Five Weeks in a Balloon

CHAPTER TWENTIETH.

The Ce­les­tial Bot­tle.–The Fig-​Palms.–The Mam­moth Trees.–The Tree of War.–The Winged Team.–Two Na­tive Tribes in Bat­tle.–A Mas­sacre.–An In­ter­ven­tion from above.

The wind had be­come vi­olent and ir­reg­ular; the bal­loon was run­ning the gant­let through the air. Tossed at one mo­ment to­ward the north, at an­oth­er to­ward the south, it could not find one steady cur­rent.

“We are mov­ing very swift­ly with­out ad­vanc­ing much,” said Kennedy, re­mark­ing the fre­quent os­cil­la­tions of the nee­dle of the com­pass.

“The bal­loon is rush­ing at the rate of at least thir­ty miles an hour. Lean over, and see how the coun­try is glid­ing away be­neath us!” said the doc­tor.

“See! that for­est looks as though it were pre­cip­itat­ing it­self up­on us!”

“The for­est has be­come a clear­ing!” added the oth­er.

“And the clear­ing a vil­lage!” con­tin­ued Joe, a mo­ment or two lat­er. “Look at the faces of those as­ton­ished dark­ys!”

“Oh! it’s nat­ural enough that they should be as­ton­ished,” said the doc­tor. “The French peas­ants, when they first saw a bal­loon, fired at it, think­ing that it was an aeri­al mon­ster. A Soudan ne­gro may be ex­cused, then, for open­ing his eyes VERY wide!”

“Faith!” said Joe, as the Vic­to­ria skimmed close­ly along the ground, at scarce­ly the el­eva­tion of one hun­dred feet, and im­me­di­ate­ly over a vil­lage, “I’ll throw them an emp­ty bot­tle, with your leave, doc­tor, and if it reach­es them safe and sound, they’ll wor­ship it; if it breaks, they’ll make tal­is­mans of the pieces.”

So say­ing, he flung out a bot­tle, which, of course, was bro­ken in­to a thou­sand frag­ments, while the ne­groes scam­pered in­to their round huts, ut­ter­ing shrill cries.

A lit­tle far­ther on, Kennedy called out: “Look at that strange tree! The up­per part is of one kind and the low­er part of an­oth­er!”

“Well!” said Joe, “here’s a coun­try where the trees grow on top of each oth­er.”

“It’s sim­ply the trunk of a fig-​tree,” replied the doc­tor, “on which there is a lit­tle veg­etat­ing earth. Some fine day, the wind left the seed of a palm on it, and the seed has tak­en root and grown as though it were on the plain ground.”

“A fine new style of gar­den­ing,” said Joe, “and I’ll im­port the idea to Eng­land. It would be just the thing in the Lon­don parks; with­out count­ing that it would be an­oth­er way to in­crease the num­ber of fruit-​trees. We could have gar­dens up in the air; and the small house-​own­ers would like that!”

At this mo­ment, they had to raise the bal­loon so as to pass over a for­est of trees that were more than three hun­dred feet in height–a kind of an­cient banyan.

“What mag­nif­icent trees!” ex­claimed Kennedy. “I nev­er saw any thing so fine as the ap­pear­ance of these ven­er­able forests. Look, doc­tor!”

“The height of these banyans is re­al­ly re­mark­able, my dear Dick; and yet, they would be noth­ing as­ton­ish­ing in the New World.”

“Why, are there still lofti­er trees in ex­is­tence?”

“Un­doubt­ed­ly; among the ‘mam­moth trees’ of Cal­ifor­nia, there is a cedar four hun­dred and eighty feet in height. It would over­top the Hous­es of Par­lia­ment, and even the Great Pyra­mid of Egypt. The trunk at the sur­face of the ground was one hun­dred and twen­ty feet in cir­cum­fer­ence, and the con­cen­tric lay­ers of the wood dis­closed an age of more than four thou­sand years.”

“But then, sir, there was noth­ing won­der­ful in it! When one has lived four thou­sand years, one ought to be pret­ty tall!” was Joe’s re­mark.

