by Theo Varlet
“Île Fer-et-or!” Lefébure put in, humorously.
Hurrahs saluted that impromptu baptism.
“Yes! Yes!”
“That’s it!”
“Île Féréor! Île Féréor!”
The vibrant voice of the corvette captain demanded silence. “Île Féréor—so be it; the name is fine and harmonious,13 but we alone will employ it, for the time being. As for you, Monsieur Gripert, I beg you not to budge. Monsieur Madec has strict orders, and I renew them here publicly, to keep the nature, as well as the exact position, of the island secret. The discovery of the island and its taking into possession by us—yes, the government of the Republic will be informed of that this evening; but you know that the League of Nations has not yet made a decision as to the attribution of the island. Announce by radio that it is made of gold—even in encrypted language? Bah! We know what secret codes are sometimes worth, with all the possible leaks at the ministry and ever-watchful espionage. That would be to risk a check at the League of Nations, and attract a horde of gold-seekers here.”
“They’d be here in no time,” the Commander said, supportively. “Like you, Captain, I’m of the opinion that we should keep the secret. In any case, our right of first occupation is incontestable. France...”
“France has, in this island, a unique opportunity to reestablish its finances. It’s up to us to take advantage of it before it’s too late. Who knows what the future holds in store for us? The exploitation must begin tomorrow.”
“Fortunately, we have the equipment!” said the Commander.
There was no need to say any more; although it was not official, the true goal of the expedition was not a mystery to anyone aboard, and Lefébure, who had discovered its nature, had revealed it to me and to the others two days before.
Hazard had served the government of the Republic well is causing it to chose the Erebus II, because it was readily to depart and fully equipped for a polar expedition. In reality, Commander Barcot, covered with glory but financially ruined by his previous voyages, had only obtained subsidies from the financier Jean-Paul Rivier by agreeing to add to his scientific objectives other aims of a practical order, to which the cargo of sulfur was merely an accessory. According to certain indications obtained in the course of the preceding voyage, a gold-bearing deposit existed south of the volcano Terror, in the vicinity of the eight-second parallel. That is why the Erebus II had embarked four mining engineers in addition to its scientific personnel, and why the holds had been loaded, before Lefébure’s perspicacious eyes, with an entire apparatus for mining exploitation: huts, explosives, a conveyor belt, diggers, rails, Decauville locomotives and wagons...
When he had seen, with a knowing smile for everyone, that everyone was in the know, Commander Barcot added: “Messieurs, we’re about to do better than enrich our backer, to whom I had resigned myself in order to obtain the means of returning to the Pole. We’re going to save our county’s credit, and reestablish the fortune of France. Tomorrow we begin taking aboard the yellow nuggets of Île Féréor!”
VI. Celestial Gold
The weather had improved overnight. By dawn, the rain had stopped, but black clouds, chased by the north-east wind, were still attached to the summit of the snowy peak.
Undertaken at first light, the circumnavigation of Île Féréor revealed more of its geological structure to us and permitted us to find a disembarkation site in the western face.
The ferrous part of the bolide, visible above the ocean surface like a pedestal on which the auriferous cone was set, was neither level nor all of a piece. One might have thought that two gigantic slabs of iron had been stuck together at their ends, with opposing slopes, as if their junction, or hinge, had been prized apart by the weight of the cone—with the result that the black cliffs, several hundred meters high on the southern side, at which we had arrived, declined gradually until they disappeared beneath the waves at the location of the “hinge.” They rose up beyond, to the north, in a symmetrical slope, but in the interval a breach opened, about ninety meters wide and two hundred deep: a kind of basin of calm water, sheltered from the wind, prolonged by a ravine about half a kilometer long, which ended at the base of the peak itself.
In this V-shaped opening, the steep blood-red slope appeared to be much closer to us than it had the previous evening, beneath the clouds that hid its snowy part. There was no mistaking the fact that yellow pebbles of all sizes were encrusted like flints in that makeshift cliff.
