Bab Bab 34 · The Hurricane.—A Forced Departure.—Loss of an Anchor.—Melancholy

. The Hurricane.—A Forced Departure.—Loss of an Anchor.—Melancholy

Reflections.—The Resolution adopted.—The Sand-Storm.—The Buried

Caravan.—A Contrary yet Favorable Wind.—The Return southward.—Kennedy

at his Post.

At three o’clock in the morning the wind was raging. It beat down with

such violence that the _Victoria_ could not stay near the ground

without danger. It was thrown almost flat over upon its side, and the

reeds chafed the silk so roughly that it seemed as though they would

tear it.

“We must be off, Dick,” said the doctor; “we cannot remain in this

situation.”

“But, doctor, what of Joe?”

“I am not likely to abandon him. No, indeed! and should the hurricane

carry me a thousand miles to the northward, I will return! But here we

are endangering the safety of all.”

“Must we go without him?” asked the Scot, with an accent of profound

grief.

“And do you think, then,” rejoined Ferguson, “that my heart does not

bleed like your own? Am I not merely obeying an imperious necessity?”

“I am entirely at your orders,” replied the hunter; “let us start!”

But their departure was surrounded with unusual difficulty. The anchor,

which had caught very deeply, resisted all their efforts to disengage

it; while the balloon, drawing in the opposite direction, increased its

tension. Kennedy could not get it free. Besides, in his present

position, the manœuvre had become a very perilous one, for the

_Victoria_ threatened to break away before he should be able to get

into the car again.

The doctor, unwilling to run such a risk, made his friend get into his

place, and resigned himself to the alternative of cutting the

anchor-rope. The _Victoria_ made one bound of three hundred feet into

the air, and took her route directly northward.

Ferguson had no other choice than to scud before the storm. He folded

his arms, and soon became absorbed in his own melancholy reflections.

After a few moments of profound silence, he turned to Kennedy, who sat

there no less taciturn.

“We have, perhaps, been tempting Providence,” said he; “it does not

belong to man to undertake such a journey!”—and a sigh of grief escaped

him as he spoke.

“It is but a few days,” replied the sportsman, “since we were

congratulating ourselves upon having escaped so many dangers! All three

of us were shaking hands!”

“Poor Joe! kindly and excellent disposition! brave and candid heart!

Dazzled for a moment by his sudden discovery of wealth, he willingly

sacrificed his treasures! And now, he is far from us; and the wind is

carrying us still farther away with resistless speed!”

“Come, doctor, admitting that he may have found refuge among the lake

tribes, can he not do as the travellers who visited them before us,

did;—like Denham, like Barth? Both of those men got back to their own

country.”

“Ah! my dear Dick! Joe doesn’t know one word of the language; he is

alone, and without resources. The travellers of whom you speak did not

attempt to go forward without sending many presents in advance of them

to the chiefs, and surrounded by an escort armed and trained for these

expeditions. Yet, they could not avoid sufferings of the worst

description! What, then, can you expect the fate of our companion to

be? It is horrible to think of, and this is one of the worst calamities

that it has ever been my lot to endure!”

“But, we’ll come back again, doctor!”

“Come back, Dick? Yes, if we have to abandon the balloon! if we should

be forced to return to Lake Tchad on foot, and put ourselves in

communication with the Sultan of Bornou! The Arabs cannot have retained

a disagreeable remembrance of the first Europeans.”

“I will follow you, doctor,” replied the hunter, with emphasis. “You

may count upon me! We would rather give up the idea of prosecuting this

journey than not return. Joe forgot himself for our sake; we will

sacrifice ourselves for his!”

This resolve revived some hope in the hearts of these two men; they

felt strong in the same inspiration. Ferguson forthwith set every thing

at work to get into a contrary current, that might bring him back again

to Lake Tchad; but this was impracticable at that moment, and even to

alight was out of the question on ground completely bare of trees, and

with such a hurricane blowing.

