Five Weeks in a Balloon
The car was at once ballasted, and Kennedy, closely followed by Joe,
leaped out.
“Take your guns with you!” said the doctor; “take your guns, and be
careful!”
Dick grasped his rifle, and Joe took one of the fowling-pieces. They
then rapidly made for the trees, and disappeared under the fresh
verdure, which announced the presence of abundant springs. As they
hurried on, they had not taken notice of certain large footprints and
fresh tracks of some living creature marked here and there in the damp
soil.
Suddenly, a dull roar was heard not twenty paces from them.
“The roar of a lion!” said Joe.
“Good for that!” said the excited hunter; “we’ll fight him. A man feels
strong when only a fight’s in question.”
“But be careful, Mr. Kennedy; be careful! The lives of all depend upon
the life of one.”
But Kennedy no longer heard him; he was pushing on, his eye blazing;
his rifle cocked; fearful to behold in his daring rashness. There,
under a palm-tree, stood an enormous black-maned lion, crouching for a
spring on his antagonist. Scarcely had he caught a glimpse of the
hunter, when he bounded through the air; but he had not touched the
ground ere a bullet pierced his heart, and he fell to the earth dead.
“Hurrah! hurrah!” shouted Joe, with wild exultation.
Kennedy rushed toward the well, slid down the dampened steps, and flung
himself at full length by the side of a fresh spring, in which he
plunged his parched lips. Joe followed suit, and for some minutes
nothing was heard but the sound they made with their mouths, drinking
more like maddened beasts than men.
“Take care, Mr. Kennedy,” said Joe at last; “let us not overdo the
thing!” and he panted for breath.
But Kennedy, without a word, drank on. He even plunged his hands, and
then his head, into the delicious tide—he fairly revelled in its
coolness.
“But the doctor?” said Joe; “our friend, Dr. Ferguson?”
That one word recalled Kennedy to himself, and, hastily filling a flask
that he had brought with him, he started on a run up the steps of the
well.
But what was his amazement when he saw an opaque body of enormous
dimensions blocking up the passage! Joe, who was close upon Kennedy’s
heels, recoiled with him.
“We are blocked in—entrapped!”
“Impossible! What does that mean?—”
Dick had no time to finish; a terrific roar made him only too quickly
aware what foe confronted him.
“Another lion!” exclaimed Joe.
“A lioness, rather,” said Kennedy. “Ah! ferocious brute!” he added,
“I’ll settle you in a moment more!” and swiftly reloaded his rifle.
In another instant he fired, but the animal had disappeared.
“Onward!” shouted Kennedy.
“No!” interposed the other, “that shot did not kill her; her body would
have rolled down the steps; she’s up there, ready to spring upon the
first of us who appears, and he would be a lost man!”
“But what are we to do? We must get out of this, and the doctor is
expecting us.”
“Let us decoy the animal. Take my piece, and give me your rifle.”
“What is your plan?”
“You’ll see.”
And Joe, taking off his linen jacket, hung it on the end of the rifle,
and thrust it above the top of the steps. The lioness flung herself
furiously upon it. Kennedy was on the alert for her, and his bullet
broke her shoulder. The lioness, with a frightful howl of agony, rolled
down the steps, overturning Joe in her fall. The poor fellow imagined
that he could already feel the enormous paws of the savage beast in his
flesh, when a second detonation resounded in the narrow passage, and
Dr. Ferguson appeared at the opening above with his gun in hand, and
still smoking from the discharge.
Joe leaped to his feet, clambered over the body of the dead lioness,
and handed up the flask full of sparkling water to his master.
To carry it to his lips, and to half empty it at a draught, was the
work of an instant, and the three travellers offered up thanks from the
depths of their hearts to that Providence who had so miraculously saved
them.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHTH.
An Evening of Delight.—Joe’s Culinary Performance.—A Dissertation on
Raw Meat.—The Narrative of James Bruce.—Camping out.—Joe’s Dreams.—The
Barometer begins to fall.—The Barometer rises again.—Preparations for
Departure.—The Tempest.
The evening was lovely, and our three friends enjoyed it in the cool
shade of the mimosas, after a substantial repast, at which the tea and
the punch were dealt out with no niggardly hand.
Kennedy had traversed the little domain in all directions. He had
ransacked every thicket and satisfied himself that the balloon party
were the only living creatures in this terrestrial paradise; so they
stretched themselves upon their blankets and passed a peaceful night
that brought them forgetfulness of their past sufferings.
On the morrow, May 7th, the sun shone with all his splendor, but his
rays could not penetrate the dense screen of the palm-tree foliage, and
as there was no lack of provisions, the doctor resolved to remain where
he was while waiting for a favorable wind.
Joe had conveyed his portable kitchen to the oasis, and proceeded to
indulge in any number of culinary combinations, using water all the
time with the most profuse extravagance.
“What a strange succession of annoyances and enjoyments!” moralized
Kennedy. “Such abundance as this after such privations; such luxury
after such want! Ah! I nearly went mad!”
“My dear Dick,” replied the doctor, “had it not been for Joe, you would
not be sitting here, to-day, discoursing on the instability of human
affairs.”
“Whole-hearted friend!” said Kennedy, extending his hand to Joe.
“There’s no occasion for all that,” responded the latter; “but you can
take your revenge some time, Mr. Kennedy, always hoping though that you
may never have occasion to do the same for me!”
