Douglas Frazar

“ If I feared to trust my submarine boat, I could make a catamaran on a large scale, almost exactly on the same plan as the car I was now seated upon, which could not capsize or sink; a life raft, or, better yet, I could construct a boat wholly of iron, with water-tight compartments; but who was to steer whilst I slept,—my goat?—and who was to take care of my island during my absence and keep it safe from all inquisitive eyes? ”

“ I had long, long ago given over any idea of being attacked by savages, and my nerves had become again, as in my younger days, hard as steel; yet I often used to think of how I could lie concealed in this boat, beyond discovery from any source, should I ever be attacked, or how, rising to the surface amongst a fleet of canoes, I could spread dismay by my appearance alone from the bottom of the ocean, among any body of savages, however numerically strong or valiant.
No one will ever know the gardens of the ocean that I often sailed over, more beautiful far than anything upon the earth. ”

“ I never wholly got over the sensation of being at the bottom of the ocean; it always seemed as if I had entered another world, where all was changed, and in which every living thing was compelled to keep an eternal silence.
Many parts of the bottom, especially that near the pearl-oyster reef and the approaches to Stillwater Cove, became, shortly after using my glass windows, as familiar to me as similar places would have been on land; there being fully as many distinguishing marks, peculiar in themselves, as upon the rocks and protuberances of the island itself. ”

“ I named the beautiful stream Rapid River, and drew out my birch-bark chart and sketched and located it. I felt that this would be my home; and could anything be more beautiful. As I sat upon a large stone near the river this is what I saw round about me. To the westward, I knew that just around the bend, but concealed from my eyes as I sat, was the long, beautiful beach of Stillwater Cove, with its inland glades that I had just passed over; to the northward and eastward, a gradually ascending grade of land, covered with lovely groves of trees in full foliage ”

“ By this time the moon had risen, and by its light we saw the shadowy shapes of monstrous cliffs and miniature headlands covered with tangled forests of a species of pine, mirrored in the little bay in which we [11] hung at anchor; but not one sound of life, no lights on shore, no cry of bird or beast, but the depressing, awful solitude of an unknown land; no noise except the graceful rise of the "Good Luck" to the miniature waves of the bay as she lay at anchor with twenty fathoms of chain out. ”

“ Upon my exploration depended all my security for the future. Should I find the island inhabited, a long farewell to all content. If uninhabited, I could, I felt certain, take care of myself till it pleased God to remove me from the solitude to which I was tied. I envied the old Robinson Crusoe, to whom I likened myself, and thought, why could not I have been as fortunate as he; if the "Good Luck" must be destroyed why could she not have come ashore on this island where I could have saved something from her, and, more precious yet, some of the lives of my shipmates? ”

“ That is to say, instead of throwing a lead with a marked line to the bottom of the ocean, I threw a buoy to the surface. Nature seemed to be capsized, and everything upside down, as used to appear in using the inverted telescope in my first attempts to take the altitude of the sun with a sextant. If I had not lived so solitary a life I could have laughed at many of the things that befel me in this submarine boat. ”

“ I had started upon one of my trips to the pearl oyster reef in the submarine boat, to obtain some of those bivalves, to convey to the shore for examination. The day was beautiful, and the sky clear and almost without a cloud, with a light air moving from the northwest. I was standing out toward the reef from Perseverance Bay with the manhole open, and all goat power on, when all at once, as I was gazing about the horizon, I saw to leeward of me and off the eastern end of the island, a strange commotion in the regular waves of the ocean. ”

“ But what could I—an old sailor, but not an old man, who had banged around the world—ask for more than I could obtain on my island except companionship? Nothing.
Having secured the boat, and put the goats and spare traps into the canoe, I at the close of the day paddled myself back to the Hermitage, determined on the morrow to make an excursion out of Stillwater Cove into the ocean, and see what I could discover. ”

“ Upon the rocks I found small portions of the boat, broken to atoms not larger than my hand, but no friend, no comrade, no living soul to cheer my despair. I saw in a very few minutes that if they had not been swept over the reef at the very first sea, as I had been, they had inevitably been washed back again into the ocean, dashed amongst the rocks, and sucked in by the undertow, never more to be seen by man. ”

“ I could in time build some kind of a boat, and reach the Society Islands to the northward of me, or the South American coast to the eastward, or even New Zealand to the westward. I was not without hope, and, although far from cheerful in my dreadful solitude, I could not but think that I should be comparatively happy and contented if I felt sure of my island being uninhabited; but I dreaded, in my exploration about to be undertaken, to come suddenly upon some savage village, that would destroy all my desire to still live, and almost put me in a mood to take my own life with my [84] own hands. ”

“ My nerves were unstrung now all the time, and the slightest noise caused my heart to palpitate with fear, as it had never before done in the severest gale at sea or in face of the greatest practical dangers. I was fast becoming a coward, and felt that I should continue to be one till my problem was solved; then, if successful in ascertaining the extent of the island and its freedom from savages, I felt that I could resign myself with fortitude to the designs that Providence had in my behalf. ”

