Five Weeks in a Balloon

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIFTH.

What hap­pened to Joe.–The Is­land of the Bid­diom­ahs.–The Ado­ra­tion shown him.–The Is­land that sank.–The Shores of the Lake.–The Tree of the Ser­pents.–The Foot-​Tramp.–Ter­ri­ble Suf­fer­ing.–Mosquitoes and Ants.–Hunger.–The Vic­to­ria seen.–She dis­ap­pears.–The Swamp. –One Last De­spair­ing Cry.

What had be­come of Joe, while his mas­ter was thus vain­ly seek­ing for him?

When he had dashed head­long in­to the lake, his first move­ment on com­ing to the sur­face was to raise his eyes and look up­ward. He saw the Vic­to­ria al­ready risen far above the wa­ter, still rapid­ly as­cend­ing and grow­ing small­er and small­er. It was soon caught in a rapid cur­rent and dis­ap­peared to the north­ward. His mas­ter–both his friends were saved!

“How lucky it was,” thought he, “that I had that idea to throw my­self out in­to the lake! Mr. Kennedy would soon have jumped at it, and he would not have hes­itat­ed to do as I did, for noth­ing’s more nat­ural than for one man to give him­self up to save two oth­ers. That’s math­emat­ics!”

Sat­is­fied on this point, Joe be­gan to think of him­self. He was in the mid­dle of a vast lake, sur­round­ed by tribes un­known to him, and prob­ably fe­ro­cious. All the greater rea­son why he should get out of the scrape by de­pend­ing on­ly on him­self. And so he gave him­self no far­ther con­cern about it.

Be­fore the at­tack by the birds of prey, which, ac­cord­ing to him, had be­haved like re­al con­dors, he had no­ticed an is­land on the hori­zon, and de­ter­min­ing to reach it, if pos­si­ble, he put forth all his knowl­edge and skill in the art of swim­ming, af­ter hav­ing re­lieved him­self of the most trou­ble­some part of his cloth­ing. The idea of a stretch of five or six miles by no means dis­con­cert­ed him; and there­fore, so long as he was in the open lake, he thought on­ly of strik­ing out straight ahead and man­ful­ly.

In about an hour and a half the dis­tance be­tween him and the is­land had great­ly di­min­ished.

But as he ap­proached the land, a thought, at first fleet­ing and then tena­cious, arose in his mind. He knew that the shores of the lake were fre­quent­ed by huge al­li­ga­tors, and was well aware of the vo­rac­ity of those mon­sters.

Now, no mat­ter how much he was in­clined to find ev­ery thing in this world quite nat­ural, the wor­thy fel­low was no lit­tle dis­turbed by this re­flec­tion. He feared great­ly lest white flesh like his might be par­tic­ular­ly ac­cept­able to the dread­ed brutes, and ad­vanced on­ly with ex­treme pre­cau­tion, his eyes on the alert on both sides and all around him. At length, he was not more than one hun­dred yards from a bank, cov­ered with green trees, when a puff of air strong­ly im­preg­nat­ed with a musky odor reached him.

“There!” said he to him­self, “just what I ex­pect­ed. The crocodile isn’t far off!”

With this he dived swift­ly, but not suf­fi­cient­ly so to avoid com­ing in­to con­tact with an enor­mous body, the scaly sur­face of which scratched him as he passed. He thought him­self lost and swam with des­per­ate en­er­gy. Then he rose again to the top of the wa­ter, took breath and dived once more. Thus passed a few min­utes of un­speak­able an­guish, which all his phi­los­ophy could not over­come, for he thought, all the while, that he heard be­hind him the sound of those huge jaws ready to snap him up for­ev­er. In this state of mind he was strik­ing out un­der the wa­ter as noise­less­ly as pos­si­ble when he felt him­self seized by the arm and then by the waist.

Poor Joe! he gave one last thought to his mas­ter; and be­gan to strug­gle with all the en­er­gy of de­spair, feel­ing him­self the while drawn along, but not to­ward the bot­tom of the lake, as is the habit of the crocodile when about to de­vour its prey, but to­ward the sur­face.

