Propeller Island

by Jules Verne

  “It seems that if his Majesty had not been capable of doing the work of an astronomer, he would have had to give lessons like a professor of music.”

  “A King going out teaching!” exclaimed Pinchinat. “Certainly, and at the price his rich pupils would pay him for his lessons—”

  “They say he is a very good musician,” observed Yvernès.

  “I am not surprised at his being enthusiastic over music,” added Sebastien Zorn; “for we have seen him at the door of the casino, during our concerts, owing to his not being able to afford a stall for the Queen and himself.”

  “Well, fiddlers, I have an idea!” said Pinchinat.

  “An idea of his Highness’s,” replied the violoncellist, “is sure to be a queer one.”

  “Queer or not, old Sebastien,” said Pinchinat, “I am sure you will approve of it.”

  “Let us hear this idea,” said Frascolin.

  “To give a concert at their Majesties’, to them alone in their drawing-room, and to play the best pieces in our repertory.”

  “Well,” said Sebastien Zorn, “your idea is not a bad one.

  “Confound it, I have many like that in my head, and when I shake it—”

  “It sounds like a rattle!” said Yvernès.

  “My dear Pinchinat,” said Frascolin, “let us be content to-day with your proposal. I am certain it would be a great pleasure to this good King and this good Queen.”

  “To-morrow, we will write and ask for an audience,” said Sebastien Zorn.

  “Better than that!” said Pinchinat. “This very evening let us call at the royal habitation with our instruments, like a band of musicians come to give them a morning greeting—”

  “You mean a serenade,” said Yvernès, “for it will be at night.”

  “Be it so, first violin, severe but just! Do not let us juggle with words! Is it agreed?”

  “Agreed.”

  It was really an excellent idea. The King would no doubt appreciate this delicate attention, and be happy to hear the French artistes.

  When the day closed in, the Quartette Party, laden with their violin cases and the violoncello box, left the casino in the direction of Thirty-ninth Avenue, situated at the extremity of the Starboard Section.

  It was a very quiet house, having a small court in front with a verdant lawn. On one side were the domestic offices, on the other the stables, which were not used. The house consisted of a ground floor entered from a flight of steps, and a story surmounted by a mezzanine window and a mansard roof. On the right and left two magnificent nettle trees shaded the double footpath which led to the garden. Beneath the trees in the garden, which did not measure two hundred superficial metres, extended a lawn. There was no comparison between this cottage and the mansions of the Coverleys, Tankerdons, and other notables of Milliard City. It was the retreat of a sage who lived in retirement, of a learned man, a philosopher. Abdolonymus would have been satisfied with it when he left the throne of the Kings of Sidon.

  The King of Malecarlie had for his only chamberlain a valet, and the Queen for a maid of honour had but her lady’s maid. Add to this an American cook, and you have all the household of the deposed sovereigns, who once on a time were brother to brother with the emperors of the old continent.

  Frascolin touched an electric bell. The valet opened the gate.

  Frascolin expressed the wish of himself and comrades to present their respects to his Majesty, and begged the favour of being admitted.

  The servant asked them to enter, and they stopped before the flight of steps.

  Almost immediately the valet returned to inform them that the King would receive them with pleasure. They were introduced into the vestibule, where they put down their instruments, then into the drawing-room, where their Majesties entered at the same instant. That was all the ceremonial of this reception.

  The artistes bowed respectfully before the King and Queen. The Queen, very simply dressed in dark coloured stuff, wore no headdress, but her abundant hair whose grey locks gave a charm to her rather pale face and somewhat weary look. She sat in an arm-chair near the window which opened on to the garden, beyond which were the trees of the park.

  The King, standing, replied to the greeting of the visitors, and asked them to say what motive had brought them to this house, which was away on the outskirts of Milliard City.

