Adrift in the Pacific-Two Years Holiday

by Jules Verne

  The boys crowded up to Jack and took him in their arms, although he continued to sob bitterly. They knew now why this youngster, the liveliest in the school, and one of the sharpest, had become so gloomy, and why he had kept apart from the rest! By his brother’s orders and at his own wish, too, they had seen him venture his life at every dangerous opportunity that offered! And he thought he had not done enough! He wanted to risk his life again! And as soon as he could speak, this is what he said, —

  ‘You see it is for me to go—for me alone! Is it not so, brother?’

  ‘Well done, Jack,’ said Briant, taking his brother in his arms.

  In face of Jack’s confession, in face of the right he insisted on, it was in vain that Donagan and the others tried to interfere. All that could be done was to leave him to the mercy of the wind, which was showing a certain tendency to freshen.

  Jack shook hands with his friends, and then, before getting into the car, turned to his brother, who remained motionless a few paces behind the winch.

  ‘Goodbye,’ said Jack.

  ‘Yes! Goodbye!’ said Briant, restraining his feelings; ‘or rather, it is for me to bid you goodbye, for it is for me to go.’

  ‘You!’ exclaimed Jack.

  ‘You! you!’ said Donagan and Service.

  ‘Yes! I! If Jack’s folly is atoned for by himself or his brother makes little difference. Besides, when I had the first idea of this attempt, do you think I ever thought of leaving it to another?’

  ‘Brother,’ said Jack, ‘I beg you.’

  ‘No, Jack!’

  ‘Then,’ said Donagan, ‘ I claim my turn.’

  ‘No, Donagan!’ said Briant, in a tone admitting of no reply, ‘I will go! It is my wish to do so.’

  ‘As I thought, Briant!’ said Gordon, clasping him by the hand.

  A few minutes afterwards Briant was in the car, and as soon as he had fixed himself comfortably, he gave the order to let the kite go.

  The kite rose gently at first; then Baxter, Wilcox, Cross, and Service, who were posted at the winch, let the string run out quickly, while Garnett allowed the signal-cord to run smoothly through his fingers.

  In ten seconds the ‘Giant of the Air’ had disappeared in the darkness—not amid such cheers as had greeted its last departure, but in profound silence.

  The intrepid chief of this little world had vanished with it.

  Regularly rose the kite. The steady breeze assured perfect stability. Briant experienced none of those oscillations which might have made his position more perilous. And he remained motionless, with his hands grasping the cords that held up the car, which swayed gently as if it were a swing.

  A strange feeling had Briant at first, when he felt himself suspended in space from this huge inclined plane which rustled in the wind. It seemed as though he were being lifted by some fantastic bird of prey, or rather an enormous black bat. But, thanks to the energy of his character, he was able to keep as cool as the adventure required.

  Ten minutes after the kite had left the ground a slight shock indicated that its ascensional movement was about to cease. Arrived at the end of the string, it began to rise, not without a few jerks.

  Briant coolly caught hold of the string run through the ball, and began his observations. Holding on with one hand to the suspension-cord, with the other he held his night-glasses.

  Below him all was darkness. The lake, the forests, the cliff, formed a confused mass in which he could distinguish no detail; but he could trace the whole coast-line of the island.

  And if he had made this ascent in the daytime, and looked round a horizon bathed in light he might have seen other islands, or even a continent, If any existed within a range of from forty to fifty miles, such as he could command.

  In the west, and the north, and the south, the sky was too misty for him to see anything; but in the east, where a little corner of the firmament was temporarily free from cloud, a few stars appeared.

  And exactly in that direction a bright light, reflecting on to the lower banks of cloud, attracted his attention.

  ‘It is the light of a fire!’ he exclaimed. ‘Has Walston camped over there? No! The fire is much too far away, and it is certainly beyond the island! Can it be a volcano in eruption? Is there land over there?’

  It occurred to Briant’s memory that on his first expedition to Deception Bay a whitish patch had appeared on the field of his glasses. ‘Yes,’ said he, ‘and it was over there! Can it have been a glacier? If so, land ought to be near us in the east.’

  Briant brought his glasses to bear on the light which the darkness made more apparent. There could be no doubt that it was a volcano, and that a glacier was close by which belonged either to a continent or archipelago not more than thirty miles away.

  As Briant settled this in his mind he was conscious of another light much nearer to him—five or six miles away only—and consequently on the island and among the trees.

  ‘It is in the forest this time,’ he said, ‘and on the skirts of it, on the seashore!’

  But it seemed as though the light had only appeared to disappear, for despite all he could do, Briant could not catch sight of it again.

  Yes! His heart beat so violently, and his hand trembled so, that he could not hold his glasses so as to catch it in their field!

  But there could be no doubt there was a camp fire not far from the mouth of East River. Briant had seen it and soon he recognized its reflection among the trees.

  So Walston and his men were camped near Bear Rock Harbour. The mutineers of the Severn had not abandoned Charman Island! The colonists were exposed to their attack, and were no longer in safety at French Den!

  Evidently Walston had found it impossible to repair the boat, and had given up his attempt to leave for one of the neighbouring islands.

