The Floating Island (9 page)

The tram road skirted the coast,
with the sea on one side, the fields on the other. The cars ran along in this
way for about four miles. Then they stopped before a battery of twelve guns of
heavy calibre, the entrance to which bore the inscription “Prow Battery.”

“Cannons which load but do not
discharge by the breech, like so many of those in Old Europe,” said Calistus
Munbar.

Hereabouts the coast was deeply
indented. A sort of cape ran out, very long and narrow, like the prow of a
ship, or the ram of a man-of-war, on which the waves divided, sprinkling it
with their white foam. The effect of the current probably, for the sea in the
offing was reduced to long undulations, which were getting smaller and smaller
with the setting of the sun.

From this point another line of
rails went off towards the centre, while the other continued to follow the
curve of the coast; and Calistus Munbar made his friends change cars,
announcing that they would return direct towards the city.

The excursion had lasted long
enough.

Calistus Munbar drew out his
watch, a masterpiece of Sivan, of Geneva
—
a
talking watch, a phonographic watch
—
of
which he pressed the button, and which distinctly spoke, “Thirteen minutes past
four.”

“You will not forget the ascent
of the observatory?” Frascolin reminded him.

“Forget it, my dear, and I may
say my old, friends! I would sooner forget my own name, which enjoys a certain
celebrity, I believe. In another four miles we shall be in front of the
magnificent edifice, built at the end of First Avenue, that which divides the
two sections of our town.”

The tram started. Beyond were the
fields, on which fell the afternoon rain, as the American called it; here again
was the enclosed park with its fences, its lawns, its beds and its shrubberies.

Half-past four then chimed. Two
hands indicated the hour on a gigantic dial, like that of the Houses of
Parliament at Westminster, on the face of a quadrangular tower.

At the foot of this tower were
the buildings of the observatory, devoted to different duties, some of which,
with round metal roofs and glass windows, allowed the astronomers to follow the
circuit of the stars. There were arranged round a central court, from the midst
of which rose the tower for a hundred and fifty feet. From its upper gallery
the view around would extend over a radius of sixteen miles, if the horizon
were not bounded by any high ground or mountains.

Calistus Munbar, preceding his
guests, entered a door which was opened to him by a porter in superb livery.

At the end of the hall the lift
cage was waiting, which was worked by electricity. The quartette took their
places in it with their guide. The cage ascended slowly and quietly. Forty-five
seconds after they stopped at the level of the upper platform of the tower.
From this platform rose the staff of a gigantic flag, of which the bunting
floated out in the northerly breeze.

Of what nationality was this flag?
None of our Parisians could recognize it. It was like the American ensign, with
its lateral stripes of white and red, but the upper canton, instead of the
sixty-seven stars which twinkled in the Confederation at this epoch, bore only
one, a star or rather a sun of gold on a blue ground, which seemed to rival in
brilliancy the star of day.

“Our flag, gentlemen,” said
Calistus Munbar, taking off his hat as a mark of respect.

Sebastien Zorn and his comrades
could not do otherwise than follow his example. Then they advanced to the
parapet and looked over.

What a shriek
—
at first of
surprise and then of anger
—
escaped them!

The country lay extended beneath
them. The country was a perfect oval, surrounded by a horizon of sea, and as
far as the eye could carry no land was in sight. And yet the night before,
after leaving the village of Freschal in the American’s company, Zorn, Frascolin,
Yvernès, Pinchinat had travelled for two miles on the land. They had then
crossed the river in the ferry boat and again reached land. In fact, if they
had left the Californian shore for any sea voyage they would certainly have
noticed it.

Frascolin turned towards Calistus
Munbar.

“We are on an island?” he asked.

“As you see!”  said the Yankee,
with the most amiable of smiles.

“And what is this island?”

“Floating Island.”

“And this town?”

“Milliard City.”

