Jules Verne (15 page)

On this plain the recognition of the new king was to take place. Here
it was that thousands of prisoners taken during recent razzias were
to be immolated in his honor.

It was about two o'clock when the "Albatross" arrived over the plain
and began to descend among the clouds which still hid her from the
Dahomians.

There were sixteen thousand people at least come from all parts of
the kingdom, from Whydah, and Kerapay, and Ardrah, and Tombory, and
the most distant villages.

The new king—a sturdy fellow named Bou-Nadi—some five-and-twenty
years old, was seated on a hillock shaded by a group of wide-branched
trees. Before him stood his male army, his Amazons, and his people.

At the foot of the mound fifty musicians were playing on their
barbarous instruments, elephants' tusks giving forth a husky note,
deerskin drums, calabashes, guitars, bells struck with an iron
clapper, and bamboo flutes, whose shrill whistle was heard over all.
Every other second came discharges of guns and blunderbusses,
discharges of cannons with the carriages jumping so as to imperil the
lives of the artillery-women, and a general uproar so intense that
even the thunder would be unheard amidst it.

In one corner of the plain, under a guard of soldiers, were grouped
the prisoners destined to accompany the defunct king into the other
world. At the obsequies of Ghozo, the father of Bahadou, his son had
dispatched three thousand, and Bou-Nadi could not do less than his
predecessor. For an hour there was a series of discourses, harangues,
palavers and dances, executed not only by professionals, but by the
Amazons, who displayed much martial grace.

But the time for the hecatomb was approaching. Robur, who knew the
customs of Dahomey, did not lose sight of the men, women, and
children reserved for butchery.

The minghan was standing at the foot of the hillock. He was
brandishing his executioner's sword, with its curved blade surmounted
by a metal bird, whose weight rendered the cut more certain.

This time he was not alone. He could not have performed the task.
Near him were grouped a hundred executioners, all accustomed to cut
off heads at one blow.

The "Albatross" came slowly down in an oblique direction. Soon she
emerged from the bed of clouds which hid her till she was within
three hundred feet of the ground, and for the first time she was
visible from below.

Contrary to what had hitherto happened, the savages saw in her a
celestial being come to render homage to King Baha-dou. The
enthusiasm was indescribable, the shouts were interminable, the
prayers were terrific—prayers addressed to this supernatural
hippogriff, which "had doubtless come to" take the king's body to the
higher regions of the Dahomian heaven. And now the first head fell
under the minghan's sword, and the prisoners were led up in hundreds
before the horrible executioners.

Suddenly a gun was fired from the "Albatross." The minister of
justice fell dead on his face!

"Well aimed, Tom!" said Robur,

His comrades, armed as he was, stood ready to fire when the order was
given.

But a change came over the crowd below. They had understood. The
winged monster was not a friendly spirit, it was a hostile spirit.
And after the fall of the minghan loud shouts for revenge arose on
all sides. Almost immediately a fusillade resounded over the plain.

These menaces did not prevent the "Albatross" from descending boldly
to within a hundred and fifty feet of the ground. Uncle Prudent and
Phil Evans, whatever were their feelings towards Robur, could not
help joining him in such a work of humanity.

"Let us free the prisoners!" they shouted.

"That is what I am going to do!" said the engineer.

And the magazine rifles of the "Albatross" in the hands of the
colleagues, as in the hands of the crew, began to rain down the
bullets, of which not one was lost in the masses below. And the
little gun shot forth its shrapnel, which really did marvels.

The prisoners, although they did not understand how the help had come
to them, broke their bonds, while the soldiers were firing at the
aeronef. The stern screw was shot through by a bullet, and a few
holes were made in the hull. Frycollin, crouching in his cabin,
received a graze from a bullet that came through the deck-house.

"Ah! They will have them!" said Tom Turner. And, rushing to the
magazine, he returned with a dozen dynamite cartridges, which he
distributed to the men. At a sign from Robur, these cartridges were
fired at the hillock, and as they reached the ground exploded like so
many small shells.

