City in the Sahara - Barsac Mission 02

by Jules Verne

  "That doesn't matter. What is it?"

  "Daniel Frasne."

  "Nationality?"

  "English."

  Daniel Frasne, for that really was his name, as determined to answer as briefly as he had previously been to keep silence, replied one by one to the questions put to him.

  "Now, my lad," Camaret began. "I want some information. If you refuse, we'll carry on with the little game you've been playing. Do you feel mclined to let me have it?"

  "Yes," the injured man replied.

  "First of all, what's your position in Blackland? What part do you play there?"

  "Counsellor."

  "Counsellor?" repeated Camaret interrogatively.

  Frasne seemed surprised that the engineer did not know the word. But he explained: "That's what they call those who share in Harry Killer's government."

  Then, if I understand you right, you share in the government of Blackland."

  "Yes."

  Marcel Camaret seemed quite satisfied with that reply. He continued: "Have you been here long."

  "Since it started."

  "You knew Harry Killer before that?"

  "Yes."

  "Where were you when you knew him." "With Blazon's column."

  On hearing these words, Jane trembled. Fate had provided her with another witness.

  But Camaret repeated: "With Blazon's column: how is it I don't recognize you?"

  "I suppose I must have altered," Frasne replied philosophically. "All the same I was with you, Monsieur Camaret."

  Unable to wait any longer, Jane Blazon intervened. "Excuse me, Monsieur Camaret," she said, "but would you allow me to say a few words to this man?"

  Camaret having agreed, she asked: "As you were with Blazon's column, you must have seen Harry Killer when he arrived?"

  "Yes."

  "Why did Captain Blazon give him so hearty a welcome?"

  "I don't know anything about that."

  "Would it be correct," Jane continued, "to say that from the day when Harry Killer joined the column, he became its real commander?"

  "Quite correct," replied Frasne, showing some astonishment at being questioned about what had happened so long ago.

  "So it was only by Harry Killer's orders that the Blazon column devoted itself to the acts of pillage which led to its being destroyed?"

  "Yes," Frasne agreed.

  "Captain Blazon had nothing to do with it?"

  "No."

  "You heard that, gentlemen?" asked Jane, turning towards her companions. Then, "Why was it," she enquired, "that Captain Blazon gave up his authority to Harry Killer?"

  "How would you expect me to know that," Frasne answered impatiently.

  He seemed sincere, and Jane thought it useless to insist. "At any rate, do you know how Captain Blazon died?" she asked, turning to another subject.

  "Oh ... in the fighting," Frasne replied, as if that went without saying. "Plenty of others fell at the same time."

  Jane sighed. It was not in this way that she was going to clarify the many points which remained obscure.

  "Thank you, sir," she said to Camaret. "I've finished."

  The engineer at once recommenced his enquiries at the point where they had been interrupted.

  "In the first place, how did they get hold of the Negroes who built the town?" he asked.

  Frasne. opened his eyes widely. How could anyone ask so stupid a question? Good heavens, was this the sort of' thing he'd just been tortured for?

  "Obviously!" he said, "from the villages. You don't need much sense to know that!"

  "Yes, but how?"

  Frasne shrugged his uninjured shoulder. "That trick!" he said. "As if you didn't know! We simply took them."

  "All!" . . . exclaimed Camaret, holding his head down with a dejected air.

  "At the beginning, you needed machines. Where did they come from?"

  "Not from the moon, to be sure!" sniggered Frasne.

  "You got them from Europe?"

  "Conceivably!"

  "How did they get here?"

  "They certainly didn't fly here. . . . Look, Monsieur Camaret, these are funny questions! How would you expect them to get here? They came in boats, that goes without saying."

  "Where were they disembarked?" Camaret went on quietly.

  "At Kotonou."

  "But it's some distance from Kotonou to Blackland. How were they conveyed here?"

  "Camels, horses, Negroes," Frasne replied laconically; his patience seemed to be running out.

  "During that long journey, many of the Negroes died, I suppose?"

