The Adventures of Saturnin Farandoul

by Albert Robida

  The two English scientists, buried in their furs, had not spoken a word; nor had they manifested any opinion whatsoever by means of signs. Mandibul, bursting out laughing, turned to them and asked them whether they too were traveling the seas in pursuit of Latin seals.

  A slight smile behind their spectacles was the sole response of the English scientists.

  Doctor Hermann Knapp became furious. “English jealousy!” he cried. “They are pretending to disdain our seals and trying to steal our discovery! What were they doing behind us on the ice-sheet? We were following our seals, and they were following us, with the intention of arriving at our goal at the same time. Disdain our seals—our admirable Latin seals! You shall see them and hear them, Captain; they’re still suffering, but I cannot let them spend another minute under the burden of this disdain. A cordial—a cordial, quickly!”

  Farandoul made a sign. A bowl of strongly-spiced hot wine was brought from the stores and given to Dr. Hermann Knapp. The seals, woken up again in spite of their groans, each drank a measure of the liquid and soon seemed reinvigorated. It was then just a matter of making them talk; for half an hour, Hermann Knapp lavished quasi-maternal care upon them, rubbing them and tapping them on the head with solicitude to stimulate the activity of their brains, while the other German scientists pronounced an uninterrupted sequence of paters and maters to get them going.

  Finally, one of the seals spoke, initially in an unintelligible fashion, but then more and more distinctly, and its three companions, fully awakened, joined in:

  “Pater, Mater! Pater, Mater! Pater, Mater!”

  “Bah!” said Mandibul. “Is that all? Some circus performer must have taught them!”

  “Wait a while before pronouncing judgment,” Hermann Knapp said, solemnly. “That’s not all!”

  “Polus, polus!” said one of the seals.

  “Pater, mater. Navis, navis,” said another.

  “Us, us…lus, lus…tus, tus….”

  “Servus, servus! Infelix!”

  “Polus, polus!”108

  “Well, do you still doubt?” cried Hermann Knapp triumphantly. “Is that Latin or isn’t it?”

  Farandoul and Mandibul stared at the knowledgeable seals with astonishment as they continued to pour out a series of us, us…, confused fragments of evidently Latin words. What did it mean?

  “I’ve got it!” cried Farandoul, slapping his forehead. “By means of the voices of these seals, unfortunates stranded in the polar seas on some frozen rock—perhaps some Eskimo tribe—are calling for help. Lacking a bottle in which to entrust a document to the sea, as shipwreck-victims normally do, they have ingeniously domesticated seals, and by dint of patience have taught them to repeat, after a fashion, a few words indicating their sad situation! It’s very vague, but it’s better than nothing. Perhaps we’ll find them!”

  The German scientists were white with fury. This simple explanation left them beside themselves. As they were about to launch into an extraordinarily scientific discussion, Farandoul took his leave of them and left them at grips with the English scientists. For a long time, the German scientists could be heard arguing animatedly, combating the Englishmen’s objections.

  In the end, the Englishmen escaped and climbed up on deck, but the obstinate Knapp followed them. Fortunately for them, he lost them in the fog and latched on to Farandoul’s foster-father, who was smoking his pipe while striding back and forth to keep himself warm. Thinking that he was still dealing with a colleague, Hermann Knapp continued to develop his argument, refuting all objections one by one and reducing Farandoul’s hypothesis to dust.

  The honest foster-father, astonished at first, replied without understanding with approving nods of the head. Hermann Knapp spoke for a long time—so long that, in order to escape him, the poor monkey had to resort to extreme measures; a his persecutor passed in front of a hatchway, he grabbed him by the legs and threw him head-first down to the lower deck.

  Farandoul conferred with Mandibul. Both of them were of the same mind; somewhere, on a rock in the polar region, unfortunates were appealing for help; doubtless they had employed Latin in order that they might be understood by the officials of any nation whatsoever. It was necessary to head for any land or rock signaled by the lookout; perhaps they would arrive in time to save them.

