OVER THE ATLANTIC
Yes, the Atlantic! The fears of the two colleagues were realized; but
it did not seem as though Robur had the least anxiety about venturing
over this vast ocean. Both he and his men seemed quite unconcerned
about it and had gone back to their stations.
Whither was the “Albatross” bound? Was she going more than round the
world as Robur had said? Even if she were, the voyage must end
somewhere. That Robur spent his life in the air on board the aeronef
and never came to the ground was impossible. How could he make up his
stock of provisions and the materials required for working his
machines? He must have some retreat, some harbor of refuge—in some
unknown and inaccessible spot where the “Albatross” could revictual.
That he had broken off all connections with the inhabitants of the land
might be true, but with every point on the surface of the earth,
certainly not.
That being the case, where was this point? How had the engineer come to
choose it? Was he expected by a little colony of which he was the
chief? Could he there find a new crew?
What means had he that he should be able to build so costly a vessel as
the “Albatross” and keep her building secret? It is true his living was
not expensive. But, finally, who was this Robur? Where did he come
from? What had been his history? Here were riddles impossible to solve;
and Robur was not the man to assist willingly in their solution.
It is not to be wondered at that these insoluble problems drove the
colleagues almost to frenzy. To find themselves whipped off into the
unknown without knowing what the end might be doubting even if the
adventure would end, sentenced to perpetual aviation, was this not
enough to drive the President and secretary of the Weldon Institute to
extremities?
Meanwhile the “Albatross” drove along above the Atlantic, and in the
morning when the sun rose there was nothing to be seen but the circular
line where earth met sky. Not a spot of land was insight in this huge
field of vision. Africa had vanished beneath the northern horizon.
When Frycollin ventured out of his cabin and saw all this water beneath
him, fear took possession of him.
Of the hundred and forty-five million square miles of which the area of
the world’s waters consists, the Atlantic claims about a quarter; and
it seemed as though the engineer was in no hurry to cross it. There was
now no going at full speed, none of the hundred and twenty miles an
hour at which the “Albatross” had flown over Europe. Here, where the
southwest winds prevail, the wind was ahead of them, and though it was
not very strong, it would not do to defy it and the “Albatross” was
sent along at a moderate speed, which, however, easily outstripped that
of the fastest mail-boat.
On the 13th of July she crossed the line, and the fact was duly
announced to the crew. It was then that Uncle Prudent and Phil Evans
ascertained that they were bound for the southern hemisphere. The
crossing of the line took place without any of the Neptunian ceremonies
that still linger on certain ships. Tapage was the only one to mark the
event, and he did so by pouring a pint of water down Frycollin’s neck.
On the 18th of July, when beyond the tropic of Capricorn, another
phenomenon was noticed, which would have been somewhat alarming to a
ship on the sea. A strange succession of luminous waves widened out
over the surface of the ocean with a speed estimated at quite sixty
miles an hour. The waves ran along at about eight feet from one
another, tracing two furrows of light. As night fell a bright
reflection rose even to the “Albatross.” so that she might have been
taken for a flaming aerolite. Never before had Robur sailed on a sea of
fire—fire without heat—which there was no need to flee from as it
mounted upwards into the sky.
The cause of this light must have been electricity; it could not be
attributed to a bank of fish spawn, nor to a crowd of those animalculae
that give phosphorescence to the sea, and this showed that the
electrical tension of the atmosphere was considerable.
In the morning an ordinary ship would probably have been lost. But the
“Albatross” played with the winds and waves like the powerful bird
whose name she bore. If she did not walk on their surface like the
petrels, she could like the eagles find calm and sunshine in the higher
zones.
They had now passed the forty-seventh parallel. The day was but little
over seven hours long, and would become even less as they approached
the Pole.
About one o’clock in the afternoon the “Albatross” was floating along
in a lower current than usual, about a hundred feet from the level of
the sea. The air was calm, but in certain parts of the sky were thick
black clouds, massed in mountains, on their upper surface, and ruled
off below by a sharp horizontal line. From these clouds a few lengthy
protuberances escaped, and their points as they fell seemed to draw up
hills of foaming water to meet them.
