The Adventures of Saturnin Farandoul

by Albert Robida

  “There’s a means,” he said. “A five-league swim isn’t drinking the sea. It’s necessary that one of us should undertake it for the sake of common salvation. Great dangers give birth to great devotions. I therefore propose…”

  “Bravo!” cried Picolot. “It’s magnificent that you should do that!”

  “Yes, my friends—rather than vegetate for a fortnight in this cruel situation, I much prefer that one of these gentlemen should set out for Krasnow and come back with a boat. I have spoken!”

  The mariners shook their heads. To cover five leagues, swimming in an icy sea, did not appear to them to be an easy or agreeable task. On reflection, however, a few strong swimmers were about to volunteer, when Farandoul told them that he and his brave foster-father would undertake the dangerous mission themselves. Experienced in all kinds of bodily exercise, both endowed with a prodigious muscular elasticity, they were better equipped than anyone else to succeed in that difficult navigation. The mariners, long accustomed to seeing Farandoul reserve delicate or dangerous enterprises for himself, bowed to their leader’s will.

  Codgett rubbed his hands and lavished warm congratulations on himself. “A man of law is perhaps good for something, you see,” he said. “It’s me who’ll save you.”

  Farandoul and the old monkey had already begun their preparations to depart at first light—which is to say, at about 9 a.m. You will remember that the wreck of the herring shoal had take place in the middle of the night; the installation of the victims had taken several hours, and daylight would not be long delayed.

  Having left the North Pole in May, at the end of winter, our friends had arrived on the Russian coast in the middle of September, just as another winter was beginning. While they were sailing through the polar ice-sheet the summer had come and gone. The White Sea, ice-free for a few months, would soon form a thick sheet of ice over its waves. For swimmers like Farandoul and his foster-father the danger was not the distance to be covered but the coldness of the water.

  When wan sunlight added a yellow tint to the thick banks of fog on the horizon, however, Farandoul and his foster-father intended to leave. All the provisions they had were a little Russian pancake, a few herrings and a small flask of rum discovered at the bottom of one of the casks saved from the final shipwreck. Each of them fixed a lifebelt around his waist and, after giving a few last instructions to the mariners and exchanging a last few emotional handshakes, they went down to the sea. Scarcely had they lowered themselves on to the crests of the waves than a breaker carried them away in its swirl of foam, to the sound of a last hurrah.

  We’ll get to the coast at about 1 p.m. and we’ll be in Krasnow about 3, at sunset, Farandoul said to himself.

  So as not to get behind schedule, the two swimmers cut through the waves rapidly. After two hours of swimming, the mist having dissipated somewhat, Farandoul glimpsed the coast in the distance. He swallowed a shot of rum and lay on his back in order to be towed by the monkey. After a quarter of an hour’s rest he turned round, had the monkey ingurgitate some rum, and made him play the plank in his turn.

  At 1 p.m., less a few minutes, the two exhausted swimmers finally reached land. Before setting out for Krasnow they were obliged to take a full half-hour’s rest. Farandoul lit an immense fire, as much to get warm as to inform the lighthouse that they had arrived in good condition.

  “Now, forward!” cried Farandoul, when he was dry and rested.

  The monkey got to his feet unhurriedly, put on his fur overcoat, put up his hood and set off at a brisk pace. There was no actual road to take them to Krasnow; it was necessary to follow the coast, taking the best short cuts to avoid the curves of the shoreline.

  It was pitch dark when our two friends reached the first houses. Everything was closed; snow filled the streets and there was not a pedestrian in sight. It was necessary to find the authorities, in order to organize a rescue mission as quickly as possible.

  Unfortunately, as they tried to find their way around the town, the two travelers became separated and lost sight of one another in the fog. Farandoul had gone into a tavern in the hope of obtaining some information from the drinkers assembled around bottles of vodka, and when he went back into the street he could not see any sign of the old monkey.

  There was no response to his call. He was about to launch forth on a search at hazard when he spotted a sentry-box adjoining a gate and a few men from a guard unit. He went into the post immediately and took the chance of speaking in French to the officer.

