Five Weeks in a Balloon

CHAPTER FOURTEENTH.

The For­est of Gum-​Trees.–The Blue An­te­lope.–The Ral­ly­ing-​Sig­nal. –An Un­ex­pect­ed At­tack.–The Kanyeme.–A Night in the Open Air.–The Mabun­gu­ru.–Ji­houe-​la-​Mkoa.–A Sup­ply of Wa­ter.–Ar­rival at Kazeh.

The coun­try, dry and parched as it was, con­sist­ing of a clayey soil that cracked open with the heat, seemed, in­deed, a desert: here and there were a few traces of car­avans; the bones of men and an­imals, that had been half-​gnawed away, moul­der­ing to­geth­er in the same dust.

Af­ter half an hour’s walk­ing, Dick and Joe plunged in­to a for­est of gum-​trees, their eyes alert on all sides, and their fin­gers on the trig­ger. There was no fore­see­ing what they might en­counter. With­out be­ing a ri­fle­man, Joe could han­dle fire-​arms with no tri­fling dex­ter­ity.

“A walk does one good, Mr. Kennedy, but this isn’t the eas­iest ground in the world,” he said, kick­ing aside some frag­ments of quartz with which the soil was be­strewn.

Kennedy mo­tioned to his com­pan­ion to be silent and to halt. The present case com­pelled them to dis­pense with hunt­ing-​dogs, and, no mat­ter what Joe’s agili­ty might be, he could not be ex­pect­ed to have the scent of a set­ter or a grey­hound.

A herd of a dozen an­telopes were quench­ing their thirst in the bed of a tor­rent where some pools of wa­ter had lodged. The grace­ful crea­tures, snuff­ing dan­ger in the breeze, seemed to be dis­turbed and un­easy. Their beau­ti­ful heads could be seen be­tween ev­ery draught, raised in the air with quick and sud­den mo­tion as they sniffed the wind in the di­rec­tion of our two hunters, with their flex­ible nos­trils.

Kennedy stole around be­hind some clumps of shrub­bery, while Joe re­mained mo­tion­less where he was. The for­mer, at length, got with­in gun­shot and fired.

The herd dis­ap­peared in the twin­kling of an eye; one male an­te­lope on­ly, that was hit just be­hind the shoul­der-​joint, fell head­long to the ground, and Kennedy leaped to­ward his booty.

It was a blauw­bok, a su­perb an­imal of a pale-​bluish col­or shad­ing up­on the gray, but with the bel­ly and the in­side of the legs as white as the driv­en snow.

“A splen­did shot!” ex­claimed the hunter. “It’s a very rare species of the an­te­lope, and I hope to be able to pre­pare his skin in such a way as to keep it.”

“In­deed!” said Joe, “do you think of do­ing that, Mr. Kennedy?”

“Why, cer­tain­ly I do! Just see what a fine hide it is!”

“But Dr. Fer­gu­son will nev­er al­low us to take such an ex­tra weight!”

“You’re right, Joe. Still it is a pity to have to leave such a no­ble an­imal.”

“The whole of it? Oh, we won’t do that, sir; we’ll take all the good eat­able parts of it, and, if you’ll let me, I’ll cut him up just as well as the chair­man of the hon­or­able cor­po­ra­tion of butch­ers of the city of Lon­don could do.”

“As you please, my boy! But you know that in my hunter’s way I can just as eas­ily skin and cut up a piece of game as kill it.”

“I’m sure of that, Mr. Kennedy. Well, then, you can build a fire­place with a few stones; there’s plen­ty of dry dead-​wood, and I can make the hot coals tell in a few min­utes.”

“Oh! that won’t take long,” said Kennedy, go­ing to work on the fire­place, where he had a brisk flame crack­ling and sparkling in a minute or two.

Joe had cut some of the nicest steaks and the best parts of the ten­der­loin from the car­cass of the an­te­lope, and these were quick­ly trans­formed to the most sa­vory of broils.

“There, those will tick­le the doc­tor!” said Kennedy.

“Do you know what I was think­ing about?” said Joe.

“Why, about the steaks you’re broil­ing, to be sure!” replied Dick.

“Not the least in the world. I was think­ing what a fig­ure we’d cut if we couldn’t find the bal­loon again.”

“By George, what an idea! Why, do you think the doc­tor would desert us?”

“No; but sup­pose his an­chor were to slip!”

