Robur the Conqueror by Jules Verne

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This list may be a little long, but that will be forgiven, for it is
necessary to give the various steps in the ladder of aerial
locomotion, on the top of which appeared Robur the Conqueror. Without
these attempts, these experiments of his predecessors, how could the
inquirer have conceived so perfect an apparatus? And though he had
but contempt for those who obstinately worked away in the direction
of balloons, he held in high esteem all those partisans of "heavier
than air," English, American, Italian, Austrian, French--and
particularly French--whose work had been perfected by him, and led
him to design and then to build this flying engine known as the
"Albatross," which he was guiding through the currents of the
atmosphere.

"The pigeon flies!" had exclaimed one of the most persistent adepts
at aviation.

"They will crowd the air as they crowd the earth!" said one of his
most excited partisans.

"From the locomotive to the aeromotive!" shouted the noisiest of all,
who had turned on the trumpet of publicity to awaken the Old and New
Worlds.

Nothing, in fact, is better established, by experiment and
calculation, than that the air is highly resistant. A circumference
of only a yard in diameter in the shape of a parachute can not only
impede descent in air, but can render it isochronous. That is a fact.

It is equally well known that when the speed is great the work of the
weight varies in almost inverse ratio to the square of the speed, and
therefore becomes almost insignificant.

It is also known that as the weight of a flying animal increases, the
less is the proportional increase in the surface beaten by the wings
in order to sustain it, although the motion of the wings becomes
slower.

A flying machine must therefore be constructed to take advantage of
these natural laws, to imitate the bird, "that admirable type of
aerial locomotion," according to Dr. Marcy, of the Institute of
France.

In short the contrivances likely to solve the problem are of three
kinds:--

1. Helicopters or spiralifers, which are simply screws with vertical
axes.

2. Ornithopters, machines which endeavour to reproduce the natural
flight of birds.

3. Aeroplanes, which are merely inclined planes like kites, but towed
or driven by screws.

Each of these systems has had and still has it partisans obstinately
resolved to give way in not the slightest particular. However, Robur,
for many reasons, had rejected the two first.

The ornithopter, or mechanical bird, offers certain advantages, no
doubt. That the work and experiments of M. Renard in 1884 have
sufficiently proved. But, as has been said, it is not necessary to
copy Nature servilely. Locomotives are not copied from the hare, nor
are ships copied from the fish. To the first we have put wheels which
are not legs; to the second we have put screws which are not fins.
And they do not do so badly. Besides, what is this mechanical
movement in the flight of birds, whose action is so complex? Has not
Doctor Marcy suspected that the feathers open during the return of
the wings so as to let the air through them? And is not that rather a
difficult operation for an artificial machine?

On the other hand, aeroplanes have given many good results. Screws
opposing a slanting plane to the bed of air will produce an
ascensional movement, and the models experimented on have shown that
the disposable weight, that is to say the weight it is possible to
deal with as distinct from that of the apparatus, increases with the
square of the speed. Herein the aeroplane has the advantage over the
aerostat even when the aerostat is furnished with the means of
locomotion.

Nevertheless Robur had thought that the simpler his contrivance the
better. And the screws--the Saint Helices that had been thrown in
his teeth at the Weldon Institute--had sufficed for all the needs of
his flying machine. One series could hold it suspended in the air,
the other could drive it along under conditions that were marvelously
adapted for speed and safety.

If the ornithopter--striking like the wings of a bird--raised
itself by beating the air, the helicopter raised itself by striking
the air obliquely, with the fins of the screw as it mounted on an
inclined plane. These fins, or arms, are in reality wings, but wings
disposed as a helix instead of as a paddle wheel. The helix advances
in the direction of its axis. Is the axis vertical? Then it moves
vertically. Is the axis horizontal? Then it moves horizontally.

The whole of Robur's flying apparatus depended on these two
movements, as will be seen from the following detailed description,
which can be divided under three heads--the platform, the engines of
suspension and propulsion, and the machinery.

