第 十六 章 · Symptoms of a Storm.—The Country of the Moon.—The Future of the African

. Symptoms of a Storm.—The Country of the Moon.—The Future of the African

Continent.—The Last Machine of all.—A View of the Country at

Sunset.—Flora and Fauna.—The Tempest.—The Zone of Fire.—The Starry

Heavens.

“See,” said Joe, “what comes of playing the sons of the moon without

her leave! She came near serving us an ugly trick. But say, master, did

you damage your credit as a physician?”

“Yes, indeed,” chimed in the sportsman. “What kind of a dignitary was

this Sultan of Kazeh?”

“An old half-dead sot,” replied the doctor, “whose loss will not be

very severely felt. But the moral of all this is that honors are

fleeting, and we must not take too great a fancy to them.”

“So much the worse!” rejoined Joe. “I liked the thing—to be

worshipped!—Play the god as you like! Why, what would any one ask more

than that? By-the-way, the moon did come up, too, and all red, as if

she was in a rage.”

While the three friends went on chatting of this and other things, and

Joe examined the luminary of night from an entirely novel point of

view, the heavens became covered with heavy clouds to the northward,

and the lowering masses assumed a most sinister and threatening look.

Quite a smart breeze, found about three hundred feet from the earth,

drove the balloon toward the north-northeast; and above it the blue

vault was clear; but the atmosphere felt close and dull.

The aëronauts found themselves, at about eight in the evening, in

thirty-two degrees forty minutes east longitude, and four degrees

seventeen minutes latitude. The atmospheric currents, under the

influence of a tempest not far off, were driving them at the rate of

from thirty to thirty-five miles an hour; the undulating and fertile

plains of Mfuto were passing swiftly beneath them. The spectacle was

one worthy of admiration—and admire it they did.

“We are now right in the country of the Moon,” said Dr. Ferguson; “for

it has retained the name that antiquity gave it, undoubtedly, because

the moon has been worshipped there in all ages. It is, really, a superb

country.”

“It would be hard to find more splendid vegetation.”

“If we found the like of it around London it would not be natural, but

it would be very pleasant,” put in Joe. “Why is it that such savage

countries get all these fine things?”

“And who knows,” said the doctor, “that this country may not, one day,

become the centre of civilization? The races of the future may repair

hither, when Europe shall have become exhausted in the effort to feed

her inhabitants.”

“Do you think so, really?” asked Kennedy.

“Undoubtedly, my dear Dick. Just note the progress of events: consider

the migrations of races, and you will arrive at the same conclusion

assuredly. Asia was the first nurse of the world, was she not? For

about four thousand years she travailed, she grew pregnant, she

produced, and then, when stones began to cover the soil where the

golden harvests sung by Homer had flourished, her children abandoned

her exhausted and barren bosom. You next see them precipitating

themselves upon young and vigorous Europe, which has nourished them for

the last two thousand years. But already her fertility is beginning to

die out; her productive powers are diminishing every day. Those new

diseases that annually attack the products of the soil, those defective

crops, those insufficient resources, are all signs of a vitality that

is rapidly wearing out and of an approaching exhaustion. Thus, we

already see the millions rushing to the luxuriant bosom of America, as

a source of help, not inexhaustible indeed, but not yet exhausted. In

its turn, that new continent will grow old; its virgin forests will

fall before the axe of industry, and its soil will become weak through

having too fully produced what had been demanded of it. Where two

harvests bloomed every year, hardly one will be gathered from a soil

completely drained of its strength. Then, Africa will be there to offer

to new races the treasures that for centuries have been accumulating in

her breast. Those climates now so fatal to strangers will be purified

by cultivation and by drainage of the soil, and those scattered water

supplies will be gathered into one common bed to form an artery of

navigation. Then this country over which we are now passing, more

fertile, richer, and fuller of vitality than the rest, will become some

grand realm where more astonishing discoveries than steam and

electricity will be brought to light.”

“Ah! sir,” said Joe, “I’d like to see all that.”

“You got up too early in the morning, my boy!”

“Besides,” said Kennedy, “that may prove to be a very dull period when

industry will swallow up every thing for its own profit. By dint of

inventing machinery, men will end in being eaten up by it! I have

always fancied that the end of the earth will be when some enormous

boiler, heated to three thousand millions of atmospheric pressure,

shall explode and blow up our Globe!”

“And I add that the Americans,” said Joe, “will not have been the last

to work at the machine!”

“In fact,” assented the doctor, “they are great boiler-makers! But,

without allowing ourselves to be carried away by such speculations, let

us rest content with enjoying the beauties of this country of the Moon,

since we have been permitted to see it.”

