Five Weeks in a Balloon

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIRST.

Strange Sounds.–A Night At­tack.–Kennedy and Joe in the Tree.–Two Shots.–“Help! help!”–Re­ply in French.–The Morn­ing.–The Mis­sion­ary. –The Plan of Res­cue.

The night came on very dark. The doc­tor had not been able to re­con­noitre the coun­try. He had made fast to a very tall tree, from which he could dis­tin­guish on­ly a con­fused mass through the gloom.

As usu­al, he took the nine-​o’clock watch, and at mid­night Dick re­lieved him.

“Keep a sharp look­out, Dick!” was the doc­tor’s good-​night in­junc­tion.

“Is there any thing new on the car­pet?”

“No; but I thought that I heard vague sounds be­low us, and, as I don’t ex­act­ly know where the wind has car­ried us to, even an ex­cess of cau­tion would do no harm.”

“You’ve prob­ably heard the cries of wild beasts.”

“No! the sounds seemed to me some­thing al­to­geth­er dif­fer­ent from that; at all events, on the least alarm don’t fail to wak­en us.”

“I’ll do so, doc­tor; rest easy.”

Af­ter lis­ten­ing at­ten­tive­ly for a mo­ment or two longer, the doc­tor, hear­ing noth­ing more, threw him­self on his blan­kets and went asleep.

The sky was cov­ered with dense clouds, but not a breath of air was stir­ring; and the bal­loon, kept in its place by on­ly a sin­gle an­chor, ex­pe­ri­enced not the slight­est os­cil­la­tion.

Kennedy, lean­ing his el­bow on the edge of the car, so as to keep an eye on the cylin­der, which was ac­tive­ly at work, gazed out up­on the calm ob­scu­ri­ty; he ea­ger­ly scanned the hori­zon, and, as of­ten hap­pens to minds that are un­easy or pos­sessed with pre­con­ceived no­tions, he fan­cied that he some­times de­tect­ed vague gleams of light in the dis­tance.

At one mo­ment he even thought that he saw them on­ly two hun­dred paces away, quite dis­tinct­ly, but it was a mere flash that was gone as quick­ly as it came, and he no­ticed noth­ing more. It was, no doubt, one of those lu­mi­nous il­lu­sions that some­times im­press the eye in the midst of very pro­found dark­ness.

Kennedy was get­ting over his ner­vous­ness and falling in­to his wan­der­ing med­ita­tions again, when a sharp whis­tle pierced his ear.

Was that the cry of an an­imal or of a night-​bird, or did it come from hu­man lips?

Kennedy, per­fect­ly com­pre­hend­ing the grav­ity of the sit­ua­tion, was on the point of wak­ing his com­pan­ions, but he re­flect­ed that, in any case, men or an­imals, the crea­tures that he had heard must be out of reach. So he mere­ly saw that his weapons were all right, and then, with his night-​glass, again plunged his gaze in­to space.

It was not long be­fore he thought he could per­ceive be­low him vague forms that seemed to be glid­ing to­ward the tree, and then, by the aid of a ray of moon­light that shot like an elec­tric flash be­tween two mass­es of cloud, he dis­tinct­ly made out a group of hu­man fig­ures mov­ing in the shad­ow.

The ad­ven­ture with the dog-​faced ba­boons re­turned to his mem­ory, and he placed his hand on the doc­tor’s shoul­der.

The lat­ter was awake in a mo­ment.

“Si­lence!” said Dick. “Let us speak be­low our breath.”

“Has any thing hap­pened?”

“Yes, let us wak­en Joe.”

The in­stant that Joe was aroused, Kennedy told him what he had seen.

“Those con­found­ed mon­keys again!” said Joe.

“Pos­si­bly, but we must be on our guard.”

“Joe and I,” said Kennedy, “will climb down the tree by the lad­der.”

“And, in the mean­while,” added the doc­tor, “I will take my mea­sures so that we can as­cend rapid­ly at a mo­ment’s warn­ing.”

“Agreed!”

“Let us go down, then!” said Joe.

