by Jules Verne
Ned Land was well acquainted with this fruit. He had already eaten it on previous voyages, and knew how to prepare the edible part. Seeing it excited his desire so much that he was unable to hold on any longer.
‘Sir, I’ll die if I don’t taste some of the inside of this breadfruit!’
‘Go ahead, Ned, my friend, you can taste to your heart’s delight. We’re here to try things out, so feel free.’
‘It won’t take long,’ said the Canadian.
Using a lens he lit a fire with some deadwood, which soon began crackling cheerfully. Meanwhile Conseil and I were choosing the best fruit from the Artocarpus. Some were not ripe enough, with their thick skin revealing a white pulp, not very fibrous. A large number of others, sticky and yellowish, were just waiting to be plucked.
The fruit did not have any stones. Conseil carried about a dozen back to Ned, who cut thick slices and put them on the hot coals, repeating all the while:
‘You’ll soon see, sir, how good it is!’
‘Especially when you haven’t had any for a long time!’ said Conseil.
‘It’s no longer bread, it’s delicate pastry. Have you ever had any, sir?’
‘No, Ned.’
‘Well, get ready to taste something out of this world! If it doesn’t knock you out, I’m not the king of the harpooners!’
After a while the side of the fruit on the fire had turned completely black. Inside was a sort of dry white paste, or soft crumb, which tasted like artichoke.
It must be admitted that it was very good, and I ate with great pleasure.
‘Unfortunately’, I said, ‘this paste can’t be kept fresh, and so there seems little point in stocking up on board.’
‘What are you saying!’ cried Ned. ‘You’re speaking as a naturalist, but I’m going to act as a baker. Conseil, gather lots of these breadfruit, and we’ll pick them up again on our way back.’
‘But how will you prepare them?’ I asked.
‘By using the pulp to make a fermented paste which will keep indefinitely. When I want some, I’ll just cook it in the kitchen, and you will find it excellent despite a slightly acidic taste.’
‘So, Master Ned, I can see that this bread is perfect . . .’
‘No, sir, it still needs a few fresh fruit or, failing that, vegetables.’
‘Well then, let’s go and look for some.’
Once our bread harvest was over, we set off to complete this earthly meal.
Our search was not in vain, for by about midday we had gathered a generous supply of bananas. These delicious products of the tropical zone ripen the whole year round, and the Malays, who call them pisang, eat them uncooked. Along with the bananas we collected enormous, very strong-tasting jackfruit, delicious mangoes, and pineapples of an incredible size. All this took a long time, but we had no reason to regret it.
Conseil was still observing Ned. The harpooner was walking ahead and as he worked his way through the forest, he was completing his provisions by collecting fine fruit with a sure hand.
‘So now you have everything you wish, Ned, my friend?’
‘H’m.’
‘You can’t still be complaining?’
‘All this fruit doesn’t really make up a dinner. It’s the end of the meal, the pudding. But what about the soup and the main course?’
‘Indeed,’ I said. ‘Ned promised us chops, which now seem unlikely to materialize.’
‘Sir, not only has the hunting not finished, but it hasn’t even started yet. Patience! We’ll certainly end up meeting some sort of animal with either feathers or hair, if not here, then somewhere else . . .’
‘And if not today, then tomorrow,’ added Conseil, ‘for we should not wander too far. I even suggest returning to the boat.’
‘What, already!’
‘We have to be back by nightfall,’ I said.
‘So what time is it?’
‘At least two o’clock,’ replied Conseil.
‘How time flies on dry land!’ exclaimed Master Ned Land with a sigh of regret.
‘Off we go!’ said Conseil.
So back we went through the forest, completing our harvest by raiding the palm cabbage trees, whose palms need to be taken from the tops of the trees, and gathering some small beans, that I recognized to be what the Malays call abrou, as well as some yams of superior quality.
