บทที่ บทที่ 22 · The Jet of Light.—The Missionary.—The Rescue in a Ray of Electricity.—A

. The Jet of Light.—The Missionary.—The Rescue in a Ray of Electricity.—A

Lazarist Priest.—But little Hope.—The Doctor’s Care.—A Life of

Self-Denial.—Passing a Volcano.

Dr. Ferguson darted his powerful electric jet toward various points of

space, and caused it to rest on a spot from which shouts of terror were

heard. His companions fixed their gaze eagerly on the place.

The baobab, over which the balloon was hanging almost motionless, stood

in the centre of a clearing, where, between fields of Indian-corn and

sugar-cane, were seen some fifty low, conical huts, around which

swarmed a numerous tribe.

A hundred feet below the balloon stood a large post, or stake, and at

its foot lay a human being—a young man of thirty years or more, with

long black hair, half naked, wasted and wan, bleeding, covered with

wounds, his head bowed over upon his breast, as Christ’s was, when He

hung upon the cross.

The hair, cut shorter on the top of his skull, still indicated the

place of a half-effaced tonsure.

“A missionary! a priest!” exclaimed Joe.

“Poor, unfortunate man!” said Kennedy.

“We must save him, Dick!” responded the doctor; “we must save him!”

The crowd of blacks, when they saw the balloon over their heads, like a

huge comet with a train of dazzling light, were seized with a terror

that may be readily imagined. Upon hearing their cries, the prisoner

raised his head. His eyes gleamed with sudden hope, and, without too

thoroughly comprehending what was taking place, he stretched out his

hands to his unexpected deliverers.

“He is alive!” exclaimed Ferguson. “God be praised! The savages have

got a fine scare, and we shall save him! Are you ready, friends?”

“Ready, doctor, at the word.”

“Joe, shut off the cylinder!”

The doctor’s order was executed. An almost imperceptible breath of air

impelled the balloon directly over the prisoner, at the same time that

it gently lowered with the contraction of the gas. For about ten

minutes it remained floating in the midst of luminous waves, for

Ferguson continued to flash right down upon the throng his glowing

sheaf of rays, which, here and there, marked out swift and vivid sheets

of light. The tribe, under the influence of an indescribable terror,

disappeared little by little in the huts, and there was complete

solitude around the stake. The doctor had, therefore, been right in

counting upon the fantastic appearance of the balloon throwing out

rays, as vivid as the sun’s, through this intense gloom.

The car was approaching the ground; but a few of the savages, more

audacious than the rest, guessing that their victim was about to escape

from their clutches, came back with loud yells, and Kennedy seized his

rifle. The doctor, however, besought him not to fire.

The priest, on his knees, for he had not the strength to stand erect,

was not even fastened to the stake, his weakness rendering that

precaution superfluous. At the instant when the car was close to the

ground, the brawny Scot, laying aside his rifle, and seizing the priest

around the waist, lifted him into the car, while, at the same moment,

Joe tossed over the two hundred pounds of ballast.

The doctor had expected to ascend rapidly, but, contrary to his

calculations, the balloon, after going up some three or four feet,

remained there perfectly motionless.

“What holds us?” he asked, with an accent of terror.

Some of the savages were running toward them, uttering ferocious cries.

“Ah, ha!” said Joe, “one of those cursed blacks is hanging to the car!”

“Dick! Dick!” cried the doctor, “the water-tank!”

Kennedy caught his friend’s idea on the instant, and, snatching up with

desperate strength one of the water-tanks weighing about one hundred

pounds, he tossed it overboard. The balloon, thus suddenly lightened,

made a leap of three hundred feet into the air, amid the howlings of

the tribe whose prisoner thus escaped them in a blaze of dazzling

light.

“Hurrah!” shouted the doctor’s comrades.

Suddenly, the balloon took a fresh leap, which carried it up to an

elevation of a thousand feet.

“What’s that?” said Kennedy, who had nearly lost his balance.

“Oh! nothing; only that black villain leaving us!” replied the doctor,

tranquilly, and Joe, leaning over, saw the savage that had clung to the

car whirling over and over, with his arms outstretched in the air, and

presently dashed to pieces on the ground. The doctor then separated his

electric wires, and every thing was again buried in profound obscurity.

It was now one o’clock in the morning.

The Frenchman, who had swooned away, at length opened his eyes.

“You are saved!” were the doctor’s first words.