So soon as he could get breath and look around him, he saw that he was be­tween two na­tives as black as ebony, who held him, with a firm gripe, and ut­tered strange cries.

“Ha!” said Joe, “blacks in­stead of crocodiles! Well, I pre­fer it as it is; but how in the mis­chief dare these fel­lows go in bathing in such places?”

Joe was not aware that the in­hab­itants of the is­lands of Lake Tchad, like many oth­er ne­gro tribes, plunge with im­puni­ty in­to sheets of wa­ter in­fest­ed with crocodiles and cay­mans, and with­out trou­bling their heads about them. The am­phibi­ous denizens of this lake en­joy the well-​de­served rep­uta­tion of be­ing quite in­of­fen­sive.

But had not Joe es­caped one per­il on­ly to fall in­to an­oth­er? That was a ques­tion which he left events to de­cide; and, since he could not do oth­er­wise, he al­lowed him­self to be con­duct­ed to the shore with­out man­ifest­ing any alarm.

“Ev­ident­ly,” thought he, “these chaps saw the Vic­to­ria skim­ming the wa­ters of the lake, like a mon­ster of the air. They were the dis­tant wit­ness­es of my tum­ble, and they can’t fail to have some re­spect for a man that fell from the sky! Let them have their own way, then.”

Joe was at this stage of his med­ita­tions, when he was land­ed amid a yelling crowd of both sex­es, and all ages and sizes, but not of all col­ors. In fine, he was sur­round­ed by a tribe of Bid­diom­ahs as black as jet. Nor had he to blush for the scant­iness of his cos­tume, for he saw that he was in “un­dress” in the high­est style of that coun­try.

But be­fore he had time to form an ex­act idea of the sit­ua­tion, there was no mis­tak­ing the ag­ita­tion of which he in­stant­ly be­came the ob­ject, and this soon en­abled him to pluck up courage, al­though the ad­ven­ture of Kazah did come back rather vivid­ly to his mem­ory.

“I fore­see that they are go­ing to make a god of me again,” thought he, “some son of the moon most like­ly. Well, one trade’s as good as an­oth­er when a man has no choice. The main thing is to gain time. Should the Vic­to­ria pass this way again, I’ll take ad­van­tage of my new po­si­tion to treat my wor­ship­pers here to a mir­acle when I go sail­ing up in­to the sky!”

While Joe’s thoughts were run­ning thus, the throng pressed around him. They pros­trat­ed them­selves be­fore him; they howled; they felt him; they be­came even an­noy­ing­ly fa­mil­iar; but at the same time they had the con­sid­er­ation to of­fer him a su­perb ban­quet con­sist­ing of sour milk and rice pound­ed in hon­ey. The wor­thy fel­low, mak­ing the best of ev­ery thing, took one of the hearti­est lun­cheons he ev­er ate in his life, and gave his new ador­ers an ex­alt­ed idea of how the gods tuck away their food up­on grand oc­ca­sions.

When evening came, the sor­cer­ers of the is­land took him re­spect­ful­ly by the hand, and con­duct­ed him to a sort of house sur­round­ed with tal­is­mans; but, as he was en­ter­ing it, Joe cast an un­easy look at the heaps of hu­man bones that lay scat­tered around this sanc­tu­ary. But he had still more time to think about them when he found him­self at last shut up in the cab­in.

Dur­ing the evening and through a part of the night, he heard fes­tive chant­ings, the re­ver­ber­ations of a kind of drum, and a clat­ter of old iron, which were very sweet, no doubt, to African ears. Then there were howl­ing cho­rus­es, ac­com­pa­nied by end­less dances by gangs of na­tives who cir­cled round and round the sa­cred hut with con­tor­tions and gri­maces.

