Five Weeks in a Balloon
After his journey to the Thibet, the doctor had remained nearly two
years without hinting at new explorations; and Dick, supposing that his
friend’s instinct for travel and thirst for adventure had at length
died out, was perfectly enchanted. They would have ended badly, some
day or other, he thought to himself; no matter what experience one has
with men, one does not travel always with impunity among cannibals and
wild beasts. So, Kennedy besought the doctor to tie up his bark for
life, having done enough for science, and too much for the gratitude of
men.
The doctor contented himself with making no reply to this. He remained
absorbed in his own reflections, giving himself up to secret
calculations, passing his nights among heaps of figures, and making
experiments with the strangest-looking machinery, inexplicable to
everybody but himself. It could readily be guessed, though, that some
great thought was fermenting in his brain.
“What can he have been planning?” wondered Kennedy, when, in the month
of January, his friend quitted him to return to London.
He found out one morning when he looked into the _Daily Telegraph_.
“Merciful Heaven!” he exclaimed, “the lunatic! the madman! Cross Africa
in a balloon! Nothing but that was wanted to cap the climax! That’s
what he’s been bothering his wits about these two years past!”
Now, reader, substitute for all these exclamation points, as many
ringing thumps with a brawny fist upon the table, and you have some
idea of the manual exercise that Dick went through while he thus spoke.
When his confidential maid-of-all-work, the aged Elspeth, tried to
insinuate that the whole thing might be a hoax—
“Not a bit of it!” said he. “Don’t I know my man? Isn’t it just like
him? Travel through the air! There, now, he’s jealous of the eagles,
next! No! I warrant you, he’ll not do it! I’ll find a way to stop him!
He! why if they’d let him alone, he’d start some day for the moon!”
On that very evening Kennedy, half alarmed, and half exasperated, took
the train for London, where he arrived next morning.
Three-quarters of an hour later a cab deposited him at the door of the
doctor’s modest dwelling, in Soho Square, Greek Street. Forthwith he
bounded up the steps and announced his arrival with five good, hearty,
sounding raps at the door.
Ferguson opened, in person.
“Dick! you here?” he exclaimed, but with no great expression of
surprise, after all.
“Dick himself!” was the response.
“What, my dear boy, you at London, and this the mid-season of the
winter shooting?”
“Yes! here I am, at London!”
“And what have you come to town for?”
“To prevent the greatest piece of folly that ever was conceived.”
“Folly!” said the doctor.
“Is what this paper says, the truth?” rejoined Kennedy, holding out the
copy of the _Daily Telegraph_, mentioned above.
“Ah! that’s what you mean, is it? These newspapers are great tattlers!
But, sit down, my dear Dick.”
“No, I won’t sit down!—Then, you really intend to attempt this
journey?”
“Most certainly! all my preparations are getting along finely, and I—”
“Where are your traps? Let me have a chance at them! I’ll make them
fly! I’ll put your preparations in fine order.” And so saying, the
gallant Scot gave way to a genuine explosion of wrath.
“Come, be calm, my dear Dick!” resumed the doctor. “You’re angry at me
because I did not acquaint you with my new project.”
“He calls this his new project!”
“I have been very busy,” the doctor went on, without heeding the
interruption; “I have had so much to look after! But rest assured that
I should not have started without writing to you.”
“Oh, indeed! I’m highly honored.”
“Because it is my intention to take you with me.”
Upon this, the Scotchman gave a leap that a wild goat would not have
been ashamed of among his native crags.
“Ah! really, then, you want them to send us both to Bedlam!”
“I have counted positively upon you, my dear Dick, and I have picked
you out from all the rest.”
Kennedy stood speechless with amazement.
“After listening to me for ten minutes,” said the doctor, “you will
thank me!”
“Are you speaking seriously?”
“Very seriously.”
“And suppose that I refuse to go with you?”
“But you won’t refuse.”
“But, suppose that I were to refuse?”
“Well, I’d go alone.”
“Let us sit down,” said Kennedy, “and talk without excitement. The
moment you give up jesting about it, we can discuss the thing.”
“Let us discuss it, then, at breakfast, if you have no objections, my
dear Dick.”
The two friends took their seats opposite to each other, at a little
table with a plate of toast and a huge tea-urn before them.
“My dear Samuel,” said the sportsman, “your project is insane! it is
impossible! it has no resemblance to anything reasonable or
practicable!”
“That’s for us to find out when we shall have tried it!”
“But trying it is exactly what you ought not to attempt.”
“Why so, if you please?”
“Well, the risks, the difficulty of the thing.”
“As for difficulties,” replied Ferguson, in a serious tone, “they were
made to be overcome; as for risks and dangers, who can flatter himself
that he is to escape them? Every thing in life involves danger; it may
even be dangerous to sit down at one’s own table, or to put one’s hat
on one’s own head. Moreover, we must look upon what is to occur as
having already occurred, and see nothing but the present in the future,
for the future is but the present a little farther on.”
“There it is!” exclaimed Kennedy, with a shrug. “As great a fatalist as
ever!”
“Yes! but in the good sense of the word. Let us not trouble ourselves,
then, about what fate has in store for us, and let us not forget our
good old English proverb: ‘The man who was born to be hung will never
be drowned!’”
There was no reply to make, but that did not prevent Kennedy from
resuming a series of arguments which may be readily conjectured, but
which were too long for us to repeat.
