Chapter XXI
THE INSTITUTE AGAIN
Some weeks before, on the 13th of June, on the morning after thesitting during which the Weldon Institute had been given over to suchstormy discussions, the excitement of all classes of the Philadelphiapopulation, black or white, had been much easier to imagine than todescribe.
From a very early hour conversation was entirely occupied with theunexpected and scandalous incident of the night before. A strangercalling himself an engineer, and answering to the name of Robur, aperson of unknown origin, of anonymous nationality, had unexpectedlypresented himself in the club-room, insulted the balloonists, madefun of the aeronauts, boasted of the marvels of machines heavier thanair, and raised a frightful tumult by the remarks with which hegreeted the menaces of his adversaries. After leaving the desk, amida volley of revolver shots, he had disappeared, and in spite of everyendeavor, no trace could be found of him.
Assuredly here was enough to exercise every tongue and excite everyimagination. But by how much was this excitement increased when inthe evening of the 13th of June it was found that neither thepresident nor secretary of the Weldon Institute had returned to theirhomes! Was it by chance only that they were absent? No, or at leastthere was nothing to lead people to think so. It had even been agreedthat in the morning they would be back at the club, one as president,the other as secretary, to take their places during a discussion onthe events of the preceding evening.
And not only was there the complete disappearance of these twoconsiderable personages in the state of Pennsylvania, but there wasno news of the valet Frycollin. He was as undiscoverable as hismaster. Never had a Negro since Toussaint L'Ouverture, Soulouque, orDessaline had so much talked about him.
The next day there was no news. Neither the colleagues nor Frycollinhad been found. The anxiety became serious. Agitation commenced. Anumerous crowd besieged the post and telegraph offices in case anynews should be received. There was no news.
And they had been seen coming out of the Weldon Institute loudlytalking together, and with Frycollin in attendance, go down WalnutStreet towards Fairmount Park! Jem Chip, the vegetarian, had evenshaken hands with the president and left him with "Tomorrow!"
And William T. Forbes, the manufacturer of sugar from rags, hadreceived a cordial shake from Phil Evans who had said to him twice,"Au revoir! Au revoir!"
Miss Doll and Miss Mat Forbes, so attached to Uncle Prudent by thebonds of purest friendship, could not get over the disappearance, andin order to obtain news of the absent, talked even more than theywere accustomed to.
Three, four, five, six days passed. Then a week, then two weeks, andthere was nothing to give a clue to the missing three. The mostminute search had been made in every quarter. Nothing! In the park,even under the trees and brushwood. Nothing! Always nothing! Althoughhere it was noticed that the grass looked to be pressed down in a waythat seemed suspicious and certainly was inexplicable; and at theedge of the clearing there were traces of a recent struggle. Perhapsa band of scoundrels had attacked the colleagues here in the desertedpark in the middle of the night!
It was possible. The police proceeded with their inquiries in all dueform and with all lawful slowness. They dragged the Schuyllkillriver, and cut into the thick bushes that fringe its banks; and ifthis was useless it was not quite a waste, for the Schuyllkill is ingreat want of a good weeding, and it got it on this occasion.Practical people are the authorities of Philadelphia!
Then the newspapers were tried. Advertisements and notices andarticles were sent to all the journals in the Union withoutdistinction of color. The "Daily Negro," the special organ of theblack race, published a portrait of Frycollin after his latestphotograph. Rewards were offered to whoever would give news of thethree absentees, and even to those who would find some clue to putthe police on the track. "Five thousand dollars! Five thousanddollars to any citizen who would--"
Nothing was done. The five thousand dollars remained with thetreasurer of the Weldon Institute.
Undiscoverable! Undiscoverable! Undiscoverable! Uncle Prudent andPhil Evans, of Philadelphia!
It need hardly be said that the club was put to serious inconvenienceby this disappearance of its president and secretary. And at firstthe assembly voted urgency to a measure which suspended the work onthe "Go-Ahead." How, in the absence of the principal promoters of theaffair, of those who had devoted to the enterprise a certain part oftheir fortune in time and money--how could they finish the work whenthese were not present? It were better, then, to wait.
And just then came the first news of the strange phenomenon which hadexercised people's minds some weeks before. The mysterious objecthad been again seen at different times in the higher regions of theatmosphere. But nobody dreamt of establishing a connection betweenthis singular reappearance and the no less singular disappearance ofthe members of the Weldon Institute. In fact, it would have requireda very strong dose of imagination to connect one of these facts withthe other.