Joe could catch the sound of this deaf­en­ing or­ches­tra, through the mud and reeds of which his cab­in was built; and per­haps un­der oth­er cir­cum­stances he might have been amused by these strange cer­emonies; but his mind was soon dis­turbed by quite dif­fer­ent and less agree­able re­flec­tions. Even look­ing at the bright side of things, he found it both stupid and sad to be left alone in the midst of this sav­age coun­try and among these wild tribes. Few trav­ellers who had pen­etrat­ed to these re­gions had ev­er again seen their na­tive land. More­over, could he trust to the wor­ship of which he saw him­self the ob­ject? He had good rea­son to be­lieve in the van­ity of hu­man great­ness; and he asked him­self whether, in this coun­try, ado­ra­tion did not some­times go to the length of eat­ing the ob­ject adored!

But, notwith­stand­ing this rather per­plex­ing prospect, af­ter some hours of med­ita­tion, fa­tigue got the bet­ter of his gloomy thoughts, and Joe fell in­to a pro­found slum­ber, which would have last­ed no doubt un­til sun­rise, had not a very un­ex­pect­ed sen­sa­tion of damp­ness awak­ened the sleep­er. Ere long this damp­ness be­came wa­ter, and that wa­ter gained so rapid­ly that it had soon mount­ed to Joe’s waist.

“What can this be?” said he; “a flood! a wa­ter-​spout! or a new tor­ture in­vent­ed by these blacks? Faith, though, I’m not go­ing to wait here till it’s up to my neck!”

And, so say­ing, he burst through the frail wall with a jog of his pow­er­ful shoul­der, and found him­self–where? –in the open lake! Is­land there was none. It had sunk dur­ing the night. In its place, the wa­tery im­men­si­ty of Lake Tchad!

“A poor coun­try for the land-​own­ers!” said Joe, once more vig­or­ous­ly re­sort­ing to his skill in the art of nata­tion.

One of those phe­nom­ena, which are by no means un­usu­al on Lake Tchad, had lib­er­at­ed our brave Joe. More than one is­land, that pre­vi­ous­ly seemed to have the so­lid­ity of rock, has been sub­merged in this way; and the peo­ple liv­ing along the shores of the main­land have had to pick up the un­for­tu­nate sur­vivors of these ter­ri­ble catas­tro­phes.

Joe knew noth­ing about this pe­cu­liar­ity of the re­gion, but he was none the less ready to prof­it by it. He caught sight of a boat drift­ing about, with­out oc­cu­pants, and was soon aboard of it. He found it to be but the trunk of a tree rude­ly hol­lowed out; but there were a cou­ple of pad­dles in it, and Joe, avail­ing him­self of a rapid cur­rent, al­lowed his craft to float along.

“But let us see where we are,” he said. “The po­lar-​star there, that does its work hon­or­ably in point­ing out the di­rec­tion due north to ev­ery­body else, will, most like­ly, do me that ser­vice.”

He dis­cov­ered, with sat­is­fac­tion, that the cur­rent was tak­ing him to­ward the north­ern shore of the lake, and he al­lowed him­self to glide with it. About two o’clock in the morn­ing he dis­em­barked up­on a promon­to­ry cov­ered with prick­ly reeds, that proved very pro­vok­ing and in­con­ve­nient even to a philoso­pher like him; but a tree grew there ex­press­ly to of­fer him a bed among its branch­es, and Joe climbed up in­to it for greater se­cu­ri­ty, and there, with­out sleep­ing much, how­ev­er, await­ed the dawn of day.

When morn­ing had come with that sud­den­ness which is pe­cu­liar to the equa­to­ri­al re­gions, Joe cast a glance at the tree which had shel­tered him dur­ing the last few hours, and be­held a sight that chilled the mar­row in his bones. The branch­es of the tree were lit­er­al­ly cov­ered with snakes and chameleons! The fo­liage ac­tu­al­ly was hid­den be­neath their coils, so that the be­hold­er might have fan­cied that he saw be­fore him a new kind of tree that bore rep­tiles for its leaves and fruit. And all this hor­ri­ble liv­ing mass writhed and twist­ed in the first rays of the morn­ing sun! Joe ex­pe­ri­enced a keen sen­sa­tion or ter­ror min­gled with dis­gust, as he looked at it, and he leaped pre­cip­itate­ly from the tree amid the hiss­ings of these new and un­wel­come bed­fel­lows.

