Five Weeks in a Balloon

CHAPTER THIRTIETH.

Mos­feia.–The Sheik.–Den­ham, Clap­per­ton, and Oud­ney.–Vo­gel.–The Cap­ital of Log­goum.–Toole.–Be­calmed above Ker­nak.–The Gov­er­nor and his Court. –The At­tack.–The In­cen­di­ary Pi­geons.

On the next day, May 11th, the Vic­to­ria re­sumed her ad­ven­tur­ous jour­ney. Her pas­sen­gers had the same con­fi­dence in her that a good sea­man has in his ship.

In ter­rif­ic hur­ri­canes, in trop­ical heats, when mak­ing dan­ger­ous de­par­tures, and de­scents still more dan­ger­ous, it had, at all times and in all places, come out safe­ly. It might al­most have been said that Fer­gu­son man­aged it with a wave of the hand; and hence, with­out know­ing in ad­vance, where the point of ar­rival would be, the doc­tor had no fears con­cern­ing the suc­cess­ful is­sue of his jour­ney. How­ev­er, in this coun­try of bar­bar­ians and fa­nat­ics, pru­dence obliged him to take the strictest pre­cau­tions. He there­fore coun­selled his com­pan­ions to have their eyes wide open for ev­ery thing and at all hours.

The wind drift­ed a lit­tle more to the north­ward, and, to­ward nine o’clock, they sight­ed the larg­er city of Mos­feia, built up­on an em­inence which was it­self en­closed be­tween two lofty moun­tains. Its po­si­tion was im­preg­nable, a nar­row road run­ning be­tween a marsh and a thick wood be­ing the on­ly chan­nel of ap­proach to it.

At the mo­ment of which we write, a sheik, ac­com­pa­nied by a mount­ed es­cort, and clad in a garb of bril­liant col­ors, pre­ced­ed by couri­ers and trum­peters, who put aside the boughs of the trees as he rode up, was mak­ing his grand en­try in­to the place.

The doc­tor low­ered the bal­loon in or­der to get a bet­ter look at this cav­al­cade of na­tives; but, as the bal­loon grew larg­er to their eyes, they be­gan to show symp­toms of in­tense af­fright, and at length made off in dif­fer­ent di­rec­tions as fast as their legs and those of their hors­es could car­ry them.

The sheik alone did not budge an inch. He mere­ly grasped his long mus­ket, cocked it, and proud­ly wait­ed in si­lence. The doc­tor came on to with­in a hun­dred and fifty feet of him, and then, with his round­est and fullest voice, salut­ed him cour­te­ous­ly in the Ara­bic tongue.

But, up­on hear­ing these words falling, as it seemed, from the sky, the sheik dis­mount­ed and pros­trat­ed him­self in the dust of the high­way, where the doc­tor had to leave him, find­ing it im­pos­si­ble to di­vert him from his ado­ra­tion.

“Un­ques­tion­ably,” Fer­gu­son re­marked, “those peo­ple take us for su­per­nat­ural be­ings. When Eu­ro­peans came among them for the first time, they were mis­tak­en for crea­tures of a high­er race. When this sheik comes to speak of to-​day’s meet­ing, he will not fail to em­bel­lish the cir­cum­stance with all the re­sources of an Arab imag­ina­tion. You may, there­fore, judge what an ac­count their leg­ends will give of us some day.”

“Not such a de­sir­able thing, af­ter all,” said the Scot, “in the point of view that af­fects civ­iliza­tion; it would be bet­ter to pass for mere men. That would give these ne­gro races a su­pe­ri­or idea of Eu­ro­pean pow­er.”

“Very good, my dear Dick; but what can we do about it? You might sit all day ex­plain­ing the mech­anism of a bal­loon to the sa­vants of this coun­try, and yet they would not com­pre­hend you, but would per­sist in as­crib­ing it to su­per­nat­ural aid.”

“Doc­tor, you spoke of the first time Eu­ro­peans vis­it­ed these re­gions. Who were the vis­itors?” in­quired Joe.

“My dear fel­low, we are now up­on the very track of Ma­jor Den­ham. It was at this very city of Mos­feia that he was re­ceived by the Sul­tan of Man­dara; he had quit­ted the Bornou coun­try; he ac­com­pa­nied the sheik in an ex­pe­di­tion against the Fel­latahs; he as­sist­ed in the at­tack on the city, which, with its ar­rows alone, brave­ly re­sist­ed the bul­lets of the Arabs, and put the sheik’s troops to flight. All this was but a pre­text for mur­ders, raids, and pil­lage. The ma­jor was com­plete­ly plun­dered and stripped, and had it not been for his horse, un­der whose stom­ach he clung with the skill of an In­di­an rid­er, and was borne with a head­long gal­lop from his bar­barous pur­suers, he nev­er could have made his way back to Kou­ka, the cap­ital of Bornou.”

