Chương Chương 24 · The Wind dies away.—The Vicinity of the Desert.—The Mistake in the

. The Wind dies away.—The Vicinity of the Desert.—The Mistake in the

Water-Supply.—The Nights of the Equator.—Dr. Ferguson’s Anxieties.—The

Situation flatly stated.—Energetic Replies of Kennedy and Joe.—One

Night more.

The balloon, having been made fast to a solitary tree, almost

completely dried up by the aridity of the region in which it stood,

passed the night in perfect quietness; and the travellers were enabled

to enjoy a little of the repose which they so greatly needed. The

emotions of the day had left sad impressions on their minds.

Toward morning, the sky had resumed its brilliant purity and its heat.

The balloon ascended, and, after several ineffectual attempts, fell

into a current that, although not rapid, bore them toward the

northwest.

“We are not making progress,” said the doctor. “If I am not mistaken,

we have accomplished nearly half of our journey in ten days; but, at

the rate at which we are going, it would take months to end it; and

that is all the more vexatious, that we are threatened with a lack of

water.”

“But we’ll find some,” said Joe. “It is not to be thought of that we

shouldn’t discover some river, some stream, or pond, in all this vast

extent of country.”

“I hope so.”

“Now don’t you think that it’s Joe’s cargo of stone that is keeping us

back?”

Kennedy asked this question only to tease Joe; and he did so the more

willingly because he had, for a moment, shared the poor lad’s

hallucinations; but, not finding any thing in them, he had fallen back

into the attitude of a strong-minded looker-on, and turned the affair

off with a laugh.

Joe cast a mournful glance at him; but the doctor made no reply. He was

thinking, not without secret terror, probably, of the vast solitudes of

Sahara—for there whole weeks sometimes pass without the caravans

meeting with a single spring of water. Occupied with these thoughts, he

scrutinized every depression of the soil with the closest attention.

These anxieties, and the incidents recently occurring, had not been

without their effect upon the spirits of our three travellers. They

conversed less, and were more wrapt in their own thoughts.

Joe, clever lad as he was, seemed no longer the same person since his

gaze had plunged into that ocean of gold. He kept entirely silent, and

gazed incessantly upon the stony fragments heaped up in the

car—worthless to-day, but of inestimable value to-morrow.

The appearance of this part of Africa was, moreover, quite calculated

to inspire alarm: the desert was gradually expanding around them; not

another village was to be seen—not even a collection of a few huts; and

vegetation also was disappearing. Barely a few dwarf plants could now

be noticed, like those on the wild heaths of Scotland; then came the

first tract of grayish sand and flint, with here and there a lentisk

tree and brambles. In the midst of this sterility, the rudimental

carcass of the Globe appeared in ridges of sharply-jutting rock. These

symptoms of a totally dry and barren region greatly disquieted Dr.

Ferguson.

It seemed as though no caravan had ever braved this desert expanse, or

it would have left visible traces of its encampments, or the whitened

bones of men and animals. But nothing of the kind was to be seen, and

the aëronauts felt that, ere long, an immensity of sand would cover the

whole of this desolate region.

However, there was no going back; they must go forward; and, indeed,

the doctor asked for nothing better; he would even have welcomed a

tempest to carry him beyond this country. But, there was not a cloud in

the sky. At the close of the day, the balloon had not made thirty

miles.

If there had been no lack of water! But, there remained only three

gallons in all! The doctor put aside one gallon, destined to quench the

burning thirst that a heat of ninety degrees rendered intolerable. Two

gallons only then remained to supply the cylinder. Hence, they could

produce no more than four hundred and eighty cubic feet of gas; yet the

cylinder consumed about nine cubic feet per hour. Consequently, they

could not keep on longer than fifty-four hours—and all this was a

mathematical calculation!

“Fifty-four hours!” said the doctor to his companions. “Therefore, as I

am determined not to travel by night, for fear of passing some stream

or pool, we have but three days and a half of journeying during which

we must find water, at all hazards. I have thought it my duty to make

you aware of the real state of the case, as I have retained only one

gallon for drinking, and we shall have to put ourselves on the shortest

allowance.”