  "More than the ones who were born!" grunted Frasne. "It wouldn't have amused me to count them."

  Camaret went on to another subject: "These machines, they had to be paid for?"

  "Hell!" exclaimed Frasne, who found these questions more and more nonsensical.

  "Then there's money in Blackland."

  "Certainly it isn't what we're short of!"

  "Where did it come from?"

  This time Frasne quite lost patience. "When are you going to leave off playing about with me, Monsieur Camaret?" he demanded in unfeigned anger, "asking me a heap of things you know better than I do? You didn't make those heliplanes just for fun. You know well enough that every now and again they took Harry Killer and his mates as far as the Bissago Islands, and then a steamer took them and brought them back after a little tour in Europe, in England mostly. It isn't you whom I've got to tell that in Europe there are banks, old misers and so forth, a whole lot of people whom it's worth while visiting . . . without an invitation. When the visit was over, they came back, and nobody saw them and nobody knew who they were."

  "Did these journeys happen often?" Camaret asked, his face red with shame.

  Frasne made a gesture of resignation. "Oh well, if this amuses you! . . ." he murmured. "It all depends—three or four times a year."

  "And when was the last journey made?"

  "The last?" replied Frasne, rummaging conscientiously among his memories. "Wait! . . . About four months ago, or four and a half."

  "And whom did they visit that time?"

  "I don't know very well." Frasne replied. "I wasn't in that one. A bank, I think. But what I do know is that we'd never had such luck before."

  Marcel Camaret was silent for a moment. He had turned quite pale and looked ten years older. "One last word, Frasne," he said. "How many Negroes have you got working in the country?"

  "About four thousand. Perhaps more."

  "And women?"

  "About fifteen hundred."

  "And I suppose you got them the same as the others?"

  "No," replied Frasne in quite natural tones. "Now there are the heliplanes to pick them up with."

  "Ah! . . ." signed Camaret. After another pause, he continued: "How did you get into here?"

  Before replying Frasne hesitated for the first time. Here was a serious question at lastl He was just as much annoyed at having to answer this as he had been ready to reply hitherto. Nevertheless, he had to. "Through the reservoir," he replied with a very ill grace.

  "Through the reservoir?" Camaret asked in surprise.

  "Yes. The day before yesterday the water gates on the river were closed so that you couldn't pump up the water, and the reservoir at the Palace was emptied. This emptied the one at the Factory, which leads to the Palace by a conduit below the Esplanade. Tchoumouki and I came through that conduit."

  A few hours before the engineer had learned, without paying it much attention, that the pump had been reinstalled and was working perfectly. He now understood why Harry Killer, swayed by the frightful death of Tchoumouki, which he attributed to the defenders of the Factory, had reopened the water gate so that the water was flowing in as usual.

  "That's well. I thank you," said Camaret. Having concentrated on the points that interested him, he went away without asking any more questions.

  So the 13th dragged on, and on the 14th there was no fresh incident. The siege remained rigo
rous. On the quay upstream and on the Esplanade, the Merry Fellows were posted, and as their view extended everywhere around the encircling road and covered all the approaches to the Factory, nobody was able to leave it. There was no reason why the position should change until the day came when hunger would force the garrison to surrender.

  That was the undeniable thought with which Amedee Florence was continually preoccupied. Since the heliplane had been destroyed, he had been looking for some way of getting out of this business, and he was angry at not being able to find one. At last, on the evening of the 14th, he had an idea. As that idea, looked at from all angles, seemed promising, next morning he had a long consultation with Tongane; then he asked his friends to come with him to Camaret, to whom he had something urgent to say.

  Since Frasne had been questioned, nobody had seen the engineer, who had at once gone into his own quarters, where he still remained. There, alone, he was sadly working out the consequences of the facts revealed to him, and was hanging dizzily over the gulf which they implied.

