The Extraordinary Adventures of a Russian Scientist Across the Solar System (Vol. 1)

by Georges Le Faure; Henri de Graffigny

  “You’re quite forgiven. So the seismograph…”

  “Worked marvelously.”

  “Of course! I expected as much. But are you at least sure that you’re not mistaken?”

  “You’ll see for yourself…”

  “But the voyage—you’ve decided to attempt it, then?” Fricoulet asked, seriously.

  “Or, at least, to get everything ready. At the last moment, though, something might well crop up that will render it impossible…”

  The young engineer shook his head. “At the last moment!” he grumbled. “At the last moment…that’s extremely imprudent, for if nothing does crop up…”

  “In that case,” Gontran retorted, “we’ll go. Selena and I shall see whether the honeymoon is more complete at close range than at long distance!”

  Fricoulet raised his arms to the Heavens in a despairing gesture. “Oh, love…love!” he said, in a tragic tone.

  The following morning, at dawn, an impressive caravan passed out of the gates of Quito. First, marching at the head beside the guide, came Fricoulet who forgot the sidereal goal of the journey in gazing with astonished eyes at the splendid equatorial vegetation, so different from that of our own climes. Then came Gontran, on horseback, escorting Selena, for whom a mule specially chosen by the young man served as a mount. Behind them, similarly astride mules, came Ossipoff and Jonathan Farenheit, their boots almost touching. Afterwards, in two files, also mounted on mules, marched the 25 technicians, fitters, laborers, masons and so on, hired in Quito by the Comte de Flammermont. Bringing up the rear, under the guidance of local men, came 30 pack-animals transporting carefully-packaged materials and metallic sections. In all, there were 45 men and 80 quadrupeds.

  After marching all day, they halted at the foot of the superior cone. The mules were unloaded and they camped for the night. After dawn, it was a matter of traveling for at least a kilometer through the eternal snows, and the entirety of the following day was devoted to that.

  On leaving the summit of Cotopaxi for the first time, Gontran had taken care to prepare for the climbing of the peak by leaving long, strong rope-ladders behind him, attached to the rocks by iron crampons. In ten hours, they climbed 500 or 600 meters, hoisting their baggage after them by means of an ingenious system of pulleys. They were preparing to continue the climb when Fricoulet, whose sharp eyes were exploring every crack in the rock, noticed an opening through the monstrous rocks heaped up in that titanic chaos. The entire troop slipped through that tortuous tunnel hollowed out by incandescent lava and molten eruptive matter. After an hour’s march, Fricoulet, who was at the head, shouted hurrah in a resonant voice, multiplied by the echoes. He had just emerged into the very crater of the volcano.

  Mikhail Ossipoff precipitated himself towards the “chimneys”—the frightful gaping mouths of giants with entrails of fire—and his gaze tried to sound their dark depths, but he could see nothing except terrible gulfs, whose eternal shadows had never been troubled by any ray of sunlight.

  The next day, thanks to Fricoulet’s vigilance, everyone was up and about at 4 a.m. The first thing to do was to determine which of the volcano’s chimneys would be transformed into a cannon. Several were successively eliminated by the young engineer as too large or too tortuous. He ended up choosing the middle chimney; it measured no more than 100 feet in diameter. Instead of sending back the plumb-line—which measured its depth at 4000 feet, or 1333 meters—Fricoulet decided to explore the barrel of this prodigious cannon himself.

  On this subject, a slight dispute flared up between himself and Flammermont, who claimed the honor of descending to the bottom of the crater himself, as if it were his entitlement. He was, in fact, burning with a desire to advertise himself, in Selena’s presence, by some act of folly or heroism.

  “Come on,” Fricoulet suddenly said, “I’ll let Monsieur Ossipoff settle the matter. Let him decide whether it’s up to you—who is, after all, the soul of the expedition—to endanger its outcome by exposing yourself to some accident.” He had pronounced these words in a sincere tone, while addressing an ironic smile to his friend.

  Gontran wanted to argue, but the old scientist cut him off. “Monsieur Fricoulet’s right,” he said. “I formally forbid you to make this descent.”