“Don’t use your weapons, ex­cept­ing at the last ex­trem­ity! It would be a use­less risk to make the na­tives aware of our pres­ence in such a place as this.”

Dick and Joe replied with signs of as­sent, and then let­ting them­selves slide noise­less­ly to­ward the tree, took their po­si­tion in a fork among the strong branch­es where the an­chor had caught.

For some mo­ments they lis­tened minute­ly and mo­tion­less­ly among the fo­liage, and ere long Joe seized Kenedy’s hand as he heard a sort of rub­bing sound against the bark of the tree.

“Don’t you hear that?” he whis­pered.

“Yes, and it’s com­ing near­er.”

“Sup­pose it should be a ser­pent? That hiss­ing or whistling that you heard be­fore–“

“No! there was some­thing hu­man in it.”

“I’d pre­fer the sav­ages, for I have a hor­ror of those snakes.”

“The noise is in­creas­ing,” said Kennedy, again, af­ter a lapse of a few mo­ments.

“Yes! some­thing’s com­ing up to­ward us–climb­ing.”

“Keep watch on this side, and I’ll take care of the oth­er.”

“Very good!”

There they were, iso­lat­ed at the top of one of the larg­er branch­es shoot­ing out in the midst of one of those minia­ture forests called baobab-​trees. The dark­ness, height­ened by the den­si­ty of the fo­liage, was pro­found; how­ev­er, Joe, lean­ing over to Kennedy’s ear and point­ing down the tree, whis­pered:

“The blacks! They’re climb­ing to­ward us.”

The two friends could even catch the sound of a few words ut­tered in the low­est pos­si­ble tones.

Joe gen­tly brought his ri­fle to his shoul­der as he spoke.

“Wait!” said Kennedy.

Some of the na­tives had re­al­ly climbed the baobab, and now they were seen ris­ing on all sides, wind­ing along the boughs like rep­tiles, and ad­vanc­ing slow­ly but sure­ly, all the time plain­ly enough dis­cernible, not mere­ly to the eye but to the nos­trils, by the hor­ri­ble odors of the ran­cid grease with which they be­daub their bod­ies.

Ere long, two heads ap­peared to the gaze of Kennedy and Joe, on a lev­el with the very branch to which they were cling­ing.

“At­ten­tion!” said Kennedy. “Fire!”

The dou­ble con­cus­sion re­sound­ed like a thun­der­bolt and died away in­to cries of rage and pain, and in a mo­ment the whole horde had dis­ap­peared.

But, in the midst of these yells and howls, a strange, un­ex­pect­ed–nay what seemed an im­pos­si­ble–cry had been heard! A hu­man voice had, dis­tinct­ly, called aloud in the French lan­guage–

“Help! help!”

Kennedy and Joe, dumb with amaze­ment, had re­gained the car im­me­di­ate­ly.

“Did you hear that?” the doc­tor asked them.

“Un­doubt­ed­ly, that su­per­nat­ural cry, ‘A moi! a moi!’ comes from a French­man in the hands of these bar­bar­ians!”

“A trav­eller.”

“A mis­sion­ary, per­haps.”

“Poor wretch!” said Kennedy, “they’re as­sas­si­nat­ing him–mak­ing a mar­tyr of him!”

The doc­tor then spoke, and it was im­pos­si­ble for him to con­ceal his emo­tions.

“There can be no doubt of it,” he said; “some un­for­tu­nate French­man has fall­en in­to the hands of these sav­ages. We must not leave this place with­out do­ing all in our pow­er to save him. When he heard the sound of our guns, he rec­og­nized an un­hoped-​for as­sis­tance, a prov­iden­tial in­ter­po­si­tion. We shall not dis­ap­point his last hope. Are such your views?”

“They are, doc­tor, and we are ready to obey you.”

“Let us, then, lay our heads to­geth­er to de­vise some plan, and in the morn­ing we’ll try to res­cue him.”

“But how shall we drive off those abom­inable blacks?” asked Kennedy.

