“Are you cracked?” asked the other, simultaneously amused and disconcerted. “If the stratagem works, why keep it a secret?”
“For various reasons, but most of all because there presently exists another means of immunization, which is the fruit of empiricism, and is certainly more reliable than my procedure, which is the result of calculation. That means is precisely the one that you’ve rejected, which consists of gathering in force away from habitations. That’s well-known; everyone accepts that temporary obligation, and those who refuse to submit to it—imbeciles, hotheads or braggarts, meaning no offense—won’t want to use my system either.”
“There’s some truth in that…”
“Except…except that…will the first of the two procedures, the more popular, always be efficacious? And is the second—mine—reliable? Is it by chance that the sarvants didn’t carry me off during that first experiment? Might it be that they didn’t see me? Paradoxical as it might seem, you know, I desire that wholeheartedly. For, if that one part of my theory were to be verified, the entire theory would be true, and then…” He passed his hand over his forehead, as if he were facing frightful apparitions. His hand was trembling and beads of sweat were forming on his brow.
“…And then, my dear chap, you haven’t had dinner,” Maxime finished. “You’re hungry. Empty stomach, hollow head. Hunger is leading you astray.”
“Monsieur Maxime,” said Robert, “I would give my life to be mistaken.”
XV. Other Contradictory Facts
The period that followed was truly terrible, for the sole reason that some people were still incredulous. The neighboring populations retained a suspicion of trickery, and those of the inhabitants who admitted the epidemic of disappearances did not realize how far it might extend. In their view, it was a local calamity. Some merely passed for St. Thomases, who had not seen anything themselves—but in the heart of Bugey, in the neighborhood of Belley, more than one wit or churl persisted in refusing to take it seriously. That is what is incredible! That is what provoked more and more misfortunes!
The audacity of the enemy increased with the number of its successes. Its field of operations eventually became an immense circle that took in Saint-Rambert, Aix-les-Bains and Nantua. Within this province, which continued to grow incessantly, the sarvant levied its incomprehensible tithe, and those who did not believe in it became its unfortunate victims.
What about those who believed in the sarvant, though? The unfortunates were living in fear. Did they want to go out? An escort was necessary; they rendered the service reciprocally, and one saw cohorts of villagers going abroad, looking at the sky, which had become equivocal. Ah, the sky! An enigma had been added to its numerous mysteries, and its depths retreated even further from human eyes. Dwellings were locked up well before dusk, and when the hostile night had fallen, people listened carefully, for it has been agreed that an alarm bell would be sounded in any commune where the sarvants had been detected. They only ever heard it, though, in the depths of feverish ears where the blood rang its own unhealthy bell. Well after dawn, they would open a door-hatch, a ventilator, then the windows, and finally the door.
Some remained sequestered. Others, less timorous, forced themselves to go out—but it only required a tremor for them to tremble, a door to be moved by a draught for them to go pale; the wind, most of all, was able to frighten them. Rumor had spread of the breeze agitating the chestnut-trees at Mirastel and preceding the frightful snap, with the result that a zephyr passing through foliage seemed to them to be something malevolent watching them; its caress sent frissons running over them. They wanted to know the origin of the wind and exactly what it was—questions they had never asked before.
What they feared, to tell the truth, was being grabbed from behind, in crushing hands that were always perceived too late. That is why they turned round continually. Tapping a comrade on the shoulder, taking him by surprise, was a deadly game. On the avenue in Belley, during a game of boule, a citizen with a weak heart dropped dead because his partner had touched him in that fashion.
One Wednesday, near Talissieu, the corpse of the rural policeman was discovered in a mulberry hedge. In the course of a twilight patrol, his shirt had been caught on the thorns; certain that he had been harpooned by the sarvants, the poor devil had lashed out, but the brambles had wrapped their claws around him and fear had killed him; his expression clearly showed that he had died of fright.
