Five Weeks in a Balloon

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHTH.

An Evening of De­light.–Joe’s Culi­nary Per­for­mance.–A Dis­ser­ta­tion on Raw Meat.–The Nar­ra­tive of James Bruce.–Camp­ing out.–Joe’s Dreams.–The Barom­eter be­gins to fall.–The Barom­eter ris­es again.–Prepa­ra­tions for De­par­ture.–The Tem­pest.

The evening was love­ly, and our three friends en­joyed it in the cool shade of the mi­mosas, af­ter a sub­stan­tial repast, at which the tea and the punch were dealt out with no nig­gard­ly hand.

Kennedy had tra­versed the lit­tle do­main in all di­rec­tions. He had ran­sacked ev­ery thick­et and sat­is­fied him­self that the bal­loon par­ty were the on­ly liv­ing crea­tures in this ter­res­tri­al par­adise; so they stretched them­selves up­on their blan­kets and passed a peace­ful night that brought them for­get­ful­ness of their past suf­fer­ings.

On the mor­row, May 7th, the sun shone with all his splen­dor, but his rays could not pen­etrate the dense screen of the palm-​tree fo­liage, and as there was no lack of pro­vi­sions, the doc­tor re­solved to re­main where he was while wait­ing for a fa­vor­able wind.

Joe had con­veyed his portable kitchen to the oa­sis, and pro­ceed­ed to in­dulge in any num­ber of culi­nary com­bi­na­tions, us­ing wa­ter all the time with the most pro­fuse ex­trav­agance.

“What a strange suc­ces­sion of an­noy­ances and en­joy­ments!” mor­al­ized Kennedy. “Such abun­dance as this af­ter such pri­va­tions; such lux­ury af­ter such want! Ah! I near­ly went mad!”

“My dear Dick,” replied the doc­tor, “had it not been for Joe, you would not be sit­ting here, to-​day, dis­cours­ing on the in­sta­bil­ity of hu­man af­fairs.”

“Whole-​heart­ed friend!” said Kennedy, ex­tend­ing his hand to Joe.

“There’s no oc­ca­sion for all that,” re­spond­ed the lat­ter; “but you can take your re­venge some time, Mr. Kennedy, al­ways hop­ing though that you may nev­er have oc­ca­sion to do the same for me!”

“It’s a poor con­sti­tu­tion this of ours to suc­cumb to so lit­tle,” phi­los­ophized Dr. Fer­gu­son.

“So lit­tle wa­ter, you mean, doc­tor,” in­ter­posed Joe; “that el­ement must be very nec­es­sary to life.”

“Un­doubt­ed­ly, and per­sons de­prived of food hold out longer than those de­prived of wa­ter.”

“I be­lieve it. Be­sides, when needs must, one can eat any thing he comes across, even his fel­low-​crea­tures, al­though that must be a kind of food that’s pret­ty hard to di­gest.”

“The sav­ages don’t bog­gle much about it!” said Kennedy.

“Yes; but then they are sav­ages, and ac­cus­tomed to de­vour­ing raw meat; it’s some­thing that I’d find very dis­gust­ing, for my part.”

“It is dis­gust­ing enough,” said the doc­tor, “that’s a fact; and so much so, in­deed, that no­body be­lieved the nar­ra­tives of the ear­li­est trav­ellers in Africa who brought back word that many tribes on that con­ti­nent sub­sist­ed up­on raw meat, and peo­ple gen­er­al­ly re­fused to cred­it the state­ment. It was un­der such cir­cum­stances that a very sin­gu­lar ad­ven­ture be­fell James Bruce.”

“Tell it to us, doc­tor; we’ve time enough to hear it,” said Joe, stretch­ing him­self volup­tuous­ly on the cool greensward.

“By all means.–James Bruce was a Scotch­man, of Stir­ling­shire, who, be­tween 1768 and 1772, tra­versed all Abyssinia, as far as Lake Tyana, in search of the sources of the Nile. He af­ter­ward re­turned to Eng­land, but did not pub­lish an ac­count of his jour­neys un­til 1790. His state­ments were re­ceived with ex­treme in­creduli­ty, and such may be the re­cep­tion ac­cord­ed to our own. The man­ners and cus­toms of the Abyssini­ans seemed so dif­fer­ent from those of the En­glish, that no one would cred­it the de­scrip­tion of them. Among oth­er de­tails, Bruce had put for­ward the as­ser­tion that the tribes of East­ern Africa fed up­on raw flesh, and this set ev­ery­body against him. He might say so as much as he pleased; there was no one like­ly to go and see! One day, in a par­lor at Ed­in­burgh, a Scotch gen­tle­man took up the sub­ject in his pres­ence, as it had be­come the top­ic of dai­ly pleas­antry, and, in ref­er­ence to the eat­ing of raw flesh, said that the thing was nei­ther pos­si­ble nor true. Bruce made no re­ply, but went out and re­turned a few min­utes lat­er with a raw steak, sea­soned with pep­per and salt, in the African style.

