Willis the Pilot : A Sequel to the Swiss Family Robinson

  CHAPTER XI.

  ON THE WATCH--FECUNDITY OF PLANTS AND ANIMALS--LATEST NEWS FROM THEMOON--A DEATH-KNELL EVERY SECOND--THE INCONVENIENCES OF BEING TOO NEARTHE SUN--NARCOTICS--WILLIS CONTRALTO--HUNTING TURNED UPSIDEDOWN--ELECTRIC CLOUDS--PARTIALITIES OF LIGHTNING--BELLS ANDBELL-RINGERS--CONDUCTING RODS--THE RETURN--THE TWO SISTERS--TOBYBECOMES A DRAGOMAN.

  As is usual in tropical climates, a blazing hot day was succeeded byan intensely dark night. The fire that the hunters had made on shorecast a lurid glare on the prominent objects round about. The flames,as they fitfully lit up the landscape into that dim distinctnesstermed by artists the _chiar oscuro_, made the bushes and trunks oftrees appear like monsters issuing stealthily from the forest thatlined the background. There seemed to be some attraction, however,elsewhere for the real monsters, not a single wild beast having as yetappeared on the scene.

  The two young men were eagerly straining their eyes from the stern ofthe pinnace, whilst the dogs kept diligently wagging their tails inexpectation of a signal for the onset. The position of Willis could beascertained now and then by an eye of fire, which opened and shut ashe inhaled or exhaled the fumes of his Maryland. The ripple beatgently on the sea-line of the boat, which oscillated with theregularity and softness of a cradle.

  "It is always so," said Jack, impatiently; "if we don't want wildbeasts, there are shoals of them to be seen; but if we do want them,then they are all off to their dens."

  "Perhaps, there are none now," suggested Willis.

  "Say rather," observed Fritz, "that there ought to be thousands; foron the one hand they multiply rapidly, and on the other there is noone to destroy them. Spaniards once left a few cattle on St. Domingo,and they increased at such a rate, that the island very soon would nothave been able to support them, had they not been kept down byconstant slaughter."

  "Besides," remarked Jack, "the bovine race reproduce themselves moreslowly than other animals; a single sow, according to a calculationmade by Vauban, if allowed to live eleven years, would produce sixmillions of pigs."

  "What a cargo of legs of pork and sides of bacon!" exclaimed Willis,laughing.

  "Then fish; there are more than a hundred and sixty thousand eggs in asingle carp. A sturgeon contains a million four hundred andsixty-seven thousand eight hundred and fifty, whilst in some codfishthe number exceeds nine millions."

  "Oh, you need not favor us with the 'Mariner's March,' Willis; what mybrother says is perfectly correct."

  "What, then, do these shoals of creatures live upon?"

  "The big ones upon the little ones; fish devour each other."

  "A beautiful harmony of Nature," remarked Fritz drily.

  "Then plants," continued Jack, "are still more prolific than animals.Some trees can produce as many of their kind as they have branches, oreven leaves. An elm tree, twelve years old, yields sometimes fivehundred thousand pods; and, by the way, Willis, to encourage you incarrying on the war against the mosquitoes, a single stalk of tobaccoproduces four thousand seeds."

  "The leaves, however, are of more use to me than the seeds," repliedWillis.

  "This admirable proportion between the productiveness of the twokingdoms demonstrates the far-seeing wisdom of Providence. If thepower of multiplication in vegetables had been less considerable, thefields, gardens, and prairies would have been deserts, with only aplant here and there to hide the nakedness of the land. Had Godpermitted animals to multiply in excess of plants, the entirevegetation would soon have been devoured, and then the animalsthemselves would of necessity have ceased to exist."

  "How is it, then," inquired Willis, "with this continualmultiplication always going on, the inhabitants of land and sea do notget over-crowded?"

  "Why, as regards man, for example, if thirteen or fourteen humanbeings are born within a given period, death removes ten or elevenothers; but though this leaves a regular increase, still thepopulation of the globe always continues about the same."

  "It may be so, Master Jack, but when I was a little boy at school, Igenerally came in for a whipping, if I made out two and two to beanything else than four."

  "And served you right too, Willis; but if the human family did notcontinually increase, if the number of deaths exceeded continuallythat of the births, at the end of a few centuries the world would beunpeopled."

