by Jules Verne
"That's true," said Paganel. "It is a volcano that blazes, but does not speak. The gleam seems intermittent too, sometimes, like that of a lighthouse."
"You are right," said John Mangles, "and yet we are not on a lighted coast."
"Ah!" he exclaimed, "another fire? On the shore this time! Look! It moves! It has changed its place!"
John was not mistaken. A fresh fire had appeared, which seemed to die out now and then, and suddenly flare up again.
"Is the island inhabited then?" said Glenarvan.
"By savages, evidently," replied Paganel.
"But in that case, we cannot leave the quartermaster there."
"No," replied the Major, "he would be too bad a gift even to bestow on savages."
"We must find some other uninhabited island," said Glenarvan, who could not help smiling at the delicacy of McNabbs. "I promised Ayrton his life, and I mean to keep my promise."
"At all events, don't let us trust them," added Paganel. "The New Zealanders have the barbarous custom of deceiving ships by moving lights, like the wreckers on the Cornish coast in former times. Now the natives of Maria Theresa may have heard of this proceeding."
"Keep her off a point," called out John to the man at the helm. "To-morrow at sunrise we shall know what we're about."
At eleven o'clock, the passengers and John Mangles retired to their cabins. In the forepart of the yacht the man on watch was pacing the deck, while aft, there was no one but the man at the wheel.
At this moment Mary Grant and Robert came on the poop.
The two children of the captain, leaning over the rail, gazed sadly at the phosphorescent waves and the luminous wake of the DUNCAN. Mary was thinking of her brother's future, and Robert of his sister's. Their father was uppermost in the minds of both. Was this idolized parent still in existence? Must they give him up? But no, for what would life be without him? What would become of them without him? What would have become of them already, but for Lord Glenarvan and Lady Helena?
The young boy, old above his years through trouble, divined the thoughts that troubled his sister, and taking her hand in his own, said, "Mary, we must never despair. Remember the lessons our father gave us. Keep your courage up and no matter what befalls you, let us show this obstinate courage which can rise above everything. Up to this time, sister, you have been working for me, it is my turn now, and I will work for you."
"Dear Robert!" replied the young girl.
"I must tell you something," resumed Robert. "You mustn't be vexed, Mary!"
"Why should I be vexed, my child?"
"And you will let me do it?"
"What do you mean?" said Mary, getting uneasy.
"Sister, I am going to be a sailor!"
"You are going to leave me!" cried the young girl, pressing her brother's hand.
"Yes, sister; I want to be a sailor, like my father and Captain John. Mary, dear Mary, Captain John has not lost all hope, he says. You have confidence in his devotion to us, and so have I. He is going to make a grand sailor out of me some day, he has promised me he will; and then we are going to look for our father together. Tell me you are willing, sister mine. What our father would have done for us it is our duty, mine, at least, to do for him. My life has one purpose to which it should be entirely consecrated-- that is to search, and never cease searching for my father, who would never have given us up. Ah, Mary, how good our father was!"
"And so noble, so generous!" added Mary. "Do you know, Robert, he was already a glory to our country, and that he would have been numbered among our great men if fate had not arrested his course."
"Yes, I know it," said Robert.
Mary put her arm around the boy, and hugged him fondly as he felt her tears fall on his forehead.
"Mary, Mary!" he cried, "it doesn't matter what our friends say, I still hope, and will always hope. A man like my father doesn't die till he has finished his work."
Mary Grant could not reply. Sobs choked her voice. A thousand feelings struggled in her breast at the news that fresh attempts were about to be made to recover Harry Grant, and that the devotion of the captain was so unbounded.
"And does Mr. John still hope?" she asked.
"Yes," replied Robert. "He is a brother that will never forsake us, never! I will be a sailor, you'll say yes, won't you, sister? And let me join him in looking for my father. I am sure you are willing."
"Yes, I am willing," said Mary. "But the separation!" she murmured.
"You will not be alone, Mary, I know that. My friend John told me so. Lady Helena will not let you leave her. You are a woman; you can and should accept her kindness. To refuse would be ungrateful, but a man, my father has said a hundred times, must make his own way."