“It’s quite clear to me, from the way in which they made off, that they are un­ac­quaint­ed with fire-​arms. We must, there­fore, prof­it by their fears; but we shall await day­light be­fore act­ing, and then we can form our plans of res­cue ac­cord­ing to cir­cum­stances.”

“The poor cap­tive can­not be far off,” said Joe, “be­cause–“

“Help! help!” re­peat­ed the voice, but much more fee­bly this time.

“The sav­age wretch­es!” ex­claimed Joe, trem­bling with in­dig­na­tion. “Sup­pose they should kill him to-​night!”

“Do you hear, doc­tor,” re­sumed Kennedy, seiz­ing the doc­tor’s hand. “Sup­pose they should kill him to-​night!”

“It is not at all like­ly, my friends. These sav­age tribes kill their cap­tives in broad day­light; they must have the sun­shine.”

“Now, if I were to take ad­van­tage of the dark­ness to slip down to the poor fel­low?” said Kennedy.

“And I’ll go with you,” said Joe, warm­ly.

“Pause, my friends–pause! The sug­ges­tion does hon­or to your hearts and to your courage; but you would ex­pose us all to great per­il, and do still greater harm to the un­for­tu­nate man whom you wish to aid.”

“Why so?” asked Kennedy. “These sav­ages are fright­ened and dis­persed: they will not re­turn.”

“Dick, I im­plore you, heed what I say. I am act­ing for the com­mon good; and if by any ac­ci­dent you should be tak­en by sur­prise, all would be lost.”

“But, think of that poor wretch, hop­ing for aid, wait­ing there, pray­ing, call­ing aloud. Is no one to go to his as­sis­tance? He must think that his sens­es de­ceived him; that he heard noth­ing!”

“We can re­as­sure him, on that score,” said Dr. Fer­gu­son –and, stand­ing erect, mak­ing a speak­ing-​trum­pet of his hands, he shout­ed at the top of his voice, in French: “Who­ev­er you are, be of good cheer! Three friends are watch­ing over you.”

A ter­rif­ic howl from the sav­ages re­spond­ed to these words–no doubt drown­ing the pris­on­er’s re­ply.

“They are mur­der­ing him! they are mur­der­ing him!” ex­claimed Kennedy. “Our in­ter­fer­ence will have served no oth­er pur­pose than to has­ten the hour of his doom. We must act!”

“But how, Dick? What do you ex­pect to do in the midst of this dark­ness?”

“Oh, if it was on­ly day­light!” sighed Joe.

“Well, and sup­pose it were day­light?” said the doc­tor, in a sin­gu­lar tone.

“Noth­ing more sim­ple, doc­tor,” said Kennedy. “I’d go down and scat­ter all these sav­age vil­lains with pow­der and ball!”

“And you, Joe, what would you do?”

“I, mas­ter? why, I’d act more pru­dent­ly, maybe, by telling the pris­on­er to make his es­cape in a cer­tain di­rec­tion that we’d agree up­on.”

“And how would you get him to know that?”

“By means of this ar­row that I caught fly­ing the oth­er day. I’d tie a note to it, or I’d just call out to him in a loud voice what you want him to do, be­cause these black fel­lows don’t un­der­stand the lan­guage that you’d speak in!”

“Your plans are im­prac­ti­ca­ble, my dear friends. The great­est dif­fi­cul­ty would be for this poor fel­low to es­cape at all–even ad­mit­ting that he should man­age to elude the vig­ilance of his cap­tors. As for you, my dear Dick, with de­ter­mined dar­ing, and prof­it­ing by their alarm at our fire-​arms, your project might pos­si­bly suc­ceed; but, were it to fail, you would be lost, and we should have two per­sons to save in­stead of one. No! we must put ALL the chances on OUR side, and go to work dif­fer­ent­ly.”

“But let us act at once!” said the hunter.

“Per­haps we may,” said the doc­tor, throw­ing con­sid­er­able stress up­on the words.

“Why, doc­tor, can you light up such dark­ness as this?”

“Who knows, Joe?”

