Ossipoff was somber and silent; one might have thought that his mind had been prey to a great preoccupation for some little time.
Finally, they ran aground on a shingle beach, split in many places by deep ravines. Fricoulet bent down and ascertained that these ravines were of very recent origin. Ah! he thought. As the captain said, we’re certainly on the summit of a submarine volcano, and it was an eruption that we saw yesterday…just as long as there isn’t another one now…that’s all I ask.
Then, leaving the oarsmen in charge of the boat, they advanced into the island’s interior, observing traces of the recent disturbance of the soil at every step. The further they went, the more Fricoulet wondered how anything could survive on that Sun-burned land, deprived of all vegetation and situated off the shipping-routes. And yet, he thought, the island was inhabited, since we found corpses.
Ossipoff, for his part, had remained absolutely silent. Suddenly, he stopped, raised his head and looked the engineer full in the face. “Today is February 25, isn’t it?” he asked.
“Indeed—why?”
“You know that in three days the Moon will pass directly overhead, and is also at its perigee—the nearest point of approach to the Earth.”
“Yes, I know—but I don’t understand.”
The old man was on the point of answering, but his lips closed again and he walked on, even more somber and taciturn. At that moment, they were climbing a little hillock elevated a few meters above sea level; they hoped to be able to see the entire islet from the top of this natural observatory. Fricoulet, who reached the summit first, cried: “A man! A man!”
“Dead?” asked Ossipoff.
“No, alive…so alive that he’s running towards us at top speed.”
Indeed, a bare-headed man with his clothes in tatters arrived as fast as his legs could carry him, seemingly fleeing from some terrible danger. “Save me! Save me!” he cried, in English.
They studied him curiously, moved to pity by the miserable state in which they found him, soiled with mud and blood. His face was distorted by an indescribable terror, his fearful eyes almost popping out of his head.
“Farenheit!” Ossipoff suddenly cried, in a terrible voice. “Jonathan Farenheit!”
These words seemed to have a singular effect on the unfortunate. He slowly straightened up and passed his trembling hands over his forehead as if to wipe away the terror that obsessed him. Then, all of a sudden, his panic-stricken features became serene again; his gaze lost its brutal fixity, and a gleam of intelligence shone in his eyes. He raised his eyes to the two companions and murmured: “Jonathan Farenheit! That’s me. Yes, that’s my name. But how do you know my name—and who are you?”
Ossipoff had become very pale. “Do you remember your lecture at the Nice Observatory?” he asked. “Do you remember Mikhail Ossipoff?”
The American uttered a terrible scream, and seized the old man’s hand. “Ah! It’s Providence that has sent you,” he said. “If you knew! The monster! The bandit! The scoundrel!”
“Who?” demanded Ossipoff and Fricoulet, in unison. “Who are you talking about?”
“Come! Come…you’ll see!” He took the old scientist by the arm, thus obliging him to follow him, and set about running to a spot 200 meters away, where the ground appeared more disturbed and torn up than any other part of the island.
The engineer and his companion could not suppress a cry of horror at the sight of the hideous spectacle that appeared to their eyes. The ground was strewn with unidentifiable debris: twisted pieces of metal and burned pieces of wood, in the midst of which lay about 40 horribly mutilated corpses. One might have thought it a lake of blood, in which floated hacked-off arms, broken legs, unraveled intestines and split heads. The two men felt a cold sweat inundate their limbs, and instinctively turned away from that terrible charnel-house.
Fricoulet was the first to recover a measure of self-possession. “But what’s happened?” he demanded of Farenheit. “What formidable scourge struck these men down?”
“Let’s step away first,” replied the American, drawing his companions with him. “Then I’ll tell you the story of this horrible catastrophe.” After a few steps, however, his strength abandoned him, his legs bent and the unfortunate would have fallen down if Fricoulet had not grabbed him by the shoulders.
“It’s the reaction,” murmured Ossipoff, seeing Farenheit suddenly become very pale and close his eyes.
