Cinq semaines en ballon. English

  CHAPTER NINTH.

  They double the Cape.--The Forecastle.--A Course of Cosmography byProfessor Joe.--Concerning the Method of guiding Balloons.--How to seekout Atmospheric Currents.--Eureka.

  The Resolute plunged along rapidly toward the Cape of Good Hope, theweather continuing fine, although the sea ran heavier.

  On the 30th of March, twenty-seven days after the departure from London,the Table Mountain loomed up on the horizon. Cape City lying at the footof an amphitheatre of hills, could be distinguished through the ship'sglasses, and soon the Resolute cast anchor in the port. But the captaintouched there only to replenish his coal bunkers, and that was but aday's job. On the morrow, he steered away to the south'ard, so asto double the southernmost point of Africa, and enter the MozambiqueChannel.

  This was not Joe's first sea-voyage, and so, for his part, he soon foundhimself at home on board; every body liked him for his frankness andgood-humor. A considerable share of his master's renown was reflectedupon him. He was listened to as an oracle, and he made no more mistakesthan the next one.

  So, while the doctor was pursuing his descriptive course of lecturing inthe officers' mess, Joe reigned supreme on the forecastle, holding forthin his own peculiar manner, and making history to suit himself--a styleof procedure pursued, by the way, by the greatest historians of all agesand nations.

  The topic of discourse was, naturally, the aerial voyage. Joe hadexperienced some trouble in getting the rebellious spirits to believe init; but, once accepted by them, nothing connected with it was any longeran impossibility to the imaginations of the seamen stimulated by Joe'sharangues.

  Our dazzling narrator persuaded his hearers that, after this trip, manyothers still more wonderful would be undertaken. In fact, it was to bebut the first of a long series of superhuman expeditions.

  "You see, my friends, when a man has had a taste of that kind oftravelling, he can't get along afterward with any other; so, on ournext expedition, instead of going off to one side, we'll go right ahead,going up, too, all the time."

  "Humph! then you'll go to the moon!" said one of the crowd, with a stareof amazement.

  "To the moon!" exclaimed Joe, "To the moon! pooh! that's too common.Every body might go to the moon, that way. Besides, there's no waterthere, and you have to carry such a lot of it along with you. Then youhave to take air along in bottles, so as to breathe."

  "Ay! ay! that's all right! But can a man get a drop of the real stuffthere?" said a sailor who liked his toddy.

  "Not a drop!" was Joe's answer. "No! old fellow, not in the moon. Butwe're going to skip round among those little twinklers up there--thestars--and the splendid planets that my old man so often talks about.For instance, we'll commence with Saturn--"

  "That one with the ring?" asked the boatswain.

  "Yes! the wedding-ring--only no one knows what's become of his wife!"

  "What? will you go so high up as that?" said one of the ship-boys,gaping with wonder. "Why, your master must be Old Nick himself."

  "Oh! no, he's too good for that."

  "But, after Saturn--what then?" was the next inquiry of his impatientaudience.

  "After Saturn? Well, we'll visit Jupiter. A funny place that is, too,where the days are only nine hours and a half long--a good thing for thelazy fellows--and the years, would you believe it--last twelve of ours,which is fine for folks who have only six months to live. They get off alittle longer by that."

  "Twelve years!" ejaculated the boy.

  "Yes, my youngster; so that in that country you'd be toddling after yourmammy yet, and that old chap yonder, who looks about fifty, would onlybe a little shaver of four and a half."

  "Blazes! that's a good 'un!" shouted the whole forecastle together.

  "Solemn truth!" said Joe, stoutly.

  "But what can you expect? When people will stay in this world, theylearn nothing and keep as ignorant as bears. But just come along toJupiter and you'll see. But they have to look out up there, for he's gotsatellites that are not just the easiest things to pass."

  All the men laughed, but they more than half believed him. Then he wenton to talk about Neptune, where seafaring men get a jovial reception,and Mars, where the military get the best of the sidewalk to such anextent that folks can hardly stand it. Finally, he drew them a heavenlypicture of the delights of Venus.

  "And when we get back from that expedition," said the indefatigablenarrator, "they'll decorate us with the Southern Cross that shines upthere in the Creator's button-hole."

  "Ay, and you'd have well earned it!" said the sailors.

  Thus passed the long evenings on the forecastle in merry chat, andduring the same time the doctor went on with his instructive discourses.

  One day the conversation turned upon the means of directing balloons,and the doctor was asked his opinion about it.

  "I don't think," said he, "that we shall succeed in finding out asystem of directing them. I am familiar with all the plans attemptedand proposed, and not one has succeeded, not one is practicable. You mayreadily understand that I have occupied my mind with this subject, whichwas, necessarily, so interesting to me, but I have not been able tosolve the problem with the appliances now known to mechanical science.We would have to discover a motive power of extraordinary force, andalmost impossible lightness of machinery. And, even then, we could notresist atmospheric currents of any considerable strength. Until now, theeffort has been rather to direct the car than the balloon, and that hasbeen one great error."

  "Still there are many points of resemblance between a balloon and a shipwhich is directed at will."

  "Not at all," retorted the doctor, "there is little or no similaritybetween the two cases. Air is infinitely less dense than water, in whichthe ship is only half submerged, while the whole bulk of a balloon isplunged in the atmosphere, and remains motionless with reference to theelement that surrounds it."

  "You think, then, that aerostatic science has said its last word?"

  "Not at all! not at all! But we must look for another point in the case,and if we cannot manage to guide our balloon, we must, at least, try tokeep it in favorable aerial currents. In proportion as we ascend,the latter become much more uniform and flow more constantly in onedirection. They are no longer disturbed by the mountains and valleysthat traverse the surface of the globe, and these, you know, are thechief cause of the variations of the wind and the inequality of theirforce. Therefore, these zones having been once determined, the balloonwill merely have to be placed in the currents best adapted to itsdestination."

  "But then," continued Captain Bennet, "in order to reach them, you mustkeep constantly ascending or descending. That is the real difficulty,doctor."

  "And why, my dear captain?"

  "Let us understand one another. It would be a difficulty and an obstacleonly for long journeys, and not for short aerial excursions."

  "And why so, if you please?"

  "Because you can ascend only by throwing out ballast; you can descendonly after letting off gas, and by these processes your ballast and yourgas are soon exhausted."

  "My dear sir, that's the whole question. There is the only difficultythat science need now seek to overcome. The problem is not how to guidethe balloon, but how to take it up and down without expending thegas which is its strength, its life-blood, its soul, if I may use theexpression."

  "You are right, my dear doctor; but this problem is not yet solved; thismeans has not yet been discovered."

  "I beg your pardon, it HAS been discovered."

  "By whom?"

  "By me!"

  "By you?"

  "You may readily believe that otherwise I should not have risked thisexpedition across Africa in a balloon. In twenty-four hours I shouldhave been without gas!"

  "But you said nothing about that in England?"

  "No! I did not want to have myself overhauled in public. I saw no use inthat. I made my preparatory experiments in secret and was satisfied. Ihave no occasion, then, to learn any thing more from the
m."

  "Well! doctor, would it be proper to ask what is your secret?"

  "Here it is, gentlemen--the simplest thing in the world!"

  The attention of his auditory was now directed to the doctor in theutmost degree as he quietly proceeded with his explanation.