Penguin Island Read online

  ANATOLE FRANCE

  Translated by A.W. Evans

  Illustrated by Frank C Papé

  Afterword by Ron Miller

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

  eISBN: 978-1-61824-996-8

  Copyright © 2013 by Ron Miller

  Cover art by: Ron Miller

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.

  Electronic version by Baen Books

  http://www.baen.com

  This edition of Penguin Island is based on the 1925 illustrated edition published by John Lane. Originally published in 1908 in French as L'Île des Pingouins.

  Special contents copyright © 2010 Black Cat Press.

  The Ron Miller Science Fiction Classics Collection

  PART I: THE CONQUEST OF SPACE

  The Archeology of Space Travel

  (space travel books from the 18th and early 19th centuries)

  The Life and Astonishing Adventures of John Daniel (1751), Ralph Morris, illustrated

  Voyage to the Moon (1827), George Tucker

  Journeys to the Moon (includes "The Moon Hoax" by Richard Adams Locke, "The Unparalleled Adventures of Hans Pfaall" by Edgar Allan Poe and "Journey...to the newly discovered Planet Georgium Sidus" by "Vivenair", illustrated

  Trip to the Moon, Lucian of Samosata

  Iter Lunaire (1703), David Russen

  A Voyage to Cacklogallinia (1727), "Samuel Brunt"

  Gulliver Joi (1851), Elbert Perce, illustrated

  The Consolidator (1705), Daniel Defoe

  Trips to the Moon

  Daybreak (1896), James Cowan, illustrated

  The Conquest of the Moon (1889), Andre Laurie, illustrated

  Drowsy (1917), J.A. Mitchell, illustrated

  The Moon Conquerors (1930), R.H. Roman

  A History of a Voyage to the Moon (1864), "Chrysostom Trueman"

  The Moon Colony (1937), William Dixon Bell, illustrated by Ron Miller

  To the Moon and Back in Ninety Hours (1922), John Young Brown, illustrated

  Pioneers of Space (1949), George Adamski

  A Christmas Dinner With the Man in the Moon (1880), illustrated

  Flights to and from Mars

  Doctor Omega (1906), Arnould Goupin (translated by Ron Miller), illustrated

  To Mars via the Moon (1911), Mark Wicks, illustrated

  A Plunge Into Space (1890), Robert Cromie

  A Trip to Mars (1909), Fenton Ash, illustrated

  War of the Worlds (includes The Crystal Egg and The Things That Live On Mars), H.G. Wells. Illustrated

  Gulliver of Mars (1905), Edwin Arnold

  Across the Zodiac (1880), Percy Greg

  Journeys to Other Worlds

  The Moon-Maker (includes The Man Who Rocked the Earth) (1916), Arthur Train and Robert Wood

  A Trip to Venus (includes "Daybreak on the Moon") (1897), John Munro

  A Honeymoon in Space (1900), George Griffith, illustrated

  The Brick Moon (includes "On Vesta" by K.E. Tsiolkovsky) (1869), E.E. Hale

  A Columbus of Space (1894), Garrett Serviss, illustrated

  Extract from Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven (1909), Mark Twain

  Zero to Eighty (1937), "Akkad Pseudoman" (E.F. Northrup)

  Aleriel (Voice from Another World, 1874 and Letters from the Planets, 1883), W.S. Lach-Szyrma, illustrated

  A Journey in Other Worlds (1894), J. J. Astor. Illustrated

  Deutsche im Weltall

  (Germans in Space)

  By Rocket to the Moon (1931), Otto Willi Gail, illustrated

  The Shot Into Infinity (1925), Otto Willi Gail, illustrated

  The Stone From the Moon (1926), Otto Willi Gail, illustrated

  Between Earth and Moon (1930), Otfrid von Hanstein, illustrated

  Distant Worlds (1932), Friedrich Mader, illustrated

  A Daring Flight to Mars (1931), Max Valier

  Space Travel for Junior Space Cadets

  Through Space to Mars (1910), "Roy Rockwood" (Howard R. Garis)

