Winter approached its end, however. To occupy the rather long evenings, the pupils—save for the dunces punished with extra work—could choose between the theater and concerts on the telephonoscope. From 8 until 10 p.m., in a large hall adapted for the purpose, they watched performances of French or English plays in Paris or London—always classics, of course.
Next door, in another room, there was an opera or a concert, vocal or instrumental music, still by telephonoscope. A third neighboring room was reserved for lectures at the Sorbonne or the Hautes Écoles, but we must admit that it was less crowded there than in the theater.
The cinematic history course had reached the fall of the Roman Empire and the Barbarian Invasions. It was still thrilling, but they waited impatiently for the fine days of spring, to set about the study of geography by modern methods—which is to say, from nature: geography on location.
XVI. The Course in Geography from Nature.
The Glacier Palace Famine.
For a fortnight Chambourcy school—which had become an open air school again, with courses in the grounds beneath the young, fresh greenery and among the new flowers—had been dreaming of nothing but geography.
Greek and Latin were done without enthusiasm; mathematics had palled, its joys being insufficiently savored. Mind turned toward geography. A beautiful science, geography: the study of our globe, which has become so easy and pleasant, thanks to the means at our disposal.
The fortnight went by, and the impatiently-awaited day arrived for the entire third form. The course was about to begin.
The siren, whistling to wake the school up, found all the pupils already out of bed, ready to leave, books and notebooks in little satchels slung over the shoulder. They still had two hours, however, before the anchor would be raised.
Breakfast dragged on. The phono on the table started speaking; it was the Headmaster giving his final instructions to the pupils, who were listening distractedly. They knew it all; they had already done the other years of the course in “geography from nature.” Only Koufra was a newcomer, a pupil entirely new to the new method, and he gazed excitedly at the dirigible bobbing on its mooring-ropes above the grounds, ready to bear away the whole third form on the course in physical geography.
It was a fine dirigible, brand new, and larger than the airship-omnibus in service between Paris and the school for the benefit of pupils not flying by their own means. It was a neatly-designed airship, fitted with the latest improvements and offering all possible guarantees of safety.
“Follow me, old chap,” said Gustave Turbille, when they embarked. “I went to inspect our places yesterday; they’re at the front, to starboard, and will suit us very well. Besides, I’m on good terms with the chief mechanic, who sometimes asks my advice, and we can go on to the helmsman’s gangway as often as we want.”
The “physical geography course from nature” strongly resembled a vacation. A long trip, in a joyous troop, in a good and comfortable dirigible; a tour of France. In order to study from nature the coasts, the valleys, the rivers, the plateaux and the mountains. Superb and enjoyable! A week-long excursion! And the barometer stood at Set Fair!
Did one ever see, at the opening of a course, that universal expansiveness and urgency, even from the worst duffers? It seems unlikely. Today, the third form went to class uttering hurrahs, which the geography professor—a real one, this time, not a phonographic professor—tried to calm with appeals for order, in competition with the form-masters.
When the third form was aboard, gathered in the vast cabin beneath the helmsman’s gangway, the professor arranged his papers and maps on a desk on the balcony at the rear, where he had the entire class under his gaze.
“Satchels and notebooks at the ready, Messieurs” said the form-masters. “We’re taking off!”
The first phase was a mere stroll: the Seine valley, very familiar; the Norman and Breton coasts, also quite familiar. The day was spent reviewing long chalky cliffs, sandy beaches, steep-sided promontories beaten by the waves, jagged rocky coasts, groups of islands, isolated reefs, gulfs and bays…. Then the dirigible set a course for the open air school in Nantes, beneath the pines at the mouth of the Loire, for the evening meal and overnight stop.
“It’s going very well,” said Gustave. “I’ve already filled one notebook.”
“And me two notebooks,” replied Koufra, increasingly fascinated.
Things also went very well the following day and the days after that, when they studied the Loire valley and the Langres plateau, and started on mountains with the Massif Central, the Vosges and the Jura chain.