“‘Sir,’ said he to the Scotch­man, ‘in doubt­ing my state­ments, you have gross­ly af­front­ed me; in be­liev­ing the thing to be im­pos­si­ble, you have been egre­gious­ly mis­tak­en; and, in proof there­of, you will now eat this beef-​steak raw, or you will give me in­stant sat­is­fac­tion!’ The Scotch­man had a whole­some dread of the brawny trav­eller, and DID eat the steak, al­though not with­out a good many wry faces. There­upon, with the ut­most cool­ness, James Bruce added: ‘Even ad­mit­ting, sir, that the thing were un­true, you will, at least, no longer main­tain that it is im­pos­si­ble.’”

“Well put in!” said Joe, “and if the Scotch­man found it lie heavy on his stom­ach, he got no more than he de­served. If, on our re­turn to Eng­land, they dare to doubt what we say about our trav­els–“

“Well, Joe, what would you do?”

“Why, I’ll make the doubters swal­low the pieces of the bal­loon, with­out ei­ther salt or pep­per!”

All burst out laugh­ing at Joe’s queer no­tions, and thus the day slipped by in pleas­ant chat. With re­turn­ing strength, hope had re­vived, and with hope came the courage to do and to dare. The past was oblit­er­at­ed in the pres­ence of the fu­ture with prov­iden­tial ra­pid­ity.

Joe would have been will­ing to re­main for­ev­er in this en­chant­ing asy­lum; it was the realm he had pic­tured in his dreams; he felt him­self at home; his mas­ter had to give him his ex­act lo­ca­tion, and it was with the gravest air imag­in­able that he wrote down on his tablets fif­teen de­grees forty-​three min­utes east lon­gi­tude, and eight de­grees thir­ty-​two min­utes north lat­itude.

Kennedy had but one re­gret, to wit, that he could not hunt in that minia­ture for­est, be­cause, ac­cord­ing to his ideas, there was a slight de­fi­cien­cy of fe­ro­cious wild beasts in it.

“But, my dear Dick,” said the doc­tor, “haven’t you rather a short mem­ory? How about the li­on and the li­oness?”

“Oh, that!” he ejac­ulat­ed with the con­tempt of a thor­ough-​bred sports­man for game al­ready killed. “But the fact is, that find­ing them here would lead one to sup­pose that we can’t be far from a more fer­tile coun­try.”

“It don’t prove much, Dick, for those an­imals, when goad­ed by hunger or thirst, will trav­el long dis­tances, and I think that, to-​night, we had bet­ter keep a more vig­ilant look­out, and light fires, be­sides.”

“What, in such heat as this?” said Joe. “Well, if it’s nec­es­sary, we’ll have to do it, but I do think it a re­al pity to burn this pret­ty grove that has been such a com­fort to us!”

“Oh! above all things, we must take the ut­most care not to set it on fire,” replied the doc­tor, “so that oth­ers in the same strait as our­selves may some day find shel­ter here in the mid­dle of the desert.”

“I’ll be very care­ful, in­deed, doc­tor; but do you think that this oa­sis is known?”

“Un­doubt­ed­ly; it is a halt­ing-​place for the car­avans that fre­quent the cen­tre of Africa, and a vis­it from one of them might be any thing but pleas­ant to you, Joe.”

“Why, are there any more of those ras­cal­ly Nyam-​Nyams around here?”

“Cer­tain­ly; that is the gen­er­al name of all the neigh­bor­ing tribes, and, un­der the same cli­mates, the same races are like­ly to have sim­ilar man­ners and cus­toms.”

“Pah!” said Joe, “but, af­ter all, it’s nat­ural enough. If sav­ages had the ways of gen­tle­men, where would be the dif­fer­ence? By George, these fine fel­lows wouldn’t have to be coaxed long to eat the Scotch­man’s raw steak, nor the Scotch­man ei­ther, in­to the bar­gain!”

