The Floating Island (22 page)

Besides, our instrumentalists had
many times written to France since their departure from Madeleine Bay. Their
families, relieved of all fears for their safety, frequently sent them letters,
and the correspondence continued as regularly as the postal service between
Paris and New York.

One morning
—
that of the 17th of
September
—
Frascolin,
installed in the library of the casino, felt a very natural desire to consult
the map of this archipelago of Paumotu to which they were bound. As soon as he
opened the atlas, as soon as his eye lighted on these regions of the Pacific,
he exclaimed:

“A thousand treble strings! How
can Ethel Simcoe get through this chaos? Never will he find a passage through
this mass of islets and islands. There are hundreds of them! A regular heap of
pebbles in the middle of a pond. He will touch, he will run aground, he will
hook his machine on to this point, he will knock it in on this. We shall end by
remaining fixed in this group, which is more numerous than our Morbihan in
Brittany.”

The judicious Frascolin was
right. Morbihan has only three hundred and sixty-five islands
—
as many as there
are days in the year
—
and
in this Paumotu Archipelago there are quite double as many. It is true that the
sea which beats on them is circumscribed by a girdle of coral reefs, the
circumference of which, according to Elisée Reclus, is not less than six
hundred and fifty leagues.

Nevertheless, in looking at the
map of this group, one would feel astonished that a ship, and more than all
such a peculiar vessel as Floating Island, should dare to venture through this
archipelago. Comprised between the seventeenth and twenty-eighth parallels of
south latitude, and between the hundred and fortieth and hundred and forty-seventh
meridians of west longitude, it is composed of hundreds of islands and islets
—
seven hundred at
the least
—
ranging
from Mata-Hiva to Pitcairn.

It is not surprising, then, that
this group has received several names, among others that of the Dangerous
Archipelago and the Evil Sea. Thanks to that geographical prodigality of which
the Pacific Ocean has the privilege, it is also called the Low Islands, the
Tuamotou Islands, which means the distant isles, the Southern Islands, the
Isles of the Night, the Mysterious Islands. As to the name of Paumotu or
Pamautou, which signifies the subject islands, a deputation from the
archipelago assembled in 1850 at Papaete, the capital of Tahiti, protested
against this designation. But although the French Government, deferring to this
protest in 1852, chose among all these names that of Tuamotu, it is more
convenient to speak of them here under their better-known name of Paumotu.

Dangerous as the navigation might
be, the Commodore did not hesitate. He was so accustomed to these seas that
every confidence was to be placed in him. He manœuvred his island as if it were
a canoe. He could spin it round within its own length. He was said to treat it
as if it were a sculling boat. Frascolin need have no fear for Floating Island;
the capes of Paumotu would not even be grazed by its hull of steel.

In the afternoon of the 19th the
look-outs at the observatory reported the first appearance of the heights of
the group twelve miles away. If a few rise some fifty metres above the level of
the sea, seventy-four of them rise but a yard or so, and would be under water
twice a day if the tides were not almost imperceptible. The others are but
atolls surrounded by breakers, coral banks of absolute aridity, mere reefs
leading on to the larger islands of the archipelago.

It was on the east that Floating
Island approached the group and was to reach Anaa Island, which Farakava has
replaced as the capital, owing to Anaa having been partially destroyed by the
terrible cyclone of 1878, in which a large number of its inhabitants perished,
and which extended its ravages to the island of Kaukura.

The first island passed was
Vahitahi, three miles away. The most minute precautions were taken in these
parts, the most dangerous of the archipelago, on account of the currents and
the extensions of the reefs towards the east. Vahitahi is but a mass of coral
flanked by three wooded islands, of which that to the north is occupied by the
principal village.

Next morning they sighted the
island of Akiti, with its reefs carpeted with prionia, with purslane, a
creeping plant of yellowish hue, and with hairy borage. It differs from the
others in that it possesses no interior lagoon. If it is visible for some
distance away, it is because its height is rather above that of the average of
the group.