“The best thing, I think, is to carry him to the boat,” said the young engineer. “The quicker we get him aboard, the quicker we can give him the care that will bring him round…not to mention that we’ve lost nearly 24 hours, and we need to make them up, no matter what the cost.”
Mikhail Ossipoff grabbed Farenheit’s legs while Fricoulet held on to his shoulders, and they headed straight for the place on the shore where they had left the boat and the oarsmen, their progress rendered difficult by the disruption of the ground.
An hour later, the Salvador Urquiza resumed its course at full steam, and Jonathan Farenheit was deeply asleep, lying in Ossipoff’s own bed. The old scientist had volunteered to watch over the sick man; anxious to hear the story he had been promised, he wanted to be there to lay claim to it as soon as the American’s brain had recovered its intelligence and his lips could pronounce comprehensible words.
Suddenly, in the middle of the night, just as Ossipoff was beginning to doze off, sprawled in a wicker armchair and rocked by the ship, a single word escaped the invalid’s lips. It was vague and confused, but it made the old man start.
Farenheit had said: “Sharp!” And he repeated several times. “Sharp! Oh! The bandit! Oh! The wretch!”
Ossipoff leaned over the bed. Farenheit was asleep but he was pronouncing words incoherently and inconsequentially in the grip of a nightmare. The aged scientist shook the sick man brutally; the latter did not budge and continued sleeping. Then Ossipoff ran to Fricoulet’s cabin and knocked on the door, with such vigor that the young engineer, waking up with a start, got up in alarm. “What is it? What’s up?” he demanded, appearing on the threshold still half-asleep. “Is the ship on fire? Are we sinking?”
“Nothing like that,” Ossipoff replied, in a trembling voice. “It’s Farenheit.”
“Is he dead?” cried the young man, suddenly coming fully awake.
“No, but he’s just pronounced a name in his sleep…”
“So what?”
“So what! Get dressed and come to meet me. I’d rather not be alone.”
Intrigued and somewhat troubled by the old man’s strange manner, Fricoulet got dressed hastily and ran to Farenheit’s cabin, where he found Ossipoff bending over the invalid, anxiously watching the movement of his lips.
The young engineer, it will be remembered, was something of a physician. Gently, he pushed Ossipoff aside; then, taking the American’s wrist between his thumb and index finger, he started counting his pulse-beats. “The fever’s almost died down,” he murmured, after a few moments. Taking a little traveling pharmacy out of his pocket, he extracted a small phial, a part of whose contents he poured between the invalid’s lips.
The latter remained motionless for a few seconds; then his mouth suddenly opened very wide to give passage to a yawn. His eyelids then began to flutter nervously and lifted up, uncovering abnormally-dilated eyes, while his cheeks reddened slightly. The American gazed around the cabin, vaguely at first, then suddenly fixed his eyes on Ossipoff and his companion. He studied them momentarily as if he did not recognize them, then reached out towards them. “My saviors,” he stammered. With Fricoulet’s help, he propped himself up on his elbow, and passed his hand over his forehead several times, as if to bring back memories that had taken flight. His features suddenly contracted, and he murmured in a strangled voice: “Oh, it’s horrible! It’s horrible!”
“What?” demanded Osipoff, anxiously. “Speak—tell us what happened to you.”
“Yes, yes—I remember now. Yesterday, after you saved me, I was g
oing to tell you the whole frightful story…and then…I can’t remember.”
“Yes,” said Fricoulet, “you’ve been rather ill—but you’re better now.”
“Listen,” said Farenheit. “You remember, don’t you, that lecture I gave in Nice, which you attended. You know, therefore, that a company had been formed for the exploitation of precious mineral deposits situated in the lunar plains, and that I was president of that company’s board of directors.”
“Yes,” said Ossipoff and Fricoulet in unison. “We know that—but what does it have to do with this horrible catastrophe?”
“What! Everything, Messieurs, everything…for the company had bought the plans of a Russian scientist, by the name of Fedor Sharp, and several members of the board, including me, were to accompany Sharp on his voyage of exploration, which was intended to convince us, by means of our own eyes, that the spectral analyses had not misled us. Well…”
“Well?” asked Ossipoff, anxiously.
