THE INSTITUTE AGAIN
Some weeks before, on the 13th of June, on the morning after the
sitting during which the Weldon Institute had been given over to such
stormy discussions, the excitement of all classes of the Philadelphia
population, black or white, had been much easier to imagine than to
describe.
From a very early hour conversation was entirely occupied with the
unexpected and scandalous incident of the night before. A stranger
calling himself an engineer, and answering to the name of Robur, a
person of unknown origin, of anonymous nationality, had unexpectedly
presented himself in the club-room, insulted the balloonists, made fun
of the aeronauts, boasted of the marvels of machines heavier than air,
and raised a frightful tumult by the remarks with which he greeted the
menaces of his adversaries. After leaving the desk, amid a volley of
revolver shots, he had disappeared, and in spite of every endeavor, no
trace could be found of him.
Assuredly here was enough to exercise every tongue and excite every
imagination. But by how much was this excitement increased when in the
evening of the 13th of June it was found that neither the president nor
secretary of the Weldon Institute had returned to their homes! Was it
by chance only that they were absent? No, or at least there was nothing
to lead people to think so. It had even been agreed that in the morning
they would be back at the club, one as president, the other as
secretary, to take their places during a discussion on the events of
the preceding evening.
And not only was there the complete disappearance of these two
considerable personages in the state of Pennsylvania, but there was no
news of the valet Frycollin. He was as undiscoverable as his master.
Never had a Negro since Toussaint L’Ouverture, Soulouque, or Dessaline
had so much talked about him.
The next day there was no news. Neither the colleagues nor Frycollin
had been found. The anxiety became serious. Agitation commenced. A
numerous crowd besieged the post and telegraph offices in case any news
should be received. There was no news.
And they had been seen coming out of the Weldon Institute loudly
talking together, and with Frycollin in attendance, go down Walnut
Street towards Fairmount Park! Jem Chip, the vegetarian, had even
shaken hands with the president and left him with “Tomorrow!”
And William T. Forbes, the manufacturer of sugar from rags, had
received a cordial shake from Phil Evans who had said to him twice, “Au
revoir! Au revoir!”
Miss Doll and Miss Mat Forbes, so attached to Uncle Prudent by the
bonds of purest friendship, could not get over the disappearance, and
in order to obtain news of the absent, talked even more than they were
accustomed to.
Three, four, five, six days passed. Then a week, then two weeks, and
there was nothing to give a clue to the missing three. The most minute
search had been made in every quarter. Nothing! In the park, even under
the trees and brushwood. Nothing! Always nothing! Although here it was
noticed that the grass looked to be pressed down in a way that seemed
suspicious and certainly was inexplicable; and at the edge of the
clearing there were traces of a recent struggle. Perhaps a band of
scoundrels had attacked the colleagues here in the deserted park in the
middle of the night!
It was possible. The police proceeded with their inquiries in all due
form and with all lawful slowness. They dragged the Schuyllkill river,
and cut into the thick bushes that fringe its banks; and if this was
useless it was not quite a waste, for the Schuyllkill is in great want
of a good weeding, and it got it on this occasion. Practical people are
the authorities of Philadelphia!
Then the newspapers were tried. Advertisements and notices and articles
were sent to all the journals in the Union without distinction of
color. The “Daily Negro.” the special organ of the black race,
published a portrait of Frycollin after his latest photograph. Rewards
were offered to whoever would give news of the three absentees, and
even to those who would find some clue to put the police on the track.
“Five thousand dollars! Five thousand dollars to any citizen who
would—”
Nothing was done. The five thousand dollars remained with the treasurer
of the Weldon Institute.
Undiscoverable! Undiscoverable! Undiscoverable! Uncle Prudent and Phil
Evans, of Philadelphia!
It need hardly be said that the club was put to serious inconvenience
by this disappearance of its president and secretary. And at first the
assembly voted urgency to a measure which suspended the work on the
“Go-Ahead.” How, in the absence of the principal promoters of the
affair, of those who had devoted to the enterprise a certain part of
their fortune in time and money—how could they finish the work when
these were not present? It were better, then, to wait.
And just then came the first news of the strange phenomenon which had
exercised people’s minds some weeks before. The mysterious object had
been again seen at different times in the higher regions of the
atmosphere. But nobody dreamt of establishing a connection between this
singular reappearance and the no less singular disappearance of the
members of the Weldon Institute. In fact, it would have required a very
strong dose of imagination to connect one of these facts with the
other.
