Five Weeks in a Balloon

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOURTH.

The Hur­ri­cane.–A Forced De­par­ture.–Loss of an An­chor.–Melan­choly Re­flec­tions.–The Res­olu­tion adopt­ed.–The Sand-​Storm.–The Buried Car­avan.–A Con­trary yet Fa­vor­able Wind.–The Re­turn south­ward.–Kennedy at his Post.

At three o’clock in the morn­ing the wind was rag­ing. It beat down with such vi­olence that the Vic­to­ria could not stay near the ground with­out dan­ger. It was thrown al­most flat over up­on its side, and the reeds chafed the silk so rough­ly that it seemed as though they would tear it.

“We must be off, Dick,” said the doc­tor; “we can­not re­main in this sit­ua­tion.”

“But, doc­tor, what of Joe?”

“I am not like­ly to aban­don him. No, in­deed! and should the hur­ri­cane car­ry me a thou­sand miles to the north­ward, I will re­turn! But here we are en­dan­ger­ing the safe­ty of all.”

“Must we go with­out him?” asked the Scot, with an ac­cent of pro­found grief.

“And do you think, then,” re­joined Fer­gu­son, “that my heart does not bleed like your own? Am I not mere­ly obey­ing an im­pe­ri­ous ne­ces­si­ty?”

“I am en­tire­ly at your or­ders,” replied the hunter; “let us start!”

But their de­par­ture was sur­round­ed with un­usu­al dif­fi­cul­ty. The an­chor, which had caught very deeply, re­sist­ed all their ef­forts to dis­en­gage it; while the bal­loon, draw­ing in the op­po­site di­rec­tion, in­creased its ten­sion. Kennedy could not get it free. Be­sides, in his present po­si­tion, the ma­noeu­vre had be­come a very per­ilous one, for the Vic­to­ria threat­ened to break away be­fore he should be able to get in­to the car again.

The doc­tor, un­will­ing to run such a risk, made his friend get in­to his place, and re­signed him­self to the al­ter­na­tive of cut­ting the an­chor-​rope. The Vic­to­ria made one bound of three hun­dred feet in­to the air, and took her route di­rect­ly north­ward.

Fer­gu­son had no oth­er choice than to scud be­fore the storm. He fold­ed his arms, and soon be­came ab­sorbed in his own melan­choly re­flec­tions.

Af­ter a few mo­ments of pro­found si­lence, he turned to Kennedy, who sat there no less tac­iturn.

“We have, per­haps, been tempt­ing Prov­idence,” said he; “it does not be­long to man to un­der­take such a jour­ney!” –and a sigh of grief es­caped him as he spoke.

“It is but a few days,” replied the sports­man, “since we were con­grat­ulat­ing our­selves up­on hav­ing es­caped so many dan­gers! All three of us were shak­ing hands!”

“Poor Joe! kind­ly and ex­cel­lent dis­po­si­tion! brave and can­did heart! Daz­zled for a mo­ment by his sud­den dis­cov­ery of wealth, he will­ing­ly sac­ri­ficed his trea­sures! And now, he is far from us; and the wind is car­ry­ing us still far­ther away with re­sist­less speed!”

“Come, doc­tor, ad­mit­ting that he may have found refuge among the lake tribes, can he not do as the trav­ellers who vis­it­ed them be­fore us, did;–like Den­ham, like Barth? Both of those men got back to their own coun­try.”

“Ah! my dear Dick! Joe doesn’t know one word of the lan­guage; he is alone, and with­out re­sources. The trav­ellers of whom you speak did not at­tempt to go for­ward with­out send­ing many presents in ad­vance of them to the chiefs, and sur­round­ed by an es­cort armed and trained for these ex­pe­di­tions. Yet, they could not avoid suf­fer­ings of the worst de­scrip­tion! What, then, can you ex­pect the fate of our com­pan­ion to be? It is hor­ri­ble to think of, and this is one of the worst calami­ties that it has ev­er been my lot to en­dure!”

“But, we’ll come back again, doc­tor!”

“Come back, Dick? Yes, if we have to aban­don the bal­loon! if we should be forced to re­turn to Lake Tchad on foot, and put our­selves in com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the Sul­tan of Bornou! The Arabs can­not have re­tained a dis­agree­able re­mem­brance of the first Eu­ro­peans.”

“I will fol­low you, doc­tor,” replied the hunter, with em­pha­sis. “You may count up­on me! We would rather give up the idea of pros­ecut­ing this jour­ney than not re­turn. Joe for­got him­self for our sake; we will sac­ri­fice our­selves for his!”

This re­solve re­vived some hope in the hearts of these two men; they felt strong in the same in­spi­ra­tion. Fer­gu­son forth­with set ev­ery thing at work to get in­to a con­trary cur­rent, that might bring him back again to Lake Tchad; but this was im­prac­ti­ca­ble at that mo­ment, and even to alight was out of the ques­tion on ground com­plete­ly bare of trees, and with such a hur­ri­cane blow­ing.

The Vic­to­ria thus passed over the coun­try of the Tib­bous, crossed the Be­lad el Djerid, a desert of briers that forms the bor­der of the Soudan, and ad­vanced in­to the desert of sand streaked with the long tracks of the many car­avans that pass and repass there. The last line of veg­eta­tion was speed­ily lost in the dim south­ern hori­zon, not far from the prin­ci­pal oa­sis in this part of Africa, whose fifty wells are shad­ed by mag­nif­icent trees; but it was im­pos­si­ble to stop. An Arab en­camp­ment, tents of striped stuff, some camels, stretch­ing out their viper-​like heads and necks along the sand, gave life to this soli­tude, but the Vic­to­ria sped by like a shoot­ing-​star, and in this way tra­versed a dis­tance of six­ty miles in three hours, with­out Fer­gu­son be­ing able to check or guide her course.