The following day another island
of rather more importance, Anranu, was sighted, the lagoon of which
communicates with the sea by two channels on the north-west coast.

While the Floating Islanders were
content to wander indolently amidst the archipelago, which they had visited the
preceding year, admiring its wonders as they passed, Pinchinat, Frascolin, Yvernès
would have been glad of a few stoppages, that they might explore these islands,
due to the work of polyparies, that is to say artificial, like Floating Island.

“Only,” said the Commodore, “ours
has the power of movement.”

“A little too much so,” replied
Pinchinat, “for it stops nowhere.”

“It will stop at the islands of
Hao, Anaa, and Farakava, and you will have plenty of time to explore them.”

When asked as to the mode of
formation of these islands, Ethel Simcoe answered in the terms of the theory
most generally adopted; that is, that in this part of the Pacific the ocean bed
has gradually sunk about thirty metres. The zoophytes, the polyps, have formed
on its sunken summits a solid foundation for their coral constructions. Little
by little these constructions have risen stage by stage, owing to the work of
the infusorians, who cannot work at great depths. They have reached the
surface, they have formed this archipelago, the islands of which can be classed
as barrier reefs, fringing reefs, and atolls
—
the Indian name of those provided with interior lagoons. Then the fragments
dashed up by the waves have formed a vegetable mould; seeds have been brought
by the wind; vegetation has appeared on their coral rings; the calcareous
margin is clothed with herbs and plants, and dotted with shrubs and trees under
the influence of our intertropical climate.

“And who knows,” asked Yvernès in
a burst of prophetic enthusiasm, “if the continent swallowed up by the waters
of the Pacific will not appear again at its surface, reconstructed by these
myriads of microscopic animalcules? And then on these regions, now ploughed by
sailing ships and steamers, there will run at full speed express trains which
will connect the old with the new world
—
”

“Take the handle off
—
take the handle
off, my old Isaiah!” replied the disrespectful Pinchinat.

As the Commodore had said,
Floating Island stopped on the 23rd of September off the island of Hao, which
it was able to get rather near to, owing to the great depth of water. Its boats
took several visitors through the passage, which on the right is sheltered by a
curtain of cocoanut trees. The principal village is six miles away on the top
of a hill. The village consists of from two to three hundred inhabitants, for
the most part pearl fishers, employed as such by the merchants at Tahiti. There
abound the pandanus and the mikimiki myrtle, which were the first trees of a
soil whence now rises the sugar-cane, the pineapple, the taro, the prionia, the
tobacco, and above all the cocoanut tree, of which the immense palm groves of
the archipelago contain more than forty thousand.

One might say that this “tree of
providence” succeeds almost without culture. Its nut serves as the customary
food of the natives, being superior in nutritive substances to the fruits of
the pandanus. With it they fatten their pigs, their poultry, and also their
dogs, whose chops and steaks are much in demand. And then the cocoanut gives a
valuable oil. When scraped, reduced to pulp, and dried in the sun, it is
submitted to pressure in a very rudimentary machine. Ships take cargoes of
these “copperas” to the continent, where the factories treat them in more
profitable fashion.

It is not at Hao that an idea of
the people of Paumotu can be gained. The natives there are not numerous, but
where the quartette could observe them to advantage was in the island of Anaa,
before which Floating Island arrived in the morning of the 27th of September.

Anaa shows its wooded masses of
superb aspect from but a short distance. One of the largest islands of the
archipelago, it is eighteen miles in length by nine in breadth, measured at its
madreporic base.

We have said that in 1878 a
cyclone ravaged this island and necessitated the transport of the capital of
the archipelago to Farakava. That is true, although in this wonderful climate
it was presumable that the devastation would be repaired in a few years. In
fact, Anaa has become as flourishing as ever, and possesses fifteen hundred
inhabitants. It is, however, inferior to Farakava, its rival, for a reason
which is of importance; the communication between the sea and the lagoon being
through a narrow channel troubled with whirlpools. At Farakava, on the
contrary, the lagoon has two wide openings to the north and south. At the same
time, although the principal market for cocoanut oil has been removed to
Farakava, Anaa, which is more picturesque, always attracts the preference of
visitors.