“Who was this Ma­jor Den­ham?”

“A fear­less En­glish­man, who, be­tween 1822 and 1824, com­mand­ed an ex­pe­di­tion in­to the Bornou coun­try, in com­pa­ny with Cap­tain Clap­per­ton and Dr. Oud­ney. They set out from Tripoli in the month of March, reached Mour­zouk, the cap­ital of Fez, and, fol­low­ing the route which at a lat­er pe­ri­od Dr. Barth was to pur­sue on his way back to Eu­rope, they ar­rived, on the 16th of Febru­ary, 1823, at Kou­ka, near Lake Tchad. Den­ham made sev­er­al ex­plo­rations in Bornou, in Man­dara, and to the east­ern shores of the lake. In the mean time, on the 15th of De­cem­ber, 1823, Cap­tain Clap­per­ton and Dr. Oud­ney had pushed their way through the Soudan coun­try as far as Sack­atoo, and Oud­ney died of fa­tigue and ex­haus­tion in the town of Mur­mur.”

“This part of Africa has, there­fore, paid a heavy trib­ute of vic­tims to the cause of sci­ence,” said Kennedy.

“Yes, this coun­try is fa­tal to trav­ellers. We are mov­ing di­rect­ly to­ward the king­dom of Baghir­mi, which Vo­gel tra­versed in 1856, so as to reach the Wadai coun­try, where he dis­ap­peared. This young man, at the age of twen­ty-​three, had been sent to co­op­er­ate with Dr. Barth. They met on the 1st of De­cem­ber, 1854, and there­upon com­menced his ex­plo­rations of the coun­try. To­ward 1856, he an­nounced, in the last let­ters re­ceived from him, his in­ten­tion to re­con­noitre the king­dom of Wadai, which no Eu­ro­pean had yet pen­etrat­ed. It ap­pears that he got as far as Wara, the cap­ital, where, ac­cord­ing to some ac­counts, he was made pris­on­er, and, ac­cord­ing to oth­ers, was put to death for hav­ing at­tempt­ed to as­cend a sa­cred moun­tain in the en­vi­rons. But, we must not too light­ly ad­mit the death of trav­ellers, since that does away with the ne­ces­si­ty of go­ing in search of them. For in­stance, how of­ten was the death of Dr. Barth re­port­ed, to his own great an­noy­ance! It is, there­fore, very pos­si­ble that Vo­gel may still be held as a pris­on­er by the Sul­tan of Wadai, in the hope of ob­tain­ing a good ran­som for him.

“Baron de Neimans was about start­ing for the Wadai coun­try when he died at Cairo, in 1855; and we now know that De Heuglin has set out on Vo­gel’s track with the ex­pe­di­tion sent from Leip­sic, so that we shall soon be ac­cu­rate­ly in­formed as to the fate of that young and in­ter­est­ing ex­plor­er.”*

* Since the doc­tor’s de­par­ture, let­ters writ­ten from El’Obeid by Mr. Muntzinger, the new­ly-​ap­point­ed head of the ex­pe­di­tion, un­for­tu­nate­ly place the death of Vo­gel be­yond a doubt.

Mos­feia had dis­ap­peared from the hori­zon long ere this, and the Man­dara coun­try was de­vel­op­ing to the gaze of our aero­nauts its as­ton­ish­ing fer­til­ity, with its forests of aca­cias, its lo­cust-​trees cov­ered with red flow­ers, and the herba­ceous plants of its fields of cot­ton and in­di­go trees. The riv­er Shari, which eighty miles far­ther on rolled its im­petu­ous wa­ters in­to Lake Tchad, was quite dis­tinct­ly seen.

The doc­tor got his com­pan­ions to trace its course up­on the maps drawn by Dr. Barth.

“You per­ceive,” said he, “that the labors of this sa­vant have been con­duct­ed with great pre­ci­sion; we are mov­ing di­rect­ly to­ward the Log­goum re­gion, and per­haps to­ward Ker­nak, its cap­ital. It was there that poor Toole died, at the age of scarce­ly twen­ty-​two. He was a young En­glish­man, an en­sign in the 80th reg­iment, who, a few weeks be­fore, had joined Ma­jor Den­ham in Africa, and it was not long ere he there met his death. Ah! this vast coun­try might well be called the grave­yard of Eu­ro­pean trav­ellers.”