The king and his court and army and people were stricken with fear at
the turn things had taken. They fled under the trees, while the
prisoners ran off without anybody thinking of pursuing them.

In this way was the festival interfered with. And in this way did
Uncle Prudent and, Phil Evans recognize the power of the aeronef and
the services it could render to humanity.

Soon the "Albatross" rose again to a moderate height, and passing
over Whydah lost to view this savage coast which the southwest wind
hems round with an inaccessible surf. And she flew out over the
Atlantic.

Yes, the Atlantic! The fears of the two colleagues were realized; but
it did not seem as though Robur had the least anxiety about venturing
over this vast ocean. Both he and his men seemed quite unconcerned
about it and had gone back to their stations.

Whither was the "Albatross" bound? Was she going more than round the
world as Robur had said? Even if she were, the voyage must end
somewhere. That Robur spent his life in the air on board the aeronef
and never came to the ground was impossible. How could he make up his
stock of provisions and the materials required for working his
machines? He must have some retreat, some harbor of refuge—in some
unknown and inaccessible spot where the "Albatross" could revictual.
That he had broken off all connections with the inhabitants of the
land might be true, but with every point on the surface of the earth,
certainly not.

That being the case, where was this point? How had the engineer come
to choose it? Was he expected by a little colony of which he was the
chief? Could he there find a new crew?

What means had he that he should be able to build so costly a vessel
as the "Albatross" and keep her building secret? It is true his
living was not expensive. But, finally, who was this Robur? Where did
he come from? What had been his history? Here were riddles impossible
to solve; and Robur was not the man to assist willingly in their
solution.

It is not to be wondered at that these insoluble problems drove the
colleagues almost to frenzy. To find themselves whipped off into the
unknown without knowing what the end might be doubting even if the
adventure would end, sentenced to perpetual aviation, was this not
enough to drive the President and secretary of the Weldon Institute
to extremities?

Meanwhile the "Albatross" drove along above the Atlantic, and in the
morning when the sun rose there was nothing to be seen but the
circular line where earth met sky. Not a spot of land was insight in
this huge field of vision. Africa had vanished beneath the northern
horizon.

When Frycollin ventured out of his cabin and saw all this water
beneath him, fear took possession of him.

Of the hundred and forty-five million square miles of which the area
of the world's waters consists, the Atlantic claims about a quarter;
and it seemed as though the engineer was in no hurry to cross it.
There was now no going at full speed, none of the hundred and twenty
miles an hour at which the "Albatross" had flown over Europe. Here,
where the southwest winds prevail, the wind was ahead of them, and
though it was not very strong, it would not do to defy it and the
"Albatross" was sent along at a moderate speed, which, however,
easily outstripped that of the fastest mail-boat.

On the 13th of July she crossed the line, and the fact was duly
announced to the crew. It was then that Uncle Prudent and Phil Evans
ascertained that they were bound for the southern hemisphere. The
crossing of the line took place without any of the Neptunian
ceremonies that still linger on certain ships. Tapage was the only
one to mark the event, and he did so by pouring a pint of water down
Frycollin's neck.

On the 18th of July, when beyond the tropic of Capricorn, another
phenomenon was noticed, which would have been somewhat alarming to a
ship on the sea. A strange succession of luminous waves widened out
over the surface of the ocean with a speed estimated at quite sixty
miles an hour. The waves ran along at about eight feet from one
another, tracing two furrows of light. As night fell a bright
reflection rose even to the "Albatross," so that she might have been
taken for a flaming aerolite. Never before had Robur sailed on a sea
of fire—fire without heat—which there was no need to flee from as
it mounted upwards into the sky.

The cause of this light must have been electricity; it could not be
attributed to a bank of fish spawn, nor to a crowd of those
animalculae that give phosphorescence to the sea, and this showed
that the electrical tension of the atmosphere was considerable.

