THE CASTAWAYS OF THE FLAG
BOOKS BY JULES VERNE
THE LIGHTHOUSE AT THE END OF THE WORLD
THE CASTAWAYS OF THE FLAG
THEIR ISLAND HOME
[Illustration: Resistance was hopeless against an entire crew of
mutineers.]
THE CASTAWAYS
OF THE FLAG
THE FINAL ADVENTURES OF
THE SWISS FAMILY ROBINSON
JULES VERNE
AUTHOR OF
“THE LIGHTHOUSE AT THE END OF THE WORLD,”
“THEIR ISLAND HOME,” etc.
Frontispiece by
H. C. MURPHY
NEW YORK
G. HOWARD WATT
1819 BROADWAY
1924
Copyright, 1924, by
G. HOWARD WATT
Printed in the United States of America
CONTENTS
Preface—“The Swiss Family Robinson”
and Its Sequel “Their Island Home”
I. The Castaways
II. In England
III. The Mutiny on the Flag
IV. Land Ahoy!
V. A Barren Shore
VI. Time of Trial
VII. The Coming of the Albatross
VIII. Little Bob Lost
IX. Bob Found
X. The Flag on the Peak!
XI. By Well-Known Ways
XII. Enemies in the Promised Land
XIII. Shark’s Island
XIV. A Perilous Plight
XV. Fighting for Life
XVI. Conclusion
“THE CASTAWAYS OF THE FLAG”
TRANSLATOR’S NOTE
With the restoration of Fritz Zermatt and his wife Jenny, his brother
Frank and the other Castaways of the Flag to their anxious and sorely
tried relatives in New Switzerland, the story of “The Swiss Family
Robinson” is brought to its proper end. Thereafter, the interest of
their domestic life is merged in that of the growth of a young colony.
Romance is merged in history and the romancer’s work is finished. Jules
Verne has here set the coping stone on the structure begun by Rudolph
Wyss, and in “The Swiss Family Robinson,” “Their Island Home” and “The
Castaways of the Flag” we have, not a story and two sequels, but a
complete trilogy which judges who survey it must pronounce very good.
A word may be permitted about this English version. Jules Verne is a
master of pure narrative. His style is singularly limpid and his
language is so simple that people with a very limited knowledge of
French can read his stories in the original and miss very little of
their substance. But to be able to read a book in one language and to
translate it into another are very different things. The very simplicity
of Jules Verne’s French presents difficulties to one who would translate
it into English. What the French call “idiotismes” abound in all Verne’s
writing, and I know few French authors to whose books it is so difficult
to impart a really English air in English dress. Whatever the
imperfections of these translations may be they cannot, however, mar
very greatly the pleasure the stories themselves give to every reader.
Cranstoun Metcalfe.
PREFACE
This story is a sequel to “Their Island Home,” which takes up the
adventures of the Swiss Family Robinson at the place where the author of
the original narrative dropped them.
“The Swiss Family Robinson” seems to have affected Jules Verne’s
literary bent as no other book ever did. It gave him that liking for the
lonely island life as the basis of a yarn which is conspicuous in much
of his work. In a preface to the story of which this is really a part he
tells how firmly New Switzerland established itself in the fabric of his
thoughts, till it became for him a real island inhabited by real people.
At last he was compelled to write about it, and “Their Island Home” and
“The Castaways of the Flag” are the result.
The youth of Europe—many generations of it—owes a big debt to the old
romancer who worked for so many years in his turret room at Amiens to
entertain it. From that room, with its many bookshelves, came volume
after volume of adventure, mostly with a big admixture of the
scientific. M. Verne was not one of those who pile hairbreadth escapes
one upon another till they become incredible. There are plenty of things
happening in his books, but they are the sort of things that would
happen, given the circumstances, and he explains why and how they
chanced in the most convincing manner possible. In these days of
submarines and aeroplanes it is interesting to read again the wonderful
Frenchman’s forecast of them in such books as “Twenty Thousand Leagues
under the Sea” and “The Clipper of the Clouds.” “Round the World in
Eighty Days”—the task would be an easy one now, but at the time when he
wrote it required great ingenuity to make it seem possible; and the end
of that book is one of the most ingenious things in fiction, though it
has for justification a simple geographical fact. Phineas Fogg was a day
late, as he believed. He had apparently lost his wager. But, having gone
round the world in the right direction, he had gained a day, and just
won. If he had gone the other way he would have been two days late, for
a day would have been lost to him—cut right out of the calendar!