  Land was scarce in these parts; however, the maps indicated a long coast-line glimpsed by the mariners of the most recent polar expeditions a few 100 leagues to the north-west. This nameless coast had not been explored; it was necessary to reach it and see whether unfortunate navigators might be there, lamenting the horrors of an eternal winter.

  A few extracts from the ship’s log, kept by Mandibul, will acquaint us with the incidents of this research, which led the expedition somewhat astray from its principal goal, but which humanity demanded.

  SHIP’S LOG

  April 8. Weather lousy. Snow. Fog. 43 degrees below zero.

  April 9. Weather lousy. Minus 44 degrees. Fog. Snow. The German scientists are sulking. Since our discussion, they haven’t appeared on deck. They’re well, though, for they eat a lot. The English scientists are cross with them; we’ve been obliged to separate them. Dr. Hermann Knapp complains a great deal about the older one, who is apparently driving him mad, since he has manhandled him over some point of science on which they’re not in agreement. The old English scientist has a stronger grip that I’d have thought; he got hold of Hermann Knapp and threw him through a hatchway into the middle of the table in the chart-room. Mount surveillance on the English scientist when he goes on deck.

  April 10. Weather lousy. Minus 46 degrees. Snow. Fog. One of Dr. Knapp’s seals has escaped through a porthole, Chloroformed a bear that had jumped from an iceberg on to the deck.

  April 11. Weather lousy. Minus 44 degrees. Fog. Snow. Numerous icebergs. Mountains of ice 300 meters high, but no vanilla.

  April 12. Weather lousy. Minus 43 degrees. Fog. Snow. Land spotted in the east thanks to a clear spell. Impossible to approach; completely encircled by ice.

  April 13. Weather lousy. Minus 42 degrees. Fog. Snow. Dreadful event: my dear Farandoul’s brave foster-father, that honest and charming monkey, so gentle, so kind, so devoted—that friend, in sum—has disappeared! Lost in the eternal snows! Probably frozen by now, or fallen beneath the claws of a bear! Farandoul is inconsolable, but he had not lost hope and I supervising the searches. This is how misfortune occurred. This morning, a fissure in the ice-sheet having allowed us to get close enough to the coast to attempt a landing, I departed with six men and our friend the unfortunate monkey for whom we are in mourning. Disembarkation was effected comfortably, exploration began well. We found no trace of the shipwreck-victims whose existence has been revealed to us by the Latin seals. Unfortunately, we separated in the rocks and when after three hours of fatigue and peril, we reassembled in order to return to the gondola-sloop, the brave monkey was missing.

  April 14. Weather lousy. Minus 43 degrees. Snow. Fog. Continuation of searches. Alas, alas, will it be necessary to despair of ever seeing again the good and honest face of our lost friend? Not the slightest trace! No clue! Tomorrow, great expedition. Farandoul and eight men departing with three days’ rations. This is our last hope.

  April 15. Weather lousy. Minus 42 degrees. Fog. Snow. Great news. The expedition has come back. Farandoul has just told me about the adventure. They had covered four leagues in a northerly direction without discovering anything when, all of a sudden, a slight trail of smoke on the horizon announced the presence of human beings. Ten minutes of running brought our men to the smoke; it was an Eskimo village: a group of five or six reindeer-hide huts covered with snow. The entire population was standing in front of the largest hut, which had to be that of the chief. There were 50 individuals, so hunched up in their bear-skins that one might have taken them for ambulant fur hats rather than human beings.109

  Our men seemed to have interrupted the preparations for a ceremony. Standing in front of an old Eskimo—probabl
y the chief—with a stout staff in his hand, a couple of individuals were humbly bowing down. Tournesol, who was once a whaler, recognized it as a marriage—the marriage of the chief’s daughter, to be precise. The staff of espousal was already raised over the backs of the bride and groom.

  “Come on!” murmured Farandoul, going forward. “He can give them his blessing later; first, let’s try to obtain some information from the old Eskimo.”

  At the noise of the intruders’ arrival, the two future spouses turned round. Farandoul and his men released a cry of joyful astonishment. The fiancé of the young Eskimo woman was none other than our hero’s foster father.