“ You must have lived in an age when God had not granted to mortals the permission to discover and utilize many of the arts and sciences of my day; you did not live when steam was the motive power, when the lightnings of the heavens were made obedient to man to convey his demands and requests, when the paddle-wheels of floating steamers beat the waters of all the oceans of the earth. ”

“ I may as well say here, that I often afterwards enjoyed myself in the air, floating over my own island, and that I never met with the slightest accident, of any kind; but I could not utilize my discovery enough to dare to attempt an ocean voyage with it. It was a pretty plaything, and would make my fortune if amongst civilized people; but I have no objection to both my submarine boat and balloon becoming public property, as far as I am concerned, I having enough actual wealth, in solid metal, to enable me to enjoy everything in this life worth enjoying. ”

“ The sun had not been down an hour before the whole heavens changed their appearance, and dark clouds from the southward commenced to overcast the stars. The wind began to moan amongst the trees, and the sea to give forth that solemn sound or breathing that often forbodes a storm. In less than three hours it was blowing heavily from the southeast, the direction the vessel had taken to clear the island, and exactly opposite to the light northwest wind that had in the first part of the evening wafted her off the island's coast. ”

“ The darkness was the darkness of the ocean in a storm, and torrents of rain and spray flew over us. I was unable to see an atom of even the sail ahead of me in the boat. [35] And thus we plunged on, into the inky darkness, followed by the angry roar of the disappointed waves that we left astern. ”

“ Inside of my brain I was continually answered, "You will escape! you will escape! and with this treasure, added to your stock of pearls and ownership of the island, with its mineral wealth of coal, iron, saltpetre, and sulphur, you will be the richest man in the world. With these industries [296] once developed, your submarine boats multiplied, and pearl oysters procured by thousands, and your island peopled with contented and happy working people, not even the Rothschilds or Barings will be able to compete with you." ”

“ It was a strange formation, rising abruptly from the bottom of the sea, five or six fathoms, like the walls of a citadel. I saw plainly that a vessel could at one moment, by a cast of the lead, get nine fathoms, and in the very next find herself hard and fast upon the reef, if she drew over eighteen feet of water. Holding myself in equilibrio at about half distance from the surface and the bottom, I moved cautiously along the face of this wall to the eastward, looking for my prize. ”

“ Having satisfied my curiosity and seen that the grapnel to the watch-buoy held all right, I drew in some new air, rose to the surface, and made for Mirror Bay, not over four miles distant. I ran up to the river's mouth near the hut and came to an anchor, and made all snug about the boat, and then, tethering out the goats on the shore, I struck out manfully for home across the island, for I saw plainly that I should have to make Mirror Bay my headquarters for some time to come, and that I must get home and bring together all the powder I possessed, and the steam yacht. ”

“ Exploration of the island. Third day. Stalking goats. Mirror lake and river and bay. Sad moonlight thoughts.
I awoke to still another pleasant day, having scarcely moved in my seaweed bed during the night. My first duty was to make my way to the running brook and have a good wash, and then to look about me for breakfast. I bethought myself all at once of the turtle that I had seen on the beach the previous day, and I made my way back to the place where I observed the marks of its ingress into the sea, and, looking about carefully, I soon found its eggs nicely covered up in the sand. ”

“ Although I did not know how far south I was, still I knew within a degree or so by the reckoning that I had on board of the "Good Luck." I felt assured that I was somewhere between the fortieth and forty-fifth parallel of latitude, and that the climate must therefore be somewhat like that of countries situated between the same parallels of north latitude, like that of England, France, or the New England States of America. Knowing this I had a sort of general knowledge of what seeds would probably prosper, and also what kind of a winter I might expect. ”

“ I felt that nature could not be sustained much longer, and that in a few hours I must succumb. My comrades pottered round at my feet, their efforts to bail becoming more and more feeble. I was in this reckless, half-dazed state when, without one moment's warning, I was thrown with a crash into the forward end of the boat, and in another instant surrounded by pieces of the boat and floating débris. ”

“ Two long weeks had we been lying near the coast standing out in the morning, and in towards the evening, waiting for our prey; when, on this fatal morning, after heading seaward for four hours, we discovered the enemy on the horizon to the northwest. The "Rover" was a strong, well-built brig of three hundred tons, and was manned by one hundred and twenty human devils, drawn from all nations, but mostly Englishmen, with a few South Americans and natives. We carried eight eighteen-pounders, and one long thirty-two pivot gun amidships. Our vessel was fast and a splendid sea-boat. ”

“ Having arrived at the car, I attached them by yokes of two to a central rope attached to the car, and, cracking my whip, set off on a tour of pleasure down Stillwater Cove. Did ever man drive such a car and team before? and yet it was by just such artifices as these that I kept myself from going mad and gave myself excitement and pleasure. No one knows, till they have tried, how easily the birds of the earth are taught. I had often seen a Chinaman make the cormorant fish for him all day long, and make his body of ducks that he was watching as obedient as so many dogs. ”