Jules Verne (4 page)

This is what Robur demonstrated with undeniable logic amid the
uproar that arose on all sides. And in conclusion these are the words
he hurled in the faces of the balloonists: "With your aerostats you
can do nothing—you will arrive at nothing—you dare do nothing!
The boldest of your aeronauts, John Wise, although he has made an
aerial voyage of twelve hundred miles above the American continent,
has had to give up his project of crossing the Atlantic! And you have
not advanced one step—not one step—towards your end."

"Sir," said the president, who in vain endeavored to keep himself
cool, "you forget what was said by our immortal Franklin at the first
appearance of the fire balloon, 'It is but a child, but it will
grow!' It was but a child, and it has grown."

"No, Mr. President, it has not grown! It has got fatter—and this is
not the same thing!"

This was a direct attack on the Weldon Institute, which had decreed,
helped, and paid for the making of a monster balloon. And so
propositions of the following kind began to fly about the room: "Turn
him out!" "Throw him off the platform!" "Prove that he is heavier
than the air!"

But these were only words, not means to an end.

Robur remained impassible, and continued: "There is no progress for
your aerostats, my citizen balloonists; progress is for flying
machines. The bird flies, and he is not a balloon, he is a piece of
mechanism!"

"Yes, he flies!" exclaimed the fiery Bat T. Fynn; "but he flies
against all the laws of mechanics."

"Indeed!" said Robur, shrugging his shoulders, and resuming, "Since
we have begun the study of the flight of large and small birds one
simple idea has prevailed—to imitate nature, which never makes
mistakes. Between the albatross, which gives hardly ten beats of the
wing per minute, between the pelican, which gives seventy—"

"Seventy-one," said the voice of a scoffer.

"And the bee, which gives one hundred and ninety-two per second—"

"One hundred and ninety-three!" said the facetious individual.

"And, the common house fly, which gives three hundred and thirty—"

"And a half!"

"And the mosquito, which gives millions—"

"No, milliards!"

But Robur, the interrupted, interrupted not his demonstration.
"Between these different rates—" he continued.

"There is a difference," said a voice.

"There is a possibility of finding a practical solution. When De Lucy
showed that the stag beetle, an insect weighing only two grammes,
could lift a weight of four hundred grammes, or two hundred times its
own weight, the problem of aviation was solved. Besides, it has been
shown that the wing surface decreases in proportion to the increase
of the size and weight of the animal. Hence we can look forward to
such contrivances—"

"Which would never fly!" said secretary Phil Evans.

"Which have flown, and which will fly," said Robur, without being in
the least disconcerted, "and which we can call streophores,
helicopters, orthopters—or, in imitation of the word 'nef,' which
comes from 'navis,' call them from 'avis,' 'efs,'—by means of which
man will become the master of space. The helix—"

"Ah, the helix!" replied Phil Evans. "But the bird has no helix; that
we know!"

"So," said Robur; "but Penaud has shown that in reality the bird
makes a helix, and its flight is helicopteral. And the motor of the
future is the screw—"

"From such a maladee Saint Helix keep us free!" sung out one of the
members, who had accidentally hit upon the air from Herold's "Zampa."

And they all took up the chorus: "From such a maladee Saint Helix
keep us free!" with such intonations and variations as would have
made the French composer groan in his grave.

As the last notes died away in a frightful discord Uncle Prudent took
advantage of the momentary calm to say, "Stranger, up to now, we let
you speak without interruption." It seemed that for the president of
the Weldon Institute shouts, yells, and catcalls were not
interruptions, but only an exchange of arguments.

"But I may remind you, all the same, that the theory of aviation is
condemned beforehand, and rejected by the majority of American and
foreign engineers. It is a system which was the cause of the death of
the Flying Saracen at Constantinople, of the monk Volador at Lisbon,
of De Leturn in 1852, of De Groof in 1864, besides the victims I
forget since the mythological Icarus—"

"A system," replied Robur, "no more to be condemned than that whose
martyrology contains the names of Pilâtre de Rozier at Calais, of
Blanchard at Paris, of Donaldson and Grimwood in Lake Michigan, of
Sivel and of Crocé-Spinelli, and others whom it takes good care, to
forget."

