IN WHICH GODFREY DOES WHAT ANY OTHER SHIPWRECKED MAN WOULD HAVE DONE
UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES.
The night passed without incident. The two men, quite knocked up with
excitement and fatigue, had slept as peacefully as if they had been in
the most comfortable room in the mansion in Montgomery Street.
On the morrow, the 27th of June, at the first rays of the rising sun,
the crow of the cock awakened them.
Godfrey immediately recognized where he was, but Tartlet had to rub his
eyes and stretch his arms for some time before he did so.
"Is breakfast this morning to resemble dinner yesterday?" was his first
observation.
"I am afraid so," answered Godfrey. "But I hope we shall dine better
this evening."
The professor could not restrain a significant grimace. Where were the
tea and sandwiches which had hitherto been brought to him when he
awoke? How could he wait till breakfast-time, the bell for which would
perhaps never sound, without this preparatory repast?
But it was necessary to make a start. Godfrey felt the responsibility
which rested on him, on him alone, for he could in no way depend on his
companion. In that empty box which served the professor for a cranium
there could be born no practical idea; Godfrey would have to think,
contrive, and decide for both.
His first thought was for Phina, his betrothed, whom he had so stupidly
refused to make his wife; his second for his Uncle Will, whom he had so
imprudently left, and then turning to Tartlet,--
"To vary our ordinary," he said, "here are some shell-fish and half a
dozen eggs."
"And nothing to cook them with!"
"Nothing!" said Godfrey. "But if the food itself was missing, what would
you say then, Tartlet?"
"I should say that nothing was not enough," said Tartlet drily.
Nevertheless, they had to be content with this repast.
The very natural idea occurred to Godfrey to push forward the
reconnaissance commenced the previous evening. Above all it was
necessary to know as soon as possible in what part of the Pacific Ocean
the _Dream_ had been lost, so as to discover some inhabited place on
the shore, where they could either arrange the way of returning home or
await the passing of some ship.
Godfrey observed that if he could cross the second line of hills, whose
picturesque outline was visible beyond the first, that he might perhaps
be able to do this. He reckoned that they could get there in an hour or
two, and it was to this urgent exploration that he resolved to devote
the first hours of the day. He looked round him. The cocks and hens were
beginning to peck about among the high vegetation. Agouties, goats,
sheep, went and came on the skirt of the forest.
Godfrey did not care to drag all this flock of poultry and quadrupeds
about with him. But to keep them more safely in this place, it would be
necessary to leave Tartlet in charge of them.
Tartlet agreed to remain alone, and for several hours to act as shepherd
of the flock.
He made but one observation,--
"If you lose yourself, Godfrey?"
"Have no fear of that," answered the young man, "I have only this forest
to cross, and as you will not leave its edge I am certain to find you
again."
"Don't forget the telegram to your Uncle Will, and ask him for a good
many hundred dollars."
"The telegram--or the letter! It is all one!" answered Godfrey, who so
long as he had not fixed on the position of this land was content to
leave Tartlet to his illusions.
Then having shaken hands with the professor, he plunged beneath the
trees, whose thick branches scarcely allowed the sun's rays to
penetrate. It was their direction, however, which was to guide our young
explorer towards the high hill whose curtain hid from his view the whole
of the eastern horizon.
Footpath there was none. The ground, however, was not free from all
imprint. Godfrey in certain places remarked the tracks of animals. On
two or three occasions he even believed he saw some rapid ruminants
moving off, either elans, deer, or wapiti, but he recognized no trace of
ferocious animals such as tigers or jaguars, whose absence, however, was
no cause for regret.
The first floor of the forest, that is to say all that portion of the
trees comprised between the first fork and the branches, afforded an
asylum to a great number of birds--wild pigeons by the hundred beneath
the trees, ospreys, grouse, aracaris with beaks like a lobster's claw,
and higher, hovering above the glades, two or three of those
lammergeiers whose eye resembles a cockade. But none of the birds were
of such special kinds that he could therefrom make out the latitude of
this continent.
So it was with the trees of this forest. Almost the same species as
those in that part of the United States which comprises Lower
California, the Bay of Monterey, and New Mexico.
