Five Weeks in a Balloon
all sides and formed the most curious combinations of color. Crocodiles
were seen basking in the broad blaze of the sun or plunging beneath the
waters with the agility of lizards, and in their gambols they sported
about among the many green islands that intercept the current of the
stream.
It was thus, in the midst of rich and verdant landscapes that our
travellers passed over the district of Maffatay, and about nine o’clock
in the morning reached the southern shore of Lake Tchad.
There it was at last, outstretched before them, that Caspian Sea of
Africa, the existence of which was so long consigned to the realms of
fable—that interior expanse of water to which only Denham’s and Barth’s
expeditions had been able to force their way.
The doctor strove in vain to fix its precise configuration upon paper.
It had already changed greatly since 1847. In fact, the chart of Lake
Tchad is very difficult to trace with exactitude, for it is surrounded
by muddy and almost impassable morasses, in which Barth thought that he
was doomed to perish. From year to year these marshes, covered with
reeds and papyrus fifteen feet high, become the lake itself.
Frequently, too, the villages on its shores are half submerged, as was
the case with Ngornou in 1856, and now the hippopotamus and the
alligator frisk and dive where the dwellings of Bornou once stood.
The sun shot his dazzling rays over this placid sheet of water, and
toward the north the two elements merged into one and the same horizon.
The doctor was desirous of determining the character of the water,
which was long believed to be salt. There was no danger in descending
close to the lake, and the car was soon skimming its surface like a
bird at the distance of only five feet.
Joe plunged a bottle into the lake and drew it up half filled. The
water was then tasted and found to be but little fit for drinking, with
a certain carbonate-of-soda flavor.
While the doctor was jotting down the result of this experiment, the
loud report of a gun was heard close beside him. Kennedy had not been
able to resist the temptation of firing at a huge hippopotamus. The
latter, who had been basking quietly, disappeared at the sound of the
explosion, but did not seem to be otherwise incommoded by Kennedy’s
conical bullet.
“You’d have done better if you had harpooned him,” said Joe.
“But how?”
“With one of our anchors. It would have been a hook just big enough for
such a rousing beast as that!”
“Humph!” ejaculated Kennedy, “Joe really has an idea this time—”
“Which I beg of you not to put into execution,” interposed the doctor.
“The animal would very quickly have dragged us where we could not have
done much to help ourselves, and where we have no business to be.”
“Especially now since we’ve settled the question as to what kind of
water there is in Lake Tchad. Is that sort of fish good to eat, Dr.
Ferguson?”
“That fish, as you call it, Joe, is really a mammiferous animal of the
pachydermal species. Its flesh is said to be excellent and is an
article of important trade between the tribes living along the borders
of the lake.”
“Then I’m sorry that Mr. Kennedy’s shot didn’t do more damage.”
“The animal is vulnerable only in the stomach and between the thighs.
Dick’s ball hasn’t even marked him; but should the ground strike me as
favorable, we shall halt at the northern end of the lake, where Kennedy
will find himself in the midst of a whole menagerie, and can make up
for lost time.”
“Well,” said Joe, “I hope then that Mr. Kennedy will hunt the
hippopotamus a little; I’d like to taste the meat of that queer-looking
beast. It doesn’t look exactly natural to get away into the centre of
Africa, to feed on snipe and partridge, just as if we were in England.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SECOND.
The Capital of Bornou.—The Islands of the Biddiomahs.—The Condors.—The
Doctor’s Anxieties.—His Precautions.—An Attack in Mid-air.—The Balloon
Covering torn.—The Fall.—Sublime Self-Sacrifice.—The Northern Coast of
the Lake.
Since its arrival at Lake Tchad, the balloon had struck a current that
edged it farther to the westward. A few clouds tempered the heat of the
day, and, besides, a little air could be felt over this vast expanse of
water; but about one o’clock, the _Victoria_, having slanted across
this part of the lake, again advanced over the land for a space of
seven or eight miles.
The doctor, who was somewhat vexed at first at this turn of his course,
no longer thought of complaining when he caught sight of the city of
Kouka, the capital of Bornou. He saw it for a moment, encircled by its
walls of white clay, and a few rudely-constructed mosques rising
clumsily above that conglomeration of houses that look like
playing-dice, which form most Arab towns. In the court-yards of the
private dwellings, and on the public squares, grew palms and
caoutchouc-trees topped with a dome of foliage more than one hundred
feet in breadth. Joe called attention to the fact that these immense
parasols were in proper accordance with the intense heat of the sun,
and made thereon some pious reflections which it were needless to
repeat.
Kouka really consists of two distinct towns, separated by the “Dendal,”
a large boulevard three hundred yards wide, at that hour crowded with
horsemen and foot passengers. On one side, the rich quarter stands
squarely with its airy and lofty houses, laid out in regular order; on
the other, is huddled together the poor quarter, a miserable collection
of low hovels of a conical shape, in which a poverty-stricken multitude
vegetate rather than live, since Kouka is neither a trading nor a
commercial city.
Kennedy thought it looked something like Edinburgh, were that city
extended on a plain, with its two distinct boroughs.
