Chapter Chapter 26 · One Hundred and Thirteen Degrees.—The Doctor’s Reflections.—A Desperate

. One Hundred and Thirteen Degrees.—The Doctor’s Reflections.—A Desperate

Search.—The Cylinder goes out.—One Hundred and Twenty-two

Degrees.—Contemplation of the Desert.—A Night

Walk.—Solitude.—Debility.—Joe’s Prospects.—He gives himself One Day

more.

The distance made by the balloon during the preceding day did not

exceed ten miles, and, to keep it afloat, one hundred and sixty-two

cubic feet of gas had been consumed.

On Saturday morning the doctor again gave the signal for departure.

“The cylinder can work only six hours longer; and, if in that time we

shall not have found either a well or a spring of water, God alone

knows what will become of us!”

“Not much wind this morning, master,” said Joe; “but it will come up,

perhaps,” he added, suddenly remarking the doctor’s ill-concealed

depression.

Vain hope! The atmosphere was in a dead calm—one of those calms which

hold vessels captive in tropical seas. The heat had become intolerable;

and the thermometer, in the shade under the awning, indicated one

hundred and thirteen degrees.

Joe and Kennedy, reclining at full length near each other, tried, if

not in slumber, at least in torpor, to forget their situation, for

their forced inactivity gave them periods of leisure far from pleasant.

That man is to be pitied the most who cannot wean himself from gloomy

reflections by actual work, or some practical pursuit. But here there

was nothing to look after, nothing to undertake, and they had to submit

to the situation, without having it in their power to ameliorate it.

The pangs of thirst began to be severely felt; brandy, far from

appeasing this imperious necessity, augmented it, and richly merited

the name of “tiger’s milk” applied to it by the African natives.

Scarcely two pints of water remained, and that was heated. Each of the

party devoured the few precious drops with his gaze, yet neither of

them dared to moisten his lips with them. Two pints of water in the

midst of the desert!

Then it was that Dr. Ferguson, buried in meditation, asked himself

whether he had acted with prudence. Would he not have done better to

have kept the water that he had decomposed in pure loss, in order to

sustain him in the air? He had gained a little distance, to be sure;

but was he any nearer to his journey’s end? What difference did sixty

miles to the rear make in this region, when there was no water to be

had where they were? The wind, should it rise, would blow there as it

did here, only less strongly at this point, if it came from the east.

But hope urged him onward. And yet those two gallons of water, expended

in vain, would have sufficed for nine days’ halt in the desert. And

what changes might not have occurred in nine days! Perhaps, too, while

retaining the water, he might have ascended by throwing out ballast, at

the cost merely of discharging some gas, when he had again to descend.

But the gas in his balloon was his blood, his very life!

A thousand one such reflections whirled in succession through his

brain; and, resting his head between his hands, he sat there for hours

without raising it.

“We must make one final effort,” he said, at last, about ten o’clock in

the morning. “We must endeavor, just once more, to find an atmospheric

current to bear us away from here, and, to that end, must risk our last

resources.”

Therefore, while his companions slept, the doctor raised the hydrogen

in the balloon to an elevated temperature, and the huge globe, filling

out by the dilation of the gas, rose straight up in the perpendicular

rays of the sun. The doctor searched vainly for a breath of wind, from

the height of one hundred feet to that of five miles; his

starting-point remained fatally right below him, and absolute calm

seemed to reign, up to the extreme limits of the breathing atmosphere.

At length the feeding-supply of water gave out; the cylinder was

extinguished for lack of gas; the Buntzen battery ceased to work, and

the balloon, shrinking together, gently descended to the sand, in the

very place that the car had hollowed out there.

It was noon; and solar observations gave nineteen degrees thirty-five

minutes east longitude, and six degrees fifty-one minutes north

latitude, or nearly five hundred miles from Lake Tchad, and more than

four hundred miles from the western coast of Africa.

On the balloon taking ground, Kennedy and Joe awoke from their stupor.

“We have halted,” said the Scot.

“We had to do so,” replied the doctor, gravely.

His companions understood him. The level of the soil at that point

corresponded with the level of the sea, and, consequently, the balloon

remained in perfect equilibrium, and absolutely motionless.

The weight of the three travellers was replaced with an equivalent

quantity of sand, and they got out of the car. Each was absorbed in his

own thoughts; and for many hours neither of them spoke. Joe prepared

their evening meal, which consisted of biscuit and pemmican, and was

hardly tasted by either of the party. A mouthful of scalding water from

their little store completed this gloomy repast.

During the night none of them kept awake; yet none could be precisely

said to have slept. On the morrow there remained only half a pint of

water, and this the doctor put away, all three having resolved not to

touch it until the last extremity.

It was not long, however, before Joe exclaimed:

“I’m choking, and the heat is getting worse! I’m not surprised at that,

though,” he added, consulting the thermometer; “one hundred and forty

degrees!”

“The sand scorches me,” said the hunter, “as though it had just come

out of a furnace; and not a cloud in this sky of fire. It’s enough to

drive one mad!”

“Let us not despair,” responded the doctor. “In this latitude these

intense heats are invariably followed by storms, and the latter come

with the suddenness of lightning. Notwithstanding this disheartening

clearness of the sky, great atmospheric changes may take place in less

than an hour.”