  Everything was soon explained. The brave monkey had got lost in the fog, had walked until nightfall and, gripped by the cold, had begun to despair when the Eskimo village suddenly presented itself to his eyes. He had been cordially received, offered hospitality and nourishment. The next day and the day after that he had gone fishing with his new friends; he had shown himself to be skilful, each time bringing back a veritable abundance of cod, and had deposited it at the feet of the chief’s daughter, a flirtatious Eskimo girl with a rather flat nose. This, in the eyes of the father, had qualified as a proposal. He had made a long speech to the brave monkey, explaining the duties of the head of a family, had wiped away a tear and had concluded with a “put it there, son-in-law!” in Eskimo—to which the old monkey had only responded with a few grunts.

  Farandoul had arrived just in time; the paternal staff had not yet fallen on the shoulders of the bride and groom; the monkey was not married.

  The explanation given by Farandoul to the Eskimos—who wanted to hang on to their new comrade—was long and stormy. There were tears from the tribe’s feminine contingent. Finally, a few gifts settled the affair; Farandoul gave a dowry to the young woman—a good hatchet and a pair of boots—which would help her considerably in finding another husband.

  After an agreeable evening spent in the hut and a good night, the whole troop returned in triumph to the gondola-sloop, bringing back the lost friend.

  IV.

  On the evening of May 25, the gondola-sloop reached the Open Sea. The ice-field had been crossed; there was no longer any obstacle between the gondola-sloop and the objective of its voyage, the North Pole.

  No one else had ever got so far—and yet, a man placed as a lookout on the mast affirmed that he had seen the topmost yardarms of a ship disappearing over the horizon.

  The thermometer, which had fallen during the previous week to minutes 48 degrees, had risen appreciably. The further forward they went, the more the climate seemed to ameliorate; it was already no lower than minus 41 degrees. The mariners explained this phenomenon by the proximity of the waters of the Gulf Stream, conserving the last residue of their warmth after their long journey from the Gulf of Mexico.

  The gondola-sloop, proceeding full steam ahead, had been sailing the calm waters of the Open Sea for more than a week when, on the morning of the ninth day, a cry of “Land ho!” suddenly rang out. In the distance, to the north, a coast appeared: a mere dot crowned by a plume of smoke.

  The news caused great excitement aboard. The English and German scientists, who had not come out of their cabins for a fortnight, ran on to the deck, telescopes in hand. The coast that had been glimpsed became visibly larger; its entire configuration was soon clearly distinguishable, recognizable as an island surrounded by reefs.

  Farandoul calculated their position with particular care. All of a sudden he stood up triumphantly. “The North Pole!” he cried. “That island is the Island of the Pole!”110

  All the mariners threw their bearskin bonnets in the air and voiced loud hurrahs.

  “But it’s a fully active volcano!” cried the German scientists.

  “It’s a fireship,” Mandibul replied. “Let’s be careful of getting too hot, having been too cold!”

  The entire island did, indeed, resemble a vast fireship. An immense circle of flames surrounded a central plateau, dominated by a volcanic peak smoking like Vesuvius.

  “We’ll be there in a few hours!” Farandoul went on. “We’re traveling at full steam, and our speed is further increased by a particular phenomenon: our gondola-sloop, almost entirely plated with iron, is subject to the attraction of the Pole and is literally flying towards the island.”

  A heart-warming scene was taking place in the bow. The German scientists, Knapp, Rabus and Koplipmann had been to fetch their seals and were holding them in their arms showing them the Island of the Pole.

  “Polus! Polus! Polus!” the seals repeated. “Pater! Mater!”

  Suddenly, an exclamation from Hermann Knapp attracted Farandoul’s attention. One of the seals had just pronounced the word Caesar quite distinctly.

  “Caesar! You heard! No more doubt! No more doubt!” repeated Knapp, almost fainting with joy. “He said Caesar!”

  The sea was becoming appreciably worse, however. Farandoul no longer lowered his telescope; rocks barely covered by the waves and ferociously jagged jutting reefs seemed to be mounting guard around the Island of the Pole, forbidding any approach.

