Propeller Island

by Jules Verne

  This atoll being left to port, the look-outs now signalled the first island, Fetuhuhu, very steep, surrounded by perpendicular cliffs four hundred metres in height. Beyond is Hiau, six hundred metres high, of a barren aspect on this side, while on the other it is fresh and verdant, and has two creeks practicable for small vessels.

  Frascolin, Yvernès, and Pinchinat, leaving Sebastien Zorn to his chronic ill-humour, took their places on the tower, in company with Ethel Simcoe and several of his officers.

  One need not be astonished that this name of Hiau had excited his Highness to emit several strange onomatopes.

  “Assuredly,” said he, “it is a colony of cats which inhabits that island with a tom for chief.”

  Hiau was left to port. There was no intention of stopping there, and the course was continued towards the principal island of the group, to which it had given its name, and which was now to be temporarily increased by this extraordinary Floating Island.

  Next morning, that of the 30th of August, at daybreak our Parisians returned to their port. The heights of Nuka-Hiva had been visible the evening before. In fine weather the mountain chains of this archipelago can be seen from a distance of eighteen or twenty leagues, for the altitude of certain summits exceeds twelve hundred metres, and they lie like a gigantic backbone along the length of the islands.

  “You will notice,” said the Commodore to his guests, “a peculiarity common to all this archipelago. The summits are singularly bare, and the vegetation which begins about two-thirds up the mountain slopes penetrates to the very bottom of the ravines and gorges, and spreads magnificently down to the white beaches of the coast.”

  “And yet,” said Frascolin, “it seems that Nuka-Hiva is an exception to the general rule, at least as regards the verdure of the intermediate zones. It appears barren!”

  “Because we are approaching it from the north-west,” said the Commodore, “but when we turn at the south, you will be surprised at the contrast. Everywhere, verdant plains, forests, cascades of three hundred metres.”

  “Eh!” exclaimed Pinchinat, “a mass of water falling from the top of the Eiffel Tower, that is worth considering! Niagara should be jealous.”

  “Not at all,” said Frascolin, “it prides itself on its width, and its fall extends for nine hundred metres, from the American shore to the Canadian. You know that well, Pinchinat, for we have visited it.”

  “That is so, and I beg to apologize to Niagara,” replied his Highness.

  That day Floating Island coasted along about a mile away from the island. Always the barren slopes rising to the central plateau of Tovii, rocky cliffs which seemed to have no break in them. Nevertheless, according to the navigator Brown, there are good anchorages, which, in fact, have recently been discovered.

  In short, the aspect of Nuka-Hiva, the name of which evokes such pleasant landscapes, is rather mournful. But, as has been justly observed by Dumoulin and Desgraz, the companions of Dumont d’Urville during his voyage to the South Pole and in Oceania, “all its natural beauties are confined to the interior of its bays, into the valleys formed by the ramifications of the chain of mountains which rise in the centre of the island.”

  After following this desert shore beyond the acute angle projecting to the west, Floating Island gradually changed its direction by diminishing the speed of its starboard screws, and rounding Cape Tchitchagoff, so called by the Russian navigator Krusenstern. The coast then runs in, describing an elongated curve, in the course of which a narrow inlet gives access to the port of Taiva or Akaui, one of the creeks of which offers a shelter against the most terrible storms of the Pacific.

  Commodore Simcoe did not stop there. To the south are two other bays, that of Anna Maria or Taio-Hae in the centre, and that of Comptroller or Taipis on the other side of Cape Martin, the extreme south-westerly point of the island. Is was off Taio-Hae that they were to make a stay of twelve days.

  A little distance from the shore of Nuka-Hiva the sea is of great depth. Near the bays there is anchorage at a depth of forty or fifty fathoms. It was thus easy for the Commodore to bring up very close. to Taio-Hae Bay, which he did in the afternoon of the 31st of August.

  As soon as they arrived in sight of the port, reports were heard on the right, and a circling smoke appeared above the cliffs to the east.

  “Hallo!” said Pinchinat. “Are they firing the guns to welcome our arrival?”

  “Not so,” said the Commodore. “Neither the Tais nor the Happas, the two principal tribes of the island, possess artillery capable of firing the simplest salutes. What you hear is the noise of the sea plunging into the depths of a cavern half-way up Cape Martin, and the smoke is the spray hurled aloft from it.”