“But,” asked Kennedy, “is there any sign whatever of that?”

“Well,” replied the doctor, “I think that there is some slight symptom

of a fall in the barometer.”

“May Heaven hearken to you, Samuel! for here we are pinned to the

ground, like a bird with broken wings.”

“With this difference, however, my dear Dick, that our wings are

unhurt, and I hope that we shall be able to use them again.”

“Ah! wind! wind!” exclaimed Joe; “enough to carry us to a stream or a

well, and we’ll be all right. We have provisions enough, and, with

water, we could wait a month without suffering; but thirst is a cruel

thing!”

It was not thirst alone, but the unchanging sight of the desert, that

fatigued the mind. There was not a variation in the surface of the

soil, not a hillock of sand, not a pebble, to relieve the gaze. This

unbroken level discouraged the beholder, and gave him that kind of

malady called the “desert-sickness.” The impassible monotony of the

arid blue sky, and the vast yellow expanse of the desert-sand, at

length produced a sensation of terror. In this inflamed atmosphere the

heat appeared to vibrate as it does above a blazing hearth, while the

mind grew desperate in contemplating the limitless calm, and could see

no reason why the thing should ever end, since immensity is a species

of eternity.

Thus, at last, our hapless travellers, deprived of water in this torrid

heat, began to feel symptoms of mental disorder. Their eyes swelled in

their sockets, and their gaze became confused.

When night came on, the doctor determined to combat this alarming

tendency by rapid walking. His idea was to pace the sandy plain for a

few hours, not in search of any thing, but simply for exercise.

“Come along!” he said to his companions; “believe me, it will do you

good.”

“Out of the question!” said Kennedy; “I could not walk a step.”

“And I,” said Joe, “would rather sleep!”

“But sleep, or even rest, would be dangerous to you, my friends; you

must react against this tendency to stupor. Come with me!”

But the doctor could do nothing with them, and, therefore, set off

alone, amid the starry clearness of the night. The first few steps he

took were painful, for they were the steps of an enfeebled man quite

out of practice in walking. However, he quickly saw that the exercise

would be beneficial to him, and pushed on several miles to the

westward. Once in rapid motion, he felt his spirits greatly cheered,

when, suddenly, a vertigo came over him; he seemed to be poised on the

edge of an abyss; his knees bent under him; the vast solitude struck

terror to his heart; he found himself the minute mathematical point,

the centre of an infinite circumference, that is to say—a nothing! The

balloon had disappeared entirely in the deepening gloom. The doctor,

cool, impassible, reckless explorer that he was, felt himself at last

seized with a nameless dread. He strove to retrace his steps, but in

vain. He called aloud. Not even an echo replied, and his voice died out

in the empty vastness of surrounding space, like a pebble cast into a

bottomless gulf; then, down he sank, fainting, on the sand, alone, amid

the eternal silence of the desert.

At midnight he came to, in the arms of his faithful follower, Joe. The

latter, uneasy at his master’s prolonged absence, had set out after

him, easily tracing him by the clear imprint of his feet in the sand,

and had found him lying in a swoon.

“What has been the matter, sir?” was the first inquiry.

“Nothing, Joe, nothing! Only a touch of weakness, that’s all. It’s over

now.”

“Oh! it won’t amount to any thing, sir, I’m sure of that; but get up on

your feet, if you can. There! lean upon me, and let us get back to the

balloon.”

And the doctor, leaning on Joe’s arm, returned along the track by which

he had come.

“You were too bold, sir; it won’t do to run such risks. You might have

been robbed,” he added, laughing. “But, sir, come now, let us talk

seriously.”

“Speak! I am listening to you.”

“We must positively make up our minds to do something. Our present

situation cannot last more than a few days longer, and if we get no

wind, we are lost.”

The doctor made no reply.

“Well, then, one of us must sacrifice himself for the good of all, and

it is most natural that it should fall to me to do so.”

“What have you to propose? What is your plan?”

“A very simple one! It is to take provisions enough, and to walk right

on until I come to some place, as I must do, sooner or later. In the

mean time, if Heaven sends you a good wind, you need not wait, but can

start again. For my part, if I come to a village, I’ll work my way

through with a few Arabic words that you can write for me on a slip of

paper, and I’ll bring you help or lose my hide. What do you think of my

plan?”

“It is absolute folly, Joe, but worthy of your noble heart. The thing

is impossible. You will not leave us.”

“But, sir, we must do something, and this plan can’t do you any harm,

for, I say again, you need not wait; and then, after all, I may

succeed.”

“No, Joe, no! We will not separate. That would only be adding sorrow to

trouble. It was written that matters should be as they are; and it is

very probably written that it shall be quite otherwise by-and-by. Let

us wait, then, with resignation.”

“So be it, master; but take notice of one thing: I give you a day

longer, and I’ll not wait after that. To-day is Sunday; we might say

Monday, as it is one o’clock in the morning, and if we don’t get off by

Tuesday, I’ll run the risk. I’ve made up my mind to that!”

The doctor made no answer, and in a few minutes they got back to the

car, where he took his place beside Kennedy, who lay there plunged in

silence so complete that it could not be considered sleep.