This was a counter-thrust with a vengeance.

"Besides," continued Robur, "With your balloons as good as you can
make them you will never obtain any speed worth mentioning. It would
take you ten years to go round the world—and a flying machine could
do it in a week!"

Here arose a new tempest of protests and denials which lasted for
three long minutes. And then Phil Evans look up the word.

"Mr. Aviator," he said "you who talk so much of the benefits of
aviation, have you ever aviated?"

"I have."

"And made the conquest of the air?"

"Not unlikely."

"Hooray for Robur the Conqueror!" shouted an ironical voice.

"Well, yes! Robur the Conqueror! I accept the name and I will bear
it, for I have a right to it!"

"We beg to doubt it!" said Jem Chip.

"Gentlemen," said Robur, and his brows knit, "when I have just
seriously stated a serious thing I do not permit anyone to reply to
me by a flat denial, and I shall be glad to know the name of the
interrupter."

"My name is Chip, and I am a vegetarian."

"Citizen Chip," said Robur, "I knew that vegetarians had longer
alimentary canals than other men—a good foot longer at the least.
That is quite long enough; and so do not compel me to make you any
longer by beginning at your ears and—"

"Throw him out."

"Into the street with him!"

"Lynch him!"

"Helix him!"

The rage of the balloonists burst forth at last. They rushed at the
platform. Robur disappeared amid a sheaf of hands that were thrown
about as if caught in a storm. In vain the steam whistle screamed its
fanfares on to the assembly. Philadelphia might well think that a
fire was devouring one of its quarters and that all the waters of the
Schuyllkill could not put it out.

Suddenly there was a recoil in the tumult. Robur had put his hands
into his pockets and now held them out at the front ranks of the
infuriated mob.

In each hand was one of those American institutions known as
revolvers which the mere pressure of the fingers is enough to
fire—pocket mitrailleuses in fact.

And taking advantage not only of the recoil of his assailants but
also of the silence which accompanied it.

"Decidedly," said he, "it was not Amerigo that discovered the New
World, it was Cabot! You are not Americans, citizen balloonists! You
are only Cabo—"

Four or five shots cracked out, fired into space. They hurt nobody.
Amid the smoke, the engineer vanished; and when it had thinned away
there was no trace of him. Robur the Conqueror had flown, as if some
apparatus of aviation had borne him into the air.

This was not the first occasion on which, at the end of their stormy
discussions, the members of the Weldon Institute had filled Walnut
Street and its neighborhood with their tumult. Several times had the
inhabitants complained of the noisy way in which the proceedings
ended, and more than once had the policemen had to interfere to clear
the thoroughfare for the passersby, who for the most part were
supremely indifferent on the question of aerial navigation. But never
before had the tumult attained such proportions, never had the
complaints been better founded, never had the intervention of the
police been more necessary.

But there was some excuse for the members of the Weldon Institute.
They had been attacked in their own house. To these enthusiasts for
"lighter than air" a no less enthusiast for "heavier than air" had
said things absolutely abhorrent. And at the moment they were about
to treat him as he deserved, he had disappeared.

So they cried aloud for vengeance. To leave such insults unpunished
was impossible to all with American blood in their veins. Had not the
sons of Amerigo been called the sons of Cabot? Was not that an insult
as unpardonable as it happened to be just—historically?

The members of the club in several groups rushed down Walnut Street,
then into the adjoining streets, and then all over the neighborhood.
They woke up the householders; they compelled them to search their
houses, prepared to indemnify them later on for the outrage on their
privacy. Vain were all their trouble and searching. Robur was nowhere
to be found; there was no trace of him. He might have gone off in the
"Go-Ahead," the balloon of the Institute, for all they could tell.
After an hour's hunt the members had to give in and separate, not
before they had agreed to extend their search over the whole
territory of the twin Americas that form the new continent.