  Briant, having finished his observations, judged it useless to prolong his aerial exploration. He prepared to descend. The wind was increasing. Already the oscillations of the car had become greater, and the car swung in a way that would make landing difficult.

  Making sure that the signal-cord was clear, he let go the ball, which in a few seconds slipped down into Garnett’s hand.

  Immediately the winch began to wind in the string.

  But as the kite went down Briant kept watching the lights he had seen. Again he saw that of the eruption and that of the camp fire.

  It can be imagined with what extreme impatience Gordon and the others had waited for the signal for descent The twenty minutes Briant had passed in the air seemed to them interminable.

  Donagan and his assistants worked away vigorously at the winch. They also had noticed that the wind had gained in strength and blew more unsteadily. They could feel the jerks on the string, and began to fear with keen anxiety that Briant would come to grief.

  The winch spun round as hard as they could drive it, but to get in twelve hundred feet of cord took much time. The wind kept rising, and three quarters of an hour after the signal had been given, it was blowing quite fresh.

  The kite at the time was more than a hundred feet above the lake.

  Suddenly there was a violent jerk. Wilcox, Donagan, Service, Webb, and Baxter found resistance gone, and fell forward on to the ground.

  The string had broken!

  And amid the cries of terror there were shouts of—

  ‘Briant! Briant!’

  A few minutes afterwards Briant gained the beach and shouted loudly.

  ‘Brother!’ said Jack, who was the first to rush to his arms.

  ‘Walston is there!’

  Those were Briant’s first words as soon as his comrades had gathered round him.

  When the string broke Briant had felt himself carried away—not in a vertical fall, but obliquely and comparatively slowly, owing to the kite forming a sort of parachute above him. What he had to do was to leave the car before it touched the surface of the lake. He waited, and the instant before it struck the water he took a header, and, good swimmer as he was, he
soon covered the four or five hundred feet that separated him from the shore.

  And meanwhile, the kite, deprived of its weight, had disappeared in the north-east like a gigantic raft in the air.

  CHAPTER X—THE ENEMY IN SIGHT.

  IT was late next morning before the boys were astir, and ready to discuss the state of affairs which had become so disquieting.

  Walston, as Gordon remarked, had now been a fortnight on the island, and if he had not repaired his boat, it was because he had not the tools to do so.

  ‘That must be the reason,’ said Donagan; ‘for the boat was not damaged very much. If our schooner had not suffered more, we should have had her seaworthy in much less time.’

  But although Walston had not gone, it was not likely that he intended to settle on Charman Island. Had he done so, he would have made several excursions into the interior, and French Den would certainly have been visited by him.

  Then Briant told the others what he had seen regarding the land, which could not be very far off to the eastward.

  ‘You have not forgotten,’ he said, ‘that when we went to East River I noticed a white patch a little above the horizon, which I could not at all understand.’

  ‘Wilcox and I saw nothing like it,’ said Donagan, ‘although we did our best—’

  ‘Moko saw it as distinctly as I did,’ said Briant.

  ‘Well, that may be,’ said Donagan. ‘But what makes you think we are near a continent or a group of islands?’

  ‘Just this,’ said Briant ‘Yesterday, while I was looking at the horizon in that direction, I saw a light a long way beyond our island, which could only come from a volcano in eruption, and I supposed that there must be some land not far off. Now, the sailors of the Severn must know that, and they would do all they could to get there.’

  ‘That is true enough,’ interrupted Baxter. ‘They won’t get much by stopping here. Evidently the only reason they have not relieved us of their presence is that they have not been able to get their boat made seaworthy.’

  Briant’s news was of the greatest importance to the little colony. It showed for certain that Charman Island was not isolated in the Pacific as they had thought. But the fact that Walston had taken up his quarters at East River seriously complicated matters. He had left the place where he had come ashore, and come a dozen miles nearer the camp. He had only to ascend the river to reach the lake; and he had only to skirt the southern shore of the lake to discover French Den.

  To provide against this, Briant had to take every precaution. Henceforth the boys were allowed out only when absolutely necessary. Baxter masked the palisading of the enclosure with a curtain of brushwood, and in the same way he concealed the entrances of the hall and store-room. No one was allowed to show himself in the open between the lake and Auckland Hill.

  And added to these difficulties there were now other causes of anxiety. Costar was ill of a fever, and in danger of his life. Gordon had to prescribe for him from the schooner’s medicine-chest, not without some nervousness that he might make a mistake! Luckily, Kate was quite a mother to the poor, sick boy. She watched over him with a painstaking affection, which is instinctive to woman, and nursed him night and day. Thanks chiefly to her, the fever left him, and he soon afterwards quite recovered.

  During the first fortnight of November there were frequent showers, but on the 17th the barometer rose and steadied, and the warm season set in for good. Trees and shrubs and all the vegetation were soon covered with leaves and flowers. The customary visitors of South Moors returned in great numbers. Donagan was miserable at not being able to go out shooting across the marshes, and poor Wilcox was none the less so at not being able to spread his nets. And not only did the birds swarm on the island, but others were taken in the snares near French Den.

