Five Weeks in a Balloon

CHAPTER NINETEENTH.

The Nile.–The Trem­bling Moun­tain.–A Re­mem­brance of the Coun­try.–The Nar­ra­tives of the Arabs.–The Nyam-​Nyams.–Joe’s Shrewd Cog­ita­tions.–The Bal­loon runs the Gant­let.–Aero­stat­ic As­cen­sions.–Madame Blan­chard.

“Which way do we head?” asked Kennedy, as he saw his friend con­sult­ing the com­pass.

“North-​north­east.”

“The deuce! but that’s not the north?”

“No, Dick; and I’m afraid that we shall have some trou­ble in get­ting to Gon­do­ko­ro. I am sor­ry for it; but, at last, we have suc­ceed­ed in con­nect­ing the ex­plo­rations from the east with those from the north; and we must not com­plain.”

The bal­loon was now re­ced­ing grad­ual­ly from the Nile.

“One last look,” said the doc­tor, “at this im­pass­able lat­itude, be­yond which the most in­trepid trav­ellers could not make their way. There are those in­tractable tribes, of whom Peth­er­ick, Ar­naud, Mi­uni, and the young trav­eller Lejean, to whom we are in­debt­ed for the best work on the Up­per Nile, have spo­ken.”

“Thus, then,” added Kennedy, in­quir­ing­ly, “our dis­cov­er­ies agree with the spec­ula­tions of sci­ence.”

“Ab­so­lute­ly so. The sources of the White Nile, of the Bahr-​el-​Abi­ad, are im­mersed in a lake as large as a sea; it is there that it takes its rise. Poesy, un­doubt­ed­ly, los­es some­thing there­by. Peo­ple were fond of as­crib­ing a ce­les­tial ori­gin to this king of rivers. The an­cients gave it the name of an ocean, and were not far from be­liev­ing that it flowed di­rect­ly from the sun; but we must come down from these flights from time to time, and ac­cept what sci­ence teach­es us. There will not al­ways be sci­en­tif­ic men, per­haps; but there al­ways will be po­ets.”

“We can still see cataracts,” said Joe.

“Those are the cataracts of Make­do, in the third de­gree of lat­itude. Noth­ing could be more ac­cu­rate. Oh, if we could on­ly have fol­lowed the course of the Nile for a few hours!”

“And down yon­der, be­low us, I see the top of a moun­tain,” said the hunter.

“That is Mount Long­wek, the Trem­bling Moun­tain of the Arabs. This whole coun­try was vis­it­ed by Debono, who went through it un­der the name of Latif-​Ef­fen­di. The tribes liv­ing near the Nile are hos­tile to each oth­er, and are con­tin­ual­ly wag­ing a war of ex­ter­mi­na­tion. You may form some idea, then, of the dif­fi­cul­ties he had to en­counter.”

The wind was car­ry­ing the bal­loon to­ward the north­west, and, in or­der to avoid Mount Long­wek, it was nec­es­sary to seek a more slant­ing cur­rent.

“My friends,” said the doc­tor, “here is where OUR pas­sage of the African Con­ti­nent re­al­ly com­mences; up to this time we have been fol­low­ing the traces of our pre­de­ces­sors. Hence­forth we are to launch our­selves up­on the un­known. We shall not lack the courage, shall we?”

“Nev­er!” said Dick and Joe to­geth­er, al­most in a shout.

“On­ward, then, and may we have the help of Heav­en!”

At ten o’clock at night, af­ter pass­ing over ravines, forests, and scat­tered vil­lages, the aero­nauts reached the side of the Trem­bling Moun­tain, along whose gen­tle slopes they went qui­et­ly glid­ing. In that mem­orable day, the 23d of April, they had, in fif­teen hours, im­pelled by a rapid breeze, tra­versed a dis­tance of more than three hun­dred and fif­teen miles.

But this lat­ter part of the jour­ney had left them in dull spir­its, and com­plete si­lence reigned in the car. Was Dr. Fer­gu­son ab­sorbed in the thought of his dis­cov­er­ies? Were his two com­pan­ions think­ing of their trip through those un­known re­gions? There were, no doubt, min­gled with these re­flec­tions, the keen­est rem­inis­cences of home and dis­tant friends. Joe alone con­tin­ued to man­ifest the same care­less phi­los­ophy, find­ing it QUITE NAT­URAL that home should not be there, from the mo­ment that he left it; but he re­spect­ed the silent mood of his friends, the doc­tor and Kennedy.

About ten the bal­loon an­chored on the side of the Trem­bling Moun­tain, so called, be­cause, in Arab tra­di­tion, it is said to trem­ble the in­stant that a Mus­sul­man sets foot up­on it. The trav­ellers then par­took of a sub­stan­tial meal, and all qui­et­ly passed the night as usu­al, keep­ing the reg­ular watch­es.

On awak­ing the next morn­ing, they all had pleas­an­ter feel­ings. The weath­er was fine, and the wind was blow­ing from the right quar­ter; so that a good break­fast, sea­soned with Joe’s mer­ry pranks, put them in high good-​hu­mor.

The re­gion they were now cross­ing is very ex­ten­sive. It bor­ders on the Moun­tains of the Moon on one side, and those of Dar­fur on the oth­er–a space about as broad as Eu­rope.

“We are, no doubt, cross­ing what is sup­posed to be the king­dom of Uso­ga. Ge­og­ra­phers have pre­tend­ed that there ex­ist­ed, in the cen­tre of Africa, a vast de­pres­sion, an im­mense cen­tral lake. We shall see whether there is any truth in that idea,” said the doc­tor.

“But how did they come to think so?” asked Kennedy.

