The river and a few fragments of monuments fell back on top of the besiegers’ lines and hindered the movement of the artillery with a sudden deluge. When it had all run off, it was too late; the aerial fleet had disappeared.
IX.
Cayman City, the capital of the Northern States, was enjoying a holiday. Everyone was celebrating the great victory of Generalissimo Farandoul and the taking of Papagayo. Details were still lacking regarding the end of the battle.
There were flags, festoons and Chinese and Venetian lanterns everywhere; the streets were packed; the entire population was delirious with joy. Public balls were improvised in the grand plazas; the theaters were giving gala performances. After the theaters emptied, people profited from the splendid moonlight to continue partying. Fireworks were launched from several points, in the midst of cheering.
Suddenly, as the last rockets died away, an infernal apparition in the sky set a chill in every heart. Two blue dots had just appeared beside the Moon—followed by two others, and then a whole series of rapidly-growing dots. What were these new stars whose blue light had just disturbed our planetary system? What were these unknown worlds, endowed with such vertiginous velocity? No one could answer those questions—even the astronomers at the Observatory felt their hair stand on end at the thought of the imminent collision.
But detonations were heard: the blue stars were bombarding the city. Asphyxiating shells began to fall on the suburbs. The truth became clear. The Observatory recognized the blue stars as the lights of a flotilla of balloons.
It was Phileas Fogg! It was the southists!
At the same moment, a dispatch from Farandoul, communicated to the crowd, provided the key to the enigma:
Papagayo taken. City blown up, telegraph damaged, hence delay. Take defensive measures. Southist army departed northwards in balloons. Am sending General Mandibul to cover Cayman City.
The generalissimo:
Saturnin Farandoul.
Orders were immediately given to plunge the city into darkness. All the lights were extinguished in order to avoid giving the southist easy points at which to aim. Even so, bombs and shells continued to rain down at hazard, albeit without causing overmuch damage. Alas, the dawn arrived too soon, revealing the town’s position to the southists.
The southists who had drawn away, immediately returned, and the whole of Cayman City was able to see, with mortal terror, their balloons take up positions 500 meters above the houses. The city maintained its composure; a civil guard was organized. About noon, when the southists, having completed their preparations, opened fire, the civil guard, distributed about the roofs and monuments, directed a furious fusillade at the aerial fleet.
General Mandibul telegraphed news of his imminent arrival with 75 armored locomotives. Cayman City continued the battle while it waited. By dusk, 25,000 inhabitants, chloroformed or asphyxiated by concentrated vervain, were lying in the streets. Smallpox canisters were also falling; there were hasty vaccinations in every quarter. The 75 balloons illuminated their searchlights and formed up like a crown of little blue moons above the city; it was magical, but horribly unpleasant, for the shells continued to rain down.
Fortunately, General Mandibul arrived in the evening. He spent the night establishing his 75 armored locomotives as a battery. Then, in order to judge the situation better, he installed himself at the top of the bell-tower on Cayman City’s town hall, the most exposed spot.
All through the night, balloons and locomotives exchanged infernal fire.
At daybreak, Phileas change tactics. His balloons broke ranks, descended to a height of 100 meters, and lowered their huge anchors, then tacked back and forth above the city. The noise of collapsing buildings was soon alternating with that of bombardments.
Phileas had reserved for his own point of attack the town hall where Mandibul had set up his general quarters; full of fury against the general, he launched his armored balloon, the Clarissa Harlowe, against the monument at full steam.
A terrible impact shook the town hall to its foundations. Fortunately—and how the councilors congratulated themselves on not having skimped on its construction!—the monument resisted two charges, and after the third, the southist aerostat remained fixed to its summit, impaled by the spire of the bell-tower. Immediately, the northist soldiers, led by General Mandibul, launched themselves forward to attack the balloon.