Some boats, fifty feet long, were de­scend­ing the cur­rent of the Shari. The Vic­to­ria, then one thou­sand feet above the soil, hard­ly at­tract­ed the at­ten­tion of the na­tives; but the wind, which un­til then had been blow­ing with a cer­tain de­gree of strength, was falling off.

“Is it pos­si­ble that we are to be caught in an­oth­er dead calm?” sighed the doc­tor.

“Well, we’ve no lack of wa­ter, nor the desert to fear, any­how, mas­ter,” said Joe.

“No; but there are races here still more to be dread­ed.”

“Why!” said Joe, again, “there’s some­thing like a town.”

“That is Ker­nak. The last puffs of the breeze are waft­ing us to it, and, if we choose, we can take an ex­act plan of the place.”

“Shall we not go near­er to it?” asked Kennedy.

“Noth­ing eas­ier, Dick! We are right over it. Al­low me to turn the stop­cock of the cylin­der, and we’ll not be long in de­scend­ing.”

Half an hour lat­er the bal­loon hung mo­tion­less about two hun­dred feet from the ground.

“Here we are!” said the doc­tor, “near­er to Ker­nak than a man would be to Lon­don, if he were perched in the cupo­la of St. Paul’s. So we can take a sur­vey at our ease.”

“What is that tick-​tack­ing sound that we hear on all sides?”

Joe looked at­ten­tive­ly, and at length dis­cov­ered that the noise they heard was pro­duced by a num­ber of weavers beat­ing cloth stretched in the open air, on large trunks of trees.

The cap­ital of Log­goum could then be seen in its en­tire ex­tent, like an un­rolled chart. It is re­al­ly a city with straight rows of hous­es and quite wide streets. In the midst of a large open space there was a slave-​mar­ket, at­tend­ed by a great crowd of cus­tomers, for the Man­dara wom­en, who have ex­treme­ly small hands and feet, are in ex­cel­lent re­quest, and can be sold at lu­cra­tive rates.

At the sight of the Vic­to­ria, the scene so of­ten pro­duced oc­curred again. At first there were out­cries, and then fol­lowed gen­er­al stu­pe­fac­tion; busi­ness was aban­doned; work was flung aside, and all noise ceased. The aero­nauts re­mained as they were, com­plete­ly mo­tion­less, and lost not a de­tail of the pop­ulous city. They even went down to with­in six­ty feet of the ground.

Here­upon the Gov­er­nor of Log­goum came out from his res­idence, dis­play­ing his green stan­dard, and ac­com­pa­nied by his mu­si­cians, who blew on hoarse buf­fa­lo-​horns, as though they would split their cheeks or any thing else, ex­cept­ing their own lungs. The crowd at once gath­ered around him. In the mean while Dr. Fer­gu­son tried to make him­self heard, but in vain.

This pop­ula­tion looked like proud and in­tel­li­gent peo­ple, with their high fore­heads, their al­most aquiline noses, and their curl­ing hair; but the pres­ence of the Vic­to­ria trou­bled them great­ly. Horse­men could be seen gal­lop­ing in all di­rec­tions, and it soon be­came ev­ident that the gov­er­nor’s troops were as­sem­bling to op­pose so ex­traor­di­nary a foe. Joe wore him­self out wav­ing hand­ker­chiefs of ev­ery col­or and shape to them; but his ex­er­tions were all to no pur­pose.

How­ev­er, the sheik, sur­round­ed by his court, pro­claimed si­lence, and pro­nounced a dis­course, of which the doc­tor could not un­der­stand a word. It was Ara­bic, mixed with Baghir­mi. He could make out enough, how­ev­er, by the uni­ver­sal lan­guage of ges­tures, to be aware that he was re­ceiv­ing a very po­lite in­vi­ta­tion to de­part. In­deed, he would have asked for noth­ing bet­ter, but for lack of wind, the thing had be­come im­pos­si­ble. His non­com­pli­ance, there­fore, ex­as­per­at­ed the gov­er­nor, whose courtiers and at­ten­dants set up a fu­ri­ous howl to en­force im­me­di­ate obe­di­ence on the part of the aeri­al mon­ster.

