Fighting back with gunfire
chapter 43
The Talibas—the chase—a devastated country—not much wind—the Victoria loses altitude—the last provisions—the Victoria leaps around—fighting back with gunfire—the wind picks up—the Senegal River—Gouina Falls—hot air—crossing the river.
“If we hadn’t taken the precaution of lightening our balloon last evening,” the doctor said, “we would’ve been done for, there’s no getting around it.”
“A stitch in time saves nine,” Joe remarked. “Nothing could be more natural.”
“We’re still in danger,” Fergusson countered.
“Why are you worried?” Dick asked. “The Victoria can’t descend without your say-so, and what if she does?”
“What if she does? Dick, take a look!”
Our travelers had just passed the edge of the forest when some thirty horsemen came in sight, dressed in bulky pants and fluttering burnooses; they were armed, some with lances, others with long muskets; keeping their speedy, spirited horses to a canter, they were going the same way as the Victoria, which by then was moving at a moderate pace.
Seeing the travelers, they let out wild yells and shook their weapons; you could read anger and menace in their dusky faces, which looked even fiercer with their sparse but bristly beards; they crossed effortlessly over the low mesas and mild gradients leading down to the Senegal River.
“Here they come!” the doctor said. “They’re cruel Talibas, ferocious marabouts serving El-Hadj Umar Tall! I’d rather be surrounded by wild animals in midforest than fall into the hands of those bandits.”
“They don’t look very neighborly!” Kennedy said. “And they’re strapping brutes!”
“Luckily their animals can’t fly,” Joe replied. “That’s a point for our side.”
“Look at those ruined villages,” Fergusson said, “those shacks burned to the ground! That’s their handiwork; and here, in place of huge tracts of tilled land, they’ve left drought and devastation.”
“For now they can’t get at us,” Kennedy remarked, “and if we make it to the far side of the river, we’ll be safe.”
“Completely safe, Dick; but we mustn’t go lower,” the doctor replied, his eyes darting to the barometer.
“Anyhow, Joe,” Kennedy went on, “it won’t hurt to get our weapons ready.”
“Can’t do any harm, Mr. Dick; good thing we didn’t sprinkle ’em down the road behind us.”
“My rifle!” the hunter exclaimed. “Here’s hoping we never part.”
And Kennedy loaded it with the greatest care; he had an ample supply of powder and bullets left.
“What’s our altitude?” he asked Fergusson.
“About 750 feet; but we no longer can look for favorable currents by climbing or descending. We’re at the balloon’s mercy.”
“That’s a nuisance,” Kennedy continued. “There isn’t much of a wind, and if we’d run into a hurricane like the ones earlier, we would’ve lost sight of those wretched bandits hours ago.”
“The rascals are following us at a canter,” Joe said. “They’re taking it easy, they’re out for a stroll.”
“If they were in range,” the hunter said, “I’d have fun unhorsing ’em one after the other.”
“I daresay!” Fergusson replied. “But we’d be in range as well, and our Victoria would offer an all-too-easy target for bullets from their long muskets; and if they punctured her, just imagine the predicament we’d be in.”
The Talibas chased them all morning long. Approaching eleven o’clock, our travelers had gone barely fifteen miles farther west.
The doctor kept an eye out for the tiniest clouds on the horizon. He lived in constant dread of changes in the atmosphere. If he should be tossed back toward the Niger, what would happen to him? Furthermore he noted that the balloon was visibly tending to lose altitude; since setting out he’d already dropped more than 300 feet, and the Senegal River had to be a dozen or so miles away; at his present speed he was bound to be traveling for another three hours.
Just then a new round of yells caught his attention; the Talibas were frantically urging their horses onward.
The doctor checked his barometer and learned the reason for all the shrieking:
“We’re descending,” Kennedy said.
“Yes,” Fergusson replied.
“Bloody hell!” Joe thought.
After a quarter of an hour, the gondola wasn’t 150 feet off the ground, but the wind was blowing with more energy.
The Talibas reared up on their horses, and soon a barrage from their muskets exploded in the sky.
“You’re too far off, you morons!” Joe called. “We’d better make sure those scoundrels keep their distance.”