We were loaded down by the time we got back to the boat. Ned, however, still did not find his supplies sufficient, although luck was to favour him. Just as he was getting back in he spotted a few 25- or 30-foot trees belonging to the palm-tree family. This variety, as precious as the Artocarpus, is considered one of the most useful products in the Malay archipelago.
They were sago palms, which grow wild, similar to the mulberry in that they reproduce from their own offspring and their own seeds.
Land knew what to do. He took his axe, chopped with great vigour, and soon felled two or three sago palms: they were fully grown, as could be seen from the white powder speckling their leaves.
I watched him more as a naturalist than a starving man. He cut a strip of bark 1 inch thick from each trunk and revealed a network of long fibres forming inextricable knots, gummed together with a sort of sticky flour. This flour was sago, an edible substance that forms the principal diet of the Melanesians.
For the moment Ned merely chopped the trunks up, as if making wood for burning: he thus postponed the job of extracting the flour, sifting it through cloth to separate out the fibrous parts, evaporating the liquid in the sun, and putting it in moulds to set.
We finally pushed off at five o’clock, laden down with our booty, and half an hour later drew up alongside the Nautilus. No one appeared. The enormous metal cylinder lay as if deserted. Once the provisions were loaded, I went down to my room. I found my dinner ready. I ate, then went to bed.
The next day, 6 January, nothing had changed on board. No sound, no sign of life. The dinghy remained alongside where we had left it. We decided to go back to Gueboroar Island. Ned Land wanted to visit another part of the forest, hoping to have better luck hunting than the day before.
At dawn we were already on our way. The boat was carried along by the ebb-tide, and we reached the island very quickly.
We got out and followed Ned Land, preferring to trust to his instinct, although his long legs nearly left us behind.
He headed west along the coast, then forded a few streams, before reaching a plateau surrounded by splendid forests. A few kingfishers were stalking along the water-courses, but it was impossible to get near them. Their caution told me that these birds knew what to expect from bipeds like us, and I deduced that if the island was not actually inhabited, it was at least regularly visited.
Having crossed a rich plain, we arrived at the edge of a little wood brightened by the song and flight of a large number of birds.
‘They’re still only birds,’ said Conseil.
‘But some are edible.’
‘On the contrary, dear Ned, I can see they’re nothing but parrots.’
‘My dear Conseil,’ he solemnly intoned, ‘the parrot is the pheasant of those who have nothing else to eat.’
‘And I will add’, I said, ‘that when properly prepared, the bird is worth sticking your fork into.’
And indeed, beneath the thick foliage, a large number of parrots were swooping from branch to branch, merely awaiting more education to learn a human tongue. For the moment they cackled together in the company of multicoloured parakeets and grave cockatoos apparently pondering some philosophical problem. All the while, brilliant red lories flew past like pieces of bunting carried off on the breeze, amongst noisy flights of calaos, papua birds decorated in the finest shades of azure, and a whole assortment of delightful but generally inedible birds.
However, a bird particular to those regions and one which has never lived beyond the limits of the islands around Papua and Aru was missing from this collection, although chance was to allow me to admire one before long.
‘Birds of paradise!’
‘Order of Passeriformes, section of clystomores,’ replied Conseil.
‘Family of partridges?’
‘I do not think so, Master Land. I am, nevertheless, counting on your skill to secure one of these charming products of the Tropics.’
‘I’ll have a go, sir, though I’m handier with a harpoon than a gun.’
The Malays, who trade a large number of these birds with the Chinese, have various methods for catching them that we could not employ. Sometimes they set snares at the tops of tall trees where the birds of paradise like to live. Sometimes they capture them with a strong glue which immobilizes them. Sometimes they even poison the springs where the birds habitually drink. As for us, we were reduced to firing at them in flight, which left little chance of hitting them; and indeed we wasted much of our ammunition in vain.