"But what will become of our own dear home in Dundee, so full of memories?"
"We will keep it, little sister! All that is settled, and settled so well, by our friend John, and also by Lord Glenarvan. He is to keep you at Malcolm Castle as if you were his daughter. My Lord told my friend John so, and he told me. You will be at home there, and have someone to speak to about our father, while you are waiting till John and I bring him back to you some day. Ah! what a grand day that will be!" exclaimed Robert, his face glowing with enthusiasm.
"My boy, my brother," replied Mary, "how happy my father would be if he could hear you. How much you are like him, dear Robert, like our dear, dear father. When you grow up you'll be just himself."
"I hope I may," said Robert, blushing with filial and sacred pride.
"But how shall we requite Lord and Lady Glenarvan?" said Mary Grant.
"Oh, that will not be difficult," replied Robert, with boyish confidence. "We will love and revere them, and we will tell them so; and we will give them plenty of kisses, and some day, when we can get the chance, we will die for them."
"We'll live for them, on the contrary," replied the young girl, covering her brother's forehead with kisses. "They will like that better, and so shall I."
The two children then relapsed into silence, gazing out into the dark night, and giving way to long reveries, interrupted occasionally by a question or remark from one to the other. A long swell undulated the surface of the calm sea, and the screw turned up a luminous furrow in the darkness.
A strange and altogether supernatural incident now occurred. The brother and sister, by some of those magnetic communications which link souls mysteriously together, were the subjects at the same time and the same instant of the same hallucination.
Out of the midst of these waves, with their alternations of light and shadow, a deep plaintive voice sent up a cry, the tones of which thrilled through every fiber of their being.
"Come! come!" were the words which fell on their ears.
They both started up and leaned over the railing, and peered into the gloom with questioning eyes.
"Mary, you heard that? You heard that?" cried Robert.
But they saw nothing but the long shadow that stretched before them.
"Robert," said Mary, pale with emotion, "I thought--yes, I thought as you did, that--We must both be ill with fever, Robert."
A second time the cry reached them, and this time the illusion was so great, that they both exclaimed simultaneously, "My father! My father!"
It was too much for Mary. Overcome with emotion, she fell fainting into Robert's arms.
"Help!" shouted Robert. "My sister! my father! Help! Help!"
The man at the wheel darted forward to lift up the girl. The sailors on watch ran to assist, and John Mangles, Lady Helena, and Glenarvan were hastily roused from sleep.
"My sister is dying, and my father is there!" exclaimed Robert, pointing to the waves.
They were wholly at a loss to understand him.
"Yes!" he repeated, "my father is there! I heard my father's voice; Mary heard it too!"
Just at this moment, Mary Grant recovering consciousness, but wandering and excited, called out, "My father! my father is there!"
And the poor girl started
up, and leaning over the side of the yacht, wanted to throw herself into the sea.
"My Lord--Lady Helena!" she exclaimed, clasping her hands, "I tell you my father is there! I can declare that I heard his voice come out of the waves like a wail, as if it were a last adieu."
The young girl went off again into convulsions and spasms, which became so violent that she had to be carried to her cabin, where Lady Helena lavished every care on her. Robert kept on repeating, "My father! my father is there! I am sure of it, my Lord!"
The spectators of this painful scene saw that the captain's children were laboring under an hallucination. But how were they to be undeceived?
Glenarvan made an attempt, however. He took Robert's hand, and said, "You say you heard your father's voice, my dear boy?"
"Yes, my Lord; there, in the middle of the waves. He cried out, 'Come! come!'"
"And did you recognize his voice?"
"Yes, I recognized it immediately. Yes, yes; I can swear to it! My sister heard it, and recognized it as well. How could we both be deceived? My Lord, do let us go to my father's help. A boat! a boat!"
Glenarvan saw it was impossible to undeceive the poor boy, but he tried once more by saying to the man at the wheel:
"Hawkins, you were at the wheel, were you not, when Miss Mary was so strangely attacked?"
"Yes, your Honor," replied Hawkins.