Suddenly the water shot up in the form of a gigantic hourglass, and the
“Albatross” was enveloped in the eddy of an enormous waterspout, while
twenty others, black as ink, raged around her. Fortunately the gyratory
movement of the water was opposite to that of the suspensory screws,
otherwise the aeronef would have been hurled into the sea. But she
began to spin round on herself with frightful rapidity. The danger was
immense, and perhaps impossible to escape, for the engineer could not
get through the spout which sucked him back in defiance of his
propellers. The men, thrown to the ends of the deck by centrifugal
force, were grasping the rail to save themselves from being shot off.
“Keep cool!” shouted Robur.
They wanted all their coolness, and their patience, too. Uncle Prudent
and Phil Evans, who had just come out of their cabin, were hurled back
at the risk of flying overboard. As she spun the “Albatross” was
carried along by the spout, which pirouetted along the waves with a
speed enough to make the helices jealous. And if she escaped from the
spout she might be caught by another, and jerked to pieces with the
shock.
“Get the gun ready!” said Robur.
The order was given to Tom Turner, who was crouching behind the swivel
amidships where the effect of the centrifugal force was least felt. He
understood. In a moment he had opened the breech and slipped a
cartridge from the ammunition-box at hand. The gun went off, and the
waterspouts collapsed, and with them vanished the platform of cloud
they seemed to bear above them.
“Nothing broken on board?” asked Robur.
“No.” answered Tom Turner. “But we don’t want to have another game of
humming-top like that!”
For ten minutes or so the “Albatross” had been in extreme peril. Had it
not been for her extraordinary strength of build she would have been
lost.
During this passage of the Atlantic many were the hours whose monotony
was unbroken by any phenomenon whatever. The days grew shorter and
shorter, and the cold became keen. Uncle Prudent and Phil Evans saw
little of Robur. Seated in his cabin, the engineer was busy laying out
his course and marking it on his maps, taking his observations whenever
he could, recording the readings of his barometers, thermometers, and
chronometers, and making full entries in his log-book.
The colleagues wrapped themselves well up and eagerly watched for the
sight of land to the southward. At Uncle Prudent’s request Frycollin
tried to pump the cook as to whither the engineer was bound, but what
reliance could be placed on the information given by this Gascon?
Sometimes Robur was an ex-minister of the Argentine Republic, sometimes
a lord of the Admiralty, sometimes an ex-President of the United
States, sometimes a Spanish general temporarily retired, sometimes a
Viceroy of the Indies who had sought a more elevated position in the
air. Sometimes he possessed millions, thanks to successful razzias in
the aeronef, and he had been proclaimed for piracy. Sometimes he had
been ruined by making the aeronef, and had been forced to fly aloft to
escape from his creditors. As to knowing if he were going to stop
anywhere, no! But if he thought of going to the moon, and found there a
convenient anchorage, he would anchor there! “Eh! Fry! My boy! That
would just suit you to see what was going on up there.”
“I shall not go! I refuse!” said the Negro, who took all these things
seriously.
“And why, Fry, why? You might get married to some pretty bouncing
Lunarian!”
Frycollin reported this conversation to his master, who saw it was
evident that nothing was to be learnt about Robur. And so he thought
still more of how he could have his revenge on him.
“Phil.” said he one day, “is it quite certain that escape is
impossible?”
“Impossible.”
“Be it so! But a man is always his own property; and if necessary, by
sacrificing his life—”
“If we are to make that sacrifice.” said Phil Evans, “the sooner the
better. It is almost time to end this. Where is the “Albatross” going?