Although every dwelling was full of occupants, most of the villages seemed to have been evacuated. The streets resonated here and there with the passage of a group. Sometimes, in their oppressive silence and emptiness, one brave and bold individual would slide along the walls with the face of man in perdition—and like everyone else, he lifted his eyes to Heaven, not to pray but to maintain surveillance, for everyone had less expectation of salvation from the Heavens than of peril.
The countryside was deserted. A few flocks, guarded by groups of children, were still in the meadows; at distant intervals, phalanxes of laborers worked the fields. A lugubrious meditation overhung the faint songs and strained laughter. To complete the misery, the month of June was overcast, interminably rolling clouds intercepting the sunlight. Every day, though, processions flowed out of the churches, composed of crowds in mourning-dress, and prayers were said imploring God to put an end to a scourge that could not even be clearly defined. As usual, terror encouraged conversions. One priest, having researched the old Medieval formulas, carried out exorcisms.
The further away one went from Bugey in any direction, the more the emotion was attenuated, as might be expected in frontier regions. The region was a hearth of dread, which radiated over the land and whose intensity decreased with distance. Outsiders, whose were still not anxious on their own behalf, were living in perfect tranquility, and in many distant States people still took the sarvants for a hoax.
One unimaginable thing is that Maxime—a guest at Mirastel, so severely tested in his affections by the general misfortune—was in the ranks of the skeptics, as unmoved as if he were living at the antipodes. His firm common sense, as a mariner and soldier, baulked at the supernatural. He refused to admit it—and as the supernatural seemed to be the only explanation of the facts, Maxime was not far from denying the facts themselves, if not in their reality at least in the appearances they presented. He remained convinced that everything would be explained naturally when the bandits demanded money to return the captives safe and sound. In his view, the sarvant’s only martyrs were the nervous individuals slain by fear. He had tried hard to take the stories of flying men and eagles no longer flying seriously—stories of a world turned upside-down and a saturnalia of creation—but he had not succeeded, and privately considered them to be theatrical trickery, the machinations of some of illusionist, or tall tales.
In spite of everyone’s remonstrations, and in spite of his mother’s anxiety, he often went out on the mountain alone and painted water-colors from nature. He said that he needed to practice in order to execute the color plates for a treatise on ichthyology. He showed off his confidence with extraordinary insouciance, and never missed an opportunity to get away, no matter how briefly. When there were journeys to be undertaken, he took responsibility for them, and it was he and the mechanic who took the big white motor-car—which he delighted in driving—to fetch provisions.
Maxime took the vehicle to Belley on the second Thursday in June, the stocks of calcium carburate being in need of renewal—for they had decided to remount the two searchlights, and every night, for the present, their double beam shine from the top of the tower, making it resemble a fantastic windmill with capricious fiery sails. He was on his way back to Mirastel as dusk fell. As he emerged from Ceyzérieu—which stood on a ridge facing the château, on the far side of the marshy plain—he was suddenly carried away by the beauty of the view.
A sea of mist submerged the depths. Villages—even their bell-towers—had disappeared. The vapors elevated their imponderable felt as far as
the line of manor-houses. The setting sun, monarch of gold and shade, silhouetted the Colombier superbly, making its ridges stand out and carving out the hollows of its ravines. The mounting darkness had already conquered the base of the rump, but the high crags were still flamboyant. A heavy cloud plumed the summit, making it resemble the crater of a volcano. There was something antediluvian about the landscape.
Maxime imagined that he was living hundreds of thousand years earlier, when the waves covered the plain and the mountains jetted flame. The Moon was rising to his right from the heights of the Chautagne, enormous and deep red in color, like a lukewarm prehistoric Sun—and he thought about primitive humans, prey to the multiple anguish of a world they did not know, unfortunate victims of inexplicable elements, every manifestation of which must have seemed supernatural to them, who were doomed to die convinced that they had lived amid prodigies.
The Moon spread carmine tints across the surface of the fog.
The automobile went down the slope and plunged into the stagnant mist.
