Hippopotamuses on the surface of a pond
chapter 16
Signs of a thunderstorm—the Land of the Moon—the future of the African continent—the doomsday machine—scenic views at sunset—flora and fauna—the thunderstorm—the zone of fire—the starry sky.
“That’s what we get,” Joe said, “for playing the moon’s sons without her prior approval! Our satellite almost got even with us! By any chance, master, did you sully her reputation with your medicine?”
“By the way,” the hunter said, “what was he like, this Sultan of Kazeh?”
“Like an old drunk with one foot in the grave,” the doctor replied, “and he won’t be badly missed once he’s gone. But the moral of it all is that honor and glory are fleeting, so we mustn’t get too attached to them.”
“That’s a shame,” Joe remarked. “They worked for me! Being adored! Playing God at my leisure! But what do you want? When the moon arrived, she was all red, which goes to show that we’d riled her up!”
During these and other conversations in which Joe examined that glowing orb from an entirely new perspective, the sky filled with huge clouds to the north—grim, heavy clouds. A fairly brisk wind was blowing some 300 feet up, driving the Victoria north-northeast. Above her, the vault of the heavens was pale blue and unblemished, but the air had a sultry feel.
Around eight o’clock in the evening, our travelers lay in longitude 32° 40′ and latitude 4° 17′; influenced by an approaching thunderstorm, air currents drove them along at a speed of thirty-five miles per hour. Below their feet the fertile, rolling plains of Mfuto went swiftly by. It was a marvelous sight, and they marveled at it.
“We’re deep in the Land of the Moon,” Dr. Fergusson said, “a name it has kept from ancient times, no doubt because its people have worshipped the moon throughout history. It’s truly a magnificent region, and it would be hard to find a place with lovelier plant life.”
“If we had some in London, it wouldn’t exactly be natural,” Joe replied, “but it’d be mighty enjoyable! Why are these beautiful things limited to such backward countries?”
“And are we so sure,” the doctor countered, “that this region won’t become the center of the civilized world someday? Maybe future populations will move here, once all Europe is too depleted to feed her citizens.”
“You think so?” Kennedy asked.
“Definitely, my dear Dick. Look at the course of human events; think about the consecutive mass migrations, and you’ll reach the same conclusion I have. Asia was the first to suckle the world, true? She was in constant labor for maybe 4,000 years, she conceived, she bore fruit, and finally when stones sprang up instead of old Homer’s golden crops, her children turned away from her withered and depleted bosom. Then you see them flocking to young, energetic Europe, and she nurtured them for 2,000 years. But already her fertility is on the wane; her reproductive powers are declining by the day; those new diseases that annually attack her produce, those failed harvests, those shrinking resources—they’re a sure sign of deteriorating vitality, of impending depletion. Accordingly we already see hordes of people rushing to America’s nourishing breasts, a source not inexhaustible but not exhausted as yet. This new continent will grow old in her turn; her virgin forests will fall under the axes of industry; her soil will weaken from meeting the excessive demands placed on it; where two crops used to flourish each year, barely one will emerge from those lands at the end of their strength. Then Africa will offer new races the treasures that have accumulated for centuries in her bosom. These climates so fatal to foreigners will be cleansed by crop rotation and soil drainage; these scattered watercourses will be combined into one common bed and will form a thoroughfare for shipping. And this country we’re soaring over will become more fertile, wealthy, and vital than any other—a great kingdom that will make discoveries even more amazing than steam and electricity.”
“Oh, sir,” Joe said, “I’d really like to see that!”
“You entered the world too soon, my boy.”
“Besides,” Kennedy said, “it might be a pretty tiresome time if industry takes over the globe and runs everything for profit! After inventing machines, man will be devoured by ’em! I’ve always figured that doomsday will come when some huge boiler gets heated to three billion atmospheres, then blows up the planet!”
“And I’ll add,” Joe said, “that the first ones fooling with the contraption will have been Americans.”
“Quite so, they’re great boilermakers!” the doctor replied. “But without getting all caught up in these discussions, let’s be content to marvel at this Land of the Moon, since it’s right beneath our eyes.”
Below the masses of piled-up clouds, the sun shed its last rays and draped the ground’s tiniest irregularities in gold trim: gigantic timber, treelike weeds, and mosses flush with the soil all shared in this outpouring of light; the mildly rolling terrain swelled here and there into little conical hills; no mountains were on the horizon; immense brushwood barriers, impregnable hedges, and prickly jungles partitioned off the glades where the many villages were spread out; gigantic spurges erected natural fortifications around them, intermingling with the coral-shaped branches of the shrubbery.
