LX The Reflections of the Colonists—Renewal of Work—The 1st of January, 1869—A Smoke From the Volcano—Symptoms of An Eruption Ayrton and Smith At the Corral—Exploration of the Crypt Dakkar—What Captain Nemo Had Said to the Engineer. LXI Smith’s Recital—Hastening the Work—A Last Visit to the Corral—The Combat Between the Fire and the Water—The Aspect of the Island—They Decide to Launch the Ship—The Night of the 8th of March. LXII An Isolated Rock in the Pacific—The Last Refuge of the Colonists—The Prospect of Death—Unexpected Succor—How and Why It Came—The Last Good Action—An Island on Terra Firma—The Tomb of Captain Nemo. THE MYSTERIOUS ISLAND. By JULES VERNE. PART I SHIPWRECKED IN THE AIR CHAPTER I. THE HURRICANE OF 1865—CRIES IN THE AIR—A BALLOON CAUGHT BY A WATERSPOUT—ONLY THE SEA IN SIGHT—FIVE PASSENGERS—WHAT TOOK PLACE IN THE BASKET—LAND AHEAD!—THE END. “Are we going up again?” “No. On the contrary; we are going down!” “Worse than that, Mr. Smith, we are falling!” “For God’s sake throw over all the ballast!” “The last sack is empty!” “And the balloon rises again?” “No!” “I hear the splashing waves!” “The sea is under us!” “It is not five hundred feet off!” Then a strong, clear voice shouted:— “Overboard with all we have, and God help us!” Such were the words which rang through the air above the vast wilderness of the Pacific, towards 4 o’clock in the afternoon of the 23d of March, 1865:— Doubtless, no one has forgotten that terrible northeast gale which vented its fury during the equinox of that year. It was a hurricane lasting without intermission from the 18th to the 26th of March. Covering a space of 1,800 miles, drawn obliquely to the equator, between the 35° of north latitude and 40° south, it occasioned immense destruction both in America and Europe and Asia. Cities in ruins, forests uprooted, shores devastated by the mountains of water hurled upon them, hundreds of shipwrecks, large tracts of territory desolated by the waterspouts which destroyed everything in their path, thousands of persons crushed to the earth or engulfed in the sea; such were the witnesses to its fury left behind by this terrible hurricane. It surpassed in disaster those storms which ravaged Havana and Guadeloupe in 1810 and 1825. While these catastrophes were taking place upon the land and the sea, a scene not less thrilling was enacting in the disordered heavens. A balloon, caught in the whirl of a column of air, borne like a ball on the summit of a waterspout, spinning around as in some aerial whirlpool, rushed through space with a velocity of ninety miles an hour. Below the balloon, dimly visible through the dense vapor, mingled with spray, which spread over the ocean, swung a basket containing five persons.