He drew a bead on one of the closer horsemen and fired; the Taliba tumbled to the ground; his companions came to a stop, and the Victoria pulled farther ahead.
“They’re playing it safe,” Kennedy said.
“Because they’re convinced they’ll catch us,” the doctor replied. “And they’ll succeed if we keep descending! We absolutely must go higher!”
“What can we dump?” Joe asked.
“Our entire remaining stock of pemmican! That’s an additional thirty pounds we can dispense with!”
“It’s gone!” Joe said, following orders.
The gondola had nearly touched down, then it rose again in the midst of howls from the Talibas; but half an hour later the Victoria was swiftly dropping again; her gas was seeping through the envelope’s pores.
Soon the gondola was skimming over the ground; El-Hadj’s Negroes rushed toward it; but as happens in such circumstances, the Victoria had barely touched down when she gave a leap into the air, only to swoop again a mile farther on.
“So we aren’t going to get away!” Kennedy said.
“Toss out our brandy stores, Joe,” the doctor snapped, “our instruments, everything that has any weight whatever—and our last anchor, since we have no choice!”
Joe snatched up the barometers and thermometers; but they didn’t amount to much, and after the balloon climbed for an instant, she soon fell back toward the earth. The Talibas were hard on her heels, just 200 paces behind her.
“Throw out the two shotguns!” the doctor shouted.
“Not without firing ’em at least,” the hunter replied.
And he squeezed off four consecutive rounds into the crowd of horsemen; four Talibas fell, to frenzied shouts from the rest of the band.
The Victoria went higher again; she made several enormously long leaps, like an immense rubber ball bouncing over the ground. Our poor travelers were a strange sight, trying to get away by taking gigantic strides, seeming to gain new energy as soon as they touched the earth, like the giant wrestler Antaeus!1 But this situation couldn’t go on. It was almost noon. The Victoria was tiring, emptying out, getting leaner; her envelope grew flabby and fluttery; the spreading folds of its taffeta squealed against each other.
“Heaven’s abandoning us,” Kennedy said. “We’re riding for a fall!”
Joe didn’t reply but looked at his master.
“No!” Fergusson said. “We have over 150 additional pounds left to drop.”
“Just what exactly?” Kennedy asked, thinking the doctor was losing his mind.
“The gondola!” Samuel replied. “Let’s get up in the netting! We can hold onto the meshes and make it to the river! Hurry! Hurry!”
And the daredevils didn’t hesitate to clutch at this last straw. They clung to the meshes of the netting as the doctor had instructed, and while Joe held on with one hand, he cut the ropes attaching the gondola; it dropped away just as their vehicle was going down for good.
“Hooray! Hooray!” he shouted as the balloon, lighter again, climbed back to 300 feet.
The Talibas spurred their horses; they were racing at full gallop; but the Victoria found a livelier wind, increased her lead, and swiftly headed for a hill that blocked the western horizon. This was a promising circumstance for our travelers—they could fly over it, while El-Hadj’s horde had to turn north in order to get around this latest obstacle.
The three friends held on tight to the netting; they had managed to tie it together underneath them, and it formed a sort of fluttering pocket.
Suddenly, after they had cleared the hill, the doctor exclaimed:
“The river! The Senegal River!”
Sure enough, the river was rolling along two miles away, quite a broad expanse of water; low and fertile, the opposite bank offered a safe refuge and a promising place to come in for a landing.
“Another quarter of an hour,” Fergusson said, “and we’ll be out of danger!”
But it wasn’t to be; the empty balloon gradually dropped down over terrain almost completely devoid of vegetation. There were long slopes and rocky plains, just a few shrubs and some coarse grass dried out by the hot sun.
The Victoria touched down several times and rose again; her leaps got shorter and lower; ultimately she sat still, and the top part of her netting brushed the high branches of a baobab, the only tree left standing out in that deserted countryside.
“It’s over,” the hunter said.
“Just a hundred paces from the river,” Joe added.
Our hapless trio stepped down onto the ground, and the doctor led his two companions toward the banks of the Senegal.
At this location the river was making a thunderous racket that didn’t let up; reaching its edge, Fergusson realized they were at Gouina Falls! Not a rowboat at waterside, not a sign of life.
