Propeller Island

by Jules Verne

  “You will kiss my hands!” the superintendent had told them at their first interview.

  And if they had not done it, if they would never do it, it was because it is never necessary to kiss a masculine hand.

  One day Athanase Dorémus, most fortunate of mortals as he was, said to them, “I have been two years on Floating Island, and I am sorry it is not to be sixty, if I could be certain that in sixty years I shall still be here.”

  “Won’t you have too much of it,” asked Pinchinat, “if you are to become a centenarian?”

  “Ah! Monsieur Pinchinat, be sure that I shall attain the century! Why do you want people to die on Floating Island?”

  “Because they die everywhere.”

  “Not here, sir, no more than they do in the celestial paradise.”

  What could be said to that? However, there were from time to time a few ill-advised people who took upon themselves to die even in this enchanted island. And then the steamers took away their remains to the distant cemetery at Madeleine Bay. Decidedly it is written that we cannot be completely happy in this world below.

  But at the same time there were a few black spots on the horizon. It must even be admitted that these black spots were gradually taking the form of electrified clouds, which before long would bring storm and tempest. Disquieting was this regrettable rivalry between the Tankerdons and the Coverleys—a rivalry which was approaching an acute stage. Their partisans made common cause with them. Were the two sections to fight each other some day? Was Milliard City threatened with troubles, outbreaks, revolutions? Would the council of administration have an arm energetic enough, and Governor Cyrus Bikerstaff have a hand firm enough to keep the peace between these Capulets and Montagues of Floating Island? We can hardly say. Everything is possible with rivals whose self-esteem is apparently boundless.

  Since the scene at the crossing of the line the two millionaires had been avowed enemies. Their friends supported them. All communication had ceased between the two sections. When they saw each other from afar they avoided each other, and if they met, what an exchange of menacing gestures and fierce looks! A rumour had spread that the old merchant of Chicago and a few of the Larboardites were going to found a trading business, that they were asking the company for permission to build a huge establishment, that they were going to import a hundred thousand pigs, and that they would slaughter them and salt them and sell them in the different archipelagoes of the Pacific.

  After that it can easily be believed that the house of the Tankerdons and the house of the Coverleys were two powder magazines. It wanted but a spark to blow them up, and the island with them. Do not forget that the island was afloat above the deepest depths. It is true that this explosion would be only an explosion in a figurative sense, but the consequences would probably be that the notables would clear out. That proceeding would compromise the future and the financial position of the Floating Island Company.

  All this was full of menacing complications, if not of actual catastrophes. And who knows if the latter were not to be feared?

  In fact, if the authorities of the island had been less asleep in deceptive security, they might have done well to keep a watch on Captain Sarol and his Malays. Not that these people had said anything suspicious, being but slightly loquacious, living apart, keeping themselves clear of all connections, rejoicing in a state of happiness they would regret in their savage New Hebrides. Were there any grounds for suspecting them? Yes and no. But a more watchful observer would have noticed that they were exploring every part of Floating Island, that they were constantly making notes of Milliard City, the position of its avenues, the situation of its palaces and its houses, as if they were making an exact plan of it. They were met with in the park and the country. They were frequently either at Larboard Harbour or Starboard Harbour, observing the arrival and departure of the ships. They were seen to take long walks exploring the coast, where the custom-house officers were on duty day and night, and visiting the batteries at the bow and stern of the island. After all, what could be more natural? These out-of-work Malays could not employ their time better than in such walks, and what was there suspicious in that?

  The Commodore gradually moved towards the southwest at reduced speed. Yvernès, as if he had been transformed since he had become a Floating Islander, abandoned himself to the charm of the voyage. So did Pinchinat and Frascolin. What delightful hours were passed at the casino during the fortnightly concerts and the evenings when the crowd struggled for admission at prices that could only be paid in gold. Every morning, thanks to the newspapers of Miliard City, provided with fresh news by the cables and with facts a few days old by the steamers, they were informed of everything of interest that was happening in both continents in society, science, arts, and politics. And from the last point of view it was noticeable that the English press of all parties never ceased to complain about the existence of this moving island which had chosen the Pacific as the theatre of its excursions. But such recriminations were treated with contempt at Floating Island as in Madeleine Bay.

  Let us not forget to mention that for some weeks now Sebastien Zorn and his comrades had been reading under the heading of foreign intelligence that their disappearance had been mentioned by the American journals. The celebrated Quartette Party, so well received in the States of the Union, so expected by those who had not yet had the pleasure of listening to them, could not vanish without a good deal of fuss being made about their disappearance. San Diego had not seen them on the appointed date, and San Diego had raised a cry of alarm. Inquiries had been made, and it had been ascertained that the French artistes were on Floating Island after being carried off from the coast of Lower California. As they had not protested against their capture, there had been no exchange of diplomatic notes between the Company and the Federal Republic. When it pleased the quartette to reappear on the scene of their successes they would be welcome.