  The gondola-sloop, increasingly attracted by the Pole’s magnetic current, became more difficult to control; it required all of Farandoul’s attention and all the crew’s skill to pass between the redoubtable breakers.

  Eventually, at about six kilometers from the coast, the girdle of frightfully-battered reefs that protected it seemed to the mariners to be virtually impassable. Farandoul decided not to risk the gondola-sloop therein, and set about searching for a mooring between two rocks in order to take shelter. The place was soon found and the sloop, skillfully maneuvered into a sort of tranquil inlet in the centre of an archipelago of large rocks, came safely to a stop.

  “Well?” said Herman Knapp. “Aren’t we going to the Pole, then?”

  “Yes, and more quickly than you imagine—but not with our gondola-sloop, which we’d risk breaking on the reefs.

  Hermann Knapp stepped back. “Not by swimming, undoubtedly! I can’t swim…”

  Farandoul’s only response was to show him some bizarre items of apparatus that the mariners were in the process of getting ready. “These are lifebuoys of a particular sort. Look—at the center of each buoy is a perfectly watertight iron barrel, provided with a conical lid with a crystal porthole. Thanks to the magnetized iron, as soon as they’re put into the water, they’ll move straight toward the Pole, merely by the force of attraction.”

  “But how will we get back to the gondola-sloop?”

  “That’s been anticipated. In the largest of the magnetic buoys we’ll take a little steam engine; coming back, it will tow us. Let’s go! Are you coming?”

  Four men had to remain behind to guard the gondola-sloop. The rest of the crew and the English and German scientists embarked in the magnetic buoys. Each man, well-provided with weapons and munitions, got into his iron barrel; the conical lids were sealed and they prepared to cast off. The buoys were taken one by one to the opening of the inlet and detached from their mooring-ropes. It was a curious sight; as soon as they were free, the buoys turned in the direction of the Pole and cut through the waves with a prodigious speed in the direction of the island.

  The buoys carrying Farandoul and Mandibul were dancing at the head of the procession on the crests of the waves. They required no more than a quarter of an hour to cross the six kilometers separating the line of reefs from the rocks of the island.

  A hundred meters from the shore, Farandoul fired a rifle-shot into the air, a conventional signal in case of an alert ordering weapons to be made ready. Hardly had the detonation sounded when a series of gunshots rang out and a hail of bullets struck the iron barrels of the electric buoys.

  The North Pole was inhabited!

  Drawn by the Pole’s magnetic current, the iron buoys slammed into the rocks two minutes later. The mariners were hastening to get out of their carapaces, in order to defend themselves against the inhospitable inhabitants of the Pole, when a ragge
d and emaciated human figure appeared, leaping from rock to rock. At the same time, more rifle-shots rang out—but the bullets flattened themselves against a huge rock, behind which our friends were sheltering.

  The unknown man, waving his long arms, flew through the hail of bullets. Finally, without having been hit, he fell into the midst of the stupefied mariners.

  “Here you are at last!” he cried, in French. “Saved! Thank God!”

  French was spoken at the North Pole; the German scientists went white.

  “First, and most important,” the man went on, “be on your guard against surprise attacks. The Governor…”

  “What Governor?” demanded the German scientists.

  “The Governor of the North Pole! He’s up there, lying in ambush with his men. Don’t move from here, where you’re sheltered. These rocks that are protecting us from the bullets are easy to defend, and I know a sort of cave from which we can defy any attack.”

  The semi-naked man who was speaking to them did not seem to be suffering from cold and the mariners were panting under their furs.

  “Oof!” exclaimed Mandibul, suddenly. “I can’t stand it any longer. What a funny temperature to find at the North Pole! I don’t think I’m mistaken, but it seems to me that I’m too hot!” He took off some of his bearskins. All the mariners did likewise, looking at one another in surprise. They were still too hot.

  Mandibul ran to his buoy and came back with a thermometer that he had prudently brought along. His face was painted with extreme astonishment. “Thirty-five degrees above zero!” he cried. “At the North Pole!!!”