Previous - next
are to be feared! If I feel too hot, I can ascend; if too
cold, I can come down. Should there be a mountain, I can
pass over it; a precipice, I can sweep across it; a river, I can
sail beyond it; a storm, I can rise away above it; a torrent,
I can skim it like a bird! I can advance without fatigue,
I can halt without need of repose! I can soar above the
nascent cities! I can speed onward with the rapidity of a
tornado, sometimes at the loftiest heights, sometimes only a
hundred feet above the soil, while the map of Africa unrolls
itself beneath my gaze in the great atlas of the world."
Even the stubborn Kennedy began to feel moved, and
yet the spectacle thus conjured up before him gave him the
vertigo. He riveted his eyes upon the doctor with wonder
and admiration, and yet with fear, for he already felt
himself swinging aloft in space.
"Come, come," said he, at last. "Let us see, Samuel.
Then you have discovered the means of guiding a balloon?"
"Not by any means. That is a Utopian idea."
"Then, you will go--"
"Whithersoever Providence wills; but, at all events,
from east to west."
"Why so?"
"Because I expect to avail myself of the trade-winds,
the direction of which is always the same."
"Ah! yes, indeed!" said Kennedy, reflecting; "the
trade-winds--yes--truly--one might--there's something
in that!"
"Something in it--yes, my excellent friend--there's
EVERY THING in it. The English Government has placed a
transport at my disposal, and three or four vessels are to
cruise off the western coast of Africa, about the presumed
period of my arrival. In three months, at most, I shall be
at Zanzibar, where I will inflate my balloon, and from that
point we shall launch ourselves."
"We!" said Dick.
"Have you still a shadow of an objection to offer?
Speak, friend Kennedy."
"An objection! I have a thousand; but among other
things, tell me, if you expect to see the country. If you
expect to mount and descend at pleasure, you cannot do
so, without losing your gas. Up to this time no other
means have been devised, and it is this that has always
prevented long journeys in the air."
"My dear Dick, I have only one word to answer--I
shall not lose one particle of gas."
"And yet you can descend when you please?"
Previous - next
