Five Weeks in a Balloon by Jules Verne (ereader android .txt) 📕

“My cylinder? It is lit, as you perceive. But the balloon will not rise until you have thrown off a little ballast.”

Joe scratched his ear, picked up a piece of quartz, the smallest in the lot, weighed and reweighed it, and tossed it up and down in his hand. It was a fragment of about three or four pounds. At last he threw it out.

But the balloon did not budge.

“Humph!” said he; “we’re not going up yet.”

“Not yet,” said the doctor. “Keep on throwing.”

Kennedy laughed. Joe now threw out some ten pounds, but the balloon stood still.

Joe got very pale.

“Poor fellow!” said the doctor. “Mr. Kennedy, you and I weigh, unless I am mistaken, about four hundred pounds—so that you’ll have to get rid of at least that weight, since it was put in here to make up for us.”

“Throw away four hundred pounds!” said Joe, piteously.

“And some more with it, or we can’t rise. Come, courage, Joe!”

The brave fellow, heaving deep sighs, began at last to lighten the balloon; but, from time to time, he would stop, and ask:

“Are you going up?”

“No, not yet,” was the invariable response.

“It moves!” said he, at last.

“Keep on!” replied the doctor.

“It’s going up; I’m sure.”

“Keep on yet,” said Kennedy.

And Joe, picking up one more block, desperately tossed it out of the car. The balloon rose a hundred feet or so, and, aided by the cylinder, soon passed above the surrounding summits.

“Now, Joe,” resumed the doctor, “there still remains a handsome fortune for you; and, if we can only keep the rest of this with us until the end of our trip, there you are—rich for the balance of your days!”

Joe made no answer, but stretched himself out luxuriously on his heap of quartz.

“See, my dear Dick!” the doctor went on. “Just see the power of this metal over the cleverest lad in the world! What passions, what greed, what crimes, the knowledge of such a mine as that would cause! It is sad to think of it!”

By evening the balloon had made ninety miles to the westward, and was, in a direct line, fourteen hundred miles from Zanzibar.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOURTH.

The Wind dies away.—The Vicinity of the Desert.—The Mistake in the WaterSupply.—The Nights of the Equator.—Dr. Ferguson’s Anxieties. —The Situation flatly stated.—Energetic Replies of Kennedy and Joe. —One Night more.

The balloon, having been made fast to a solitary tree, almost completely dried up by the aridity of the region in which it stood, passed the night in perfect quietness; and the travellers were enabled to enjoy a little of the repose which they so greatly needed. The emotions of the day had left sad impressions on their minds.

Toward morning, the sky had resumed its brilliant purity and its heat. The balloon ascended, and, after several ineffectual attempts, fell into a current that, although not rapid, bore them toward the northwest.

“We are not making progress,” said the doctor. “If I am not mistaken, we have accomplished nearly half of our journey in ten days; but, at the rate at which we are going, it would take months to end it; and that is all the more vexatious, that we are threatened with a lack of water.”

“But we’ll find some,” said Joe. “It is not to be thought of that we shouldn’t discover some river, some stream, or pond, in all this vast extent of country.”

“I hope so.”

“Now don’t you think that it’s Joe’s cargo of stone that is keeping us back?”

Kennedy asked this question only to tease Joe; and he did so the more willingly because he had, for a moment, shared the poor lad’s hallucinations; but, not finding any thing in them, he had fallen back into the attitude of a strong-minded looker-on, and turned the affair off with a laugh.

Joe cast a mournful glance at him; but the doctor made no reply. He was thinking, not without secret terror, probably, of the vast solitudes of Sahara—for there whole weeks sometimes pass without the caravans meeting with a single spring of water. Occupied with these thoughts, he scrutinized every depression of the soil with the closest attention.

These anxieties, and the incidents recently occurring, had not been without their effect upon the spirits of our three travellers. They conversed less, and were more wrapt in their own thoughts.

Joe, clever lad as he was, seemed no longer the same person since his gaze had plunged into that ocean of gold. He kept entirely silent, and gazed incessantly upon the stony fragments heaped up in the car—worthless to-day, but of inestimable value to-morrow.

The appearance of this part of Africa was, moreover, quite calculated to inspire alarm: the desert was gradually expanding around them; not another village was to be seen—not even a collection of a few huts; and vegetation also was disappearing. Barely a few dwarf plants could now be noticed, like those on the wild heaths of Scotland; then came the first tract of grayish sand and flint, with here and there a lentisk tree and brambles. In the midst of this sterility, the rudimental carcass of the Globe appeared in ridges of sharply-jutting rock. These symptoms of a totally dry and barren region greatly disquieted Dr. Ferguson.

It seemed as though no caravan had ever braved this desert expanse, or it would have left visible traces of its encampments, or the whitened bones of men and animals. But nothing of the kind was to be seen, and the aeronauts felt that, ere long, an immensity of sand would cover the whole of this desolate region.