“We can­not halt, we can­not alight!” said the doc­tor; “not a tree, not an in­equal­ity of the ground! Are we then to be driv­en clear across Sa­hara? Sure­ly, Heav­en is in­deed against us!”

He was ut­ter­ing these words with a sort of de­spair­ing rage, when sud­den­ly he saw the desert sands ris­ing aloft in the midst of a dense cloud of dust, and go whirling through the air, im­pelled by op­pos­ing cur­rents.

Amid this tor­na­do, an en­tire car­avan, dis­or­ga­nized, bro­ken, and over­thrown, was dis­ap­pear­ing be­neath an avalanche of sand. The camels, flung pell-​mell to­geth­er, were ut­ter­ing dull and piti­ful groans; cries and howls of de­spair were heard is­su­ing from that dusty and sti­fling cloud, and, from time to time, a par­ti-​col­ored gar­ment cut the chaos of the scene with its vivid hues, and the moan­ing and shriek­ing sound­ed over all, a ter­ri­ble ac­com­pa­ni­ment to this spec­ta­cle of de­struc­tion.

Ere long the sand had ac­cu­mu­lat­ed in com­pact mass­es; and there, where so re­cent­ly stretched a lev­el plain as far as the eye could see, rose now a ridgy line of hillocks, still mov­ing from be­neath–the vast tomb of an en­tire car­avan!

The doc­tor and Kennedy, pal­lid with emo­tion, sat trans­fixed by this fear­ful spec­ta­cle. They could no longer man­age their bal­loon, which went whirling round and round in con­tend­ing cur­rents, and re­fused to obey the dif­fer­ent di­la­tions of the gas. Caught in these ed­dies of the at­mo­sphere, it spun about with a ra­pid­ity that made their heads reel, while the car os­cil­lat­ed and swung to and fro vi­olent­ly at the same time. The in­stru­ments sus­pend­ed un­der the awning clat­tered to­geth­er as though they would be dashed to pieces; the pipes of the spi­ral bent to and fro, threat­en­ing to break at ev­ery in­stant; and the wa­ter-​tanks jos­tled and jarred with tremen­dous din. Al­though but two feet apart, our aero­nauts could not hear each oth­er speak, but with firm­ly-​clinched hands they clung con­vul­sive­ly to the cordage, and en­deav­ored to steady them­selves against the fury of the tem­pest.

Kennedy, with his hair blown wild­ly about his face, looked on with­out speak­ing; but the doc­tor had re­gained all his dar­ing in the midst of this dead­ly per­il, and not a sign of his emo­tion was be­trayed in his coun­te­nance, even when, af­ter a last vi­olent twirl, the Vic­to­ria stopped sud­den­ly in the midst of a most un­looked-​for calm; the north wind had abrupt­ly got the up­per hand, and now drove her back with equal ra­pid­ity over the route she had tra­versed in the morn­ing.

“Whith­er are we go­ing now?” cried Kennedy.

“Let us leave that to Prov­idence, my dear Dick; I was wrong in doubt­ing it. It knows bet­ter than we, and here we are, re­turn­ing to places that we had ex­pect­ed nev­er to see again!”

The sur­face of the coun­try, which had looked so flat and lev­el when they were com­ing, now seemed tossed and un­even, like the ocean-​bil­lows af­ter a storm; a long suc­ces­sion of hillocks, that had scarce­ly set­tled to their places yet, in­dent­ed the desert; the wind blew fu­ri­ous­ly, and the bal­loon fair­ly flew through the at­mo­sphere.

The di­rec­tion tak­en by our aero­nauts dif­fered some­what from that of the morn­ing, and thus about nine o’clock, in­stead of find­ing them­selves again near the bor­ders of Lake Tchad, they saw the desert still stretch­ing away be­fore them.

Kennedy re­marked the cir­cum­stance.

“It mat­ters lit­tle,” replied the doc­tor, “the im­por­tant point is to re­turn south­ward; we shall come across the towns of Bornou, Woud­die, or Kou­ka, and I should not hes­itate to halt there.”

“If you are sat­is­fied, I am con­tent,” replied the Scot, “but Heav­en grant that we may not be re­duced to cross the desert, as those un­for­tu­nate Arabs had to do! What we saw was fright­ful!”

“It of­ten hap­pens, Dick; these trips across the desert are far more per­ilous than those across the ocean. The desert has all the dan­gers of the sea, in­clud­ing the risk of be­ing swal­lowed up, and added there­to are un­en­durable fa­tigues and pri­va­tions.”

“I think the wind shows some symp­toms of mod­er­at­ing; the sand-​dust is less dense; the un­du­la­tions of the sur­face are di­min­ish­ing, and the sky is grow­ing clear­er.”

“So much the bet­ter! We must now re­con­noitre at­ten­tive­ly with our glass­es, and take care not to omit a sin­gle point.”

“I will look out for that, doc­tor, and not a tree shall be seen with­out my in­form­ing you of it.”

And, suit­ing the ac­tion to the word, Kennedy took his sta­tion, spy-​glass in hand, at the for­ward part of the car.