  The quartette felt somewhat affected as they looked at this sovereign whose appearance was one of inexpressible dignity. His look was keen under his almost black eyebrows—the profound look of a scientific man. His white beard fell large and silky on his chest. His face, of which a charming smile tempered the rather serious expression, could but arouse the sympathy of those who approached him.

  Frascolin acted as spokesman, his voice trembling slightly.

  “We thank your Majesty,” said he, “for having deigned to welcome artistes who desire to offer you their respectful homage.”

  “The Queen and I thank you, gentlemen, and we are sensible of your compliment. To this island, where we hope to end so troubled an existence, it seems as though you had brought a little of the fine air of your France. Gentlemen, you are not unknown to a man who, though busy with science, is passionately fond of music, that art in which you have acquired such good reputation in the artistic world. We know the successes you have obtained in Europe, in America. In the applause which welcomed the Quartette Party to Floating Island we have taken part —at a distance, it is true. And we have had one regret, that at not having yet heard you as you deserve to be heard.”

  The King gave a sign for his guests to sit down, while he stood before the mantelpiece, the marble of which supported a magnificent bust of the Queen, when young, by Franquetti.

  To come to business, Frascolin had only to reply to the last sentence uttered by the King.

  “Your Majesty is right,” said he, “and the regret expressed is fully justified as concerning that branch of music of which we are the interpreters. Chamber music demands more privacy than is obtainable with a numerous audience. It requires a little of the meditation of the sanctuary.”

  “Yes, gentlemen,” said the Queen, “this music should be heard as one would hear a strain of celestial harmony, and it is really in a sanctuary that it should—”

  “Will, then, your Majesties,” said Yvernès, “allow us to transform this room into a sanctuary for an hour, and be heard by your Majesties alone—”

  Yvernès had not finished these words when the faces of the two sovereigns brightened.

  “Gentlemen,” said the King, “you wish—you had thought of this?”

  “That is the object of our visit.”

  “Ah!” said the King, extending his hand to them. “I therein recognize French musicians in whom the heart equals the talent. I thank you in the name of the Queen and myself! Nothing—no! nothing could give us greater pleasure.”

  And while the valet received orders to bring in the instruments and arrange the room for the improvised concert, the King and Queen invited their guests to follow them into the garden. There they talked of music as artistes might in the completest intimacy.

  The King abandoned himself to his enthusiasm for this art, like a man who felt all its charm, and understood all its beauties. He showed, to the astonishment of his auditors, how well he knew the masters he was to listen to in a few minutes. He talked of the ingenuous and ingenious genius of Haydn. He recalled what a critic had said of Mendelssohn, that unequalled composer of chamber music, who expressed his ideas in the language of Beethoven. Weber, what exquisite sensibility, what a chivalrous spirit, which made him a master different from all the others! Beethoven, that prince of instrumental music.... His soul was revealed in his symphonies. The works of his genius yielded neither in grandeur nor in value to the masterpieces of poetry, painting, sculpture, or architecture—that sublime star which finally set in the choir symphony in which the voices of the instruments mingle so closely with human voices.

  “And yet he was never ab
le to dance in time.”

  As may be imagined, it was from Pinchinat that this most inopportune remark emanated.

  “Yes,” replied the King, smiling, “that shows that the ear is not necessarily an indispensable organ to the musician. It is with the heart, and that alone, that he hears. And has not Beethoven proved that in the incomparable symphony I mentioned, composed when his deafness did not allow him to hear a sound?”

  After Haydn, Weber, Mendelssohn, Beethoven, it was of Mozart that his Majesty spoke with enthusiastic eloquence.

  “Ah, gentlemen,” he said, “let me give vent to my raptures. It is such a time since I have had an opportunity of saying what I think! Were you not the first artistes I have been able to understand since my arrival at Floating Island? Mozart! Mozart! One of your dramatic composers, the greatest, in my opinion, of the end of the nineteenth century, has devoted some admirable pages to him! I have read them, and nothing will ever efface them from my memory! He tells us with what facility Mozart gave to each word its special emphasis and intonation without affecting the rhythm and character of the musical phrase. He says that to pathetic truthfulness he added the perfection of physical beauty. Was not Mozart the only one who divined with certainty as unfailing, as complete, the musical form of all the sentiments of all the shades of passion and character; that is all that forms the human drama? Mozart was not a King —what is a King nowadays?” added his Majesty, shaking his head; “I say he was a god, if they will still permit the existence of a god. He was the God of Music!”