  Lost on the Moon (1911)), "Roy Rockwood" (Howard R. Garis)

  Rocket Riders Across the Ice (1933), Howard R. Garis, illustrated

  Rocket Riders in Stormy Seas (1933), Howard R. Garis, illustrated

  Rocket Riders in the Air (1934), Howard R. Garis, illustrated

  Adrift in the Stratosphere (1937), A.M. Low, illustrated

  Jules Verne

  20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Jules Verne, translated and edited by Ron Miller. Illustrated

  A Journey to the Center of the Earth, translated, annotated and edited by Ron Miller. Illustrated

  Off on a Comet!, Jules Verne, edited by Ron Miller, illustrated

  From the Earth to the Moon (includes Around the Moon), Jules Verne, translated and edited by Ron Miller. Illustrated

  The Purchase of the North Pole, edited by Ron Miller, illustrated

  Science Fiction by Gaslight

  The End of Books (1884), Octave Uzanne, illustrated by Albert Robida

  Under the Sea to the North Pole (1898), Pierre Mael, illustrated

  Penguin Island (1908), Anatole France, illustrated by Frank C. Pape

  The Crystal City Under the Sea (1896), Andre Laurie, illustrated

  The Earth-Tube (1929), Gawain Edwards (G. Edward Pendray)

  PART II: FIREBRANDS OF SCIENCE FICTION

  Heroines

  Three Go Back (1932), J. Leslie Mitchell

  The Flying Legion (1920), George Allen England, illustrated

  The Island of Captain Sparrow (1928), S. Fowler Wright

  Under the Sea to the North Pole (1898), Pierre Mael, illustrated

  Fugitive Anne (1904), Rose Praed, illustrated

  Lentala of the South Seas (1908), W.C. Morrow

  The Girl in the Golden Atom (1923), Ray Cummings

  Maza of the Moon (1929), Otis Adelbert Kline

  Bad Girls

  Atlantida (1920), Pierre Benoit

  Out of the Silence (1928), Erle Cox

  Swordwomen

  The Lost Continent (1900), C.J. Cutcliffe-Hyne

  The Legend of Croquemitaine (1874), Ernest L'Epine, illustrated by Gustave Dore

  Not Quite Human

  The Beetle (1897). Richard Marsh, illustrated

  Carmilla (1872), J. Sheridan LeFanu

  The Lair of the White Worm (1911), Bram Stoker, illustrated

  The Life and Adventures of Peter Wilkins (1751), Richard Paltock, illustrated

  The Sea Lady (1902), H.G. Wells, illustrated

  Angel Island (1914), Inez Haynes Gilmore

  The Future Eve (1926), Villiers de L'Isle-Adam, illustrated

  The Coming Race (1871), Edward Bulwer-Lytton

  PREFACE

  IN spite of the apparent diversity of the amusements that seem to attract me, my life has but one object. It is wholly bent upon the accomplishment of one great scheme. I am writing the history of the Penguins. I labour sedulously at this task without allowing myself to be repelled by its frequent difficulties although at times these seem insuperable. I have delved into the ground in order to discover the buried remains of that people. Men’s first books were stones, and I have studied the stones that can be regarded as the primitive annals of the Penguins. On the shore of the ocean I have ransacked a previously untouched tumulus, and in it I found, as usually happens, flint axes, bronze swords, Roman coins, and a twenty-sou piece bearing the effigy of Louis-Philippe I., King of the French.

  For historical times, the chronicle of Johannes Talpa, a monk of the monastery of Beargarden, has been of great assistance to me. I steeped myself the m
ore thoroughly in this author as no other source for the Penguin history of the Early Middle Ages has yet been discovered.

  We are richer for the period that begins with the thirteenth century, richer but not better off. It is extremely difficult to write history. We do not know exactly how things have happened, and the historian’s embarrassment increases with the abundance of documents at his disposal. When a fact is known through the evidence of a single person, it is admitted without much hesitation. Our perplexities begin when events are related by two or by several witnesses, for their evidence is always contradictory and always irreconcilable.

