Questioning the natives, Captain Dumont d’Urville also learned that after La Pérouse’s two ships had miscarried on the island’s reefs, the count had built a smaller craft, only to go off and miscarry a second time. Where? Nobody knew.
The commander of the new Astrolabe then had a monument erected under a tuft of mangrove, in memory of the famous navigator and his companions. It was a simple quadrangular pyramid, set on a coral base, with no ironwork to tempt the natives’ avarice.
Then Dumont d’Urville tried to depart; but his crews were run down from the fevers raging on these unsanitary shores, and quite ill himself, he was unable to weigh anchor until March 17.
Meanwhile, fearing that Dumont d’Urville wasn’t abreast of Dillon’s activities, the French government sent a sloop of war to Vanikoro, the Bayonnaise under Commander Legoarant de Tromelin, who had been stationed on the American west coast. Dropping anchor before Vanikoro a few months after the new Astrolabe’s departure, the Bayonnaise didn’t find any additional evidence but verified that the savages hadn’t disturbed the memorial honoring the Count de La Pérouse.
This is the substance of the account I gave Captain Nemo.
“So,” he said to me, “the castaways built a third ship on Vanikoro Island, and to this day, nobody knows where it went and perished?”
“Nobody knows.”
Captain Nemo didn’t reply but signaled me to follow him to the main lounge. The Nautilus sank a few meters beneath the waves, and the panels opened.
I rushed to the window and saw crusts of coral: fungus coral, siphonula coral, alcyon coral, sea anemone from the genus Caryophylia, plus myriads of charming fish including greenfish, damselfish, sweepers, snappers, and squirrelfish; underneath this coral covering I detected some rubble the old dredges hadn’t been able to tear free—iron stirrups, anchors, cannons, shells, tackle from a capstan, a stempost, all objects hailing from the wrecked ships and now carpeted in moving flowers.
And as I stared at this desolate wreckage, Captain Nemo told me in a solemn voice: