Chapter 13 Chapter Thirteen

It was a timely thunderstorm!Godfrey and Tartlet don't have to venture to the sky to steal the fire there like Prometheus did!Indeed, it was, as Tatley said, sent to them by a lightning bolt from a rather helpful Providence.For them, now is the time to save it! "No! We can't let it go off!" cried Godfrey. "Not less wood for the fire!" replied Tattley, with a slight cheer of satisfaction. "Yes, but who will keep the fire going?" "Me! I'll keep an eye on it night and day if necessary," retorted Tatley, waving a burning log that hadn't burned out.

And he did it until the sun came up. The dead branches they say are plentiful in the shade of the giant sequoias.Therefore, at dawn, Godfrey and the professor, after storing a large pile of dead branches, put them in the stove that was ignited by lightning.The hearth tower was at the foot of a tree, and in the narrow gap between the roots, the flames crackled with a clear and merry sound.Exhausted, Tatley blew all his breath on the fire, though it didn't work at all.In this posture, he followed the grayish smoke that disappeared gracefully among the tall leaves, and assumed those most characteristic postures.

But it is not necessary for its appreciation, nor is the necessary fire for warmth.It has been assigned a more important purpose.This involves putting an end to the poor diet of raw shellfish and saffron roots, whose nutritive qualities have never been brought out by a simple boil in boiling water or under ashes.Godfrey and Tutley spent part of the morning doing this. "We'll eat a hen or two deliciously!" cried Tutley, his jaws rattling ahead of time, "and an agouti leg, a lamb hind, a quarter A goat, a few pieces of game that run on the grassland, not counting two or three freshwater fish, how many sea fish are there?"

"Not so fast," replied Godfrey, who was exalted by the intemperate menu described, "should not risk indigestion to make up for not being full! We must arrange our Reserve, Tatley! Go get two broilers--one for each of us--and though we have no bread, I hope the kama-roots we have prepared in time will not do too poorly to replace them!" This cost the lives of two innocent poultry, which were taught to be molted, cleaned, prepared for cooking, and then roasted on a stick over a crackling fire. At this time, Godfrey was busy making Yanfu's root grass appear in the first official lunch that was to be cooked on Fina Island.To make them edible, it is only by following the methods of some Indians whom Americans should know and have seen more than once on the prairies of the American West.

Godfrey proceeds like this: A certain number of flat stones gathered on the beach are placed in glowing coals, so that they are soaked in a kind of intense heat.Perhaps Tuttlee would have thought it a pity to use such a good fire to "cook stones"; but since it did not in any way prevent him from cooking his broiler, he made no further complaints about it. While the stones were thus heated, Godfrey selected a spot, and uprooted the grass about a square yard above it; deep.Having done this, he placed a lit stove of dry wood at the bottom of the hole, to conduct a great deal of heat to the compacted earth at the bottom of the hole.

When the firewood is all burnt out, the ashes are cleared out, and the root grass of Karma, which has been scrubbed beforehand, is put into the hole, covered with a thin layer of fine grass, and hot stones are placed on it, and when Make the base of a new stove and light a fire on its face. In short, it is an oven prepared in such a way that, after a relatively short period of time—half an hour at most—the operation is considered complete. Indeed, beneath the removed two layers of stones and fine grass, it will be seen that the roots of Kama have been altered by this intense roasting.By grinding them, one obtains a flour perfectly suitable for a kind of bread; but, left in their natural state, it is like eating very nutritious potatoes.

This time, the roots were brought up just like that, and we asked you to think what kind of lunch these two friends had when they ate those broilers down to the bones and those wonderful kale Ma, they don't need to save and eat.The field is not far away, it grows a lot there, and you can harvest hundreds of them just by bending down. After this meal, Godfrey busied himself preparing a quantity of these powders, which could be stored almost indefinitely, and which could be made into bread for the daily needs. That day passed in such busyness, and the stove was always being filled with firewood with the utmost care.More fuel was put in especially for the night--this did not prevent Tutley from getting up several times to bring the charcoal closer and stir the fire more vigorously; He immediately got up again, and started this tossing and turning like this until dawn.

