The Goddess of Atvatabar<br />Being the history of the discovery of the interior world and conquest of Atvatabar, William Richard Bradshaw [mobi reader txt] 📗

Our discussions terminated in an invitation by the goddess to accompany her in her aerial yacht, the Aeropher, to Egyplosis, whither, according to the sacred calendar, she must proceed to take part in the ceremony of the installation of a twin soul. Her holiness, their majesties the king and queen, myself[129] and officers of the Polar King, together with the chief minister Koshnili, the military, civil and naval officers, the poets, savants, artists, and musicians of Atvatabar, would sail in the yacht of the goddess.

A host of lesser dignitaries, including the sailors of the Polar King under command of Flathootly, would follow us in another yacht, called the Fletyeming. Each yacht had its own priest-captain, officers and crew of aerial navigators.

Each yacht consisted of a deck of fine woven cane, compact as steel, woven with great skill, with cabins, staterooms, etc., of the same material erected thereon, and high bamboo bulwarks to prevent the voyagers falling off the deck.

The propelling apparatus consisted of two large wheels, having numerous aerial fans that alternately beat backward and cut through the air as they oscillated on their axes. The wheels were supplemented by aeroplanes, resembling huge outspreading wings, inclined at an angle, so that their forward rush upon the air supported the ship. They revolved with great rapidity, being driven by the accumulated force of a thousand magnic batteries, composed of dry metallic cells, especially designed for aerial navigation. Very little force was required to keep the vessel buoyed up in the air, owing to the diminished gravity.

It was discovered that the rarer metals terrelium and aquelium developed in contact, without salts or acids, enormous currents of magnicity without polarization or the development of[130] gases. These metallic cells would run without attention or maintenance exerting magnic action, and could be stopped or started at any time without corrosion of metals or loss of energy, like the electric batteries on the outer sphere, but infinitely more powerful.

Aerial navigation was one of the great institutions of Atvatabar, and the goddess' yacht was only one of many thousand aerial ships that carried passengers, mails and light freight to and from every part of the country.

On such a machine as this we purposed travelling a distance of one thousand miles.

Five hundred miles west of Calnogor lay a range of lofty mountains, whose peaks pierced the upper strata of cold air. This region was the breeding-place of fearful storms that occasionally vexed the otherwise placid climate of the country.

Westward of the mountains, an elevated prairie or tableland extended for five hundred miles further, broken here and there into crevasses and cañons, the beds of mighty rivers. Beyond the prairie an irregular agglomeration of mountains and valleys stretched five hundred miles further until the ocean was reached which formed the western boundary of Atvatabar.

Egyplosis, or the sacred palace, stood on an island in a lake lying in a romantic valley of the central plateau, one thousand miles west of Calnogor. This was the destination of the Aeropher, the goddess making a special visitation to the palace of hopeless love.

No journey could have begun with better[131] auspices than ours. We soared up the grand divide, underneath the brilliant sun, which threw the moving shadow of the ship on the earth beneath.

The Gleroseral.

Captain Lavornal, the inventor of the Aeropher, was resolved to outdo all former records in aerial navigation, and accordingly drove the Aeropher at a speed of eighty miles an hour.

The captain explained to me that he was using the wheels simply to lift the ship over the mountains. Once over these the wheels that were being used to lift the ship would thus propel her, when her normal speed of two hundred miles an hour would be reached.

Lyone was in a particularly happy mood. "I like aerial travelling so much," said she, "because it is the nearest mechanical approach to the nature of the soul."

"What relation to the soul can the ship possibly possess?" I inquired.

"Why, don't you see," said she, "that our travelling approaches nearer to that of the spiritual state than any other mode? We can at will sweep up into heaven or descend to earth. We are independent of obstacles. Rivers and roads, mountains and seas have no terrors for us. Then the infinite daring of it all—oh! it is to me delightful."

The Eaglon.

Higher and yet higher mounted the ship up the steeps of the continent until we plunged into a grisly pass. On either side the huge shoulders of the mountains lifted up forests of pines and cedars, whose colossal trunks seemed the gateways of a new world. The ship indeed possessed some of the attributes of a soul. It could plunge us into sublimity or death, lift up to the very sun itself, or, like a disembodied soul, skim the surface of the earth.

The mountains once crossed, we swept down their declivities toward the prairies with tremendous speed. The propellers seemed powerful enough to control the ship in the fiercest storm. The inner world lay spread out beneath us like a map in relief.[132] There was a strange absence of shadow caused by a perpendicular sun that realized the climate of Dante,

"A land whereon no shadow falls."

Yet as the Aeropher swept onward her shadow could be seen drifting over cornfields, miles of rustling wheat and pastures where the cattle started and fled from the apparition in the sky.

We were admiring the beauty of the panorama beneath, when the sky became suddenly overcast with clouds, obscuring the light of the sun. This was so unexpected an occurrence that Lyone and myself looked at each other in alarm.

Captain Lavornal exclaimed: "Your holiness, I apprehend these clouds are the couriers of a hurricane!"

"Do you mean that we shall be overtaken by the storm?" asked Lyone.

"Most certainly," said the captain, "and I tremble lest anything should happen to your holiness."

"Do not fear for me," said Lyone; "even a storm is not insurmountable."

"Shall I descend, your holiness, or keep to our course?" inquired the captain with some trepidation.

"Keep to your course," replied Lyone.

Just then a hollow booming was heard, and then a fierce explosion in which the darkened sky became enveloped in a sheet of flame.

In a moment the cyclone struck the ship!

Some of the terrified voyagers shrieked and others remained silent, but all held tightly on to the nearest thing they could get hold of.

The ship lay at an angle of forty-five degrees from the plane of the rotating storm, having been caught by the wind with a fearful shock, snapping several of the cables that bound cabins and decks together. Strangely enough, the ship did not become a wreck, but was blown out of its course, the toy of the wind. We lost sight of the other ship containing the sailors, and could certainly only care for ourselves.

The cyclone proved to be a storm five hundred miles in diameter. The currents of air most remote from the centre did not sweep round in the same uniform plane. The entire circumference of wind was composed of two enormous waves each[133] seven hundred and fifty miles in length and four miles in perpendicular height. It was as if the rings of Saturn had suddenly assumed a vertical as well as a spinning motion, and both movements of the storm produced an appalling splendor of flight hitherto unknown to human sensation. Can the Aeropher survive the roaring storm? was the thought of every heart. Bravery was of no avail with the destroying force that had so suddenly overwhelmed us.

CHAPTER XXV. ESCAPING FROM THE CYCLONE.

The ship, lifting her prow, would spring into the sky upon the bosom of the whirling waste of air. The sun was completely obscured by dense masses of flying clouds and we were deluged with torrents of water. The terror of the situation obliterated all thoughts of country or home or friends. All worldly consciousness had evaporated from the pale beings that in despair held on to the ship for life or death.

The ravages of the storm on the earth beneath could be heard with startling distinctness. We heard at times the roaring of forests and saw the shrieking, whirling branches in every earth-illuminating flash of lightning.

The goddess stood holding on to the outer rail of the deck, the incarnation of courage. She had risen to