“The wretch…the bandit has robbed us. He was supposed to take us as passengers in the shell that the American society’s dollars paid for…he abused our generosity. He left on his own, and you’ve seen the result of the deflagration of that terrible powder. The cannon exploded. All our constructions blew up; almost all of our staff perished. Thanks to a providential stroke of luck, I was on another part of the island and survived.”47
Ossipoff uttered a terrible exclamation: “Sharp has gone!”
“Yes,” replied Jonathan Farenheit. “Gone to the Moon!!!”
“Ah! I’m defeated,” murmured the old scientist, collapsing into an armchair.
The American, by contrast, seemed to have recovered all his strength and vigor. “But I shan’t give up!” he howled, waving his formidable fists at the void. “I’ll follow him, that accursed Sharp, all the way to the Moon! We shall see whether a scoundrel of that sort can cheat free America with impunity! He probably doesn’t know how tenacious a son of the United States can be!”
Ossipoff, his head in his hands, was prey to a profound discouragement. “Gone,” he repeated, in a broken voice. “He’s gone…oh, the villain…the thief…”
“But that’s the not only means of getting to the Moon,” Farenheit continued. “Is it impossible for a man of genius to find a more rapid means of transit from the Earth to its satellite? Come on, Monsieur Ossipoff….let’s see, Monsieur…just give me a means to avenge myself and I’ll put all the dollars that the bandit Sharp has left in my bank account at your disposal.”
“The means is found, Monsieur Farenheit,” replied Fricoulet, “and, as you can see, we’re on our way to make use of it.”
“And this means is…?”
“A volcanic eruption of Cotopaxi!”
The American started mightily, almost falling out of bed. “Hurrah!” he cried. “Hurrah for Cotopaxi!”
The young engineer shook his head. “Unfortunately,” he said, “the eruption won’t take place until March 28, and the Moon will pass directly overhead at its perigee—which is to say, at its shortest distance from us, 84,000 leagues—tomorrow. It will draw away from us thereafter and I think it will be materially impossible to reach it on March 28.”
“Well then,” said Jonathan Farenheit, “let’s leave right away!”
“It will take us a month to get the chimney of the volcano ready for its new destination!”
The American uttered a formidable curse.
Ossipoff, however, suddenly sat up, his face radiant and his eyes flashing. “Since March 28 is too far distant,” he said, “we’ll bring the eruption forward!”
“What do you mean?” asked Fricoulet, bewildered.
“One of your compatriots once shouted in parliament: ‘De l’audace, encore de l’audace, et toujours l’audace!’48 Well, since Nature isn’t ready to further our plans, we’ll force her hand. We’ll compel the crater of Cotopaxi to hurl us into space when it suits us, and we’ll leave for the March’s full Moon.”
Farenheit released another loud hurrah, which burst like a thunderclap in the silence of the sleeping ship, while Fricoulet, looking at Ossipoff with a mixture of surprise and admiration, muttered: “The diabolical man! He’ll do as he says…I’m beginning to think that we’ll go no matter what.”
Chapter IX
Preparations for Departure
At the very moment when old Ossipoff, aboard the Salvador Urquiza, was in despair at the ruination of his plans, while Selena was mourning her fiancé and Fricoulet his friend, Gontran de Flammermont himself was working with feverish activity to prepare everything that was necessary to transport his companions an their luggage.
On quitting the summit of Cotopaxi after making the observations telegraphed to Ossipoff with the aid of the seismograph, the young man had decided not to make the expedition follow the same route he had followed in arriving—from Guayaquil, that is. He had, in fact, observed how long and perilous the road was from that city to the Andes mountains, not to mention that he strongly doubted that the necessary objects inevitably forgotten on departure from Europe, but which the expedition he had summoned would require, could not be found in Guayaquil. He therefore resolved to go to Quito, a city situated 48 kilometers away, in the very midst of the massive volcanic mountains, and to make that his operational base.
Quito is one of the most important cities in Colombia, even though it is situated 2950 meters above sea level, in the bosom of a desolate and arid region with a harsh and cold climate. It has a population of no less than 80,000, is the capital of the equatorial region, and is an important commercial center.