  The young engineer turned on his heel without further delay and made his preparations for the perilous expedition. A sort of flying bridge was installed across the abyss; a few paces away, a windlass was fixed, carrying 500 meters of rope that was passed through the throat of a pulley suspended under the bridge. A plank fitted with iron crampons was attached to the end of this rope; Fricoulet took his place upon it, holding a Trouvé electric lamp in one hand and a pick-axe in the other, intended not only to make his decent less perilous by keeping him away from the walls but also to serve as a defensive weapon in the event of his being attacked by some vicious animal.

  “Listen,” said the young engineer. “I have my revolver in my pocket; when you hear a shot, stop the descent. Two successive shots will tell you that you need to bring me up again, but in a normal fashion. If, by chance, you hear three shots one after another, bring me up as rapidly as possible.”

  Gontran, more anxious than he wanted to appear, shook his hand effusively. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ll be here, and I’ll be listening!”

  “All right,” said the engineer, calmly.

  Two men, who were manning the windlass, released the starting-handles, while keeping on the friction-brake, and Fricoulet descended in free fall into the void.

  Leaning over the edge of the hole, the young Comte followed his friend’s descent with anxious eyes, but the light of the lamp, which faded rapidly, soon vanished entirely…and the rope was still unwinding.

  Five minutes went by; then, all of a sudden, like an indistinct echo, the sound of a gunshot reached the lip of the gulf.

  “Halt!” commanded Gontran. Lying on his belly on the edge of the crater, he cocked his ear, in the hope of perceiving some indication of what was happening at the bottom—but a deathly silence filled the gigantic funnel, disturbed by a human being for the fist time since its formation.

  Ten more minutes went by, full of anguish and terror. Finally, two shots rang out. Four men manned the handles of the windlass and, half an hour later, Fricoulet’s head appeared.

  Gontran threw himself toward his friend; before he even had time to free himself from the apparatus he had pressed him in his arms several times.

  Ossipoff stamped his feet, impatient because these testaments of friendship were delaying the young engineer’s story. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s have it—what are the results of your exploration?”

  “In the first place, terrible, absurd fears,” replied Fricoulet. “For one thing, I almost broke my legs on arriving to the bottom. Then…”

  “But what about the chimney?” the old scientist put in.

  “Secondly, I roasted myself by planting my feet on rocks so hot that the soles of my boots were charred all over.”

  “But what about the volcano?” Ossipoff exclaimed. “You haven’t mentioned the volcano. What’s your opinion?”

  “My opinion is that it’s very near to sneezing,” Fricoulet retorted. “Thirdly, I dropped my revolver and I feared that I wouldn’t be able to put my hands on it, any more than…fourthly, my lamp went out, and it was so dark down there…brrr…”

  The old man seized the engineer by the arm. “Well?” he cried, beside himself. “Are you going tell me? Did you go down into the crater simply for the pleasure of gathering impressions of the voyage?”

  “Calm down, Monsieur Ossipoff,” replied Fricoulet, laughing, “and rest content…we couldn’t have wished or hoped for anything better, although, to tell the truth, the well is a trifle deep. The chimney is rigorously vertical—as to that, there’s no doubt, since I played the role of plumb-line myself. It narrows at a depth of 15 feet, the inferior part measuring no more than ten meters in diameter; that’s exactly the dimension we require.
The ground at the bottom is stony, and rests, I think, on an unbreakable mass of obsidian.”

  “Then the crater isn’t even in communication with the fires of the volcano?” cried Ossipoff.

  “Certainly not. We’re dealing with a stoppered chimney, though which the subterranean gases no longer run.”

  “In that case, we can’t use it!”

  “On the contrary—it’s exactly what we need.”

  “I confess that I don’t understand you,” said the old man.

  “It’s quite simple, though. We’ll be able to work in total security, without fear that some partial trepidation will destroy our preparations, as might happen in any other active crater. Then, when we want to, we’ll be able to reduce that rock to dust by means of a few pinches of selenite, and thus open a new path for the subterranean vapors.”

  “With the result,” Gontran added, “that instead of bursting forth when Cotopaxi wishes, it’s us who will determine the moment of departure.”

