The Mysterious Island - Jules Verne (beach read .txt) 📗

“Mr. Smith,” said Herbert, “what astonishes me is that this explosion did not produce more effect. The detonation was not loud, and the ship is very little broken up. She seems rather to have sunk than to have blown up.”

“That astonishes you, does it, my boy?” asked the engineer.

“Yes, sir.”

“And it astonishes me too, Herbert,” replied the engineer; “but when we examine the hull of the brig, we shall find some explanation of this mystery.”

“Why, Mr. Smith,” said Pencroff, “you don’t mean to say that the Speedy has just sunk like a ship which strikes upon a rock?”

“Why not,” asked Neb, “if there are rocks in the channel?”

“Good, Neb,” said Pencroff. “You did not look at the right minute. An instant before she went down I saw the brig rise on an enormous wave, and fall back over to larboard. Now, if she had struck a rock, she’d have gone straight to the bottom like an honest ship.”

“And that’s just what she is not,” said Neb.

“Well, we’ll soon find out, Pencroff,” said the engineer.

“We will find out,” added the sailor, “but I’ll bet my head there are no rocks in the channel. But do you really think, Mr. Smith, that there is anything wonderful in this event?”

Smith did not answer.

“At all events,” said Spilett, “whether shock or explosion, you must own, Pencroff, that it came in good time.”

“Yes! yes!” replied the sailor, “but that is not the question. I ask Mr. Smith if he sees anything supernatural in this affair?”

“I give no opinion, Pencroff,” said the engineer; a reply which was not satisfactory to Pencroff, who believed in the explosion theory, and was reluctant to give it up. He refused to believe that in the channel which he had crossed so often at low tide, and whose bottom was covered with sand as fine as that of the beach, there existed an unknown reef.

At about half-past one, the colonists got into the canoe, and pulled out to the stranded brig. It was a pity that her two boats had not been saved; but one, they knew, had gone to pieces at the mouth of the Mercy, and was absolutely useless, and the other had gone down with the brig, and had never reappeared.

Just then the hull of the Speedy began to show itself above the water. The brig had turned almost upside down, for after having broken its masts under the weight of its ballast, displaced by the fall, it lay with its keel in the air. The colonists rowed all around the hull, and as the tide fell, they perceived, if not the cause of the catastrophe, at least the effect produced. In the fore part of the brig, on both sides of the hull, seven or eight feet before the beginning of the stem, the sides were fearfully shattered for at least twenty feet. There yawned two large leaks which it would have been impossible to stop. Not only had the copper sheathing and the planking disappeared, no doubt ground to powder, but there was not a trace of the timbers, the iron bolts, and the treenails which fastened them. The false-keel had been torn off with surprising violence, and the keel itself, torn from the carlines in several places, was broken its whole length.

“The deuce!” cried Pencroff, “here’s a ship which will be hard to set afloat.”

“Hard! It will be impossible,” said Ayrton.

“At all events,” said Spilett, “the explosion, if there has been an explosion, has produced the most remarkable effects. It has smashed the lower part of the hull, instead of blowing up the deck and the topsides. These great leaks seem rather to have been made by striking a reef than by the explosion of a magazine.”

“There’s not a reef in the channel,” answered the sailor. “I will admit anything but striking a reef.”

“Let us try to get into the hold,” said the engineer. “Perhaps that will help us to discover the cause of the disaster.”

This was the best course to take, and would moreover enable them to make an inventory of the treasures contained in the brig, and to get them ready for transportation to the island. Access to the hold was now easy; the tide continued to fall, and the lower deck, which, as the brig lay, was now uppermost, could easily be reached. The ballast, composed of heavy pigs of cast iron, had staved it in several places. They heard the roaring of the sea as it rushed through the fissures of the hull.

Smith and his companions, axe in hand, walked along the shattered deck. All kinds of chests encumbered it, and as they had not been long under water, perhaps their contents had not been damaged.

They set to work at once to put this cargo in safety. The tide would not return for some hours, and these hours were utilized to the utmost at the opening into the hull. Ayrton and Pencroff had seized upon tackle which served to hoist the barrels and chests. The canoe received them, and took them ashore at once. They took everything indiscriminately, and left the sorting of their prizes to the future.

In any case, the colonists, to their extreme satisfaction, had made sure that the brig possessed a varied cargo, an assortment of all kinds of articles, utensils, manufactured products, and tools, such as ships are loaded with for the coasting trade of Polynesia. They would probably find there a little of everything, which was precisely what they needed on Lincoln Island.

Nevertheless, Smith noticed, in silent astonishment, that not only the hull of the brig had suffered frightfully from whatever shock it was which caused the catastrophe, but the machinery was destroyed, especially in the fore part. Partitions and stanchions were torn down as if some enormous shell had burst inside of the brig. The colonists, by piling on one side the boxes which littered their path, could easily go from stem to stern. They were not heavy bales which would have been difficult to handle,