  He realized the entire truth. He knew that Black-land had been founded and maintained by violence, by robbery and murder. He knew that Europe and Africa had been, each in its own way, the scene of the exploits of Harry Killer and his followers. He could not shut his eyes to the origin of the gold so abundant in the town and thanks to which his work had been achieved. The atrocities committed by Blazon's column, the assassination of its leader, the continual slaughter of the hapless Negroes, kidnapped from the villages, robberies, assassinations in Africa and Europe, and, to crown all, that abominable attack on the peaceful Barsac Mission he understood them all.

  In these innumerable crimes he felt himself implicated. In spite of his innocence, was it not indeed he who had furnished the means by which they were carried out? In realizing what his life had been over the last ten years, he was assailed by a very real terror, and his reason, already unstable, was yielding to the shock. Little by little he had come to detest this town of Black-land, which was none the less his own work, the flesh of his flesh, this pyramid of marvels which he himself had raised to his own glory. And indeed, could the atrocities of which its people were guilty remain unpunished? Was it not accursed, thevery town which had been the scene of so much crime?

  Amedee Florence and his companions found Camaret absorbed in his unhappy thoughts. Half stretched out in an armchair, motionless, his eves dull, he seemed overcome and void of strength. In the two days during which nobody had seen him, he might not have taken any food.

  Such a person was useless to Florence, who wanted to deal with the skilled inventor of the past. By his orders, Tongane was sent to look for some food. Camaret obediently ate it, but did not show the appetite which his long fast would have justified. After the meal, however, a little blood returned to his colourless face.

  "The reason I've assembled all of you here," explained Florence, "is that I've hit on an idea for getting out of a situation from which there seems no escape. By dint of pondering over it, I have come to see quite clearly that we can secure a large number of allies that we've got so to speak close at hand."

  "What allies?" Barsac and Dr. Chatonnay asked at once.

  "The Negroes in the slave quarter," replied Florence. "There must be at least four thousand of them, not counting the women, who ought to be as good as two men when they're set free. There's a force, it seems to me, which is not to be despised."

  "That's clear," Barsac agreed, "but these Negroes have no weapons, and probably they don't even know that we exist."

  "That's the reason," said Florence, "why we must get into touch with them and arm them."

  "That's easy to say!" exclaimed Barsac.

  "And may be easy to do," Florence replied.

  "Indeed?" asked Barsac. "Without mentioning the weapons, who's going to get in touch with the Negroes?"

  "A Negro like themselves: Tongane"

  "How will he get to them? You know well enough that the Factoiy is surrounded. If he shows himseji hell be welcomed by a hail of bullets."

  "So he mustn't go out of the door," explained Florence. "Besides that wouldn't help us, because just opposite to the Factory there's the White quarter. And it's the Black quarter he's got to reach. So the only thing to do is what he's done already, to reach the countryside during the night, lose himself in the crowd of Negroes, and enter the town along with them."

  "Then he'll have to go over the circular road and the wall?" Barsac objected.

  "Or below them," replied Florence, turning towards Marcel Camaret.

  But he, wrapped in thought, had remained outside the discussion, and seemed not even to have heard it.

  "Monsieur Camaret," Florence asked him, "would it be possible to run a tunnel beneath the walls of the Factory and the town, a tunnel which would cross below the circular road and emerge in the open country?"

  "Doubtless," agreed Camaret, lifting his head.

  "How long would the work take?"

  Camaret pondered for a moment. "In the ordinary way, we should have to dig the tunnel, and that would take a long time." he said. "But it could be shortened greatly by means of a machine I have just thought of, which would give excellent results in a sandy soil. To design that machine, to build it, and to drive the tunnel, a fortnight would be needed, and that would be quite enough."

  "So you could get it finished by the end of the month?"

  "Certainly," Camaret assured him.

  As soon as anyone gave him a problem to solve he was again in his element. His mind was swinging into action, and he was visibly growing younger.

  "A second point, Monsieur Camaret," Florence continued. "Will this tunnel need the help of all your staff?"

  "It will need a good many," replied Camaret.