The Alps! A marvelous spectacle, the white tops of mountains, standing on one another’s shoulders, filling the entire horizon around the dirigible Chambourcy. The professor gave the famous names of all the peaks and all the glaciers, from which avalanches crumbled and torrents sprang. He identified the valleys lost far below in the greenish blue or violet, and the celebrated rivers that were born amid the snows and bounded from crag to crag, and the great and small lakes formed in the hollows of the valleys…
After a rapid survey from the balcony of clouds of the whole vast Alpine panorama, and the inspection of Mont Blanc, they were supposed to stay the night at the open air school in Dijon, but fate decide otherwise.
“Breakdown!” Gustave suddenly cried, lending an ear to the engine, which was manifesting a certain agitation.
They were over the slopes of Mont Blanc, a few 100 meters above the Sea of Ice. As their speed slowed, it became easier to admire the landscape. Koufra rubbed his hands together, but the professor interrupted his explanation of the glacial phenomena.
“This is it,” said Turbille, descending from the gangway. “A genuine breakdown. Listen—it’s stopping! We’re heading straight for the glacier. Sublime!”
“Oh,” said Koufra, and a few others, abandoning their notebooks, “but…”
“Sublime!” said Monsieur Radoux. “But there are some exceedingly sharp rocks down there…let’s not study them at too close a range! I don’t trust them!”
Gustave, pleased with his effect, did not reply immediately. “Calm down” he said, eventually, “We’re going down, but gently. I’ve pointed out a good place to land to the mechanics, down there on a tranquil Alp—and a hotel, Messieurs, a hotel! One couldn’t have chosen a better spot for a comfortable breakdown, eh?”
The organ-pipe hum of the engine developed a jerky hoarseness, but the airship descended toward the indicated Alp quite smoothly. The professor, anxious at first, as reassured. A short stop, time to make repairs, and then they would be on their way again. If the worst came to the worst, there was a hotel.
The Chambourcy settled tranquilly on the grass in front of the hotel; it really was a comfortable breakdown. The mechanics immediately set about examining their machines. The third-formers stretched their legs on the ground.
“3000 meters!” the professor said to the mechanics. “It will get cold; we must try to leave again soon. I’m going to get a cup of hot coffee at the hotel…”
Gustave came back from the hotel. “Monsieur,” he said, “the Glacier Palace is closed; I’ve knocked everywhere—there’s no one here; the season hasn’t started yet. There’s no one in the chalet lower down, either.”
“Oh!” said the professor and the form-masters, simultaneously. “We need to get going again right away. Let’s see about this breakdown…”
“I know what it is, Monsieur,” said the chief mechanic. “A little snag—nothing at all, easily repaired…but it’s necessary to take the engine apart. That will be six hours’ work, at least…and then to put it all back together again…”
“Ouch! In the cold, at 3000 meters!”
“Monsieur,” Gustave returned to say, “I’ve found an unlocked shutter at the hotel. I’ve shoved Koufra inside, and he’s going to open up the Glacier Palace for us…we’ll be all right.”
“Let’s go—to the Glacier Palace, quickly!”
Five minutes
later, the Glacier Palace was open and crammed with customers: the 500 pupils of the third form, with their teachers. A nice beginning for the season. Gustave and Koufra rummaged around everywhere, with Monsieur Radoux. It was a superb installation for a health cure: magnificent rooms, an immense dining-room, a splendid view, admirable kitchens, vast stoves—but solitude everywhere, and no food supplies at all! Nothing but the previous season’s last menu, pinned up in the dining-room.
That discovery terrified everyone. The excursion in the clouds and the keen Alpine air had generated a good appetite, and the general emotion increased it considerably.
“Dash it!” exclaimed Gustave. “It’s the sequel to the Paris-Naples Tube catastrophe…but down there, the passengers wedged in the tube still had soup whenever they wanted!”