“Im­pos­si­ble! and, be­sides, the doc­tor would find no dif­fi­cul­ty in com­ing down again with his bal­loon; he han­dles it at his ease.”

“But sup­pose the wind were to sweep it off, so that he couldn’t come back to­ward us?”

“Come, come, Joe! a truce to your sup­po­si­tions; they’re any thing but pleas­ant.”

“Ah! sir, ev­ery thing that hap­pens in this world is nat­ural, of course; but, then, any thing may hap­pen, and we ought to look out be­fore­hand.”

At this mo­ment the re­port of a gun rang out up­on the air.

“What’s that?” ex­claimed Joe.

“It’s my ri­fle, I know the ring of her!” said Kennedy.

“A sig­nal!”

“Yes; dan­ger for us!”

“For him, too, per­haps.”

“Let’s be off!”

And the hunters, hav­ing gath­ered up the prod­uct of their ex­pe­di­tion, rapid­ly made their way back along the path that they had marked by break­ing boughs and bush­es when they came. The den­si­ty of the un­der­brush pre­vent­ed their see­ing the bal­loon, al­though they could not be far from it.

A sec­ond shot was heard.

“We must hur­ry!” said Joe.

“There! a third re­port!”

“Why, it sounds to me as if he was de­fend­ing him­self against some­thing.”

“Let us make haste!”

They now be­gan to run at the top of their speed. When they reached the out­skirts of the for­est, they, at first glance, saw the bal­loon in its place and the doc­tor in the car.

“What’s the mat­ter?” shout­ed Kennedy.

“Good God!” sud­den­ly ex­claimed Joe.

“What do you see?”

“Down there! look! a crowd of blacks sur­round­ing the bal­loon!”

And, in fact, there, two miles from where they were, they saw some thir­ty wild na­tives close to­geth­er, yelling, ges­tic­ulat­ing, and cut­ting all kinds of an­tics at the foot of the sycamore. Some, climb­ing in­to the tree it­self, were mak­ing their way to the top­most branch­es. The dan­ger seemed press­ing.

“My mas­ter is lost!” cried Joe.

“Come! a lit­tle more cool­ness, Joe, and let us see how we stand. We hold the lives of four of those vil­lains in our hands. For­ward, then!”

They had made a mile with head­long speed, when an­oth­er re­port was heard from the car. The shot had, ev­ident­ly, told up­on a huge black de­mon, who had been hoist­ing him­self up by the an­chor-​rope. A life­less body fell from bough to bough, and hung about twen­ty feet from the ground, its arms and legs sway­ing to and fro in the air.

“Ha!” said Joe, halt­ing, “what does that fel­low hold by?”

“No mat­ter what!” said Kennedy; “let us run! let us run!”

“Ah! Mr. Kennedy,” said Joe, again, in a roar of laugh­ter, “by his tail! by his tail! it’s an ape! They’re all apes!”

“Well, they’re worse than men!” said Kennedy, as he dashed in­to the midst of the howl­ing crowd.

It was, in­deed, a troop of very formidable ba­boons of the dog-​faced species. These crea­tures are bru­tal, fe­ro­cious, and hor­ri­ble to look up­on, with their dog-​like muz­zles and sav­age ex­pres­sion. How­ev­er, a few shots scat­tered them, and the chat­ter­ing horde scam­pered off, leav­ing sev­er­al of their num­ber on the ground.

In a mo­ment Kennedy was on the lad­der, and Joe, clam­ber­ing up the branch­es, de­tached the an­chor; the car then dipped to where he was, and he got in­to it with­out dif­fi­cul­ty. A few min­utes lat­er, the Vic­to­ria slow­ly as­cend­ed and soared away to the east­ward, waft­ed by a mod­er­ate wind.

“That was an at­tack for you!” said Joe.

“We thought you were sur­round­ed by na­tives.”

“Well, for­tu­nate­ly, they were on­ly apes,” said the doc­tor.

“At a dis­tance there’s no great dif­fer­ence,” re­marked Kennedy.

“Nor close at hand, ei­ther,” added Joe.

“Well, how­ev­er that may be,” re­sumed Fer­gu­son, “this at­tack of apes might have had the most se­ri­ous con­se­quences. Had the an­chor yield­ed to their re­peat­ed ef­forts, who knows whith­er the wind would have car­ried me?”

“What did I tell you, Mr. Kennedy?”