  The island of Nuka-Hiva has many names—we might say many baptismal names—given it by its successive godfathers: Federal Island by Ingraham, Beaux Island by Marchand, Sir Henry Martin Island by Hergert, Adam Island by Roberts, Madison Island by Porter. It measures seventeen miles from east to west and ten miles from north to south, its circumference being about fifty-four miles.

  Its climate is healthy; its temperature that of the tropical zone moderated by the trade winds. At this anchorage Floating Island would not be subject to the formidable tempests and pluvial cataracts which occur during the winter, for it was not going to be there from April to October, when the easterly and south-easterly winds, known to the natives as tuatuka, prevail. It is in October that the heat is greatest, the months of November and December being the driest. At other times the prevailing winds range from east to north-east.

  For the population of the Marquesas Islands, we must reject the exaggerations of their early discoverers, who estimated it at a hundred thousand. Elisée Reclus, relying on official documents, says that it does not exceed six thousand for the whole group, and that the great majority are in Nuka-Hiva. If at the time of Dumont d’Urville the Nuka-Hivans numbered eight thousand, divided into Tais, Happas, Taionas, and Taipis, the number must have continued to decrease. Whence results this depopulation? From the extermination of natives by wars, the carrying off of the males to the plantations of Peru, the abuse of strong liquors, and, it must also be confessed, to the evils which conquest brings, even when the conquerors belong to civilized races.

  During their stay here the Milliardites made numerous visits to Nuka-Hiva, and the principal Europeans, by the Governor’s permission, had free access to Floating Island.

  On their side, Sebastien Zorn and his comrades undertook several long excursions, the pleasure of which amply paid them for their fatigues.

  The bay of Taio-Hae describes a circle, cut by the narrow inlet, in which Floating Island could not have found room, so much is this bay cut up by the two sandy beaches. These beaches are separated by a sort of hill with rugged escarpments, where still exist the remains of a fort, built here by Porter in 1812. It was at this period that this sailor made the conquest of the island, the American camp occupying the eastern beach—a capture which was not ratified by the Federal Government.

  In place of a town, on the opposite beach, our Parisians found a small village; the Marquesan habitations being, for the most part, scattered under the trees. But what admirable valleys ran up from it, among others that of Taio-Hae, in which the Nuka-Hivans had placed most of their dwellings. It was a pleasure to explore beneath the clumps of cocoanut trees, bananas, casuarinas, guavas, breadfruit trees, hibiscus, and other species rich in overflowing sap. The tourists were hospitably received in the huts, where a century earlier they might have appreciated banana cakes and mei pastry and breadfruit, and the yellowish fecula of the taro, sweet when fresh and sour when stale, and the edible roots of the tacca. As to the hanu, a species of large ray which was eaten raw, and filets of shark, esteemed most highly the higher they are, our tourists declined to taste them.

  Athanase Dorémus occasionally went with them on their walks. The year before this good man had visited this archipelago and was able to act as guide. Perhaps he was not very strong in natural
history or botany, perhaps he confounded the superb Spondia cytherea, whose fruits resemble the apple, with the Pandanus odoratissimus, which justifies this superlative epithet; with the casuarina, whose bark is as hard as iron; with the hibiscus, whose bark yields the garments worn by the natives; with the papaw tree; with the Gardenia florida! It is true that the quartette had no necessity to have recourse to his somewhat suspicious knowledge, when the Marquesan flora displayed its magnificent ferns, its superb polypodies, its China roses, red and white, its grasses, its solanaceous plants, among others tobacco, its labiates in violet clusters, which form the cherished finery of the Nuka-Hivans, its castor-oil plants a dozen feet high, its dracænas, its sugar-canes, its oranges, its lemon trees of recent importation, which had succeeded marvellously in a soil impregnated by summer heat and watered by the many mountain streams.