Gontran was very surprised to find so much movement and animation in a city lost in the midst of the world’s highest mountains; he did not know that Quito’s inhabitants are renowned as being the most avid pleasure-seekers among all the natives of Colombia—and yet their city hardly shines in the beauty of its monuments and streets. The government is held in scant respect, and highway administration is unknown in Quito, which, apart from the four main roads putting it in communication with the rest of America, only possesses tortuous side-streets, uneven and without any surfacing whatsoever. There are, however, very rich churches in Quito, a library containing more than 100,000 volumes, a university famed through South America and numerous factories. As he passed through it, the young Comte admired the façade of the Jesuit church, richly ornamented according to the most rigorous rules of the Corinthian style, and formed out of a single block of stone nearly 30 feet high.
After establishing his general headquarters in one of the city’s most luxurious hotels, he made an agreement with the owner of one of the large barges that plough the waters of the Las Emeraldas River—which maintain constant communication between the coast, the high plateaus and Quito—to transport Mikhail Ossipoff, his companions and luggage to that city. Then he took the road to Cotopaxi again, establishing staging-posts every 15 kilometers, with relays of mules and apartments for the travelers. When that was done, he had only to wait. Finally, on February 26, he perceived the huge barge he had hired coming up river by the force of its oars. Not being able to wait for it to be moored to the quay, he leapt into a boat and had himself taken aboard.
From Ossipoff’s arms he passed to Fricoulet’s; arriving in front of Selena, however, who was flushed with emotion and in whose eyes tears of joy were shining, he stopped dead.
“Come on,” said Ossipoff, gaily, “kiss your fiancée—you deserve it.”
“If you knew what I’ve gone through,” the young woman murmured. “We thought you were dead!”
“Dead—me!” Gontrain exclaimed in surprise. “What made you think such a terrible thing?”
The young woman told him, briefly, about the surprising phenomenon that the passengers of the Salvador Urquiza had witnessed. “Oh, how I wept!” she murmured.
“Poor Selena!” he said, squeezing her hand tenderly. Then, he suddenly added: “So that brigand Sharp has gone!”
“Ah, but we’ll catch him up!” cried Far
enheit, coming closer.
At the sight of this unknown man, whose features he could not place, the Comte de Flammermont stepped back. Looking him up and down haughtily, he asked, suspiciously: “Who is this man?”
“Jonathan Farenheit, of the United States,” the American replied. “A man that this bandit Sharp has cheated and robbed, and who is counting on you to help him get his hands on the thief!”
“On me?” cried Gontran.
“No need to dissimulate, Monsieur de Flammermont—Mr. Ossipoff has told me everything.”
“Everything!”
“Yes, everything: the volcano, the seismograph, and the rest. I see that you’re as modest as you’re knowledgeable.” He held out his huge hand. “Put it there, Monsieur de Flammermont. If you weren’t French, you’d make a worthy American!”
After matching the American’s grip, the young Comte went to rejoin Fricoulet murmuring to himself: “Here’s another one for whom I’m a torch-bearer for science. It’s flirting with disaster—Fricoulet will never be able to help me sustain my role.”
He was ready to reveal these apprehensions to the engineer, when the latter said to him, mischievously: “Well, you’re a fine joker, you know. Didn’t we agree before your departure from France on the text of the message you’d send the old madman once you’d arrived? And then you telegraph telling him to come! What does it mean?”
“It means, my dear friend, that I was overcome by remorse during the journey, and instead of staying tranquilly in Aspinwall, as had been agreed, then telegraphing to Monsieur Ossipoff that Cotopaxi was an extinct crater and that there was nothing to be done, I pressed on to the volcano. I experimented with my seismograph….”
“Mine, if it’s all the same to you,” Fricoulet put in.
“I beg your pardon, my dear chap; I’ve got so far into character that I sometimes think your ideas an inventions are mine.”
The Extraordinary Adventures of a Russian Scientist Across the Solar System (Vol. 1) Page 20
