ACROSS THE PRAIRIE
In one, of the cabins of the after-house Uncle Prudent and Phil Evans
had found two excellent berths, with clean linen, change of clothes,
and traveling-cloaks and rugs. No Atlantic liner could have offered
them more comfort. If they did not sleep soundly it was that they did
not wish to do so, or rather that their very real anxiety prevented
them. In what adventure had they embarked? To what series of
experiments had they been invited? How would the business end? And
above all, what was Robur going to do with them?
Frycollin, the valet, was quartered forward in a cabin adjoining that
of the cook. The neighborhood did not displease him; he liked to rub
shoulders with the great in this world. But if he finally went to sleep
it was to dream of fall after fall, of projections through space, which
made his sleep a horrible nightmare.
However, nothing could be quieter than this journey through the
atmosphere, whose currents had grown weaker with the evening. Beyond
the rustling of the blades of the screws there was not a sound, except
now and then the whistle from some terrestrial locomotive, or the
calling of some animal. Strange instinct! These terrestrial beings felt
the aeronef glide over them, and uttered cries of terror as it passed.
On the morrow, the 14th of June, at five o’clock, Uncle Prudent and
Phil Evans were walking on the deck of the “Albatross.”
Nothing had changed since the evening; there was a lookout forward, and
the helmsman was in his glass cage. Why was there a look-out? Was there
any chance of collision with another such machine? Certainly not. Robur
had not yet found imitators. The chance of encountering an aerostat
gliding through the air was too remote to be regarded. In any case it
would be all the worse for the aerostat—the earthen pot and the iron
pot. The “Albatross” had nothing to fear from the collision.
But what could happen? The aeronef might find herself like a ship on a
lee shore if a mountain that could not be outflanked or passed barred
the way. These are the reefs of the air, and they have to be avoided as
a ship avoids the reefs of the sea. The engineer, it is true, had given
the course, and in doing so had taken into account the altitude
necessary to clear the summits of the high lands in the district. But
as the aeronef was rapidly nearing a mountainous country, it was only
prudent to keep a good lookout, in case some slight deviation from the
course became necessary.
Looking at the country beneath them, Uncle Prudent and Phil Evans
noticed a large lake, whose lower southern end the “Albatross” had just
reached. They concluded, therefore, that during the night the whole
length of Lake Erie had been traversed, and that, as they were going
due west, they would soon be over Lake Michigan. “There can be no doubt
of it.” said Phil Evans, “and that group of roofs on the horizon is
Chicago.”
He was right. It was indeed the city from which the seventeen railways
diverge, the Queen of the West, the vast reservoir into which flow the
products of Indiana, Ohio, Wisconsin, Missouri, and all the States
which form the western half of the Union.
Uncle Prudent, through an excellent telescope he had found in his
cabin, easily recognized the principal buildings. His colleague pointed
out to him the churches and public edifices, the numerous “elevators”
or mechanical, granaries, and the huge Sherman Hotel, whose windows
seemed like a hundred glittering points on each of its faces.
“If that is Chicago.” said Uncle Prudent, “it is obvious that we are
going farther west than is convenient for us if we are to return to our
starting-place.”
And, in fact, the “Albatross” was traveling in a straight line from the
Pennsylvania capital.
But if Uncle Prudent wished to ask Robur to take him eastwards he could
not then do so. That morning the engineer did not leave his cabin.
Either he was occupied in some work, or else he was asleep, and the two
colleagues sat down to breakfast without seeing him.
The speed was the same as that during last evening. The wind being
easterly the rate was not interfered with at all, and as the
thermometer only falls a degree centigrade for every seventy meters of
elevation the temperature was not insupportable. And so, in chatting
and thinking and waiting for the engineer, Uncle Prudent and Phil Evans
walked about beneath the forest of screws, whose gyratory movement gave
their arms the appearance of semi-diaphanous disks.
The State of Illinois was left by its northern frontier in less than
two hours and a half; and they crossed the Father of Waters, the
Mississippi, whose double-decked steam-boats seemed no bigger than
canoes. Then the “Albatross” flew over Iowa after having sighted Iowa
City about eleven o’clock in the morning.
