A third individual now appeared on the scene. A tall, gaunt and ungainly man, bald and bespectacled, strode up rapidly, waving his arms and an oversized umbrella. A long yellow overcoat floated behind him. The newcomer, careless of his unprotected shoes, bounded through the puddles, splashing himself from top to toe.
Thus we introduce to our readers, with their permission, the celebrated scientist Valentin Croknuff,19 founder and Director of the Great Melbourne Aquarium, an establishment almost without rival, where all known species of fish swim back and forth in continuously-recycled sea-water. Mr. Croknuff’s Aquarium lacked nothing but a whale, so his joy may be imagined when, at the very moment he was turning for home, he observed from a distance the monster stranded on the sand.
John Bird was just about to finish the creature off, brandishing a harpoon that he had recovered from its flesh, when a violent blow from an umbrella fell upon his head. His pipe fell out of his mouth and broke. The furious John Bird rounded on his opponent to deliver his riposte.
“I’ll buy your whale—don’t touch it, you imbecile!” cried Mr. Croknuff, the man with the umbrella.
John Bird lowered his fist. “How much?”
“Fifty pounds!”
“Pay up!”
Having received his money, John Bird turned on his heel, saying: “Now take your whale away, if you can!”
That was the difficult part, but Mr. Croknuff got it done regardless. That same evening, all Melbourne was informed, by means of huge posters, that the scientist Mr. Croknuff had finally acquired for his Great Aquarium the whale of his dreams.
Valentin Croknuff spent the whole night lavishing much-needed care upon his cherished whale. The unfortunate creature was in a sad state, flapping its fins lamentably.
Mr. Croknuff’s Great Aquarium was situated in a nice part of Melbourne, on a grand avenue called Aquarium Road. A beautiful garden was laid out in front of the building, in whose shade passers-by could often observe the worthy Mr. Croknuff walking for hours with a sick baby seal in his arms, or a sea-lion overtaken by nostalgia.
The Aquarium was octagonal in shape, comprising eight immense tanks surrounding a central room—which Mr. Croknuff, in order to be always in the midst of his pupils, had made into his workroom and his bedroom. In a way, he actually lived in a submarine world, and could watch over the health of his stock as easily by night as in the daytime. He was, in consequence, familiar with all their little habits. He had studied their characteristics and had made himself master of them all, a good father to his family. He made them change tanks when they became bored, and alleviated the tedium of long summer evenings by charming them with symphonies played on the piano, performed with the most marvelous verve.
It ought to be said that it was entirely for the benefit of his inmates that Mr. Croknuff had acquired the piano. Mr. Croknuff, like all sensible men, detested music, particularly piano music—but he told himself that even though music was a prehistoric invention, a last relic of barbarism which civilization would one day sweep away, the savage art might perhaps still be agreeable to the scarcely-elevated natures of his boarders.
That night, Mr. Croknuff was entirely devoted to his whale; the other fish, glued to the glass, waited in vain for the concert that sent them to sleep every evening. The whale wheeled around and around in its aquarium like a mad thing. Mr. Croknuff was desperate to do something to ease its distress. He had scratched away distractedly at his denuded skull for hours, without seeing any means of putting an end to its suffering.
Suddenly, the whale made a convulsive movement. Its jaws opened very wide, and its eyes closed. Mr. Croknuff, believing that it was about to give up the ghost, pounced on his piano—on which, in order to soothe the poor whale’s last moments, he plucked out the despairing chords of Mozart’s Requiem, while watering the keys with his tears. When he lifted his head again, however, the whale was not dead—and it was no longer alone. A bizarre creature was standing by its side!
Mr. Croknuff, rubbing his eyes, realized that the trespasser was a diver dressed in a suit!
Leaping briskly on to the aquarium’s platform, Mr. Croknuff slid a ladder into the tank and, without saying a word, signaled to the diver to climb up. Our readers will recognize Mysora, who had survived being swallowed by the gluttonous monster, thanks to her extra-strong costume.