But our travellers had scarcely the time to catch even this glimpse of
it, for, with the fickleness that characterizes the air-currents of
this region, a contrary wind suddenly swept them some forty miles over
the surface of Lake Tchad.
Then then were regaled with a new spectacle. They could count the
numerous islets of the lake, inhabited by the Biddiomahs, a race of
bloodthirsty and formidable pirates, who are as greatly feared when
neighbors as are the Touaregs of Sahara.
These estimable people were in readiness to receive the _Victoria_
bravely with stones and arrows, but the balloon quickly passed their
islands, fluttering over them, from one to the other with butterfly
motion, like a gigantic beetle.
At this moment, Joe, who was scanning the horizon, said to Kennedy:
“There, sir, as you are always thinking of good sport, yonder is just
the thing for you!”
“What is it, Joe?”
“This time, the doctor will not disapprove of your shooting.”
“But what is it?”
“Don’t you see that flock of big birds making for us?”
“Birds?” exclaimed the doctor, snatching his spy-glass.
“I see them,” replied Kennedy; “there are at least a dozen of them.”
“Fourteen, exactly!” said Joe.
“Heaven grant that they may be of a kind sufficiently noxious for the
doctor to let me peg away at them!”
“I should not object, but I would much rather see those birds at a
distance from us!”
“Why, are you afraid of those fowls?”
“They are condors, and of the largest size. Should they attack us—”
“Well, if they do, we’ll defend ourselves. We have a whole arsenal at
our disposal. I don’t think those birds are so very formidable.”
“Who can tell?” was the doctor’s only remark.
Ten minutes later, the flock had come within gunshot, and were making
the air ring with their hoarse cries. They came right toward the
_Victoria_, more irritated than frightened by her presence.
“How they scream! What a noise!” said Joe.
“Perhaps they don’t like to see anybody poaching in their country up in
the air, or daring to fly like themselves!”
“Well, now, to tell the truth, when I take a good look at them, they
are an ugly, ferocious set, and I should think them dangerous enough if
they were armed with Purdy-Moore rifles,” admitted Kennedy.
“They have no need of such weapons,” said Ferguson, looking very grave.
The condors flew around them in wide circles, their flight growing
gradually closer and closer to the balloon. They swept through the air
in rapid, fantastic curves, occasionally precipitating themselves
headlong with the speed of a bullet, and then breaking their line of
projection by an abrupt and daring angle.
The doctor, much disquieted, resolved to ascend so as to escape this
dangerous proximity. He therefore dilated the hydrogen in his balloon,
and it rapidly rose.
But the condors mounted with him, apparently determined not to part
company.
“They seem to mean mischief!” said the hunter, cocking his rifle.
And, in fact, they were swooping nearer, and more than one came within
fifty feet of them, as if defying the fire-arms.
“By George, I’m itching to let them have it!” exclaimed Kennedy.
“No, Dick; not now! Don’t exasperate them needlessly. That would only
be exciting them to attack us!”
“But I could soon settle those fellows!”
“You may think so, Dick. But you are wrong!”
“Why, we have a bullet for each of them!”
“And suppose that they were to attack the upper part of the balloon,
what would you do? How would you get at them? Just imagine yourself in
the presence of a troop of lions on the plain, or a school of sharks in
the open ocean! For travellers in the air, this situation is just as
dangerous.”
“Are you speaking seriously, doctor?”
“Very seriously, Dick.”
“Let us wait, then!”
“Wait! Hold yourself in readiness in case of an attack, but do not fire
without my orders.”
The birds then collected at a short distance, yet so near that their
naked necks, entirely bare of feathers, could be plainly seen, as they
stretched them out with the effort of their cries, while their gristly
crests, garnished with a comb and gills of deep violet, stood erect
with rage. They were of the very largest size, their bodies being more
than three feet in length, and the lower surface of their white wings
glittering in the sunlight. They might well have been considered winged
sharks, so striking was their resemblance to those ferocious rangers of
the deep.
“They are following us!” said the doctor, as he saw them ascending with
him, “and, mount as we may, they can fly still higher!”
“Well, what are we to do?” asked Kennedy.
The doctor made no answer.
“Listen, Samuel!” said the sportsman. “There are fourteen of those
birds; we have seventeen shots at our disposal if we discharge all our
weapons. Have we not the means, then, to destroy them or disperse them?
I will give a good account of some of them!”
“I have no doubt of your skill, Dick; I look upon all as dead that may
come within range of your rifle, but I repeat that, if they attack the
upper part of the balloon, you could not get a sight at them. They
would tear the silk covering that sustains us, and we are three
thousand feet up in the air!”
At this moment, one of the ferocious birds darted right at the balloon,
with outstretched beak and claws, ready to rend it with either or both.
“Fire! fire at once!” cried the doctor.
He had scarcely ceased, ere the huge creature, stricken dead, dropped
headlong, turning over and over in space as he fell.
Kennedy had already grasped one of the two-barrelled fowling-pieces and
Joe was taking aim with another.
Frightened by the report, the condors drew back for a moment, but they
almost instantly returned to the charge with extreme fury. Kennedy
severed the head of one from its body with his first shot, and Joe
broke the wing of another.
“Only eleven left,” said he.
Thereupon the birds changed their tactics, and by common consent soared