Arbutus-trees, large-flowered cornels, maples, birches, oaks, four or
five varieties of magnolias and sea-pines, such as are met with in South
Carolina, then in the centre of vast clearances, olive-trees, chestnuts,
and small shrubs. Tufts of tamarinds, myrtles, and mastic-trees, such as
are produced in the temperate zone. Generally, there was enough space
between the trees to allow him to pass without being obliged to call on
fire or the axe. The sea breeze circulated freely amid the higher
branches, and here and there great patches of light shone on the ground.
And so Godfrey went along striking an oblique line beneath these large
trees. To take any precautions never occurred to him. The desire to
reach the heights which bordered the forest on the east entirely
absorbed him. He sought among the foliage for the direction of the solar
rays so as to march straight on his goal. He did not even see the
guide-birds, so named because they fly before the steps of the
traveller, stopping, returning, and darting on ahead as if they were
showing the way. Nothing could distract him.
His state of mind was intelligible. Before an hour had elapsed his fate
would be settled! Before an hour he would know if it were possible to
reach some inhabited portion of the continent.
Already Godfrey, reasoning on what had been the route followed and the
way made by the _Dream_ during a navigation of seventeen days, had
concluded that it could only be on the Japanese or Chinese coast that
the ship had gone down.
Besides the position of the sun, always in the south, rendered it quite
certain that the _Dream_ had not crossed the line.
Two hours after he had started Godfrey reckoned the distance he had
travelled at about five miles, considering several circuits which he had
had to make owing to the density of the forest. The second group of
hills could not be far away.
Already the trees were getting farther apart from each other, forming
isolated groups, and the rays of light penetrated more easily through
the lofty branches. The ground began slightly to slope, and then
abruptly to rise.
Although he was somewhat fatigued, Godfrey had enough will not to
slacken his pace. He would doubtless have run had it not been for the
steepness of the earlier ascents.
He had soon got high enough to overlook the general mass of the verdant
dome which stretched away behind him, and whence several heads of trees
here and there emerged.
But Godfrey did not dream of looking back. His eyes never quitted the
line of the denuded ridge, which showed itself about 400 or 500 feet
before and above him. That was the barrier which all the time hid him
from the eastern horizon.
A tiny cone, obliquely truncated, overlooked this rugged line and joined
on with its gentle slope to the sinuous crest of the hills.
"There! there!" said Godfrey, "that is the point I must reach! The top
of that cone! And from there what shall I see?--A town?--A village?--A
desert?"
Highly excited, Godfrey mounted the hill, keeping his elbows at his
chest to restrain the beating of his heart. His panting tired him, but
he had not the patience to stop so as to recover himself. Were he to
have fallen half fainting on the summit of the cone which shot up about
100 feet above his head, he would not have lost a minute in hastening
towards it.
A few minutes more and he would be there. The ascent seemed to him steep
enough on his side, an angle perhaps of thirty or thirty-five degrees.
He helped himself up with hands and feet; he seized on the tufts of
slender herbs on the hill-side, and on a few meagre shrubs, mastics
and myrtles, which stretched away up to the top.
A last effort was made! His head rose above the platform of the cone,
and then, lying on his stomach, his eyes gazed at the eastern horizon.
It was the sea which formed it. Twenty miles off it united with the line
of the sky!
He turned round.
Still sea--west of him, south of him, north of him! The immense ocean
surrounding him on all sides!
"An island!"
[Illustration: "An Island!" _page 111_]
As he uttered the word Godfrey felt his heart shrink. The thought had
not occurred to him that he was on an island. And yet such was the case!
The terrestrial chain which should have attached him to the continent
was abruptly broken. He felt as though he had been a sleeping man in a
drifted boat, who awoke with neither oar nor sail to help him back to
shore.
But Godfrey was soon himself again. His part was taken, to accept the
situation. If the chances of safety did not come from without, it was
for him to contrive them.
He set to work at first then as exactly as possible to ascertain the
disposition of this island which his view embraced over its whole
length. He estimated that it ought to measure about sixty miles round,
being, as far as he could see, about twenty miles long from south to
north, and twelve miles wide from east to west.
Its central part was screened by the green depths of forest which
extended up to the ridge dominated by the cone, whose slope died away on
the shore.
All the rest was prairie, with clumps of trees, or beach with rocks,
whose outer ring was capriciously tapered off in the form of capes and
promontories. A few creeks cut out the coast, but could only afford
refuge for two or three fishing-boats.