The cryptogram which forms the main feature of “The Giant Raft”—the
deflection of the compass in “Dick Sands,” which causes the people on
the ship of which Dick had to take command to reach the coast of Africa,
while believing that they had landed on the American continent—the
device of the millionaire in “Godfrey Morgan,” which provided an island
with beasts of prey not native to it—the gigantic projectile which
carried those intrepid voyagers to the moon and round it—the reaching of
the interior of the earth by a road down the crater of one volcano and
the return to the surface up the crater of another—these are
imaginations not readily forgotten. And the other stories—“Five Weeks in
a Balloon,” “The Adventures of Three Englishmen and Three Russians,”
“The Tribulations of a Chinaman,” the yarns dealing with the Indian
Mutiny, “Michael Strogoff the Courier of the Czar,” and the rest—how
entrancing they were, and still are to a boy, or a man with something of
the boy yet in him!
“THEIR ISLAND HOME.”
Readers of the present book who have not read that named above—though
all should read it as well as this—will have no difficulty in joining
the story of the castaways to “The Swiss Family Robinson” with the help
of the brief sketch of its contents which follows.
The story begins with the arrival of the _Unicorn_, a British corvette
commanded by Lieutenant Littlestone, whose commission includes the
exploration of the waters in which New Switzerland is situate. He has
with him as passengers Mr. and Mrs. Wolston and their daughters Hannah
and Dolly.
When the _Unicorn_ weighs anchor again Mr. Wolston and his wife and
their elder daughter, Hannah, remain on the island. But the corvette
takes away Fritz and Frank Zermatt and Jenny Montrose, who are all bound
for England, where Jenny hopes to find her father, Colonel Montrose, and
the two young men have much business to transact, and Dolly Wolston, who
is to join her brother James—a married man with one child—at Cape Town.
Mr. Wolston hopes that James, with his wife and child, will agree to
accompany Dolly and the Zermatts—by the time they return Jenny will have
become Mrs. Fritz Zermatt—to the island and take up their abode there.
The _Unicorn_ gone, those left behind settle themselves down to await
her return, labouring meanwhile to make ready the island against the
possibility of a number of immigrants. One of their first improvements
is a canal for irrigation purposes. Mr. Wolston, a skilful engineer, and
Ernest, clever and thoughtful, reader of many books and with a distinct
scientific bent, are quite capable of planning such things as this.
There are seven people left on the island—M. and Mme. Zermatt, Mr. and
Mrs. Wolston, Jack Zermatt, adventurous and keen on sport, Ernest, and
the charming Hannah. Between these last two a strong affection develops.
The brothers, very unlike in nature, have little in common, but are good
friends in spite of that fact; and the whole seven form practically one
united and very happy family.
Only a small part of the island has ever been really explored during the
ten years the Zermatts have been there. They now determine to find out
more about it. In their pinnace, the _Elizabeth_, they voyage to a
hitherto unknown coast, and, after a very arid stretch, find the mouth
of a river, capable of floating the pinnace. They christen this the
Montrose, in compliment to Jenny.
To the south they see a great mountain range. In order to get as near
this as possible Mr. Wolston and Ernest make a canoe trip up the
Montrose, but are stopped at length by rapids and a great natural dam.
They all return to Rock Castle and face the dull days of the rainy
season, which proves more stormy than usual, and does some damage to
their possessions elsewhere than at Rock Castle. That season over, they
make preparations for another expedition—this time wholly by land, and
made by Mr. Wolston, Jack, and Ernest only, M. Zermatt remaining with
the three ladies.
The three are determined to reach the topmost peak of the mountain
range, and after some considerable difficulty they achieve their object.
They plant the British flag there, Lieut. Littlestone having
provisionally taken possession of the island in Great Britain’s name,
and they christen the mountain crest Jean Zermatt Peak. From it they
discern out at sea a ship flying the British colours. But she
disappears, to their intense disappointment.