The most astonished of all the men involved was the correspondent of Le Figaro; he was perched, telescope in hand, on the top floor of the bell-tower, under the weather-vane, scribbling a dispatch to his paper, when the first shock imparted by the balloon knocked him backwards. When he saw Phileas Fogg’s balloon caught on the spire, he immediately understood the importance of the capture and succeeded in taking possession of the balloon’s stout anchor, which he wedged firmly in the beams. Mandibul and his soldiers soon joined him. It was a matter of using that rope to climb up to the gondola, from which a fierce fusillade emerged.
As it sought to disengage itself, however, the balloon gave the town hall a terrible shaking. Rosengarten redoubled the fire; the moment was approaching when the northists would reach the gondola. Suddenly, with a formidable tremor, a cracking sound was heard, the monument seemed to rip from top to bottom, and the northists released cries of terror. One last bound defeated the obstacle and the aerostat rose up into the sky along with a fragment of the decapitated bell-tower.
General Mandibul, the reporter Guy de Beaugency and a few men clinging to the debris of the bell-tower were borne away by the Clarissa Harlowe, Phileas’ armored balloon.
In the balloon, the prisoners received all the attention due to their misfortune. The Times reporter, Philoctetes Mortimer, brought by Phileas Fogg along with the ex-Miss Barbara Twicklish, now Mrs. Mortimer, set about trying to render their situation bearable.
Le Figaro’s reporter, fearing that he would not be able to correspond with his paper from the balloon, displayed some desolation, but that soon passed when he perceived that his colleague, the Times correspondent, had two dozen carrier pigeons aboard, ready to carry his dispatches to the telegraph office in Honduras, a neutral country. Unfortunately, the pigeons were shut up in a cage, the key of which the Times reporter always kept about his person. Guy de Beaugency turned his batteries in the direction of the sensitive Barbara Twicklish, Philoctetes Mortimer’s new wife; with the double objective of obtaining as much information as possible and finding a means of getting away, he attempted to capture the heart of the gentle lady.
The southist balloons, meanwhile, had quit the skies of Cayman City; finding the city well-defended by the armored locomotives, they had departed in various directions, some to destroy the coastal ports, others with specific orders to go further north, burning all the wealthy towns of the region. By acting in this manner, they were almost certain to have the advantage of the armored locomotives, obliged to run to the right and the left by the requirements of defense.
Phileas’ aerostat, the Clarissa Harlowe—a pretty name given to it by the poetic Phileas61—went ahead, with a light aerial launch following in its wake.
The Clarissa Harlowe had already destroyed two important towns, with a certain number of smaller ones, beneath a rain of shells; at present, the aerostat was on its way, at the head of a little squadron, to bombard a prosperous commercial port. The furious Mandibul was consumed by escape plans while Guy de Beaugency, in the grip of a thirst for correspondence that was impossible to satisfy, was circling around the pigeons and the Times reporter’s wife.
What agony! After every important event, Philoctetes Mortimer charged one of his flyers with a dispatch written in microscopic letters. Their number was shrinking; it was necessary to act promptly.
Beaugency had already seen a great deal of the sensitive Barbara, whom he charmed with long tirades on the sacred rights of woman; an inspiration struck him that brought matters to a head. “Listen,” he said to her one morning, as they were getting a little fresh air on the upper poo
p-deck of the Clarissa Harlowe, to the sound of bombardments. “Listen, dear Barbara, if you will permit me to call you by that sweet name; I have to tell you, although it pains me to deliver a cruel blow to your poetic dreams and to scythe down your illusions in full flower… but it must be done! I must save you!... so understand this: Mortimer, Philoctetes the traitor, is a bigamist, and perhaps a trigamist! My friend, General Mandibul, says that he knows a Mrs. Mortimer in New York, and I know that another exists in Paris, where I knew Mortimer quite well. O infamy! Instead of being the angel of the hearth, the unique spouse, you will be the traitor’s number three!”
“Horrible! Horrible!” sobbed the unfortunate Barbara.
“It shall not be!” cried Beaugency. “Leave the wretch! Your fatherland permits divorce. O angel, spread your wings! And if I dared to hope that, one day…”
Barbara had already taken out her notebook. Beaugency had succeeded; he signed whatever she wanted.
