CHAPTER SIXTEENTH.
Symptoms of a Storm.--The Country of the Moon.--The Future of theAfrican Continent.--The Last Machine of all.--A View of the Country atSunset.--Flora and Fauna.--The Tempest.--The Zone of Fire.--The StarryHeavens.
"See," said Joe, "what comes of playing the sons of the moon without herleave! She came near serving us an ugly trick. But say, master, did youdamage your credit as a physician?"
"Yes, indeed," chimed in the sportsman. "What kind of a dignitary wasthis Sultan of Kazeh?"
"An old half-dead sot," replied the doctor, "whose loss will not be veryseverely felt. But the moral of all this is that honors are fleeting,and we must not take too great a fancy to them."
"So much the worse!" rejoined Joe. "I liked the thing--to beworshipped!--Play the god as you like! Why, what would any one ask morethan that? By-the-way, the moon did come up, too, and all red, as if shewas in a rage."
While the three friends went on chatting of this and other things, andJoe examined the luminary of night from an entirely novel point of view,the heavens became covered with heavy clouds to the northward, and thelowering masses assumed a most sinister and threatening look. Quite asmart breeze, found about three hundred feet from the earth, drove theballoon toward the north-northeast; and above it the blue vault wasclear; but the atmosphere felt close and dull.
The aeronauts found themselves, at about eight in the evening, inthirty-two degrees forty minutes east longitude, and four degreesseventeen minutes latitude. The atmospheric currents, under theinfluence of a tempest not far off, were driving them at the rate offrom thirty to thirty-five miles an hour; the undulating and fertileplains of Mfuto were passing swiftly beneath them. The spectacle was oneworthy of admiration--and admire it they did.
"We are now right in the country of the Moon," said Dr. Ferguson; "forit has retained the name that antiquity gave it, undoubtedly, becausethe moon has been worshipped there in all ages. It is, really, a superbcountry."
"It would be hard to find more splendid vegetation."
"If we found the like of it around London it would not be natural, butit would be very pleasant," put in Joe. "Why is it that such savagecountries get all these fine things?"
"And who knows," said the doctor, "that this country may not, one day,become the centre of civilization? The races of the future may repairhither, when Europe shall have become exhausted in the effort to feedher inhabitants."
"Do you think so, really?" asked Kennedy.
"Undoubtedly, my dear Dick. Just note the progress of events: considerthe migrations of races, and you will arrive at the same conclusionassuredly. Asia was the first nurse of the world, was she not? For aboutfour thousand years she travailed, she grew pregnant, she produced, andthen, when stones began to cover the soil where the golden harvests sungby Homer had flourished, her children abandoned her exhausted andbarren bosom. You next see them precipitating themselves upon youngand vigorous Europe, which has nourished them for the last two thousandyears. But already her fertility is beginning to die out; her productivepowers are diminishing every day. Those new diseases that annuallyattack the products of the soil, those defective crops, thoseinsufficient resources, are all signs of a vitality that is rapidlywearing out and of an approaching exhaustion. Thus, we already see themillions rushing to the luxuriant bosom of America, as a source of help,not inexhaustible indeed, but not yet exhausted. In its turn, that newcontinent will grow old; its virgin forests will fall before the axeof industry, and its soil will become weak through having too fullyproduced what had been demanded of it. Where two harvests bloomed everyyear, hardly one will be gathered from a soil completely drained of itsstrength. Then, Africa will be there to offer to new races the treasuresthat for centuries have been accumulating in her breast. Those climatesnow so fatal to strangers will be purified by cultivation and bydrainage of the soil, and those scattered water supplies will begathered into one common bed to form an artery of navigation. Then thiscountry over which we are now passing, more fertile, richer, and fullerof vitality than the rest, will become some grand realm where moreastonishing discoveries than steam and electricity will be brought tolight."
"Ah! sir," said Joe, "I'd like to see all that."
"You got up too early in the morning, my boy!"
"Besides," said Kennedy, "that may prove to be a very dull period whenindustry will swallow up every thing for its own profit. By dint ofinventing machinery, men will end in being eaten up by it! I have alwaysfancied that the end of the earth will be when some enormous boiler,heated to three thousand millions of atmospheric pressure, shall explodeand blow up our Globe!"
"And I add that the Americans," said Joe, "will not have been the lastto work at the machine!"
"In fact," assented the doctor, "they are great boiler-makers! But,without allowing ourselves to be carried away by such speculations, letus rest content with enjoying the beauties of this country of the Moon,since we have been permitted to see it."