At Rock Castle those left behind grow anxious when the time the
explorers had expected to be away lengthens itself by several days. Then
Mr. Wolston and Ernest turn up—without Jack.
That adventurous young man has wandered off after three elephants, in
the hope of capturing and taming the calf after killing the father and
mother. They have searched in vain for him, and are almost forced to the
conclusion that something tragic must have happened.
But Jack turns up, safe and sound. He has, however, an alarming tale to
tell. It would seem that their days of peace on the island are numbered.
He has been captured by savages, and, though he has escaped by adroit
courage, all know that the chance of the savages finding the Promised
Land is one with which they must reckon.
The _Unicorn_ is now past the time appointed for her return, and the
seven have thus a double reason for anxiety.
Here “Their Island Home” finishes, and in the present book may be read
what came of it all, and in what way they emerged from heavy trouble
into peace and prosperity even greater than of old.
THE CASTAWAYS OF THE FLAG
CHAPTER I
THE CASTAWAYS
Night—a pitch-dark night! It was almost impossible to distinguish sky
from sea. From the sky, laden with clouds low and heavy, deformed and
tattered, lightning flashed every now and then, followed by muffled
rolls of thunder. At these flashes the horizon lit up for a moment and
showed deserted and melancholy.
No wave broke in foam upon the surface of the sea. There was nothing but
the regular and monotonous rolling of the swell and the gleam of ripples
under the lightning flashes. Not a breath moved across the vast plain of
ocean, not even the hot breath of the storm. But electricity so charged
the atmosphere that it escaped in phosphorescent light, and ran up and
down the rigging of the boat in tongues of Saint Elmo’s fire. Although
the sun had set four or five hours ago, the sweltering heat of the day
had not passed.
Two men talked in low tones, in the stern of a big ship’s boat that was
decked in to the foot of the mast. Her foresail and jib were flapping as
the monotonous rolling shook her.
One of these men, holding the tiller tucked under his arm, tried to
dodge the cruel swell that rolled the boat from side to side. He was a
sailor, about forty years of age, thick-set and sturdy, with a frame of
iron on which fatigue, privation, even despair, had never taken effect.
An Englishman by nationality, this boatswain was named John Block.
The other man was barely eighteen, and did not seem to belong to the
sea-faring class.
In the bottom of the boat, under the poop and seats, with no strength
left to pull the oars, a number of human beings were lying, among them a
child of five years old—a poor little creature whose whimpering was
audible, whom its mother tried to hush with idle talk and kisses.
Before the mast, upon the poop, and near the jib stays, two people sat
motionless and silent, hand in hand, lost in the most gloomy thoughts.
So intense was the darkness that it was only by the lightning flashes
that they could see each other.
From the bottom of the boat a head was lifted sometimes, only to droop
again at once.
The boatswain spoke to the young man lying by his side.
“No, no. I watched the horizon until the sun went down. No land in
sight—not a sail! But what I didn’t see this evening will perhaps be
visible at dawn.”
“But, bo’sun,” his companion answered, “we must get to land somewhere in
the next forty-eight hours, or we shall have succumbed.”
“That’s true,” John Block agreed. “Land must appear—simply must. Why,
continents and islands were made on purpose to give shelter to brave
men, and one always ends by getting to them!”
“If the wind helps one, bo’sun.”
“That is the only reason wind was invented,” John Block replied.
“To-day, as bad luck would have it, it was busy somewhere else, in the
middle of the Atlantic or the Pacific perhaps, for it didn’t blow enough
here to fill my cap. Yes, a jolly good gale would blow us merrily
along.”
“Or swallow us up, Block.”
“Oh no, not that! No, no, not that! Of all ways to bring this job to a
finish, that would be the worst.”
“Who can tell, bo’sun?”
Then for some minutes the two men were silent. Nothing could be heard
but the gentle rippling under the boat.
“How is the captain?” the young man went on.
“Captain Gould, good man, is in bad case,” John Block replied. “How
those blackguards knocked him about! The wound in his head makes him cry
out with pain. And it was an officer in whom he had every confidence who
stirred those wretches up! No, no! One fine morning, or one fine
afternoon, or perhaps one fine evening, that rascal of a Borupt shall
make his last ugly face at the yardarm or——”
“The brute! The brute!” the young man exclaimed, clenching his fists in
wrath. “But poor Harry Gould! You dressed his wounds this evening,
Block——”
“Ay, ay; and when I put him back under the poop, after I had put
compresses on his head, he was able to speak to me, though very feebly.