As soon as Floating Island had
taken up its position in a favourable spot, a number of the Milliardites went ashore.
Sebastien Zorn and his comrades were among the first, the violoncellist having
consented to take part in the excursion.

At first they went to the village
of Tuahora, after studying the way in which the island had been formed
—
a formation common
to all the islands of this archipelago. Here the calcareous margin, the width
of the ring, if you like, is from four to five metres, very steep towards the
sea and sloping gently towards the lagoon, the circumference of which encloses
about a hundred miles, as at Rairoa and Farakava. On this ring are massed
thousands of cocoanut trees, the principal, if not the only wealth of the
island, the branches of which shelter the huts of the natives.

The village of Tuahora is
traversed by a sandy road of dazzling whiteness. The French resident in the
archipelago no longer lives at Anaa, since it has ceased to be the capital; but
his house is there protected by a small fortification. On the barracks of the
little garrison, confided to the care of a sergeant of marines, floats the tricolor.
The houses of Tuahora are not undeserving of praise. They are not huts, but
comfortable and salubrious dwellings, sufficiently furnished, and built for the
most part on coral foundations. Their roofs are of the leaves of the pandanus,
the wood of this valuable tree being used for the doors and windows.
Occasionally they are surrounded with kitchen gardens, which the hand of the
native has filled with vegetable soil, and their appearance is really
enchanting.

If these natives, with their
lighter colour, their less expressive physiognomy, their less amiable
character, are of a type less remarkable than those of the Marquesas, they yet
offer fine specimens of the people of equatorial Oceania. Being intelligent and
laborious workers, they may perhaps oppose more resistance to the physical
degeneracy which menaces the Pacific Islanders.

Their principal industry, as
Frascolin noticed, was the fabrication of cocoanut oil; hence the considerable
quantity of cocoanut trees in the palm gardens of the archipelago. These trees
reproduce themselves as easily as the coralligens at the surface of the atoll.
But they have one enemy, and the Parisian excursionists discovered it one day
when they were stretched on the beach of the interior lake, whose green waters
contrasted with the azure of the surrounding sea.

At first their attention, and
then their horror was provoked by a sound of creeping among the herbage.

What did they see? A crustacean
of enormous size.

Their first movement was to jump
up, their second to look at the animal.

“The ugly beast!” said Yvernès.

“It is a crab,” said Frascolin.

A crab it was, the crab called “birgo”
by the natives. Its front claws form two strong pincers or shears with which it
opens the nuts on which it chiefly feeds. These birgos live in a kind of cave
dug deeply in among the roots, the fibres of cocoanut being heaped up to form a
bed. During the night more particularly they seek about for fallen nuts, and
even catch hold of the trunk and branches to shake the fruit down. The crab
must have been seized with wolfish hunger, as Pinchinat said, to have left his
dark retreat in broad daylight.

They let the animal alone, for
the operation promised to be extremely curious. He found a large nut among the
bushes, he tore off gradually the fibres with his pincers; then when the nut
was bare, he attacked the hard skin, knocking it, hammering it at the same
place. When he had made the opening the birgo picked out the interior
substance, using his hind pincers, which are very narrow at the end.

“It is certain,” observed Yvernès,
“that nature has created this birgo for opening cocoanuts.”

“And that nature created the cocoanut
for feeding the birgo,” added Frascolin.

“Well, suppose we frustrate the
intentions of nature by preventing this crab from eating this nut, and this nut
from being eaten by this crab?” proposed Pinchinat.

“I beg you will not disturb him,”
said Yvernès. “Do not even to a birgo give a bad impression of Parisians on
their travels.”

They consented, and the crab, who
had doubtless given an angry look at his Highness, gave a grateful glance at
the first violin of the Quartette Party.