Soon the Malagarasi River, Lake Tanganyika’s chief tributary, began winding beneath the clumps of greenery; it offered sanctuary to the many watercourses arising from swollen torrents during the flood season, or from ponds gouged into the ground’s clayish bedrock. For watchers on high, it was a network of waterfalls pouring over the entire western face of the country.
Livestock with big humps grazed on the lush meadows, vanishing into the tall weeds; magnificently aromatic forests pleased the eye like huge bouquets; but inside those bouquets lions, leopards, hyenas, and tigers1 took refuge to escape the heat of the dying day. Sometimes the top of a thicket would ripple as an elephant passed underneath, and you could hear trees cracking as they gave way to its ivory tusks.
“What a country for a hunter!” Kennedy exclaimed gleefully. “If you fired a shot at random into any part of that forest, you’d hit something worthwhile! Couldn’t we give it a quick try?”
“Not yet, my dear Dick; night’s falling, a threatening night with a thunderstorm to keep it company. Now then, the soil in this region acts like an immense electric battery, so the thunderstorms are dreadful.”
“You’re right, sir,” Joe said. “The heat’s stifling, and there’s no wind at all; you can tell something’s in the works.”
“The atmosphere is overloaded with electricity,” the doctor replied. “Every living thing is attuned to the conditions in the air that precede a battle of the elements, and I confess I’ve never seen those conditions as pervasive as this.”
“Well,” the hunter asked, “wouldn’t it be a good time to descend?”
“On the contrary, Dick, I’d rather go higher. I’m only worried about being carried off course by these crosscurrents in the air.”
“You don’t want to stick with the heading we’ve followed since we left the coast?”
“If at all possible,” Fergusson replied, “I’ll bear more to the north for seven or eight degrees; I’ll try to go back up to the supposed latitudes of the Nile’s headwaters; maybe we’ll spy a few traces of Captain Speke’s expedition, or even Herr von Heuglin’s caravan. If my calculations are correct, we’re at longitude 32° 40′, and I’d like to head straight up past the equator.”
“Look at that!” Kennedy exclaimed, interrupting his companion. “Look at those blood-colored masses of flesh, those hippopotamuses wriggling out of the ponds—and those crocodiles inhaling the air so noisily!”
“They feel stifled!” Joe noted. “Ah, what a dandy way to travel, and we can truly look down on those nasty varmints! Mr. Samuel! Mr. Kennedy! Look at those packs of animals moving in tight ranks! There’s a good 200 of ’em; they’re wolves.”
“No, Joe, they’re wild dogs; a notorious breed that doesn’t shrink from attacking lions. They’re the most dreadful thing a traveler could encounter. They’d instantly tear him to pieces.”
“Whoops. Just don’t put Joe in charge of muzzling the brutes,” replied that blithe youth. “Anyhow, if that’s the nature of the beast, we shouldn’t hold it against ’em!”
Little by little the landscape fell silent under the thunderstorm’s influence; apparently the heavier air became unfit for transmitting sound; the atmosphere seemed packed in cotton wool, swallowing up every noise like a room hung with tapestries. Falcons, gray-crowned cranes, red jays, blue jays, mockingbirds, and phoebes all vanished into the tall trees. Everything in nature pointed to an impending cataclysm.
By nine o’clock in the evening, the Victoria hung motionless above Mséné, a huge gathering of villages barely standing out in the shadows; sometimes a stray beam of light reflected off a dreary patch of water, indicating regularly laid out ditches; and through a last rift in the clouds, your eyes could catch the dark, quiet shapes of palm trees, tamarinds, sycamores, and gigantic spurges.
“It’s stifling!” the Scot said, inhaling the biggest lungful he could of that thin air. “We’re stock-still! Should we take her down?”
“But what about the thunderstorm?” the doctor said with some uneasiness.
“If you’re worried about being carried off by the wind, I don’t think you have a choice.”
“Maybe the storm won’t burst tonight,” Joe went on. “The clouds are awfully high.”
“That’s the very reason I’m reluctant to go above them; we’d have to climb to a great altitude, lose sight of the earth, and not know the entire night if we were moving forward or in what direction.”
“Make a decision, my dear Samuel, the clock’s ticking.”
“It’s aggravating that the wind died out,” Joe continued. “It would take us far away from the thunderstorm.”