Platform.--This was a framework a hundred feet long and twelve wide,
a ship's deck in fact, with a projecting prow. Beneath was a hull
solidly built, enclosing the engines, stores, and provisions of all
sorts, including the watertanks. Round the deck a few light uprights
supported a wire trellis that did duty for bulwarks. On the deck were
three houses, whose compartments were used as cabins for the crew, or
as machine rooms. In the center house was the machine which drove the
suspensory helices, in that forward was the machine that drove the
bow screw, in that aft was the machine that drove the stern screw. In
the bow were the cook's galley and the crew's quarters; in the stern
were several cabins, including that of the engineer, the saloon, and
above them all a glass house in which stood the helmsman, who steered
the vessel by means of a powerful rudder. All these cabins were
lighted by port-holes filled with toughened glass, which has ten
times the resistance of ordinary glass. Beneath the hull was a system
of flexible springs to ease off the concussion when it became
advisable to land.

Engines of suspension and propulsion.--Above the deck rose
thirty-seven vertical axes, fifteen along each side, and seven, more
elevated, in the centre. The "Albatross" might be called a clipper
with thirty-seven masts. But these masts instead of sails bore each
two horizontal screws, not very large in spread or diameter, but
driven at prodigious speed. Each of these axes had its own movement
independent of the rest, and each alternate one spun round in a
different direction from the others, so as to avoid any tendency to
gyration. Hence the screws as they rose on the vertical column of air
retained their equilibrium by their horizontal resistance.
Consequently the apparatus was furnished with seventy-four suspensory
screws, whose three branches were connected by a metallic circle
which economized their motive force. In front and behind, mounted on
horizontal axes, were two propelling screws, each with four arms.
These screws were of much larger diameter than the suspensory ones,
but could be worked at quite their speed. In fact, the vessel
combined the systems of Cossus, La Landelle, and Ponton d'Amecourt, as
perfected by Robur. But it was in the choice and application of his
motive force that he could claim to be an inventor.

Machinery.--Robur had not availed himself of the vapor of water or
other liquids, nor compressed air and other mechanical motion. He
employed electricity, that agent which one day will be the soul of
the industrial world. But he required no electro-motor to produce it.
All he trusted to was piles and accumulators. What were the elements
of these piles, and what were the acids he used, Robur only knew. And
the construction of the accumulators was kept equally secret. Of what
were their positive and negative plates? None can say. The engineer
took good care--and not unreasonably--to keep his secret
unpatented. One thing was unmistakable, and that was that the piles
were of extraordinary strength; and the accumulators left those of
Faure-Sellon-Volckmar very far behind in yielding currents whose
amperes ran into figures up to then unknown. Thus there was obtained
a power to drive the screws and communicate a suspending and
propelling force in excess of all his requirements under any
circumstances.

But--it is as well to repeat it--this belonged entirely to Robur.
He kept it a close secret. And, if the president and secretary of the
Weldon Institute did not happen to discover it, it would probably be
lost to humanity.

It need not be shown that the apparatus possessed sufficient
stability. Its center of gravity proved that at once. There was no
danger of its making alarming angles with the horizontal, still less
of its capsizing.

And now for the metal used by Robur in the construction of his
aeronef--a name which can be exactly applied to the "Albatross."
What was this material, so hard that the bowie-knife of Phil Evans
could not scratch it, and Uncle Prudent could not explain its nature?
Simply paper!

For some years this fabrication had been making considerable
progress. Unsized paper, with the sheets impregnated with dextrin and
starch and squeezed in hydraulic presses, will form a material as
hard as steel. There are made of it pulleys, rails, and wagon-wheels,
much more solid than metal wheels, and far lighter. And it was this
lightness and solidity which Robur availed himself of in building his
aerial locomotive. Everything--framework, hull, houses, cabins--
were made of straw-paper turned hard as metal by compression, and -
what was not to be despised in an apparatus flying at great heights--
incombustible. The different parts of the engines and the screws were
made of gelatinized fiber, which combined in sufficient degree
flexibility with resistance. This material could be used in every
form. It was insoluble in most gases. and liquids, acids or essences,
to say nothing of its insulating properties, and it proved most
valuable in the electric machinery of the "Albatross."

Robur, his mate Tom Turner, an engineer and two assistants, two
steersman and a cook--eight men all told--formed the crew of the
aeronef, and proved ample for all the maneuvers required in aerial
navigation. There were arms of the chase and of war; fishing
appliances; electric lights; instruments of observation, compasses,
and sextants for checking the course, thermometers for studying the
temperature, different barometers, some for estimating the heights
attained, others for indicating the variations of atmospheric
pressure; a storm-glass for forecasting tempests; a small library; a
portable printing press; a field-piece mounted on a pivot; breech
loading and throwing a three-inch shell; a supply of powder, bullets,
dynamite cartridges; a cooking-stove, warmed by currents from the
accumulators; a stock of preserves, meats and vegetables sufficient
to last for months. Such were the outfit and stores of the aeronef--
in addition to the famous trumpet.