“Nuggets!” said Gripert, in a slightly-hushed voice, pointing them out to us.
No one replied. An anguish gripped the throats of the ship’s officers, assembled on the upper deck, and it was in silence that the commands were uttered and the maneuvers carried out.
Not without difficulty, utilizing the fissures and projections that the two iron shores presented at this point, the immobilization of the Erebus II was contrived by means of four mooring-ropes, which protected it from drifting in the current and the waves. The starboard side of the vessel was scarcely three meters from the edge of the cliff, which was shaped like a quay, and an initial communication with the ground was established with the aid of a gangplank, while awaiting the setting-up of the conveyor-belt for the transportation of materials.
A crew of ten men, equipped with pickaxes and spades, disembarked first, and the bosun took them on reconnaissance, while the four engineers, Gripert and I followed by the two commanders, went over the gangplank in our turn.
A disorderly scene ensued, however. At the end of the creek, at the entrance to the ravine, a red stream, like the one in the gorge the previous day, was rolling its nuggets over a miry thalweg of gold chloride, which plastered the hinge like a mudslide from the peak. Having arrived there, the sailors threw their tools away and broke ranks in order to collect the gold.
Seeing that, their comrades still aboard the ship, along with the other officers, loudly demanded to go ashore too. We called a halt, anxiously—but Lefébure, stationed at the head of the gangplank, fired his revolver, threatening to blow out the brains of the first one who stepped on to it. He succeeded in containing them and sending them back to their posts.
We resumed our march, and Commander Barcot severely reprimanded the men occupied in heaping up nuggets at the edge of the muddy stream. He succeeded in making them understand that the real deposit was further on, at the top of the ravine, in the red wall in which the nuggets seemed to be stuck like the almonds in a fantastic bar of nougat.
Rallied and dragged away by the bosun, the sailors picked up their picks and spades and launched themselves forward at the double, their heels making a tremendous racket on the iron ground.
We “civilized” individuals affected a more casual and moderate manner—but I confess that I felt greatly disturbed. A continual tickling sensation was irritating my throat with an absurd desire to laugh or cry; I could already see myself as the master of unprecedented wealth, and I dedicated it to Frédérique...
The engineers excited one another with cubic measurements and estimates of percentages in chloride and pure gold. Cubic kilometers and millions of tons leapt to their lips; all four of them were debating with the aid of grand gestures, like drunkards.
Captain de Silfrage and Commander Barcot walked in silence, gravely, their features contracted and jaws clenched in a determined and triumphant rictus. The former, holding fast to his idea of the previous day, had brought his flag with him, whose shaft he was finally able to plant profoundly in the layer of gold chloride mud in the middle of the thalweg.
The most disinterested of us, probably, was Gripert. The prodigious golden alp was no more interesting to him than the landscape of iron that the two slopes displayed immensely to the right and left, in a black and hideous desolation that was lost in the mist in the distance. The mineralogist embraced “his” bolide with his gaze, with a satisfied proprietorial smile, and while moving forward, he made notes for his future paper.
During that march along the wall, on
the sloping edge of the red torrent, an embarrassment, every time we looked at one another, caused us to turn our gazes away, invincibly attracted by the gold, as if by a theatrical performance that was simultaneously indecent and tempting. We tried in vain to adopt an “innocent” appearance.
When we reached the foot of the peak, however, although the sight of such a mass of gold, in excluding any fancy of egotistical possession, reduced the intoxication of gold to its pure state, so to speak, all of us, without exception, experienced the need to pick up a nugget—just one, but a big one—and pocket it as a souvenir.
We had, in any case, only to bend down. Under the action of the rain, and even that of the saline air, the rocks of gold chloride were disintegrating into a pasty magma; a bed of nuggets was already deposited at the foot of the wall, in the hollow formed by the fusion of their matrix, exactly like pebbles at the foot of a cliff.