  One morning when the quartette had ascended beyond the village of Tais along the banks of a torrent to the summit of the chain, and beneath their feet and before their eyes lay spread the valleys of the Tais, the Taipis, and the Happas, a shout of admiration escaped them. If they had had their instruments with them they could not have resisted their desire to reply by the execution of some lyric masterpiece to this spectacle of one of the masterpieces of nature. Doubtless the executants would have had but a few birds for their audience! But how beautiful is the kurukuru pigeon which flies at these heights, how charming the little salangane, which beats the air with so capricious a wing, and the tropic-bird, the habitual visitor to these Nuka-Hivan gorges. Besides, no venomous reptile was to be feared in the depths of these forests. There was no fear of the boas, barely two feet long, as inoffensive as a common snake, nor of the simquas, whose blue tail is indistinguishable among the flowers.

  The natives are of a remarkable type. There is a sort of Asiatic character about them, on account of which they are assigned a very different origin to that of the other races of Oceania. Their extremities are well shaped, their face oval, their forehead high, their black eyes with long lashes, their nose aquiline, their teeth white and regular, their colour neither black nor red, but brown like that of the Arabs, a physiognomy marked by cheerfulness and gentleness.

  Tattooing had almost disappeared—tattooing obtained not by cutting into the flesh, but by prickings, dusted with carbon and the aleurite triloba, and now replaced by the cotton cloth of the missionaries.

  “Very fine, these men,” said Yvernès, “but not so much so as when they were simply clothed in their skins, wore their own hair, and brandished bows and arrows!”

  This remark was made during an excursion to Comptroller Bay in the Governor’s company. Cyrus Bikerstaff had expressed a wish to take his guests to this bay, divided into several harbours like Valetta, and doubtless in the hands of the English Nuka-Hiva would become a Malta of the Pacific Ocean. In this district the Happas are principally found, among the gorges of a fertile country, with a small river fed by a noisy cascade. This was the chief theatre of the struggle between Porter, the American, and the natives.

  The remark of Yvernès required a reply, and the Governor made answer:

  “Perhaps you are right, Monsieur Yvernès. The Marquesans must have looked well in their cotton drawers, with the maro and pareo of brilliant colours, the alm bun, a kind of flying scarf, and the tiputa, a sort of Mexican poncho. It is certain that the modern costume hardly becomes them. What would you have? Decency is the consequence of civilization! At the same time, as our missionaries endeavour to instruct the natives, they encourage them to clothe themselves in a more or less rudimentary fashion.”

  “Are they not right?” asked Frascolin.

  “From the point of view of the proprietors, yes! From the hygienic point of view, no! Since they have become more decently clothed, the Nuka-Hivans and other islanders have undoubtedly lost their native vigour, and also their natural cheerfulness. They get weary, and their health suffers. Formerly they knew nothing of bronchitis, pneumonia, phthisis—”

  “And since they have not gone stark naked they have caught colds,” remarked Pinchinat.

  “As you say! And that has been an important cause of the decay of the race.”

  “From which I conclude,” said his Highness, “that Adam and Eve did not sneeze until the day they wore shirts and pants, after being chased from the terrestrial Paradise—and that has given us, their degenerate and responsible children, diseases of the chest.”

  “It seems to us,” remarked Yvernès, “that the women are not as good-looking as the men in this archipelago.”

  “As in the others,” replied Cyrus Bikerstaff, “and yet here perhaps you see the most perfect type of the Oceanians. But is not that a law of nature common to the races which approach the savage state? Is it not also so in the animal Kingdom, where the fauna, from the point of view of physical beauty, shows us almost invariably the males superior to the females?”

  “Well,” exclaimed Pinchinat, “we must come to the Antipodes to make observations of that kind. Our lovely Parisians would never admit it.”

  There are only two classes in the Nuka-Hiva population, and they are subject to the law of the taboo. This law was invented by the strong against the weak, by the rich against the poor, so as to protect their privileges and their goods. The taboo has white for its colour, and tabooed objects, sacred places, funereal monuments, the houses of the chiefs, the lower class are not allowed to touch. Hence a tabooed class, to which belong the priests, the sorcerers or touas, the akarkis or civil chiefs, and a non-tabooed class, to which are relegated the greater part of the women and the poorer people. Besides, not only is it not allowed to lift the hand against an object protected by the taboo, but it is even forbidden to look at it.

  “And this rule,” said Cyrus Bikerstaff, “is so strict in the Marquesas, as in Paumotu and the Society Islands, that I would advise you never to infringe it.”