  It goes without saying that the two violins and the alto had imposed silence on the violoncello, who would not have been sorry to be the cause of a declaration of war which would have brought about a contest between the new continent and the Pearl of the Pacific.

  Besides, our instrumentalists had many times written to France since their departure from Madeleine Bay. Their families, relieved of all fears for their safety, frequently sent them letters, and the correspondence continued as regularly as the postal service between Paris and New York.

  One morning—that of the 17th of September—Frascolin, installed in the library of the casino, felt a very natural desire to consult the map of this archipelago of Paumotu to which they were bound. As soon as he opened the atlas, as soon as his eye lighted on these regions of the Pacific, he exclaimed:

  “A thousand treble strings! How can Ethel Simcoe get through this chaos? Never will he find a passage through this mass of islets and islands. There are hundreds of them! A regular heap of pebbles in the middle of a pond. He will touch, he will run aground, he will hook his machine on to this point, he will knock it in on this. We shall end by remaining fixed in this group, which is more numerous than our Morbihan in Brittany.”

  The judicious Frascolin was right. Morbihan has only three hundred and sixty-five islands—as many as there are days in the year—and in this Paumotu Archipelago there are quite double as many. It is true that the sea which beats on them is circumscribed by a girdle of coral reefs, the circumference of which, according to Elisée Reclus, is not less than six hundred and fifty leagues.

  Nevertheless, in looking at the map of this group, one would feel astonished that a ship, and more than all such a peculiar vessel as Floating Island, should dare to venture through this archipelago. Comprised between the seventeenth and twenty-eighth parallels of south latitude, and between the hundred and fortieth and hundred and forty-seventh meridians of west longitude, it is composed of hundreds of islands and islets—seven hundred at the least —ranging from Mata-Hiva to Pitcairn.

  It is not surprising, then, that this group
has received several names, among others that of the Dangerous Archipelago and the Evil Sea. Thanks to that geographical prodigality of which the Pacific Ocean has the privilege, it is also called the Low Islands, the Tuamotou Islands, which means the distant isles, the Southern Islands, the Isles of the Night, the Mysterious Islands. As to the name of Paumotu or Pamautou, which signifies the subject islands, a deputation from the archipelago assembled in 1850 at Papaete, the capital of Tahiti, protested against this designation. But although the French Government, deferring to this protest in 1852, chose among all these names that of Tuamotu, it is more convenient to speak of them here under their better-known name of Paumotu.

  Dangerous as the navigation might be, the Commodore did not hesitate. He was so accustomed to these seas that every confidence was to be placed in him. He manœuvred his island as if it were a canoe. He could spin it round within its own length. He was said to treat it as if it were a sculling boat. Frascolin need have no fear for Floating Island; the capes of Paumotu would not even be grazed by its hull of steel.

  In the afternoon of the 19th the look-outs at the observatory reported the first appearance of the heights of the group twelve miles away. If a few rise some fifty metres above the level of the sea, seventy-four of them rise but a yard or so, and would be under water twice a day if the tides were not almost imperceptible. The others are but atolls surrounded by breakers, coral banks of absolute aridity, mere reefs leading on to the larger islands of the archipelago.

  It was on the east that Floating Island approached the group and was to reach Anaa Island, which Farakava has replaced as the capital, owing to Anaa having been partially destroyed by the terrible cyclone of 1878, in which a large number of its inhabitants perished, and which extended its ravages to the island of Kaukura.

  The first island passed was Vahitahi, three miles away. The most minute precautions were taken in these parts, the most dangerous of the archipelago, on account of the currents and the extensions of the reefs towards the east. Vahitahi is but a mass of coral flanked by three wooded islands, of which that to the north is occupied by the principal village.

  Next morning they sighted the island of Akiti, with its reefs carpeted with prionia, with purslane, a creeping plant of yellowish hue, and with hairy borage. It differs from the others in that it possesses no interior lagoon. If it is visible for some distance away, it is because its height is rather above that of the average of the group.

  The following day another island of rather more importance, Anranu, was sighted, the lagoon of which communicates with the sea by two channels on the north-west coast.

  While the Floating Islanders were content to wander indolently amidst the archipelago, which they had visited the preceding year, admiring its wonders as they passed, Pinchinat, Frascolin, Yvernès would have been glad of a few stoppages, that they might explore these islands, due to the work of polyparies, that is to say artificial, like Floating Island.

  “Only,” said the Commodore, “ours has the power of movement.”

  “A little too much so,” replied Pinchinat, “for it stops nowhere.”

  “It will stop at the islands of Hao, Anaa, and Farakava, and you will have plenty of time to explore them.”

  When asked as to the mode of formation of these islands, Ethel Simcoe answered in the terms of the theory most generally adopted; that is, that in this part of the Pacific the ocean bed has gradually sunk about thirty metres. The zoophytes, the polyps, have formed on its sunken summits a solid foundation for their coral constructions. Little by little these constructions have risen stage by stage, owing to the work of the infusorians, who cannot work at great depths. They have reached the surface, they have formed this archipelago, the islands of which can be classed as barrier reefs, fringing reefs, and atolls— the Indian name of those provided with interior lagoons. Then the fragments dashed up by the waves have formed a vegetable mould; seeds have been brought by the wind; vegetation has appeared on their coral rings; the calcareous margin is clothed with herbs and plants, and dotted with shrubs and trees under the influence of our intertropical climate.

