Five Weeks in a Balloon
enough to quench the thirst of his party. Therefore he determined to
lose no opportunity of replenishing his supply.
Upon getting back to the car, he found it burdened with the
quartz-blocks that Joe’s greed had heaped in it. He got in, however,
without saying any thing. Kennedy took his customary place, and Joe
followed, but not without casting a covetous glance at the treasures in
the ravine.
The doctor rekindled the light in the cylinder; the spiral became
heated; the current of hydrogen came in a few minutes, and the gas
dilated; but the balloon did not stir an inch.
Joe looked on uneasily, but kept silent.
“Joe!” said the doctor.
Joe made no reply.
“Joe! Don’t you hear me?”
Joe made a sign that he heard; but he would not understand.
“Do me the kindness to throw out some of that quartz!”
“But, doctor, you gave me leave—”
“I gave you leave to replace the ballast; that was all!”
“But—”
“Do you want to stay forever in this desert?”
Joe cast a despairing look at Kennedy; but the hunter put on the air of
a man who could do nothing in the matter.
“Well, Joe?”
“Then your cylinder don’t work,” said the obstinate fellow.
“My cylinder? It is lit, as you perceive. But the balloon will not rise
until you have thrown off a little ballast.”
Joe scratched his ear, picked up a piece of quartz, the smallest in the
lot, weighed and reweighed it, and tossed it up and down in his hand.
It was a fragment of about three or four pounds. At last he threw it
out.
But the balloon did not budge.
“Humph!” said he; “we’re not going up yet.”
“Not yet,” said the doctor. “Keep on throwing.”
Kennedy laughed. Joe now threw out some ten pounds, but the balloon
stood still.
Joe got very pale.
“Poor fellow!” said the doctor. “Mr. Kennedy, you and I weigh, unless I
am mistaken, about four hundred pounds—so that you’ll have to get rid
of at least that weight, since it was put in here to make up for us.”
“Throw away four hundred pounds!” said Joe, piteously.
“And some more with it, or we can’t rise. Come, courage, Joe!”
The brave fellow, heaving deep sighs, began at last to lighten the
balloon; but, from time to time, he would stop, and ask:
“Are you going up?”
“No, not yet,” was the invariable response.
“It moves!” said he, at last.
“Keep on!” replied the doctor.
“It’s going up; I’m sure.”
“Keep on yet,” said Kennedy.
And Joe, picking up one more block, desperately tossed it out of the
car. The balloon rose a hundred feet or so, and, aided by the cylinder,
soon passed above the surrounding summits.
“Now, Joe,” resumed the doctor, “there still remains a handsome fortune
for you; and, if we can only keep the rest of this with us until the
end of our trip, there you are—rich for the balance of your days!”
Joe made no answer, but stretched himself out luxuriously on his heap
of quartz.
“See, my dear Dick!” the doctor went on. “Just see the power of this
metal over the cleverest lad in the world! What passions, what greed,
what crimes, the knowledge of such a mine as that would cause! It is
sad to think of it!”
By evening the balloon had made ninety miles to the westward, and was,
in a direct line, fourteen hundred miles from Zanzibar.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOURTH.
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