“Let’s flee! Flee!” he cried. Barbara flinched, thinking that he wanted to precipitate himself, along with her, into the layer of 4000 meters of blue sky that separated them from the ground. “Don’t be afraid, my lovely friend!” he said. “We can flee, but more comfortably!” And Beaugency revealed to Barbara, in a whisper, all the details of an escape plan, elaborated with General Mandibul.
Barbara consented to everything; when the triumphant reporter left the poop with her, everything was arranged, the roles allocated and the hour fixed.
To escape from a balloon floating at an altitude of 4000 meters is not an easy thing to do at any time, but to escape from a war balloon, strictly guarded by sentries and watched over by vigilant officers, is a terribly dangerous enterprise. Even so, Mandibul and Beaugency were determined to run any risk.
Beaugency had spent the evening in the Times correspondent’s cabin. About midnight, as he took his leave of Mortimer, he suddenly stuck a chloroform mine under the latter’s nose, reduced in potency but still sufficient to knock someone out. The reporter did not utter a peep; he collapsed into a sleep that would last at least eight hours.
Beaugency put Mortimer’s reefer-jacket on, pulled the hood down over his eyes and went out with Barbara. The officer on guard in the wardroom mistook him for Mortimer and thought that he was going to contemplate the stars poetically with his better half. Barbara went up to the poop alone; Beaugency headed for the prisoners’ cabin in steerage. The man on guard let him approach, unsuspectingly. Beaugency repeated the trick with the chloroform mine, and the man collapsed. Beaugency opened the door feverishly.
Mandibul and his men were there. The sleeping sentry was dragged into the cabin; one of the prisoners put on his uniform and took his place. It was now a matter of getting out through a narrow loophole open to the outside and hoisting themselves up by the force of their arms to the poop-deck, previously guarded by as sentry whom Barbara was likewise to have chloroformed. A muted call from the latter informed the fugitives that she had succeeded.
The rest was easy. The eight prisoners hauled themselves up; the robust Barbara was there to help them over the guard-rail. When the eight men were reunited, they crept towards the balloon-launch moored to the stern.
Some difficulties presented themselves then; there were two men on watch there. Arm in arm, Barbara and Beaugency went ahead and chatted for two minutes with the sentries; they were suddenly made to inhale the mines and the way was open.
With what joy the freed prisoners installed themselves in the little launch. “Free! Free!” repeated Mandibul.
It was necessary to detach the moorings and rapidly draw away from the Clarissa Harlowe. While the mariners cut the ropes, Guy Beaugency had run to the cage containing the Times correspondent’s carrier pigeons and carried it off triumphantly. “Quickly! Quickly!” he cried. “Cast off! Someone’s rousing the guards!”
A certain commotion had arisen in the interior of the large balloon; the first chloroformed sentry had just been discovered. The sound of footsteps was heard, climbing up to the poop-deck.
The last cable was cut by a hatchet-blow, and the balloon-launch, detached from the large aerostat—which was heading into the wind—leapt backwards. It was just in time; the alarm sounded among the southist aeronauts.
“Hurrah!” cried Mandibul.
The little balloon-launch had suddenly risen up 200 or 300 meters above the flotilla of southist balloons; the escapees were able to see the entire blue-light squadron drawing away beneath their feet. There was a great stir aboard; the strident notes of steam-horns were heard signaling maneuvers to the fleet.
The balloon-launch, caught by the wind, was soon seven or eight kilometers away from the southists. Unfortunately, the entire fleet suddenly turned round and came back.
“Put out the lights!” cried Mandibul. “Let’s vanish into the darkness!”
They gained a few more kilometers by this stratagem, but they suddenly saw the southists combing the depths of the sky with electric searchlights in order to discover the fugitives. As soon as they had been seen, the pursuit was organized.
“To the machines!” Mandibul howled. “Full steam ahead!”
