Five Weeks in a Balloon

CHAPTER THIRTY-SECOND.

The Cap­ital of Bornou.–The Is­lands of the Bid­diom­ahs.–The Con­dors.–The Doc­tor’s Anx­ieties.–His Pre­cau­tions.–An At­tack in Mid-​air.–The Bal­loon Cov­er­ing torn.–The Fall.–Sub­lime Self-​Sac­ri­fice.–The North­ern Coast of the Lake.

Since its ar­rival at Lake Tchad, the bal­loon had struck a cur­rent that edged it far­ther to the west­ward. A few clouds tem­pered the heat of the day, and, be­sides, a lit­tle air could be felt over this vast ex­panse of wa­ter; but about one o’clock, the Vic­to­ria, hav­ing slant­ed across this part of the lake, again ad­vanced over the land for a space of sev­en or eight miles.

The doc­tor, who was some­what vexed at first at this turn of his course, no longer thought of com­plain­ing when he caught sight of the city of Kou­ka, the cap­ital of Bornou. He saw it for a mo­ment, en­cir­cled by its walls of white clay, and a few rude­ly-​con­struct­ed mosques ris­ing clum­si­ly above that con­glom­er­ation of hous­es that look like play­ing-​dice, which form most Arab towns. In the court-​yards of the pri­vate dwellings, and on the pub­lic squares, grew palms and caoutchouc-​trees topped with a dome of fo­liage more than one hun­dred feet in breadth. Joe called at­ten­tion to the fact that these im­mense para­sols were in prop­er ac­cor­dance with the in­tense heat of the sun, and made there­on some pi­ous re­flec­tions which it were need­less to re­peat.

Kou­ka re­al­ly con­sists of two dis­tinct towns, sep­arat­ed by the “Den­dal,” a large boule­vard three hun­dred yards wide, at that hour crowd­ed with horse­men and foot pas­sen­gers. On one side, the rich quar­ter stands square­ly with its airy and lofty hous­es, laid out in reg­ular or­der; on the oth­er, is hud­dled to­geth­er the poor quar­ter, a mis­er­able col­lec­tion of low hov­els of a con­ical shape, in which a pover­ty-​strick­en mul­ti­tude veg­etate rather than live, since Kou­ka is nei­ther a trad­ing nor a com­mer­cial city.

Kennedy thought it looked some­thing like Ed­in­burgh, were that city ex­tend­ed on a plain, with its two dis­tinct bor­oughs.

But our trav­ellers had scarce­ly the time to catch even this glimpse of it, for, with the fick­le­ness that char­ac­ter­izes the air-​cur­rents of this re­gion, a con­trary wind sud­den­ly swept them some forty miles over the sur­face of Lake Tchad.

Then then were re­galed with a new spec­ta­cle. They could count the nu­mer­ous islets of the lake, in­hab­it­ed by the Bid­diom­ahs, a race of blood­thirsty and formidable pi­rates, who are as great­ly feared when neigh­bors as are the Touaregs of Sa­hara.

These es­timable peo­ple were in readi­ness to re­ceive the Vic­to­ria brave­ly with stones and ar­rows, but the bal­loon quick­ly passed their is­lands, flut­ter­ing over them, from one to the oth­er with but­ter­fly mo­tion, like a gi­gan­tic bee­tle.

At this mo­ment, Joe, who was scan­ning the hori­zon, said to Kennedy:

“There, sir, as you are al­ways think­ing of good sport, yon­der is just the thing for you!”

“What is it, Joe?”

“This time, the doc­tor will not dis­ap­prove of your shoot­ing.”

“But what is it?”

“Don’t you see that flock of big birds mak­ing for us?”

“Birds?” ex­claimed the doc­tor, snatch­ing his spy­glass.

“I see them,” replied Kennedy; “there are at least a dozen of them.”

“Four­teen, ex­act­ly!” said Joe.

“Heav­en grant that they may be of a kind suf­fi­cient­ly nox­ious for the doc­tor to let me peg away at them!”