By virtue of a sort of modesty, before putting it in our jacket pocket, we each held our nuggets of gold in one hand at the end of an outstretched arm, feeling its several kilos of weight with a muscular astonishment—and we touched it in secret, smooth and cold, impregnating it, in a way, with the potential virtue of gold, irradiating within us a kind of illusion, of symbolically possessing all the gold in the mountain that loomed up in front of us.
Among the sailors, instinct was given free rein. The immensity of the deposit did not inspire any disdain in them for the “vile metal.” It merely spared them the disputes and squabbles that would otherwise surely have broken out. They threw themselves into it wholeheartedly. With grunts of animal joy, litanies of blasphemies and outbursts of crazed laughter, or with a silent rage and a frenetic determination, they picked up the largest nuggets—some of them weighed seventy or eighty kilos—and, holding their burdens with both hands against their chests, ran off to deposit them a little further away, on their personal piles.
It required a forceful intervention by the two leaders to bring the ten crewmen back and persuade them and their comrades to organize the work in a less primitive fashion. I even suspect the bosun of having speculated on the avidity of the men by suggesting to them—an idea of dubious regularity, but effective—that they would not tire themselves out so rapidly if they used the mining equipment, and that they would not lose out thereby, if they were careful to divert a few tons of gold and store it in the crew’s quarters for their individual benefit.
By the afternoon, the exploitation was in full swing. Under the cliff, an electric crane was picking up the nuggets dug out by the excavator and loading the miniature wagons of the decauville. The latter, released in series on the descending slope, arrived at the edge of the “quay,” where they tipped their load on to the conveyor-belt. With every passing minute, half a ton of nuggets poured like a cataract into the forward hold of the Erebus II.
It was, of course, necessary to make room there—but the mining equipment was at the very back, and in order to reach it the barrels of sulfur had had to be disembarked first. It would have been quicker to throw them in the sea, but—by virtue of a scruple of honesty that seemed out of place to us—the Commander would not permit that, and had them arranged in an orderly manner on the shore.
That gave me a first opportunity to exercise my doctoral skills and inaugurate the infirmary. Two men were injured by the fall of a barrel poorly secured to the crane’s hooks; one of them had a sprained ankle, the other a large scalp-wound.
Night fell while I was completing their treatment, but the activity of the improvised miners did not slow down. A night shift, made up of volunteers, continued the work by the light of the ship’s searchlights and acetylene lamps set up along the ravine, all the way to the point of attack.
We were at dinner. Through the portholes I could see the shadows agitating in the beams of white light magically illuminating the snow that had begun to fall. The wagons were rolling noisily down the iron slope; distant appeals could be heard, along with the whistle-blasts of the locomotive taking up the empty trains, the hum of machinery and the dull impact of loads of gold emptied into the hold.
“Two millions francs’ worth of gold a minute, Messieurs!” proclaimed de Silfrage, who had just pushed his plate of saffron-rice away in order to scribble a calculation on the tablecloth. “Once her holds are full, the Erebus II will carry away more than eight billion…gold francs, that is. And if all goes well, in less than three days, that gold will be heading for Cherbourg…and the Banque de France!”
VII. In Secret
The memory of Frédérique Kohbuler had certainly preoccupied me during the journey, and my hours of solitude were spent dreaming about her—but only my hours of solitude; at other times, her dear image vanished from my mind. Why, then, after arriving at Île Féréor—whether I was aboard the Erebus II, moored in the inlet, or on the iron ground, between the gray ocean and the unspeakable desolation of that ferrous landscape, before the red mass drowned in the flutter of the snow and the ravine filled with the tumultuous din of the factory—did the ideal presence suddenly acquire a new intensity, and impose itself upon me continuously, in “superimposition,” to use an evocative cinematic term, over my every waking moment?