  It is true that the scientific reasons for preferring one piece of evidence to another are sometimes very strong, but they are never strong enough to outweigh our passions, our prejudices, our interests, or to overcome that levity of mind common to all grave men. It follows that we continually present the facts in a prejudiced or frivolous manner.

  I have confided the difficulties that I experienced in writing the history of the Penguins to several learned archaeologists and palaeographers both of my own and foreign countries. I endured their contempt. They looked at me with a pitying smile which seemed to say: “Do we write history? Do you imagine that we attempt to extract the least parcel of life or truth from a text or a document? We publish texts purely and simply. We keep to their exact letter. The letter alone is definite and perceptible. It is not so with the spirit; ideas are crotchets. A man must be very vain to write history, for to do so requires imagination.”

  All this was in the glances and smiles of our masters in palaeography, and their behaviour discouraged me deeply. One day after a conversation with an eminent sigillographer, I was even more depressed than usual, when I suddenly thought:

  “After all, there are historians; the race has not entirely disappeared. Some five or six of them have been preserved at the Academy of Moral Sciences.

  They do not publish texts; they write history. They will not tell me that one must be a vain fellow to take up that sort of work.”

  This idea restored my courage.

  The following day I called upon one of them, an astute old man.

  “I came, sir,” said I to him, “to ask for the advice that a man of your experience can give. I am taking the utmost trouble in composing a history and I reach no result whatever.”

  He answered me, shrugging his shoulders:

  “What is the good, my dear sir, of giving yourself so much trouble, and why compose a history when all you need do is to copy the best-known ones in the usual way? If you have a fresh view or an original idea, if you present men and things from an unexpected point of view, you will surprise the reader. And the reader does not like being surprised. He never looks in a history for anything but the stupidities that he knows already. If you try to instruct him you only humiliate him and make him angry. Do not try to enlighten him; he will only cry out that you insult his beliefs.

  “Historians copy from one another. Thus they spare themselves trouble and avoid the appearance of presumption. Imitate them and do not be original. An original historian is the object of distrust, contempt, and loathing from everybody.

  “Do you imagine, sir,” added he, “that I should be respected and honoured as I am if I had put innovations into my historical works? And what are innovations? They are impertinences.”

  He rose. I thanked him for his kindness and reached the door. He called me back.

  “One word more. If you want your book to be well received, lose no opportunity for exalting the virtues on which society is based—attachment to wealth, pious sentiments, and especially resignation on the part of the poor, which latter is the very foundation of order. Proclaim, sir, that the origins of property— nobility and police—are treated in your history with all the respect which these institutions deserve. Make it known that you admit the supernatural when it presents itself. On these conditions you will succeed in good society.”

  I have given much thought to these judicious observations and I have given them the fullest weight.

  I have not here to deal with the Penguins before their metamorphosis. They begin to come within my scope only at the moment when they leave the realm of zoology to enter those of history and theology. It was in truth Penguins that the great St. Maël changed into men, though it is necessary to explain this, for to-day the term might give rise to confusion.

  We call by the name of Penguin in French, a bird of the Arctic regions belonging to the family of the Alcides; we call the type of the spheniscides, inhabiting the Antarctic seas, manchots. Thus M. G. Lecointe, for example, says in his narrative of the voyage of the Belgica1: “Of all birds that people the Strait of Gerlache, the manchots are certainly the most interesting. They are sometimes designated, though inaccurately, under the name of the penguins of the South.” Doctor J. B. Charcct affirms2, on the contrary, that the true and only Penguins are those Antarctic birds which we call manchots, and he gives for reason that they received from the Dutch, who in 1598 reached Cape Magellan, the name of pinguinos, doubtless because of their fat. But if the manchots are called penguins what are we in future to call the Penguins themselves? Dr. J. B. Charcot does not tell us, and he does not seem to have given the matter a moment’s attention.