Mr. Croknuff and Mysora climbed down into the scientist’s bedroom. Mr. Croknuff seemed to be furious. Standing before Mysora with his arms folded he began cursing explosively. “Ah! ah! ah! Wretch! So it’s you who’ve been hurting my whale! Do you know, infamous torturer, that I can have you up in court—you’ve no right to damage my property!”
Mysora, who did not speak a word of English, understood nothing of this discourse. In any case, the poor girl was at the end of her tether. Without making any response, she fainted, letting herself fall into an armchair.
“Here we go!” Croknuff grumbled. “Look who’s ill now! There’s a chap who doesn’t stand on ceremony! As if I had time to attend to him, when the poor whale he’s hurt is suffering so! Let’s see now—come round, my friend. Hang on—drink this. It’s a bottle of sugared water I prepared for a baby seal with the measles... drink up! Quickly! I’ve got to get back to my whale!” And Mr. Croknuff, his head turned towards his whale, rapped on Mysora’s iron helmet with the bottle of sugared water. “Well, drink it, then!” he went on. “Ah, I get it! It’s his diving-suit getting in the way!” Replacing the bottle on his desk, Mr. Croknuff set about unfastening Mysora’s diving-suit.
Suddenly, he cried out and let the helmet fall to the ground. Mysora’s pretty head had appeared before his eyes, pallid with the emotion of those 30 terrible hours. Her long hair had come undone, and made a magnificent ebony frame for the bleached canvas of her face. Life seemed to be returning; her large eyes opened wide with effort as she tried to get her bearings.
Her gaze fell first upon the glass partition of the huge tank where the whale, finally restored to normality, was swimming quite calmly back and forth. Mysora let out a feeble scream at the sight of the monster—which, bumping its nose against the wall of its prison, fixed its little round eyes upon her. She fainted again.
No scientist had ever experienced an emotion as great as Mr. Croknuff’s. His heart beat faster and his spectacles jumped on his nose as his eyes flickered back and forth between the whale and the girl. What blows he rained upon his forehead with his fist! Eventually, having moved an atlas and a stuffed tuna out of the way, he sat down on a low chair beside the young woman and began slapping her gently with both hands to bring her round.
A few feeble sighs were the only response. Mr. Croknuff jumped up, satisfied, threw himself upon the bottle of sugared water and tried to force a few drops between the young woman’s lips.
“How beautiful she is! How beautiful!” murmured Mr. Croknuff, his attentions becoming more profuse. “What long hair! What little hands! And the nose—what lovely curvature! What eyes! What eyebrows! What teeth! How beautiful she is! How beautiful! Drink this for me, my girl. Oof! What a woman! There’s an adventure—walking on the sea-bed in a diving-suit, being swallowed by a whale! She loves fish! How beautiful she is! How beautiful! I love them too, and I’ve always dreamed of a Mrs. Croknuff who would love fish... but I’ve never found one, and have remained a bachelor. Yes, my girl! That’s what you see—a bachelor! Drink this for me, my girl. I made it for my baby seal; it’s very good. How beautiful she is! How beautiful!!!”
Mr. Croknuff was beside himself. None of his friends would have recognized the illustrious scientist—author of eight conscientious volumes on the morals of the lobster before dressing, and lengthy patient studies of the habits of reef-building polyps—as he knelt beside Mysora, sighing frantically and bathing the hands of the girl abandoned to his care with tender tears.
It must be acknowledged that although Mr. Croknuff no longer had any hair or teeth, he still had a heart—and that heart had quickened its beat for the very first time! Mr. Crok
nuff firmly believed that he had committed himself entirely to pisciculture, but here was his heart in sudden rebellion, up-ending everything in its way, laying down the law to its former master, Mr. Croknuff’s brain.
It was all over! Mr. Croknuff could no longer contain himself.
“Angel!” he said to Mysora—for he was already thinking of her as an angel, and addressed her thus. “Angel! I love you, and I offer you my hand and my Aquarium! Accept them! You love fish; I love them too! I love you; you shall love me; we shall love one another, here! Give me your answer, angel!”