‘Thanks, Block, thanks,’ he said—as if I wanted thanks! ‘And land? What
about land?’ he asked. ‘You may be quite sure, captain,’ I told him,
‘that there is land somewhere, and perhaps not very far off.’ He looked
at me and closed his eyes.”
And the boatswain murmured in an aside: “Land? Land? Ah, Borupt and his
accomplices knew very well what they were about! While we were shut up
in the bottom of the hold, they altered the course; they went some
hundreds of miles away before they cast us adrift in this boat—in seas
where a ship is hardly ever seen, I guess.”
The young man had risen. He stooped, listening to port.
“Didn’t you hear anything, Block?” he asked.
“Nothing, nothing at all,” the boatswain answered; “this swell is as
noiseless as if it were made of oil instead of water.”
The young man said no more, but sat down again with his arms folded
across his breast.
Just at this moment one of the passengers sat up, and exclaimed, with a
gesture of despair:
“I wish a wave would smash this boat up, and swallow us all up with it,
rather than that we should all be given over to the horrors of
starvation! To-morrow we shall have exhausted the last of our
provisions. We shall have nothing left at all.”
“To-morrow is to-morrow, Mr. Wolston,” the boatswain replied. “If the
boat were to capsize there wouldn’t be any to-morrow for us; and while
there is a to-morrow——”
“John Block is right,” his young companion answered. “We must not give
up hope, James! Whatever danger threatens us, we are in God’s hands, to
dispose of as He thinks fit. His hand is in all that comes to us, and it
is not right to say that He has withdrawn it from us.”
“I know,” James whispered, drooping his head, “but one is not always
master of one’s self.”
Another passenger, a man of about thirty, one of those who had been
sitting in the bows, approached John Block and said:
“Bo’sun, since our unfortunate captain was thrown into this boat with
us—and that is a week ago already—it is you who have taken his place. So
our lives are in your hands. Have you any hope?”
“Have I any hope?” John Block replied. “Yes! I assure you I have. I hope
these infernal calms will come to an end shortly and that the wind will
take us safe to harbour.”
“Safe to harbour?” the passenger answered, his eyes trying to pierce the
darkness of the night.
“Well, what the deuce!” John Block exclaimed. “There is a harbour
somewhere! All we have to do is to steer for it, with the wind whistling
through the yards. Good Lord! If I were the Creator I would show you
half a dozen islands lying all round us, waiting our convenience!”
“We won’t ask for as many as that, bo’sun,” the passenger replied,
unable to refrain from smiling.
“Well,” John Block answered, “if He will drive our boat towards one of
those which exist already, it will be enough, and He need not make any
islands on purpose, although, I must say, He seems to have been a bit
stingy with them hereabouts!”
“But where are we?”
“I can’t tell you, not even within a few hundred miles,” John Block
replied. “You know that for a whole long week we were shut up in the
hold, unable to see what course the ship was shaping, whether south or
north. Anyhow, it must have been blowing steadily, and the sea did
plenty of rolling and chopping.”
“That is true, John Block, and true, too, that we must have gone a long
way; but in what direction?”
“About that I don’t know anything,” the boatswain declared. “Did the
ship go off to the Pacific, instead of making for the Indian Ocean? On
the day of the mutiny we were off Madagascar. But since then, as the
wind has blown from the west all the time, we may have been taken
hundreds of miles from there, towards the islands of Saint Paul and
Amsterdam.”
“Where there are none but savages of the worst possible sort,” James
Wolston remarked. “But after all, the men who cast us away are not much
better.”
“One thing is certain,” John Block declared; “that wretch Borupt must
have altered the _Flag’s_ course and made for waters where he will be
most likely to escape punishment, and where he and his gang will play
pirates! So I think that we were a long way out of our proper course
when this boat was cut adrift. But I wish we might strike some island in
these seas—even a desert island would do! We could live all right by
hunting and fishing; we should find shelter in some cave. Why shouldn’t
we make of our island what the survivors of the _Landlord_ made of New
Switzerland? With strong arms, brains, and pluck——”
“Very true,” James Wolston answered, “but the _Landlord_ did not fail
her passengers. They were able to save her cargo, while we shall never
have anything from the _Flag’s_ cargo.”
