Five Weeks in a Balloon<br />Or, Journeys and Discoveries in Africa by Three Englishmen, Jules Verne [english novels to read txt] 📗
- Author: Jules Verne
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“Allow me, Joe, to prefer a favorable wind to your team of eagles. It costs less for fodder, and is more reliable.”
“Well, you may have your choice, master, but I stick to my idea.”
It now was noon. The Victoria had been going at a more moderate speed for some time; the country merely passed below it; it no longer flew.
Suddenly, shouts and whistlings were heard by our aëronauts, and, leaning over the edge of the car, they saw on the open plain below them an exciting spectacle.
Two hostile tribes were fighting furiously, and the air was dotted with volleys of arrows. The combatants were so intent upon their murderous work that they did not notice the arrival of the balloon; there were about three hundred mingled confusedly in the deadly struggle: most of them, red with the blood of the wounded, in which they fairly wallowed, were horrible to behold.
As they at last caught sight of the balloon, there was a momentary pause; but their yells redoubled, and some arrows were shot at the Victoria, one of them coming close enough for Joe to catch it with his hand.
“Let us rise out of range,” exclaimed the doctor; “there must be no rashness! We are forbidden any risk.”
Meanwhile, the massacre continued on both sides, with battle-axes and war-clubs; as quickly as one of the combatants fell, a hostile warrior ran up to cut off his head, while the women, mingling in the fray, gathered up these bloody trophies, and piled them together at either extremity of the battle-field. Often, too, they even fought for these hideous spoils.
“What a frightful scene!” said Kennedy, with profound disgust.
“They’re ugly acquaintances!” added Joe; “but then, if they had uniforms they’d be just like the fighters of all the rest of the world!”
“I have a keen hankering to take a hand in at that fight,” said the hunter, brandishing his rifle.
“No! no!” objected the doctor, vehemently; “no, let us not meddle with what don’t concern us. Do you know which is right or which is wrong, that you would assume the part of the Almighty? Let us, rather, hurry away from this revolting spectacle. Could the great captains of the world float thus above the scenes of their exploits, they would at last, perhaps, conceive a disgust for blood and conquest.”
The chieftain of one of the contending parties was remarkable for his athletic proportions, his great height, and herculean strength. With one hand he plunged his spear into the compact ranks of his enemies, and with the other mowed large spaces in them with his battle-axe. Suddenly he flung away his war-club, red with blood, rushed upon a wounded warrior, and, chopping off his arm at a single stroke, carried the dissevered member to his mouth, and bit it again and again.
“Ah!” ejaculated Kennedy, “the horrible brute! I can hold back no longer,” and, as he spoke, the huge savage, struck full in the forehead with a rifle-ball, fell headlong to the ground.
Upon this sudden mishap of their leader, his warriors seemed struck dumb with amazement; his supernatural death awed them, while it reanimated the courage and ardor of their adversaries, and, in a twinkling, the field was abandoned by half the combatants.
“Come, let us look higher up for a current to bear us away. I am sick of this spectacle,” said the doctor.
But they could not get away so rapidly as to avoid the sight of the victorious tribe rushing upon the dead and the wounded, scrambling and disputing for the still warm and reeking flesh, and eagerly devouring it.
“Faugh!” uttered Joe, “it’s sickening.”
The balloon rose as it expanded; the howlings of the brutal horde, in the delirium of their orgy, pursued them for a few minutes; but, at length, borne away toward the south, they were carried out of sight and hearing of this horrible spectacle of cannibalism.
The surface of the country was now greatly varied, with numerous streams of water, bearing toward the east. The latter, undoubtedly, ran into those affluents of Lake Nu, or of the River of the Gazelles, concerning which M. Guillaume Lejean has given such curious details.
At nightfall, the balloon cast anchor in twenty-seven degrees east longitude, and four degrees twenty minutes north latitude, after a day’s trip of one hundred and fifty miles.
Strange Sounds.—A Night Attack.—Kennedy and Joe in the Tree.—Two Shots.—“Help! help!”—Reply in French.—The Morning.—The Missionary.—The Plan of Rescue.
The night came on very dark. The doctor had not been able to reconnoitre the country. He had made fast to a very tall tree, from which he could distinguish only a confused mass through the gloom.
As usual, he took the nine-o’clock watch, and at midnight Dick relieved him.
“Keep a sharp lookout, Dick!” was the doctor’s good-night injunction.
“Is there any thing new on the carpet?”
“No; but I thought that I heard vague sounds below us, and, as I don’t exactly know where the wind has carried us to, even an excess of caution would do no harm.”
“You’ve probably heard the cries of wild beasts.”
“No! the sounds seemed to me something altogether different from that; at all events, on the least alarm don’t fail to waken us.”
“I’ll do so, doctor; rest easy.”
After listening attentively for a moment or two longer, the doctor, hearing nothing more, threw himself on his blankets and went asleep.
The sky was covered with dense clouds, but not a breath of air was stirring; and the balloon, kept in its place by only a single anchor, experienced not the slightest oscillation.
Kennedy, leaning his elbow on the edge of the car, so as to keep an eye on the cylinder, which was actively at work, gazed out upon the calm obscurity; he eagerly scanned the horizon, and, as often happens to minds that are uneasy or possessed with preconceived notions, he fancied that he sometimes detected vague gleams of light in the distance.
At one moment he even thought that he saw them only two hundred paces away, quite distinctly, but it was a mere flash that was gone as quickly as it came, and he noticed nothing more. It was, no doubt, one of those luminous illusions that sometimes impress the eye in the midst of very profound darkness.
Kennedy was getting over his nervousness and falling into his wandering meditations again, when a sharp whistle pierced his ear.