Mean­while, dur­ing the doc­tor’s recital and Joe’s re­sponse, the for­est had giv­en place to a large col­lec­tion of huts sur­round­ing an open space. In the mid­dle of this grew a soli­tary tree, and Joe ex­claimed, as he caught sight of it:

“Well! if that tree has pro­duced such flow­ers as those, for the last four thou­sand years, I have to of­fer it my com­pli­ments, any­how,” and he point­ed to a gi­gan­tic sycamore, whose whole trunk was cov­ered with hu­man bones. The flow­ers of which Joe spoke were heads fresh­ly sev­ered from the bod­ies, and sus­pend­ed by dag­gers thrust in­to the bark of the tree.

“The war-​tree of these can­ni­bals!” said the doc­tor; “the In­di­ans mere­ly car­ry off the scalp, but these ne­groes take the whole head.”

“A mere mat­ter of fash­ion!” said Joe. But, al­ready, the vil­lage and the bleed­ing heads were dis­ap­pear­ing on the hori­zon. An­oth­er place of­fered a still more re­volt­ing spec­ta­cle–half-​de­voured corpses; skele­tons moul­der­ing to dust; hu­man limbs scat­tered here and there, and left to feed the jack­als and hye­nas.

“No doubt, these are the bod­ies of crim­inals; ac­cord­ing to the cus­tom in Abyssinia, these peo­ple have left them a prey to the wild beasts, who kill them with their ter­ri­ble teeth and claws, and then de­vour them at their leisure.

“Not a whit more cru­el than hang­ing!” said the Scot; “filth­ier, that’s all!”

“In the south­ern re­gions of Africa, they con­tent them­selves,” re­sumed the doc­tor, “with shut­ting up the crim­inal in his own hut with his cat­tle, and some­times with his fam­ily. They then set fire to the hut, and the whole par­ty are burned to­geth­er. I call that cru­el; but, like friend Kennedy, I think that the gal­lows is quite as cru­el, quite as bar­barous.”

Joe, by the aid of his keen sight, which he did not fail to use con­tin­ual­ly, no­ticed some flocks of birds of prey flit­ting about the hori­zon.

“They are ea­gles!” ex­claimed Kennedy, af­ter re­con­noitring them through the glass, “mag­nif­icent birds, whose flight is as rapid as ours.”

“Heav­en pre­serve us from their at­tacks!” said the doc­tor, “they are more to be feared by us than wild beasts or sav­age tribes.”

“Bah!” said the hunter, “we can drive them off with a few ri­fle-​shots.”

“Nev­er­the­less, I would pre­fer, dear Dick, not hav­ing to re­ly up­on your skill, this time, for the silk of our bal­loon could not re­sist their sharp beaks; for­tu­nate­ly, the huge birds will, I be­lieve, be more fright­ened than at­tract­ed by our ma­chine.”

“Yes! but a new idea, and I have dozens of them,” said Joe; “if we could on­ly man­age to cap­ture a team of live ea­gles, we could hitch them to the bal­loon, and they’d haul us through the air!”

“The thing has been se­ri­ous­ly pro­posed,” replied the doc­tor, “but I think it hard­ly prac­ti­ca­ble with crea­tures nat­ural­ly so restive.”

“Oh! we’d tame them,” said Joe. “In­stead of driv­ing them with bits, we’d do it with eye-​blink­ers that would cov­er their eyes. Half blind­ed in that way, they’d go to the right or to the left, as we de­sired; when blind­ed com­plete­ly, they would stop.”

“Al­low me, Joe, to pre­fer a fa­vor­able wind to your team of ea­gles. It costs less for fod­der, and is more re­li­able.”

“Well, you may have your choice, mas­ter, but I stick to my idea.”

It now was noon. The Vic­to­ria had been go­ing at a more mod­er­ate speed for some time; the coun­try mere­ly passed be­low it; it no longer flew.

Sud­den­ly, shouts and whistlings were heard by our aero­nauts, and, lean­ing over the edge of the car, they saw on the open plain be­low them an ex­cit­ing spec­ta­cle.

Two hos­tile tribes were fight­ing fu­ri­ous­ly, and the air was dot­ted with vol­leys of ar­rows. The com­bat­ants were so in­tent up­on their mur­der­ous work that they did not no­tice the ar­rival of the bal­loon; there were about three hun­dred min­gled con­fus­ed­ly in the dead­ly strug­gle: most of them, red with the blood of the wound­ed, in which they fair­ly wal­lowed, were hor­ri­ble to be­hold.