By eleven o'clock quiet had been restored in the neighborhood of
Walnut Street. Philadelphia was able to sink again into that sound
sleep which is the privilege of non-manufacturing towns. The
different members of the club parted to seek their respective houses.
To mention the most distinguished amongst them, William T. Forbes
sought his large sugar establishment, where Miss Doll and Miss Mat
had prepared for him his evening tea, sweetened with his own glucose.
Truck Milnor took the road to his factory in the distant suburb,
where the engines worked day and night. Treasurer Jim Chip, publicly
accused of possessing an alimentary canal twelve inches longer than
that of other men, returned to the vegetable soup that was waiting
for him.

Two of the most important balloonists—two only—did not seem to
think of returning so soon to their domicile. They availed themselves
of the opportunity to discuss the question with more than usual
acrimony. These were the irreconcilables, Uncle Prudent and Phil
Evans, the president and secretary of the Weldon Institute.

At the door of the club the valet Frycollin waited for Uncle Prudent,
his master, and at last he went after him, though he cared but little
for the subject which had set the two colleagues at loggerheads.

It is only an euphemism that the verb "discuss" can be used to
express the way in which the duet between the president and secretary
was being performed. As a matter of fact they were in full wrangle
with an energy born of their old rivalry.

"No, Sir, no," said Phil Evans. "If I had had the honor of being
president of the Weldon Institute, there never, no, never, would have
been such a scandal."

"And what would you have done, if you had had the honor?" demanded
Uncle Prudent.

"I would have stopped the insulter before he had opened his mouth."

"It seems to me it would have been impossible to stop him until he
had opened his mouth," replied Uncle Prudent.

"Not in America, Sir; not in America."

And exchanging such observations, increasing in bitterness as they
went, they walked on through the streets farther and farther from
their homes, until they reached a part of the city whence they had to
go a long way round to get back.

Frycollin followed, by no means at ease to see his master plunging
into such deserted spots. He did not like deserted spots,
particularly after midnight. In fact the darkness was profound, and
the moon was only a thin crescent just beginning its monthly life.
Frycollin kept a lookout to the left and right of him to see if he
was followed. And he fancied he could see five or six hulking follows
dogging his footsteps. Instinctively he drew nearer to his master,
but not for the world would he have dared to break in on the
conversation of which the fragments reached him.

In short it so chanced that the president and secretary of the Weldon
Institute found themselves on the road to Fairmount Park. In the full
heat of their dispute they crossed the Schuyllkill river by the
famous iron bridge. They met only a few belated wayfarers, and
pressed on across a wide open tract where the immense prairie was
broken every now and then by the patches of thick woodland—which
make the park different to any other in the world.

There Frycollin's terror became acute, particularly as he saw the
five or six shadows gliding after him across the Schuyllkill bridge.
The pupils of his eyes broadened out to the circumference of his
iris, and his limbs seemed to diminish as if endowed with the
contractility peculiar to the mollusca and certain of the articulate;
for Frycollin, the valet, was an egregious coward.

He was a pure South Carolina Negro, with the head of a fool and the
carcass of an imbecile. Being only one and twenty, he had never been
a slave, not even by birth, but that made no difference to him.
Grinning and greedy and idle, and a magnificent poltroon, he had been
the servant of Uncle Prudent for about three years. Over and over
again had his master threatened to kick him out, but had kept him on
for fear of doing worse. With a master ever ready to venture on the
most audacious enterprises, Frycollin's cowardice had brought him
many arduous trials. But he had some compensation. Very little had
been said about his gluttony, and still less about his laziness.

Ah, Valet Frycollin, if you could only have read the future! Why, oh
why, Frycollin, did you not remain at Boston with the Sneffels, and
not have given them up when they talked of going to Switzerland? Was
not that a much more suitable place for you than this of Uncle
Prudent's, where danger was daily welcomed?