Here we are flying obliquely over the Atlantic, and if we keep on we
shall get to the coast of Patagonia or Tierra del Fuego. And what are
we to do then? Get into the Pacific, or go to the continent at the
South Pole? Everything is possible with this Robur. We shall be lost in
the end. It is thus a case of legitimate self-defence, and if we must
perish—”
“Which we shall not do.” answered Uncle Prudent, “without being
avenged, without annihilating this machine and all she carries.”
The colleagues had reached a stage of impotent fury, and were prepared
to sacrifice themselves if they could only destroy the inventor and his
secret. A few months only would then be the life of this prodigious
aeronef, of whose superiority in aerial locomotion they had such
convincing proofs! The idea took such hold of them that they thought of
nothing else but how to put it into execution. And how? By seizing on
some of the explosives on board and simply blowing her up. But could
they get at the magazines?
Fortunately for them, Frycollin had no suspicion of their scheme. At
the thought of the “Albatross” exploding in midair, he would not have
shrunk from betraying his master.
It was on the 23rd of July that the land reappeared in the southwest
near Cape Virgins at the entrance of the Straits of Magellan. Under the
fifty-second parallel at this time of year the night was eighteen hours
long and the temperature was six below freezing.
At first the “Albatross.” instead of keeping on to the south, followed
the windings of the coast as if to enter the Pacific. After passing
Lomas Bay, leaving Mount Gregory to the north and the Brecknocks to the
west, they sighted Puerto Arena, a small Chilean village, at the moment
the churchbells were in full swing; and a few hours later they were
over the old settlement at Port Famine.
If the Patagonians, whose fires could be seen occasionally, were really
above the average in stature, the passengers in the aeronef were unable
to say, for to them they seemed to be dwarfs. But what a magnificent
landscape opened around during these short hours of the southern day!
Rugged mountains, peaks eternally capped with snow, with thick forests
rising on their flanks, inland seas, bays deep set amid the peninsulas,
and islands of the Archipelago. Clarence Island, Dawson Island, and the
Land of Desolation, straits and channels, capes and promontories, all
in inextricable confusion, and bound by the ice in one solid mass from
Cape Forward, the most southerly point of the American continent, to
Cape Horn the most southerly point of the New World.
When she reached Fort Famine the “Albatross” resumed her course to the
south. Passing between Mount Tam on the Brunswick Peninsula and Mount
Graves, she steered for Mount Sarmiento, an enormous peak wrapped in
snow, which commands the Straits of Magellan, rising six thousand four
hundred feet from the sea. And now they were over the land of the
Fuegians, Tierra del Fuego, the land of fire. Six months later, in the
height of summer, with days from fifteen to sixteen hours long, how
beautiful and fertile would most of this country be, particularly in
its northern portion! Then, all around would be seen valleys and
pasturages that could form the feeding-grounds of thousands of animals;
then would appear virgin forests, gigantic trees-birches, beeches,
ash-trees, cypresses, tree-ferns—and broad plains overrun by herds of
guanacos, vicunas, and ostriches. Now there were armies of penguins and
myriads of birds; and, when the “Albatross” turned on her electric
lamps the guillemots, ducks, and geese came crowding on board enough to
fill Tapage’s larder a hundred times and more.
Here was work for the cook, who knew how to bring out the flavor of the
game and keep down its peculiar oiliness. And here was work for
Frycollin in plucking dozen after dozen of such interesting feathered
friends.
That day, as the sun was setting about three o’clock in the afternoon,
there appeared in sight a large lake framed in a border of superb
forest. The lake was completely frozen over, and a few natives with
long snowshoes on their feet were swiftly gliding over it.
At the sight of the “Albatross.” the Fuegians, overwhelmed with
terror—scattered in all directions, and when they could not get away
they hid themselves, taking, like the animals, to the holes in the
ground.
The “Albatross” still held her southerly course, crossing the Beagle
Channel, and Navarin Island and Wollaston Island, on the shores of the
Pacific. Then, having accomplished 4,700 miles since she left Dahomey,
she passed the last islands of the Magellanic archipelago, whose most
southerly outpost, lashed by the everlasting surf, is the terrible Cape
Horn.