“Which is regrettable, my friends, because the clouds are a danger to us; they contain countercurrents that could ensnare us in their eddies, also lightning flashes that could set us on fire. On the other hand, if we dropped anchor in some treetop, the squall could be forceful enough to slam us to the ground.”
“Then what can we do?”
“We need to keep the Victoria in a neutral zone between the earth’s perils and the sky’s. We have ample water for the burner, and our 200 pounds of ballast are intact. In a pinch I can make use of them.”
“We’ll keep watch with you,” the hunter said.
“No, my friends; put the provisions under cover and go to bed; I’ll wake you if necessary.”
“But we aren’t in danger yet, master—wouldn’t it be better if you got some rest yourself?”
“Thank you, my boy, but no—I’d rather stand watch. We aren’t moving, and if our circumstances don’t change, tomorrow we’ll be in exactly the same place.”
“Good night, sir!”
“Good night, if that’s still a possibility.”
Kennedy and Joe got comfortable under their blankets, and the doctor stayed by himself out in the vastness.
But the clouds were like a domed ceiling that kept inching downward, and the darkness deepened. The black vault of night closed in around the planet earth, as if bent on crushing it.
Violent, swift, incisive, a flash of lightning suddenly sliced through the gloom; the gash it made hadn’t closed before a frightful thunderclap shook the heavens to their depths.
“Everybody up!” Fergusson shouted.
Aroused by the horrific racket, the two sleepers stood by for orders.
“Are we descending?” Kennedy asked.
“No, the balloon wouldn’t hold up under it! Let’s go higher before these clouds transform into water and the wind increases!”
And he got busy shooting the flame of his burner into the loops of the coil.
Thunderstorms in the tropics develop with as much speed as violence. A second flash of lightning ripped through the cloud bank, then twenty others instantly followed. Electric sparks streaked the sky, crackling under the heavy raindrops.
“We’re too late,” the doctor said. “Now we have to cross a zone of fire in a balloon filled with flammable gas!”
“So take her down! Take her down!” Kennedy kept repeating.
“We’d have about a fifty-fifty chance of being hit by lightning, and we’d quickly rip apart on some tree branch!”
“We’re climbing, Mr. Samuel!”
“We need to go faster, still faster!”
During equatorial thunderstorms in this part of Africa, it isn’t rare to count thirty to thirty-five flashes of lightning per minute. The sky is literally on fire, and the thunderclaps never let up.
The wind cut loose with frightful violence in that burning atmosphere; the white-hot clouds buckled under the assault; you would have sworn that the air from some immense blower was fanning those flames.
Dr. Fergusson kept his gas burner going full blast; the balloon expanded and ascended; Kennedy knelt in the center of the gondola and tied down the tent flaps. The balloon was whirling fast enough to give you vertigo, and our travelers had to put up with nerve-wracking shakes and shivers. Big hollows took shape in the envelope of their lighter-than-air vehicle; the wind swooped down savagely, and the taffeta cracked like a gunshot under the pressure. Making a furious racket, a sort of hail crossed the skies and drummed on the Victoria. But she continued her upward trek; flashes of lightning scrawled fiery tangents to her circumference; she was in the heart of the blaze.
“God help us!” Dr. Fergusson said. “We’re in His hands; He alone can save us. Let’s be ready for any eventuality, even catching on fire; our fall may not be swift.”
The doctor’s voice barely carried to the ears of his companions; but they could see his calm features in the midst of crisscrossing flashes of lighting; he was watching the phosphorescent phenomena caused by St. Elmo’s fire, which played along the netting of their lighter-than-air vehicle.
The Victoria kept whirling and twirling, but she continued to climb; after a quarter of an hour, she had gone beyond the zone of storm clouds; the extensive outpourings of electricity below her were like a huge halo of fireworks hanging from her gondola.
It was one of the most gorgeous sights nature can offer to man. Below, the thunderstorm. Above, the starry sky—serene, silent, self-contained, with the moon shedding her peaceful rays over those peevish clouds.
Dr. Fergusson checked the barometer; it gave an altitude of 12,000 feet. The time was eleven o’clock in the evening.
“The dangers are behind us, thank heaven,” he said. “All we have to do is stay at this altitude.”
“That was scary!” Kennedy replied.
“Oh now,” Joe countered. “It added a spot of variety to our trip, and I don’t mind watching a thunderstorm from a little higher up. It’s a colorful sight!”