With this very sen­si­ble ob­ser­va­tion, Joe be­gan to get ready his fire­wood for the night, mak­ing just as lit­tle of it as pos­si­ble. For­tu­nate­ly, these pre­cau­tions were su­per­flu­ous; and each of the par­ty, in his turn, dropped off in­to the sound­est slum­ber.

On the next day the weath­er still showed no sign of change, but kept pro­vok­ing­ly and ob­sti­nate­ly fair. The bal­loon re­mained mo­tion­less, with­out any os­cil­la­tion to be­tray a breath of wind.

The doc­tor be­gan to get un­easy again. If their stay in the desert were to be pro­longed like this, their pro­vi­sions would give out. Af­ter near­ly per­ish­ing for want of wa­ter, they would, at last, have to starve to death!

But he took fresh courage as he saw the mer­cury fall con­sid­er­ably in the barom­eter, and no­ticed ev­ident signs of an ear­ly change in the at­mo­sphere. He there­fore re­solved to make all his prepa­ra­tions for a start, so as to avail him­self of the first op­por­tu­ni­ty. The feed­ing-​tank and the wa­ter-​tank were both com­plete­ly filled.

Then he had to reestab­lish the equi­lib­ri­um of the bal­loon, and Joe was obliged to part with an­oth­er con­sid­er­able por­tion of his pre­cious quartz. With re­stored health, his am­bi­tious no­tions had come back to him, and he made more than one wry face be­fore obey­ing his mas­ter; but the lat­ter con­vinced him that he could not car­ry so con­sid­er­able a weight with him through the air, and gave him his choice be­tween the wa­ter and the gold. Joe hes­itat­ed no longer, but flung out the req­ui­site quan­ti­ty of his much-​prized ore up­on the sand.

“The next peo­ple who come this way,” he re­marked, “will be rather sur­prised to find a for­tune in such a place.”

“And sup­pose some learned trav­eller should come across these spec­imens, eh?” sug­gest­ed Kennedy.

“You may be cer­tain, Dick, that they would take him by sur­prise, and that he would pub­lish his as­ton­ish­ment in sev­er­al fo­lios; so that some day we shall hear of a won­der­ful de­posit of gold-​bear­ing quartz in the midst of the African sands!”

“And Joe there, will be the cause of it all!”

This idea of mys­ti­fy­ing some learned sage tick­led Joe huge­ly, and made him laugh.

Dur­ing the rest of the day the doc­tor vain­ly kept on the watch for a change of weath­er. The tem­per­ature rose, and, had it not been for the shade of the oa­sis, would have been in­sup­port­able. The ther­mome­ter marked a hun­dred and forty-​nine de­grees in the sun, and a ver­ita­ble rain of fire filled the air. This was the most in­tense heat that they had yet not­ed.

Joe ar­ranged their bivouac for that evening, as he had done for the pre­vi­ous night; and dur­ing the watch­es kept by the doc­tor and Kennedy there was no fresh in­ci­dent.

But, to­ward three o’clock in the morn­ing, while Joe was on guard, the tem­per­ature sud­den­ly fell; the sky be­came over­cast with clouds, and the dark­ness in­creased.

“Turn out!” cried Joe, arous­ing his com­pan­ions. “Turn out! Here’s the wind!”

“At last!” ex­claimed the doc­tor, ey­ing the heav­ens. “But it is a storm! The bal­loon! Let us has­ten to the bal­loon!”

It was high time for them to reach it. The Vic­to­ria was bend­ing to the force of the hur­ri­cane, and drag­ging along the car, the lat­ter graz­ing the sand. Had any por­tion of the bal­last been ac­ci­den­tal­ly thrown out, the bal­loon would have been swept away, and all hope of re­cov­er­ing it have been for­ev­er lost.

But fleet-​foot­ed Joe put forth his ut­most speed, and checked the car, while the bal­loon beat up­on the sand, at the risk of be­ing torn to pieces. The doc­tor, fol­lowed by Kennedy, leaped in, and lit his cylin­der, while his com­pan­ions threw out the su­per­flu­ous bal­last.

The trav­ellers took one last look at the trees of the oa­sis bow­ing to the force of the hur­ri­cane, and soon, catch­ing the wind at two hun­dred feet above the ground, dis­ap­peared in the gloom.