The sun, darting his last rays beneath the masses of heaped-up cloud,adorned with a crest of gold the slightest inequalities of theground below; gigantic trees, arborescent bushes, mosses on the evensurface--all had their share of this luminous effulgence. The soil,slightly undulating, here and there rose into little conical hills;there were no mountains visible on the horizon; immense bramblypalisades, impenetrable hedges of thorny jungle, separated the clearingsdotted with numerous villages, and immense euphorbiae surroundedthem with natural fortifications, interlacing their trunks with thecoral-shaped branches of the shrubbery and undergrowth.
Ere long, the Malagazeri, the chief tributary of Lake Tanganayika, wasseen winding between heavy thickets of verdure, offering an asylum tomany water-courses that spring from the torrents formed in the seasonof freshets, or from ponds hollowed in the clayey soil. To observerslooking from a height, it was a chain of waterfalls thrown across thewhole western face of the country.
Animals with huge humps were feeding in the luxuriant prairies, and werehalf hidden, sometimes, in the tall grass; spreading forests in bloomredolent of spicy perfumes presented themselves to the gaze like immensebouquets; but, in these bouquets, lions, leopards, hyenas, and tigers,were then crouching for shelter from the last hot rays of thesetting sun. From time to time, an elephant made the tall tops of theundergrowth sway to and fro, and you could hear the crackling of hugebranches as his ponderous ivory tusks broke them in his way.
"What a sporting country!" exclaimed Dick, unable longer to restrain hisenthusiasm; "why, a single ball fired at random into those forests wouldbring down game worthy of it. Suppose we try it once!"
"No, my dear Dick; the night is close at hand--a threatening night witha tempest in the background--and the storms are awful in this country,where the heated soil is like one vast electric battery."
"You are right, sir," said Joe, "the heat has got to be enough tochoke one, and the breeze has died away. One can feel that something'scoming."
"The atmosphere is saturated with electricity," replied the doctor;"every living creature is sensible that this state of the air portends astruggle of the elements, and I confess that I never before was so fullof the fluid myself."
"Well, then," suggested Dick, "would it not be advisable to alight?"
"On the contrary, Dick, I'd rather go up, only that I am afraid of beingcarried out of my course by these counter-currents contending in theatmosphere."
"Have you any idea, then, of abandoning the route that we have followedsince we left the coast?"
"If I can manage to do so," replied the doctor, "I will turn moredirectly northward, by from seven to eight degrees; I shall thenendeavor to ascend toward the presumed latitudes of the sources of theNile; perhaps we may discover some traces of Captain Speke's expeditionor of M. de Heuglin's caravan. Unless I am mistaken, we are atthirty-two degrees forty minutes east longitude, and I should like toascend directly north of the equator."
"Look there!" exclaimed Kennedy, suddenly, "see those hippopotamisliding out o
f the pools--those masses of blood-colored flesh--and thosecrocodiles snuffing the air aloud!"
"They're choking!" ejaculated Joe. "Ah! what a fine way to travel thisis; and how one can snap his fingers at all that vermin!--Doctor! Mr.Kennedy! see those packs of wild animals hurrying along close together.There are fully two hundred. Those are wolves."
"No! Joe, not wolves, but wild dogs; a famous breed that does nothesitate to attack the lion himself. They are the worst customers atraveller could meet, for they would instantly tear him to pieces."
"Well, it isn't Joe that'll undertake to muzzle them!" responded thatamiable youth. "After all, though, if that's the nature of the beast, wemustn't be too hard on them for it!"
Silence gradually settled down under the influence of the impendingstorm: the thickened air actually seemed no longer adapted to thetransmission of sound; the atmosphere appeared MUFFLED, and, like aroom hung with tapestry, lost all its sonorous reverberation. The"rover bird" so-called, the coroneted crane, the red and blue jays,the mocking-bird, the flycatcher, disappeared among the foliage of theimmense trees, and all nature revealed symptoms of some approachingcatastrophe.
At nine o'clock the Victoria hung motionless over Msene, an extensivegroup of villages scarcely distinguishable in the gloom. Once in awhile, the reflection of a wandering ray of light in the dull waterdisclosed a succession of ditches regularly arranged, and, by one lastgleam, the eye could make out the calm and sombre forms of palm-trees,sycamores, and gigantic euphorbiae.
"I am stifling!" said the Scot, inhaling, with all the power of hislungs, as much as possible of the rarefied air. "We are not moving aninch! Let us descend!"
"But the tempest!" said the doctor, with much uneasiness.
"If you are afraid of being carried away by the wind, it seems to methat there is no other course to pursue."
"Perhaps the storm won't burst to-night," said Joe; "the clouds are veryhigh."
"That is just the thing that makes me hesitate about going beyond them;we should have to rise still higher, lose sight of the earth, andnot know all night whether we were moving forward or not, or in whatdirection we were going."
"Make up your mind, dear doctor, for time presses!"
"It's a pity that the wind has fallen," said Joe, again; "it would havecarried us clear of the storm."
