toplease my own conceit I deliberately dropped a line amongst them andcaptured several, which I again allowed to escape. But even in my ownsolitude I could not help smiling at the idea of a mortal man sailingalong at the bottom of the ocean and capturing its denizens at hisleisure,--the thing was too comical.
Although I had stopped the goats, my boat still had a motion, or ratherI should say that I could see that the tide was drifting it sidewaysto the northwest, but very slowly, not more than a knot an hour. Ithink that I could have sat hours and looked upon this scene. It waslike a new world opening up before me. Everything was plain, for noripple blurred the surface of the water in the interior of my boat, andno wind of heaven rushed over it to destroy, for a moment even, itstransparency. It was as still and motionless as death, and as quitelarge rocks and new objects seemed to pass by below me, I was sometimesstartled at their beauty and grandeur. It was a panorama. I seemed tobe stationary, fixed, as immovable as the foundations of the earth; andthese objects passed in review before me exactly as if moving along inspace. It was difficult to disabuse my mind of the fact that I was notstationary, but that the objects upon which I was gazing were. Thisfeeling was increased in a marked degree by the absolute stillness andwant of motion, in itself, of my submarine boat.
I hated to break in upon this deathlike silence by the motion of mypropeller, but I was being swept by the tide slowly away from mydestination, and it would not do to proceed too far, so as to lose thetrue course by compass. Reluctantly then I spoke to my goats and putthe boat in motion, and proceeded upon my way. I had not advanced,far when I perceived that I was entering a perfect forest of submarineplants and kelp, the long tendrils of which, sustained by the water,reached upwards towards the surface. I saw that I was upon dangerousground, and therefore stopped the treadmill and reversed my propeller,and backed out from my position. I then rigged my pump and made theboat ascend so as to pass over their heads, and again forced the boattowards the breakwater, but this time I found that I was getting intothe undertow, and the forest beneath me warned me not to descend; soI had nothing to do but to back out seaward and give up all idea ofexploring the place of my shipwreck.
When I had pushed back so as to be clear of the tangled plants thatseemed to surround the margin of the island on this side, I commencedagain to descend, and allowed the boat to rest within a few feet of thebottom, and, rigging my spray-wheel, went to work to renew and purifymy air, which I had no difficulty in doing. I then moved about indifferent directions, taking care all the time to keep a reckoning bymy compass of the courses sailed and the distances passed over, by deadreckoning. During one of my stationary moments I had a complete view ofas large a shark as I have ever seen. He passed directly beneath me,and took no more notice of the boat than if it had been a stationaryrock. He was at least sixteen feet in length, and would have made but amouthful of poor me.
THE SUBMARINE BOAT.--PAGE 243.]
I wish that I could describe the sights that I saw. It seemed as if Iwas in another world, and had passed from this existence to one moreadvanced, in which I floated in space. The extreme silence of allabout me, and the rigidness of all objects seen, was very striking. Ateach moment some beautiful fish or plant struck my view, of which Ihad never before had any knowledge. I moved about in all directions,trying to find, if possible, some bank of pearl-oysters, and I had agood idea of how they ought to look, for I had once, in my youngerdays, descended with the divers in the East Indies to the pearl-oysterbeds, and knew the whole practical science of the business. At last,at a point by compass and dead-reckoning about northeast from PointDeliverance, and distant two miles, I came upon what I wanted,--orrather what I hoped was what I wanted,--namely, a perfect bank ofoysters, in thousands, clustered together. My first act was, afterstopping the boat, to throw over a light anchor, to hold it inposition; the next to cast into the water a small grapnel, to which wasattached a long piece of rawhide rope, fully forty fathoms in length,ending in a wooden buoy, shaped like a tenpin in a bowling-alley, andof about the same size. This, after dropping the grapnel, by means of ashort boat-hook I thrust under the tank of the boat, and saw it rapidlytake up the spare line as it ascended towards the surface. And as itwas so ascending it flashed upon me that here was also a practical wayof determining at all times the depth of water; for this buoy onlytook out about seven or eight fathoms of the line before it becamestationary, evidently having reached the surface. I used this buoy toanchor the reef, so as to be able to find it in future trips, when Ihad only to stand out towards it, on pleasant days, on the surface ofthe water, and, when I found it, descend and find myself on the reef.