“Now, there’s some­thing that I would nev­er have be­lieved!” said he.

He was not aware that Dr. Vo­gel’s last let­ters had made known this sin­gu­lar fea­ture of the shores of Lake Tchad, where rep­tiles are more nu­mer­ous than in any oth­er part of the world. But af­ter what he had just seen, Joe de­ter­mined to be more cir­cum­spect for the fu­ture; and, tak­ing his bear­ings by the sun, he set off afoot to­ward the north­east, avoid­ing with the ut­most care cab­ins, huts, hov­els, and dens of ev­ery de­scrip­tion, that might serve in any man­ner as a shel­ter for hu­man be­ings.

How of­ten his gaze was turned up­ward to the sky! He hoped to catch a glimpse, each time, of the Vic­to­ria; and, al­though he looked vain­ly dur­ing all that long, fa­tigu­ing day of sore foot-​trav­el, his con­fi­dent re­liance on his mas­ter re­mained undi­min­ished. Great en­er­gy of char­ac­ter was need­ed to en­able him thus to sus­tain the sit­ua­tion with phi­los­ophy. Hunger con­spired with fa­tigue to crush him, for a man’s sys­tem is not great­ly re­stored and for­ti­fied by a di­et of roots, the pith of plants, such as the Mele, or the fruit of the doum palm-​tree; and yet, ac­cord­ing to his own cal­cu­la­tions, Joe was en­abled to push on about twen­ty miles to the west­ward.

His body bore in scores of places the marks of the thorns with which the lake-​reeds, the aca­cias, the mi­mosas, and oth­er wild shrub­bery through which he had to force his way, are thick­ly stud­ded; and his torn and bleed­ing feet ren­dered walk­ing both painful and dif­fi­cult. But at length he man­aged to re­act against all these suf­fer­ings; and when evening came again, he re­solved to pass the night on the shores of Lake Tchad.

There he had to en­dure the bites of myr­iads of in­sects –gnats, mosquitoes, ants half an inch long, lit­er­al­ly cov­ered the ground; and, in less than two hours, Joe had not a rag re­main­ing of the gar­ments that had cov­ered him, the in­sects hav­ing de­voured them! It was a ter­ri­ble night, that did not yield our ex­haust­ed trav­eller an hour of sleep. Dur­ing all this time the wild-​boars and na­tive buf­faloes, reen­forced by the ajoub–a very dan­ger­ous species of laman­tine –car­ried on their fe­ro­cious rev­els in the bush­es and un­der the wa­ters of the lake, fill­ing the night with a hideous con­cert. Joe dared scarce­ly breathe. Even his courage and cool­ness had hard work to bear up against so ter­ri­ble a sit­ua­tion.

At length, day came again, and Joe sprang to his feet pre­cip­itate­ly; but judge of the loathing he felt when he saw what species of crea­ture had shared his couch–a toad!–but a toad five inch­es in length, a mon­strous, re­pul­sive spec­imen of ver­min that sat there star­ing at him with huge round eyes. Joe felt his stom­ach re­volt at the sight, and, re­gain­ing a lit­tle strength from the in­ten­si­ty of his re­pug­nance, he rushed at the top of his speed and plunged in­to the lake. This sud­den bath some­what al­layed the pangs of the itch­ing that tor­tured his whole body; and, chew­ing a few leaves, he set forth res­olute­ly, again feel­ing an ob­sti­nate res­olu­tion in the act, for which he could hard­ly ac­count even to his own mind. He no longer seemed to have en­tire con­trol of his own acts, and, nev­er­the­less, he felt with­in him a strength su­pe­ri­or to de­spair.