  Well, that his manchots become or re-become Penguins is a matter to which we must consent. He has acquired the right to name them by discovering them. But let him at least allow the Northern penguins to remain penguins. There will be the penguins of the South and those of the North, the Antarctic and the Arctic, the alcides or old penguins, and the spheniscides or former manchots. This will perhaps cause embarrassment to ornithologists who are careful in describing and classing the palmipedes; they will doubtless ask if a single name is really suited to two families who are poles apart from one another and who differ in several respects, particularly in their beaks, winglets, and claws. For my part, I adapt myself easily to this confusion. Whatever be the differences between my penguins and those of M. J. B. Charcot, the resemblances are more numerous and more deep-seated. The former, like the latter, attract notice by their grave and placid air, their comic dignity, their trustful familiarity, their sly simplicity, their habits at once awkward and solemn. Both are pacific, abounding in speech, eager to see anything novel, immersed in public affairs, and perhaps a little jealous of all that is superior to them.

  My hyperboreans have, it is true, winglets that are not scaly, but covered with little feathers, and, although their legs are fixed a little farther back than those of the Southerns, they walk in the same way with their chests lifted up and their heads held aloft, balancing their bodies in a like dignified style, and their sublime beak (os sublime) is not the least cause of the error into which the apostle fell when he took them for men.

  The present work, I cannot but recognise, belongs to the old order of history, to that which presents the sequence of events whose memory has been preserved, to the order which indicates, as far as possible, causes and effects. It is an art rather than a science. It is claimed that this method no longer satisfies exact minds, and that the ancient Clio is to-day looked upon as a teller of old wives’ fables. And possibly we shall have in the future a more trustworthy history, a history of the conditions of life, which will teach us what a given people at a given epoch produced and consumed in every department of its activity. History of that type will be no longer an art but a science, and it will assume the exactness which the former history lacked. But in order that it may come into existence, it has need of a multitude of statistics which is hitherto wanting among all peoples and particularly among the Penguins. It is possible that modern nations may one day provide the elements of such a history. As regards what is already past we must always content ourselves, I fear, with a narrative in the ancient style. The interest of such a narrative depends above all on the perspicacity and good faith of the narrator.

  As a great writer of Aica has said, the life of a people is a tissue of crime, wretchedness, and folly. Penguinia d
id not differ in this respect from other nations; nevertheless, its history contains some admirable sections upon which I hope that I have cast much fresh light.

  The Penguins remained warlike for a lengthy period. One of them, Jacquot, the Philosopher, as painted their character in a little moral picture that I reproduce here, and that, doubtless, will not be read without pleasure:

  “The philosopher, Gratien, travelled through Penguinia in the time of the later Draconides. One day as he passed through a pleasant valley where the cow-bells tinkled in the pure air, he seated himself on a bench at the foot of an oak, close beside a cottage. At the threshold a woman was nursing her child; a little boy was playing vmh a big dog; a blind old man, seated in the sun with his lips half-opened, drank in the light of day.

  The master of the house, a young and sturdy man, offered some bread and milk to Gratien.

  The Porpoise philosopher having taken this rural repast: “Delightful inhabitants of a delightful country, I give you thanks,” said he. “Everything here breathes forth joy, concord, and peace.”

  As he said this a shepherd passed by playing a march upon his pipe.

  “What is that lively air?” asked Gratien.

  “It is the war-hymn against the Porpoises,” answered the peasant. “Everybody here sings it. Little children know it before they can speak. We are all good Penguins.”

  “You don’t like the Porpoises then?”

  “We hate them.”

  “For what reason do you hate them?”

  “Need you ask ? Are not the Porpoises neighbours of the Penguins!”

  “Of course.”

  “Well, that is why the Penguins hate the Porpoises.”

  “Is that a reason ?”

  “ Certainly. He who says neighbours says enemies. Look at the field that borders mine. It belongs to the man I hate most in the world. After him my worst enemies are the people of the village on the other slope of the valley at the foot of that birch-wood. In this narrow valley formed of two parts there are but that village and mine: they are enemies. Every time that our lads meet the others, insults and blows pass between them. And you want the Penguins not to be the enemies of the Porpoises! Don’t you know what patriotism is? For my part there are two cries that rise to my lips: ‘ Hurrah for the Penguins! Death to the Porpoises!’”