Whatever it might be, asteroid or aerolite or aerial monster, it hadreappeared in such a way that its dimensions and shape could be muchbetter appreciated, first in Canada, over the country between Ottawaand Quebec, on the very morning after the disappearance of thecolleagues, and later over the plains of the Far West, where it hadtried its speed against an express train on the Union Pacific.
At the end of this day the doubts of the learned world were at anend. The body was not a product of nature, it was a flying machine,the practical application of the theory of "heavier than air." And ifthe inventor of the aeronef had wished to keep himself unknown hecould evidently have done better than to try it over the Far West. Asto the mechanical force he required, or the engines by which it wascommunicated, nothing was known, but there could be no doubt theaeronef was gifted with an extraordinary faculty of locomotion. Infact, a few days afterwards it was reported from the CelestialEmpire, then from the southern part of India, then from the Russiansteppes.
Who was then this bold mechanician that possessed such powers oflocomotion, for whom States had no frontiers and oceans no limits,who disposed of the terrestrial atmosphere as if it were his domain?Could it be this Robur whose theories had been so brutally thrown inthe face of the Weldon Institute the day he led the attack againstthe utopia of guidable balloons? Perhaps such a notion occurred tosome of the wide-awake people, but none dreamt that the said Roburhad anything to do with the disappearance of the president andsecretary of the Institute.
Things remained in this state of mystery when a telegram arrived fromFrance through the New York cable at 11-37 A.M. on July 13. And whatwas this telegram? It was the text of the document found at Paris ina snuff-box revealing what had happened to the two personages forwhom the Union was in mourning.
So, then, the perpetrator of this kidnapping "was" Robur theengineer, come expressly to Philadelphia to destroy in its egg thetheory of the balloonists. He it was who commanded the "Albatross!"He it was who carried off by way of reprisal Uncle Prudent, PhilEvans and Frycollin; and they might be considered lost for ever. Atleast until some means were found of constructing an engine capableof contending with this powerful machine their terrestrial friendswould never bring them back to earth.
What excitement! What stupor! The telegram from Paris had beenaddressed to the members of the Weldon Institute. The members of theclub were immediately informed of it. Ten minutes later allPhiladelphia received the news through its telephones, and in lessthan an hour all America heard of it through the innumerable electricwires of the new continent.
No one would believe it! "It is an unseasonable joke," said some. "Itis all smoke," said others. How could such a thing be done inPhiladelphia, and so secretly, too? How could the "Albatross" havebeen beached in Fairmount Park without its appearance having beensignaled all over Pennsylvania?
Very good. These were the arguments. The incredulous had the right ofdoubting. But the right did not last long. Seven days after thereceipt of the telegram the French mail-boat "Normandie" came int
o theHudson, bringing the famous snuff-box. The railway took it in allhaste from New York to Philadelphia.
It was indeed the snuff-box of the President of the Weldon Institute.Jem Chip would have done on at day to take some more substantialnourishment, for he fell into a swoon when he recognized it. How manya time had he taken from it the pinch of friendship! And Miss Dolland Miss Mat also recognized it, and so did William T. Forbes, TruckMilnor, Bat T. Fynn, and many other members. And not only was it thepresident's snuff-box, it was the president's writing!
Then did the people lament and stretch out their hands in despair tothe skies. Uncle Prudent and his colleague carried away in a flyingmachine, and no one able to deliver them!
The Niagara Falls Company, in which Uncle Prudent was the largestshareholder, thought of suspending its business and turning off itscataracts. The Wheelton Watch Company thought of winding up itsmachinery, now it had lost its manager.
Nothing more was heard of the aeronef. July passed, and there was nonews. August ran its course, and the uncertainty on the subject ofRobur's prisoners was as great as ever. Had he, like Icarus, fallen avictim to his own temerity?
The first twenty-seven days of September went by without result, buton the 28th a rumor spread through Philadelphia that Uncle Prudentand Phil Evans had during the afternoon quietly walked into thepresident's house. And, what was more extraordinary, the rumor wastrue, although very few believed it.
They had, however, to give in to the evidence. There could be nodoubt these were the two men, and not their shadows. And Frycollinalso had come back! The members of the club, then their friends, thenthe crowd, swarmed into the president's house, and shook hands withthe president and secretary, and cheered them again and again. JemChip was there, having left his luncheon's joint of boiled lettuces,and William T. Forbes and his daughters, and all the members of theclub. It is a mystery how Uncle Prudent and Phil Evans emerged alivefrom the thousands who welcomed them.