Was the proximity of the gold, in the same way that it exasperated the vile passions of the sailors, giving greater relief and force to my intimate aspirations in respect of the person who would be the happiness of my life, by appearing to offer me, by means of the great adventure, the wealth and prestige that would complete me assurance of her love?
Was it the evident impossibility of enjoying those riches and happiness on my own that made me yearn for her presence more violently and evoke her memory in continuous fashion…just as once before, against the backdrop of the Edenic landscapes of the Côte d’Azur, I had been driven to the point of anguish by the desire to share that excess of beauty with a sibling soul?
Was it, on the contrary, the impression of exile imposed by the very nature of the bolide—the obscure sentiment of contemplating, in the ferocious activity of the workers taking apart that fallen star, a forbidden spectacle, abhorrent to the intrinsic harmony of the Cosmos?
I leave the problem to those more expert than me in matters of psychology—but the fact remains that for those three days, even in the hours when my occupations were at their most absorbing and the gravity of the situation ought to have taken complete possession of me, the image of Frédérique inscribed itself in filigree in all my thoughts. While caring for my invalids in the infirmary, while chatting with the officers or my scientific colleagues in the warm atmosphere of the wardroom, as well as in carrying out hard and unaccustomed labor—about which you will read in due course—in the snow, or in mounting guard on the poop-deck, I thought about her with anguished aspiration.
Far from blessing the stroke of luck that had spared me the long polar expedition and reduced my absence from Paris to a matter of weeks, I could only see one thing: Frédérique was unaware of the imminence of my return. Like everyone else, she thought that I was on my way to the Antarctic.
The prohibition on sending her any message tormented me, and, in spite of all my hopes for the future, spoiled the present for me—and it was with a sort of personal rancor that I saw, as I passed the wireless cabin, the operator Madec huddled over his crackling apparatus, making it stridulate like a giant cricket. It was forbidden to transmit private communications, which might have alerted the public to the true location of the Erebus II. Yes, I was jealous of the messages that the ship’s antenna launched toward Europe—toward Paris—twenty times a day.
Back there, in Geneva, the delegates of the nations were busy debating the fate of our island. They still believed it, on the basis of the Champlain’s report, to be a rock lost in the north Atlantic, a sterile mass of volcanic ash and scoria; and, in ignorance of its value—or, more accurately, the apparent certainty of its lack of value—were preparing to dispose of it “in the spirit of Locarno.”14 There was talk of internationalizing it, of making it a port of call and fuel
stop for aircraft.
On the evening of the fifteenth, the corvette captain and the Commander had notified the Ministry and Jean-Paul Rivier, in code, that they had taken possession of the island. The two leaders insisted, in covert terms, on the importance of the island, and the vital necessity of its attribution to France, even at the cost of sacrifices. In addition, the naval officer urgently requested the sending of a destroyer and a transport ship.
After an entire day of quibbling, the request was granted. The two ships Espadon and Cornouaille would depart from Brest on the eighteenth or nineteenth. That was the limit of the government’s audacity, however; the news broadcast to the world from the Eiffel Tower did not breathe a word about the taking of possession. The President of the Council awaited events, keeping that card up his sleeve, in order to play it, if necessary, as a decisive trump, in the negotiations in Geneva.
It was an admissible tactic—but a few hours delay or advance in our arrival in Paris might have an incalculable effect on those very negotiations, for the French government could not comprehend the true importance of the island while the results of our exploration were not known in detail…detail that de Silfrage dared not confide to the Hertzian waves.
On the one hand, it was necessary that the world be unaware of the riches of Île Féréor, until the League of Nations had reached its decision. On the other hand, the negotiations would not be conducted by France with all the desired activity—renouncing, if necessary, one of our colonies in exchange for the island, the captain said—unless the government knew about those riches.
That is why we trembled at the thought that a ship might pass within sight of the island and make a landing there. That is why we had to complete loading the cargo and make ready to sail as soon as possible, without even waiting for the arrival of the two ships that were expected.