  "Very good; but if, on the other hand, there is a continual increase,how can the population continue the same?"

  "Because the increase supposes a normal state; that is to say, thebirths are only estimated as compared with deaths from disease or oldage. But then there are shipwrecks, inundations, plagues, and war,which sometimes exterminate entire communities at one fell swoop. Thenwhole nations die out and give place to the redundant populations ofothers; phenomena now observed in the cases of the aborigines ofAustralia and America."

  "Very true."

  "No signs of furs yet," cried Fritz, who was every now and thenlevelling his rifle at the phantoms on shore.

  "We need not dread," continued Jack, "ever being hustled or jostled onthe earth; life will fail us before space. There are now eight hundredmillions of human beings in existence, and, according to the mostmoderate computation, room enough for twice that number. As it is, themost fertile sections of the earth are not the most populous; thereare four hundred millions in Asia, sixty millions in Africa, forty inAmerica, two hundred and thirty in Europe, and only seventy millionsin the islands and continent of Oceanica!"

  "To which," remarked Fritz, "you may add the eleven inhabitants of NewSwitzerland."

  "Assuming, then, this calculation to be nearly accurate, thoughauthorities vary materially in their computations of the earth'sinhabitants, and regarding it in connexion with the average durationof human life, a thousand millions of mortals must perish inthirty-three years; to descend to detail, thirty millions every year,three thousand four hundred every hour, sixty every minute, or ONEEVERY SECOND."

  "Aye," remarked Willis, "we are here to-day and gone to-morrow."

  "Suppose, then, that the population of the earth were twice as great,cultivation would be extended, territories that are now lying wastewould be teeming with life and covered with fertile fields, but thesame beautiful equilibrium would be maintained."

  "And the inhabitants of the planets," said Fritz, "what are theyabout?"

  "What planets do you mean?" inquired Willis.

  "Well, all in general; the moon, for example, in particular."

  "The moon," replied Jack, "has, in the first place, no atmosphere.This we know, because the rays of the stars passing behind her arenot, in the slightest degree, refracted; and this proves that neithermen, nor animals, nor vegetables of any kind, are to be found in thatplanet, for they could not exist without air."

  "That should settle the question," remarked Willis.

  "Yes," remarked Fritz; "but some theorists, nevertheless, insist thatthere may be living creatures in the moon, for all that--of course,differently constituted from the inhabitants of our earth, andsusceptible of existing without air. There is, however, no evidence ofany kind to support such a theory; it is a mere fancy, the dream of animaginative brain. Upon the same grounds, it may be argued, that theinterior of the earth is inhabited, and that elves and gnomes arepossible beings. Besides, the telescope has been brought to so high adegree of perfection, that objects the size of a house can now bedetected in the moon."

  "It seems, I am afraid," remarked Jack, who, like his brother, wasgetting annoyed by the phantasmagoria on shore, "that we were aboutas well supplied with wild beasts here as they are with men in theplanets."

  "In speaking of the moon, however," continued Fritz, "I do not implyall the planets; for, certain as we are that the moon has noatmosphere, so we are equally certain that some of the planets possessthat attribute. Still there are other circumstances that render thenotion of their being inhabited by beings like ourselves exceedinglyimprobable. Mercury, for example, is so embarrassed by the solar rays,that lead must always be in a state of fusion, and water
, if notreduced to a state of vapor, will be hot enough to boil the fish thatare in it. Uranus, at the other extremity of the system, receives fourhundred times less heat and light than we do, consequently neitherwater nor any thing else can exist there in a liquid state; what isfluid on our earth must be frozen up into a solid mass. Good, Ideclare my brother has fallen asleep!"

  "It is very--interesting--however," said Willis, making ineffectualefforts to smother a yawn.

  "The same difficulty with comets; there must have been some veryurgent necessity for human beings in order to have peopled them. Whenthey pass the perihelion--"

  "The what?" inquired Willis.

  "The point where they approach nearest the sun--when they pass theperihelion, I was going to say, the heat they endure must be terrific;when on the other hand, at their extreme distance from that body, thecold must be intense. The comet of 1680 did not approach within fivethousand _myriametres_ of the sun."