The sun, darting his last rays beneath the masses of heaped-up cloud,

adorned with a crest of gold the slightest inequalities of the ground

below; gigantic trees, arborescent bushes, mosses on the even

surface—all had their share of this luminous effulgence. The soil,

slightly undulating, here and there rose into little conical hills;

there were no mountains visible on the horizon; immense brambly

palisades, impenetrable hedges of thorny jungle, separated the

clearings dotted with numerous villages, and immense euphorbiae

surrounded them with natural fortifications, interlacing their trunks

with the coral-shaped branches of the shrubbery and undergrowth.

Ere long, the Malagazeri, the chief tributary of Lake Tanganayika, was

seen winding between heavy thickets of verdure, offering an asylum to

many water-courses that spring from the torrents formed in the season

of freshets, or from ponds hollowed in the clayey soil. To observers

looking from a height, it was a chain of waterfalls thrown across the

whole western face of the country.

Animals with huge humps were feeding in the luxuriant prairies, and

were half hidden, sometimes, in the tall grass; spreading forests in

bloom redolent of spicy perfumes presented themselves to the gaze like

immense bouquets; but, in these bouquets, lions, leopards, hyenas, and

tigers, were then crouching for shelter from the last hot rays of the

setting sun. From time to time, an elephant made the tall tops of the

undergrowth sway to and fro, and you could hear the crackling of huge

branches as his ponderous ivory tusks broke them in his way.

“What a sporting country!” exclaimed Dick, unable longer to restrain

his enthusiasm; “why, a single ball fired at random into those forests

would bring down game worthy of it. Suppose we try it once!”

“No, my dear Dick; the night is close at hand—a threatening night with

a tempest in the background—and the storms are awful in this country,

where the heated soil is like one vast electric battery.”

“You are right, sir,” said Joe, “the heat has got to be enough to choke

one, and the breeze has died away. One can feel that something’s

coming.”

“The atmosphere is saturated with electricity,” replied the doctor;

“every living creature is sensible that this state of the air portends

a struggle of the elements, and I confess that I never before was so

full of the fluid myself.”

“Well, then,” suggested Dick, “would it not be advisable to alight?”

“On the contrary, Dick, I’d rather go up, only that I am afraid of

being carried out of my course by these counter-currents contending in

the atmosphere.”

“Have you any idea, then, of abandoning the route that we have followed

since we left the coast?”

“If I can manage to do so,” replied the doctor, “I will turn more

directly northward, by from seven to eight degrees; I shall then

endeavor to ascend toward the presumed latitudes of the sources of the

Nile; perhaps we may discover some traces of Captain Speke’s expedition

or of M. de Heuglin’s caravan. Unless I am mistaken, we are at

thirty-two degrees forty minutes east longitude, and I should like to

ascend directly north of the equator.”

“Look there!” exclaimed Kennedy, suddenly, “see those hippopotami

sliding out of the pools—those masses of blood-colored flesh—and those

crocodiles snuffing the air aloud!”

“They’re choking!” ejaculated Joe. “Ah! what a fine way to travel this

is; and how one can snap his fingers at all that vermin!—Doctor! Mr.

Kennedy! see those packs of wild animals hurrying along close together.

There are fully two hundred. Those are wolves.”

“No! Joe, not wolves, but wild dogs; a famous breed that does not

hesitate to attack the lion himself. They are the worst customers a

traveller could meet, for they would instantly tear him to pieces.”

“Well, it isn’t Joe that’ll undertake to muzzle them!” responded that

amiable youth. “After all, though, if that’s the nature of the beast,

we mustn’t be too hard on them for it!”

Silence gradually settled down under the influence of the impending

storm: the thickened air actually seemed no longer adapted to the

transmission of sound; the atmosphere appeared _muffled_, and, like a

room hung with tapestry, lost all its sonorous reverberation. The

“rover bird” so-called, the coroneted crane, the red and blue jays, the

mocking-bird, the flycatcher, disappeared among the foliage of the

immense trees, and all nature revealed symptoms of some approaching

catastrophe.

At nine o’clock the _Victoria_ hung motionless over Msene, an extensive

group of villages scarcely distinguishable in the gloom. Once in a

while, the reflection of a wandering ray of light in the dull water

disclosed a succession of ditches regularly arranged, and, by one last

gleam, the eye could make out the calm and sombre forms of palm-trees,

sycamores, and gigantic euphorbiae.

“I am stifling!” said the Scot, inhaling, with all the power of his

lungs, as much as possible of the rarefied air. “We are not moving an

inch! Let us descend!”

“But the tempest!” said the doctor, with much uneasiness.

“If you are afraid of being carried away by the wind, it seems to me

that there is no other course to pursue.”

“Perhaps the storm won’t burst to-night,” said Joe; “the clouds are

very high.”

“That is just the thing that makes me hesitate about going beyond them;

we should have to rise still higher, lose sight of the earth, and not

know all night whether we were moving forward or not, or in what

direction we were going.”

“Make up your mind, dear doctor, for time presses!”

“It’s a pity that the wind has fallen,” said Joe, again; “it would have

carried us clear of the storm.”