The night passed peacefully, and the crackling of the hearth, added to the crowing of the rooster, awoke Godfrey and his sleeping companion at last. At first Godfrey was startled to feel a draft of air enter the Will tree from a height.He could not help thinking that the hollow inside the sequoia went all the way to the fork of the lowest branches, and there was an opening there, which had better be plugged if he wanted to shut himself in and add a roof. "Strange, though!" thought Godfrey, "how did I not feel this draft all those nights before? Could it be a lightning strike? . . . "

In order to answer these questions, he thought of going outside to examine the trunk of a giant sequoia. After looking it up, Godfrey immediately understood what happened during the thunderstorm. Ray's marks could be seen on the tree, and the passing current had stripped the tree of a large chunk of bark from the fork to the root.Godfrey and his companions could have been struck by lightning had the spark entered the inside of the sequoia instead of following its outer contours, and there is no doubt that they had taken a real risk. "People advise," Godfrey said, "never hide under a tree during a thunderstorm! It's very useful for those who can find other ways to take shelter! But for us, it's the way to avoid this danger." method, because we live inside a tree! Well, just wait and see!"

Then he looked at the spot on the giant sequoia where the long electrical trace had begun. "Obviously," he thought, "the place where the lightning struck was there, and the lightning must have split the tree violently at the top of the trunk. But since the air came in through that hole, is it because the tree is in the whole Hollow in height, only invisible due to bark? Should know the layout!" So Godfrey set out to find a resinous twig that he could use as a torch. A bunch of pine provided him with the torches he needed; resin oozed from the boughs and, when lit, glowed brilliantly.