  One day Wilcox found one of the birds of passage, that the winter had driven to the unknown countries of the north. It was a swallow, which still carried the little packet under its wing. Did the packet contain a letter addressed to the survivors of the schooner? Alas, not The message had come back without a reply.

  During these long, idle days, many were the hours now passed in the hall. Baxter, who had charge of the log, found not an incident to relate. And in less than four months the third winter would begin for the colonists of Charman Island!

  The boys noticed with deep anxiety, how discouragement was seizing upon the most energetic—with the exception of Gordon who was always absorbed in the details of administration.

  Even Briant at times despaired, although he did his best to hide it. He tried to encourage his comrades to continue their studies, to resume their debates, and their readings aloud. He reminded them constantly of their country and their friends, averring that one day they would go back. He did all he could to keep up their spirits, but with little success, and his great fear was that despair would overwhelm them.

  Nothing of the sort! Events of the greatest importance were at hand which soon gave them quite sufficient excitement.

  It was on the 21st of November, about two o’clock in the afternoon, when Donagan was fishing in the lake, that his attention was attracted by the discordant cries of a score of birds hovering over the left bank of the stream. If the birds were not crows—which they somewhat resembled—they evidently belonged to the same voracious and cawing species.

  Donagan would have taken little notice of their cries had not their behaviour been strange.

  They were describing large circles, diminishing in radius as they neared the ground, until in a compact group they swooped down.

  Then the noise became greater than ever, but in vain Donagan tried to catch a glimpse of the birds among the thick bushes in which they had disappeared.

  The thought occurred to him that the carcase of some animal must be there. Curious to know what was the matter, he returned to French Den and asked Moko to take him over in the boat to the other side of Zealand River.

  They pushed off and in ten minutes had slipped in among the vegetation on the bank. At once the birds took to flight, protesting by their screams at being disturbed at their meal.

  There lay the body of a young guanaco that had evidently been dead for only a few hours, inasmuch as it was not quite cold.

  Donagan and Moko not caring to burden their larder with the remains of the birds’ dinner, were about to leave it when it occurred to them to ask why the guanaco had come to die on the skirt of the marsh, so far from the eastern forest which its fellows so seldom left.

  Donagan examined the body. There was a wound in the flank, a wound which could not have been given by the tooth of a jaguar, or any other beast of prey.

  ‘This guanaco was shot!’ said Donagan.

  ‘And here is the proof!’ said the cabin-boy, picking out a bullet from the wound with the point of his knife.

  The bullet was more of the size carried by a ship’s rifle than by such a gun as sportsmen use. It must therefore have been fired by Walston or one of his companions.

  Donagan and Moko, leaving the carcase to the birds, returned to French Den to consult with their companions.

  That the guanaco had been shot by one of the Severn men was evident, for neither Donagan nor any one else had fired a gun for more than a month. But it was important to know when and where the guanaco had received the bullet.

  Taking everything into consideration, it appeared the wound must have been given not more than five or six hours before—that being the lapse of time necessary for the animal to cross the Down Lands so as to reach the river. Consequently, one of Walston’s men must that morning have been at the south point of Family Lake, and the party must have crossed East River, and be getting nearer and nearer to French Den.

  Thus the position was getting more serious, although danger was not yet imminent in the south of the island lay this vast plain, cut up by streams, patched with swamps, dotted with sandhills, where there was not enough game to furnish the party with their daily meals It was unlikely that Walston, as yet, had ventur
ed to cross it; no report of firearms had been heard, and there was reason to hope that the position of French Den had not yet been

  discovered.

  Nevertheless, prudential means had to be enforced with renewed vigour. If there was any chance of repulsing an attack, it lay in the colonists not being caught by surprise outside the cave.

  Three days afterwards a more significant event happened to increase their apprehensions, and show that their safety was more endangered than ever.

  On the 24th, about nine o’clock in the morning, Briant and Gordon had gone out across Zealand River, to see if they could throw up a sort of entrenchment across the narrow footpath which ran between the lake and the marsh. Behind this entrenchment it would be easy for Donagan, the best shot of the party, to lie in ambush if Walston’s advance was discovered in time.

  They had gone about three hundred yards from the river, when Briant stepped on something which broke under his foot. He took no notice of this, thinking it was one of the thousands of shells rolled up by the springtides when they covered the plain. But Gordon, who was walking behind him, stopped and exclaimed, —

  ‘Look here, Briant, look here!’

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  Gordon stooped and picked up what had been broken.

  ‘Look!’ he said

  ‘That is not a shell,’ said Briant. ‘That is—’

  ‘A pipe!’

  Gordon held in his hand a black pipe with the stem broken off at the bowl.

  ‘As none of us smoke,’ said he, ‘this pipe must have been lost—’

  ‘By one of the men, unless it belonged to the Frenchman who was here before us.’

  No! The pipe had not belonged to Baudoin, who had died twenty years before. It had been dropped very recently, as the fragments of tobacco inside it clearly showed. A few days before, perhaps a few hours before, one of Walston’s companions or perhaps Walston himself had been on this side of the lake.