Cinq semaines en ballon. English

by Jules Verne

  CHAPTER THIRD.

  The Doctor's Friend.--The Origin of their Friendship.--Dick Kennedy atLondon.--An unexpected but not very consoling Proposal.--A Proverb byno means cheering.--A few Names from the African Martyrology.--TheAdvantages of a Balloon.--Dr. Ferguson's Secret.

  Dr. Ferguson had a friend--not another self, indeed, an alter ego, forfriendship could not exist between two beings exactly alike.

  But, if they possessed different qualities, aptitudes, and temperaments,Dick Kennedy and Samuel Ferguson lived with one and the same heart, andthat gave them no great trouble. In fact, quite the reverse.

  Dick Kennedy was a Scotchman, in the full acceptation of the word--open,resolute, and headstrong. He lived in the town of Leith, which is nearEdinburgh, and, in truth, is a mere suburb of Auld Reekie. Sometimes hewas a fisherman, but he was always and everywhere a determined hunter,and that was nothing remarkable for a son of Caledonia, who had knownsome little climbing among the Highland mountains. He was cited as awonderful shot with the rifle, since not only could he split a bulleton a knife-blade, but he could divide it into two such equal parts that,upon weighing them, scarcely any difference would be perceptible.

  Kennedy's countenance strikingly recalled that of Herbert Glendinning,as Sir Walter Scott has depicted it in "The Monastery"; his stature wasabove six feet; full of grace and easy movement, he yet seemed giftedwith herculean strength; a face embrowned by the sun; eyes keen andblack; a natural air of daring courage; in fine, something sound, solid,and reliable in his entire person, spoke, at first glance, in favor ofthe bonny Scot.

  The acquaintanceship of these two friends had been formed in India, whenthey belonged to the same regiment. While Dick would be out in pursuitof the tiger and the elephant, Samuel would be in search of plants andinsects. Each could call himself expert in his own province, and morethan one rare botanical specimen, that to science was as great a victorywon as the conquest of a pair of ivory tusks, became the doctor's booty.

  These two young men, moreover, never had occasion to save each other'slives, or to render any reciprocal service. Hence, an unalterablefriendship. Destiny sometimes bore them apart, but sympathy alwaysunited them again.

  Since their return to England they had been frequently separated bythe doctor's distant expeditions; but, on his return, the latter neverfailed to go, not to ASK for hospitality, but to bestow some weeks ofhis presence at the home of his crony Dick.

  The Scot talked of the past; the doctor busily prepared for the future.The one looked back, the other forward. Hence, a restless spiritpersonified in Ferguson; perfect calmness typified in Kennedy--such wasthe contrast.

  After his journey to the Thibet, the doctor had remained nearly twoyears without hinting at new explorations; and Dick, supposing that hisfriend's instinct for travel and thirst for adventure had at length diedout, was perfectly enchanted. They would have ended badly, some day orother, he thought to himself; no matter what experience one has withmen, one does not travel always with impunity among cannibals and wildbeasts. So, Kennedy besought the doctor to tie up his bark for life,having done enough for science, and too much for the gratitude of men.

  The doctor contented himself with making no reply to this. Heremained absorbed in his own reflections, giving himself up to secretcalculations, passing his nights among heaps of figures, and makingexperiments with the strangest-looking machinery, inexplicable toeverybody but himself. It could readily be guessed, though, that somegreat thought was fermenting in his brain.

  "What can he have been planning?" wondered Kennedy, when, in the monthof January, his friend quitted him to return to London.

  He found out one morning when he looked into the Daily Telegraph.

  "Merciful Heaven!" he exclaimed, "the lunatic! the madman! Cross Africain a balloon! Nothing but that was wanted to cap the climax! That's whathe's been bothering his wits about these two years past!"

  Now, reader, substitute for all these exclamation points, as manyringing thumps with a brawny fist upon the table, and you have some ideaof the manual exercise that Dick went through while he thus spoke.