The fog was quite dense. The road vanished from sight ten meters in front of the hood. He changed down into second gear, passed over a small bridge, made a left turn and went alongside the invisible meadows of Ceyzérieu. After the bridge at Tuilière, he was forced to slow down even further; the winding road was full of hazards.
In the whitish half-light, the spinneys loomed up as a succession of indistinct masses, which distance blurred accordingly. The little marshy clearings were fuming gently.
Suddenly, Maxime braked hard and seized the mechanic’s wrist in a tight grip.
“Look! What’s happening down there?”
In front of them, in the depths of the fog, very close to ground level, a monumental elongated shape—a sort of large spindle, like the silhouette of a dirigible balloon—was gliding sinuously along, briskly and rapidly, between the clumps of trees. It disappeared into the mist, which its passage had disturbed, and which moved in its wake in nonchalant swirls. It was merely a glimpse.
“Did you see it?” demanded Maxime, overcome by surprise.
“Yes, Monsieur Maxime. It’s a big balloon. How rapidly it moves! Ninety, at least!”
“For sure…ah, we have the truth!” cried the young man, as he set off again. “I know it now!”
“Ah! Perhaps that was how Mademoiselle was abducted…”
“What? You didn’t see, then? You didn’t notice anything odd?”
“No, Monsieur Maxime.”
“Come on—the gondola? There wasn’t any gondola!”
“Does Monsieur Maxime think so?”
“I certainly do think so.”
“Didn’t see—moving too fast…”
“Didn’t you hear anything? Me neither. Mind you, the car’s motor was making a racket, and shaking.”
“Right! Monsieur Maxime let it race when he declutched so quickly. Finally, we’re coming out of this cotton wool—which is no bad thing…”
Indeed, the automobile was climbing the slope toward Mirastel and soon emerged into the evening light. Maxime was able to observe things at his leisure.
The sea of fog was quite motionless. No wake disturbed it. The risen moon, reduced and paler, now imparted nacreous streaks to it. The immense atmosphere was only haunted by bats. As far as the eye could see, there was no balloon in flight. The furtive aeronef, which seemed to be steering without a crew, like a phantom dirigible, was doubtless still gliding beneath the vaporous expanse, which extended as far as the eye could see.
Maxime reached Mirastel and pulled up in the main courtyard. He was astonished to find his relatives and all the domestics gathered there around a four-wheeled cart, furnished with a massive box, whose owner was speaking animatedly. Maxime recognized Philibert, who held the fishing concession at the Lac du Bourget. Every Thursday, the man went from house to house bringing the Friday fish, and he was he who supplied the ichthyologist-oceanographer with the subjects of his experiments and the models for his plates.
Philibert was making a speech, and Maxime observed the serious and attentive expressions of Robert Collin and Monsieur Le Tellier, who were listening to him. No one, moreover, took any interest in the return of the automobile. Having advised the mechanic to keep quiet about the dirigible, the son of the house went over to the fisherman and asked him to begin his story again. It was not ordinary, and dated from the same day.
Philibert’s house was situated close to Conjux, on the shore of the lake. He had come out that morning at about five o’clock to go “furnish” his mare, and had paused by the lake momentarily, for he liked to contemplate his fishing-ground.
The water, sparkling in the dawn light, was smooth and transparent. The fish were swimming close to the surface. Suddenly, though, the mirror-like placidity had been broken. Some distance from the shore, Philibert saw something forming in the water like an instantaneous, fugitive hollow…and from the bottom of the hole leapt the most magnificent pike imaginable. The fish sprang up with a formidable bound, out of its element, and did not fall back. While the navel in the lake closed up again beneath a wave, it commenced surprising contortions. For three or four seconds, it lashed the air with its tail and its fins, and then it shot off, flying above the waves, as kingfishers do. It doubled the promontory on which the Château de Châtillon stood, and was lost to sight behind it.
Such was the story that Philibert told, much less succinctly. The domestics were hearing it for the second time, but they exclaimed in amazement again.