  "Friends coming within that distance of each other should at leastshake hands," said Willis.

  "Still, even at that distance, the heat, according to Newton, must belike red-hot iron, and if constituted like our earth, when heated tothat degree, must take fifty thousand years to cool."

  "Fifty thousand years!" said Willis, yawning from ear to ear.

  "The central position between these extremes, which would eithercongeal our earth into a mass of ice or burn it up into a heap ofcinders, is therefore the most congenial to such beings as ourselves.Whence I conclude--"

  Here the crimson flashes of Willis's pipe, which had been graduallydiminishing in brilliance suddenly ceased; _contralto_ notes issuedfrom the profundities of his breast, and it became evident to theorator that all his audience were sound asleep.

  "Whence I conclude," said Fritz, addressing himself, "that my orationsmust be somewhat soporiferous."

  Being thus left alone to keep a look-out on shore, his thoughtsgradually receded within his own breast, where all was rose-coloredand smiling, for at his age rust has not had time to corrupt, normoths to eat away. And it was not long before he himself, like his twocompanions, was fast locked in the arms of sleep.

  How long this state of things lasted the chronicle saith not; but thethree sleepers were eventually awakened by a simultaneous howl of thedogs. They were instantly on their feet, with their rifles levelled.

  It was too late; day had broken, and there was light enough toconvince them that nothing was to be seen. The sheep's quarters had,however, entirely disappeared, and they had the satisfaction ofknowing that they had politely given the denizens of the forest afeast gratis.

  "Ah, they shall pay us for it yet," said Jack.

  "This is a case of the hunters being caught instead of the game,"remarked Fritz.

  "The poor sheep! If Ernest had been here, he would have erected amonument to its memory."

  "I doubt that; epitaphs are generally made rather to please the livingthan to compliment the defunct. But, Willis, we must deprive you ofyour office of huntsman in chief--I shall go into the forest andrevenge this insult."

  "I have no objection to abdicate the office of huntsman, but mustretain that of admiral, in which capacity I announce to you that therewill be a storm presently, and that we shall just have time to makeRockhouse before it overtakes us."

  "That is rather a reason for our remaining where we are."

  "We have come for skins, and skins we must have."

  "Besides, we are two to one, and in all constitutional governments themajority rules."

  "Have you both made up your minds?" inquired Willis.

  "Yes, we are quite decided."

  "In that case," said Willis, "let us hoist the anchor and be offhome."

  "Home! but we are determined to have the skins first."

  "No, you are not," said Willis; "I know you better than you knowyourselves. You are both brave fellows, but I know you would not, forall the skins in the world, have your good mother suppose that youwere buffeted about by the waves in a storm."

  "True; up with the anchor, Willis," said Fritz.

  "Be it so," said Jack, shaking his fist menacingly at the silentforest, "but we shall lose nothing by waiting."

  The sailor had not erred in his calculations, for they had scarcelyunfurled the sail before they heard the distant rumbling of the storm.As soon as the first flash of lightning shot across the sky, Jack puthis forefinger of one hand on the wrist of the other, and begancounting one--two--three.

  "Do you feel feverish?" inquired Willis.

  "No, not personally," replied Jack; "I am feeling the pulse of thestorm--twenty-four--twenty-five--twenty-six--it is a mile off."

  "Aye! how do you make that out?"

  "Very easily; you recollect Ernest telling us that light travelled sorapidly, that the time it occupied in passing from one point toanother of the earth's surface was scarcely perceptible to oursenses?"

  "Yes, but I thought he was spinning a yarn at the time."

  "You were wrong, Willis; he likewise told us that sound travels at therate of four hundred yards in a second."

  "Well, but--"

  "Have patience, Willis! When the lightning flashes, the electric sparkis discharged, is it not?"

  "Well, I was never high enough aloft to see."

  "But others have been; Newton and Franklin have seen it. Now, if thesound reaches our ears a second after the flash, it has travelled fourhundred yards. If we hear it twelve or thirteen seconds after, it hastravelled twelve or thirteen times four hundred yards, or about half amile, and so on."

  "But what has that to do with your pulse?"

  "In the first place, I am in perfect health, am I not?"

  "I hope so, Master Jack."