And for measurement of my depth below the surface I had only, infuture, to fasten a light, buoyant piece of wood to a small cord,marked off into fathoms, which I could at any time thrust under thetanks and allow to ascend to the surface, and note how many of thefathoms of line were taken up, which would denote my depth below thesurface, and then draw my sounding-buoy back again into the boat forfurther use, simply reversing the method that is used on shipboard.That is to say, instead of throwing a lead with a marked line to thebottom of the ocean, I threw a buoy to the surface. Nature seemed to becapsized, and everything upside down, as used to appear in using theinverted telescope in my first attempts to take the altitude of thesun with a sextant. If I had not lived so solitary a life I could havelaughed at many of the things that befel me in this submarine boat.
Having gotten the boat securely anchored, and the buoy thrown out as Ihave related, I went to work gathering the oysters. I had taken careto bring with me a light pickaxe, a crowbar, and a sort of hand-rake,similar to ones used by East Indian divers, which I proceeded toemploy upon the mass of oysters below me. I had no difficulty indetaching all I wanted of them, and filling my decks, and particularlythe hanging shelves, which I relieved of their stones and weights,replacing them by masses of the oysters. I made a long job of this,and, having gotten all I desired, I drew up my anchor and got againunder way, ascending as near as possible to the surface beforeadvancing towards the land. During all this time, whenever necessary, Ihad renewed my air by use of the spray-wheel.
Being near the surface, which I was made aware of in several ways, suchas the increased light, the disappearance of the bottom from view, anda slight noise of the waves above me, and a little motion of the boat,caused by their agitation, I put the goats at full speed, feeling surethat for at least two miles nothing was in my way. After I had, asI calculated, gone this distance, I slowed down, and proceeded morecautiously; but after an hour's work I made no land, nor found anygreat shallowing of the water. Here was a pretty scrape. By my chart Iwas past Stillwater Cove, and even in the interior of the island, andnot a sign of the land or shallow water could I find. I began to beseriously troubled, and I foresaw that unless I soon made some shallowwater I should be obliged to dive under my tanks, and look about me andsee where I was. But before I did this I descended and anchored, andfound out for the first time that I was at last in a strong current,setting towards the westward. This frightened me still more, and Iascended at once, stripped off the little clothing that I had on, andplunged into the water and came up buoyant as a cork on the surface,and pulled the canoe towards me and got into it without much effort.One glance showed me what the trouble was. I had gradually, during thewhole day, drifted to the westward, and had passed West Signal Point,and was, in the direction I was pursuing, leaving the island on theport hand, behind me. One glance in the open air cleared my brain, andgave me a true idea of where I was, for I confess that the many coursesthat I had sailed beneath the surface had rather confused me.
Taking one more good look about me, I plunged into the sea under mytanks, and was again inside my boat, which I speedily started in theright direction, and in less than two hours made shallow water, when Ionce more had to dive out of the boat and look about me, when I foundthat I had made a pretty good landfall, as I was in Perseverance Bay,not more than a quarter of a mile from the mouth of Stillwater Cove,having overrun it; and as I was so near home I dove back again, startedthe goats, and soon had the pleasure of finding myself in the cove,some part of the bottom of which I already recognized; and I foresawthat if I should make many trips I should be able to recognize thebottom just as easily as one recognizes familiar objects on land.
I stranded my boat in the usual manner, and waited for the tide,which was now at an ebb, to leave the top exposed, for the buoyancyof the boat was not very great from my frequent use of the air-tankstopcock. During this time I busied myself in casting the oysters tothe bottom, and then moving the boat, which was thus lightened, alittle to one side, so that, when the tide returned, the former wouldbe exposed clear of the boat. I then unshipped the movable shelvesand put everything in order in the interior, and sat down and ate ahearty meal, after which I tried the manhole, which, by the pressureof the tanks upon the sand, I felt confident was above the surface,which proved to be the fact. I soon had the goats ashore, who seemedto be glad to escape from the confinement of the boat, and gambolledabout me. I waited patiently for the tide to go down far enough for meto get at my oysters, which I conveyed to the land, above high-watermark, and, sitting down, commenced with my knife to open one or two ofthem. I think it was the third that I was opening when my knife-bladestruck against something that made my heart beat. I laid open theoyster, and there within it, nestled near to the upper shell, was asbeautiful and perfect a pearl as anyone could desire to see. It was notvery large,--perhaps the size of a common pea,--but of a pure creamcolor, and of perfect oval form. I knew at once that it was a jewelof value and price, and I carefully hid it away in my clothing. Thisprize sufficed me. It proved to me the importance of my discovery, andI was determined that the sun should do the remainder of the work forme, and therefore left the oysters where they lay, to be made putrid byexposure, when the pearls that they might contain could be very easilywashed out.