The bay at the bottom of which the _Dream_ lay shipwrecked was the only
one of any size, and that extended over some seven or eight miles. An
open roadstead, no vessel would have found it a safe shelter, at least
unless the wind was blowing from the east.
But what was this island? To what geographical group did it belong? Did
it form part of an archipelago, or was it alone in this portion of the
Pacific?
In any case, no other island, large or small, high or low, appeared
within the range of vision.
Godfrey rose and gazed round the horizon. Nothing was to be seen along
the circular line where sea and sky ran into each other. If, then, there
existed to windward or to leeward any island or coast of a continent, it
could only be at a considerable distance.
Godfrey called up all his geographical reminiscences, in order to
discover what island of the Pacific this could be. In reasoning it out
he came to this conclusion.
The _Dream_ for seventeen days had steered very nearly south-west. Now
with a speed of from 150 to 180 miles every four-and-twenty hours, she
ought to have covered nearly fifty degrees. Now it was obvious that she
had not crossed the equator.
The situation of the island, or of the group to which it belonged, would
therefore have to be looked for in that part of the ocean comprised
between the 160th and 170th degrees of west longitude.
In this portion of the Pacific it seemed to Godfrey that the map showed
no other archipelago than that of the Sandwich Islands, but outside this
archipelago were there not any isolated islands whose names escaped him
and which were dotted here and there over the sea up to the coast of the
Celestial Empire?
It was not of much consequence. There existed no means of his going in
search of another spot on the ocean which might prove more hospitable.
"Well," said Godfrey to himself, "if I don't know the name of this
island, I'll call it Phina Island, in memory of her I ought never to
have left to run about the world, and perhaps the name will bring us
some luck."
Godfrey then occupied himself in trying to ascertain if the island was
inhabited in the part which he had not yet been able to visit.
From the top of the cone he saw nothing which betrayed the presence of
aborigines, neither habitations on the prairie nor houses on the skirt
of the trees, not even a fisherman's hut on the shore.
But if the island was deserted, the sea which surrounded it was none the
less so, for not a ship showed itself within the limits of what, from
the height of the cone, was a considerable circuit.
Godfrey having finished his exploration had now only to get down to the
foot of the hill and retake the road through the forest so as to rejoin
Tartlet. But before he did so his eyes were attracted by a sort of
cluster of trees of huge stature, which rose on the boundary of the
prairie towards the north. It was a gigantic group, it exceeded by a
head all those which Godfrey had previously seen.
"Perhaps," he said, "it would be better to take up our quarters over
there, more especially as if I am not mistaken I can see a stream which
should rise in the central chain and flow across the prairie."
This was to be looked into on the morrow.
Towards the south the aspect of the island was slightly different.
Forests and prairies rapidly gave place to the yellow carpet of the
beach, and in places the shore was bounded with picturesque rocks.
But what was Godfrey's surprise, when he thought he saw a light smoke,
which rose in the air beyond this rocky barrier.
"Are there any of our companions?" he exclaimed. "But no, it is not
possible! Why should they have got so far from the bay since yesterday,
and round so many miles of reef? Is it a village of fishermen, or the
encampment of some indigenous tribe?"
Godfrey watched it with the closest attention. Was this gentle vapour
which the breeze softly blew towards the west a smoke? Could he be
mistaken? Anyhow it quickly vanished, a few minutes afterwards nothing
could be seen of it.
It was a false hope.
Godfrey took a last look in its direction, and then seeing nothing,
glided down the slope, and again plunged beneath the trees.
An hour later he had traversed the forest and found himself on its
skirt.
There Tartlet awaited him with his two-footed and four-footed flock. And
how was the obstinate professor occupying himself? In the same way. A
bit of wood was in his right hand another piece in his left, and he
still continued his efforts to set them alight. He rubbed and rubbed
with a constancy worthy of a better fate.
"Well," he shouted as he perceived Godfrey some distance off--"and the
telegraph office?"
"It is not open!" answered Godfrey, who dared not yet tell him anything
of the situation.
"And the post?"
"It is shut! But let us have something to eat!--I am dying with hunger!
We can talk presently."
And this morning Godfrey and his companion had again to content
themselves with a too meagre repast of raw eggs and shell-fish.
"Wholesome diet!" repeated Godfrey to Tartlet, who was hardly of that
opinion and picked his food with considerable care.