"It is, indeed, a pity, my friends," rejoined the doctor. "The cloudsare dangerous for us; they contain opposing currents which might catchus in their eddies, and lightnings that might set on fire. Again, thoseperils avoided, the force of the tempest might hurl us to the ground,were we to cast our anchor in the tree-tops."
"Then what shall we do?"
"Well, we must try to get the balloon into a medium zone of theatmosphere, and there keep her suspended between the perils of theheavens and those of the earth. We have enough water for the cylinder,and our two hundred pounds of ballast are untouched. In case ofemergency I can use them."
"We will keep watch with you," said the hunter.
"No, my friends, put the provisions under shelter, and lie down; I willrouse you, if it becomes necessary."
"But, master, wouldn't you do well to take some rest yourself, asthere's no danger close on us just now?" insisted poor Joe.
"No, thank you, my good fellow, I prefer to keep awake. We are notmoving, and should circumstances not change, we'll find ourselvesto-morrow in exactly the same place."
"Good-night, then, sir!"
"Good-night, if you can only find it so!"
Kennedy and Joe stretched themselves out under their blankets, and thedoctor remained alone in the immensity of space.
However, the huge dome of clouds visibly descended, and the darknessbecame profound. The black vault closed in upon the earth as if to crushit in its embrace.
All at once a violent, rapid, incisive flash of lightning pierced thegloom, and the rent it made had not closed ere a frightful clap ofthunder shook the celestial depths.
"Up! up! turn out!" shouted Ferguson.
The two sleepers, aroused by the terrible concussion, were at thedoctor's orders in a moment.
"Shall we descend?" said Kennedy.
"No! the balloon could not stand it. Let us go up before those cloudsdissolve in water, and the wind is let loose!" and, so saying, thedoctor actively stirred up the flame of the cylinder, and turned it onthe spirals of the serpentine siphon.
The tempests of the tropics develop with a rapidity equalled only bytheir violence. A second flash of lightning rent the darkness, and wasfollowed by a score of others in quick succession. The sky was crossedand dotted, like the zebra's hide, with electric sparks, which dancedand flickered beneath the great drops of rain.
"We have delayed too long," exclaimed the doctor; "we must nowpass through a zone of fire, with our balloon filled as it is withinflammable gas!"
"But let us descend, then! let us descend!" urged Kennedy.
"The risk of being struck would be just about even, and we should soonbe torn to pieces by the branches of the trees!"
"We are going up, doctor!"
"Quicker, quicker still!"
In this part of Africa, during the equatorial storms, it is not rare tocount from thirty to thirty-five flashes of lightning per minute. Thesky is literally on fire, and the crashes of thunder are continuous.
The wind burst forth with frightful violence in this burning atmosphere;it twisted the blazing clouds; one might have compared it to the breathof some gigantic bellows, fanning all this conflagration.
Dr. Ferguson kept his cylinder at full heat, and the balloon dilated andwent up, while Kennedy, on his knees, held together the curtains ofthe awning. The balloon whirled round wildly enough to make their headsturn, and the aeronauts got some very alarming jolts, indeed, as theirmachine swung and swayed in all directions. Huge cavities would form inthe silk of the balloon as the wind fiercely bent it in, and the stufffairly cracked like a pistol as it flew back from the pressure. Asort of hail, preceded by a rumbling noise, hissed through the air andrattled on the covering of the Victoria. The latter, however, continuedto ascend, while the lightning described tangents to the convexity ofher circumference; but she bore on, right through the midst of the fire.
"God protect us!" said Dr. Ferguson, solemnly, "we are in His hands;He alone can save us--but let us be ready for every event, even forfire--our fall could not be very rapid."
The doctor's voice could scarcely be heard by his companions; but theycould see his countenance calm as ever even amid the flashing of thelightnings; he was watching the phenomena of phosphorescence producedby the fires of St. Elmo, that were now skipping to and fro along thenetwork of the balloon.
The latter whirled and swung, but steadily ascended, and, ere the hourwas over, it had passed the stormy belt. The electric display was goingon below it like a vast crown of artificial fireworks suspended from thecar.
Then they enjoyed one of the grandest spectacles that Nature can offerto the gaze of man. Below them, the tempest; above them, the starryfirmament, tranquil, mute, impassible, with the moon projecting herpeaceful rays over these angry clouds.
Dr. Ferguson consulted the barometer; it announced twelve thousand feetof elevation. It was then eleven o'clock at night.
"Thank Heaven, all danger is past; all we have to do now, is, to keepourselves at this height," said the doctor.
"It was frightful!" remarked Kennedy.
"Oh!" said Joe, "it gives a little variety to the trip, and I'm notsorry to have seen a storm from a trifling distance up in the air. It'sa fine sight!"