  When his confidential maid-of-all-work, the aged Elspeth, tried toinsinuate that the whole thing might be a hoax--

  "Not a bit of it!" said he. "Don't I know my man? Isn't it just likehim? Travel through the air! There, now, he's jealous of the eagles,next! No! I warrant you, he'll not do it! I'll find a way to stop him!He! why if they'd let him alone, he'd start some day for the moon!"

  On that very evening Kennedy, half alarmed, and half exasperated, tookthe train for London, where he arrived next morning.

  Three-quarters of an hour later a cab deposited him at the door of thedoctor's modest dwelling, in Soho Square, Greek Street. Forthwith hebounded up the steps and announced his arrival with five good, hearty,sounding raps at the door.

  Ferguson opened, in person.

  "Dick! you here?" he exclaimed, but with no great expression ofsurprise, after all.

  "Dick himself!" was the response.

  "What, my dear boy, you at London, and this the mid-season of the wintershooting?"

  "Yes! here I am, at London!"

  "And what have you come to town for?"

  "To prevent the greatest piece of folly that ever was conceived."

  "Folly!" said the doctor.

  "Is what this paper says, the truth?" rejoined Kennedy, holding out thecopy of the Daily Telegraph, mentioned above.

  "Ah! that's what you mean, is it? These newspapers are great tattlers!But, sit down, my dear Dick."

  "No, I won't sit down!--Then, you really intend to attempt thisjourney?"

  "Most certainly! all my preparations are getting along finely, and I--"

  "Where are your traps? Let me have a chance at them! I'll make them fly!I'll put your preparations in fine order." And so saying, the gallantScot gave way to a genuine explosion of wrath.

  "Come, be calm, my dear Dick!" resumed the doctor. "You're angry at mebecause I did not acquaint you with my new project."

  "He calls this his new project!"

  "I have been very busy," the doctor went on, without heeding theinterruption; "I have had so much to look after! But rest assured that Ishould not have started without writing to you."

  "Oh, indeed! I'm highly honored."

  "Because it is my intention to take you with me."

  Upon this, the Scotchman gave a leap that a wild goat would not havebeen ashamed of among his native crags.

  "Ah! really, then, you want them to send us both to Bedlam!"

  "I have counted positively upon you, my dear Dick, and I have picked youout from all the rest."

  Kennedy stood speechless with amazement.

  "After listening to me for ten minutes," said the doctor, "you willthank me!"

  "Are you speaking seriously?"

  "Very seriously."

  "And suppose that I refuse to go with you?"

  "But you won't refuse."

  "But, suppose that I were to refuse?"

  "Well, I'd go alone."

  "Let us sit down," said Kennedy, "and talk without excitement. Themoment you give up jesting about it, we can discuss the thing."

  "Let us discuss it, then, at breakfast, if you have no objections, mydear Dick."

  The two friends took their seats opposite to each other, at a littletable with a plate of toast and a huge tea-urn before them.

  "My dear Samuel," said the sportsman, "your project is insane! itis impossible! it has no resemblance to anything reasonable orpracticable!"

  "That's for us to find out when we shall have tried it!"

  "But trying it is exactly what you ought not to attempt."

  "Why so, if you please?"

  "Well, the risks, the difficulty of the thing."

  "As for difficulties," replied Ferguson, in a serious tone, "they weremade to be overcome; as for risks and dangers, who can flatter himselfthat he is to escape them? Every thing in life involves danger; it mayeven be dangerous to sit down at one's
own table, or to put one's hat onone's own head. Moreover, we must look upon what is to occur as havingalready occurred, and see nothing but the present in the future, for thefuture is but the present a little farther on."

  "There it is!" exclaimed Kennedy, with a shrug. "As great a fatalist asever!"

  "Yes! but in the good sense of the word. Let us not trouble ourselves,then, about what fate has in store for us, and let us not forget ourgood old English proverb: 'The man who was born to be hung will never bedrowned!'"

  There was no reply to make, but that did not prevent Kennedy fromresuming a series of arguments which may be readily conjectured, butwhich were too long for us to repeat.

  "Well, then," he said, after an hour's discussion, "if you areabsolutely determined to make this trip across the African continent--ifit is necessary for your happiness, why not pursue the ordinary routes?"