At
this period the world was still waiting for the audacious statistical
geographer who could give the exact number of the islands scattered over the
face of the globe. The number, we may make bold to say, would amount to many
thousands. Among all these islands was there not one that answered the
requirements of the founders of Floating Island, and the wants of its future
inhabitants? No, not one. Hence this peculiarly American notion of making an
island which would be the latest and greatest thing in modern construction.

Floating Island was an island
worked by screws. Milliard City was its capital. Why this name? Evidently
because the capital was the town of the millionaires, a Gouldian,
Vanderbiltian, Rothschildian City.

An artificial island; there was
nothing extraordinary in the idea. With a sufficient mass of materials
submerged in a river, a lake, a sea, it was not beyond the power of men to make
it. But that was not sufficient. Having regard to its destination, to the
requirements it had to satisfy, it was necessary that this island could be
moved from place to place, and consequently that it should float. There was the
difficulty, which was not too great for ironworkers and engineers to overcome.

Already, at the end of the
nineteenth century, with their instinct for the “big,” their admiration for the
“enormous,” the Americans had conceived the project of forming a large raft
some miles out at sea, and their mooring it with anchors. If this was not a
city, it was at least a station in the Atlantic with restaurants, hotels,
clubs, theatres, &c., where tourists could find all the conveniences of the
watering places then most in vogue. This project was realized and completed.
And then, instead of a stationary raft, they made a movable island.

Six years before the opening of
this story an American company, under the title of
Floating
Island
Company, Limited
, had been formed with a capital of five hundred million
dollars, divided into five hundred shares, for the construction of an
artificial island, affording the nabobs of the United States the various
advantages of which the stationary regions of the globe are deprived. The
shares were quickly taken up, for immense fortunes were then plentiful in
America, gained either by manipulating railways, or banking operations, or oil
transactions, or speculations in pickled pork.

Four years were occupied in the
construction of this island, of which we may conveniently give the chief
dimensions, the internal arrangements, the means of locomotion which enabled it
to cruise amongst the most beautiful regions of the immense Pacific Ocean.

There are floating villages in
China on the River Yang-tse-Kiang, in Brazil on the Amazon, in Europe on the
Danube. But these are only ephemeral constructions, a few small houses built on
the top of long rafts of wood. When it reaches its destination the raft is
broken up, the houses taken off
—
the
village has lived and died.

But it was quite another affair
with regard to this island; it was to be launched on the sea, it was to last as
long as any of the works issued from the hands of man.

And besides, who knows if the
earth will not some day be too small for its inhabitants, whose numbers will
almost reach six milliards in 2072
—
as
the statisticians following Ravenstein affirm with astonishing precision. And
will it not be necessary to build on the sea when the continents are
overcrowded?

Floating Island was an island in
steel, and the strength of its hull had been calculated for the weight it had to
bear. It was composed of 270,000 caissons, each of them eighteen yards high, by
ten long and ten wide. Their horizontal surface represented a square of ten
yards on the side, that is to say, of a hundred square yards. When the caissons
were all bolted and riveted together, they gave the island an area of about
twenty-seven million square yards. In the oval form which the constructors had
given it, it measured about four and a half miles long and three broad, and its
circuit in round numbers was about eleven miles.

Floating Island drew thirty feet
of water, and had a freeboard of twenty feet. In volume it was about 430,000,000
cubic yards, and its displacement, being three-fifths of its volume, amounted
to 258,000,000 cubic yards.

The whole of the caissons below
the water line had been covered with a preparation up to then undiscoverable
—
which had made a
millionaire of its inventor
—
which
prevented barnacles and other growths from attaching themselves to the parts in
contact with the sea.

The subsoil of the new island was
made safe from distortion and breakage by cross girders, riveting and bolting.

Special workshops had had to be
erected for the construction of this huge example of naval construction. These
were built by the Floating Island Company, who had acquired Madeleine Bay and
its coast, at the extremity of the long peninsula of Old California, which is
just on the Tropic of Cancer. It was in this bay that the work was executed
under the direction of the engineers of the Floating Island Company, the chief
being the celebrated William Tersen, who died a few months after the completion
of the work, as Brunei did after the unfortunate launch of the
Great
Eastern
.
And Floating Island was but a
Great Eastern
modernized
—
only several
thousand times larger.