Two thousand feet wide, the Senegal River rushed down from a height of 150 feet, making a deafening noise. It flowed from east to west, and the row of rocks that blocked its course ran north to south. The rocks standing in the middle of the falls had strange shapes, like immense prehistoric animals turned to stone in the midst of the waters.
Clearly this chasm was impossible to cross; Kennedy couldn’t help throwing up his hands.
But Dr. Fergusson exclaimed in a bold, forceful voice:
“It’s not over!”
“I didn’t think so,” said Joe, who never lost confidence in his master.
The sight of that dried-up grass had given the doctor a daring idea. It was their only chance. He quickly led his friends over to the vehicle’s envelope.
“We have at least an hour’s head start on those bandits,” he said. “Let’s not waste a second, my friends; gather up a huge load of this dry grass; I need at least a hundred pounds’ worth.”
“To do what?” Kennedy asked.
“I haven’t any more gas; all right, I’ll cross the river using hot air!”
“Ah, my gallant Samuel!” Kennedy exclaimed. “You’re truly a man among men!”
Joe and Kennedy got to work, and an enormous haystack soon sprang up next to the baobab tree.
Meanwhile the doctor had enlarged the throat of his lighter-than-air vehicle, cutting a wider opening at the bottom; he took care beforehand to expel any remaining hydrogen through the valve; then he piled a load of dry grass under the envelope and set it on fire.
It doesn’t take long to inflate a balloon with hot air; a temperature of 180°2 is enough to thin the air inside and reduce its weight by 50%; so the Victoria began to get noticeably rounder again; there was no shortage of grass; the fire increased thanks to the doctor’s attentions, and his lighter-than-air vehicle fattened up before their eyes.
By that point it was twelve forty-five.
Just then, two miles to the north, the band of Talibas came in sight; you could hear their yells and the hoofbeats of horses racing at top speed.
“They’ll be here in twenty minutes!” Kennedy said.
“More grass, Joe, more grass! In ten minutes we’ll be high in the sky!”
“There you go, sir.”
The Victoria was two-thirds inflated.
“My friends, hold onto the netting as we did before!”
“Righto,” the hunter replied.
After ten minutes the balloon gave a lurch or two, indicating she was set to lift off. The Talibas were closing in; they were barely 500 paces away.
“Hold on tight,” Fergusson shouted.
“Not to worry, master!”
With his foot the doctor pushed another load of grass into the blaze.
Fully inflated by the rise in temperature, the balloon lifted off, rubbing against the baobab’s branches.
“We’re on our way!” Joe exclaimed.
A barrage of musket fire replied to him; a bullet actually scraped his shoulder; but Kennedy leaned over the side, fired his rifle with one hand, and laid another enemy low.
Indescribable shouts of rage greeted the ascension of their lighter-than-air vehicle, which climbed to nearly 800 feet. A fast-moving wind took hold of her, she shook and shivered alarmingly, and meanwhile the courageous doctor and his companions gazed at the chasm of waterfalls opening up beneath their eyes.
Ten minutes later, without a word spoken, our courageous travelers were gradually descending toward the river’s other bank.
Dressed in French military uniforms, a group of about ten men stood there, astounded, marveling, awestruck. You can imagine their amazement when they saw that balloon lift off from the river’s right bank. They were close to thinking it was some astronomical phenomenon; but their officers, a naval lieutenant and sublieutenant, knew about Dr. Fergusson’s daring endeavor from Europe’s newspapers, and they instantly realized what was going on.
Gradually deflating, the balloon dropped lower and lower while the bold balloonists held onto her netting; but there wasn’t much chance she could make it ashore; so the Frenchmen dashed into the river and gave the three Englishmen a warm welcome, just as the Victoria splashed down several yards from the Senegal’s left bank.
“Dr. Fergusson!” the lieutenant exclaimed.
“The same,” the doctor replied serenely, “along with his two friends.”
The Frenchmen led the travelers away from the river, while a swift current carried off the half-deflated balloon, which looked like an immense bubble as she went over Gouina Falls and sank into the waters of the Senegal River.
“Poor Victoria!” Joe said.
The doctor couldn’t keep back a tear; he spread his arms, and his two friends rushed into them under the sway of deep emotion.
