Войти в систему
Войти с помощью соц. сетей:
In two days Ayrton wanted to speak to Glenarvan.
“Do you wish for a private interview?” asked Glenarvan
“Yes, but I think if Major McNabbs and Mr. Paganel were present it would be better.”
“For whom?”
“For myself.”
Ayrton spoke quite calmly and firmly.
“We are all ready to listen to you,” said Glenarvan, when his two friends had taken their place at the saloon table.
Ayrton said: “My Lord, I propose to make a bargain.”
“What is the bargain?” asked Glenarvan.
“Allow me to be left on one of the uninhabited islands of the Pacific. I will manage as best I can, and will repent if I have time.”
Glenarvan, quite unprepared for such a proposal, looked at his two friends in silence.
“Ayrton, if I agree to your request, you will tell me all I have an interest in knowing.”
“Yes, my Lord, that is to say, all I know about Captain Grant and the Britannia.”
“The whole truth?”
“The whole.”
“But what guarantee have I?”
“Oh, you must either take my offer or leave it.”
“I will trust to you, Ayrton,” said Glenarvan, simply. “Tell us all you know, Ayrton.”
“Gentlemen,” replied Ayrton, “I am really Tom Ayrton, the quartermaster of the Britannia. I left Glasgow on Harry Grant’s ship on the 12th of March, 1861. For fourteen months I cruised with him in the Pacific in search of an advantageous spot for founding a Scotch colony. Harry Grant was the man to carry out grand projects, but serious disputes often arose between us. His temper and mine could not agree. I dared to rebel, and I tried to get the crew to join me, and to take possession of the vessel. On the 8th of April, 1862, Harry Grant left me behind on the west coast of Australia.”
“Of Australia!” said the Major, interrupting Ayrton in his narrative.
“I found myself abandoned on a nearly desert coast, but only forty miles from the penal settlement at Perth, the capital of Western Australia. As I was wandering there along the shore, I met a band of convicts who had just escaped, and I joined myself to them. I became the leader of the gang, under the name of Ben Joyce. In September, 1864, I introduced myself at the Irish farm, where I engaged myself as a servant in my real name, Ayrton. I waited there till I should get some chance of seizing a ship. This was my one idea. Two months afterward the Duncan arrived. During your visit to the farm you related Captain Grant’s history. Without the least hesitation I determined to appropriate the Duncan. But serious injuries had to be repaired. I therefore let it go to Melbourne, and joined myself to you in my true character as quartermaster. I directed your expedition toward the province of Victoria. My men committed a crime at Camden Bridge; since the Duncan, if brought to the coast, could not escape me, and with the yacht once mine, I was master of the ocean. The horses and bullocks dropped dead one by one. I dragged the wagon into the marshes, where it got half buried. Such is my history, gentlemen. My disclosures, unfortunately, cannot put you on the track of Harry Grant, and you perceive that you have made but a poor bargain.”
The quartermaster said no more, but crossed his arms in his usual fashion and waited. Glenarvan and his friends kept silence. They felt that this strange criminal had spoken the whole truth.
“You are sure then,” said the Major, “that it was on the 8th of April you were left on the west coast of Australia?”
“On that very day,” replied Ayrton.
“And do you know what projects Harry Grant had in view at the time?”
“No.”
“Say all you can, Ayrton,” said Glenarvan, “the least indication may set us in the right course.”
“I only know, my Lord,” replied the quartermaster, “that Captain Grant intended to visit New Zealand. This would agree with the date assigned by the document to the shipwreck—the 27th of June, 1862.”
“Clearly,” said Paganel.
“But,” objected Glenarvan, “there is nothing in the fragmentary words in the document that could apply to New Zealand.”
“That I cannot answer,” said the quartermaster.
“Well, Ayrton,” said Glenarvan, “you have kept your word, and I will keep mine. We have to decide now on what island of the Pacific Ocean you are to be left?”
“It matters little, my Lord,” replied Ayrton.
“Return to your cabin,” said Glenarvan, “and wait our decision.”
The quartermaster withdrew, guarded by the two sailors.
“That villain might have been a man,” said the Major.
“Yes,” returned Glenarvan; “he is a strong, clear-headed fellow.”
“But Harry Grant?”
“I must fear he is irrevocably lost. Poor children! Who can tell them where their father is?”
“I can!” replied Paganel. “Yes; I can!”
Glenarvan spring to his feet, crying out: “You, Paganel! You know where Captain Grant is?”
“Yes, in New Zealand! When I was writing the letter to Glenarvan’s dictation, the word “Zealand” was swimming in my brain. Do you remember those two syllables—“aland”? What a sudden light flashed on my mind. “Aland” was the termination of the noun, Zealand!”
“What then?” asked Glenarvan.
“My dear lord,” replied Paganel, “I am going to translate the document according to my third interpretation”.
And slowly articulating each syllable, he repeated the following sentences:
“LE 27th JUIN, 1862, le trois-mats Britannia, de Glasgow, a sombre apres une longue AGONIE dans les mers AUSTRALES sur les côtés de la Nouvelle ZELANDE—in English Zealand. Deux matelots et le Capitaine Grant ont pu y ABORDER. La CONTINUellement en PRoie a une CRUELle INDIgence, ils ont jeté ce document par—de longitude ET 37 degrees 11’ de LATItude. Venex à leur secours, ou ils sont PERDUS!” (On the 27th of June, 1865, the three-mast vessel Britannia, of Glasgow, has foundered after a long agony in the Southern Seas, on the coast of New Zealand. Two sailors and Captain Grant have succeeded in landing. Continually a prey to cruel indigence, they have thrown this document into the sea in—longitude and 37 degrees 11’ latitude. Come to their help, or they are lost.)