A terrible cry replied; the coal-bunker was empty. It would be necessary to fight, without any possibility of steering the balloon, against the swift steam-driven aerostats. No matter! In order to climb as high as possible, Mandibul had all the ballast thrown overboard. They leapt up 1000 meters, and the southist balloons dwindled into the distance.
Meanwhile, Guy de Beaugency hastened to bring his correspondence up to date. His paper had been without news of him for a fortnight; he wanted to relieve his readers of their anxiety and resume the series of his exciting letters. The Times correspondent had only left him nine pigeons; Beaugency had already sent forth four, each with a page lodged beneath its wing. A fifth page was ready, when a violent “Ventre de phoque!” from Mandibul caused him to raise his head.
“What is it?” he asked.
O rage! The blue signal-lights and electric searchlights were reappearing in the distance, like hounds on a track, searching for the missing balloon-launch from cloud to cloud. Beaugency made a note of this resumption of the pursuit and sent off his fifth pigeon.
Everything that could be thrown overboard was sacrificed; the balloon gained another 500 meters—but five minutes later, the terrible blue lights reappeared. The electric searchlights picked out their prey again, towards which they were moving under full steam. The enormous headlight of the flagship, manned by Phileas, was ahead of all the others, which were scattered like a constellation of blue stars. The southists soon thought that they were close enough to the fugitives to begin the cannonade.
The shells whistle through the air some distance from the balloon-launch and fell back to Earth, describing long parabolas; with every passing minute, the southists’ fire became more accurate, the shells getting closer.
Beaugency was still writing, happy to have such exciting news to send to his paper. A sixth pigeon flew off, bewildered by the cannon fire.
“They’re catching up!” screeched Mandibul. “Come on! Throw all unnecessary weight overboard! Look alive, lads!”
The healthy Barbara was afraid, and threw herself into Beaugency’s arms; he reassured her.
The fugitives hurled every useless or heavy object into space: the steam-engine, the coal-bunker, the armor plating. They only kept one small cannon in case of need.
With a new leap, the balloon vanished into the sky; the blue lights faded into the distance. Beaugency charged his seventh pigeon with the news of that fortunate change in their circumstances; hope was reignited, all the more so because the breeze seemed to be lifting them up.
“If we can gain two hours,” murmured Mandibul, who had been examining the sky with the experienced eye of an old mariner for some time, “we’ll be saved.”
They flew on for another hour, sometimes within sight of the indefatigable blue lights and sometimes without. In the end, as the shells resumed their rain, Mandib
ul, in order to gain another hour, took off his less indispensable garments and his boots and threw the lot overboard. His men did likewise; eight pairs of boots whirled into the sky, eight jackets and eight tunics. Barbara sacrificed her Bible and a few meager items of toiletry. The balloon’s guard-rail was partly demolished, and they cut through the air with increasing speed.
Hurrah! Just as the tempest they had been hoping for began to get up, the blue headlights faded away. Soon they disappeared, while the balloon, moving faster and faster, went through the tumultuous and heaped-up dark clouds like a bullet. Beaugency sent forth his eighth and next-to-last pigeon.
How many kilometers and myriameters did the balloon-launch cover on the night of that terrible chase? No one was ever able to say. At dawn, when the tempest abated, they saw the ground from a height of 700 or 800 meters. Seaman Tournesol, one of the eight escapees, though he recognized the mountains of Costa Rica and the Bay of Mosquitoes; they could, in consequence, set down.
There lay a difficulty; none of the eight escapees knew how to steer the balloon; they hoped that as they continued to run free they might eventually get close enough to the ground to be able to throw out the anchor. The danger having disappeared, they were looking forward to restoring their expended strength with a long rest. Barbara, who had been suffering hunger pangs for several hours, finally asked whether it might not be time for dinner.
“Let’s look in the food-locker,” said Mandibul. “Where is it hidden on this accursed balloon?”
O despair! The food-store was empty! No one had given it a thought on embarking, but now the horrors of hunger would succeed those of pursuit.
The Adventures of Saturnin Farandoul Page 25
