The Mysterious Island, Jules Verne [freenovel24 txt] 📗

latter as being easier to work, and supporting immersion in water the better.

These details having been arranged, it was decided that, as the fine weather would not return before six months, Smith and Pencroff should do this work alone. Spilett and Herbert were to continue hunting, and Neb and his assistant, Master Jup, were to attend to the domestic cares as usual.

At once trees were selected and cut down and sawed into planks, and a week later a shipyard was made in the hollow between Granite House and the Cliff, and a keel thirty-five feet long, with sternpost and stem lay upon the sand.

Smith had not entered blindly upon this undertaking. He understood marine construction as he did almost everything else, and he had first drawn the model on paper. Moreover, he was well aided by Pencroff, who had worked as a ship-carpenter. It was, therefore, only after deep thought and careful calculation that the false frame was raised on the keel.

Pencroff was very anxious to begin the new enterprise, and but one thing took him away, and then only for a day, from the work. This was the second harvest, which was made on the 15th of April. It resulted as before, and yielded the proportion of grains calculated.

“Five bushels, Mr. Smith,” said Pencroff, after having scrupulously measured these riches.

“Five bushels,” answered the engineer, “or 650,000 grains of corn.”

“Well, we will sow them all this time, excepting a small reserve.”

“Yes, and if the next harvest is proportional to this we will have 4,000 bushels.”

“And we will eat bread.”

“We will, indeed.”

“But we must build a mill?”

“We will build one.”

The third field of corn, though incomparably larger than the others, was prepared with great care and received the precious seed. Then Pencroff returned to his work.

In the meantime, Spilett and Herbert hunted in the neighborhood, or with their guns loaded with ball, adventured into the unexplored depths of the Far West. It was an inextricable tangle of great trees growing close together. The exploration of those thick masses was very difficult and the engineer never undertook it without taking with him the pocket compass, as the sun was rarely visible through the leaves. Naturally, game was not plenty in these thick undergrowths, but three ai were shot during the last fortnight in April, and their skins were taken to Granite House, where they received a sort of tanning with sulfuric acid.

On the 30th of April, a discovery, valuable for another reason, was made by Spilett. The two hunters were deep in the southwestern part of the Far West when the reporter, walking some fifty paces ahead of his companion, came to a sort of glade, and was surprised to perceive an odor proceeding from certain straight stemmed plants, cylindrical and branching, and bearing bunches of flowers and tiny seeds. The reporter broke off some of these stems, and, returning to the lad, asked him if he knew what they were.

“Where did you find this plant?” asked Herbert.

“Over there in the glade; there is plenty of it.”

“Well, this is a discovery that gives you Pencroff’s everlasting gratitude.”

“Is it tobacco?”

“Yes, and if it is not first quality it is all the same, tobacco.”

“Good Pencroff, how happy he’ll be. But he cannot smoke all. He’ll have to leave some for us.”

“I’ll tell you what, sir. Let us say nothing to Pencroff until the tobacco has been prepared, and then some fine day we will hand him a pipe full.”

“And you may be sure, Herbert, that on that day the good fellow will want nothing else in the world.”

The two smuggled a good supply of the plant into Granite House with as much precaution as if Pencroff had been the strictest of custom house officers. Smith and Neb were let into the secret, but Pencroff never suspected anything during the two months it took to prepare the leaves, as he was occupied all day at the shipyard.

On the 1st of May the sailor was again interrupted at his favorite work by a fishing adventure, in which all the colonists took part.

For some days they had noticed an enormous animal swimming in the sea some two or three miles distant from the shore. It was a huge whale, apparently belonging to the species australis, called “cape whales.”

“How lucky for us if we could capture it!” cried the sailor. “Oh, if we only had a suitable boat and a harpoon ready, so that I could say:⁠—Let’s go for him! For he’s worth all the trouble he’ll give us!”

“Well, Pencroff, I should like to see you manage a harpoon. It must be interesting.”

“Interesting and somewhat dangerous,” said the engineer, “but since we have not the means to attack this animal, it is useless to think about him.”

“I am astonished to see a whale in such comparatively high latitude.”

“Why, Mr. Spilett, we are in that very part of the Pacific which whalers call the ‘whale-field,’ and just here whales are found in the greatest number.”

“That is so,” said Pencroff, “and I wonder we have not seen one before, but it don’t matter much since we cannot go to it.”

And the sailor turned with a sigh to his work, as all sailors are fishermen; and if the sport is proportionate to the size of the game, one can imagine what a whaler must feel in the presence of a whale. But, aside from the sport, such spoil would have been very acceptable to the colony, as the oil, the fat, and the fins could be turned to various uses.

It appeared as if the animal did not wish to leave these waters. He kept swimming about in Union Bay for two days, now approaching the shore, when his black body could be seen perfectly, and again darting through the water or spouting vapor to a vast height in the air. Its presence continually engaged the thoughts of the colonists, and Pencroff was like a child longing for some forbidden object.

Fortune, however, did for the colonists what they could not have done for