  “Exactly,” said Fricoulet. “This is what we’ll do: while the technicians and fitters get busy unpacking all the equipment, we’ll install a flying platform that can carry ten men. We’ll send that platform down to be bottom of the well. During the descent, the men will scrape away from the 300 meters of the cylindrical section that will serve as a cannon all the rocky asperities that might provide obstacles to the ascension of the projectile.”

  Ossipoff turned to Gontran. “Is that your opinion?” he asked.

  “Absolutely,” the ex-diplomat replied in a grave tone. “Isn’t it necessary to make the interior of the crater as smooth as the barrel of a cannon?”

  The work got under way immediately, in order not to waste a second until it was complete, under the active impulsion of the Russian scientist and the intelligent direction of the young engineer. The crater of Cotopaxi was turned into a human ant-hill, and its ancient echoes repeated the sounds of hammers, saws and pick-axes, while its darkness was dissipated by the vivid glare of 100 Trouvé electric lamps.

  In six days, the shell was entirely reassembled, while the chimney was “re-bored” as completely as if it had been the barrel of a steel mortar. When that important work was complete, Fricoulet tested the thickness of the layer of stone that had to be reduced to crumbs; it was not more than 30 feet. What was that to a few kilograms of selenite? Holes were drilled out in the rock and cartridges crammed in to a depth of 15 feet, so as to blast those dozen meters of stone into smithereens. Two copper wires covered in gutta-percha projected from each cartridge, connected to a Bréguet detonator,49 the system being designed to transmit the igniting spark into the center of the mixture.

  For their part, the technicians did not remain inactive; all the equipment was unpacked and a veritable camp was organized in the depths of Cotopaxi’s crater, under the direction of the aged scientist.

  One evening, while the principal characters in the story were having a meal in the tent adapted as a dining-room, an argument began between Jonathan Farenheit and Gontran de Flammermont. For the first time since his arrival, the American had consented to accompany the young Comte to the bottom of the crater, but the suffocating heat of the gigantic chamber had obliged him to come up again almost immediately. He was in an execrable humor and hastened to seize every opportunity that presented itself to relax his nerves.

  “What’s up, Mr. Farenheit?” asked Fricoulet, between two mouthfuls of soup, one perceiving the Yankee’s furious appearance.

  “What’s up? What’s up is that I’m beginning to see that grand plan is a simple fumisterie, as you say in France—humbug and tomfoolery.”

  Ossipoff became red with choler, and extended a hand armed with a menacing fork toward the American. “Explain yourself!” he growled. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that, in all probability, only insane minds could come up with the idea of blowing up 50 feet of granite. Do you think that’s trivial?”

  “It is trivial…for selenite,” the old scientist affirmed.

  “All right, then—let’s assume that your 50 feet of rock can be reduced to dust. To what will they give passage? To nothing. You heard me right: to nothing. Your Spanish Jesuit is a joker, and his predictions of volcanic eruptions are nothing but a farce. Your Cotopaxi is no more a volcano than its monstrous colleague Chimborazo.”

  Ossipoff had rise to his feet; Fricoulet and Flammermont had done likewise.

  “It ill befits you, as an American, Mr. Farenheit,” said the young Comte, with marvelous self-composure, “to insult an American volcano.”

  “Monsieur,” Farenheit replied, gravely, “for me, America is the United States. The rest does not concern me.”

  “Cotopaxi, not a volcano!” exclaimed Ossipoff. “But it’s the most frightful ignivomous mouth in the entire world. You’re claiming that it’s an extinct volcano! Don’t you recall the frightful eruption of February 15, 1843, which claimed so many victims?”

  Farenheit shook his head. “Besides,” Ossipoff went on, “that recent eruption was not the most terrible. In 1698, a rock 1000 feet high was split by the action of subterranean forces. In 1738…”

  “Eh? Let’s get to the Deluge, my dear Monsieur Ossipoff!”50 cried the American, seeing his companion getting carried away and anticipating a long speech, from which he wanted to be spared.