However, there was no going back; they must go forward; and, indeed, the doctor asked for nothing better; he would even have welcomed a tempest to carry him beyond this country. But, there was not a cloud in the sky. At the close of the day, the balloon had not made thirty miles.

If there had been no lack of water! But, there remained only three gallons in all! The doctor put aside one gallon, destined to quench the burning thirst that a heat of ninety degrees rendered intolerable. Two gallons only then remained to supply the cylinder. Hence, they could produce no more than four hundred and eighty cubic feet of gas; yet the cylinder consumed about nine cubic feet per hour. Consequently, they could not keep on longer than fifty-four hours—and all this was a mathematical calculation!

“Fifty-four hours!” said the doctor to his companions. “Therefore, as I am determined not to travel by night, for fear of passing some stream or pool, we have but three days and a half of journeying during which we must find water, at all hazards. I have thought it my duty to make you aware of the real state of the case, as I have retained only one gallon for drinking, and we shall have to put ourselves on the shortest allowance.”

“Put us on short allowance, then, doctor,” responded Kennedy, “but we must not despair. We have three days left, you say?”

“Yes, my dear Dick!”

“Well, as grieving over the matter won’t help us, in three days there will be time enough to decide upon what is to be done; in the meanwhile, let us redouble our vigilance!”

At their evening meal, the water was strictly measured out, and the brandy was increased in quantity in the punch they drank. But they had to be careful with the spirits, the latter being more likely to produce than to quench thirst.

The car rested, during the night, upon an immense plateau, in which there was a deep hollow; its height was scarcely eight hundred feet above the level of the sea. This circumstance gave the doctor some hope, since it recalled to his mind the conjectures of geographers concerning the existence of a vast stretch of water in the centre of Africa. But, if such a lake really existed, the point was to reach it, and not a sign of change was visible in the motionless sky.

To the tranquil night and its starry magnificence succeeded the unchanging daylight and the blazing rays of the sun; and, from the earliest dawn, the temperature became scorching. At five o’clock in the morning, the doctor gave the signal for departure, and, for a considerable time, the balloon remained immovable in the leaden atmosphere.

The doctor might have escaped this intense heat by rising into a higher range, but, in order to do so, he would have had to consume a large quantity of water, a thing that had now become impossible. He contented himself, therefore, with keeping the balloon at one hundred feet from the ground, and, at that elevation, a feeble current drove it toward the western horizon.

The breakfast consisted of a little dried meat and pemmican. By noon, the Victoria had advanced only a few miles.

“We cannot go any faster,” said the doctor; “we no longer command—we have to obey.”

“Ah! doctor, here is one of those occasions when a propeller would not be a thing to be despised.”

“Undoubtedly so, Dick, provided it would not require an expenditure of water to put it in motion, for, in that case, the situation would be precisely the same; moreover, up to this time, nothing practical of the sort has been invented. Balloons are still at that point where ships were before the invention of steam. It took six thousand years to invent propellers and screws; so we have time enough yet.”

“Confounded heat!” said Joe, wiping away the perspiration that was streaming from his forehead.

“If we had water, this heat would be of service to us, for it dilates the hydrogen in the balloon, and diminishes the amount required in the spiral, although it is true that, if we were not short of the useful liquid, we should not have to economize it. Ah! that rascally savage who cost us the tank!”*

* The water-tank had been thrown overboard when the native clung to the car.

“You don’t regret, though, what you did, doctor?”

“No, Dick, since it was in our power to save that unfortunate missionary from a horrible death. But, the hundred pounds of water that we threw overboard would be very useful to us now; it would be thirteen or fourteen days more of progress secured, or quite enough to carry us over this desert.”

“We’ve made at least half the journey, haven’t we?” asked Joe.

“In distance, yes; but in duration, no, should the wind leave us; and it, even now, has a tendency to die away altogether.”

“Come, sir,” said Joe, again, “we must not complain; we’ve got along pretty well, thus far, and whatever happens to me, I can’t get desperate. We’ll find water; mind, I tell you so.”

The soil, however, ran lower from mile to mile; the undulations of the gold-bearing mountains they had left died away into the plain, like the last throes of exhausted Nature. Scanty grass took the place of the fine trees of the east; only a few belts of half-scorched herbage still contended against the invasion of the sand, and the huge rocks, that had rolled down from the distant summits, crushed in their fall, had scattered in sharp-edged pebbles which soon again became coarse sand, and finally impalpable dust.

“Here, at last, is Africa, such as you pictured it to yourself, Joe! Was I not right in saying, ‘Wait a little?’ eh?”

“Well, master, it’s all natural, at least—heat and dust. It would be foolish to look for any thing else in such a country. Do you see,” he added, laughing, “I had no confidence, for my part, in your forests and your prairies; they were out of reason. What was the use of coming so far to find scenery just like England? Here’s the first