Whatever it might be, asteroid or aerolite or aerial monster, it had
reappeared in such a way that its dimensions and shape could be much
better appreciated, first in Canada, over the country between Ottawa
and Quebec, on the very morning after the disappearance of the
colleagues, and later over the plains of the Far West, where it had
tried its speed against an express train on the Union Pacific.
At the end of this day the doubts of the learned world were at an end.
The body was not a product of nature, it was a flying machine, the
practical application of the theory of “heavier than air.” And if the
inventor of the aeronef had wished to keep himself unknown he could
evidently have done better than to try it over the Far West. As to the
mechanical force he required, or the engines by which it was
communicated, nothing was known, but there could be no doubt the
aeronef was gifted with an extraordinary faculty of locomotion. In
fact, a few days afterwards it was reported from the Celestial Empire,
then from the southern part of India, then from the Russian steppes.
Who was then this bold mechanician that possessed such powers of
locomotion, for whom States had no frontiers and oceans no limits, who
disposed of the terrestrial atmosphere as if it were his domain? Could
it be this Robur whose theories had been so brutally thrown in the face
of the Weldon Institute the day he led the attack against the utopia of
guidable balloons? Perhaps such a notion occurred to some of the
wide-awake people, but none dreamt that the said Robur had anything to
do with the disappearance of the president and secretary of the
Institute.
Things remained in this state of mystery when a telegram arrived from
France through the New York cable at 11-37 A.M. on July 13. And what
was this telegram? It was the text of the document found at Paris in a
snuff-box revealing what had happened to the two personages for whom
the Union was in mourning.
So, then, the perpetrator of this kidnapping “was” Robur the engineer,
come expressly to Philadelphia to destroy in its egg the theory of the
balloonists. He it was who commanded the “Albatross!” He it was who
carried off by way of reprisal Uncle Prudent, Phil Evans and Frycollin;
and they might be considered lost for ever. At least until some means
were found of constructing an engine capable of contending with this
powerful machine their terrestrial friends would never bring them back
to earth.
What excitement! What stupor! The telegram from Paris had been
addressed to the members of the Weldon Institute. The members of the
club were immediately informed of it. Ten minutes later all
Philadelphia received the news through its telephones, and in less than
an hour all America heard of it through the innumerable electric wires
of the new continent.
No one would believe it! “It is an unseasonable joke.” said some. “It
is all smoke.” said others. How could such a thing be done in
Philadelphia, and so secretly, too? How could the “Albatross” have been
beached in Fairmount Park without its appearance having been signaled
all over Pennsylvania?
Very good. These were the arguments. The incredulous had the right of
doubting. But the right did not last long. Seven days after the receipt
of the telegram the French mail-boat “Normandie” came into the Hudson,
bringing the famous snuff-box. The railway took it in all haste from
New York to Philadelphia.
It was indeed the snuff-box of the President of the Weldon Institute.
Jem Chip would have done on at day to take some more substantial
nourishment, for he fell into a swoon when he recognized it. How many a
time had he taken from it the pinch of friendship! And Miss Doll and
Miss Mat also recognized it, and so did William T. Forbes, Truck
Milnor, Bat T. Fynn, and many other members. And not only was it the
president’s snuff-box, it was the president’s writing!
Then did the people lament and stretch out their hands in despair to
the skies. Uncle Prudent and his colleague carried away in a flying
machine, and no one able to deliver them!
The Niagara Falls Company, in which Uncle Prudent was the largest
shareholder, thought of suspending its business and turning off its
cataracts. The Wheelton Watch Company thought of winding up its
machinery, now it had lost its manager.
Nothing more was heard of the aeronef. July passed, and there was no
news. August ran its course, and the uncertainty on the subject of
Robur’s prisoners was as great as ever. Had he, like Icarus, fallen a
victim to his own temerity?
The first twenty-seven days of September went by without result, but on
the 28th a rumor spread through Philadelphia that Uncle Prudent and
Phil Evans had during the afternoon quietly walked into the president’s
house. And, what was more extraordinary, the rumor was true, although
very few believed it.
They had, however, to give in to the evidence. There could be no doubt
these were the two men, and not their shadows. And Frycollin also had
come back! The members of the club, then their friends, then the crowd,
swarmed into the president’s house, and shook hands with the president
and secretary, and cheered them again and again. Jem Chip was there,
having left his luncheon’s joint of boiled lettuces, and William T.
Forbes and his daughters, and all the members of the club. It is a
mystery how Uncle Prudent and Phil Evans emerged alive from the
thousands who welcomed them.