  "Why?" ejaculated the doctor, growing animated. "Because, all attemptsto do so, up to this time, have utterly failed. Because, from MungoPark, assassinated on the Niger, to Vogel, who disappeared in theWadai country; from Oudney, who died at Murmur, and Clapperton, lostat Sackatou, to the Frenchman Maizan, who was cut to pieces; from MajorLaing, killed by the Touaregs, to Roscher, from Hamburg, massacredin the beginning of 1860, the names of victim after victim have beeninscribed on the lists of African martyrdom! Because, to contendsuccessfully against the elements; against hunger, and thirst, andfever; against savage beasts, and still more savage men, is impossible!Because, what cannot be done in one way, should be tried in another. Infine, because what one cannot pass through directly in the middle, mustbe passed by going to one side or overhead!"

  "If passing over it were the only question!" interposed Kennedy; "butpassing high up in the air, doctor, there's the rub!"

  "Come, then," said the doctor, "what have I to fear? You will admitthat I have taken my precautions in such manner as to be certain thatmy balloon will not fall; but, should it disappoint me, I shouldfind myself on the ground in the normal conditions imposed upon otherexplorers. But, my balloon will not deceive me, and we need make no suchcalculations."

  "Yes, but you must take them into view."

  "No, Dick. I intend not to be separated from the balloon until I reachthe western coast of Africa. With it, every thing is possible; withoutit, I fall back into the dangers and difficulties as well as the naturalobstacles that ordinarily attend such an expedition: with it, neitherheat, nor torrents, nor tempests, nor the simoom, nor unhealthyclimates, nor wild animals, nor savage men, are to be feared! If I feeltoo hot, I can ascend; if too cold, I can come down. Should there bea mountain, I can pass over it; a precipice, I can sweep across it;a river, I can sail beyond it; a storm, I can rise away above it; atorrent, I can skim it like a bird! I can advance without fatigue, I canhalt without need of repose! I can soar above the nascent cities! I canspeed onward with the rapidity of a tornado, sometimes at the loftiestheights, sometimes only a hundred feet above the soil, while the map ofAfrica unrolls itself beneath my gaze in the great atlas of the world."

  Even the stubborn Kennedy began to feel moved, and yet the spectaclethus conjured up before him gave him the vertigo. He riveted his eyesupon the doctor with wonder and admiration, and yet with fear, for healready felt himself swinging aloft in space.

  "Come, come," said he, at last. "Let us see, Samuel. Then you havediscovered the means of guiding a balloon?"

  "Not by any means. That is a Utopian idea."

  "Then, you will go--"

  "Whithersoever Providence wills; but, at all events, from east to west."

  "Why so?"

  "Because I expect to avail myself of the trade-winds, the direction ofwhich is always the same."

  "Ah! yes, indeed!" said Kennedy, reflecting; "thetrade-winds--yes--truly--one might--there's something in that!"

  "Something in it--yes, my excellent friend--there's EVERY THING in it.The English Government has placed a transport at my disposal, and threeor four vessels are to cruise off the western coast of Africa, about thepresumed period of my arrival. In three months, at most, I shall be atZanzibar, where I will inflate my balloon, and from that point we shalllaunch ourselves."

  "We!" said Dick.

  "Have you still a shadow of an objection to offer? Speak, friendKennedy."

  "An objection! I have a thousand; but among other things, tell me, ifyou expect to see the country. If you expect to mount and descend atpleasure, you cannot do so, without losing your gas. Up to this time noother means have been devised, and it is this that has always preventedlong journeys in the air."

  "My dear Dick, I have only one word to answer--I shall not lose oneparticle of gas."

  "And yet you can descend when you please?"

  "I shall descend when I please."

  "And how will you do that?"

  "Ah, ha! therein lies my secret, friend Dick. Have faith, and let mydevice be yours--'Excelsior!'"

  "'Excelsior' be it then," said the sportsman, who did not understand aword of Latin.

  But he made up his mind to oppose his friend's departure by all means inhis power, and so pretended to give in, at the same time keeping on thewatch. As for the doctor, he went on diligently with his preparations.