  The officer leapt out of his chair at Farandoul’s first words. “Shipwreck-victims! Entirely at your service, Monsieur!”

  Farandoul, starting with the most urgent matter, asked him whether anyone had seen a gentleman in a fur overcoat. The sentry, interrogated, had seen no one. The officer gave Farandoul a sergeant and four men to guide him around the town and take him to the local commandant as soon as the lost traveler had been found.

  Then commenced an interminable promenade around the streets of Krasnow. Following the sergeant, Farandoul explored all its quarters without being able to rediscover his companion. The poor monkey seemed to have vanished into thin air. No one had seen him; he had disappeared without leaving any trace.

  Farandoul made a tour of all the guard-posts. Lieutenant Rastatoff sent him to Police-Captain Papoff, who had him taken to Commandant Tschlstopoff, who sent him to wake up General Borogodoloff, all without result.

  The lieutenant was very polite, the captain less so, the commandant not at all, and as for General Borogodoloff, doubtless furious at being woken up, he had Farandoul arrested by his Cossacks, under the pretext that he had no passport. Our hero had swiftly related the story of his shipwreck, but the general was inflexible on the matter of the passport. When Farandoul mentioned his lost companion, the general furrowed his brow suspiciously.

  In the meantime, a breathless messenger arrived carrying a folded piece of paper. The general read it, then folded his arms and looked at Farandoul fixedly. “I was sure of it!” he cried. “Your friend has no passport either, and refuses to answer any questions…”

  “Has he been found?”

  “Yes, he’s been found; his number is up! He’s been recognized, in spite of his disguise. He’s a nihilist leader to whose presence I’ve been altered by the government!”

  “Him, a nihilist! General, just one word, and…”

  “I’m going to visit the guard-posts. Nihilists interned here are dangerous. On my return, Monsieur, we’ll settle your account.” And the general hurried off, leaving Farandoul locked in, after having instructed the four policemen stationed in the antechamber to exercise the utmost vigilance.

  Farandoul was about to search for some means of escape when a door hidden by a curtain suddenly opened. A young woman appeared, putting her finger to her lips.

  “Silence!” she said, in French. “I’m General Borogodoloff’s niece. I heard everything, and I’ll save you in spite of my uncle. I’m a nihilist, like you!”

  Farandoul, petrified, could not take his eyes of this charming apparition. The general’s niece, Olga Borogodoloff, was 20 years old; she was tall, as white as the snow of her native land and as blonde as the harvests on its plains.

  Olga had seized the piece of paper brought be the messenger. “Oh, the poor man!” she said. “Your companion, the nihilist leader, is to be sent to Siberia within the hour! How reckless it was to come here without taking more precautions, without a passport….”

  “Mademoiselle!” exclaimed Farandoul. “Just one word would suffice….”

  “Silence, imprudent fool! All is not lost. Our brothers must have been alerted. We shall free him. Follow me, and don’t make a sound!”

  An Olga, after having bolted the door of the general’s room from the inside, took Farandoul into a little corridor leading to a little courtyard ringed by stables. Olga went into one of these stables, woke up a muzjik buried in the straw and ordered him to harness a sleigh immediately.

  Ten minutes
later, Farandoul and Olga, wrapped in furs, were flying over the snow across the plain. The muzjik was urging his horses, sometimes with caresses and sometimes with curses, to catch up with the exile’s convoy as quickly as possible.

  Farandoul was burning with impatience and anxiety. He was desperate to save his foster-father from the frightful danger he was in. After his turbulent existence, the poor old monkey must not end his career in unjust exile in Siberia.

  The sleigh flew; several versts were soon devoured. Eventually, they saw the Cossacks halted on the bank of the river Pushkaya, ready to cross the river one by one, at any price.

  “Halt!” commanded Olga, leaning out of the sleigh.

  Recognizing their general’s niece, the Cossacks took Farandoul, wrapped in his furs, for the general himself and opened their ranks. Farandoul was invisible in his cloak, but his eyes were free; with an inexpressible joy he recognized the brave monkey, the foster-father of his infancy, alive but tied to the rump of a horse.

