Читать книгу Five Weeks in a Balloon - Jules Verne - Страница 13

chapter 3

The doctor’s friend—where their friendship dated from—Dick Kennedy in London—an unexpected and unsettling proposition—a discouraging proverb—a few names from Africa’s death register—advantages of a lighter-than-air vehicle—Dr. Fergusson’s secret.

Dr. Fergusson had a friend. Not an alter ego, not a second self; a friendship couldn’t exist between two perfectly identical beings.

But even though they boasted different traits, abilities, and personalities, Dick Kennedy and Samuel Fergusson marched to the exact same drummer, which didn’t seriously bother them. On the contrary.

This Dick Kennedy fellow was a Scot in the fullest sense of the word—outgoing, decisive, bullheaded. He lived in the little town of Leith near Edinburgh, actually a suburb of “Auld Reekie.”* He was sometimes a fisherman but at all times and places an avid hunter, not a bit surprising for a native of Caledonia who had done a little mountain climbing in the Highlands. He was renowned as a marvelous shot with a rifle; not only did he split bullets on a knife blade, he cut them into two equal halves—and if you weighed them afterward, you wouldn’t find any noticeable difference.

Kennedy’s looks strongly reminded you of the fiery Halbert Glen dinning as described by Sir Walter Scott in The Monastery; he stood over six English feet in height;¹ limber and alert, he seemed to be blessed with Herculean strength; a face deeply tanned by the sun, dark keen eyes, a bold and resolute nature; in sum, there was something solid and decent in the entire person of this Scot, and it boded well.

Dick Kennedy

The two friends got to know each other in India, back when they both belonged to the same regiment; while Dick was hunting tigers and elephants, Samuel was hunting plants and insects; each could boast of being adept at his line of work, and more than one rare plant fell prey to the doctor, who valued this kind of conquest as much as any pair of ivory tusks.

These two young men never had a chance to rescue each other or to end up in each other’s debt. Which means they had a lasting friendship. Fate sometimes kept them apart, but their mutual liking always brought them back together.

After their return to England, they were often separated by the doctor’s expeditions abroad; but when he came back, he never failed to visit his Scottish friend and give a few weeks of himself unasked.

Dick chatted about the past, Samuel planned for the future: one looked forward, the other back. Hence Fergusson had a restless mind, while Kennedy was content with his lot.

After his trip to Tibet, the doctor went nearly two years without any talk of further exploring; Dick assumed that his urge to travel, his craving for adventure, had simmered down. To the hunter’s relief. He figured that sooner or later the doctor was bound to come to a bad end; you can be an old hand with the human race and still not journey with impunity among cannibals and wild animals; so Kennedy urged Samuel to rest on his laurels, since he had done enough for science and more than enough to earn the gratitude of his fellow man.

To which the doctor was content to say nothing. He continued to look thoughtful, then indulged in mysterious calculations, spent his nights slaving over figures, even experimented with odd gadgets nobody could make sense of. You could tell that some grand idea was fermenting in his brain.

“What can he be working on?” Kennedy wondered, when his friend left him and spent the month of January back in London.

He found out one morning from that article in the Daily Telegraph.

“Merciful God!” he exclaimed. “That madman! That maniac! Go across Africa by balloon! That’s all we need! So this is what he’s been brooding about these past two years!”

Replace all these exclamation points with a fist smacking his skull, and you’ll have an idea of the calisthenics our gallant Dick indulged in while he carried on this way.

When old Elspeth, his trusted housekeeper, ventured to hint that it might actually be a hoax:

“Get along with you!” he replied. “Don’t I know him? Isn’t this the doctor all over? Travel through the skies! Now he has eagle envy! No, this positively mustn’t happen! It’s up to me to put a stop to it! Lord, he’d be off to the moon one fine day if they let him!”

Half anxious, half furious, Kennedy caught a train that same evening at the main railway station and reached London the next day.

Forty-five minutes later a cab dropped him off at the doctor’s humble abode on Greek St. in Soho Square; he went up the front steps and announced his coming by giving the door five firmly delivered thumps.

Fergusson opened it personally.

“Dick!” he said without much surprise.

“His own self,” Kennedy shot back.

“What’s this, my dear Dick—you’re in London during the winter hunting season?”

“I’m in London.”

“And why are you here?”

“To prevent an act of indescribable lunacy!”

“Lunacy?” the doctor said.

“Is it true what this paper says?” Kennedy responded, holding out the issue of the Daily Telegraph.

“Ah, that’s what you’re referring to! These newspapers are so irresponsible! But have a seat, my dear Dick.”

“I won’t have a seat. You’re definitely intending to go on this trip?”

“Definitely; my preparations are coming along nicely, and I—”

“Where are they, these preparations of yours? Where are they? I’ll rip ’em to pieces! I’ll tear ’em to shreds!”

The worthy Scot was growing seriously angry.

“Easy, my dear Dick,” the doctor went on. “I understand your annoyance. You’re after me because I haven’t told you yet about my new plan.”

“He calls that a plan!”

“I’ve been so busy,” Samuel continued, not acknowledging the interruption. “I’ve had so much to do! But never fear, I wouldn’t have left without writing you—”

“Don’t make me laugh!”

“Because I intend to take you with me.”

The Scot gave a leap that would have done credit to a mountain goat.

“Hang it all,” he said, “do you want ’em to lock us both up in Bedlam hospital?”*

“I’m absolutely counting on you, my dear Dick, and you’re my first choice over many, many others.”

Kennedy froze, totally astonished.