So the quartermaster knew nothing which could put the Duncan on the right track. The yacht therefore continued her course. They had yet to select the island for Ayrton’s banishment.
Paganel and John Mangles consulted the charts on board, and exactly on the 37th parallel found a little isle marked by the name of Maria Theresa, a sunken rock in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, 3,500 miles from the American coast, and 1,500 miles from New Zealand.
The two children of the captain gazed sadly at the phosphorescent waves. Mary was thinking of her brother’s future, and Robert of his sister’s. What would become of them without their father?
The young boy, taking her hand in his own, said, “Mary, we must never despair. Remember the lessons our father gave us. Keep your courage up. Up to this time, sister, you have been working for me, it is my turn now, and I will work for you.”
“Dear Robert!” replied the young girl.
“I must tell you something,” resumed Robert. “You mustn’t be vexed, Mary!”
“Why should I be vexed, my child? What do you mean?” said Mary, getting uneasy.
“Sister, I am going to be a sailor!”
“You are going to leave me!” cried the young girl, pressing her brother’s hand.
“Yes, sister; I want to be a sailor, like my father and Captain John. Mary, dear Mary, Captain John has not lost all hope, he says. He is going to make a grand sailor out of me some day, he has promised me he will; and then we are going to look for our father together. My life has one purpose to which it should be entirely consecrated—to search, and never cease searching for my father! Ah, Mary, how good our father was!”
“And so noble, so generous!” added Mary. “Do you know, Robert, he was already a glory to our country.”
“Yes, I know it,” said Robert.
Mary put her arm around the boy, and hugged him fondly.
“Mary, Mary!” he cried, “It doesn’t matter what our friends say, I still hope, and will always hope. A man like my father doesn’t die till he has finished his work.”
Mary Grant could not reply. A thousand feelings struggled in her breast at the news that fresh attempts were about to be made to recover Harry Grant.
Suddenly, out of the midst of the waves, a deep plaintive voice sent up a cry.
“Help! Help!” were the words which fell on their ears.
They both started up and leaned over the railing.
“Mary, you heard that? You heard that?” cried Robert.
But they saw nothing.
“Robert,” said Mary, pale with emotion, “I thought—yes, Robert.”
A second time the cry reached them, and this time the illusion was so great, that they both exclaimed simultaneously, “My father! My father!”
It was too much for Mary. Overcome with emotion, she fell fainting into Robert’s arms.
“Help!” shouted Robert. “My sister! My father! Help! Help!”
The sailors on watch ran to assist.
“My sister is dying, and my father is there!” exclaimed Robert, pointing to the waves.
They did not understand him.
“Yes!” he repeated, “My father is there! I heard my father’s voice; Mary heard it too!”
Just at this moment, Mary Grant called out, “My father! My father is there!”
And the poor girl started up, and leaning over the side of the yacht, wanted to throw herself into the sea.
“My Lord—Lady Helena!” she exclaimed, clasping her hands, “I tell you my father is there! I can declare that I heard his voice come out of the waves.”
The young girl went off again into convulsions and spasms. Robert kept on repeating, “My father! My father is there! I am sure of it, my Lord!”
The spectators of this painful scene saw that the captain’s children were laboring under a hallucination.
Glenarvan took Robert’s hand, and said,
“You say you heard your father’s voice, my dear boy?”
“Yes, my Lord; there, in the middle of the waves. He cried out, ‘Help! Help!’”
“And did you recognize his voice?”
“Yes, I recognized it immediately. Yes, yes; I can swear to it! My sister heard it, and recognized it as well. How could we both be deceived? My Lord, let us go! A boat! A boat!”
Glenarvan said to the man at the wheel:
“Hawkins, you were at the wheel, were you not?”
“Yes, your Honor,” replied Hawkins.
“And you heard nothing, and saw nothing?”
“Nothing.”
“Now Robert, see?”
“If it had been Hawkins’s father,” returned the boy, “Hawkins would not say he had heard nothing. It was my father, my lord! My father.”
He became pale and silent, and fell down insensible, like his sister. Glenarvan had him carried to his bed.
“Poor orphans,” said John Mangles. “It is a terrible trial for them!”
“Yes,” said Glenarvan; “the same hallucination in both of them, and at the same time.”
“In both of them!” muttered Paganel; “that’s strange, and inadmissible.”
He leaned over the side of the vessel, and listened attentively. But profound silence reigned around. Paganel shouted. No response came.
“It is strange,” repeated the geographer, going back to his cabin.
Next day, March 4, at 5 A. M., at dawn, the passengers, including Mary and Robert, were all assembled on the poop, examining the land they had only caught a glimpse of the night before.
The yacht was coasting along the island at the distance of about a mile. Suddenly Robert gave a loud cry, and exclaimed he could see two men running about and gesticulating, and a third was waving a flag.
“The Union Jack,” said John Mangles.
“My Lord,” said Robert, trembling with emotion, “if you don’t want me to swim to the shore, let a boat be lowered!”
No one dared to speak. What! On this little isle, crossed by the 37th parallel, there were three men, shipwrecked Englishmen! Everyone thought of the voice heard by Robert and Mary the preceding night. The children were right, perhaps. The sound of a voice might have reached them, but this voice—was it their father’s? No, alas, of course, no.
“Lower a boat,” Lord Glenarvan called out.
Another minute and the boat was ready. The two children of Captain Grant, Glenarvan, John Mangles, and Paganel, rushed into it, and six sailors, who rowed so vigorously that they were presently almost close to the shore.
“My father!” Mary exclaimed.
A man was standing on the beach, between two others. His tall, powerful form, and his physiognomy, with its expression of boldness and gentleness, bore a resemblance both to Mary and Robert. This was indeed the man the children had so often described. Their hearts had not deceived them. This was their father, Captain Grant!
Войти с помощью соц. сетей: