Robur-le-conquerant. English Read online

  Chapter IX

  ACROSS THE PRAIRIE

  In one, of the cabins of the after-house Uncle Prudent and Phil Evanshad found two excellent berths, with clean linen, change of clothes,and traveling-cloaks and rugs. No Atlantic liner could have offeredthem more comfort. If they did not sleep soundly it was that they didnot wish to do so, or rather that their very real anxiety preventedthem. In what adventure had they embarked? To what series ofexperiments had they been invited? How would the business end? Andabove all, what was Robur going to do with them?

  Frycollin, the valet, was quartered forward in a cabin adjoining thatof the cook. The neighborhood did not displease him; he liked to rubshoulders with the great in this world. But if he finally went tosleep it was to dream of fall after fall, of projections throughspace, which made his sleep a horrible nightmare.

  However, nothing could be quieter than this journey through theatmosphere, whose currents had grown weaker with the evening. Beyondthe rustling of the blades of the screws there was not a sound,except now and then the whistle from some terrestrial locomotive, orthe calling of some animal. Strange instinct! These terrestrialbeings felt the aeronef glide over them, and uttered cries of terroras it passed. On the morrow, the 14th of June, at five o'clock, UnclePrudent and Phil Evans were walking on the deck of the "Albatross."

  Nothing had changed since the evening; there was a lookout forward,and the helmsman was in his glass cage. Why was there a look-out? Wasthere any chance of collision with another such machine? Certainlynot. Robur had not yet found imitators. The chance of encountering anaerostat gliding through the air was too remote to be regarded. Inany case it would be all the worse for the aerostat--the earthen potand the iron pot. The "Albatross" had nothing to fear from thecollision.

  But what could happen? The aeronef might find herself like a ship ona lee shore if a mountain that could not be outflanked or passedbarred the way. These are the reefs of the air, and they have to beavoided as a ship avoids the reefs of the sea. The engineer, it istrue, had given the course, and in doing so had taken into accountthe altitude necessary to clear the summits of the high lands in thedistrict. But as the aeronef was rapidly nearing a mountainouscountry, it was only prudent to keep a good lookout, in case someslight deviation from the course became necessary.

  Looking at the country beneath them, Uncle Prudent and Phil Evansnoticed a large lake, whose lower southern end the "Albatross" hadjust reached. They concluded, therefore, that during the night thewhole length of Lake Erie had been traversed, and that, as they weregoing due west, they would soon be over Lake Michigan. "There can beno doubt of it," said Phil Evans, "and that group of roofs on thehorizon is Chicago."

  He was right. It was indeed the city from which the seventeenrailways diverge, the Queen of the West, the vast reservoir intowhich flow the products of Indiana, Ohio, Wisconsin, Missouri, andall the States which form the western half of the Union.

  Uncle Prudent, through an excellent telescope he had found in hiscabin, easily recognized the principal buildings. His colleaguepointed out to him the churches and public edifices, the numerous"elevators" or mechanical, granaries, and the huge Sherman Hotel,whose windows seemed like a hundred glittering points on each of itsfaces.

  "If that is Chicago," said Uncle Prudent, "it is obvious that we aregoing farther west than is convenient for us if we are to return toour starting-place."

  And, in fact, the "Albatross" was traveling in a straight line fromthe Pennsylvania capital.

  But if Uncle Prudent wished to ask Robur to take him eastwards hecould not then do so. That morning the engineer did not leave hiscabin. Either he was occupied in some work, or else he was asleep,and the two colleagues sat down to breakfast without seeing him.

  The speed was the same as that during last evening. The wind beingeasterly the rate was not interfered with at all, and as thethermometer only falls a degree centigrade for every seventy metersof elevation the temperature was not insupportable. And so, inchatting and thinking and waiting for the engineer, Uncle Prudent andPhil Evans walked about beneath the forest of screws, whose gyratorymovement gave their arms the appearance of semi-diaphanous disks.

  The State of Illinois was left by its northern frontier in less thantwo hours and a half; and they crossed the Father of Waters, theMississippi, whose double-decked steam-boats seemed no bigger thancanoes. Then the "Albatross" flew over Iowa after having sighted IowaCity about eleven o'clock in the morning.

  A few chains of hills, "bluffs" as they are called, curved across theface of the country trending from the south to the northwest, whosemoderate height necessitated no rise in the course of the aeronef.Soon the bluffs gave place to the large plains of western Iowa andNebraska--immense prairies extending all the way to the foot of theRocky Mountains. Here and there were many rios, affluents or minoraffluents of the Missouri. On their banks were towns and villages,growing more scattered as the "Albatross" sped farther west.

  Nothing particular happened during this day. Uncle Prudent and PhilEvans were left entirely to themselves. They hardly noticed Frycollinsprawling at full length in the bow, keeping his eyes shut so that hecould see nothing. And they were not attacked by vertigo, as mighthave been expected. There was no guiding mark, and there was nothingto cause the vertigo, as there would have been on the top of a loftybuilding. The abyss has no attractive power when it is gazed at fromthe car of a balloon or deck of an aeronef. It is not an abyss thatopens beneath the aeronaut, but an horizon that rises round him onall sides like a cup.

  In a couple of hours the "Albatross" was over Omaha, on the Nebraskanfrontier--Omaha City, the real head of the Pacific Railway, thatlong line of rails, four thousand five hundred miles in length,stretching from New York to San Francisco. For a moment they couldsee the yellow waters of the Missouri, then the town, with its housesof wood and brick in the center of a rich basin, like a buckle in theiron belt which clasps North America round the waist. Doubtless,also, as the passengers in the aeronef could observe all thesedetails, the inhabitants of Omaha noticed the strange machine. Theirastonishment at seeing it gliding overhead could be no greater thanthat of the president and secretary of the Weldon Institute atfinding themselves on board.

  Anyhow, the journals of the Union would be certain to notice thefact. It would be the explanation of the astonishing phenomenon whichthe whole world had been wondering over for some time.

  In an hour the "Albatross" had left Omaha and crossed the PlatteRiver, whose valley is followed by the Pacific Railway in its routeacross the prairie. Things looked serious for Uncle Prudent and PhilEvans.

  "It is serious, then, this absurd project of taking us to theAntipodes."

  "And whether we like it or not!" exclaimed the other.

  "Robur had better take care! I am not the man to stand that sort ofthing."

  "Nor am I!" replied Phil Evans. "But be calm, Uncle Prudent, be calm."

  "Be calm!"

  "And keep your temper until it is wanted."

  By five o'clock they had crossed the Black Mountains covered withpines and cedars, and the "Albatross" was over the appropriatelynamed Bad Lands of Nebraska--a chaos of ochre-colored hills, ofmountainous fragments fallen on the soil and broken in their fall. Ata distance these blocks take the most fantastic shapes. Here andthere amid this enormous game of knucklebones there could be tracedthe imaginary ruins of medieval cities with forts and dungeons,pepper-box turrets, and machicolated towers. And in truth these BadLands are an immense ossuary where lie bleaching in the sun myriadsof fragments of pachyderms, chelonians, and even, some would have usbelieve, fossil men, overwhelmed by unknown cataclysms ages and agesago.

  When evening came the whole basin of the Platte River had beencrossed, and the plain extended to the extreme limits of the horizon,which rose high owing to the altitude of the "Albatross."

  During the night there were no more shrill whistles of locomotives ordeeper notes of the river steamers to trouble the quiet of the starryfirmament. Long bellowing occasionall
y reached the aeronef from theherds of buffalo that roamed over the prairie in search of water andpasturage. And when they ceased, the trampling of the grass undertheir feet produced a dull roaring similar to the rushing of a flood,and very different from the continuous f-r-r-r-r of the screws.

  Then from time to time came the howl of a wolf, a fox, a wild cat, ora coyote, the "Canis latrans," whose name is justified by hissonorous bark.

  Occasionally came penetrating odors of mint, and sage, and absinthe,mingled with the more powerful fragrance of the conifers which rosefloating through the night air.

  At last came a menacing yell, which was not due to the coyote. It wasthe shout of a Redskin, which no Tenderfoot would confound with thecry of a wild beast.