  We cannot describe, for it was indescribable, the ardour with which his Majesty manifested his admiration; and when he and the Queen had entered the room, the artistes following him, he took up a pamphlet that lay on the table. This pamphlet, which seemed to have been read and re-read, bore the title, “Mozart’s Don Juan.” Then he opened it and read these few lines from the pen of the master who most understood and best loved Mozart, the illustrious Gounod: “O Mozart! Divine Mozart! It is little you require to be understood to be adored. Thine is constant truthfulness! Thine is perfect beauty! Thine is inexhaustible charm! Thou art always profound and always clear! Thine are complete humanity and the simplicity of the child! Thou hast felt everything and expressed everything in musical phrase, which has never been surpassed, and never will be surpassed!”

  Then Sebastien Zorn and his comrades took their instruments, and in the light of the electric lamp, which shed a gentle radiance through the room, they played the first of the pieces they had chosen for this concert.

  It was the second quartette in A minor, op. 13 of Mendelssohn, in which the royal audience took infinite pleasure.

  To this quartette succeeded the third in C major, op. 75 of Haydn, that is to say, the Austrian Hymn, executed with incomparable mastery. Never had executants been nearer perfection than in the intimacy of this sanctuary where our artistes had no one to hear them but two deposed sovereigns.

  And when they had finished the hymn enriched by the genius of the composer, they played the sixth quartette in B flat op. 18 of Beethoven, the Malinconia, of character so sad, and power so penetrating, that the eyes of their Majesties were wet with tears.

  Then came the admirable fugue in C minor of Mozart, so perfect, so free from all scholastic research, so natural, that it seemed to flow like limpid water, or pass like the breeze through the leaves. Finally, it was one of the most admirable quartettes of the divine composer, the tenth in D major, op. 35, which ended this never-to-be-forgotten evening, of which the nabobs of Milliard City had never had the equal.

  And it was not that the Frenchmen were tired of playing these admirable works, or that the King and Queen were tired of listening to them; but it was eleven o’clock, and his Majesty said, —

  “We thank you, gentlemen, and our thanks come from the depths of our hearts. Thanks to the perfection of your execution, we have enjoyed artistic delights which nothing will make us forget! It has done us so much good.”

  “If the King desires it,” said Yvernès, “we could still—”

  “Thank you, gentlemen, for the last time, thanks. We will not abuse your kindness. It is late, and then—tonight—I am on duty—”

  This expression, in the mouth of the King, recalled our artistes to the realities. Before the sovereign who thus spoke they felt somewhat confused—they lowered their eyes.

  “Yes, gentlemen,” continued the King, playfully, “am I not the astronomer of the observatory of Floating Island, and,” added he, with some emotion, “inspector of stars—of falling stars?”

  CHAPTER IV.

  DURING the last week of the year, devoted to Christmas joys, numerous invitations were given for dinners, parties, and official receptions; a banquet given by the Governor to the principal personages of Milliard City, attended by the Starboard and Larboard notables, testified to a certain fusion between the two sections of the town. The Tankerdons and the Coverleys found themselves at the same table. On New Year’s Day there was an exchange of cards between the mansion in the Nineteenth Avenue and that in the Fifteenth. Walter Tankerdon even received an invitation for one of Mrs. Coverley’s concerts. The welcome with which he was received by the mistress of the house appeared to be of good augury. But it was a long way from that to closer ties, although Calistus Munbar, in his characteristic way, was continually repeating to those who cared to listen to him, —

  “It is done, my friends, it is done.”