“Villennes is going to make fun of us mercilessly.”
“What are we going to do? Are we going to be forced to eat Koufra?”
“Eating a black boy might not be as great a crime as eating a white boy—me, I’m leaning toward Koufra…”
“No, no,” said Gustave. “We have to think of something else.”
“I’ve got it!” said Koufra, returning at a gallop, “We shan’t die of hunger; in the chalet, there are five large balls of gruyère.”
“Hurrah for Koufra! Let’s go fetch the balls of gruyère!”
Gustave, feeling jealous, hurried down to the cellar of the hotel, which he had forgotten to explore. Nothing but six bottles of white wine, forgotten in a corner. There was still that. They would eat. In the meantime, he filled up the central-heating boiler, for the cold was becoming intense.
Dormitories were organized in the rooms and corridors. The table was set, two balls of gruyère sliced up—one slice for the soup, one slice for the roast and one slice for dessert for each guest, plus another in the guise of bread—and to table! For want of gypsies, Gustave succeeded in starting up a mechanical orchestra, which played all the fashionable opera tunes…
And to think that at that moment, a substantial hot dinner, now going cold, was waiting for them at Dijon school!
The meal was cheerful al the same. The excitement and fatigue were forgotten in god reparative sleep. Unfortunately, the dirigible as not as easily repaired. The chief engineer declared that it definitely did not work. The situation became grave. Monsieur Virgile Radoux wrote his will, in verse.
A second day of isolation. The Crusoes of the desert Alp blew on their fingers. The chief mechanic still said that they would be there for no longer than six hours, but another six hours were added to those…
And snow began to fall thick and fast. The unfortunate third form was besieged by snow and famine!
The professor heroically continued his course in the hotel’s ballroom. At least the third-formers would come out of the adventure quite strong in Alpine geography, the folding of the terrestrial crust and the formation and environment of glaciers.
Unfortunately, their attention was elsewhere, directed toward the balls of gruyère that were dwindling away before their eyes. The dirigible obstinately refused to move. What would become of them?
XVII. In which young Koufra makes
sensational prehistoric discoveries.
In the ballroom of the Glacier Palace, during the professor’s intentionally long-drawn-out lecture Koufra searched in vain for Gustave, who had already been put down for a severe imposition. Where was he? What was he doing?
Koufra imagined some accident, in the frightful precipices surrounding the hotel or one of the avalanches that the professor had mentioned. Gustave must have ventured out to search for a path through the icy chaos; Koufra could already see him lying frozen at the bottom of some crevasse when he reappeared, quite calmly.
“Monsieur,” he said, “I’ve seen the machine. Nothing much, there’s a silly little thing missing, which is quite important; it’ll require at least five times six hours to sort it out—and the gruyère won’t last that long!”
The entire class seemed as refrigerated as the nearby glacier. Monsieur Radoux immediately added another stanza to his will.
“But it will be fixed, all the same, Monsieur,” Gustave added. “I’ve been working on something... The hotel’s wireless telegraph station was dismantled, but I’ve improvised an antenna and I can communicate with the people down below. An airship will set off to bring us the missing component and…”
“Bravo! Bravo! Hurrah for Turbille!”
“…And something for dinner!”
Thus it was that Gustave saved the situation. He was definitely the great man of the third. The return was effected without any further breakdown. On arrival at Chambourcy the Headmaster congratulated him officially in front of the whole assembled school. Koufra was also highly praised, and was promoted to second great man for having discovered the balls of gruyère and relieved the entire class of the cruel necessity of resorting to cannibalism.
The third form produced some remarkable geography essays. Those judged the best were even published in academic journals. There were variations in different accounts of the incident. The duration of the Glacier Palace famine varied from one week to six weeks. In several of them, Koufra had already been put on the spit when help arrived, and it was not entirely clear whether or not bites had already been taken out of the unfortunate boy.