As they at last caught sight of the bal­loon, there was a mo­men­tary pause; but their yells re­dou­bled, and some ar­rows were shot at the Vic­to­ria, one of them com­ing close enough for Joe to catch it with his hand.

“Let us rise out of range,” ex­claimed the doc­tor; “there must be no rash­ness! We are for­bid­den any risk.”

Mean­while, the mas­sacre con­tin­ued on both sides, with bat­tle-​ax­es and war-​clubs; as quick­ly as one of the com­bat­ants fell, a hos­tile war­rior ran up to cut off his head, while the wom­en, min­gling in the fray, gath­ered up these bloody tro­phies, and piled them to­geth­er at ei­ther ex­trem­ity of the bat­tle-​field. Of­ten, too, they even fought for these hideous spoils.

“What a fright­ful scene!” said Kennedy, with pro­found dis­gust.

“They’re ug­ly ac­quain­tances!” added Joe; “but then, if they had uni­forms they’d be just like the fight­ers of all the rest of the world!”

“I have a keen han­ker­ing to take a hand in at that fight,” said the hunter, bran­dish­ing his ri­fle.

“No! no!” ob­ject­ed the doc­tor, ve­he­ment­ly; “no, let us not med­dle with what don’t con­cern us. Do you know which is right or which is wrong, that you would as­sume the part of the Almighty? Let us, rather, hur­ry away from this re­volt­ing spec­ta­cle. Could the great cap­tains of the world float thus above the scenes of their ex­ploits, they would at last, per­haps, con­ceive a dis­gust for blood and con­quest.”

The chief­tain of one of the con­tend­ing par­ties was re­mark­able for his ath­let­ic pro­por­tions, his great height, and her­culean strength. With one hand he plunged his spear in­to the com­pact ranks of his en­emies, and with the oth­er mowed large spaces in them with his bat­tle-​axe. Sud­den­ly he flung away his war-​club, red with blood, rushed up­on a wound­ed war­rior, and, chop­ping off his arm at a sin­gle stroke, car­ried the dis­sev­ered mem­ber to his mouth, and bit it again and again.

“Ah!” ejac­ulat­ed Kennedy, “the hor­ri­ble brute! I can hold back no longer,” and, as he spoke, the huge sav­age, struck full in the fore­head with a ri­fle-​ball, fell head­long to the ground.

Up­on this sud­den mishap of their lead­er, his war­riors seemed struck dumb with amaze­ment; his su­per­nat­ural death awed them, while it re­an­imat­ed the courage and ar­dor of their ad­ver­saries, and, in a twin­kling, the field was aban­doned by half the com­bat­ants.

“Come, let us look high­er up for a cur­rent to bear us away. I am sick of this spec­ta­cle,” said the doc­tor.

But they could not get away so rapid­ly as to avoid the sight of the vic­to­ri­ous tribe rush­ing up­on the dead and the wound­ed, scram­bling and dis­put­ing for the still warm and reek­ing flesh, and ea­ger­ly de­vour­ing it.

“Faugh!” ut­tered Joe, “it’s sick­en­ing.”

The bal­loon rose as it ex­pand­ed; the howl­ings of the bru­tal horde, in the delir­ium of their or­gy, pur­sued them for a few min­utes; but, at length, borne away to­ward the south, they were car­ried out of sight and hear­ing of this hor­ri­ble spec­ta­cle of can­ni­bal­ism.

The sur­face of the coun­try was now great­ly var­ied, with nu­mer­ous streams of wa­ter, bear­ing to­ward the east. The lat­ter, un­doubt­ed­ly, ran in­to those af­flu­ents of Lake Nu, or of the Riv­er of the Gazelles, con­cern­ing which M. Guil­laume Lejean has giv­en such cu­ri­ous de­tails.

At night­fall, the bal­loon cast an­chor in twen­ty-​sev­en de­grees east lon­gi­tude, and four de­grees twen­ty min­utes north lat­itude, af­ter a day’s trip of one hun­dred and fifty miles.