“Well, then,” he said, after an hour’s discussion, “if you are
absolutely determined to make this trip across the African continent—if
it is necessary for your happiness, why not pursue the ordinary
routes?”
“Why?” ejaculated the doctor, growing animated. “Because, all attempts
to do so, up to this time, have utterly failed. Because, from Mungo
Park, assassinated on the Niger, to Vogel, who disappeared in the Wadai
country; from Oudney, who died at Murmur, and Clapperton, lost at
Sackatou, to the Frenchman Maizan, who was cut to pieces; from Major
Laing, killed by the Touaregs, to Roscher, from Hamburg, massacred in
the beginning of 1860, the names of victim after victim have been
inscribed on the lists of African martyrdom! Because, to contend
successfully against the elements; against hunger, and thirst, and
fever; against savage beasts, and still more savage men, is impossible!
Because, what cannot be done in one way, should be tried in another. In
fine, because what one cannot pass through directly in the middle, must
be passed by going to one side or overhead!”
“If passing over it were the only question!” interposed Kennedy; “but
passing high up in the air, doctor, there’s the rub!”
“Come, then,” said the doctor, “what have I to fear? You will admit
that I have taken my precautions in such manner as to be certain that
my balloon will not fall; but, should it disappoint me, I should find
myself on the ground in the normal conditions imposed upon other
explorers. But, my balloon will not deceive me, and we need make no
such calculations.”
“Yes, but you must take them into view.”
“No, Dick. I intend not to be separated from the balloon until I reach
the western coast of Africa. With it, every thing is possible; without
it, I fall back into the dangers and difficulties as well as the
natural obstacles that ordinarily attend such an expedition: with it,
neither heat, nor torrents, nor tempests, nor the simoom, nor unhealthy
climates, nor wild animals, nor savage men, are to be feared! If I feel
too hot, I can ascend; if too cold, I can come down. Should there be a
mountain, I can pass over it; a precipice, I can sweep across it; a
river, I can sail beyond it; a storm, I can rise away above it; a
torrent, I can skim it like a bird! I can advance without fatigue, I
can halt without need of repose! I can soar above the nascent cities! I
can speed onward with the rapidity of a tornado, sometimes at the
loftiest heights, sometimes only a hundred feet above the soil, while
the map of Africa unrolls itself beneath my gaze in the great atlas of
the world.”
Even the stubborn Kennedy began to feel moved, and yet the spectacle
thus conjured up before him gave him the vertigo. He riveted his eyes
upon the doctor with wonder and admiration, and yet with fear, for he
already felt himself swinging aloft in space.
“Come, come,” said he, at last. “Let us see, Samuel. Then you have
discovered the means of guiding a balloon?”
“Not by any means. That is a Utopian idea.”
“Then, you will go—”
“Whithersoever Providence wills; but, at all events, from east to
west.”
“Why so?”
“Because I expect to avail myself of the trade-winds, the direction of
which is always the same.”
“Ah! yes, indeed!” said Kennedy, reflecting; “the
trade-winds—yes—truly—one might—there’s something in that!”
“Something in it—yes, my excellent friend—there’s _every thing_ in it.
The English Government has placed a transport at my disposal, and three
or four vessels are to cruise off the western coast of Africa, about
the presumed period of my arrival. In three months, at most, I shall be
at Zanzibar, where I will inflate my balloon, and from that point we
shall launch ourselves.”
“We!” said Dick.
“Have you still a shadow of an objection to offer? Speak, friend
Kennedy.”
“An objection! I have a thousand; but among other things, tell me, if
you expect to see the country. If you expect to mount and descend at
pleasure, you cannot do so, without losing your gas. Up to this time no
other means have been devised, and it is this that has always prevented
long journeys in the air.”
“My dear Dick, I have only one word to answer—I shall not lose one
particle of gas.”
“And yet you can descend when you please?”
“I shall descend when I please.”
“And how will you do that?”
“Ah, ha! therein lies my secret, friend Dick. Have faith, and let my
device be yours—‘Excelsior!’”
“‘Excelsior’ be it then,” said the sportsman, who did not understand a
word of Latin.
But he made up his mind to oppose his friend’s departure by all means
in his power, and so pretended to give in, at the same time keeping on
the watch. As for the doctor, he went on diligently with his
preparations.
CHAPTER FOURTH.
African Explorations.—Barth, Richardson, Overweg, Werne, Brun-Rollet,
Penney, Andrea, Debono, Miani, Guillaume Lejean, Bruce, Krapf and
Rebmann, Maizan, Roscher, Burton and Speke.
The aërial line which Dr. Ferguson counted upon following had not been
chosen at random; his point of departure had been carefully studied,
and it was not without good cause that he had resolved to ascend at the
island of Zanzibar. This island, lying near to the eastern coast of
Africa, is in the sixth degree of south latitude, that is to say, four
hundred and thirty geographical miles below the equator.
From this island the latest expedition, sent by way of the great lakes
to explore the sources of the Nile, had just set out.
But it would be well to indicate what explorations Dr. Ferguson hoped
to link together. The two principal ones were those of Dr. Barth in
1849, and of Lieutenants Burton and Speke in 1858.
Dr. Barth is a Hamburger, who obtained permission for himself and for
his countryman Overweg to join the expedition of the Englishman