The conversation was interrupted. A voice that rang with pain was heard:
“Drink! Give me something to drink!”
“It’s Captain Gould,” one of the passengers said. “He is eaten up with
fever. Luckily there is plenty of water, and——”
“That’s my job,” said the boatswain. “Do one of you take the tiller. I
know where the can is, and a few mouthfuls will give the captain ease.”
And John Block left his seat aft and went forward into the bows of the
boat.
The three other passengers remained in silence, awaiting his return.
After being away for two or three minutes John Block came back to his
post.
“Well?” someone enquired.
“Someone got there before me,” John Block answered. “One of our good
angels was with the patient already, pouring a little fresh water
between his lips, and bathing his forehead that was wet with sweat. I
don’t know whether Captain Gould was conscious. He seemed to be
delirious. He was talking about land. ‘The land ought to be over there,’
he kept saying, and his hand was wobbling about like the pennon on the
mainmast when all winds are blowing at once. I answered: ‘Ay, ay,
captain, quite so. The land is somewhere! We shall reach it soon. I can
smell it, to northwards.’ And that is a sure thing. We old sailors can
smell land like that. And I said too: ‘Don’t be uneasy, captain,
everything is all right. We have a stout boat and I will keep her course
steady. There must be more islands hereabouts than we could know what to
do with. Too many to choose from! We shall find one to suit our
convenience—an inhabited island where we shall find a welcome and where
we shall be sent home from.’ The poor chap understood what I said, I am
sure, and when I held the lantern near his face he smiled to me—such a
sad smile!—and at the good angel too. Then he closed his eyes again, and
fell asleep almost at once. Well! I may have lied pretty heavily when I
talked about land to him as if it were only a few miles off, but was I
far wrong?”
“No, Block,” the youngest passenger replied; “that is the kind of lie
that God allows.”
The conversation ended, and the silence was only broken thereafter by
the flapping of the sail against the mast as the boat rolled from one
side to the other. Most of those who were aboard her, broken down by
fatigue and weakened by long privation, forgot their terrors in heavy
sleep.
Although these unhappy people still had something wherewith to quench
their thirst, they would have nothing wherewith to appease their hunger
in the coming days. Of the few pounds of salt meat that had been flung
into the boat when she was pushed off, nothing now remained. They were
reduced to one bag of sea-biscuits for eleven people. How could they
manage, if the calm persisted? And for the last forty-eight hours not
one breath of breeze had stolen through the stifling atmosphere, not
even one of those intermittent gusts which are like the last sighs of a
dying man. It meant death by starvation, and that within a short time.
There was no steam navigation in those days. So the probability was
that, in the absence of wind, no ship would come into sight, and, in the
absence of wind, the boat could not reach land, whether island or
continent.
It was necessary to have perfect faith in God to combat utter despair,
or else to possess the unshakeable philosophy of the boatswain, which
consisted in refusing to see any but the bright side of things. Even now
he muttered to himself:
“Ay, ay, I know; the time will come when the last biscuit will have been
eaten; but as long as one can keep one’s stomach one mustn’t grumble,
even if there is nothing to put in it! Now, if one hadn’t got a stomach
left, even if there were plenty to put in it—that would be really
serious!”
Two hours passed. The boat had not moved a cable’s length, for there was
only the motion of the swell to affect her. Now the swell does not move
forward; it merely makes the surface of the water undulate. A few chips
of wood that had been thrown over the side the day before were still
floating close by, and the sail had not filled once to move the boat
away from them.
While merely afloat like this, it was little use to remain at the helm.
But the boatswain declined to leave his post. With the tiller under his
arm, he tried at least to avoid the lurching which tilted the boat to
one side and another, and thus to spare his companions excessive
shaking.
It was about three o’clock in the morning when John Block felt a light
breath pass across his cheeks, roughened and hardened as they were by
the salt sea air.
“Can the wind be getting up?” he murmured as he rose.
He turned towards the south, and wetting his finger in his mouth, held
it up. There was a distinct sensation of coldness, caused by the
evaporation, and now a distant rippling sound became audible.