On that evening was the weekly meeting of the Institute. It wasexpected that the colleagues would take their places at the desk. Asthey had said nothing of their adventures, it was thought they wouldthen speak, and relate the impressions of their voyage. But for somereason or other both were silent. And so also was Frycollin, whom hiscongeners in their delirium had failed to dismember.
But though the colleagues did not tell what had happened to them,that is no reason why we should not. We know what occurred on thenight of the 27th and 28th of July; the daring escape to the earth,the scramble among the rocks, the bullet fired at Phil Evans, the cutcable, and the "Albatross" deprived of her propellers, drifting offto the northeast at a great altitude. Her electric lamps rendered hervisible for some time. And then she disappeared.
The fugitives had little to fear. Now could Robur get back to theisland for three or four hours if his screws were out of gear? Bythat time the "Albatross" would have been destroyed by the explosion,and be no more than a wreck floating on the sea; those whom she borewould be mangled corpses, which the ocean would not even give upagain. The act of vengeance would be accomplished.
Uncle Prudent and Phil Evans looked upon it as an act of legitimateself-defence, and felt no remorse whatever. Evans was but slightlywounded by the rifle bullet, and the three made their way up from theshore in the hope of meeting some of the natives. The hope wasrealized. About fifty natives were living by fishing off the westerncoast. They had seen the aeronef descend on the island, and theywelcomed the fugitives as if they were supernatural beings. Theyworshipped them, we ought rather to say. They accommodated them inthe most comfortable of their huts.
As they had expected, Uncle Prudent and Phil Evans saw nothing moreof the aeronef. They concluded that the catastrophe had taken placein some high region of the atmosphere, and that they would hear nomore of Robur and his prodigious machine.
Meanwhile they had to wait for an opportunity of returning toAmerica. The Chatham Islands are not much visited by navigators, andall August passed without sign of a ship. The fugitives began to askthemselves if they had not exchanged one prison for another.
At last a ship came to water at the Chatham Islands. It will not havebeen forgotten that when Uncle Prudent was seized he had on himseveral thousand paper dollars, much more than would take him back toAmerica. After thanking their adorers, who were not sparing of theirmost respectful demonstrations, Uncle Prudent, Phil Evans, andFrycollin embarked for Auckland. They said nothing of theiradventures, and in two weeks landed in New Zealand.
At Auckland, a mail-boat took them on board as passengers, and aftera splendid passage the survivors of the "Albatross" stepped ashore atSan Francisco. They said nothing as to who they were or whence theyhad come, but as they had paid full price for their berths noAmerican captain would trouble them further. At San Francisco theytook the first train out on the Pacific Railway, and on the 27th ofSeptember, they arrived at Philadelphia, That is the compendioushistory of what had occurred since the escape of the fugitives. Andthat is why this very evening the president and secretary of theWeldon Institute took their seats amid a most extraordinaryattendance.
Never before had either of them been so calm. To look at them it didnot seem as though anything abnormal had happened since the memorablesitting of the 12th of June. Three months and a half had gone, andseemed to be counted as nothing. After the first round of cheers,which both received without showing the slightest emotion, UnclePrudent took off his hat and spoke.
"Worthy citizens," said he, "the meeting is now open."
Tremendous applause. And properly so, for if it was not extraordinarythat the meeting was open, it was extraordinary that it should beopened by Uncle Prudent and Phil Evans.
The president allowed the enthusiasm to subside in shouts andclappings; then he continued: "At our last meeting, gentlemen, thediscussion was somewhat animated--(hear, hear)--between thepartisans of the screw before and those of the screw behind for ourballoon the "Go-Ahead." (Marks of surprise.) We have found a way tobring the beforists and the behindists in agreement. That way is asfollows: we are going to use two screws, one at each end of thecar." Silence, and complete stupefaction.
That was all.
Yes, all! Of the kidnapping of the president and secretary of theWeldon Institute not a word! Not a word of the "Albatross" nor ofRobur! Not a word of the voyage! Not a word of the way in which theprisoners had escaped! Not a word of what had become of the aeronef,if it still flew through space, or if they were to be prepared fornew reprisals on the member's of the club!
Of course the balloonists were longing to ask Uncle Prudent and thesecretary about all these things, but they looked so close and soserious that they thought it best to respect their attitude. Whenthey thought fit to speak they would do so, and it would be an honorto hear. After all, there might be in all this some secret whichwould not yet be divulged.
And then Uncle Prudent, resuming his speech amid a silence up to thenunknown in the meetings of the Weldon Institute, said, "Gentlemen, itnow only remains for us to finish the aerostat 'Go-Ahead.' It is leftto her to effect the conquest of the air! The meeting is at an end!"