  Noiselessly, our hero opened his knife beneath his cloak—and before the Cossacks could stop him, he cut the bonds retaining the monkey with a rapid sweep. The latter uttered a cry of joy and leapt into the sleigh.

  Olga’s muzjik was intelligent; he slackened the reins and launched his horses on to the ice of the river. The Cossacks, already recovered from their surprise, galloped after them, not daring to shoot for fear of hitting Olga. The fugitives had reached the middle of the river when the ice suddenly cracked beneath the furious gallop of the horses. They stopped instantaneously; a seething gulf opened up in front of them. Behind them, the Cossacks were racing forward, only a few meters separating them from their prey, when the ice cracked again…

  X.

  Our friends felt the ice oscillate beneath their sleigh, then move off smoothly. The Cossacks’ charge had brought about a premature break-up of the river, and the sleigh, borne by an ice-floe, was sailing towards the glacial sea, whose groaning could be heard a few leagues away!

  “Lost!” cried Olga, while the Cossacks disappeared in the distance. “We’re lost!”

  “Not at all,” replied Farandoul. “I’m a sailor; leave the direction of the ice-floe to me!”

  Far from trying to run aground on the bank of the Pushkaya, Farandoul contrived to remain in mid-stream; in this way they reached the river’s mouth at mid-day. Farandoul offered to set the charming Olga ashore, but she refused. Her uncle, the general, would never forgive her for having liberated the nihilist leader, whose capture would have won him promotion. It was better not to return to Krasnow.

  Without admitting it to himself, Farandoul felt a strange sentiment of joy in his heart at the thought that he would not be separated from Olga just yet. He offered to take her to the Kanin lighthouse, where numerous friends were waiting for him.

  “All nihilists?” asked the beautiful Russian.

  Farandoul made a vague and mysterious gesture with his head, not yet daring to confess that the famous nihilist leader for whose deliverance she had risked everything was a simple monkey.

  The intention expressed by Farandoul to go back to the Kanin lighthouse on his ice-floe was not at all excessive. Our hero had scanned the coast with his mariner’s eye and had seen that the wind and the current were heading in the exact direction of the lighthouse. In ten minutes, the flow was transformed into a passable vessel. The sleigh’s tiller became an improvised mast and Farandoul’s and the muzjik’s cloaks furnished a sail, which the south-east wind soon inflated.

  The sea was calm and the fog had almost entirely dissipated. The ice-floe danced on the waves, but the horses experienced a little sea-sickness. Farandoul, who had a plan, was very attentive to them.

  After an hour of plain sailing, Olga spotted the lighthouse to the north-west.

  “If the breeze keeps up, we’ll be there in less than three-quarters of an hour,” said our hero.

  Farandoul was not mistaken. Two minutes before the end of the third quarter-hour, the skillfully-steered ice-floe arrived within a few cables of the Kanin lighthouse. The mariners had caught sight of it long before and had followed its course with an easily understandable anxiety. Tournesol had prepared pulleys and ropes; when the floe was securely moored, Farandoul had a barrel sent down, in which Olga took her place, and which was lifted up in a matter of seconds.

  Then the horses were hoisted up, one by one, and deposited on the balcony of the lighthouse, utterly bewildered by their voyage. Never, since the lighthouse had been built, had horses found themselves in that situation. After the horses, Farandoul had the sleigh lifted, then Olga’s coachman; then he scaled the wall with his foster-father, abandoning the ice-floe to the mercy of the waves.

  “Well,” he said to the mariners who surrounded him, “we’re re-provisioned; I’ve brought you food! These three horses will last a few days while we wait for an opportunity to leave the lighthouse.”

  Olga manifested some surprise at the sight of these false nihilists. Farandoul was about to tell her everything and had called his foster-father in order to introduce him to the young woman in his true capacity, when a lookout on the balcony cried: “Sail ahoy!”

  Farandoul, postponing the explanation until later, ran to the balcony and saw a vessel sailing northwards scarcely half a league away. “Signals, quickly!”

