The Castaways of the Flag

"With
the restoration of Fritz Zermatt and his wife Jenny, his brother Frank and the
other Castaways of the Flag to their anxious and sorely tried relatives in New
Switzerland, the story of "The Swiss Family Robinson" is brought to
its proper end. Thereafter, the interest of their domestic life is merged in
that of the growth of a young colony. Romance is merged in history and the
romancer's work is finished. Jules Verne has here set the coping stone on the
structure begun by Rudolph Wyss, and in "The Swiss Family Robinson,"
"Their Island Home" and "The Castaways of the Flag" we
have, not a story and two sequels, but a complete trilogy which judges who
survey it must pronounce very good.

A word may be
permitted about this English version. Jules Verne is a master of pure
narrative. His style is singularly limpid and his language is so simple that
people with a very limited knowledge of French can read his stories in the
original and miss very little of their substance. But to be able to read a book
in one language and to translate it into another are very different things. The
very simplicity of Jules Verne's French presents difficulties to one who would
translate it into English. What the French call "idiotismes" abound
in all Verne's writing, and I know few French authors to whose books it is so
difficult to impart a really English air in English dress. Whatever the
imperfections of these translations may be they cannot, however, mar very
greatly the pleasure the stories themselves give to every reader.

Cranstoun Metcalfe.

PREFACE

THIS story is
a sequel to "Their Island Home," which takes up the adventures of the
Swiss Family Robinson at the place where the author of the original narrative
dropped them.

"The
Swiss Family Robinson" seems to have affected Jules Verne's literary bent
as no other book ever did. It gave him that liking for the lonely island life
as the basis of a yarn which is conspicuous in much of his work. In a preface
to the story of which this is really a part he tells how firmly New Switzerland
established itself in the fabric of his thoughts, till it became for him a real
island inhabited by real people. At last he was compelled to write about it,
and "Their Island Home" and "The Castaways of the Flag" are
the result.

The youth of
Europe—many generations of it—owes a big debt to the old romancer who worked
for so many years in his turret room at Amiens to entertain it. From that room,
with its many bookshelves, came volume after volume of adventure, mostly with a
big admixture of the scientific. M. Verne was not one of those who pile
hairbreadth escapes one upon another till they become incredible. There are
plenty of things happening in his books, but they are the sort of things that would
happen, given the circumstances, and he explains why and how they chanced in
the most convincing manner possible. In these days of submarines and aeroplanes
it is interesting to read again the wonderful Frenchman's forecast of them in
such books as "Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea" and "The
Clipper of the Clouds." "Round the World in Eighty Days"—the
task would be an easy one now, but at the time when he wrote it required great
ingenuity to make it seem possible; and the end of that book is one of the most
ingenious things in fiction, though it has for justification a simple
geographical fact. Phineas Fogg was a day late, as he believed. He had
apparently lost his wager. But, having gone round the world in the right
direction, he had gained a day, and just won. If he had gone the other way he
would have been two days late, for a day would have been lost to him—cut right
out of the calendar!

The
cryptogram which forms the main feature of "The Giant Raft"—the
deflection of the compass in "Dick Sands," which causes the people on
the ship of which Dick had to take command to reach the coast of Africa, while
believing that they had landed on the American continent—the device of the
millionaire in "Godfrey Morgan," which provided an island with beasts
of prey not native to it—the gigantic projectile which carried those intrepid
voyagers to the moon and round it—the reaching of the interior of the earth by
a road down the crater of one volcano and the return to the surface up the
crater of another—these are imaginations not readily forgotten. And the other
stories—"Five Weeks in a Balloon," "The Adventures of Three
Englishmen and Three Russians," "The Tribulations of a
Chinaman," the yarns dealing with the Indian Mutiny, "Michael
Strogoff the Courier of the Czar," and the rest—how entrancing they were,
and still are to a boy, or a man with something of the boy yet in him!

"THEIR
ISLAND HOME."

Readers of
the present book who have not read that named above—though all should read it
as well as this—will have no difficulty in joining the story of the castaways
to "The Swiss Family Robinson" with the help of the brief sketch of
its contents which follows.

The story
begins with the arrival of the
Unicorn,
a British corvette commanded by
Lieutenant Littlestone, whose commission includes the exploration of the waters
in which New Switzerland is situate. He has with him as passengers Mr. and Mrs.
Wolston and their daughters Hannah and Dolly.

When the
Unicorn
weighs anchor again Mr. Wolston and his wife and their elder daughter,
Hannah, remain on the island. But the corvette takes away Fritz and Frank
Zermatt and Jenny Montrose, who are all bound for England, where Jenny hopes to
find her father, Colonel Montrose, and the two young men have much business to
transact, and Dolly Wolston, who is to join her brother James—a married man
with one child—at Cape Town. Mr. Wolston hopes that James, with his wife and
child, will agree to accompany Dolly and the Zermatts—by the time they return
Jenny will have become Mrs. Fritz Zermatt—to the island and take up their abode
there.

The
Unicorn
gone, those left behind settle themselves down to await her return,
labouring meanwhile to make ready the island against the possibility of a
number of immigrants. One of their first improvements is a canal for irrigation
purposes. Mr. Wolston, a skilful engineer, and Ernest, clever and thoughtful,
reader of many books and with a distinct scientific bent, are quite capable of
planning such things as this.

There are
seven people left on the island— M. and Mme. Zermatt, Mr. and Mrs. Wolston,
Jack Zermatt, adventurous and keen on sport, Ernest, and the charming Hannah.
Between these last two a strong affection develops. The brothers, very unlike
in nature, have little in common, but are good friends in spite of that fact;
and the whole seven form practically one united and very happy family.

Only a small
part of the island has ever been really explored during the ten years the
Zermatts have been there. They now determine to find out more about it. In
their pinnace, the
Elizabeth,
they voyage to a hitherto unknown coast,
and, after a very arid stretch, find the mouth of a river, capable of floating
the pinnace. They christen this the Montrose, in compliment to Jenny.

To the south they
see a great mountain range. In order to get as near this as possible Mr.
Wolston and Ernest make a canoe trip up the Montrose, but are stopped at length
by rapids and a great natural dam.

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