Mysora, coming round, had opened her eyes. At first, she understood nothing of what Mr. Croknuff said, taking him for an aged doctor—then, confronted by the scientist’s fervent pantomime, she began to wonder whether she had miraculously escaped one great peril only to fall into another, no less terrible.
Poor Mysora pushed Mr. Croknuff away and stood up, her face pale, her hair in disarray and her expression distraught.
“What do you want from me?” she cried, in Malay. “Do you know that I’m the daughter of the Rajah of Timor, and the bride-to-be of Saturnin Farandoul, Captain of La Belle Léocadie. Beware the vengeance of my father, or that—more terrible still—of my beloved Farandoul!”
Mr. Croknuff had grasped nothing from this speech except for one thing: Mysora was angry. Mr. Croknuff’s rejuvenated heart ached at that sad thought, and its proprietor groveled desperately at the feet of the incensed young woman.
“Pardon me, sweet dove! I would give my whale, and my Aquarium with it, not to have offended you! You don’t understand—I love you! It’s my heart, my hand, my Aquarium, that I offer you! Permit me to speak to you of love; listen to me! Your arrival has turned my life upside-down, and thanks to you I have experienced what experts in these matters call love at first sight! I have not studied the physiology of the passions; like a madman, I denied love, but a single instant has revealed it to me. Angel, I love you!” And Mr. Croknuff, still on his knees, extended his arms towards Mysora.
Mysora leapt backwards, abruptly took up her helmet, refastened her diving-suit, and leapt on to the platform of the aquarium as rapidly as a flash of lightning.
“Greybeard,” she cried, “you have shown me that there are monsters more dreadful to young women than those one meets at the bottom of the sea! Since you force it upon me, I shall return to the whale—but tremble, for my Farandoul will come to save me!”
Saying these words, the heroic young woman slid into the aquarium. The whale, which had not been paying attention, started with fright and retreated to the most distant extremity of the tank.
Mysora had not been unaware of the dangers that she might run in cetacean society, but she had decided to brave them in order to keep herself pure for her beloved. She was delighted to see, however, that it was she who frightened the whale. The voracious cetacean was conscious of the torment it had suffered as a result of taking such an indigestible creature into its gut, and was now disposed to keep well clear of Mysora.
Mr. Croknuff, on the other hand, stood on the platform wringing his hands, at the risk of tearing out the last of his hair in his anguish.
At one point, he seemed to be on the point of throwing himself head-first into the aquarium to end his life, but then he tried to move Mysora to pity. The young woman obdurately refused to leave her protective shelter.
At sunrise, Mr. Croknuff went away. The doors of the establishment were soon opened to the waiting crowd, whose members had come from all over Melbourne to see his whale.
The general astonishment was immense when they saw that, in addition to the whale, the central tank contained a creature clad in a diving-suit, which seemed to be living on amicable terms with the enormous cetacean. Mr. Croknuff was there, in the process of receiving the congratulations of the Scientific Societies of Melbourne; pressed by questions, he tried to keep his explanations vague, but only succeeded in further exciting their curiosity. Some of his employees, cunningly interrogated, were less discreet; several rumors began to circulate within the crowd.
Soon, all Melbourne knew that Mr. Croknuff had a live siren in his Aquarium, so accomplished and so marvelously beautiful that he had been obliged to take it upon himself to dress her in a diving-suit, in order to spare her the fervent curiosity of the public.
Poor Mysora, finding herself the object of every gaze, sought to hide herself as completely as possible behind boulders covered with algae and marine plants; but there, on the opposite face of the aquarium—which, as we have observed, looked out into Mr. Croknuff’s office—she found her odious persecutor plastered against the glass, blowing her the most tender kisses. The poor girl quickly took herself off to the other side, where numerous hurrahs greeted her return. It was the same all day. As evening approached, she contrived to make herself a refuge within the boulders—a sort of cave where, exhausted by fatigue, she went calmly to sleep, after having first partaken of a light supper dispensed by Mr. Croknuff from the platform of the aquarium.