They were odd-​look­ing fel­lows those courtiers, with their five or six shirts swathed around their bod­ies! They had enor­mous stom­achs, some of which ac­tu­al­ly seemed to be ar­ti­fi­cial. The doc­tor sur­prised his com­pan­ions by in­form­ing them that this was the way to pay court to the sul­tan. The ro­tun­di­ty of the stom­ach in­di­cat­ed the am­bi­tion of its pos­ses­sor. These cor­pu­lent gen­try ges­tic­ulat­ed and bawled at the top of their voic­es–one of them par­tic­ular­ly dis­tin­guish­ing him­self above the rest–to such an ex­tent, in­deed, that he must have been a prime min­is­ter–at least, if the dis­tur­bance he made was any cri­te­ri­on of his rank. The com­mon rab­ble of dusky denizens unit­ed their howl­ings with the up­roar of the court, re­peat­ing their ges­tic­ula­tions like so many mon­keys, and there­by pro­duc­ing a sin­gle and in­stan­ta­neous move­ment of ten thou­sand arms at one time.

To these means of in­tim­ida­tion, which were present­ly deemed in­suf­fi­cient, were added oth­ers still more formidable. Sol­diers, armed with bows and ar­rows, were drawn up in line of bat­tle; but by this time the bal­loon was ex­pand­ing, and ris­ing qui­et­ly be­yond their reach. Up­on this the gov­er­nor seized a mus­ket and aimed it at the bal­loon; but, Kennedy, who was watch­ing him, shat­tered the up­lift­ed weapon in the sheik’s grasp.

At this un­ex­pect­ed blow there was a gen­er­al rout. Ev­ery moth­er’s son of them scam­pered for his dwelling with the ut­most celer­ity, and stayed there, so that the streets of the town were ab­so­lute­ly de­sert­ed for the re­main­der of that day.

Night came, and not a breath of wind was stir­ring. The aero­nauts had to make up their minds to re­main mo­tion­less at the dis­tance of but three hun­dred feet above the ground. Not a fire or light shone in the deep gloom, and around reigned the si­lence of death; but the doc­tor on­ly re­dou­bled his vig­ilance, as this ap­par­ent qui­et might con­ceal some snare.

And he had rea­son to be watch­ful. About mid­night, the whole city seemed to be in a blaze. Hun­dreds of streaks of flame crossed each oth­er, and shot to and fro in the air like rock­ets, form­ing a reg­ular net­work of fire.

“That’s re­al­ly cu­ri­ous!” said the doc­tor, some­what puz­zled to make out what it meant.

“By all that’s glo­ri­ous!” shout­ed Kennedy, “it looks as if the fire were as­cend­ing and com­ing up to­ward us!”

And, sure enough, with an ac­com­pa­ni­ment of mus­ket-​shots, yelling, and din of ev­ery de­scrip­tion, the mass of fire was, in­deed, mount­ing to­ward the Vic­to­ria. Joe got ready to throw out bal­last, and Fer­gu­son was not long at guess­ing the truth. Thou­sands of pi­geons, their tails gar­nished with com­bustibles, had been set loose and driv­en to­ward the Vic­to­ria; and now, in their ter­ror, they were fly­ing high up, zigzag­ging the at­mo­sphere with lines of fire. Kennedy was prepar­ing to dis­charge all his bat­ter­ies in­to the mid­dle of the as­cend­ing mul­ti­tude, but what could he have done against such a num­ber­less army? The pi­geons were al­ready whisk­ing around the car; they were even sur­round­ing the bal­loon, the sides of which, re­flect­ing their il­lu­mi­na­tion, looked as though en­veloped with a net­work of fire.

The doc­tor dared hes­itate no longer; and, throw­ing out a frag­ment of quartz, he kept him­self be­yond the reach of these dan­ger­ous as­sailants; and, for two hours af­ter­ward, he could see them wan­der­ing hith­er and thith­er through the dark­ness of the night, un­til, lit­tle by lit­tle, their light di­min­ished, and they, one by one, died out.

“Now we may sleep in qui­et,” said the doc­tor.

“Not bad­ly got up for bar­bar­ians,” mused friend Joe, speak­ing his thoughts aloud.

“Oh, they em­ploy these pi­geons fre­quent­ly, to set fire to the thatch of hos­tile vil­lages; but this time the vil­lage mount­ed high­er than they could go.”

“Why, pos­itive­ly, a bal­loon need fear no en­emies!”

“Yes, in­deed, it may!” ob­ject­ed Fer­gu­son.

“What are they, then, doc­tor?”

“They are the care­less peo­ple in the car! So, my friends, let us have vig­ilance in all places and at all times.”