“Put us on short allowance, then, doctor,” responded Kennedy, “but we

must not despair. We have three days left, you say?”

“Yes, my dear Dick!”

“Well, as grieving over the matter won’t help us, in three days there

will be time enough to decide upon what is to be done; in the

meanwhile, let us redouble our vigilance!”

At their evening meal, the water was strictly measured out, and the

brandy was increased in quantity in the punch they drank. But they had

to be careful with the spirits, the latter being more likely to produce

than to quench thirst.

The car rested, during the night, upon an immense plateau, in which

there was a deep hollow; its height was scarcely eight hundred feet

above the level of the sea. This circumstance gave the doctor some

hope, since it recalled to his mind the conjectures of geographers

concerning the existence of a vast stretch of water in the centre of

Africa. But, if such a lake really existed, the point was to reach it,

and not a sign of change was visible in the motionless sky.

To the tranquil night and its starry magnificence succeeded the

unchanging daylight and the blazing rays of the sun; and, from the

earliest dawn, the temperature became scorching. At five o’clock in the

morning, the doctor gave the signal for departure, and, for a

considerable time, the balloon remained immovable in the leaden

atmosphere.

The doctor might have escaped this intense heat by rising into a higher

range, but, in order to do so, he would have had to consume a large

quantity of water, a thing that had now become impossible. He contented

himself, therefore, with keeping the balloon at one hundred feet from

the ground, and, at that elevation, a feeble current drove it toward

the western horizon.

The breakfast consisted of a little dried meat and pemmican. By noon,

the _Victoria_ had advanced only a few miles.

“We cannot go any faster,” said the doctor; “we no longer command—we

have to obey.”

“Ah! doctor, here is one of those occasions when a propeller would not

be a thing to be despised.”

“Undoubtedly so, Dick, provided it would not require an expenditure of

water to put it in motion, for, in that case, the situation would be

precisely the same; moreover, up to this time, nothing practical of the

sort has been invented. Balloons are still at that point where ships

were before the invention of steam. It took six thousand years to

invent propellers and screws; so we have time enough yet.”

“Confounded heat!” said Joe, wiping away the perspiration that was

streaming from his forehead.

“If we had water, this heat would be of service to us, for it dilates

the hydrogen in the balloon, and diminishes the amount required in the

spiral, although it is true that, if we were not short of the useful

liquid, we should not have to economize it. Ah! that rascally savage

who cost us the tank!”[3]

[3] The water-tank had been thrown overboard when the native clung to

the car.

“You don’t regret, though, what you did, doctor?”

“No, Dick, since it was in our power to save that unfortunate

missionary from a horrible death. But, the hundred pounds of water that

we threw overboard would be very useful to us now; it would be thirteen

or fourteen days more of progress secured, or quite enough to carry us

over this desert.”

“We’ve made at least half the journey, haven’t we?” asked Joe.

“In distance, yes; but in duration, no, should the wind leave us; and

it, even now, has a tendency to die away altogether.”

“Come, sir,” said Joe, again, “we must not complain; we’ve got along

pretty well, thus far, and whatever happens to me, I can’t get

desperate. We’ll find water; mind, I tell you so.”

The soil, however, ran lower from mile to mile; the undulations of the

gold-bearing mountains they had left died away into the plain, like the

last throes of exhausted Nature. Scanty grass took the place of the

fine trees of the east; only a few belts of half-scorched herbage still

contended against the invasion of the sand, and the huge rocks, that

had rolled down from the distant summits, crushed in their fall, had

scattered in sharp-edged pebbles which soon again became coarse sand,

and finally impalpable dust.

“Here, at last, is Africa, such as you pictured it to yourself, Joe!

Was I not right in saying, ‘Wait a little?’ eh?”

“Well, master, it’s all natural, at least—heat and dust. It would be

foolish to look for any thing else in such a country. Do you see,” he

added, laughing, “I had no confidence, for my part, in your forests and

your prairies; they were out of reason. What was the use of coming so

far to find scenery just like England? Here’s the first time that I

believe in Africa, and I’m not sorry to get a taste of it.”