By about eleven o’clock we had reached the foothills of the mountains in the centre of the island, and had still bagged nothing. Hunger spurred us on. The hunters in us had relied on the results of our own skill, generally a mistake. But very fortunately Conseil killed two birds with one stone, to his great surprise, and thus ensured lunch. He shot a white pigeon and a wood pigeon, which were quickly plucked, spitted, and grilled over a roaring deadwood fire. While these strange animals were cooking, Ned prepared some Artocarpus. Then the two pigeons were devoured down to the bones, and declared excellent. The nutmeg which they gorge themselves on endows their flesh with a delicious flavour.
‘It’s like chicken raised on truffles,’ said Conseil.
‘And now, Ned, what else do you need?’
‘Some game with four legs, doctor,’ he replied. ‘All these pigeons and so on are only hors-d’oeuvres and nibbles! I won’t be satisfied until I’ve killed an animal with chops on it!’
‘Nor me, Ned, until I catch a bird of paradise.’
‘Let’s continue then,’ said Conseil, ‘but heading back towards the coast. We are in the foothills of the mountains and it would appear sensible to return to the forest region.’
This seemed a good idea and was duly adopted. After an hour’s walk we had reached a real forest of sago palms. A few harmless snakes fled from under our feet. Birds of paradise escaped as we approached, and I was truly giving up catching any, when Conseil, who was ahead, suddenly bent down, gave a shout of triumph, and came back carrying a magnificent specimen.
‘Congratulations!’ I exclaimed.
‘Monsieur is too kind.’
‘But no, my good fellow, a master-stroke. To capture one of these birds alive, using bare hands!’
‘If monsieur will study it closely he will see that my merit is not so great.’
‘But why, Conseil?’
‘Because this bird is as drunk as a lord.’
‘Drunk?’
‘Yes, monsieur, tipsy from the nutmeg it was eating under the nutmeg tree where I caught it. See, Ned, the terrible effects of intemperance.’
‘My God! Considering how much gin I’ve had in the last two months, one can hardly talk.’
I examined the strange bird. Conseil was quite right. The bird of paradise was drunk on the heady juice, totally incapacitated. It could not fly, it could hardly walk; but this didn’t bother me, and I let it stew in its own nutmeg.
The bird belonged to the most beautiful of the eight species that have been observed in New Guinea and the neighbouring islands. It was the great emerald bird of paradise, one of the rarest.* It was a foot long. Its head seemed relatively small, with tiny eyes near the beak. But it had a wonderful collection of tints, with a yellow beak, brown feet and claws, hazel wings with purple tips, a pale yellow head and back of neck, an emerald throat, and a rich brown stomach and breast. Two horned and downy frenums rose above its tail, with feathers that were very light and long and amazingly fine, and these completed the display of that marvellous bird, poetically called ‘the bird of the sun’ by the natives.
I would have very much liked to take this superb bird of paradise back to Paris, and donate it to the Jardin des Plantes, which does not have a single living specimen.
‘Is it that rare then?’ asked the Canadian, in the tone of a hunter who hardly appreciates game from an aesthetic point of view.
‘Very rare, my friend, and above all very difficult to capture alive; even dead these birds are the subject of an important trade. As a result, the natives have ingeniously reconstructed them, just as pearls or diamonds are fabricated.’
‘What!’ exclaimed Conseil. ‘They make fake birds of paradise?’
‘Yes, Conseil.’
‘And does sir know how they go about it?’
‘He does. During the easterly monsoon season the birds of paradise shed their magnificent tail feathers, which the naturalists call subalary. These are gathered by the bird-fakers, and carefully stitched on to some poor parakeet which has previously been mutilated. Then they dye the stitching and varnish the bird, before sending the product of their singular industry to the museums and collectors of Europe.’
‘Well,’ said Ned, ‘shame about the bird, but at least the feathers are all right, so unless you actually want to eat the creature, I don’t see the problem.’
