The Victoria towed by an elephant
The Mountains of the Moon—an ocean of greenery—they drop anchor—elephant towing service—running fire—death of a pachyderm—country kitchen—meal on the grass—a night on the ground.
On Monday the sun rose above the horizon around six o’clock in the morning; the clouds broke up, and a pleasant breeze cooled the early morning hours.
The sweet-scented earth grew visible again to the travelers’ eyes. Twisting in place among the countercurrents, their balloon had barely drifted; letting his hydrogen contract, the doctor dropped down to catch a more northerly heading. He searched without success for a good while; the wind took him to the west until he sighted the famous Mountains of the Moon, which curve in a semicircle around Lake Tanganyika’s lower tip; their slightly jagged offshoots stood out against the bluish horizon; they were like a natural fortification, too hard for central African explorers to climb; a few isolated pinnacles bore hints of year-round snow.
“Now we’re in unexplored territory,” the doctor said. “Captain Burton pushed quite far into the west, but he couldn’t reach these famous mountains; he even denied they existed, although Speke vouched for them; Burton claimed they sprang from his companion’s imagination; for us, my friends, no more doubts are possible.”
“Will we fly over ’em?” Kennedy asked.
“No, God willing; I’m hoping to find a favorable wind that will bring me back to the equator; I’ll even wait for one if need be—I’ll have the Victoria drop anchor like ships do in contrary winds.”
But it wasn’t long before the doctor’s expectations were fulfilled. After trying out a few different altitudes, the Victoria proceeded northeast at a moderate speed.
“We’re moving in the right direction,” he said, checking the compass, “and we’re barely 200 feet in the air, highly promising conditions for scouting out these new districts; when Captain Speke left Kazeh and went on to discover Lake Victoria, he headed up a straight line that lay more to the east.”
“Will we be at this a long time?” Kennedy asked.
“Maybe; our objective is to travel in the direction of the Nile’s headwaters, and we have over 600 miles to cover before getting to the farthest point reached by explorers coming from the north.”
“And we won’t set foot on solid ground,” Joe asked, “in order to stretch our legs?”
“Of course we will; besides, we’ll need to go easy on our provisions, and you, my gallant Dick, will be supplying us with fresh meat on the way.”
“Anytime you like, Samuel old friend.”
“We’ll also have to replenish our water supply. Who knows if we won’t be carried off to more arid regions? So we can’t be too cautious.”
At noon the Victoria lay in longitude 29° 15′ and latitude 3° 15′. She passed over the village of Uyofu on the northernmost edge of Unyamwezi, which was abreast of Lake Victoria, invisible as yet.
The tribes closer to the equator seem a bit more civilized, although governed by absolute monarchs whose tyranny knows no bounds; the province of Karagwah constitutes their most tightly knit community.
Our three travelers made up their minds to dock at the first promising locale. They needed to call an extended halt and give their lighter-than-air vehicle a thorough going-over: the doctor cut back the burner’s flame; the anchors, tossed out of the gondola, were soon skimming over the tall weeds of an immense meadow; from the air it seemed to be covered with a closely trimmed lawn, but in reality this lawn was seven or eight feet high.
Like a gigantic butterfly, the Victoria scarcely brushed these weeds, not even bending them back. There wasn’t an obstacle in sight. It was like an ocean of greenery without a single reef.
“We could go on like this a good while,” Kennedy said. “I don’t see a single tree we can pull up to; I think our hunt’s in trouble.”
“Hold on, my dear Dick; you couldn’t hunt in these weeds, they’re higher than you are; we’ll end up finding a more promising area.”
In truth it was a delightful outing—an honest-to-goodness boat ride over this sea that was so green, so nearly transparent, and rolling so gently beneath the passing breezes. Their gondola truly lived up to its name and seemed to cleave the waves, sometimes causing flocks of splendidly colored birds to burst out of the tall weeds with a thousand merry squawks; the anchors dipped into this lake of blossoms, tracing a furrow that closed behind them like a ship’s wake.
All at once the balloonists felt a sharp jolt; no doubt the anchor had bitten into some rocky crevice hidden under that gigantic lawn.
“It caught hold,” Joe said.
“Good, drop the ladder!” the hunter shot back.
These words were barely out of his mouth when a shrill hooting sound echoed in the air, and the following sentences, punctuated with exclamations, burst from the lips of our three travelers:
“What was that?”
“A weird sort of hooting!”
“Good heavens! We’re in motion!”
“The anchor came loose!”
“No, it’s still holding,” Joe said, tugging at the line.