“Saved!” he with a sad smile replied in English, “saved from a cruel

death! My brethren, I thank you, but my days are numbered, nay, even my

hours, and I have but little longer to live.”

With this, the missionary, again yielding to exhaustion, relapsed into

his fainting-fit.

“He is dying!” said Kennedy.

“No,” replied the doctor, bending over him, “but he is very weak; so

let us lay him under the awning.”

And they did gently deposit on their blankets that poor, wasted body,

covered with scars and wounds, still bleeding where fire and steel had,

in twenty places, left their agonizing marks. The doctor, taking an old

handkerchief, quickly prepared a little lint, which he spread over the

wounds, after having washed them. These rapid attentions were bestowed

with the celerity and skill of a practised surgeon, and, when they were

complete, the doctor, taking a cordial from his medicine-chest, poured

a few drops upon his patient’s lips.

The latter feebly pressed his kind hands, and scarcely had the strength

to say, “Thank you! thank you!”

The doctor comprehended that he must be left perfectly quiet; so he

closed the folds of the awning and resumed the guidance of the balloon.

The latter, after taking into account the weight of the new passenger,

had been lightened of one hundred and eighty pounds, and therefore kept

aloft without the aid of the cylinder. At the first dawn of day, a

current drove it gently toward the west-northwest. The doctor went in

under the awning for a moment or two, to look at his still sleeping

patient.

“May Heaven spare the life of our new companion! Have you any hope?”

said the Scot.

“Yes, Dick, with care, in this pure, fresh atmosphere.”

“How that man has suffered!” said Joe, with feeling. “He did bolder

things than we’ve done, in venturing all alone among those savage

tribes!”

“That cannot be questioned,” assented the hunter.

During the entire day the doctor would not allow the sleep of his

patient to be disturbed. It was really a long stupor, broken only by an

occasional murmur of pain that continued to disquiet and agitate the

doctor greatly.

Toward evening the balloon remained stationary in the midst of the

gloom, and during the night, while Kennedy and Joe relieved each other

in carefully tending the sick man, Ferguson kept watch over the safety

of all.

By the morning of the next day, the balloon had moved, but very

slightly, to the westward. The dawn came up pure and magnificent. The

sick man was able to call his friends with a stronger voice. They

raised the curtains of the awning, and he inhaled with delight the keen

morning air.

“How do you feel to-day?” asked the doctor.

“Better, perhaps,” he replied. “But you, my friends, I have not seen

you yet, excepting in a dream! I can, indeed, scarcely recall what has

occurred. Who are you—that your names may not be forgotten in my dying

prayers?”

“We are English travellers,” replied Ferguson. “We are trying to cross

Africa in a balloon, and, on our way, we have had the good fortune to

rescue you.”

“Science has its heroes,” said the missionary.

“But religion its martyrs!” rejoined the Scot.

“Are you a missionary?” asked the doctor.

“I am a priest of the Lazarist mission. Heaven sent you to me—Heaven be

praised! The sacrifice of my life had been accomplished! But you come

from Europe; tell me about Europe, about France! I have been without

news for the last five years!”

“Five years! alone! and among these savages!” exclaimed Kennedy with

amazement.

“They are souls to redeem! ignorant and barbarous brethren, whom

religion alone can instruct and civilize.”

Dr. Ferguson, yielding to the priest’s request, talked to him long and

fully about France. He listened eagerly, and his eyes filled with

tears. He seized Kennedy’s and Joe’s hands by turns in his own, which

were burning with fever. The doctor prepared him some tea, and he drank

it with satisfaction. After that, he had strength enough to raise

himself up a little, and smiled with pleasure at seeing himself borne

along through so pure a sky.

“You are daring travellers!” he said, “and you will succeed in your

bold enterprise. You will again behold your relatives, your friends,

your country—you—”

At this moment, the weakness of the young missionary became so extreme

that they had to lay him again on the bed, where a prostration, lasting

for several hours, held him like a dead man under the eye of Dr.

Ferguson. The latter could not suppress his emotion, for he felt that

this life now in his charge was ebbing away. Were they then so soon to

lose him whom they had snatched from an agonizing death? The doctor

again washed and dressed the young martyr’s frightful wounds, and had

to sacrifice nearly his whole stock of water to refresh his burning

limbs. He surrounded him with the tenderest and most intelligent care,

until, at length, the sick man revived, little by little, in his arms,

and recovered his consciousness if not his strength.