“It is, indeed, a pity, my friends,” rejoined the doctor. “The clouds

are dangerous for us; they contain opposing currents which might catch

us in their eddies, and lightnings that might set on fire. Again, those

perils avoided, the force of the tempest might hurl us to the ground,

were we to cast our anchor in the tree-tops.”

“Then what shall we do?”

“Well, we must try to get the balloon into a medium zone of the

atmosphere, and there keep her suspended between the perils of the

heavens and those of the earth. We have enough water for the cylinder,

and our two hundred pounds of ballast are untouched. In case of

emergency I can use them.”

“We will keep watch with you,” said the hunter.

“No, my friends, put the provisions under shelter, and lie down; I will

rouse you, if it becomes necessary.”

“But, master, wouldn’t you do well to take some rest yourself, as

there’s no danger close on us just now?” insisted poor Joe.

“No, thank you, my good fellow, I prefer to keep awake. We are not

moving, and should circumstances not change, we’ll find ourselves

to-morrow in exactly the same place.”

“Good-night, then, sir!”

“Good-night, if you can only find it so!”

Kennedy and Joe stretched themselves out under their blankets, and the

doctor remained alone in the immensity of space.

However, the huge dome of clouds visibly descended, and the darkness

became profound. The black vault closed in upon the earth as if to

crush it in its embrace.

All at once a violent, rapid, incisive flash of lightning pierced the

gloom, and the rent it made had not closed ere a frightful clap of

thunder shook the celestial depths.

“Up! up! turn out!” shouted Ferguson.

The two sleepers, aroused by the terrible concussion, were at the

doctor’s orders in a moment.

“Shall we descend?” said Kennedy.

“No! the balloon could not stand it. Let us go up before those clouds

dissolve in water, and the wind is let loose!” and, so saying, the

doctor actively stirred up the flame of the cylinder, and turned it on

the spirals of the serpentine siphon.

The tempests of the tropics develop with a rapidity equalled only by

their violence. A second flash of lightning rent the darkness, and was

followed by a score of others in quick succession. The sky was crossed

and dotted, like the zebra’s hide, with electric sparks, which danced

and flickered beneath the great drops of rain.

“We have delayed too long,” exclaimed the doctor; “we must now pass

through a zone of fire, with our balloon filled as it is with

inflammable gas!”

“But let us descend, then! let us descend!” urged Kennedy.

“The risk of being struck would be just about even, and we should soon

be torn to pieces by the branches of the trees!”

“We are going up, doctor!”

“Quicker, quicker still!”

In this part of Africa, during the equatorial storms, it is not rare to

count from thirty to thirty-five flashes of lightning per minute. The

sky is literally on fire, and the crashes of thunder are continuous.

The wind burst forth with frightful violence in this burning

atmosphere; it twisted the blazing clouds; one might have compared it

to the breath of some gigantic bellows, fanning all this conflagration.

Dr. Ferguson kept his cylinder at full heat, and the balloon dilated

and went up, while Kennedy, on his knees, held together the curtains of

the awning. The balloon whirled round wildly enough to make their heads

turn, and the aëronauts got some very alarming jolts, indeed, as their

machine swung and swayed in all directions. Huge cavities would form in

the silk of the balloon as the wind fiercely bent it in, and the stuff

fairly cracked like a pistol as it flew back from the pressure. A sort

of hail, preceded by a rumbling noise, hissed through the air and

rattled on the covering of the _Victoria_. The latter, however,

continued to ascend, while the lightning described tangents to the

convexity of her circumference; but she bore on, right through the

midst of the fire.

“God protect us!” said Dr. Ferguson, solemnly, “we are in His hands; He

alone can save us—but let us be ready for every event, even for

fire—our fall could not be very rapid.”

The doctor’s voice could scarcely be heard by his companions; but they

could see his countenance calm as ever even amid the flashing of the

lightnings; he was watching the phenomena of phosphorescence produced

by the fires of St. Elmo, that were now skipping to and fro along the

network of the balloon.

The latter whirled and swung, but steadily ascended, and, ere the hour

was over, it had passed the stormy belt. The electric display was going

on below it like a vast crown of artificial fireworks suspended from

the car.

Then they enjoyed one of the grandest spectacles that Nature can offer

to the gaze of man. Below them, the tempest; above them, the starry

firmament, tranquil, mute, impassible, with the moon projecting her

peaceful rays over these angry clouds.

Dr. Ferguson consulted the barometer; it announced twelve thousand feet

of elevation. It was then eleven o’clock at night.

“Thank Heaven, all danger is past; all we have to do now, is, to keep

ourselves at this height,” said the doctor.

“It was frightful!” remarked Kennedy.

“Oh!” said Joe, “it gives a little variety to the trip, and I’m not

sorry to have seen a storm from a trifling distance up in the air. It’s

a fine sight!”