  "Then when our systems are in good order, the pulse, keeping fractionsout of view, beats once in every second; and consequently, though wedo not always carry a watch, we always have our arteries about us, andmay therefore always reckon time."

  "Now I understand."

  "Ah! then we are to escape this time without the 'Mariner's March.'"

  "It appears, Master Jack, that you have turned philosopher as well asyour brothers. Can you tell me what causes lightning?"

  "Yes, I can, Willis. You must know, in the first place, that all thelayers of the atmosphere are, more or less, charged with electricity."

  "Ask him how," said Fritz drily.

  "Ah, you hope to puzzle me," replied Jack, "but thanks to Mr. Wolston,I am too well up in physics to be easily driven off my perch, andtherefore may safely take my turn in philosophising."

  "Well, we are listening."

  "The air, by means of the vapor it contains, absorbs electricity fromterrestrial bodies, and so becomes a sort of reservoir of thisinvisible fluid. All chemical combinations evolve electricity, the aircollects it and stores it up in the clouds. There, worshipful brother,your question is answered."

  "Good, go on."

  "Well, Willis, you must know, in the second place, the clouds are verygood fellows, and share with each other the good things they possess.When one cloud meets another, the one over-supplied with this fluidand the other in its normal state, there is an immediate interchangeof courtesies, the negative electricity of the one is exchanged forthe positive of the other."

  "There does not appear, however, to be much generosity in thistransaction, since the surcharged cloud does not cede its superfluousabundance without a consideration."

  "It is very rarely that philanthropy amongst us goes much further,"remarked Fritz.

  "No, everybody is not like Willis," rejoined Jack, "who acts like aprince, and gives legs of mutton gratis to hyenas and tigers. Thedischarges of electricity from one cloud to another are the flashes oflightning, and it is to be observed that the thunder is nothing morethan the noise made by the fluid rushing through the air."

  "What, then, is the thunderbolt?"

  "There is no such thing as what is popularly understood by the termthunderbolt. The lightning itself, however, often does mischief. Thishappens
when the discharge, instead of being between two clouds in theair, takes place between a cloud and the ground--a cloud surchargedwith electricity understood. Then all intervening objects are struckby the fluid."

  "There, however, you are wrong," said Fritz. "All objects are notstruck; on the contrary, the fluid avoids some things and searches outothers, even moving in a zig-zag direction to manifest these caprices;it often discharges itself on or into hard substances, and passes bythose which are soft or feeble."

  "I might say this arose from a sentiment of generosity," added Jack,"but I have other reasons to assign."

  "So much the better," said Fritz, "as I should scarcely be satisfiedwith the first."

  "Well," continued Jack, "lightning has its likings and dislikings."

  "Like men and women," suggested Willis.

  "It has a partiality for metal."

  "An affection that is not returned, however," observed Fritz.

  "If the fluid enters a room, for example, it runs along the bellwires, inspects the works of the clock, and sometimes has the audacityto pounce upon the money in your purse, even though a policeman shouldhappen to be in the kitchen at the time."

  "Perhaps," remarked Willis, "it is Socialist or Red Republican in itsnotions."

  "It does not, however, patronise war," replied Jack; "I once heard ofit having melted a sword and left the scabbard intact."

  "That, to say the least of it, is improbable," remarked Fritz. "Thehilt, or even the point, might have been fused; but even supposing theelectric fluid to have been capable of such flagrant preference, thescabbard could not have held molten metal without being itselfconsumed."

  "Aye," remarked Willis, "there are plenty of non-sensical stories ofthat kind in circulation, because nobody takes the trouble to testtheir truth. Still, according to your own account, a man or woman runsno danger from the lightning."

  "I beg your pardon there, Willis; the electric fluid does not go outof its way to attack a human being, but if one should-happen to be inits way, it does not take time to request that individual to standaside, it simply passes through him, and leaves him or her, as thecase may be, a coagulated mass of inanimate tissues."

  "What a variety of ways there are of getting out of the world!" saidWillis lugubriously.

  "Again," continued Jack, "anything that happens to be in the vicinityof the clouds when this interchange of courtesies is going on, is aptto draw the storm upon itself, hence the continual war that is carriedon between the lightning and the steeples."

  "Something like an individual coming within range of a cloud ofmosquitoes," suggested Willis.