“From the recitals of the Arabs. Those fel­lows are great nar­ra­tors–too much so, prob­ably. Some trav­ellers, who had got as far as Kazeh, or the great lakes, saw slaves that had been brought from this re­gion; in­ter­ro­gat­ed them con­cern­ing it, and, from their dif­fer­ent nar­ra­tives, made up a jum­ble of no­tions, and de­duced sys­tems from them. Down at the bot­tom of it all there is some ap­pear­ance of truth; and you see that they were right about the sources of the Nile.”

“Noth­ing could be more cor­rect,” said Kennedy. “It was by the aid of these doc­uments that some at­tempts at maps were made, and so I am go­ing to try to fol­low our route by one of them, rec­ti­fy­ing it when need be.”

“Is all this re­gion in­hab­it­ed?” asked Joe.

“Un­doubt­ed­ly; and dis­agree­ably in­hab­it­ed, too.”

“I thought so.”

“These scat­tered tribes come, one and all, un­der the ti­tle of Nyam-​Nyams, and this com­pound word is on­ly a sort of nick­name. It im­itates the sound of chew­ing.”

“That’s it! Ex­cel­lent!” said Joe, champ­ing his teeth as though he were eat­ing; “Nyam-​Nyam.”

“My good Joe, if you were the im­me­di­ate ob­ject of this chew­ing, you wouldn’t find it so ex­cel­lent.”

“Why, what’s the rea­son, sir?”

“These tribes are con­sid­ered man-​eaters.”

“Is that re­al­ly the case?”

“Not a doubt of it! It has al­so been as­sert­ed that these na­tives had tails, like mere quadrupeds; but it was soon dis­cov­ered that these ap­pendages be­longed to the skins of an­imals that they wore for cloth­ing.”

“More’s the pity! a tail’s a nice thing to chase away mosquitoes.”

“That may be, Joe; but we must con­sign the sto­ry to the do­main of fa­ble, like the dogs’ heads which the trav­eller, Brun-​Rol­let, at­tribut­ed to oth­er tribes.”

“Dogs’ heads, eh? Quite con­ve­nient for bark­ing, and even for man-​eat­ing!”

“But one thing that has been, un­for­tu­nate­ly, proven true, is, the fe­roc­ity of these tribes, who are re­al­ly very fond of hu­man flesh, and de­vour it with avid­ity.”

“I on­ly hope that they won’t take such a par­tic­ular fan­cy to mine!” said Joe, with com­ic solem­ni­ty.

“See that!” said Kennedy.

“Yes, in­deed, sir; if I have to be eat­en, in a mo­ment of famine, I want it to be for your ben­efit and my mas­ter’s; but the idea of feed­ing those black fel­lows–gra­cious! I’d die of shame!”

“Well, then, Joe,” said Kennedy, “that’s un­der­stood; we count up­on you in case of need!”

“At your ser­vice, gen­tle­men!”

“Joe talks in this way so as to make us take good care of him, and fat­ten him up.”

“Maybe so!” said Joe. “Ev­ery man for him­self.”

In the af­ter­noon, the sky be­came cov­ered with a warm mist, that oozed from the soil; the brown­ish va­por scarce­ly al­lowed the be­hold­er to dis­tin­guish ob­jects, and so, fear­ing col­li­sion with some un­ex­pect­ed moun­tain-​peak, the doc­tor, about five o’clock, gave the sig­nal to halt.

The night passed with­out ac­ci­dent, but in such pro­found ob­scu­ri­ty, that it was nec­es­sary to use re­dou­bled vig­ilance.

The mon­soon blew with ex­treme vi­olence dur­ing all the next morn­ing. The wind buried it­self in the low­er cav­ities of the bal­loon and shook the ap­pendage by which the di­lat­ing-​pipes en­tered the main ap­pa­ra­tus. They had, at last, to be tied up with cords, Joe ac­quit­ting him­self very skil­ful­ly in per­form­ing that op­er­ation.

He had oc­ca­sion to ob­serve, at the same time, that the ori­fice of the bal­loon still re­mained her­met­ical­ly sealed.

“That is a mat­ter of dou­ble im­por­tance for us,” said the doc­tor; “in the first place, we avoid the es­cape of pre­cious gas, and then, again, we do not leave be­hind us an in­flammable train, which we should at last in­evitably set fire to, and so be con­sumed.”

“That would be a dis­agree­able trav­el­ling in­ci­dent!” said Joe.

“Should we be hurled to the ground?” asked Kennedy.

“Hurled! No, not quite that. The gas would burn qui­et­ly, and we should de­scend lit­tle by lit­tle. A sim­ilar ac­ci­dent hap­pened to a French aero­naut, Madame Blan­chard. She ig­nit­ed her bal­loon while send­ing off fire­works, but she did not fall, and she would not have been killed, prob­ably, had not her car dashed against a chim­ney and pre­cip­itat­ed her to the ground.”

“Let us hope that noth­ing of the kind may hap­pen to us,” said the hunter. “Up to this time our trip has not seemed to me very dan­ger­ous, and I can see noth­ing to pre­vent us reach­ing our des­ti­na­tion.”

“Nor can I ei­ther, my dear Dick; ac­ci­dents are gen­er­al­ly caused by the im­pru­dence of the aero­nauts, or the de­fec­tive con­struc­tion of their ap­pa­ra­tus. How­ev­er, in thou­sands of aeri­al as­cen­sions, there have not been twen­ty fa­tal ac­ci­dents. Usu­al­ly, the dan­ger is in the mo­ment of leav­ing the ground, or of alight­ing, and there­fore at those junc­tures we should nev­er omit the ut­most pre­cau­tion.”

“It’s break­fast-​time,” said Joe; “we’ll have to put up with pre­served meat and cof­fee un­til Mr. Kennedy has had an­oth­er chance to get us a good slice of veni­son.”