Was that the cry of an animal or of a night-bird, or did it come from human lips?
Kennedy, perfectly comprehending the gravity of the situation, was on the point of waking his companions, but he reflected that, in any case, men or animals, the creatures that he had heard must be out of reach. So he merely saw that his weapons were all right, and then, with his night-glass, again plunged his gaze into space.
It was not long before he thought he could perceive below him vague forms that seemed to be gliding toward the tree, and then, by the aid of a ray of moonlight that shot like an electric flash between two masses of cloud, he distinctly made out a group of human figures moving in the shadow.
The adventure with the dog-faced baboons returned to his memory, and he placed his hand on the doctor’s shoulder.
The latter was awake in a moment.
“Silence!” said Dick. “Let us speak below our breath.”
“Has any thing happened?”
“Yes, let us waken Joe.”
The instant that Joe was aroused, Kennedy told him what he had seen.
“Those confounded monkeys again!” said Joe.
“Possibly, but we must be on our guard.”
“Joe and I,” said Kennedy, “will climb down the tree by the ladder.”
“And, in the meanwhile,” added the doctor, “I will take my measures so that we can ascend rapidly at a moment’s warning.”
“Agreed!”
“Let us go down, then!” said Joe.
“Don’t use your weapons, excepting at the last extremity! It would be a useless risk to make the natives aware of our presence in such a place as this.”
Dick and Joe replied with signs of assent, and then letting themselves slide noiselessly toward the tree, took their position in a fork among the strong branches where the anchor had caught.
For some moments they listened minutely and motionlessly among the foliage, and ere long Joe seized Kenedy’s hand as he heard a sort of rubbing sound against the bark of the tree.
“Don’t you hear that?” he whispered.
“Yes, and it’s coming nearer.”
“Suppose it should be a serpent? That hissing or whistling that you heard before—”
“No! there was something human in it.”
“I’d prefer the savages, for I have a horror of those snakes.”
“The noise is increasing,” said Kennedy, again, after a lapse of a few moments.
“Yes! something’s coming up toward us—climbing.”
“Keep watch on this side, and I’ll take care of the other.”
“Very good!”
There they were, isolated at the top of one of the larger branches shooting out in the midst of one of those miniature forests called baobab-trees. The darkness, heightened by the density of the foliage, was profound; however, Joe, leaning over to Kennedy’s ear and pointing down the tree, whispered:
“The blacks! They’re climbing toward us.”
The two friends could even catch the sound of a few words uttered in the lowest possible tones.
Joe gently brought his rifle to his shoulder as he spoke.
“Wait!” said Kennedy.
Some of the natives had really climbed the baobab, and now they were seen rising on all sides, winding along the boughs like reptiles, and advancing slowly but surely, all the time plainly enough discernible, not merely to the eye but to the nostrils, by the horrible odors of the rancid grease with which they bedaub their bodies.
Ere long, two heads appeared to the gaze of Kennedy and Joe, on a level with the very branch to which they were clinging.
“Attention!” said Kennedy. “Fire!”
The double concussion resounded like a thunderbolt and died away into cries of rage and pain, and in a moment the whole horde had disappeared.
But, in the midst of these yells and howls, a strange, unexpected—nay what seemed an impossible—cry had been heard! A human voice had, distinctly, called aloud in the French language—
“Help! help!”
Kennedy and Joe, dumb with amazement, had regained the car immediately.
“Did you hear that?” the doctor asked them.
“Undoubtedly, that supernatural cry, ‘À moi! à moi!’ comes from a Frenchman in the hands of these barbarians!”
“A traveller.”
“A missionary, perhaps.”
“Poor wretch!” said Kennedy, “they’re assassinating him—making a martyr of him!”
The doctor then spoke, and it was impossible for him to conceal his emotions.
“There can be no doubt of it,” he said; “some unfortunate Frenchman has fallen into the hands of these savages. We must not leave this place without doing all in our power to save him. When he heard the sound of our guns, he recognized an unhoped-for assistance, a providential interposition. We shall not disappoint his last hope. Are such your views?”
“They are, doctor, and we are ready to obey you.”
“Let us, then, lay our heads together to devise some plan, and in the morning we’ll try to rescue him.”
“But how shall we drive off those abominable blacks?” asked Kennedy.
“It’s quite clear to me, from the way in which they made off, that they are unacquainted with fire-arms. We must, therefore, profit by their fears; but we shall await daylight before acting, and then we can form our plans of rescue according to circumstances.”
“The poor captive cannot be far off,” said Joe, “because—”
“Help! help!” repeated the voice, but much more feebly this time.
“The savage wretches!” exclaimed Joe, trembling with indignation. “Suppose they should kill him to-night!”
“Do you hear, doctor,” resumed Kennedy, seizing the doctor’s hand. “Suppose they should kill him to-night!”
“It is not at all likely, my friends. These savage tribes kill their captives in broad daylight; they must have the sunshine.”
“Now, if I were to take advantage of the darkness to slip down to the poor fellow?” said Kennedy.
“And I’ll go with you,” said Joe, warmly.
“Pause, my friends—pause! The suggestion does honor to your hearts and to your courage; but you would expose us all to great peril, and do still greater harm to the unfortunate man whom you wish to aid.”
“Why so?” asked Kennedy. “These savages are frightened and dispersed: they will not return.”
“Dick, I implore you, heed what I say. I am acting for the common good; and if by any accident you should be taken by surprise, all would be lost.”
“But, think of that poor wretch, hoping for aid, waiting there, praying, calling aloud. Is no one to go to his assistance? He must think that his senses deceived him; that he heard nothing!”
“We can reassure him, on that score,” said Dr. Ferguson—and, standing erect, making a speaking-trumpet of his
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