With these two resourceful individuals on hand, one could be tranquil everywhere, and the following week, when the time came to resume geography from nature, it was without apprehension that the third form took off again in the dirigible Chambourcy, repaired, checked and rechecked by Turbille and Koufra.
This time they were not going to any more mountains or doing any more climbing; on the contrary, they were going to descend into the bowels of the Earth—leaving he dirigible on the surface, of course. The program indicated: physical geography; geology; study of mining centers.
The Chambourcy set a course northwards, toward the region of the Somme: the oil wells of Béthune and Lens, the black country of French and Belgian Flanders. No more white summits, but black pits.
The professor of physical geography scarcely had time to begin his lecture before they were flying over mines, miners’ cottages, factories and blast furnaces, amid swirls of black smoke.
Only Monsieur Virgile Radoux manifested a somewhat melancholy appearance when the airship stopped above an important mine, whose exploration and study featured in the program. He would have preferred to study an agricultural and virginal region with sunlight, flocks of sheep, or a shady forest of beech and oak trees—but he had instead to descend into the utmost depths of the Earth and plunge into pitch darkness!
With great animation, the third-formers put on miners’ equipment, were given lamps, and were swallowed up, mounted in skips. They were counted as they went down, and counted again at the bottom. Then, with the professor in the lead and lamps attached to their shoulders, they set off in a long procession into the labyrinthine tunnels of the mine.
A few pupils felt the small packets of provisions in their pockets: croissants and chocolate, brought just in case. They certainly had nothing to fear, but it was necessary to be ready for anything.
Gustave made fun of these cowards; he had also packed his provisions, but he had eaten them already.
The professor began his lecture. He had interesting things to say, but could only be heard by the pupils at the front; the others passed on these interesting things and they arrived at the final rows somewhat distorted, amid laughter, jokes and jostling.
The professor searched for some traces of fossils; preserved in a block of coal, the imprint of the bones of a little fish were found, and that provided an opportunity for a fine dissertation on prehistoric fauna and flora.
Gradually, Turbille allowed himself to be overtaken, while holding Koufra back, under the pretext of having something curious to tell him.
“The bowels of the Earth, Messieurs!” he said. “Pay attention, you back there in the rear. Count ourselves and keep recoun
ting yourselves! Don’t let anyone leave the column! The professor has mentioned that a living dinotherium was found in one of the mines of Artois—perhaps it was this one!”
“Eh? What’s that?” said the pupils of the rear-guard. “You’ve found a fossil dinotherium?”
“Not a fossil—alive, but a trifle torpid,” Turbille replied, “with two plesiosaurs and three starving diplodocuses. Watch out! Oh, why didn’t I bring a revolver? Look out! They’re galloping through the tunnels—we mustn’t allow ourselves to be devoured…”
“What’s this?” asked Koufra, picking up a handful of mussel-shells.
“People claim that they’re mussels of the modern era, recently eaten by some miner, but I maintain that they’re mussels of the Tertiary, Secondary or perhaps Primary Era, cooked by the interior fire when, during the early days of our globe, the people of that epoch, who were more advanced than we supposed, first invented central heating. Quickly, pass these precious relics from hand to hand, in order to ask the professor’s opinion. It’s an interesting discovery, that—the third form of Chambourcy school will bring itself to the attention of the scientific societies.”
“You don’t say!” said young Béguinot, who had come to join his friends. “The central fire makes me think—one might perhaps light a cigarette. This would be the right moment; Monsieur Radoux won’t notice…”
“What about the firedamp, idiot?”
“Dash it—I forgot about the firedamp…”
“Firedamp?” said a few pupils, falling back. “What? You’re saying that there’s firedamp?”
“The head of the column seems to me to be taking a big risk,” said Gustave, in a voice that he strove to render lugubrious and tremulous.
But the visit to the mine was completed without encountering firedamp; the column returned via other tunnels toward the shaft in order to go back up into the daylight. There were no accidents, save for a few bumps sustained in the lower galleries.
Chalet in the Sky Page 11
