Page:Works of Jules Verne - Parke - Vol 5.djvu/121

Rh "And I can visit the celebrated islands where the Boussole and the Astrolabe struck?"

"If you like, professor."

"When shall we be there?"

"We are there now."

Followed by Captain Nemo, I went up on to the platform, and greedily scanned the horizon.

To the N.E. two volcanic islands emerged, of unequal size, surrounded by a coral reef that measured forty miles in circumference.

We were close to Vanikoro, really the one to which Dumont d'Urville gave the name of Isle de la Récherché, and exactly facing the little harbor of Vanon, situated in 16° 4′ south latitude, and 164° 32′ east longitude. The earth seemed covered with verdure from the shore to the summits in the interior, that were crowned by Mount Kapogo, 476 feet high. The Nautilus, having passed the outer belt of rocks by a narrow strait, found itself among breakers where the sea was from thirty to forty fathoms deep. Under the verdant shade of some mangroves I perceived some savages, who appeared greatly surprised at our approach. In the long black body, moving between wind and water, did they not see some formidable cetacean that they regarded with suspicion?

Just then Captain Nemo asked me what I knew about the wreck of La Perouse.

"Only what everyone knows, captain," I replied.

"And could you tell me what everyone knows about it?" he inquired ironically.

"Easily."

I related to him all that the last works of Dumont d'Urville had made known—works from which the following is a brief account:

La Perouse, and his second, Captain de Langle, were sent by Louis XVI, in 1785, on a voyage of circumnavigation. They embarked in the corvettes the Boussole and the Astrolabe, neither of which were again heard of. In 1791 the French government, justly uneasy as to the fate of these two sloops, manned two large merchantmen, the Récherché and the Esperance, which left Brest the 28th of September, under the command of Bruni d'Entrecasteaux.