“The rock itself is in motion!”
There was a huge amount of movement in the weeds, and soon a long sinuous shape rose above them.
“A snake!” Joe said.
“A snake!” yelled Kennedy, cocking his rifle.
“Nothing of the sort!” the doctor said. “It’s the trunk of an elephant.”
“An elephant, Samuel?”
And with that Kennedy sighted down the barrel of his weapon.
“Hold it, Dick, hold it!”
“No question! That animal’s towing us.”
“And in the right direction, Joe, the right direction.”
The elephant was moving at a spanking pace; soon he got to a clearing, and there they could see all of him; he was magnificent, an animal of gigantic size, and the doctor identified him as the male of the species; he had two whitish, marvelously curving tusks that might have been eight feet in length; the anchor’s flukes were stubbornly stuck between them.
Using his trunk, the beast was making vain attempts to break free of the line connecting him to the gondola.
“Giddyup, big fella!” Joe exclaimed in high delight, doing his best to spur on this unorthodox draft animal. “It’s the last word in travel! Horses are out this year! We’ll have an elephant if you please.”
“But where’s he taking us?” Kennedy asked, his rifle quivering and his fingers itching.
“He’s taking us where we want to go, my dear Dick! Have a little patience!”
“Whig-a-more,1 as Scottish farmers say!” Joe yelled cheerily. “Giddyup! Giddyup!”
The animal broke into a healthy gallop; he hurled his trunk right and left, and whenever he lunged, he gave the gondola a violent jolt. The doctor stood ready, axe in hand, to cut the line if he had to.
“But,” he said, “we won’t part with our anchor until the last possible moment.”
This chariot race—with an elephant in the traces—lasted nearly an hour and a half; the beast didn’t seem at all tired; these enormous pachyderms can manage remarkably long hauls, and they’re known to cover immense distances from one day to the next—like whales, which are also big on bulk and speed.
“In fact,” Joe said, “we practically have harpooned a whale, and whatever whalers do on their fishing expeditions, we need to get the hang of it.”
But a change in the nature of the terrain forced the doctor to revise his method of propulsion.
A dense grove of camel thorn trees2 came into view north of the meadow, roughly three miles off; the balloon now had a serious need to part company with her chauffeur.
So Kennedy was entrusted with stopping the elephant in his tracks; he sighted down the barrel of his rifle; but he wasn’t in a favorable position to get at the beast, at least not in any effective way; hitting the animal’s cranium, his first bullet flattened out as if it had struck sheet iron; the beast didn’t seem at all bothered; but the crack of the rifle made him pick up the pace, and he had the speed of a horse at full gallop.
“Bloody hell!” Kennedy said.
“What a hardheaded brute!” Joe added.
“We’ll try a couple of conical bullets in the small of the shoulder,” Dick went on, carefully loading his rifle. Then he fired.
The animal let out a dreadful hooting sound and ran like nobody’s business.
“Look here,” said Joe, who was packing a shotgun, “I’d better give you a hand, Mr. Dick, or we’ll never finish the job.”
And two bullets lodged in the beast’s flanks.
The elephant pulled up, raised his trunk, then resumed his high-speed course toward the grove; he shook his huge head, and blood began to cascade from his wounds.
“Let’s keep up our fire, Mr. Dick.”
“And keep up a running fire,” the doctor added, “because we’re less than forty yards from the grove!”
They squeezed off ten more rounds. The elephant gave a fearful leap; there was a cracking noise that was so loud, you would have sworn the gondola and balloon had gone completely to pieces; the jolt knocked the axe out of the doctor’s hands onto the ground.
At this juncture they were in a dreadful fix; the anchor rope was securely caught, and our travelers couldn’t work it free or cut it with their knives; the balloon was rapidly approaching the grove, then a bullet struck the animal in the eye just as he raised his head; he stopped, wavered; his knees buckled; his flank swung sideways to the hunter.
“Got him in the heart!” the Scot said, after firing his rifle one last time.
The elephant let out a bellow of distress and mortal agony; he straightened for an instant, trunk writhing, then he fell with all his weight onto one of his tusks, which snapped clean off. He was dead.
“He snapped off his tusk!” Kennedy wailed. “In England ivory fetches thirty-five guineas3 for every hundred pounds!”
“That much?” Joe said, wriggling down the anchor line to the ground.
“Why are you crying over spilt milk, my dear Dick?” Dr. Fergusson replied. “Are we ivory traders? Did we come here to strike it rich?”