“You can imagine,” the fisherman said, “that I rubbed my eyes! And it seemed quite frolicsome, that devil of a fish!”
“It was making violent contortions, though, wasn’t it?” said Monsieur Le Tellier.
“Oh, yes—then. Writhing like a mad dog, damn it!”
Monsieur Le Tellier made a sign to Robert. “This bears a curious resemblance to the men at Châtel and the eagle of the Colombier…”
Maxime interrupted. “Come on, Philibert. You were seeing things. Did you really see it? Cross your heart?”
“I swear it.”
But the oceanographer told Philibert that he knew the species of fish better than anyone, and assured him that no fresh-water fish was capable of flight.
“Well, Monsieur Maxime, is there any marine flying fish that can do what the pike did?”
“That, no—and their length never exceeds 30 or 40 centimeters.”
“Well, I’m telling you that it was a pike! And I know them as well as anyone. A first-rate specimen. An old diamond, green and glorious, at least 40 pounds!”
“Lord Jesus!” cried the cook.
“Anyway,” Maxime retorted, “in what fashion do you claim that it flew? Flying fish can only stay airborne for about thirty meters; they dive back into the water then take off again.”
“No, no—mine flew. It made little jumps as it drew away, zigzagging briefly to the right and the left, and it stayed at the same height. If it dived back in, it was the other side of Châtillon, because I can certify that it stayed four or five meters above the water all the time.”
Maxime laughed sarcastically. “And did you stay on the bank for a long time afterwards?”
“My word, no! I went to harness up right away, and empty the keep-nets into the fish-well.” He changed his tone to say: “Except, ladies and gentlemen, that I told everyone about my adventure along the way—that’s why I’m late. Night’s fallen, and if you’ll be generous enough to let me, I’ll sleep here, because…it’s not that I’m afraid, but…”
“That’s understood,” said Madame Arquedouve.
“I’ve brought you some lavarets, Monsieur Maxime.”
“Thanks—put them over there to the left, please.”
Having taken his father and Robert Collin aside, Maxime told them what he had seen in the fog. He maintained that the dirigible was the pirates’ craft, by virtue of the original disposition that did not permit the gondola to be seen, and because of the skill required to travel so quickly throu
gh the fog, avoiding obstacles.”
“How quickly was that?” said Monsieur Le Tellier.
“So quickly,” his son replied, “that the balloon hardly had time, so to speak, to mask the trees in front of which it glided. It was like an express train, you understand: you can see the things behind it, and never cease seeing them, in spite of the opacity it interposes between you and them for the blink of an eye. Well, that was what it was like.”
“What rapidity, indeed! But then, you were unable to make out any details, especially in the fog.”
“A veil of thick muslin surrounding me would have had the same effect. One couldn’t see anything but silhouettes at the distance at which the autoballoon passed. I noticed…I thought I noticed the absence of a gondola. It was a colossal cigar, which scattered the mist around it.”
“Larger than an ordinary dirigible?”
“Oh! No, I don’t think so. In sum, it’s definitely an improved aeronef, which flies away a top speed once a theft or abduction is accomplished. It entrusts itself to the mist in order to pass unnoticed, making use of fog as it makes use of darkness. The fact of having seen it here is a certain guarantee that it’s the corsair, for me. You’re convinced, I imagine.”
“What about the fish?” said Monsieur Le Tellier.
“And the flying men?” added his secretary, with a caustic smile.
“The fish and the flying men? The fancies of naïve peasants! Brigadier Géruzon and Philibert the fisherman are superstitious, visionaries. Take note, furthermore, that Philibert thought he saw his pike wriggling as if contorting itself, as was said of the men at Châtel, Suggestion! Pure suggestion!”
“And the eagle?” Robert objected. “I saw that so-called vision myself.”
“Agreed. You saw it, through your spectacles—gold-rimmed spectacles, even. Your sight and your imagination are overly rich.”
The Blue Peril Page 12
