ROBUR THE CONQUEROR
By Jules Verne
Contents
CHAPTER I Mysterious sounds
CHAPTER II Agreement Impossible
CHAPTER III A Visitor is Announced
CHAPTER IV In Which a New Character Appears
CHAPTER V Another Disappearance
CHAPTER VI The President and Secretary Suspend Hostilities
CHAPTER VII On board the Albatross
CHAPTER VIII The Balloonists Refuse to be Convinced
CHAPTER IX Across the Prairie
CHAPTER X Westward—but Whither?
CHAPTER XI The Wide Pacific
CHAPTER XII Through the Himalayas
CHAPTER XIII Over the Caspian
CHAPTER XIV The Aeronef at Full Speed
CHAPTER XV A Skirmish in Dahomey
CHAPTER XVI Over the Atlantic
CHAPTER XVII The Shipwrecked Crew
CHAPTER XVIII Over the Volcano
CHAPTER XIX Anchored at Last
CHAPTER XX The Wreck of the Albatross
CHAPTER XXI The Institute Again
CHAPTER XXII The Go-Ahead is Launched
CHAPTER XXIII The Grand Collapse
Chapter I
MYSTERIOUS SOUNDS
BANG! Bang!
The pistol shots were almost simultaneous. A cow peacefully grazing
fifty yards away received one of the bullets in her back. She had
nothing to do with the quarrel all the same.
Neither of the adversaries was hit.
Who were these two gentlemen? We do not know, although this would be an
excellent opportunity to hand down their names to posterity. All we can
say is that the elder was an Englishman and the younger an American,
and both of them were old enough to know better.
So far as recording in what locality the inoffensive ruminant had just
tasted her last tuft of herbage, nothing can be easier. It was on the
left bank of Niagara, not far from the suspension bridge which joins
the American to the Canadian bank three miles from the falls.
The Englishman stepped up to the American.
“I contend, nevertheless, that it was ‘Rule Britannia!’”
“And I say it was ‘Yankee Doodle!’” replied the young American.
The dispute was about to begin again when one of the seconds—doubtless
in the interests of the milk trade—interposed.
“Suppose we say it was ‘Rule Doodle’ and ‘Yankee Britannia’ and adjourn
to breakfast?”
This compromise between the national airs of Great Britain and the
United States was adopted to the general satisfaction. The Americans
and Englishmen walked up the left bank of the Niagara on their way to
Goat Island, the neutral ground between the falls. Let us leave them in
the presence of the boiled eggs and traditional ham, and floods enough
of tea to make the cataract jealous, and trouble ourselves no more
about them. It is extremely unlikely that we shall again meet with them
in this story.
Which was right; the Englishman or the American? It is not easy to say.
Anyhow the duel shows how great was the excitement, not only in the new
but also in the old world, with regard to an inexplicable phenomenon
which for a month or more had driven everybody to distraction.
Never had the sky been so much looked at since the appearance of man on
the terrestrial globe. The night before an aerial trumpet had blared
its brazen notes through space immediately over that part of Canada
between Lake Ontario and Lake Erie. Some people had heard those notes
as “Yankee Doodle.” others had heard them as “Rule Britannia.” and
hence the quarrel between the Anglo-Saxons, which ended with the
breakfast on Goat Island. Perhaps it was neither one nor the other of
these patriotic tunes, but what was undoubted by all was that these
extraordinary sounds had seemed to descend from the sky to the earth.
What could it be? Was it some exuberant aeronaut rejoicing on that
sonorous instrument of which the Renommée makes such obstreperous use?
No! There was no balloon and there were no aeronauts. Some strange
phenomenon had occurred in the higher zones of the atmosphere, a
phenomenon of which neither the nature nor the cause could be
explained. Today it appeared over America; forty-eight hours afterwards
it was over Europe; a week later it was in Asia over the Celestial
Empire.
Hence in every country of the world—empire, kingdom, or republic—there
was anxiety which it was important to allay. If you hear in your house
strange and inexplicable noises, do you not at once endeavor to
discover the cause? And if your search is in vain, do you not leave
your house and take up your quarters in another? But in this case the
house was the terrestrial globe! There are no means of leaving that
house for the moon or Mars, or Venus, or Jupiter, or any other planet
of the solar system. And so of necessity we have to find out what it is
that takes place, not in the infinite void, but within the
atmospherical zones. In fact, if there is no air there is no noise, and
as there was a noise—that famous trumpet, to wit—the phenomenon must
occur in the air, the density of which invariably diminishes, and which
does not extend for more than six miles round our spheroid.
Naturally the newspapers took up the question in their thousands, and
treated it in every form, throwing on it both light and darkness,
recording many things about it true or false, alarming and
tranquillizing their readers—as the sale required—and almost driving
ordinary people mad. At one blow party politics dropped unheeded—and
the affairs of the world went on none the worse for it.