“You were right, Joe; but, even right as you may have been, you were, at that mo­ment, prepar­ing some an­te­lope-​steaks, the very sight of which gave me a mon­strous ap­petite.”

“I be­lieve you!” said the doc­tor; “the flesh of the an­te­lope is exquisite.”

“You may judge of that your­self, now, sir, for sup­per’s ready.”

“Up­on my word as a sports­man, those veni­son-​steaks have a gamy fla­vor that’s not to be sneezed at, I tell you.”

“Good!” said Joe, with his mouth full, “I could live on an­te­lope all the days of my life; and all the bet­ter with a glass of grog to wash it down.”

So say­ing, the good fel­low went to work to pre­pare a jo­rum of that fra­grant bev­er­age, and all hands tast­ed it with sat­is­fac­tion.

“Ev­ery thing has gone well thus far,” said he.

“Very well in­deed!” as­sent­ed Kennedy.

“Come, now, Mr. Kennedy, are you sor­ry that you came with us?”

“I’d like to see any­body pre­vent my com­ing!”

It was now four o’clock in the af­ter­noon. The Vic­to­ria had struck a more rapid cur­rent. The face of the coun­try was grad­ual­ly ris­ing, and, ere long, the barom­eter in­di­cat­ed a height of fif­teen hun­dred feet above the lev­el of the sea. The doc­tor was, there­fore, obliged to keep his bal­loon up by a quite con­sid­er­able di­la­tion of gas, and the cylin­der was hard at work all the time.

To­ward sev­en o’clock, the bal­loon was sail­ing over the basin of Kanyeme. The doc­tor im­me­di­ate­ly rec­og­nized that im­mense clear­ing, ten miles in ex­tent, with its vil­lages buried in the midst of baobab and cal­abash trees. It is the res­idence of one of the sul­tans of the Ugogo coun­try, where civ­iliza­tion is, per­haps, the least back­ward. The na­tives there are less ad­dict­ed to sell­ing mem­bers of their own fam­ilies, but still, men and an­imals all live to­geth­er in round huts, with­out frames, that look like haystacks.

Be­yond Kanyeme the soil be­comes arid and stony, but in an hour’s jour­ney, in a fer­tile dip of the soil, veg­eta­tion had re­sumed all its vig­or at some dis­tance from Md­abu­ru. The wind fell with the close of the day, and the at­mo­sphere seemed to sleep. The doc­tor vain­ly sought for a cur­rent of air at dif­fer­ent heights, and, at last, see­ing this calm of all na­ture, he re­solved to pass the night afloat, and, for greater safe­ty, rose to the height of one thou­sand feet, where the bal­loon re­mained mo­tion­less. The night was mag­nif­icent, the heav­ens glit­ter­ing with stars, and pro­found­ly silent in the up­per air.

Dick and Joe stretched them­selves on their peace­ful couch, and were soon sound asleep, the doc­tor keep­ing the first watch. At twelve o’clock the lat­ter was re­lieved by Kennedy.

“Should the slight­est ac­ci­dent hap­pen, wak­en me,” said Fer­gu­son, “and, above all things, don’t lose sight of the barom­eter. To us it is the com­pass!”

The night was cold. There were twen­ty-​sev­en de­grees of dif­fer­ence be­tween its tem­per­ature and that of the day­time. With night­fall had be­gun the noc­tur­nal con­cert of an­imals driv­en from their hid­ing-​places by hunger and thirst. The frogs struck in their gut­tural so­pra­no, re­dou­bled by the yelp­ing of the jack­als, while the im­pos­ing bass of the African li­on sus­tained the ac­cords of this liv­ing or­ches­tra.

Up­on re­sum­ing his post, in the morn­ing, the doc­tor con­sult­ed his com­pass, and found that the wind had changed dur­ing the night. The bal­loon had been bear­ing about thir­ty miles to the north­west dur­ing the last two hours. It was then pass­ing over Mabun­gu­ru, a stony coun­try, strewn with blocks of syen­ite of a fine pol­ish, and knobbed with huge bowlders and an­gu­lar ridges of rock; con­ic mass­es, like the rocks of Kar­nak, stud­ded the soil like so many Druidic dol­mens; the bones of buf­faloes and ele­phants whitened it here and there; but few trees could be seen, ex­cept­ing in the east, where there were dense woods, among which a few vil­lages lay half con­cealed.