How­ev­er, he be­gan now to suf­fer ter­ri­bly from hunger. His stom­ach, less re­signed than he was, re­belled, and he was obliged to fas­ten a ten­dril of wild-​vine tight­ly about his waist. For­tu­nate­ly, he could quench his thirst at any mo­ment, and, in re­call­ing the suf­fer­ings he had un­der­gone in the desert, he ex­pe­ri­enced com­par­ative re­lief in his ex­emp­tion from that oth­er dis­tress­ing want.

“What can have be­come of the Vic­to­ria?” he won­dered. “The wind blows from the north, and she should be car­ried back by it to­ward the lake. No doubt the doc­tor has gone to work to right her bal­ance, but yes­ter­day would have giv­en him time enough for that, so that may be to-​day–but I must act just as if I was nev­er to see him again. Af­ter all, if I on­ly get to one of the large towns on the lake, I’ll find my­self no worse off than the trav­ellers my mas­ter used to talk about. Why shouldn’t I work my way out of the scrape as well as they did? Some of them got back home again. Come, then! the deuce! Cheer up, my boy!”

Thus talk­ing to him­self and walk­ing on rapid­ly, Joe came right up­on a horde of na­tives in the very depths of the for­est, but he halt­ed in time and was not seen by them. The ne­groes were busy poi­son­ing ar­rows with the juice of the eu­phor­bium–a piece of work deemed a great af­fair among these sav­age tribes, and car­ried on with a sort of cer­emo­ni­al solem­ni­ty.

Joe, en­tire­ly mo­tion­less and even hold­ing his breath, was keep­ing him­self con­cealed in a thick­et, when, hap­pen­ing to raise his eyes, he saw through an open­ing in the fo­liage the wel­come ap­pari­tion of the bal­loon–the Vic­to­ria her­self–mov­ing to­ward the lake, at a height of on­ly about one hun­dred feet above him. But he could not make him­self heard; he dared not, could not make his friends even see him!

Tears came to his eyes, not of grief but of thank­ful­ness; his mas­ter was then seek­ing him; his mas­ter had not left him to per­ish! He would have to wait for the de­par­ture of the blacks; then he could quit his hid­ing-​place and run to­ward the bor­ders of Lake Tchad!

But by this time the Vic­to­ria was dis­ap­pear­ing in the dis­tant sky. Joe still de­ter­mined to wait for her; she would come back again, un­doubt­ed­ly. She did, in­deed, re­turn, but far­ther to the east­ward. Joe ran, ges­tic­ulat­ed, shout­ed–but all in vain! A strong breeze was sweep­ing the bal­loon away with a speed that de­prived him of all hope.

For the first time, en­er­gy and con­fi­dence aban­doned the heart of the un­for­tu­nate man. He saw that he was lost. He thought his mas­ter gone be­yond all prospect of re­turn. He dared no longer think; he would no longer re­flect!

Like a crazy man, his feet bleed­ing, his body cut and torn, he walked on dur­ing all that day and a part of the next night. He even dragged him­self along, some­times on his knees, some­times with his hands. He saw the mo­ment nigh when all his strength would fail, and noth­ing would be left to him but to sink up­on the ground and die.

Thus work­ing his way along, he at length found him­self close to a marsh, or what he knew would soon be­come a marsh, for night had set in some hours be­fore, and he fell by a sud­den mis­step in­to a thick, cling­ing mire. In spite of all his ef­forts, in spite of his des­per­ate strug­gles, he felt him­self sink­ing grad­ual­ly in the swampy ooze, and in a few min­utes he was buried to his waist.

“Here, then, at last, is death!” he thought, in agony, “and what a death!”

He now be­gan to strug­gle again, like a mad­man; but his ef­forts on­ly served to bury him deep­er in the tomb that the poor doomed lad was hol­low­ing for him­self; not a log of wood or a branch to buoy him up; not a reed to which he might cling! He felt that all was over! His eyes con­vul­sive­ly closed!

“Mas­ter! mas­ter!–Help!” were his last words; but his voice, de­spair­ing, un­aid­ed, half sti­fled al­ready by the ris­ing mire, died away fee­bly on the night.