Mr. Croknuff gave himself up completely to the most brilliant improvisations on the piano, but Mysora refused to pay the least attention to the waves of harmony that rolled through the aquarium, to the great delight of the other inmates. That night, not a single resident fish went to sleep; Mysora alone found forgetfulness of her troubles in slumber—and traveled the empire of dreams in company with her beloved Farandoul.
What was our hero doing in the meantime? Had La Belle Léocadie perished when the tempest took hold of her, after the cables attaching her to the whale had ruptured?
Not at all. Farandoul was an excellent mariner; mastering his grief, he thought only of saving his crew, and La Belle Léocadie had, fortunately, extracted herself from all danger.
Two days after the storm, the three-master had come into Sandridge, Melbourne’s port, situated a few kilometers away from the town. Farandoul hoped to pick up the track of the whale there, as the monster had been racing towards Port Philip when it had given him the slip. He had soon discovered John Bird, and had obtained from him, by courtesy of a few well-placed guineas, every detail of the purchase and removal of the whale by the scientist Mr. Croknuff.
Farandoul went forthwith to Melbourne’s Great Aquarium, and entered the establishment at the moment when the greatest influx of curiosity-seekers was crowding into it.
Scientists, naturalists, academicians, journalists and tradesmen were overrunning the Aquarium. Mr. Croknuff found himself pulled in every direction, by the members of a special commission sent by the Melbourne Institute, by doctors desirous of dissecting the so-called siren, by photographers and reporters from every newspaper in the state of Victoria—and so on, and so on.
Farandoul elbowed his way through the crowd.
“Where is she? Where is she?” he cried, shoving the scientists out of the way.
“Who do you mean?”
“My whale—let me see my whale!” He had arrived in front of the largest tank in the Aquarium despite the efforts Mr. Croknuff made to repel him.
One glance was sufficient. The whale was there—and, alive within the aquarium, separated from him by a mere pane of glass, Mysora put out her arms to him.
What luck! Farandoul wanted to embrace Mr. Croknuff—but Croknuff, having inferred that he was an enemy, thrust him away acrimoniously. “Who are you, sir? What do you want?”
“I am her husband-to-be, worthy scientist, and I have come to find her!” Farandoul replied, at the summit of happiness, “I believed her dead, my dear Mysora—imagine my joy on seeing her again... on....”
“My dear sir,” Mr. Croknuff interrupted him. “I’ve bought the whale. I’ve paid for it, so it belongs to me...”
“I’m not laying claim to the whale, but...”
“But the creature that you see there was inside the whale at the time of the transaction, and was included in the price! I’m holding on to it—holding hard, Devil take you! You don’t think that I’ll generously make you a gift of it, now that it’s the most i
mportant inmate of my Aquarium, do you? I’ve got it, and I’m keeping it!”
Farandoul had gone from joy to surprise, and from surprise to anger. He seized Mr. Croknuff by the throat, and was preparing to throw him through the glass of the aquarium in which the trembling Mysora was imploring his help when hastily-summoned policemen restrained him.
“I place my property under the safeguard of the authorities!” Mr. Croknuff shouted, as Farandoul held on to him. “I’m an Australian citizen. I’ve a right to the protection of the law, for myself and my goods!”
How can we describe Farandoul’s rage? How can we speak of the plans for massacre that bubbled up in his head? As soon as he was out of the hands of the police, he hurled himself towards La Belle Léocadie’s mooring. He assembled his men on the bridge and told them what had happened. A unanimous demand for revenge went up from every mouth. The sailors immediately armed themselves with revolvers and boarding-hatchets. Leaving two men to guard the ship, they set off for Melbourne.
Farandoul wanted to wait for nightfall before attacking the Aquarium, for fear of raising too great a commotion in Melbourne. This delay proved fatal! The wily Croknuff had had him followed to his ship by one of the Aquarium’s keepers. This man, having seen the sailors disembark with obvious hostile intent, had retraced his steps in a hurry in order to warn his master.
Croknuff had lost no time. The Aquarium had been rapidly prepared for its defense. The authorities, forewarned, had sent a battalion of provincial militia to its aid, with two cannons and 40 mounted policemen.
The Adventures of Saturnin Farandoul Page 8
