Page:Twenty Thousand Verne Frith 1876.pdf/206



CHAPTER XXI.

SOME DAYS “ASHORE.”

I was much impressed upon landing. Ned trod the ground as if he had come to take possession. We had been two months “passengers in the Nautilus,” to use Captain Nemo’s expression—that is to say, prisoners of the commander.

We were soon at gun-shot distance from the shore. The soil was almost entirely madreporic, but some dry beds of torrents, scattered with granite débris, betokened the primal formation of the island. The horizon was completely hidden by the woods. Enormous trees, nearly 200 feet high, intertwined by bind-weed of the tropics, formed actual hammocks, which were rocked by the gentle breeze. There were mimosas, figs, teaks, hibiscas, palms, in mingled profusion; and beneath their verdant shade the orchids, both vegetable and ferny, were growing. But without noticing the beautiful flora, the Canadian abandoned the agreeable for the useful. He perceived a cocoa-nut tree. He knocked down a