“Ah! if you can do that, you’re the great­est learned man in the world!”

The doc­tor kept silent for a few mo­ments; he was think­ing. His two com­pan­ions looked at him with much emo­tion, for they were great­ly ex­cit­ed by the strangeness of the sit­ua­tion. Fer­gu­son at last re­sumed:

“Here is my plan: We have two hun­dred pounds of bal­last left, since the bags we brought with us are still un­touched. I’ll sup­pose that this pris­on­er, who is ev­ident­ly ex­haust­ed by suf­fer­ing, weighs as much as one of us; there will still re­main six­ty pounds of bal­last to throw out, in case we should want to as­cend sud­den­ly.”

“How do you ex­pect to man­age the bal­loon?” asked Kennedy.

“This is the idea, Dick: you will ad­mit that if I can get to the pris­on­er, and throw out a quan­ti­ty of bal­last, equal to his weight, I shall have in no­wise al­tered the equi­lib­ri­um of the bal­loon. But, then, if I want to get a rapid as­cen­sion, so as to es­cape these sav­ages, I must em­ploy means more en­er­get­ic than the cylin­der. Well, then, in throw­ing out this over­plus of bal­last at a giv­en mo­ment, I am cer­tain to rise with great ra­pid­ity.”

“That’s plain enough.”

“Yes; but there is one draw­back: it con­sists in the fact that, in or­der to de­scend af­ter that, I should have to part with a quan­ti­ty of gas pro­por­tion­ate to the sur­plus bal­last that I had thrown out. Now, the gas is pre­cious; but we must not hag­gle over it when the life of a fel­low-​crea­ture is at stake.”

“You are right, sir; we must do ev­ery thing in our pow­er to save him.”

“Let us work, then, and get these bags all ar­ranged on the rim of the car, so that they may be thrown over­board at one move­ment.”

“But this dark­ness?”

“It hides our prepa­ra­tions, and will be dis­persed on­ly when they are fin­ished. Take care to have all our weapons close at hand. Per­haps we may have to fire; so we have one shot in the ri­fle; four for the two mus­kets; twelve in the two re­volvers; or sev­en­teen in all, which might be fired in a quar­ter of a minute. But per­haps we shall not have to re­sort to all this noisy work. Are you ready?”

“We’re ready,” re­spond­ed Joe.

The sacks were placed as re­quest­ed, and the arms were put in good or­der.

“Very good!” said the doc­tor. “Have an eye to ev­ery thing. Joe will see to throw­ing out the bal­last, and Dick will car­ry off the pris­on­er; but let noth­ing be done un­til I give the word. Joe will first de­tach the an­chor, and then quick­ly make his way back to the car.”

Joe let him­self slide down by the rope; and, in a few mo­ments, reap­peared at his post; while the bal­loon, thus lib­er­at­ed, hung al­most mo­tion­less in the air.

In the mean time the doc­tor as­sured him­self of the pres­ence of a suf­fi­cient quan­ti­ty of gas in the mix­ing-​tank to feed the cylin­der, if nec­es­sary, with­out there be­ing any need of re­sort­ing for some time to the Buntzen bat­tery. He then took out the two per­fect­ly-​iso­lat­ed con­duct­ing-​wires, which served for the de­com­po­si­tion of the wa­ter, and, search­ing in his trav­el­ling-​sack, brought forth two pieces of char­coal, cut down to a sharp point, and fixed one at the end of each wire.

His two friends looked on, with­out know­ing what he was about, but they kept per­fect­ly silent. When the doc­tor had fin­ished, he stood up erect in the car, and, tak­ing the two pieces of char­coal, one in each hand, drew their points near­ly to­geth­er.

In a twin­kling, an in­tense and daz­zling light was pro­duced, with an in­sup­port­able glow be­tween the two point­ed ends of char­coal, and a huge jet of elec­tric ra­di­ance lit­er­al­ly broke the dark­ness of the night.

“Oh!” ejac­ulat­ed the as­ton­ished friends.

“Not a word!” cau­tioned the doc­tor.