  “You understand, my brave Zorn,” said Frascolin. “Keep a watch on your hands and a watch on your eyes.”

  The violoncellist was content to shrug his shoulders like a man whom these things in no way interested.

  On the 5th of September, Floating Island left its moorings at Tacoahe. It left to the east the island of Hua-Huna (Kahuga), the most easterly of the first group, of which they only perceived the distant verdant heights, and which has no beach, its circumference being formed of steep cliffs. It need hardly be mentioned that in passing along these islands Floating Island reduced its speed, for such a mass driven at a full rate would produce a sort of tide that would hurl small craft on to the shore and inundate the coast. A few miles further was Uapou, of remarkable aspect, for it bristles with basaltic peaks. Two creeks, one named Possession Bay and the other Bon Accueil Bay, indicate that their names had been given by Frenchmen. It was there in fact that Captain Marchand hoisted the flag of France.

  Beyond Ethel Simcoe entered the regions of the second group, standing towards Hiva-Oa, Dominica, according to its Spanish designation. The longest of the archipelago, of volcanic origin, it measures fifty-six miles round. Its cliffs could be distinctly observed, cut in blackish rock, and the cascades which fall from the central hills covered with rich vegetation.

  A strait three miles in width separates this island from Taou-Ata. As Floating Island could not find space enough to pass, it had to round Taou-Ata by the west, where the Bay of Madre de Dios—Resolution Bay of Cook—received the first European vessels. This island is less easy of access than its rival Hiva-Oa. Perhaps then, war being more difficult between them, the inhabitants could not come into touch with one another, and decimate themselves with their accustomed energy.

  After sighting to the eastward Motane, a sterile island, without shelter, without inhabitants, the Commodore moved on towards Fatu-Hiva. This in truth is but an enormous rock, where the birds of the tropical zone swarm, a sort of sugar-loaf measuring three miles in circumference.

  Such was the third islet in the south-east, of which the Milliardites lost sight in the afternoon of
the 9th of September. In conformity with its itinerary, Floating Island then steered south-west for the Paumotu Archipelago, and passed through the centre of that group.

  The weather continued favourable, this month of September corresponding to that of March in the northern hemisphere.

  In the morning of the 11th of September the launch from Larboard Harbour picked up one of the floating buoys, to which was attached one of the cables from Madeleine Bay. The end of this copper wire, of which a sheath of gutta-percha assured the complete insulation, was connected with the instruments in the observatory, and telephonic communication established with the American coast.

  The council of administration of the Floating Island Company was consulted concerning the shipwrecked crew of the Malay ketch. Would they authorize the governor to give them a passage to the Fijis, whither they could return to their country quickly and cheaply?

  The reply was favourable. Floating Island even received permission to cruise to the New Hebrides, so as to land the crew there, if the notables of Milliard City considered that it would not be inconvenient to do so.

  Cyrus Bikerstaff conveyed this reply to Captain Sarol, who in the name of his companions begged the Governor to transmit their thanks to the administrators at Madeleine Bay.

  CHAPTER XII.

  Really the quartette would have been guilty of revolting ingratitude to Calistus Munbar if they had not thanked him for having, somewhat treacherously perhaps, brought them on to Floating Island. What mattered the means employed by the superintendent to make them the welcome, petted, and handsomely paid guests of Milliard City! Sebastien Zorn never ceased from sulking, for you can never change a hedgehog with his prickly spines into a cat with soft fur. But Yvernès, Pinchinat, and Frascolin could not dream of a more delicious existence. An excursion with neither danger nor fatigue across these wonderful waters of the Pacific. Taking no part in the rivalry between the two camps, accepted as the island’s soul of song, welcomed always by the Tankerdons and the chiefs of the Larboard section, as they were by the Coverleys and most distinguished families of the Starboard section, treated with honour by the Governor and his assistants at the town hall, by Commodore Simcoe and his officers at the observatory, by Colonel Stewart and his militia, giving their services at the temple and at the ceremonies in the cathedral, finding good friends in both ports, in the workshops, among the functionaries and servants of the State, could our compatriots, we ask any reasonable person, regret the time when they were travelling from city to city of the Federal Republic, and who is the man who would be sufficiently his own enemy not to envy them?