On that evening was the weekly meeting of the Institute. It was
expected that the colleagues would take their places at the desk. As
they had said nothing of their adventures, it was thought they would
then speak, and relate the impressions of their voyage. But for some
reason or other both were silent. And so also was Frycollin, whom his
congeners in their delirium had failed to dismember.
But though the colleagues did not tell what had happened to them, that
is no reason why we should not. We know what occurred on the night of
the 27th and 28th of July; the daring escape to the earth, the scramble
among the rocks, the bullet fired at Phil Evans, the cut cable, and the
“Albatross” deprived of her propellers, drifting off to the northeast
at a great altitude. Her electric lamps rendered her visible for some
time. And then she disappeared.
The fugitives had little to fear. Now could Robur get back to the
island for three or four hours if his screws were out of gear? By that
time the “Albatross” would have been destroyed by the explosion, and be
no more than a wreck floating on the sea; those whom she bore would be
mangled corpses, which the ocean would not even give up again. The act
of vengeance would be accomplished.
Uncle Prudent and Phil Evans looked upon it as an act of legitimate
self-defence, and felt no remorse whatever. Evans was but slightly
wounded by the rifle bullet, and the three made their way up from the
shore in the hope of meeting some of the natives. The hope was
realized. About fifty natives were living by fishing off the western
coast. They had seen the aeronef descend on the island, and they
welcomed the fugitives as if they were supernatural beings. They
worshipped them, we ought rather to say. They accommodated them in the
most comfortable of their huts.
As they had expected, Uncle Prudent and Phil Evans saw nothing more of
the aeronef. They concluded that the catastrophe had taken place in
some high region of the atmosphere, and that they would hear no more of
Robur and his prodigious machine.
Meanwhile they had to wait for an opportunity of returning to America.
The Chatham Islands are not much visited by navigators, and all August
passed without sign of a ship. The fugitives began to ask themselves if
they had not exchanged one prison for another.
At last a ship came to water at the Chatham Islands. It will not have
been forgotten that when Uncle Prudent was seized he had on him several
thousand paper dollars, much more than would take him back to America.
After thanking their adorers, who were not sparing of their most
respectful demonstrations, Uncle Prudent, Phil Evans, and Frycollin
embarked for Auckland. They said nothing of their adventures, and in
two weeks landed in New Zealand.
At Auckland, a mail-boat took them on board as passengers, and after a
splendid passage the survivors of the “Albatross” stepped ashore at San
Francisco. They said nothing as to who they were or whence they had
come, but as they had paid full price for their berths no American
captain would trouble them further. At San Francisco they took the
first train out on the Pacific Railway, and on the 27th of September,
they arrived at Philadelphia, That is the compendious history of what
had occurred since the escape of the fugitives. And that is why this
very evening the president and secretary of the Weldon Institute took
their seats amid a most extraordinary attendance.
Never before had either of them been so calm. To look at them it did
not seem as though anything abnormal had happened since the memorable
sitting of the 12th of June. Three months and a half had gone, and
seemed to be counted as nothing. After the first round of cheers, which
both received without showing the slightest emotion, Uncle Prudent took
off his hat and spoke.
“Worthy citizens.” said he, “the meeting is now open.”
Tremendous applause. And properly so, for if it was not extraordinary
that the meeting was open, it was extraordinary that it should be
opened by Uncle Prudent and Phil Evans.
The president allowed the enthusiasm to subside in shouts and
clappings; then he continued: “At our last meeting, gentlemen, the
discussion was somewhat animated—(hear, hear)—between the partisans of
the screw before and those of the screw behind for our balloon the
“Go-Ahead.” (Marks of surprise.) We have found a way to bring the
beforists and the behindists in agreement. That way is as follows: we
are going to use two screws, one at each end of the car.” Silence, and
complete stupefaction.
That was all.
Yes, all! Of the kidnapping of the president and secretary of the
Weldon Institute not a word! Not a word of the “Albatross” nor of
Robur! Not a word of the voyage! Not a word of the way in which the
prisoners had escaped! Not a word of what had become of the aeronef, if
it still flew through space, or if they were to be prepared for new
reprisals on the member’s of the club!
Of course the balloonists were longing to ask Uncle Prudent and the
secretary about all these things, but they looked so close and so
serious that they thought it best to respect their attitude. When they
thought fit to speak they would do so, and it would be an honor to
hear. After all, there might be in all this some secret which would not
yet be divulged.
And then Uncle Prudent, resuming his speech amid a silence up to then
unknown in the meetings of the Weldon Institute, said, “Gentlemen, it
now only remains for us to finish the aerostat ‘Go-Ahead.’ It is left
to her to effect the conquest of the air! The meeting is at an end!”