The doctor was able to gather something of his history from his broken

murmurs.

“Speak in your native language,” he said to the sufferer; “I understand

it, and it will fatigue you less.”

The missionary was a poor young man from the village of Aradon, in

Brittany, in the Morbihan country. His earliest instincts had drawn him

toward an ecclesiastical career, but to this life of self-sacrifice he

was also desirous of joining a life of danger, by entering the mission

of the order of priesthood of which St. Vincent de Paul was the

founder, and, at twenty, he quitted his country for the inhospitable

shores of Africa. From the sea-coast, overcoming obstacles, little by

little, braving all privations, pushing onward, afoot, and praying, he

had advanced to the very centre of those tribes that dwell among the

tributary streams of the Upper Nile. For two years his faith was

spurned, his zeal denied recognition, his charities taken in ill part,

and he remained a prisoner to one of the cruelest tribes of the

Nyambarra, the object of every species of maltreatment. But still he

went on teaching, instructing, and praying. The tribe having been

dispersed and he left for dead, in one of those combats which are so

frequent between the tribes, instead of retracing his steps, he

persisted in his evangelical mission. His most tranquil time was when

he was taken for a madman. Meanwhile, he had made himself familiar with

the idioms of the country, and he catechised in them. At length, during

two more long years, he traversed these barbarous regions, impelled by

that superhuman energy that comes from God. For a year past he had been

residing with that tribe of the Nyam-Nyams known as the _Barafri_, one

of the wildest and most ferocious of them all. The chief having died a

few days before our travellers appeared, his sudden death was

attributed to the missionary, and the tribe resolved to immolate him.

His sufferings had already continued for the space of forty hours, and,

as the doctor had supposed, he was to have perished in the blaze of the

noonday sun. When he heard the sound of fire-arms, nature got the best

of him, and he had cried out, “Help! help!” He then thought that he

must have been dreaming, when a voice, that seemed to come from the

sky, had uttered words of consolation.

“I have no regrets,” he said, “for the life that is passing away from

me; my life belongs to God!”

“Hope still!” said the doctor; “we are near you, and we will save you

now, as we saved you from the tortures of the stake.”

“I do not ask so much of Heaven,” said the priest, with resignation.

“Blessed be God for having vouchsafed to me the joy before I die of

having pressed your friendly hands, and having heard, once more, the

language of my country!”

The missionary here grew weak again, and the whole day went by between

hope and fear, Kennedy deeply moved, and Joe drawing his hand over his

eyes more than once when he thought that no one saw him.

The balloon made little progress, and the wind seemed as though

unwilling to jostle its precious burden.

Toward evening, Joe discovered a great light in the west. Under more

elevated latitudes, it might have been mistaken for an immense aurora

borealis, for the sky appeared on fire. The doctor very attentively

examined the phenomenon.

“It is, perhaps, only a volcano in full activity,” said he.

“But the wind is carrying us directly over it,” replied Kennedy.

“Very well, we shall cross it then at a safe height!” said the doctor.

Three hours later, the _Victoria_ was right among the mountains. Her

exact position was twenty-four degrees fifteen minutes east longitude,

and four degrees forty-two minutes north latitude, and four degrees

forty-two minutes north latitude. In front of her a volcanic crater was

pouring forth torrents of melted lava, and hurling masses of rock to an

enormous height. There were jets, too, of liquid fire that fell back in

dazzling cascades—a superb but dangerous spectacle, for the wind with

unswerving certainty was carrying the balloon directly toward this

blazing atmosphere.

This obstacle, which could not be turned, had to be crossed, so the

cylinder was put to its utmost power, and the balloon rose to the

height of six thousand feet, leaving between it and the volcano a space

of more than three hundred fathoms.

From his bed of suffering, the dying missionary could contemplate that

fiery crater from which a thousand jets of dazzling flame were that

moment escaping.

“How grand it is!” said he, “and how infinite is the power of God even

in its most terrible manifestations!”

This overflow of blazing lava wrapped the sides of the mountain with a

veritable drapery of flame; the lower half of the balloon glowed redly

in the upper night; a torrid heat ascended to the car, and Dr. Ferguson

made all possible haste to escape from this perilous situation.

By ten o’clock the volcano could be seen only as a red point on the

horizon, and the balloon tranquilly pursued her course in a less

elevated zone of the atmosphere.