  “And who knows,” asked Yvernès in a burst of prophetic enthusiasm, “if the continent swallowed up by the waters of the Pacific will not appear again at its surface, reconstructed by these myriads of microscopic animalcules? And then on these regions, now ploughed by sailing ships and steamers, there will run at full speed express trains which will connect the old with the new world—”

  “Take the handle off—take the handle off, my old Isaiah!” replied the disrespectful Pinchinat.

  As the Commodore had said, Floating Island stopped on the 23rd of September off the island of Hao, which it was able to get rather near to, owing to the great depth of water. Its boats took several visitors through the passage, which on the right is sheltered by a curtain of cocoanut trees. The principal village is six miles away on the top of a hill. The village consists of from two to three hundred inhabitants, for the most part pearl fishers, employed as such by the merchants at Tahiti. There abound the pandanus and the mikimiki myrtle, which were the first trees of a soil whence now rises the sugar-cane, the pineapple, the taro, the prionia, the tobacco, and above all the cocoanut tree, of which the immense palm groves of the archipelago contain more than forty thousand.

  One might say that this “tree of providence” succeeds almost without culture. Its nut serves as the customary food of the natives, being superior in nutritive substances to the fruits of the pandanus. With it they fatten their pigs, their poultry, and also their dogs, whose chops and steaks are much in demand. And then the cocoanut gives a valuable oil. When scraped, reduced to pulp, and dried in the sun, it is submitted to pressure in a very rudimentary machine. Ships take cargoes of these “copperas” to the continent, where the factories treat them in more profitable fashion.

  It is not at Hao that an idea of the people of Paumotu can be gained. The natives there are not numerous, but where the quartette could observe them to advantage was in the island of Anaa, before which Floating Island arrived in the morning of the 27th of September.

  Anaa shows its wooded masses of superb aspect from but a short distance. One of the largest islands of the archipelago, it is eighteen miles in length by nine in breadth, measured at its madreporic base.

  We have said that in 1878 a cyclone ravaged this island and necessitated the transport of the capital of the archipelago to Farakava. That is true, although in this wonderful climate it was presumable that the devastation would be repaired in a few years. In fact, Anaa has become as flourishing as ever, and possesses fifteen hundred inhabitants. It is, however, inferior to Farakava, its rival, for a reason which is of importance; the communication between the sea and the lagoon being through a narrow channel troubled with whirlpools. At Farakava, on the contrary, the lagoon has two wide openings to the north and south. At the same time, although the principal market for cocoanut oil has been removed to Farakava, Anaa, which is more picturesque, always attracts the preference of visitors.

  As soon as Floating Island had taken up its position in a favourable spot, a number of the Milliardites went ashore. Sebastien Zorn and his comrades were among the first, the violoncellist having consented to take part in the excursion.

  At first they went to the village of Tuahora, after studying the way in which the island had been formed—a formation common to all the islands of this archipelago. Here the calcareous margin, the width of the ring, if you like, is from four to five metres, very steep towards the sea and sloping gently towards the lagoon, the circumference of which encloses about a hundred miles, as at Rairoa and Farakava. On this ring are massed thousands of cocoanut trees, the principal, if not the only wealth of the island, the branches of which shelter the huts of the natives.

  The village of Tuahora is traversed by a sandy road of dazzling whiteness. The French resident in the archipelago no longer lives at Anaa, since it has ceased to be the capital; but his house is there protected by a small fortification.
On the barracks of the little garrison, confided to the care of a sergeant of marines, floats the tricolor. The houses of Tuahora are not undeserving of praise. They are not huts, but comfortable and salubrious dwellings, sufficiently furnished, and built for the most part on coral foundations. Their roofs are of the leaves of the pandanus, the wood of this valuable tree being used for the doors and windows. Occasionally they are surrounded with kitchen gardens, which the hand of the native has filled with vegetable soil, and their appearance is really enchanting.

  If these natives, with their lighter colour, their less expressive physiognomy, their less amiable character, are of a type less remarkable than those of the Marquesas, they yet offer fine specimens of the people of equatorial Oceania. Being intelligent and laborious workers, they may perhaps oppose more resistance to the physical degeneracy which menaces the Pacific Islanders.

  Their principal industry, as Frascolin noticed, was the fabrication of cocoanut oil; hence the considerable quantity of cocoanut trees in the palm gardens of the archipelago. These trees reproduce themselves as easily as the coralligens at the surface of the atoll. But they have one enemy, and the Parisian excursionists discovered it one day when they were stretched on the beach of the interior lake, whose green waters contrasted with the azure of the surrounding sea.