  "Those who aren't needed for the work, could they manage lo construct three or four thousand weapons in the same time?"

  "What weapons? Not firearms, anyhow."

  "Pikes, knives, axes, bludgeons, any sort of contrivances for stabbing, cutting or clubbing that you like."

  "In that case, yes," agreed Camaret.

  "And these weapons, could you manage to get them in due time to the slaves' quarter without Harry Killer's people seeing or hearing them?"

  "That's more difficult," Camaret said quietly. He was silent for a few moments, then replied in his gentle voice. "Yes, I can manage that, provided the night is dark."

  Amedee Florence gave a sigh of relief. 'Then we're saved," he cried. "You understand, Monsieur Camaret, Tongane will go out through the tunnel, wait in the open until the black workers arrive and melt into them, and that evening he'll return with them. In the night he'll organize the revolt. All those people are wretchedly unhappy, and will ask only to throw off the yoke as soon as they've got weapons. As soon as you supply them, they won't hesitate. You must get to work at once, Monsieur Camaret."

  "I'm at it already," was the engineer's only reply. Indeed, he had already settled down before his drawing-board.

  The garrison went off much excited by the pleasant vista which Amedee Florence had revealed to their eyes. Yes, indeed, his idea was good, and it would have been absurd not to secure the help of these thousands of natural allies imprisoned on the far shore of the river. As for getting in touch with them, after the assurances of Camaret nobody doubted that this was possible. He had already given evidence on that point.

  From the following day the construction of the heliplane was abandoned, and all the workmen were occupied, some in forging and sharpening pointed or edged weapons, others in constructing the new machine which Camaret had thought of, others again in hollowing out a tree trunk for some purpose which nobody understood, while the remainder were digging, out of sight of the Palace, a large well which deepened rapidly.

  By the 21st April, the well had reached a depth of thirty feet. Camaret thought that enough, and began to drive a horizontal gallery. For this purpose he had devised a steel cone fifteen feet long and about four feet wide; its surface consisted of a
lternate ridges and grooves, arranged like a giant screw. An electric motor turned this apparatus, which, driving its point into the friable soil, literally screwed itself forward; meanwhile the sand flowed through specially-made openings into the cone, when it was removed through the well.

  When this gigantic screw was completely buried in the soil and at the same time supporting it, it was followed by a cylinder of the same size, driven after it by powerful screw-jacks. When the tunnel was complete, it would thus consist of a metallic tube about a hundred and fifty feet long.

  When this was done, the perforated cone would be rotated so that a larger opening, hitherto closed, would be turned uppermost. Through this another smaller cone would be passed and screwed upwards until it reached the surface.

  While these varied works were being carried out Camaret was hardly ever seen. He appeared, looking sombre and distraught, only when his presence was needed to solve any difficulty. This done, he again shut himself up in his own quarters, where in solitude he ate the meals which his servant Jacko prepared for him.

  The tunnel was none the less completed in accordance with his plans.

  By dawn on the 30th of April, the hundred and fifty feet of horizontal tubing were ready. At once began the installation of the smaller cone to bore the vertical exit, for this task had to be completed before daybreak.

  It was time. From the 27th, three days before, food had begun to run short, and the rations, already inadequate, were cut down to next to nothing.

  Good temper, or rather calmness in the face of life's difficulties, consorts ill with famished stomachs. Consequently the morale of the Factory staff began to deterioratc. Though they kept on working furiously, for their lives depended on it, their faces became more gloomy, and they exchanged angry words. They had plainly lost, to some extent at any rate, their blind confidence in their chief, to whom they had formerly attributed almost a supernatural power. For in spite of all his genius this magician had shown himself unable to keep them from dying of hunger, and his prestige had consequently suffered.

  Moreover a legend had gradually sprung up, its origin being a few words regarding Jane Blazon spoken by Camaret in his introductory speech before hostilities had been opened against the Palace. At first Harry Killer's liking for her had been regarded as not very important, as merely one of the proofs of his despotic spirit which took its place among the rest.