“When someone can make me believe that the savages make fire in this way” he said, “it will be hot even in winter! I could sooner light up my arms by rubbing them against each other!”
Pencroff rubbed two pieces of dry wood.
The sailor was wrong to belittle this technique. It is known that savages set fire to wood by means of a rapid rubbing. But all kinds of wood are not proper for this procedure and, in addition, one must have the “knack” for it, and Pencroff likely did not have the “knack.”
Pencroff’s ill humor did not last long. Harbert picked up the two pieces and began to rub them. The robust sailor laughed on seeing the adolescent’s efforts to succeed where he had failed.
“Rub, my boy, rub!” he said.
“I am rubbing,” replied Harbert laughing, “but I don’t pretend to do anything except take my turn at warming myself instead of shivering. Soon I’ll be as warm as you, Pencroff!”
This was the case, but they finally had to give up on starting a fire for the night. Gideon Spilett repeated for the twentieth time that Cyrus Smith would not have been inconvenienced by such a trifle. And while waiting, he stretched out on a bed of sand in one of the corridors. Harbert, Neb, and Pencroff did likewise while Top slept at the foot of his master.
The next day, March 28th, when the engineer awoke about eight o’clock in the morning, he saw his companions nearby watching him sleep. As on the previous day, his first words were:
“Island or continent?”
One could see that he was fixated on this idea.
“Well” replied Pencroff, “we know nothing about it, Mr. Smith!”
“You still don’t know? …”
“But we will know,” added Pencroff, “when you will have guided us around this land.”
“I think I’m well enough to try it,” replied the engineer. Without too much effort, he got up and held himself erect.
“That’s good,” said the sailor.
“I was suffering especially from exhaustion,” replied Cyrus Smith. “My friends, a little food, and it will no longer show. You have a fire, don’t you?”
This question did not get an immediate response. But after a few moments:
“Alas! We have no fire,” said Pencroff, “or rather, Mr. Cyrus, we have it no longer!”
The sailor related all that had happened on the previous day. He amused the engineer with his story of the single match and his aborted attempt to make fire the way the savages do.
“We’ll think about it,” replied the engineer, “and if we don’t find a substance similar to tinder …”
“Then?” asked the sailor.
“Then we’ll make matches.”
“With chemicals?”1
“With chemicals.”
“It isn’t any more difficult than that,” shouted the reporter, slapping the sailor’s shoulder.
The latter did not find the thing so simple, but he did not protest. They all went out. The weather was fine once again. A bright sun was rising on the sea’s horizon, and its golden rays sparkled on the coarse refractive surface of the granite wall.
After casting a quick glance around him, the engineer sat down on a rock. Harbert offered him a few handfuls of mussels and seaweed saying:
“This is all we have, Mr. Cyrus.”
“Thanks, my boy,” replied Cyrus Smith, “this will suffice, for this morning at least.”
He ate this scanty meal and washed it down with a little fresh water drawn from the river in a large shell.
His companions looked at him without speaking. After assuaging his hunger as best he could, Cyrus Smith then crossed his arms and said:
“So my friends, you still don’t know if fate has thrown us on a continent or an island?”
“No, Mr. Cyrus,” responded the boy.
“We’ll know that tomorrow,” replied the engineer. “Until then, there’s nothing to do.”
“Except,” said Pencroff.
“What?”
“Fire,” said the sailor, who also had only one idea.
“We’ll make it, Pencroff,” replied Cyrus Smith. “While you transported me yesterday, didn’t I see in the west a mountain which overlooked this land?”
“Yes,” said Gideon Spilett, “a high mountain …”
“Good,” replied the engineer, “tomorrow we’ll climb to the top, and we’ll see if this land is an island or a continent. Until then, I repeat, there’s nothing to be done.”
“Yes, make a fire!” said the stubborn sailor.
“We’ll make a fire,” replied Gideon Spilett, “a little patience, Pencroff.”
The sailor looked at Gideon Spilett as if to say: “If it depended on you to make it, we wouldn’t soon taste any roasted meat.” But he was silent.
However, Cyrus Smith did not reply. He seemed very little preoccupied with this question of fire. For several moments, he remained absorbed in his thoughts. Then he spoke again.
“My friends,” he said, “our situation is perhaps deplorable, but in any case it’s very simple. Either we’re on a continent and then, at the price of greater or less fatigue, we’ll eventually reach some inhabited part. Or else we’re on an island and, in that case, there are two possibilities: if the island is inhabited, we’ll get out of this situation with their help; if it’s deserted, we’ll have to do so alone.”
“Nothing is simpler,” replied Pencroff.
“But whether it is a continent or an island,” asked Gideon Spillet, “where do you think, Cyrus, this storm has thrown us?”
“In truth, I can’t say for sure,” replied the engineer. “But I presume that it’s a land in the Pacific. When we left Richmond, the wind blew from the northeast, and its very violence proves that its direction must not have varied much. If this direction was maintained from northeast to southwest, we crossed the states of North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, the Gulf of Mexico, the narrow part of Mexico, then a portion of the Pacific Ocean. I estimate that the distance covered by the balloon was not less than six to seven thousand miles. If the wind varied by as little as a few degrees, it would have carried us either to the archipelago of Marquesas or to the Tuamotu, and if it had a much larger speed than I suppose, even to New Zealand. If this latter hypothesis is the case, then our