"And you heard nothing, and saw nothing?"
"Nothing."
"Now Robert, see?"
"If it had been Hawkins's father," returned the boy, with indomitable energy, "Hawkins would not say he had heard nothing. It was my father, my lord! my father."
Sobs choked his voice; he became pale and silent, and presently fell down insensible, like his sister.
Glenarvan had him carried to his bed, where he lay in a deep swoon.
"Poor orphans," said John Mangles. "It is a terrible trial they have to bear!"
"Yes," said Glenarvan; "excessive grief has produced the same hallucination in both of them, and at the same time."
"In both of them!" muttered Paganel; "that's strange, and pure science would say inadmissible."
He leaned over the side of the vessel, and listened attentively, making a sign to the rest to keep still.
But profound silence reigned around. Paganel shouted his loudest. No response came.
"It is strange," repeated the geographer, going back to his cabin. "Close sympathy in thought and grief does not suffice to explain this phenomenon."
Next day, March 4, at 5 A. M., at dawn, the passengers, including Mary and Robert, who would not stay behind, were all assembled on the poop, each one eager to examine the land they had only caught a glimpse of the night before.
The yacht was coasting along the island at the distance of about a mile, and its smallest details could be seen by the eye.
Suddenly Robert gave a loud cry, and exclaimed he could see two men running about and gesticulating, and a third was waving a flag.
"The Union Jack," said John Mangles, who had caught up a spy-glass.
"True enough," said Paganel, turning sharply round toward Robert.
"My Lord," said Robert, trembling with emotion, "if you don't want me to swim to the shore, let a boat be lowered. Oh, my Lord, I implore you to let me be the first to land."
No one dared to speak. What! on this little isle, crossed by the 37th parallel, there were three men, shipwrecked Englishmen! Instantaneously everyone thought of the voice heard by Robert and Mary the preceding night. The children were right, perhaps, in the affirmation. The sound of a voice might have reached them, but this voice-- was it their father's? No, alas, most assuredly no. And as they thought of the dreadful disappointment that awaited them, they trembled lest this new trial should crush them completely. But who could stop them from going on shore? Lord Glenarvan had not the heart to do it.
"Lower a boat," he called out.
Another minute and the boat was ready. The two children of Captain Grant, Glenarvan, John Mangles, and Paganel, rushed into it, and six sailors, who rowed so vigorously that they were presently almost close to the shore.
At ten fathoms' distance a piercing cry broke from Mary's lips.
"My father!" she exclaimed.
A man was standing on the beach, between two others. His tall, powerful form, and his physiognomy, with its mingled expression of boldness and gentleness, bore a resemblance both to Mary and Robert. This was indeed the man the children had so often described. Their hearts had not deceived them. This was their father, Captain Grant!
The captain had heard Mary's cry, for he held out his arms, and fell flat on the sand, as if struck by a thunderbolt.
CHAPTER XX CAPTAIN GRANT'S STORY
JOY does not kill, for both father and children recovered before they had reached the yacht. The scene which followed, who can describe? Language fails. The whole crew wept aloud at the sight of these three clasped together in a close, silent embrace.
The moment Harry Grant came on deck, he knelt down reverently. The pious Scotchman's first act on touching the yacht, which to him was the soil of his native land, was to return thanks to the God of his deliverance. Then, turning to Lady Helena and Lord Glenarvan, and his companions, he thanked them in broken words, for his heart was too full to speak. During the short passage from the isle to the yacht, his children had given him a brief sketch of the DUNCAN'S history.
What an immense debt he owed to this noble lady and her friends! From Lord Glenarvan, down to the lowest sailor on board, how all had struggled and suffered for him! Harry Grant expressed his gratitude with such simplicity and nobleness, his manly face suffused with pure and sweet emotion, that the whole crew felt amply recompensed for the trials they had undergone. Even the impassable Major himself felt a tear steal down his cheek in spite of all his self-command; while the good, simple Paganel cried like a child who does not care who sees his tears.