  “In 1738,” the aged scientist continued, imperturbably, “Air volcanoes like those of Turbaco,51 which we would be able to examine by climbing the superior cone of the mountain that bears us, redoubled their activity and produced horrible tempests…”

  “Thank…”

  “In 1744, the cataclysm was complete; never in human memory had such a grandiose and superhuman spectacle been seen; in the space of a single night, the eternal snows crowning the summit of the mountain melted entirely, giving rise to torrents of water that precipitated down into the valleys, inundating and entirely destroying the town of Tacunga. But that’s not all…”

  Farhenheit had become resigned; he had rolled a cigarette philosophically and was now impassive, enveloped in clouds of smoke.

  “In 1758,” the old man went on, “there was a new eruption and an earthquake that shook the bowels of the entire American continent. The equatorial region was particularly tested. At Guayaquil, more than 200 kilometers away, the noise of the volcano was audible day and night, crackling like continual artillery fire. In 1768, it was even better; the roaring of Cotopaxi was heard in Honda, more than 900 kilometers away…but that’s still nothing compared with the eruptions of the present century. In 1803, flames rose up more than a kilometer above the crater, illuminating the entire country with an incendiary glow, and stones—entire blocks of stone—were projected into the rarefied atmosphere with initial velocities of 2800 and even 3000 meters per second. And it’s this equatorial giant that you believe to extinct and dead because it hasn’t spoken for 30 years? Hasn’t the ground we’ve been working told you anything? Haven’t you seen the snow melting rapidly? Can’t you feel the heat increasing? Can’t you hear the entrails of the globe stirring?”

  “And what about my seismograph?” cried Gontran. “Do you take it for a fake? Be assured, Mr. Jonathan Farenheit, the predicted eruption will take place; if necessary, we shall hasten and provoke it—and you may be certain that this mountain on which we’re standing enclosed in its bosom enough vapor and compressed gas to project our vehicle 300,000 kilometers into space!” He had pronounced these words in a voice vibrant with emotion. In a slightly mocking tone, he added: “Anyway, if you don’t trust us, there’s still time to back out, you know.”

  Jonathan Farenheit stood up. “An American never backs down, Monsieur,” he said, in a dry tone. “I’ve said that I’ll go with you, and I’d go even if I were sure that I’d fall back and shatter into a 1000 pieces.”

  Thus ended the argument; it had no other consequence than to tighten the bonds that already united these men, who were bold to the point of temerity. The next day, they began to send the steel vessels of
compressed air down the well. They had been assembled in advance; all that remained as to set them in place. Between the granite seat and the first vessel Fricoulet left a space of 50 feet. Then, once the caisson of air was in place, supported by four cast-iron brackets embedded in the wall, the four “guides” designed to steer the shell during its ascent through the narrow section of the well were installed.

  In the early days, the rudimentary windlass had been replaced by an enormous crane whose counterweight was a large basket filled with pebbles and lava debris, by means of which the fully-assembled shell was lowered down to the caissons. It was deposited on the twentieth of March. While eight men manning compression-pumps filed the caissons with air, they fitted out the interior of the vehicle and loaded all the provisions necessary to feed the travelers—and God knows that it was not easy work!

  Finally, on the evening of March 21, everything was done. 24 days of work had been sufficient for those 45 men to transform the chimney of the volcano into a gigantic cannon capable of projecting the formidable machine containing our voyagers at the sidereal target at which it was aimed.

  Ossipoff presided over the last meal that the personnel ate before quitting the crater. During the dessert he got to his feet and pronounced these few words in an emotional voice: “My friends, you remember our agreement; I promised to pay you all a bonus I addition to the wages for your labor on the day when our task was completed. That day has arrived, and I thank all of you—technicians, fitters, experienced laborers who have been with us since we left Europe—for your zeal and devotion. I fix the promised bonus at 50% of your wages. The ship that brought you here is waiting at Aspinwall to take you back to France. Go, then, and go as quickly as possible, without delay and without looking back—for in two days, the volcano in which we are located will explode, and there will never have been a more terrible eruption.”

  At these words, a dull rumor ran through the crowd of workmen. It seemed that mumblings were agitating the subterranean strata and that old Cotopaxi was waking up after its long sleep to protest against the audacity of these strangers, who were troubling the serenity of its crater, inviolate for so many centuries.