Godfrey then returned to the hole in which he lived, and the darkness was at once replaced by light, and it was easy to see what the internal arrangement of the Will tree was. A sort of irregularly cut vault became the ceiling fifteen feet or so above the ground, and Godfrey, raising his torch, saw clearly the opening of a narrow pipe, from which he could not see in the darkness.Apparently the tree is hollow throughout its length; but it is possible that some parts of the sapwood of the tree have not been damaged.In this case, with the help of those projections, it was possible, if not easy, to climb to the forks. Godfrey was well aware of the future and his determination not to procrastinate. His purpose was twofold: first, to tightly seal the opening through which the wind and rain might pour in--that would make the Will Tree nearly uninhabitable; Or the attack of the natives, whether the high branches of this giant sequoia can provide them with a suitable shelter. Either way, give it a try.If he encountered some insurmountable obstacle in the narrow pipe, then Godfrey would be able to get down again. Having inserted his torch into a gap between two thick roots that were level with the ground, he began to climb the first protrusion inside the bark.He was light, strong, nimble, and, like all American youths, accustomed to gymnastics.It's just a game to him.Soon he was in the bumpy pipe, the narrower section, and by braced on his back and knees he was able to climb like a chimneyman.His only concern is the lack of width, preventing him from climbing up. He kept climbing, however, and, when he came across a ledge, he leaned on it to catch his breath. Three minutes after leaving the ground, although Godfrey had climbed only 60 feet, he could not have climbed any further, so he only had 20 feet to climb. In fact, he already felt a stronger wind blowing against his face, and he sucked it greedily through his nose, for the air wasn't exactly clean inside the sequoias. After a minute's rest, shaking off the fine dust that had been ripped from the tree's walls, Godfrey continued climbing in the slightly narrowing pipe. However, at this moment, his attention was attracted by a certain sound, which he thought was too suspicious. It could be said that there was a scratching sound in the tree, and almost immediately there was a chirping sound. Godfrey stopped. "What is this?" he wondered, "what animal is hiding inside this giant sequoia? Could it be a snake? ... No! ... We have never seen a snake on the island! ... It is more likely What kind of bird wants to escape!" Godfrey was not mistaken, and, as he continued his ascent, a croaking sound, followed by a violent flapping of wings, showed him that nothing but a tree-nesting bird was involved. No doubt he disturbed its rest. A few "ho! ho!" with all the force in his lungs made the intruder flee in no time. It was, indeed, a heavy-bodied jackdaw, which fled at once from the mouth of the hole and disappeared hastily up the high tops of the Will-trees. Presently Godfrey's head protruded through the same opening, and soon sat comfortably on the branch of the tree, eighty feet from the ground, from these low branches. There, as I said before, the huge trunks of giant sequoias support a whole forest.Secondary branches and foliage were mixed at will, and it seemed that nothing could pass through these trees, so tightly interlaced by twigs. Godfrey, however, not without difficulty, slid from branch to branch in order to ascend to the highest tier of this miraculous plant. Many birds sang and flew away as he approached, and they would hide in the adjacent group of trees a full top lower than the Weir tree. Godfrey continued to climb as much as he could, until the uppermost branches began to bend under his weight. A wide horizontal line surrounds Fina Island, which is like a three-dimensional map spread out under his feet. His eyes wandered greedily over this part of the sea, which was always deserted.Once again it must be concluded that the island lies outside the commercial shipping lanes of the Pacific Ocean. Godfrey stifled a deep sigh, and then lowered his eyes to the narrow realm in which, no doubt, fate had condemned him to live for a long time, perhaps forever! But what a surprise he was when he saw again, this time to the north, a wisp of smoke exactly like the one he thought he had seen in the south.He watched, with full attention. A slender stream of steam, tipped with a deeper blue, rose straight in the stillness and purity of the air. "No! I'm not mistaken!" exclaimed Godfrey, "there's a stream of smoke, and, therefore, it's the smoke of a fire! . ..." Godfrey now determined the positions of the points of interest with extreme precision. The smoke was rising on the northeast side of the island, among the high rocks along the coast, which could not be mistaken, less than five miles from Will Tree.Going straight northeast, across the meadows, and then, along the coast, you must reach the rocks garnished with this wisp of smoke. Godfrey scrambled down the scaffolding of branches to the fork in a beating heart.He paused there to pluck up a mess of moss and leaves; then, when that was done, he slipped in through the hole, plugging it up as well as he could, and gliding himself quickly to the ground again. All he had to say to Tatley was that he must not be disturbed by his absence, and Godfrey made a dash northeastward to reach the coast. It was a two-hour run, first through green meadows among long hedges of sparse bushes or prickly dyewood, and then along the edge of the sea-front.Finally, we reached the last row of rocks. However, the plume of smoke that Godfrey had seen from the top of the tree was nowhere to be seen when he came down again to try to find it.However, because he pinpointed the exact location of the point where the smoke escaped from, he was able to walk there without error.There, Godfrey set out on a quest.He surveyed the whole coastal area carefully.he shouted... No one answered his cries.No one was on this beach.Not a single rock showed to him the trace of a fire that had been fueled by the seaweed and dried algae that had been carried up by the waves, or of a fire that was young, or of a hearth that was now extinct. "But I can't be mistaken!" repeated Godfrey to himself, "I see a wisp of smoke! . . . But! . . . " It was unacceptable that Godfrey could not be fooled by some fancy, and he then thought that there was some source of hot water, a kind of geyser, and he could not discover the location from which the steam might have erupted. . Indeed, there is nothing to prove that there are not a few such cenotes on this island.In this case, the appearance of a plume can be explained by this simple geological miracle. Godfrey left the coastal area and returned to the Weir Tree, looking a little around him where he hadn't been.A few ruminants made an appearance, among them reindeer, but they were running so fast it was impossible to overtake them. About four o'clock, Godfrey came back, and before he had a hundred paces to go, he heard the piercing "cring-cring" of the pocket violin, and at once Professor Tuttley appeared beside him. In front of him, with the attitude of a virgin who worships the goddess of the kitchen god, he watched the sacred fire entrusted to him according to religious rituals.