In the morning an ordinary ship would probably have been lost. But
the "Albatross" played with the winds and waves like the powerful
bird whose name she bore. If she did not walk on their surface like
the petrels, she could like the eagles find calm and sunshine in the
higher zones.

They had now passed the forty-seventh parallel. The day was but
little over seven hours long, and would become even less as they
approached the Pole.

About one o'clock in the afternoon the "Albatross" was floating along
in a lower current than usual, about a hundred feet from the level of
the sea. The air was calm, but in certain parts of the sky were thick
black clouds, massed in mountains, on their upper surface, and ruled
off below by a sharp horizontal line. From these clouds a few lengthy
protuberances escaped, and their points as they fell seemed to draw
up hills of foaming water to meet them.

Suddenly the water shot up in the form of a gigantic hourglass, and
the "Albatross" was enveloped in the eddy of an enormous waterspout,
while twenty others, black as ink, raged around her. Fortunately the
gyratory movement of the water was opposite to that of the suspensory
screws, otherwise the aeronef would have been hurled into the sea.
But she began to spin round on herself with frightful rapidity. The
danger was immense, and perhaps impossible to escape, for the
engineer could not get through the spout which sucked him back in
defiance of his propellers. The men, thrown to the ends of the deck
by centrifugal force, were grasping the rail to save themselves from
being shot off.

"Keep cool!" shouted Robur.

They wanted all their coolness, and their patience, too. Uncle
Prudent and Phil Evans, who had just come out of their cabin, were
hurled back at the risk of flying overboard. As she spun the
"Albatross" was carried along by the spout, which pirouetted along
the waves with a speed enough to make the helices jealous. And if she
escaped from the spout she might be caught by another, and jerked to
pieces with the shock.

"Get the gun ready!" said Robur.

The order was given to Tom Turner, who was crouching behind the
swivel amidships where the effect of the centrifugal force was least
felt. He understood. In a moment he had opened the breech and slipped
a cartridge from the ammunition-box at hand. The gun went off, and the
waterspouts collapsed, and with them vanished the platform of cloud
they seemed to bear above them.

"Nothing broken on board?" asked Robur.

"No," answered Tom Turner. "But we don't want to have another game of
humming-top like that!"

For ten minutes or so the "Albatross" had been in extreme peril. Had
it not been for her extraordinary strength of build she would have
been lost.

During this passage of the Atlantic many were the hours whose
monotony was unbroken by any phenomenon whatever. The days grew
shorter and shorter, and the cold became keen. Uncle Prudent and Phil
Evans saw little of Robur. Seated in his cabin, the engineer was busy
laying out his course and marking it on his maps, taking his
observations whenever he could, recording the readings of his
barometers, thermometers, and chronometers, and making full entries
in his log-book.

The colleagues wrapped themselves well up and eagerly watched for the
sight of land to the southward. At Uncle Prudent's request Frycollin
tried to pump the cook as to whither the engineer was bound, but what
reliance could be placed on the information given by this Gascon?
Sometimes Robur was an ex-minister of the Argentine Republic,
sometimes a lord of the Admiralty, sometimes an ex-President of the
United States, sometimes a Spanish general temporarily retired,
sometimes a Viceroy of the Indies who had sought a more elevated
position in the air. Sometimes he possessed millions, thanks to
successful razzias in the aeronef, and he had been proclaimed for
piracy. Sometimes he had been ruined by making the aeronef, and had
been forced to fly aloft to escape from his creditors. As to knowing
if he were going to stop anywhere, no! But if he thought of going to
the moon, and found there a convenient anchorage, he would anchor
there! "Eh! Fry! My boy! That would just suit you to see what was
going on up there."

"I shall not go! I refuse!" said the Negro, who took all these things
seriously.

"And why, Fry, why? You might get married to some pretty bouncing
Lunarian!"

Frycollin reported this conversation to his master, who saw it was
evident that nothing was to be learnt about Robur. And so he thought
still more of how he could have his revenge on him.