He turned to the passenger sitting on the middle bench, near one of the
women.
“Mr. Fritz!” he said.
Fritz Robinson raised his head and bent round.
“What do you want, bo’sun?” he asked.
“Look over there—towards the east.”
“What do you think you see?”
“If I’m not mistaken, a kind of rift, like a belt, on the water-line.”
Unmistakably there was a lighter line along the horizon in that
direction. Sky and sea could be distinguished with more definiteness. It
was as if a rent had just been made in the dome of mist and vapour.
“It’s wind!” the boatswain declared.
“Isn’t it only the first beginning of daybreak?” the passenger asked.
“It might be daylight, though it’s very early for it,” John Block
replied, “and again it might be a breeze! I felt something of it in my
beard just now, and look!—it’s twitching still! I’m aware it’s not a
breeze to fill the top-gallant sails, but anyhow it’s more than we’ve
had for the last four and twenty hours. Put your hand to your ear, Mr.
Fritz, and listen; you’ll hear what I heard.”
“You are right,” said the passenger, leaning over the gunwale; “it is
the breeze.”
“And we’re ready for it,” the boatswain replied, “with the foresail
block and tackle. We’ve only got to haul the sheet taut to save all the
wind which is rising.”
“But where will it take us?”
“Wherever it likes,” the boatswain answered; “all I want it to do is to
blow us out of these cursed waters!”
Twenty minutes went by. The breath of wind, which at first was almost
imperceptible, grew stronger. The rippling aft became louder. The boat
made a few rougher motions, not caused by the slow, nauseating swell.
Folds of the sail spread out, fell flat, and opened again, and the sheet
sagged against its cleats. The wind was not strong enough yet to fill
the heavy canvas of the foresail and the jib. Patience was needed, while
the boat’s head was kept to her course as well as might be by means of
one of the sculls.
A quarter of an hour later, progress was marked by a light wake.
Just at this moment one of the passengers who had been lying in the bows
got up and looked at the rift in the clouds to the eastward.
“Is it a breeze?” he asked.
“Yes,” John Block answered. “I think we have got it this time, like a
bird in the hand—and we won’t let go of it!”
The wind was beginning to spread steadily now through the rift, through
which, too, the first gleams of light must come. From south-east to
south-west, the clouds still hung in heavy masses, over three-quarters
of the circumference of the sky. It was still impossible to see more
than a few cables’ lengths from the boat, and beyond that distance no
ship could have been detected.
As the breeze had freshened, the sheet had to be hauled in, the
foresail, whose gear was slackened, hoisted, and the course veered a
point or two, so as to give the jib a hold on the wind.
“We’ve got it; we’ve got it!” the boatswain said cheerily, and the boat,
heeling gently over to starboard, dipped her nose into the first waves.
Little by little the rent in the clouds grew bigger and spread overhead.
The sky assumed a reddish hue. It seemed that the wind might hold to the
present quarter for some little time, and that the period of calms had
come to an end.
Hope of reaching land revived once more, or the alternative hope of
falling in with a ship.
At five o’clock the rent in the clouds was ringed with a collar of vivid
coloured clouds. It was the day, appearing with the suddenness peculiar
to the low latitudes of the tropical regions. Soon purple rays of light
arose above the horizon, like the sticks of a fan. The rim of the solar
disc, heightened by the refraction, touched the horizon line, drawn
clearly now at the end of sky and sea. At once the rays of light caught
on the little clouds which hung in the high heaven, and dyed them every
shade of crimson. But they were stubbornly arrested by the dense vapours
accumulated in the north, and could not break through them. And so the
range of vision, long behind, was still extremely limited in front. The
boat was leaving a long wake behind her now, marked in creamy white upon
the greenish water.
And now the whole sun emerged above the horizon, enormously magnified at
its diameter. No haze dimmed its brilliance, which was insupportable to
the eye. All aboard the boat looked away from it; they only scanned the
north, whither the wind was carrying them. The main question was what
the fog screened from them in that direction.
At length, just before half-past six, one of the passengers seized the
halyards of the foresail and clambered nimbly up to the yardarm, just as
the sun cleared the sky to the eastward with its early rays.
And in a ringing voice he shouted:
“Land!”