Harry Grant could not take his eyes off his daughter. He thought her beautiful, charming; and he not only said so to himself, but repeated it aloud, and appealed to Lady Helena for confirmation of his opinion, as if to convince himself that he was not blinded by his paternal affection. His boy, too, came in for admiration. "How he has grown! he is a man!" was his delighted exclamation. And he covered the two children so dear to him with the kisses he had been heaping up for them during his two years of absence.
Robert then presented all his friends successively, and found means always to vary the formula of introduction, though he had to say the same thing about each. The fact was, each and all had been perfect in the children's eyes.
John Mangles blushed like a child when his turn came, and his voice trembled as he spoke to Mary's father.
Lady Helena gave Captain Grant a narrative of the voyage, and made him proud of his son and daughter. She told him of the young hero's exploits, and how the lad had already paid back part of the paternal debt to Lord Glenarvan. John Mangles sang Mary's praises in such terms, that Harry Grant, acting on a hint from Lady Helena, put his daughter's hand into that of the brave young captain, and turning to Lord and Lady Glenarvan, said: "My Lord, and you, Madam, also give your blessing to our children."
When everything had been said and re-said over and over again, Glenarvan informed Harry Grant about Ayrton. Grant confirmed the quartermaster's confession as far as his disembarkation on the coast of Australia was concerned.
"He is an intelligent, intrepid man," he added, "whose passions have led him astray. May reflection and repentance bring him to a better mind!"
But before Ayrton was transferred, Harry Grant wished to do the honors of his rock to his friends. He invited them to visit his wooden house, and dine with him in Robinson Crusoe fashion.
Glenarvan and his friends accepted the invitation most willingly. Robert and Mary were eagerly longing to see the solitary house where their father had so often wept at the thought of them. A boat was manned, and the Captain and his two children, Lord and Lady Glenarvan, the Major, Joh
n Mangles, and Paganel, landed on the shores of the island.
A few hours sufficed to explore the whole domain of Harry Grant. It was in fact the summit of a submarine mountain, a plateau composed of basaltic rocks and volcanic DEBRIS. During the geological epochs of the earth, this mountain had gradually emerged from the depths of the Pacific, through the action of the subterranean fires, but for ages back the volcano had been a peaceful mountain, and the filled-up crater, an island rising out of the liquid plain. Then soil formed. The vegetable kingdom took possession of this new land. Several whalers landed domestic animals there in passing; goats and pigs, which multiplied and ran wild, and the three kingdoms of nature were now displayed on this island, sunk in mid ocean.
When the survivors of the shipwrecked BRITANNIA took refuge there, the hand of man began to organize the efforts of nature. In two years and a half, Harry Grant and his two sailors had metamorphosed the island. Several acres of well-cultivated land were stocked with vegetables of excellent quality.
The house was shaded by luxuriant gum-trees. The magnificent ocean stretched before the windows, sparkling in the sunlight. Harry Grant had the table placed beneath the grand trees, and all the guests seated themselves. A hind quarter of a goat, nardou bread, several bowls of milk, two or three roots of wild endive, and pure fresh water, composed the simple repast, worthy of the shepherds of Arcadia.
Paganel was enchanted. His old fancies about Robinson Crusoe revived in full force. "He is not at all to be pitied, that scoundrel, Ayrton!" he exclaimed, enthusiastically. "This little isle is just a paradise!"
"Yes," replied Harry Grant, "a paradise to these poor, shipwrecked fellows that Heaven had pity on, but I am sorry that Maria Theresa was not an extensive and fertile island, with a river instead of a stream, and a port instead of a tiny bay exposed to the open sea."
"And why, captain?" asked Glenarvan.
"Because I should have made it the foundation of the colony with which I mean to dower Scotland."
"Ah, Captain Grant, you have not given up the project, then, which made you so popular in our old country?"
"No, my Lord, and God has only saved me through your efforts that I might accomplish my task. My poor brothers in old Caledonia, all who are needy must have a refuge provided for them in another land against their misery, and my dear country must have a colony of her own, for herself alone, somewhere in these seas, where she may find that independence and comfort she so lacks in Europe."