  Floating Island continued its peaceful navigation towards the archipelago of Tonga-Tabou. Nothing seemed likely to trouble it, when on the night of the 30th of December there occurred an unexpected meteorologic phenomenon.

  Between two and three in the morning distant detonations were heard. The look-outs did not trouble about this more than was necessary. They did not suppose that it meant a naval combat, unless it was between the ships of those South American Republics who are frequently at war. After all, why should they trouble about it on Floating Island, an independent island at peace with the powers of the two worlds?

  Besides, these detonations, which came from the eastern parts of the Pacific, lasted until daylight, and certainly could not be mistaken for the full regular roar of distant artillery.

  Commodore Simcoe, informed by one of his officers, went to observe the horizon from the top of the observatory tower. There was no light visible on the surface of the wide segment of sea that lay before his eyes. But the sky had not its usual aspect. Reflections of flames coloured it up to the zenith. The air appeared misty, although the weather was fine and the barometer did not indicate by a sudden fall any perturbation in the atmosphere.

  At daybreak the early risers of Milliard City had a strange surprise. Not only did the detonations continue, but the air was full of red and black mist, a kind of impalpable dust, which began to fall like rain. You might call it a shower of fuliginous molecules. In a few moments the streets of the town, the roofs of the houses were covered with a substance in which were combined the colours of carmine, madder, nacarat, and purple with blackish ashes.

  The people were all out of doors—except Athanase Dorémus, who never got up before eleven after going to bed at eight. The quartette had, of course, jumped out of bed and gone to the observatory, where the Commodore, his officers, his astronomers, without forgetting the new royal functionary, were endeavouring to discover the cause of the phenomenon.

  “It is regrettable,” remarked Pinchinat, “that this red matter is not liquid, and that this liquid is not a shower of Pomard or Château Lafitte!”

  “Tippler!” said Sebastien Zorn.

  But what was the cause of this phenomenon? There have been many examples of these showers of red dust, composed of silica, alumina, chromic oxide and ferric oxide. At the beginning of the century Calabria and the Abruzzi were inundated with these showers, which the superstitious inhabitants took for drops of blood when, as at Blancenberghe, in 1819, they were merely chloride of cobalt. There have also been clouds of molecules of soot or carbon borne from d
istant fires. There have even been showers of soot at Fernambouc in 1820, yellow showers at Orleans in 1829, and in the Basses Pyrenees in 1836 showers of pollen drifted from firs in bloom.

  What origin could be attributed to this fall of dust mingled with scoriæ, with which the air seemed laden and which fell on Floating Island and the surrounding sea in thick reddish masses?

  The King of Malecarlie gave it as his opinion that these substances came from some volcano in the islands to the west. His colleagues at the observatory agreed with him. They collected several handfuls of these scoriæ, the temperature of which was above that of the air, and which had not cooled down in their passage through the atmosphere. An eruption of great violence would explain the irregular detonations that had been heard. These regions are strewn with craters, some in activity, others extinct, but susceptible of revival under subterranean action; without counting those which geologic upheavals occasionally lift from the ocean’s depths, the force of their projection being often extraordinary.

  And in the midst of this archipelago of Tonga to which Floating Island was going, had not a few years before the peak of Tufua been covered with its eruptive matters for an area of more than a hundred kilometres? And for hours had not the detonations of the volcano been heard two hundred kilometres away?

  Then, in the month of August, 1883, the eruption of Krakatoa had desolated the parts of the islands of Java and Sumatra adjoining Sunda Strait, destroying entire villages, causing earthquakes, covering the soil with compact mud, raising the sea in formidable waves, infecting the atmosphere with sulphurous vapours, and wrecking ships. Really, it might be asked if Floating Island were not threatened with dangers of this kind.

  Commodore Simcoe began to be uneasy, for navigation threatened to become very difficult. He gave orders to slacken speed, and Floating Island began to move with extreme slowness.