“I should not ob­ject, but I would much rather see those birds at a dis­tance from us!”

“Why, are you afraid of those fowls?”

“They are con­dors, and of the largest size. Should they at­tack us–“

“Well, if they do, we’ll de­fend our­selves. We have a whole ar­se­nal at our dis­pos­al. I don’t think those birds are so very formidable.”

“Who can tell?” was the doc­tor’s on­ly re­mark.

Ten min­utes lat­er, the flock had come with­in gun­shot, and were mak­ing the air ring with their hoarse cries. They came right to­ward the Vic­to­ria, more ir­ri­tat­ed than fright­ened by her pres­ence.

“How they scream! What a noise!” said Joe.

“Per­haps they don’t like to see any­body poach­ing in their coun­try up in the air, or dar­ing to fly like them­selves!”

“Well, now, to tell the truth, when I take a good look at them, they are an ug­ly, fe­ro­cious set, and I should think them dan­ger­ous enough if they were armed with Pur­dy-​Moore ri­fles,” ad­mit­ted Kennedy.

“They have no need of such weapons,” said Fer­gu­son, look­ing very grave.

The con­dors flew around them in wide cir­cles, their flight grow­ing grad­ual­ly clos­er and clos­er to the bal­loon. They swept through the air in rapid, fan­tas­tic curves, oc­ca­sion­al­ly pre­cip­itat­ing them­selves head­long with the speed of a bul­let, and then break­ing their line of pro­jec­tion by an abrupt and dar­ing an­gle.

The doc­tor, much dis­qui­et­ed, re­solved to as­cend so as to es­cape this dan­ger­ous prox­im­ity. He there­fore di­lat­ed the hy­dro­gen in his bal­loon, and it rapid­ly rose.

But the con­dors mount­ed with him, ap­par­ent­ly de­ter­mined not to part com­pa­ny.

“They seem to mean mis­chief!” said the hunter, cock­ing his ri­fle.

And, in fact, they were swoop­ing near­er, and more than one came with­in fifty feet of them, as if de­fy­ing the fire-​arms.

“By George, I’m itch­ing to let them have it!” ex­claimed Kennedy.

“No, Dick; not now! Don’t ex­as­per­ate them need­less­ly. That would on­ly be ex­cit­ing them to at­tack us!”

“But I could soon set­tle those fel­lows!”

“You may think so, Dick. But you are wrong!”

“Why, we have a bul­let for each of them!”

“And sup­pose that they were to at­tack the up­per part of the bal­loon, what would you do? How would you get at them? Just imag­ine your­self in the pres­ence of a troop of li­ons on the plain, or a school of sharks in the open ocean! For trav­ellers in the air, this sit­ua­tion is just as dan­ger­ous.”

“Are you speak­ing se­ri­ous­ly, doc­tor?”

“Very se­ri­ous­ly, Dick.”

“Let us wait, then!”

“Wait! Hold your­self in readi­ness in case of an at­tack, but do not fire with­out my or­ders.”

The birds then col­lect­ed at a short dis­tance, yet to near that their naked necks, en­tire­ly bare of feath­ers, could be plain­ly seen, as they stretched them out with the ef­fort of their cries, while their gristly crests, gar­nished with a comb and gills of deep vi­olet, stood erect with rage. They were of the very largest size, their bod­ies be­ing more than three feet in length, and the low­er sur­face of their white wings glit­ter­ing in the sun­light. They might well have been con­sid­ered winged sharks, so strik­ing was their re­sem­blance to those fe­ro­cious rangers of the deep.

“They are fol­low­ing us!” said the doc­tor, as he saw them as­cend­ing with him, “and, mount as we may, they can fly still high­er!”

“Well, what are we to do?” asked Kennedy.

The doc­tor made no an­swer.

