The Mysterious Island, Jules Verne [freenovel24 txt] 📗

casuarinæ and eucalypti, some of which, in the ensuing spring, would furnish a sweetish manna like that of the East. Clumps of Australian cedars rose in the glades, covered high with that sort of moss which the New-Hollanders call “tussocks”; but the cocoa-palm, so abundant in the archipelagoes of the Pacific, was conspicuous by its absence. Probably the latitude of the island was too low.

“What a pity!” said Herbert, “such a useful tree and such splendid nuts!”

There were flocks of birds on the thin boughs of the eucalypti and the casuarinæ, which gave fine play to their wings. Black, white, and grey cockatoos, parrots and parroquets of all colors, kingbirds, birds of paradise, of brilliant green, with a crowd of red, and blue lories, glowing with every prismatic color, flew about with deafening clamors. All at once, a strange volley of discordant sounds seemed to come from the thicket. The colonists heard, one after another, the song of birds, the cries of four-footed beasts, and a sort of clucking sound strangely human. Neb and Herbert rushed towards the thicket, forgetting the most elementary rules of prudence. Happily, there was neither formidable wild beast nor savage native, but merely half-a-dozen of those mocking birds which they recognized as “mountain pheasants.” A few skillfully aimed blows with a stick brought this parody to an end, and gave them excellent game for dinner that evening. Herbert also pointed out superb pigeons with bronze-colored wings, some with a magnificent crest, others clad in green, like their congeners at Port-Macquarie; but like the troops of crows and magpies which flew about, they were beyond reach. A load of small-shot would have killed hosts of them; but the colonists had nothing but stones and sticks, very insufficient weapons. They proved even more inadequate when a troop of quadrupeds leaped away through the underbrush with tremendous bounds thirty feet long, so that they almost seemed to spring from tree to tree, like squirrels.

“Kangaroos!” cried Herbert.

“Can you eat them?” said Pencroff.

“They make a delicious stew,” said the reporter.

The words had hardly escaped his lips, when the sailor, with Neb and Herbert at his heels, rushed after the kangaroos. Smith tried in vain to recall them, but equally in vain did they pursue the game, whose elastic leaps left them far behind. After five minutes’ chase, they gave it up, out of breath.

“You see, Mr. Smith,” said Pencroff, “that guns are a necessity. Will it be possible to make them?”

“Perhaps,” replied the engineer; “but we will begin by making bows and arrows, and you will soon use them as skilfully as the Australian hunters.”

“Bows and arrows!” said Pencroff, with a contemptuous look. “They are for children!”

“Don’t be so proud, my friend,” said the reporter. “Bows and arrows were sufficient for many centuries for the warfare of mankind. Powder is an invention of yesterday, while war, unhappily, is as old as the race.”

“That’s true, Mr. Spilett,” said the sailor. “I always speak before I think. Forgive me.”

Meanwhile Herbert, with his natural history always uppermost in his thoughts, returned to the subject of kangaroos.

“Those which escaped us,” he said, “belong to the species most difficult to capture⁠—very large, with long grey hair, but I am sure there are black and red kangaroos, rock-kangaroos, kangaroo-rats⁠—”

“Herbert,” said the sailor, “for me there is only one kind⁠—the ‘kangaroo-on-the-spit’⁠—and that is just what we haven’t got.”

They could not help laughing at Professor Pencroff’s new classification. He was much cast down at the prospect of dining on mountain-phesants; but chance was once more kind to him. Top, who felt his dinner at stake, rushed hither and thither, his instinct quickened by sharp appetite. In fact, he would have left very little of what he might catch or anyone else, had not Neb watched him shrewdly. About three o’clock he disappeared into the rushes, from which came grunts and growls which indicated a deadly tustle. Neb rushed in, and found Top greedily devouring an animal, which in ten seconds more would have totally disappeared. But the dog had luckily fallen on a litter, and two more rodents⁠—for to this species did the beasts belong⁠—lay strangled on the ground. Neb reappeared in triumph with a rodent in each hand. They had yellow hair, with patches of green, and the rudiments of a tail. They were a sort of agouti, a little larger than their tropical congeners, true American hares, with long ears and five molar teeth on either side.

“Hurrah!” cried Pencroff, “the roast is here; now we can go back to the house.”

The journey was resumed. Red Creek still rolled its limped waters under the arching boughs of casuarence, bankseas and gigantic gum trees. Superb liliaceæ rose, to a height of twenty feet, and other arborescent trees of species unknown to the young naturalist, bent over the brook, which murmered gently beneath its leafy cradle. It widened sensibly, nevertheless, and the mouth was evidently near. As the party emerged from a massive thicket of fine trees, the lake suddenly appeared before them.

They were now on its left bank, and a picturesque region opened to their view. The smooth sheet of water, about seven miles in circumference and 250 acres in extent, lay sleeping among the trees. Towards the east, across the intermittent screen of verdure, appeared a shining horizon of sea. To the north the curve of the lake was concave, contrasting with the sharp outline of its lower extremity. Numerous aquatic birds frequented the banks of this little Ontario, in which the “Thousand Isles” of its American original were represented by a rock emerging from its surface some hundreds of feet from the southern bank. There lived in harmony several couples of kingfishers, perched upon rocks, grave and motionless, watching for fish; then they would plunge into the water and dive with a shrill cry, reappearing with the prey in their beaks. Upon the banks of the lake and the island were constantly strutting wild ducks, pelicans, water-hens and red-beaks. The waters of the lake