A few chains of hills, “bluffs” as they are called, curved across the
face of the country trending from the south to the northwest, whose
moderate height necessitated no rise in the course of the aeronef. Soon
the bluffs gave place to the large plains of western Iowa and
Nebraska—immense prairies extending all the way to the foot of the
Rocky Mountains. Here and there were many rios, affluents or minor
affluents of the Missouri. On their banks were towns and villages,
growing more scattered as the “Albatross” sped farther west.
Nothing particular happened during this day. Uncle Prudent and Phil
Evans were left entirely to themselves. They hardly noticed Frycollin
sprawling at full length in the bow, keeping his eyes shut so that he
could see nothing. And they were not attacked by vertigo, as might have
been expected. There was no guiding mark, and there was nothing to
cause the vertigo, as there would have been on the top of a lofty
building. The abyss has no attractive power when it is gazed at from
the car of a balloon or deck of an aeronef. It is not an abyss that
opens beneath the aeronaut, but an horizon that rises round him on all
sides like a cup.
In a couple of hours the “Albatross” was over Omaha, on the Nebraskan
frontier—Omaha City, the real head of the Pacific Railway, that long
line of rails, four thousand five hundred miles in length, stretching
from New York to San Francisco. For a moment they could see the yellow
waters of the Missouri, then the town, with its houses of wood and
brick in the center of a rich basin, like a buckle in the iron belt
which clasps North America round the waist. Doubtless, also, as the
passengers in the aeronef could observe all these details, the
inhabitants of Omaha noticed the strange machine. Their astonishment at
seeing it gliding overhead could be no greater than that of the
president and secretary of the Weldon Institute at finding themselves
on board.
Anyhow, the journals of the Union would be certain to notice the fact.
It would be the explanation of the astonishing phenomenon which the
whole world had been wondering over for some time.
In an hour the “Albatross” had left Omaha and crossed the Platte River,
whose valley is followed by the Pacific Railway in its route across the
prairie. Things looked serious for Uncle Prudent and Phil Evans.
“It is serious, then, this absurd project of taking us to the
Antipodes.”
“And whether we like it or not!” exclaimed the other.
“Robur had better take care! I am not the man to stand that sort of
thing.”
“Nor am I!” replied Phil Evans. “But be calm, Uncle Prudent, be calm.”
“Be calm!”
“And keep your temper until it is wanted.”
By five o’clock they had crossed the Black Mountains covered with pines
and cedars, and the “Albatross” was over the appropriately named Bad
Lands of Nebraska—a chaos of ochre-colored hills, of mountainous
fragments fallen on the soil and broken in their fall. At a distance
these blocks take the most fantastic shapes. Here and there amid this
enormous game of knucklebones there could be traced the imaginary ruins
of medieval cities with forts and dungeons, pepper-box turrets, and
machicolated towers. And in truth these Bad Lands are an immense
ossuary where lie bleaching in the sun myriads of fragments of
pachyderms, chelonians, and even, some would have us believe, fossil
men, overwhelmed by unknown cataclysms ages and ages ago.
When evening came the whole basin of the Platte River had been crossed,
and the plain extended to the extreme limits of the horizon, which rose
high owing to the altitude of the “Albatross.”
During the night there were no more shrill whistles of locomotives or
deeper notes of the river steamers to trouble the quiet of the starry
firmament. Long bellowing occasionally reached the aeronef from the
herds of buffalo that roamed over the prairie in search of water and
pasturage. And when they ceased, the trampling of the grass under their
feet produced a dull roaring similar to the rushing of a flood, and
very different from the continuous f-r-r-r-r of the screws.
Then from time to time came the howl of a wolf, a fox, a wild cat, or a
coyote, the “Canis latrans.” whose name is justified by his sonorous
bark.
Occasionally came penetrating odors of mint, and sage, and absinthe,
mingled with the more powerful fragrance of the conifers which rose
floating through the night air.
At last came a menacing yell, which was not due to the coyote. It was
the shout of a Redskin, which no Tenderfoot would confound with the cry
of a wild beast.