But what could this thing be? There was not an observatory that was not
applied to. If an observatory could not give a satisfactory answer what
was the use of observatories? If astronomers, who doubled and tripled
the stars a hundred thousand million miles away, could not explain a
phenomenon occurring only a few miles off, what was the use of
astronomers?
The observatory at Paris was very guarded in what it said. In the
mathematical section they had not thought the statement worth noticing;
in the meridional section they knew nothing about it; in the physical
observatory they had not come across it; in the geodetic section they
had had no observation; in the meteorological section there had been no
record; in the calculating room they had had nothing to deal with. At
any rate this confession was a frank one, and the same frankness
characterized the replies from the observatory of Montsouris and the
magnetic station in the park of St. Maur. The same respect for the
truth distinguished the Bureau des Longitudes.
The provinces were slightly more affirmative. Perhaps in the night of
the fifth and the morning of the sixth of May there had appeared a
flash of light of electrical origin which lasted about twenty seconds.
At the Pic du Midi this light appeared between nine and ten in the
evening. At the Meteorological Observatory on the Puy de Dome the light
had been observed between one and two o’clock in the morning; at Mont
Ventoux in Provence it had been seen between two and three o’clock; at
Nice it had been noticed between three and four o’clock; while at the
Semnoz Alps between Annecy, Le Bourget, and Le Léman, it had been
detected just as the zenith was paling with the dawn.
Now it evidently would not do to disregard these observations
altogether. There could be no doubt that a light had been observed at
different places, in succession, at intervals, during some hours.
Hence, whether it had been produced from many centers in the
terrestrial atmosphere, or from one center, it was plain that the light
must have traveled at a speed of over one hundred and twenty miles an
hour.
In the United Kingdom there was much perplexity. The observatories were
not in agreement. Greenwich would not consent to the proposition of
Oxford. They were agreed on one point, however, and that was: “It was
nothing at all!”
But, said one, “It was an optical illusion!” While the other contended
that, “It was an acoustical illusion!” And so they disputed. Something,
however, was, it will be seen, common to both “It was an illusion.”
Between the observatory of Berlin and the observatory of Vienna the
discussion threatened to end in international complications; but
Russia, in the person of the director of the observatory at Pulkowa,
showed that both were right. It all depended on the point of view from
which they attacked the phenomenon, which, though impossible in theory,
was possible in practice.
In Switzerland, at the observatory of Sautis in the canton of
Appenzell, at the Righi, at the Gäbriss, in the passes of the St.
Gothard, at the St. Bernard, at the Julier, at the Simplon, at Zurich,
at Somblick in the Tyrolean Alps, there was a very strong
disinclination to say anything about what nobody could prove—and that
was nothing but reasonable.
But in Italy, at the meteorological stations on Vesuvius, on Etna in
the old Casa Inglesi, at Monte Cavo, the observers made no hesitation
in admitting the materiality of the phenomenon, particularly as they
had seen it by day in the form of a small cloud of vapor, and by night
in that of a shooting star. But of what it was they knew nothing.
Scientists began at last to tire of the mystery, while they continued
to disagree about it, and even to frighten the lowly and the ignorant,
who, thanks to one of the wisest laws of nature, have formed, form, and
will form the immense majority of the world’s inhabitants. Astronomers
and meteorologists would soon have dropped the subject altogether had
not, on the night of the 26th and 27th, the observatory of Kautokeino
at Finmark, in Norway, and during the night of the 28th and 29th that
of Isfjord at Spitzbergen—Norwegian one and Swedish the other—found
themselves agreed in recording that in the center of an aurora borealis
there had appeared a sort of huge bird, an aerial monster, whose
structure they were unable to determine, but who, there was no doubt,
was showering off from his body certain corpuscles which exploded like
bombs.
In Europe not a doubt was thrown on this observation of the stations in
Finmark and Spitzbergen. But what appeared the most phenomenal about it
was that the Swedes and Norwegians could find themselves in agreement
on any subject whatever.
There was a laugh at the asserted discovery in all the observatories of
South America, in Brazil, Peru, and La Plata, and in those of Australia
at Sydney, Adelaide, and Melbourne; and Australian laughter is very
catching.
To sum up, only one chief of a meteorological station ventured on a
decided answer to this question, notwithstanding the sarcasms that his
solution provoked. This was a Chinaman, the director of the observatory
at Zi-Ka-Wey which rises in the center of a vast plateau less than
thirty miles from the sea, having an immense horizon and wonderfully
pure atmosphere. “It is possible.” said he, “that the object was an
aviform apparatus—a flying machine!”
What nonsense!
But if the controversy was keen in the old world, we can imagine what
it was like in that portion of the new of which the United States
occupy so vast an area.