“Lis­ten, Samuel!” said the sports­man. “There are four­teen of those birds; we have sev­en­teen shots at our dis­pos­al if we dis­charge all our weapons. Have we not the means, then, to de­stroy them or dis­perse them? I will give a good ac­count of some of them!”

“I have no doubt of your skill, Dick; I look up­on all as dead that may come with­in range of your ri­fle, but I re­peat that, if they at­tack the up­per part of the bal­loon, you could not get a sight at them. They would tear the silk cov­er­ing that sus­tains us, and we are three thou­sand feet up in the air!”

At this mo­ment, one of the fe­ro­cious birds dart­ed right at the bal­loon, with out­stretched beak and claws, ready to rend it with ei­ther or both.

“Fire! fire at once!” cried the doc­tor.

He had scarce­ly ceased, ere the huge crea­ture, strick­en dead, dropped head­long, turn­ing over and over in space as he fell.

Kennedy had al­ready grasped one of the two-​bar­relled fowl­ing-​pieces and Joe was tak­ing aim with an­oth­er.

Fright­ened by the re­port, the con­dors drew back for a mo­ment, but they al­most in­stant­ly re­turned to the charge with ex­treme fury. Kennedy sev­ered the head of one from its body with his first shot, and Joe broke the wing of an­oth­er.

“On­ly eleven left,” said he.

There­upon the birds changed their tac­tics, and by com­mon con­sent soared above the bal­loon. Kennedy glanced at Fer­gu­son. The lat­ter, in spite of his im­per­turba­bil­ity, grew pale. Then en­sued a mo­ment of ter­ri­fy­ing si­lence. In the next they heard a harsh tear­ing noise, as of some­thing rend­ing the silk, and the car seemed to sink from be­neath the feet of our three aero­nauts.

“We are lost!” ex­claimed Fer­gu­son, glanc­ing at the barom­eter, which was now swift­ly ris­ing.

“Over with the bal­last!” he shout­ed, “over with it!”

And in a few sec­onds the last lumps of quartz had dis­ap­peared.

“We are still falling! Emp­ty the wa­ter-​tanks! Do you hear me, Joe? We are pitch­ing in­to the lake!”

Joe obeyed. The doc­tor leaned over and looked out. The lake seemed to come up to­ward him like a ris­ing tide. Ev­ery ob­ject around grew rapid­ly in size while they were look­ing at it. The car was not two hun­dred feet from the sur­face of Lake Tchad.

“The pro­vi­sions! the pro­vi­sions!” cried the doc­tor.

And the box con­tain­ing them was launched in­to space.

Their de­scent be­came less rapid, but the luck­less aero­nauts were still falling, and in­to the lake.

“Throw out some­thing–some­thing more!” cried the doc­tor.

“There is noth­ing more to throw!” was Kennedy’s de­spair­ing re­sponse.

“Yes, there is!” called Joe, and with a wave of the hand he dis­ap­peared like a flash, over the edge of the car.

“Joe! Joe!” ex­claimed the doc­tor, hor­ror-​strick­en.

The Vic­to­ria thus re­lieved re­sumed her as­cend­ing mo­tion, mount­ed a thou­sand feet in­to the air, and the wind, bury­ing it­self in the dis­in­flat­ed cov­er­ing, bore them away to­ward the north­ern part of the lake.

“Lost!” ex­claimed the sports­man, with a ges­ture of de­spair.

“Lost to save us!” re­spond­ed Fer­gu­son.

And these men, in­trepid as they were, felt the large tears stream­ing down their cheeks. They leaned over with the vain hope of see­ing some trace of their hero­ic com­pan­ion, but they were al­ready far away from him.

“What course shall we pur­sue?” asked Kennedy.

“Alight as soon as pos­si­ble, Dick, and then wait.”

Af­ter a sweep of some six­ty miles the Vic­to­ria halt­ed on a desert shore, on the north of the lake. The an­chors caught in a low tree and the sports­man fas­tened it se­cure­ly. Night came, but nei­ther Fer­gu­son nor Kennedy could find one mo­ment’s sleep.