What a night I have passed! What strange visions I have seen! With what impatience3 I waited for morning!
I was conducted to a grotto4 about a hundred paces from the edge of the lake where the tug5 stopped. The grotto, twelve feet by ten, was lighted by an incandescent6 lamp, and fitted with an entrance door that was closed upon me.
I am not surprised that electricity is employed in lighting7 the interior of the cavern, as it is also used in the submarine boat. But where is it generated? Where does it come from? Is there a manufactory installed somewhere or other in this vast crypt, with machinery8, dynamos and accumulators?
My cell is neatly9 furnished with a table on which provisions are spread, a bunk10 with bedding, a basket chair, a wash-hand-stand with toilet set, and a closet containing linen11 and various suits of clothes. In a drawer of the table I find paper, ink and pens.
My dinner consists of fresh fish, preserved meat, bread of excellent quality, ale and whisky; but I am so excited that I scarcely touch it. Yet I feel that I ought to fortify13 myself and recover my calmness of mind. I must and will solve the mystery surrounding the handful of men who burrow14 in the bowels15 of this island.
So it is under the carapace16 of Back Cup that Count d’Artigas has established himself! This cavity, the existence of which is not even suspected, is his home when he is not sailing in the Ebba along the coasts of the new world or the old. This is the unknown retreat he has discovered, to which access is obtained by a submarine passage twelve or fifteen feet below the surface of the ocean.
Why has he severed17 himself from the world? What has been his past? If, as I suspect, this name of d’Artigas and this title of Count are assumed, what motive18 has he for hiding his identity? Has he been banished19, is he an outcast of society that he should have selected this place above all others? Am I not in the power of an evildoer anxious to ensure impunity20 for his crimes and to defy the law by seeking refuge in this undiscoverable burrow? I have the right of supposing anything in the case of this suspicious foreigner, and I exercise it.
Then the question to which I have never been able to suggest a satisfactory answer once more surges into my mind. Why was Thomas Roch abducted21 from Healthful House in the manner already fully22 described? Does the Count d’Artigas hope to force from him the secret of his fulgurator with a view to utilizing23 it for the defence of Back Cup in case his retreat should by chance be discovered? Hardly. It would be easy enough to starve the gang out of Back Cup, by preventing the tug from supplying them with provisions. On the other hand, the schooner24 could never break through the investing lines, and if she did her description would be known in every port. In this event, of what possible use would Thomas Roch’s invention be to the Count d’Artigas Decidedly, I cannot understand it!
About seven o’clock in the morning I jump out of bed. If I am a prisoner in the cavern I am at least not imprisoned25 in my grotto cell. The door yields when I turn the handle and push against it, and I walk out.
Thirty yards in front of me is a rocky plane, forming a sort of quay26 that extends to right and left. Several sailors of the Ebba are engaged in landing bales and stores from the interior of the tug, which lays alongside a little stone jetty.
A dim light to which my eyes soon grow accustomed envelops27 the cavern and comes from a hole in the centre of the roof, through which the blue sky can be seen.
“It is from that hole that the smoke which can be seen for such a distance issues,” I say to myself, and this discovery suggests a whole series of reflections.
Back Cup, then, is not a volcano, as was supposed—as I supposed myself. The flames that were seen a few years ago, and the columns of smoke that still rise were and are produced artificially. The detonations28 and rumblings that so alarmed the Bermudan fishers were not caused by the internal workings of nature. These various phenomena29 were fictitious30. They manifested themselves at the mere31 will of the owner of the island, who wanted to scare away the inhabitants who resided on the coast. He succeeded, this Count d’Artigas, and remains32 the sole and undisputed monarch33 of the mountain. By exploding gunpowder34, and burning seaweed swept up in inexhaustible quantities by the ocean, he has been able to simulate a volcano upon the point of eruption35 and effectually scare would-be settlers away!
The light becomes stronger as the sun rises higher, the daylight streams through the fictitious crater36, and I shall soon be able to estimate the cavern’s dimensions. This is how I calculate:
Exteriorly37 the island of Back Cup, which is as nearly as possible circular, measures two hundred and fifty yards in circumference39, and presents an interior superficies of about six acres. The sides of the mountain at its base vary in thickness from thirty to a hundred yards.
It therefore follows that this excavation40 practically occupies the whole of that part of Back Cup island which appears above water. As to the length of the submarine tunnel by which communication is obtained with the outside, and through which the tug passed, I estimate that it is fifty yards in length.
The size of the cavern can be judged from these approximate figures. But vast as it is, I remember that there are caverns41 of larger dimensions both in the old and new worlds. For instance in Carniole, Northumberland, Derbyshire, Piedmont, the Balearics, Hungary and California are larger grottoes than Back Cup, and those at Han-sur-Lesse in Belgium, and the Mammoth42 Caves in Kentucky, are also more extensive. The latter contain no fewer than two hundred and twenty-six domes43, seven rivers, eight cataracts45, thirty two wells of unknown depth, and an immense lake which extends over six or seven leagues, the limit of which has never been reached by explorers.
I know these Kentucky grottoes, having visited them, as many thousands of tourists have done. The principal one will serve as a comparison to Back Cup. The roof of the former, like that of the latter, is supported by pillars of various lengths, which give it the appearance of a Gothic cathedral, with naves46 and aisles47, though it lacks the architectural regularity49 of a religious edifice50. The only difference is that whereas the roof of the Kentucky grotto is over four hundred feet high, that of Back Cup is not above two hundred and twenty at that part of it where the round hole through which issue the smoke and flames is situated51.
Another peculiarity53, and a very important one, that requires to be pointed54 out, is that whereas the majority of the grottoes referred to are easily accessible, and were therefore bound to be discovered some time or other, the same remark does not apply to Back Cup. Although it is marked on the map as an island forming part of the Bermuda group, how could any one imagine that it is hollow, that its rocky sides are only the walls of an enormous cavern? In order to make such a discovery it would be necessary to get inside, and to get inside a submarine apparatus55 similar to that of the Count d’Artigas would be necessary.
In my opinion this strange yachtsman’s discovery of the tunnel by which he has been able to found this disquieting56 colony of Back Cup must have been due to pure chance.
Now I turn my attention to the lake and observe that it is a very small one, measuring not more than four hundred yards in circumference. It is, properly speaking, a lagoon57, the rocky sides of which are perpendicular58. It is large enough for the tug to work about in it, and holds enough water too, for it must be one hundred and twenty-five feet deep.
It goes without saying that this crypt, given its position and structure, belongs to the category of those which are due to the encroachments of the sea. It is at once of Neptunian and Plutonian origin, like the grottoes of Crozon and Morgate in the bay of Douarnenez in France, of Bonifacio on the Corsican coast, Thorgatten in Norway, the height of which is estimated at over three hundred feet, the catavaults of Greece, the grottoes of Gibraltar in Spain, and Tourana in Cochin China, whose carapace indicates that they are all the product of this dual59 geological labor60.
The islet of Back Cup is in great part formed of calcareous rocks, which slope upwards61 gently from the lagoon towards the sides and are separated from each other by narrow beaches of fine sand. Thick layers of seaweed that have been swept through the tunnel by the tide and thrown up around the lake have been piled into heaps, some of which are dry and some still wet, but all of which exhale62 the strong odor of the briny63 ocean. This, however, is not the only combustible64 employed by the inhabitants of Back Cup, for I see an enormous store of coal that must have been brought by the schooner and the tug. But it is the incineration of masses of dried seaweed that causes the smoke vomited65
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CHAPTER VIII. BACK CUP.
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CHAPTER X. KER KARRAJE.
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