To­ward sev­en o’clock they saw a huge round rock near­ly two miles in ex­tent, like an im­mense tor­toise.

“We are on the right track,” said Dr. Fer­gu­son. “There’s Ji­houe-​la-​Mkoa, where we must halt for a few min­utes. I am go­ing to re­new the sup­ply of wa­ter nec­es­sary for my cylin­der, and so let us try to an­chor some­where.”

“There are very few trees,” replied the hunger.

“Nev­er mind, let us try. Joe, throw out the an­chors!”

The bal­loon, grad­ual­ly los­ing its as­cen­sion­al force, ap­proached the ground; the an­chors ran along un­til, at last, one of them caught in the fis­sure of a rock, and the bal­loon re­mained mo­tion­less.

It must not be sup­posed that the doc­tor could en­tire­ly ex­tin­guish his cylin­der, dur­ing these halts. The equi­lib­ri­um of the bal­loon had been cal­cu­lat­ed at the lev­el of the sea; and, as the coun­try was con­tin­ual­ly as­cend­ing, and had reached an el­eva­tion of from six to sev­en hun­dred feet, the bal­loon would have had a ten­den­cy to go low­er than the sur­face of the soil it­self. It was, there­fore, nec­es­sary to sus­tain it by a cer­tain di­la­tion of the gas. But, in case the doc­tor, in the ab­sence of all wind, had let the car rest up­on the ground, the bal­loon, thus re­lieved of a con­sid­er­able weight, would have kept up of it­self, with­out the aid of the cylin­der.

The maps in­di­cat­ed ex­ten­sive ponds on the west­ern slope of the Ji­houe-​la-​Mkoa. Joe went thith­er alone with a cask that would hold about ten gal­lons. He found the place point­ed out to him, with­out dif­fi­cul­ty, near to a de­sert­ed vil­lage; got his stock of wa­ter, and re­turned in less than three-​quar­ters of an hour. He had seen noth­ing par­tic­ular ex­cept­ing some im­mense ele­phant-​pits. In fact, he came very near falling in­to one of them, at the bot­tom of which lay a half-​eat­en car­cass.

He brought back with him a sort of clover which the apes eat with avid­ity. The doc­tor rec­og­nized the fruit of the “mben­bu”-tree which grows in pro­fu­sion, on the west­ern part of Ji­houe-​la-​Mkoa. Fer­gu­son wait­ed for Joe with a cer­tain feel­ing of im­pa­tience, for even a short halt in this in­hos­pitable re­gion al­ways in­spires a de­gree of fear.

The wa­ter was got aboard with­out trou­ble, as the car was near­ly rest­ing on the ground. Joe then found it easy to loosen the an­chor and leaped light­ly to his place be­side the doc­tor. The lat­ter then re­plen­ished the flame in the cylin­der, and the bal­loon ma­jes­ti­cal­ly soared in­to the air.

It was then about one hun­dred miles from Kazeh, an im­por­tant es­tab­lish­ment in the in­te­ri­or of Africa, where, thanks to a south-​south­east­er­ly cur­rent, the trav­ellers might hope to ar­rive on that same day. They were mov­ing at the rate of four­teen miles per hour, and the guid­ance of the bal­loon was be­com­ing dif­fi­cult, as they dared not rise very high with­out ex­treme di­la­tion of the gas, the coun­try it­self be­ing at an av­er­age height of three thou­sand feet. Hence, the doc­tor pre­ferred not to force the di­la­tion, and so adroit­ly fol­lowed the sin­uosi­ties of a pret­ty sharply-​in­clined plane, and swept very close to the vil­lages of Them­bo and Tu­ra-​Wels. The lat­ter forms part of the Un­yamwezy, a mag­nif­icent coun­try, where the trees at­tain enor­mous di­men­sions; among them the cac­tus, which grows to gi­gan­tic size.

About two o’clock, in mag­nif­icent weath­er, but un­der a fiery sun that de­voured the least breath of air, the bal­loon was float­ing over the town of Kazeh, sit­uat­ed about three hun­dred and fifty miles from the coast.

“We left Zanz­ibar at nine o’clock in the morn­ing,” said the doc­tor, con­sult­ing his notes, “and, af­ter two days’ pas­sage, we have, in­clud­ing our de­vi­ations, trav­elled near­ly five hun­dred ge­ograph­ical miles. Cap­tains Bur­ton and Speke took four months and a half to make the same dis­tance!”