The _Victoria_ thus passed over the country of the Tibbous, crossed the

Belad el Djerid, a desert of briers that forms the border of the

Soudan, and advanced into the desert of sand streaked with the long

tracks of the many caravans that pass and repass there. The last line

of vegetation was speedily lost in the dim southern horizon, not far

from the principal oasis in this part of Africa, whose fifty wells are

shaded by magnificent trees; but it was impossible to stop. An Arab

encampment, tents of striped stuff, some camels, stretching out their

viper-like heads and necks along the sand, gave life to this solitude,

but the _Victoria_ sped by like a shooting-star, and in this way

traversed a distance of sixty miles in three hours, without Ferguson

being able to check or guide her course.

“We cannot halt, we cannot alight!” said the doctor; “not a tree, not

an inequality of the ground! Are we then to be driven clear across

Sahara? Surely, Heaven is indeed against us!”

He was uttering these words with a sort of despairing rage, when

suddenly he saw the desert sands rising aloft in the midst of a dense

cloud of dust, and go whirling through the air, impelled by opposing

currents.

Amid this tornado, an entire caravan, disorganized, broken, and

overthrown, was disappearing beneath an avalanche of sand. The camels,

flung pell-mell together, were uttering dull and pitiful groans; cries

and howls of despair were heard issuing from that dusty and stifling

cloud, and, from time to time, a parti-colored garment cut the chaos of

the scene with its vivid hues, and the moaning and shrieking sounded

over all, a terrible accompaniment to this spectacle of destruction.

Ere long the sand had accumulated in compact masses; and there, where

so recently stretched a level plain as far as the eye could see, rose

now a ridgy line of hillocks, still moving from beneath—the vast tomb

of an entire caravan!

The doctor and Kennedy, pallid with emotion, sat transfixed by this

fearful spectacle. They could no longer manage their balloon, which

went whirling round and round in contending currents, and refused to

obey the different dilations of the gas. Caught in these eddies of the

atmosphere, it spun about with a rapidity that made their heads reel,

while the car oscillated and swung to and fro violently at the same

time. The instruments suspended under the awning clattered together as

though they would be dashed to pieces; the pipes of the spiral bent to

and fro, threatening to break at every instant; and the water-tanks

jostled and jarred with tremendous din. Although but two feet apart,

our aëronauts could not hear each other speak, but with firmly-clinched

hands they clung convulsively to the cordage, and endeavored to steady

themselves against the fury of the tempest.

Kennedy, with his hair blown wildly about his face, looked on without

speaking; but the doctor had regained all his daring in the midst of

this deadly peril, and not a sign of his emotion was betrayed in his

countenance, even when, after a last violent twirl, the _Victoria_

stopped suddenly in the midst of a most unlooked-for calm; the north

wind had abruptly got the upper hand, and now drove her back with equal

rapidity over the route she had traversed in the morning.

“Whither are we going now?” cried Kennedy.

“Let us leave that to Providence, my dear Dick; I was wrong in doubting

it. It knows better than we, and here we are, returning to places that

we had expected never to see again!”

The surface of the country, which had looked so flat and level when

they were coming, now seemed tossed and uneven, like the ocean-billows

after a storm; a long succession of hillocks, that had scarcely settled

to their places yet, indented the desert; the wind blew furiously, and

the balloon fairly flew through the atmosphere.

The direction taken by our aëronauts differed somewhat from that of the

morning, and thus about nine o’clock, instead of finding themselves

again near the borders of Lake Tchad, they saw the desert still

stretching away before them.

Kennedy remarked the circumstance.

“It matters little,” replied the doctor, “the important point is to

return southward; we shall come across the towns of Bornou, Wouddie, or

Kouka, and I should not hesitate to halt there.”

“If you are satisfied, I am content,” replied the Scot, “but Heaven

grant that we may not be reduced to cross the desert, as those

unfortunate Arabs had to do! What we saw was frightful!”

“It often happens, Dick; these trips across the desert are far more

perilous than those across the ocean. The desert has all the dangers of

the sea, including the risk of being swallowed up, and added thereto

are unendurable fatigues and privations.”

“I think the wind shows some symptoms of moderating; the sand-dust is

less dense; the undulations of the surface are diminishing, and the sky

is growing clearer.”

“So much the better! We must now reconnoitre attentively with our

glasses, and take care not to omit a single point.”

“I will look out for that, doctor, and not a tree shall be seen without

my informing you of it.”

And, suiting the action to the word, Kennedy took his station,

spy-glass in hand, at the forward part of the car.