  "A learned German--one of us," said the scapegrace, laughing,"calculated, in 1783, that in the space of thirty-three years therehad been, to his own knowledge, three hundred and eighty-six spiresstruck, and a hundred and twenty bell-ringers killed by lightning,without reckoning a much larger number wounded."

  "And yet," remarked Willis, "I never heard of an insurance againstaccidents by lightning."

  "There are plenty of them, however, in Roman Catholic countries," saidFritz. "Every village has one, and the charge is almost nominal."

  "How, then, do these companies make it pay?"

  "They find it answer somehow, and they never collapse."

  "Then everybody ought to insure."

  "Yes, but there are some obstinate people who do not see the good ofit."

  "If my life had not already been forfeited, I should insure it. Buthow is it done?"

  "Well, you have only to go into a church, fall down on your kneesbefore the priest, he will make you invulnerable by a sign of thecross; then, come storms that pulverize the body or crush the mind,you are perfectly safe."

  "Ah! that is the way you insure your lives, is it, trusting to thepriests rather than to Providence? For my own part, I should prefer apolicy of insurance--that is to say, if my life were of any value."

  "Next to steeples," continued Jack, "come tall trees, such as poplarsand pines. Should you ever be caught by a storm in the open country,Willis, never take shelter under a tree; face the storm bravely, andsubmit to be deluged by the rain. Dread even bushes, if they areisolated. An entire forest is less dangerous than a single reed whenit stands alone."

  "But you forget, brother, that when a man stands alone he is quite asprominent an object as the trunk of a tree four or five feet high,particularly in an open plain."

  "Quite so. It is therefore advisable, when severe storms are closeupon us, to lie down flat on the ground."

  "Suppose," remarked Fritz, smiling, "a brigade of soldiers on themarch suddenly to collapse in this way, as if before a discharge ofgrape."

  "And why not? If it is done in the case of grape-shot, why may it notbe done when the artillery is a thousand times more effective?"

  "Well, I suspect it would rather astonish the commanding officer,that is all."

  "Then, Willis," continued Jack, "you must not run during a storm,because the air you put in motion by so doing may draw the electricityinto the current."

  "Do the conductors not prevent the lightning from doing harm?"

  "Yes, but you cannot carry one of them on your hat. These rods areonly useful in protecting buildings, and then to nothing more thandouble the area of their length; it is for this last reason that roofsof public buildings have them projecting in all directions."

  "They are a sort of trap set for the lightning, are they not?"

  "Yes, and into which it is pretty sure to fall. Franklin, of whom Ispoke just now, was the first to suggest that bars of steel would drawlightning out of a cloud surcharged with electricity."

  "What becomes of it when it is caught?"

  "Keeping in view its partiality for bell-pulls, a wire is attached tothe rod down which the unconscious fluid glides."

  "Like a powder-monkey from the main-top."

  "Exactly; till it enters a well, and there it is left at the bottom incompany with Truth."

  A practical storm had begun to mix itself up with the theory asdeveloped by Jack, but not before they had very nearly reached theirdestination, where they were waited for with the greatest anxiety.

  No sooner had they landed than Sophia ran to meet Willis, who wasadvancing with Jack.

  "Ah, sweetheart," she said, "Susan has been so uneasy about you."

  "You are a good girl, Miss Soph--Susan."

  "Oh, if you only knew how frightened we have been!"

  "What, do you admit fear to be one of your accomplishments, MissSophia?" inquired Jack.

  "Certainly, when others are concerned, Master Jack. But, by the way,do you recollect the chimpanzee?"

  "Yes, what about the rascal?"

  "Oh, I must not tell you, mamma would call me a chatterbox; you willknow by-and-by."

  In the meanwhile Mary, on her side, was congratulating Toby, who keptscampering between herself and Fritz, at one moment receiving thecaresses of the one and at the next of the other, with everydemonstration of joy. This had become an established mode ofcommunication between the young people when Fritz arrived from alengthened ramble; the intelligent, brute, in point of fact, hadassumed the office of dragoman.

  "Ah, ah, Becker, glad to see you again," said Willis. "Your sons arefountains of knowledge, whilst I am--"

  "A very worthy fellow, Willis, and I know it," replied Becker, shakinghim heartily by the hand.