Toward evening, the doctor calculated that the balloon had not made

twenty miles during that whole burning day, and a heated gloom closed

in upon it, as soon as the sun had disappeared behind the horizon,

which was traced against the sky with all the precision of a straight

line.

The next day was Thursday, the 1st of May, but the days followed each

other with desperate monotony. Each morning was like the one that had

preceded it; noon poured down the same exhaustless rays, and night

condensed in its shadow the scattered heat which the ensuing day would

again bequeath to the succeeding night. The wind, now scarcely

observable, was rather a gasp than a breath, and the morning could

almost be foreseen when even that gasp would cease.

The doctor reacted against the gloominess of the situation and retained

all the coolness and self-possession of a disciplined heart. With his

glass he scrutinized every quarter of the horizon; he saw the last

rising ground gradually melting to the dead level, and the last

vegetation disappearing, while, before him, stretched the immensity of

the desert.

The responsibility resting upon him pressed sorely, but he did not

allow his disquiet to appear. Those two men, Dick and Joe, friends of

his, both of them, he had induced to come with him almost by the force

alone of friendship and of duty. Had he done well in that? Was it not

like attempting to tread forbidden paths? Was he not, in this trip,

trying to pass the borders of the impossible? Had not the Almighty

reserved for later ages the knowledge of this inhospitable continent?

All these thoughts, of the kind that arise in hours of discouragement,

succeeded each other and multiplied in his mind, and, by an

irresistible association of ideas, the doctor allowed himself to be

carried beyond the bounds of logic and of reason. After having

established in his own mind what he should _not_ have done, the next

question was, what he should do, then. Would it be impossible to

retrace his steps? Were there not currents higher up that would waft

him to less arid regions? Well informed with regard to the countries

over which he had passed, he was utterly ignorant of those to come, and

thus his conscience speaking aloud to him, he resolved, in his turn, to

speak frankly to his two companions. He thereupon laid the whole state

of the case plainly before them; he showed them what had been done, and

what there was yet to do; at the worst, they could return, or attempt

it, at least.—What did they think about it?

“I have no other opinion than that of my excellent master,” said Joe;

“what he may have to suffer, I can suffer, and that better than he can,

perhaps. Where he goes, there I’ll go!”

“And you, Kennedy?”

“I, doctor, I’m not the man to despair; no one was less ignorant than I

of the perils of the enterprise, but I did not want to see them, from

the moment that you determined to brave them. Under present

circumstances, my opinion is, that we should persevere—go clear to the

end. Besides, to return looks to me quite as perilous as the other

course. So onward, then! you may count upon us!”

“Thanks, my gallant friends!” replied the doctor, with much real

feeling, “I expected such devotion as this; but I needed these

encouraging words. Yet, once again, thank you, from the bottom of my

heart!”

And, with this, the three friends warmly grasped each other by the

hand.

“Now, hear me!” said the doctor. “According to my solar observations,

we are not more than three hundred miles from the Gulf of Guinea; the

desert, therefore, cannot extend indefinitely, since the coast is

inhabited, and the country has been explored for some distance back

into the interior. If needs be, we can direct our course to that

quarter, and it seems out of the question that we should not come

across some oasis, or some well, where we could replenish our stock of

water. But, what we want now, is the wind, for without it we are held

here suspended in the air at a dead calm.

“Let us wait with resignation,” said the hunter.

But, each of the party, in his turn, vainly scanned the space around

him during that long wearisome day. Nothing could be seen to form the

basis of a hope. The very last inequalities of the soil disappeared

with the setting sun, whose horizontal rays stretched in long lines of

fire over the flat immensity. It was the Desert!

Our aëronauts had scarcely gone a distance of fifteen miles, having

expended, as on the preceding day, one hundred and thirty-five cubic

feet of gas to feed the cylinder, and two pints of water out of the

remaining eight had been sacrificed to the demands of intense thirst.

The night passed quietly—too quietly, indeed, but the doctor did not

sleep!