I was not wholly satisfied with my boat. I did not like the idea ofhaving to dive overboard to find out where I was, as I had had toto-day, and I commenced racking my brains to overcome it; and atlast I accomplished it in theory, and it may be as well to statehere that it served me perfectly when put in practice on many futureoccasions, and in fact almost took the place of the spray-wheel. Itwas this. I arranged, in the first place, a sort of air-boat, in theshape of the half shell of an English walnut, but shallower, nearlyfour feet in length. This boat was made of very thin sheet-iron, butperfectly airtight, and upon it was lashed, in a horizontal position,a cylinder of sheet-iron, closed at one end and open at the other, afoot in diameter, and in length the same as the shallow, airtight,walnut-shaped boat that sustained it. At the end of this boat, justbelow the mouth of the cylinder, was affixed a solid iron ring, andto this was spliced a strong rawhide rope of great length. To utilizethis machine I made two long bars of iron, which I could arrange inthe interior of the boat, across its greatest diameter, in the form ofthe
letter V, pointing downwards towards the bottom of the ocean, andat the point of contact was arranged a block through which the ropeattached to the air-boat could be rove. This inverted derrick, in theform of a letter V, was still further braced by another bar, leadingto one of the short diameters of the boat, in the interior, forminga tripod. To use the air-boat I had only (at any time when beneaththe surface and in need of air, either to purify that surrounding meor obtain enough to force the boat out of water on the surface, afterhaving used up the air in the tanks) to reeve the rawhide rope throughthe derrick, as above, and erect the same in an inverted form, pointingtowards the bottom, and then put the air-boat in the water in theinterior of the submarine boat, force it bodily down in a horizontalmanner till the cylinder was filled with water, and then start thegoats so that the rope attached to the nose of the air-boat, leadingdown to the inverted apex of the tripod, through the block, and thenceto the drum of the treadmill, would be tautened, and cause it to erectitself in a perpendicular manner, and be forced down under the watertowards the apex of the tripod. When submerged enough to clear thebottom of the tank I slackened the rope gradually, pressing it at thesame time out and clear from the tank, and yet keeping enough strainupon it to prevent its touching the latter; when, as soon as it wasclear, I slacked the rope wholly, to allow it to arise to the surfaceoutside, which it rapidly did on account of the confined air in theair-tight shell. Of course immediately upon its arrival at the surfaceit righted itself, and presented the appearance, on a small scale, ofa barrel with one head out, placed in a horizontal position upon asmall sled or vessel. In this position all the water that had been inthe cylinder was at once discharged, and, to get a measure of freshair exactly equal to the dimensions of this cylinder, I had only toset the goats to work, to take the rope to the drum of the treadmill,the first effect of which was to depress the nose and open mouth ofthe cylinder on the air-boat, at the surface, and the next to drag itdown under the water in a perpendicular position, with the cylindercharged with air, which could not escape. As soon as it appeared clearof the outside of the tank, against which it rubbed in its descent,and was brought down near to the inverted apex of the tripod, Icommenced slacking the same rope till it arrived at the surface ofthe water within the submarine boat, when I cast off the rope and itrighted itself violently, discharging at the same time the contents ofthe cylinder in the shape of new air, and I had only to repeat thisprocess of conveying fresh air from the surface to obtain all I needed,taking care only, in sending the apparatus to the surface, to seethat, when the air-boat was first pointed under water ready to ascend,it took back with it none of its precious freight, which was easilyobviated when it was held in a semi-perpendicular state, and halfsubmerged ready to ascend, by pushing upon the part out of water tillit was forced into a horizontal position, the air from the cylinderdischarged, and replaced by water, when, after descending towards theconnecting points of the tripod and pushed clear of the side tank, itwas allowed to ascend to the surface, discharge the water, and descendagain filled with air.
With this apparatus I found that I could even compress the air in theinterior, and in many future expeditions I had no trouble in makingmy submarine boat, at any time, self-sustaining on the surface of thewater, and I could by a little labor come to the surface, open mymanhole, and look about me and see where I was.
THE AIR BOAT.]
Perseverance Island; Or, The Robinson Crusoe of the Nineteenth Century Page 24