But if my desires were satisfied by catching this bird of paradise, the Canadian hunter’s were not. Fortunately, at about two o’clock, Ned shot a magnificent wild boar that the natives call babi hutan. The animal thus provided us with real quadruped meat, and was warmly welcomed. Land appeared very proud of his shot. The pig, struck by the electric bullet, had fallen stone-dead.
The Canadian skinned and carefully gutted it, having extracted half a dozen chops to provide a grill for the evening meal. Then the hunting started again, soon to be marked by further exploits from Ned and Conseil.
The two friends had beaten around the bushes, and thus set off a herd of kangaroos, who hopped off on their supple legs. But these animals did not flee fast enough to escape an electric capsule in full flight.
‘Ah, sir!’ cried Ned Land, beginning to be affected by hunting mania. ‘What excellent game, especially when braised; what supplies for the Nautilus! Two, three, five on the ground, and when I think that we can guzzle all this meat ourselves and those idiots on board won’t have a single scrap!’
I believe that carried away by his enthusiasm, the Canadian would have massacred the whole herd, at least if he had not spent so much time talking. But he contented himself with a dozen of these fascinating marsupials, which, as Conseil pointed out, form the first order of the aplacental mammals.
They were quite small, belonging to a species of ‘rabbit kangaroos’ which normally live in the hollows of trees,* and can move very quickly. But if their size is not great, they do provide the best meat.
We were very pleased with the results of our hunting. A happy Ned suggested coming back the following day to this enchanted isle, which he wished to clear of all its edible quadrupeds; but events were to prove otherwise.
At six in the evening, we got back to the beach. Our boat was at its usual spot on the shore. Two miles out, the Nautilus emerged from the waves like a long reef.
Without further ado Ned got down to the serious business of cooking dinner. He knew his stuff. Babi hutan chops, grilled over the coals, were soon filling the air with a delicious aroma.
But I realize that I have become exactly like the Canadian. Here I am in ecstasy about freshly grilled pork! May I be forgiven, for the same reason I excused Master Land.
In the end the dinner was very good indeed. Two wood pigeons completed our extraordinary menu. The sago paste, some breadfruit from the Artocarpus, a few mangoes, half a dozen pineapples
, and the fermented milk from selected coconuts made our happiness complete. I even believe that the lucidity of my worthy companions’ brains left something to be desired.
‘What about not going back to the Nautilus tonight?’ said Conseil.
‘What about never going back?’ Ned Land rejoined.
Just then a stone fell at our feet, interrupting the harpooner’s train of thought.
22
Captain Nemo’s Lightning
We looked in the direction of the forest without getting up, my hand suspended half-way to my mouth, although Land’s reached its destination.
‘Stones do not fall from the sky,’ said Conseil; ‘unless they are meteorites.’
A second stone, of carefully rounded shape, took a savoury wood pigeon’s leg from Conseil’s hand and lent support to his observation.
The three of us rose to our feet, guns to shoulders. We were ready for any attack.
‘Is it monkeys?’ exclaimed Ned.
‘More or less,’ said Conseil; ‘savages.’
‘To the boat!’ I said, heading for the water.
It was indeed necessary to beat a retreat, since about twenty natives armed with bows and slings appeared on the edge of a thicket blocking the horizon less than a hundred paces to the right.
Our boat was on the shore, ten fathoms away.
The savages approached, without running but making the most hostile gestures. Stones and arrows rained down.
Ned Land did not want to give up his provisions and in spite of the danger closing in, he picked up his pig with one hand, and kangaroos in the other, before fleeing at a rate of knots.
Seconds later we were on shore. Dropping the provisions and guns into the boat, pushing it out to sea, and starting the two oars going took only an instant. We had not gone any distance at all when a hundred savages, shouting and gesticulating, came waist-deep into the water. I watched to see if their arrival would bring anyone from the Nautilus on to the platform, but in vain. Lying in the distance, the enormous machine remained absolutely deserted.