“Hear me out for the next ten minutes,” the doctor replied serenely, “then you’ll thank me!”

“You’re serious about this?”

“Very serious.”

“And what if I refuse to come along?”

“You won’t refuse.”

“But what if I do in the end?”

“I’ll go alone.”

“Let’s sit down,” the hunter said, “and let’s talk without flying off the handle. If you aren’t trying to be funny, maybe it’s worth discussing.”

“We’ll discuss it over breakfast, my dear Dick, if that meets with your approval.”

The two friends took their seats at a little table, facing each other between a stack of sandwiches and an enormous teapot.

“My dear Samuel,” the hunter said, “your plan’s crazy! It’s impossible! There isn’t a thing realistic or workable about it!”

“We’ll see after we’ve given it a try.”

“But that’s the point—you mustn’t give it a try.”

“Why not, if you please?”

“What about the dangers, all the different obstacles!”

“Obstacles,” Fergusson replied solemnly, “are made to be overcome; as for the dangers, who can delude himself that he’ll avoid them? Danger is a part of life; it can be dangerous to sit down at table or clap a hat on your head; in any case we must regard what’s bound to happen as having happened already—and see only the present in the future, because the future is merely the present a little farther along.”

“There you go!” Kennedy said, shrugging his shoulders. “You’re always a fatalist!”

“Always, but in the positive sense of the word. So let’s not agonize over what destiny has in store for us, and let’s not forget our old English proverb: ‘The man who was born to die on the scaffold will never die of drowning!’”

To this there was no comeback, which didn’t keep Kennedy from dusting off a series of arguments easy to imagine but too long-winded to go into here.

“Anyhow,” he said after a sixty-minute debate, “if you’re dead set on going across Africa, if nothing else will make you happy, why not travel the usual way?”

“Why not?” the doctor replied heatedly. “Because all such efforts until now have come to grief! Think of Mungo Park who was murdered on the Niger, Vogel who vanished in Wadaï, Oudney who died in Murmur, Clapperton who died in Sokoto, the Frenchman Maizan who was sliced to pieces, Major Laing who was killed by the Tuaregs, Roscher from Hamburg who was slaughtered early in 1860—there are so many victims recorded in Africa’s death register! Because it’s an impossible struggle against the elements, against hunger, thirst, and fever, against wild animals and even wilder tribesmen! Because what can’t be done one way needs to be tackled in another! Because, in short, what you can’t go through you have to sidestep or go over!”

“This isn’t about going over,” Kennedy fired back, “but flying over!”

“All right,” the doctor went on with all the composure in the world. “What have I to fear? You’ll readily agree that I’ve taken such thorough precautions, I won’t need to worry if my balloon falls out of the sky; if she isn’t equal to the task, I’ll end up on the ground under the usual conditions other explorers face; but my balloon won’t fail me, and we won’t need to make any allowances.”

“On the contrary, you will need to.”

“Not so, my dear Dick. I don’t intend to part company with her until I arrive on Africa’s west coast. With her, everything is possible; without her, I topple back into the dangers and obstacles natural to such an expedition; with her, neither heat, torrents, storms, whirlwinds, unsanitary climates, wild animals, nor human beings are a concern! If I’m too hot, I go higher; if I’m cold, I descend; if there’s a mountain, I pass it by; a precipice, I clear it; a river, I cross it; a downpour, I rise above it; a torrent, I skim over it like a bird! I press on without growing tired, I halt without needing to rest! I glide past new cities! I fly as fast as a tornado, sometimes high in the skies, sometimes just a hundred feet from the ground, and below is the great atlas of the world, with the map of Africa unfolding beneath my eyes!”

Our gallant Kennedy was starting to feel excited, but the mental picture in front of his eyes gave him vertigo. He looked at Samuel in wonderment, also in fear; already he felt he was swaying in the stratosphere.

“Hold on,” he said, “hold on a second, my dear Samuel—does this mean you’ve found a way of steering a balloon?”

“Far from it. That’s a pipe dream.”

“But then you’ll go—”

“Where Providence wills; but in any event from east to west.” “Why is that?”

“Because I’m counting on using the trade winds, which always blow in the same direction.”

“Oh … right!” Kennedy said, thinking it over. “The trade winds … certainly … in a pinch … there’s something to be said for ’em …”

“Something? No, my gallant friend, everything. The English govern ment has put a cargo boat at my disposal; they’ve likewise arranged for three or four ships to cruise off Africa’s west coast around the projected time of my arrival. In three months at the most, I’ll be in Zanzibar where I’ll set about inflating my balloon, and from there we’ll launch her—”

“We?” Dick interrupted.

“Really now, have you a single objection left? Out with it, Kennedy old friend.”

“A single objection? I have a thousand; but tell me, among other things: if you’re counting on seeing the country, if you’re counting on rising and descending at will, how can you do it without losing gas? So far there’s no other way of proceeding, and that’s why nobody goes on long outings in the clouds.”

“My dear Dick, I’ll tell you just one thing: I won’t lose an atom of gas, not a single molecule.”

“And you’ll descend at will?”

“I’ll descend at will.”

“And how will you manage it?”

“That’s my secret, Dick old friend. Trust me and make my motto yours: Excelsior!”

“Excelsior it is,” replied the hunter, who didn’t know a word of Latin.

But he was bound and determined to thwart his friend’s departure in any way he could. So he pretended to agree but kept a careful lookout. As for Samuel, he went off to oversee his preparations.

* Nickname for Edinburgh meaning “Old Smoky.”

* Insane asylum in London.