All Chapters of The Mysterious Island: Chapter 31 - Chapter 40

The weather changed during the first week of March. There had been a full moon at the commencement of the month, and the heat was excessive. The atmosphere was felt to be full of electricity, and a period of some length of tempestuous weather was to be feared.Indeed, on the 2nd, peals of thunder were heard, the wind blew from the east, and hail rattled against the facade of Granite House like volleys of grape-shot. The door and windows were immediately closed, or everything in the rooms would have been drenched. On seeing these hailstones, some of which were the size of a pigeon’s egg, Pencroft’s first thought was that his cornfield was in serious danger.He directly rushed to his field, where little green heads were already appearing, and by means of a great cloth, he managed to protect his crop.This bad weather lasted a week, during which time the thunder rolled without cessation in the depths of the sky.The colonists, not having any pressing work out of doors, profited by the

Winter arrived with the month of June, which is the December of the northern zones, and the great business was the making of warm and solid clothing.The musmons in the corral had been stripped of their wool, and this precious textile material was now to be transformed into stuff.Of course Cyrus Harding, having at his disposal neither carders, combers, polishers, stretchers, twisters, mule-jenny, nor self-acting machine to spin the wool, nor loom to weave it, was obliged to proceed in a simpler way, so as to do without spinning and weaving. And indeed he proposed to make use of the property which the filaments of wool possess when subjected to a powerful pressure of mixing together, and of manufacturing by this simple process the material called felt. This felt could then be obtained by a simple operation which, if it diminished the flexibility of the stuff, increased its power of retaining heat in proportion. Now the wool furnished by the musmons was composed of very short hairs, a

“A castaway!” exclaimed Pencroft; “left on this Tabor Island not two hundred miles from us! Ah, Captain Harding, you won’t now oppose my going.”“No, Pencroft,” replied Cyrus Harding; “and you shall set out as soon as possible.”“To-morrow?”“To-morrow!”The engineer still held in his hand the paper which he had taken from the bottle. He contemplated it for some instants, then resumed,“From this document, my friends, from the way in which it is worded, we may conclude this: first, that the castaway on Tabor Island is a man possessing a considerable knowledge of navigation, since he gives the latitude and longitude of the island exactly as we ourselves found it, and to a second of approximation; secondly, that he is either English or American, as the document is written in the English language.”“That is perfectly logical,” answered Spilett; “and the presence of this castaway explains the arrival of the case on the shores of our island. There must have been a wreck, since there i

The next day, the 20th of October, at seven o’clock in the morning, after a voyage of four days, the “Bonadventure” gently glided up to the beach at the mouth of the Mercy.Cyrus Harding and Neb, who had become very uneasy at the bad weather and the prolonged absence of their companions, had climbed at daybreak to the plateau of Prospect Heights, and they had at last caught sight of the vessel which had been so long in returning.“God be praised! there they are!” exclaimed Cyrus Harding.As to Neb in his joy, he began to dance, to twirl round, clapping his hands and shouting, “Oh! my master!” A more touching pantomime than the finest discourse.The engineer’s first idea, on counting the people on the deck of the “Bonadventure,” was that Pencroft had not found the castaway of Tabor Island, or at any rate that the unfortunate man had refused to leave his island and change one prison for another.Indeed Pencroft, Gideon Spilett, and Herbert were alone on the deck of the “Bonadventure

These last words justified the colonists’ presentiment. There had been some mournful past, perhaps expiated in the sight of men, but from which his conscience had not yet absolved him. At any rate the guilty man felt remorse, he repented, and his new friends would have cordially pressed the hand which they sought; but he did not feel himself worthy to extend it to honest men! However, after the scene with the jaguar, he did not return to the forest, and from that day did not go beyond the enclosure of Granite House.What was the mystery of his life? Would the stranger one day speak of it? Time alone could show. At any rate, it was agreed that his secret should never be asked from him, and that they would live with him as if they suspected nothing.For some days their life continued as before. Cyrus Harding and Gideon Spilett worked together, sometimes chemists, sometimes experimentalists. The reporter never left the engineer except to hunt with Herbert, for it would not have been pru