  Olga’s muzjik swiftly brought a carbine and cartridges. Farandoul fired off all the cartridges one by one, and finally succeeded in attracting the ship’s attention. The vessel tacked back and was soon within range of the lighthouse; the captain and crew seemed most intrigued by the sight of so many people in the lighthouse, especially by the presence of three horses on the balcony.

  The captain sent a launch, which initially collected half a dozen females; it was necessary to make six trips to move everyone. After two hours of comings and goings, no one remained on the lighthouse any longer but the two Russian keepers and the three horses perched sadly on the balcony.

  The ship was a Russian brig out of Archangel. The captain offered to take Farandoul to Krasnow, but agreed, on a promise of rich remuneration, to put himself entirely at Farandoul’s disposal. Our friend had not a sou immediately available, Mandibul having all their funds—which is to say, some four millions in bonds—about his person. He merely promised the captain a few of a million if they could find the unfortunate Mandibul—and with that, the captain handed over his loudhailer, the badge of his authority.

  In all probability, the fragment of the herring shoal carrying the unfortunate Mandibul, having turned back at the moment of the impact with the lighthouse, would have resumed the herrings’ usual route and headed for North Cape in order to go around the Lofoten islands and along the Norwegian coast. In consequence, Farandoul stoked by the brig’s furnaces and launched her in that direction at full steam.

  Now that they are safe aboard a good ship, let us leave Farandoul and his companions and return to Mandibul, our unfortunate friend in peril.

  When he felt the cabin on the herring shoal collapse on top of him, Mandibul hand held on automatically to the first piece of wreckage that came to hand. That was one of the iron buoys. Mandibul, scarcely getting damp, rapidly tucked himself inside it and looked around.

  All was confusion: herrings, planks, castaways and items of furniture were whirling on the waves in a lamentable saraband. The first distinct object he perceived was feminine hair floating on a wave; Mandibul had the good fortune to grab hold of it and draw the unconscious Mrs. Hatteras from the bosom of the ocean.

  What should he do? There was not enough room for two in the buoy. Supporting the unfortunate female traveler in his extended arms, Mandibul searched for a second piece of wreckage for her. A second buoy presented itself. Mandibul had a world of difficulty in getting Mrs. Hatteras, who was still unconscious, into it. Finally, he succeeded. A wave larger than the rest caught up both buoys, which were attached to one another, and threw them on to something almost solid.

  Mandibul thought that they had reached land, bu
t when he looked at it more closely he perceived that the ground was composed of herrings. The herrings, continuing on their way, had already carried him away from the scene of the catastrophe. Mandibul, pricking his ears, could hardly hear a few shouting voices in the distance.

  Mandibul shivered. Were his companions safe, like him, or would they perish desperately in the waves?

  Mrs. Hatteras came to. Mandibul hurriedly lavished cares upon her. Suddenly, a rifle-shot rang out. Mandibul understood that it was a signal and sought a means to respond to it. Good luck had placed him in the munitions buoy; he had three carbines and plenty of cartridges. He was therefore able, in his turn, to let his friends know that he was safe for the moment.

  After a long and terrible night, dawn finally came and Mandibul was able to see his situation clearly.

  It was, in truth, not the best imaginable. The two buoys, slightly damaged by the collapse of the cabin, were resting amid the last remnant of the unfortunate herring shoal, on a minuscule shoal of dubious solidity scarcely ten meters long by six wide. Alas, this was all of the great floating island that so many successive disasters had spared.

  The downcast Mrs. Hatteras looked sadly at the waves that were coming as far as the buoys to break, imparting a strong pitching motion to the shoal.

  In order to reassure her, Mandibul summoned up all his strength of mind and affected the greatest tranquility. “Alone at last!” he said. “Alone with the Ocean! I can, therefore, without fear of the ear of your indiscreet solicitor, paint the sentiments of my soul for you and tell you….”

  A violent impact interrupted him.

  “A cachalot!” cried Mrs. Hatteras.

  Damnation! It was another of the frightful cachalots that had been fattening themselves for months at the herrings’ expense. The wretched cetacean was back on the track of the last remnant of the shoal; it was chasing its quarry without any pity for he unfortunate survivors of the carnage.