A Yankee, we know, does not waste time on the road. He takes the street
that leads him straight to his end. And the observatories of the
American Federation did not hesitate to do their best. If they did not
hurl their objectives at each other’s heads, it was because they would
have had to put them back just when they most wanted to use them. In
this much-disputed question the observatories of Washington in the
District of Columbia, and Cambridge in Massachusetts, found themselves
opposed by those of Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, and Ann Arbor
in Michigan. The subject of their dispute was not the nature of the
body observed, but the precise moment of its observation. All of them
claimed to have seen it the same night, the same hour, the same minute,
the same second, although the trajectory of the mysterious voyager took
it but a moderate height above the horizon. Now from Massachusetts to
Michigan, from New Hampshire to Columbia, the distance is too great for
this double observation, made at the same moment, to be considered
possible.
Dudley at Albany, in the state of New York, and West Point, the
military academy, showed that their colleagues were wrong by an
elaborate calculation of the right ascension and declination of the
aforesaid body.
But later on it was discovered that the observers had been deceived in
the body, and that what they had seen was an aerolite. This aerolite
could not be the object in question, for how could an aerolite blow a
trumpet?
It was in vain that they tried to get rid of this trumpet as an optical
illusion. The ears were no more deceived than the eyes. Something had
assuredly been seen, and something had assuredly been heard. In the
night of the 12th and 13th of May—a very dark night—the observers at
Yale College, in the Sheffield Science School, had been able to take
down a few bars of a musical phrase in D major, common time, which gave
note for note, rhythm for rhythm, the chorus of the Chant du Départ.
“Good.” said the Yankee wags. “There is a French band well up in the
air.”
“But to joke is not to answer.” Thus said the observatory at Boston,
founded by the Atlantic Iron Works Society, whose opinions in matters
of astronomy and meteorology began to have much weight in the world of
science.
Then there intervened the observatory at Cincinnati, founded in 1870,
on Mount Lookout, thanks to the generosity of Mr. Kilgour, and known
for its micrometrical measurements of double stars. Its director
declared with the utmost good faith that there had certainly been
something, that a traveling body had shown itself at very short periods
at different points in the atmosphere, but what were the nature of this
body, its dimensions, its speed, and its trajectory, it was impossible
to say.
It was then a journal whose publicity is immense—the “New York
Herald”—received the anonymous contribution hereunder.
“There will be in the recollection of most people the rivalry which
existed a few years ago between the two heirs of the Begum of
Ragginahra, the French doctor Sarrasin, the city of Frankville, and the
German engineer Schultze, in the city of Steeltown, both in the south
of Oregon in the United States.
“It will not have been forgotten that, with the object of destroying
Frankville, Herr Schultze launched a formidable engine, intended to
beat down the town and annihilate it at a single blow.
“Still less will it be forgotten that this engine, whose initial
velocity as it left the mouth of the monster cannon had been
erroneously calculated, had flown off at a speed exceeding by sixteen
times that of ordinary projectiles—or about four hundred and fifty
miles an hour—that it did not fall to the ground, and that it passed
into an aerolitic stage, so as to circle for ever round our globe.
“Why should not this be the body in question?”
Very ingenious, Mr. Correspondent on the “New York Herald!” but how
about the trumpet? There was no trumpet in Herr Schulze’s projectile!
So all the explanations explained nothing, and all the observers had
observed in vain. There remained only the suggestion offered by the
director of Zi-Ka-Wey. But the opinion of a Chinaman!
The discussion continued, and there was no sign of agreement. Then came
a short period of rest. Some days elapsed without any object, aerolite
or otherwise, being described, and without any trumpet notes being
heard in the atmosphere. The body then had fallen on some part of the
globe where it had been difficult to trace it; in the sea, perhaps. Had
it sunk in the depths of the Atlantic, the Pacific, or the Indian
Ocean? What was to be said in this matter?
But then, between the 2nd and 9th of June, there came a new series of
facts which could not possibly be explained by the unaided existence of
a cosmic phenomenon.
In a week the Hamburgers at the top of St. Michael’s Tower, the Turks
on the highest minaret of St. Sophia, the Rouennais at the end of the
metal spire of their cathedral, the Strasburgers at the summit of their
minister, the Americans on the head of the Liberty statue at the
entrance of the Hudson and on the Bunker Hill monument at Boston, the
Chinese at the spike of the temple of the Four Hundred Genii at Canton,
the Hindus on the sixteenth terrace of the pyramid of the temple at
Tanjore, the San Pietrini at the cross of St. Peter’s at Rome, the
English at the cross of St. Paul’s in London, the Egyptians at the apex
of the Great Pyramid of Ghizeh, the Parisians at the lighting conductor
of the iron tower of the Exposition of 1889, a thousand feet high, all
of them beheld a flag floating from some one of these inaccessible
points.
And the flag was black, dotted with stars, and it bore a golden sun in
its center.