It will be understood that there
could be no question of launching the island as a ship is launched. It was
built in sections, in compartments alongside one another on the waters of
Madeleine Bay. This portion of the American coast became the station of the
moving island, to which it could return when repairs were necessary.

The carcase of the island, its
hull, if you will, was formed of two hundred and seventy thousand compartments,
and filled in with vegetable soil, all except the site of the city, where the
hull was of extraordinary strength. The depth of mould was ample for a
vegetation restricted to lawns, flower beds, shrubberies, clumps of trees and
fields of vegetables. It had seemed impracticable to require this artificial
soil to produce cereals and feed for cattle, which could be regularly imported.
But the necessary arrangements had been made, so as not to be dependent on
importation for milk and poultry.

The three quarters of the soil of
Floating Island devoted to vegetation amounted to about thirteen square miles,
in which the park lawns afforded permanent verdure, and the carefully tilled
fields abounded in vegetables and fruits, and the artificial prairies served as
grazing ground for the flocks and herds. Electro-culture was largely employed,
that is to say, the influence of continuous currents, the result being an
extraordinary acceleration of growth and the production of vegetables of
remarkable dimensions, such as radishes eighteen inches long and carrots
weighing seven pounds apiece. The flower gardens, vegetable gardens, and
orchards could hold their own with the best in Virginia or Louisiana. In this
there was nothing astonishing; expense was no object in this island so justly
called the” Pearl of the Pacific.”

Its capital, Milliard City,
occupied about a fifth of the seventeen square miles reserved for it, and was
about six miles in circumference. Our readers who are willing to accompany
Sebastien Zorn and his comrades on their excursion will soon know it well
enough in every part. They will find it unlike the American towns which have the
happiness and misfortune to be modern
—
happiness
on account of the facilities for communication, misfortune on account of the
artistic side, which is absolutely wanting. Milliard City, as we know, is oval
in form, and divided into two sections divided by a central artery, First
Avenue, which is about two miles long. The observatory is at one end, and the
town hall at the other. Here are centralized all the public departments, the
water supply and highways, the plantations and pleasure grounds, the municipal
police, custom-house, markets, cemeteries, hospitals, schools, and science and
art.

And now what was the population
contained within this circuit of eleven miles?

The earth, it appears, has only
twelve towns
—
of
which four are in China
—
which
have more than a million inhabitants. Well, Floating Island had but ten
thousand, all of them natives of the United States. It was never intended that
international discussions should arise among the citizens, who might repose in
tranquility on this most modern of constructions.

It was enough, or rather more
than enough, that they could not be mustered under the same banner with regard
to religion. But it would have been difficult to reserve the exclusive right of
residence on the island to the Yankees of the North, who were the port watch of
Floating Island, or the Americans of the South, who formed its starboard watch.
The interests of the Floating Island Company would not have admitted of this.
When the frame of the hull was finished, when the part reserved for the town
was ready for building on, when the plan of the streets and avenues had been
adopted, the buildings began. to rise
—
superb
hotels, less ornate mansions, houses destined for shops, public edifices,
churches and temples, but none of those monstrosities of twenty-seven floors,
those “sky-scrapers” one sees at Chicago. The materials used were light and
strong. The inoxydisable metal that prevailed was aluminium, seven times as
light as iron, the metal of the future, as it was called by
Sainte-Claire-Deville, and which is suitable for all the requirements of solid
construction. This was used in conjunction with artificial stones, cubes of
cement which can be worked with so much ease. Use was also made of glass bricks
—
hollow, blown, and
moulded like bottles
—
set
with mortar, transparent bricks with which if desired the ideal glass house
could be realized. But it was really metal framework which was most employed,
as in the different kinds of naval architecture. And what was Floating Island
but an immense ship?