“It’s a poor constitution this of ours to succumb to so little,”
philosophized Dr. Ferguson.
“So little water, you mean, doctor,” interposed Joe; “that element must
be very necessary to life.”
“Undoubtedly, and persons deprived of food hold out longer than those
deprived of water.”
“I believe it. Besides, when needs must, one can eat any thing he comes
across, even his fellow-creatures, although that must be a kind of food
that’s pretty hard to digest.”
“The savages don’t boggle much about it!” said Kennedy.
“Yes; but then they are savages, and accustomed to devouring raw meat;
it’s something that I’d find very disgusting, for my part.”
“It is disgusting enough,” said the doctor, “that’s a fact; and so much
so, indeed, that nobody believed the narratives of the earliest
travellers in Africa who brought back word that many tribes on that
continent subsisted upon raw meat, and people generally refused to
credit the statement. It was under such circumstances that a very
singular adventure befell James Bruce.”
“Tell it to us, doctor; we’ve time enough to hear it,” said Joe,
stretching himself voluptuously on the cool greensward.
“By all means.—James Bruce was a Scotchman, of Stirlingshire, who,
between 1768 and 1772, traversed all Abyssinia, as far as Lake Tyana,
in search of the sources of the Nile. He afterward returned to England,
but did not publish an account of his journeys until 1790. His
statements were received with extreme incredulity, and such may be the
reception accorded to our own. The manners and customs of the
Abyssinians seemed so different from those of the English, that no one
would credit the description of them. Among other details, Bruce had
put forward the assertion that the tribes of Eastern Africa fed upon
raw flesh, and this set everybody against him. He might say so as much
as he pleased; there was no one likely to go and see! One day, in a
parlor at Edinburgh, a Scotch gentleman took up the subject in his
presence, as it had become the topic of daily pleasantry, and, in
reference to the eating of raw flesh, said that the thing was neither
possible nor true. Bruce made no reply, but went out and returned a few
minutes later with a raw steak, seasoned with pepper and salt, in the
African style.
“‘Sir,’ said he to the Scotchman, ‘in doubting my statements, you have
grossly affronted me; in believing the thing to be impossible, you have
been egregiously mistaken; and, in proof thereof, you will now eat this
beef-steak raw, or you will give me instant satisfaction!’ The
Scotchman had a wholesome dread of the brawny traveller, and _did_ eat
the steak, although not without a good many wry faces. Thereupon, with
the utmost coolness, James Bruce added: ‘Even admitting, sir, that the
thing were untrue, you will, at least, no longer maintain that it is
impossible.’”
“Well put in!” said Joe, “and if the Scotchman found it lie heavy on
his stomach, he got no more than he deserved. If, on our return to
England, they dare to doubt what we say about our travels—”
“Well, Joe, what would you do?”
“Why, I’ll make the doubters swallow the pieces of the balloon, without
either salt or pepper!”
All burst out laughing at Joe’s queer notions, and thus the day slipped
by in pleasant chat. With returning strength, hope had revived, and
with hope came the courage to do and to dare. The past was obliterated
in the presence of the future with providential rapidity.
Joe would have been willing to remain forever in this enchanting
asylum; it was the realm he had pictured in his dreams; he felt himself
at home; his master had to give him his exact location, and it was with
the gravest air imaginable that he wrote down on his tablets fifteen
degrees forty-three minutes east longitude, and eight degrees
thirty-two minutes north latitude.
Kennedy had but one regret, to wit, that he could not hunt in that
miniature forest, because, according to his ideas, there was a slight
deficiency of ferocious wild beasts in it.
“But, my dear Dick,” said the doctor, “haven’t you rather a short
memory? How about the lion and the lioness?”
“Oh, that!” he ejaculated with the contempt of a thorough-bred
sportsman for game already killed. “But the fact is, that finding them
here would lead one to suppose that we can’t be far from a more fertile
country.”
“It don’t prove much, Dick, for those animals, when goaded by hunger or
thirst, will travel long distances, and I think that, to-night, we had
better keep a more vigilant lookout, and light fires, besides.”
“What, in such heat as this?” said Joe. “Well, if it’s necessary, we’ll
have to do it, but I do think it a real pity to burn this pretty grove
that has been such a comfort to us!”
“Oh! above all things, we must take the utmost care not to set it on
fire,” replied the doctor, “so that others in the same strait as
ourselves may some day find shelter here in the middle of the desert.”
“I’ll be very careful, indeed, doctor; but do you think that this oasis
is known?”
“Undoubtedly; it is a halting-place for the caravans that frequent the
centre of Africa, and a visit from one of them might be any thing but
pleasant to you, Joe.”
“Why, are there any more of those rascally Nyam-Nyams around here?”
“Certainly; that is the general name of all the neighboring tribes,
and, under the same climates, the same races are likely to have similar
manners and customs.”
“Pah!” said Joe, “but, after all, it’s natural enough. If savages had
the ways of gentlemen, where would be the difference? By George, these
fine fellows wouldn’t have to be coaxed long to eat the Scotchman’s raw
steak, nor the Scotchman either, into the bargain!”
With this very sensible observation, Joe began to get ready his
firewood for the night, making just as little of it as possible.
Fortunately, these precautions were superfluous; and each of the party,
in his turn, dropped off into the soundest slumber.