Joe inspected the anchor; it was solidly caught on the tusk that was still intact. Samuel and Dick leaped to the ground, while the half-deflated balloon swayed above the animal’s corpse.
“What a magnificent beast!” Kennedy exclaimed. “Look at the size of him! I never saw any elephants this big in India!”
“Nothing surprising in that, my dear Dick; the world’s finest elephants are in central Africa. Hunters such as Andersson and Gordon-Cumming have bagged so many down by the Cape, the creatures are migrating toward the equator, and there we’ll often find them in sizable herds.”
“Meanwhile,” Joe replied, “I wish we could have a bite or two of this specimen! I hereby propose to serve you a sumptuous meal at the beast’s expense. Mr. Kennedy can go hunting for a couple of hours, Mr. Samuel can knuckle down to inspecting the Victoria, and in the meantime I can do some serious cooking.”
“Well thought out,” the doctor replied. “Wish granted.”
“As for me,” the hunter said, “since Joe has deigned to offer me two free hours, I’ll take ’em.”
“Off you go, my friend; but no foolish heroics. Don’t wander too far away.”
“Relax.”
And Dick plunged into the grove, carrying his shotgun.
Then Joe got busy with his kitchen duties. First he dug a hole in the earth that was two feet deep; he filled it with the dry branches covering the ground, which came from trees shouldered aside by passing elephants, whose tracks were still visible. After filling the hole, he built a two-foot pyre above it and set it aflame.
After that he went back to the elephant’s carcass, lying barely sixty feet from the grove; he deftly removed the trunk, which was nearly two feet wide at the base; he selected the daintiest part of it, adding one of the animal’s cushioned feet; in essence these are morsels beyond compare, like a bison’s hump, a bear’s paw, or a boar’s head.
The flames consumed the pyre completely from the outside in, and after its coals and embers were cleared away, the hole was extremely hot; wrapped in aromatic leaves, the elephant morsels took their places inside this improvised oven under a covering of hot embers; then Joe built a second pyre over it all, and after the wood was consumed, the meat cooked to perfection.
Then Joe took the dinner out of the blaze; he arranged this mouthwatering meat over green leaves, positioning the meal in the middle of a magnificent patch of grass; he brought out crackers, brandy, and coffee, then drew some fresh, clear water from a nearby stream.
Laid out in this way, it was a feast that was pleasing to the eye—and Joe wasn’t bragging when he told himself it would be even more pleasing to the taste buds.
“Travel without getting tired or running risks!” he said over and over. “Meals anytime you want! A hammock all day long! What more could you ask for? And our good Mr. Kennedy didn’t want to come along!”
For his part Dr. Fergusson got on with a studious examination of his lighter-than-air vehicle. Apparently she hadn’t suffered during the turmoil; the taffeta and gutta-percha had proved marvelously resilient; given the ground’s current elevation, and taking the balloon’s lifting power into account, he was pleased to see that she held exactly the same amount of hydrogen as before; so far the envelope had remained completely watertight.
Our travelers had left Zanzibar just five days earlier; they still hadn’t opened the pemmican; their stores of canned meat and crackers were ample for a long journey; so nothing needed replenishing except the water.
The pipes and coil seemed in perfect shape; thanks to their india-rubber joints, they were ready for the balloon’s every shake and shiver.
His examination over, the doctor got busy organizing his notes. He made a rough but very successful sketch of the surrounding countryside, its long meadow vanishing into the forest of camel thorn trees, the balloon motionless above the elephant’s monstrous body.
At the end of his two hours, Kennedy came back with a string of plump partridges and a thigh from an oryx, a type of gemsbok belonging to the most agile species of antelope. Joe took charge of preparing these additional provisions.
“Dinner is served!” he called soon after in his most dulcet tones.
And our three travelers merely had to sit down on the green grass; they gave the elephant’s trunk and foot a grade of excellent; they drank to England as usual, and the savory aroma of Havana cigars wafted over this delightful district for the first time.
Kennedy did enough eating, drinking, and babbling for four people; he was feeling no pain; he solemnly proposed to his friend the doctor that they take up residence in this forest, build a hut out of foliage, and start a dynasty of Congo Crusoes.
His proposal died in committee, although Joe volunteered to play the role of Friday.
The countryside seemed so tranquil, so deserted, the doctor decided to spend the night on the ground. Joe built fires all around them, a barricade essential for keeping out wild animals; drawn by the smell of elephant meat, hyenas, cougars, and jackals were prowling the neighborhood. Kennedy had to fire his rifle several times at these overaggressive visitors; but the night ultimately ran its course without any disagreeable incidents.