There was besides a light india-rubber boat, insubmersible, which
could carry eight men on the surface of a river, a lake, or a calm
sea.

But were there an parachutes in case of accident? No. Robur did not
believe in accidents of that kind. The axes of the screws were
independent. The stoppage of a few would not affect the motion of the
others; and if only half were working, the "Albatross" could still
keep afloat in her natural element.

"And with her," said Robur to his guests--guests in spite of
themselves--"I am master of the seventh part of the world, larger
than Africa, Oceania, Asia, America, and Europe, this aerial Icarian
sea, which millions of Icarians will one day people."

Chapter VIII

THE BALLOONISTS REFUSE TO BE CONVINCED

The President of the Weldon Institute was stupefied; his companion
was astonished. But neither of them would allow any of their very
natural amazement to be visible.

The valet Frycollin did not conceal his terror at finding himself
borne through space on such a machine, and he took no pains whatever
to hide it.

The suspensory screws were rapidly spinning overhead. Fast as they
were going, they would have to triple their speed if the "Albatross"
was to ascend to higher zones. The two propellers were running very
easily and driving the ship at about eleven knots an hour.

As they leaned over the rail the passengers of the "Albatross" could
perceive a long sinuous liquid ribbon which meandered like a mere
brook through a varied country amid the gleaming of many lagoons
obliquely struck by the rays of the sun. The brook was a river, one
of the most important in that district. Along its left bank was a
chain of mountains extending out of sight.

"And will you tell us where we are?" asked Uncle Prudent, in a voice
tremulous with anger.

"I have nothing to teach you," answered Robur.

"And will you tell us where we are going?" asked Phil Evans.

"Through space."

"And how long will that last?"

"Until it ends."

"Are we going round the world?" asked Phil Evans ironically.

"Further than that," said Robur.

"And if this voyage does not suit us?" asked Uncle Prudent.

"It will have to suit you."

That is a foretaste of the nature of the relations that were to
obtain between the master of the "Albatross" and his guests, not to
say his prisoners. Manifestly he wished to give them time to cool
down, to admire the marvelous apparatus which was bearing them
through the air, and doubtless to compliment the inventor. And so he
went off to the other end of the deck, leaving them to examine the
arrangement of the machinery and the management of the ship or to
give their whole attention to the landscape which was unrolling
beneath them.

"Uncle Prudent," said Evans, "unless I am mistaken we are flying over
Central Canada. That river in the northwest is the St. Lawrence. That
town we are leaving behind is Quebec."

It was indeed the old city of Champlain, whose zinc roofs were
shining like reflectors in the sun. The "Albatross" must thus have
reached the forty-sixth degree of north latitude, and thus was
explained the premature advance of the day with the abnormal
prolongation of the dawn.

"Yes," said Phil Evans, "There is the town in its amphitheater, the
hill with its citadel, the Gibraltar of North America. There are the
cathedrals. There is the Custom House with its dome surmounted by the
British flag!"

Phil Evans had not finished before the Canadian city began to slip
into the distance.

The clipper entered a zone of light clouds, which gradually shut off
a view of the ground.

Robur, seeing that the president and secretary of the Weldon
Institute had directed their attention to the external arrangements
of the "Albatross," walked up to them and said: "Well, gentlemen, do
you believe in the possibility of aerial locomotion by machines
heavier than air?"

It would have been difficult not to succumb to the evidence. But
Uncle Prudent and Phil Evans did not reply.

"You are silent," continued the engineer. "Doubtless hunger makes you
dumb! But if I undertook to carry you through the air, I did not
think of feeding you on such a poorly nutritive fluid. Your first
breakfast is waiting for you."

As Uncle Prudent and Phil Evans were feeling the pangs of hunger
somewhat keenly they did not care to stand upon ceremony, A meal
would commit them to nothing; and when Robur put them back on the
ground they could resume full liberty of action.

And so they followed into a small dining-room in the aftermost house.
There they found a well-laid table at which they could take their
meals during the voyage. There were different preserves; and, among
other things, was a sort of bread made of equal parts of flour and
meat reduced to powder and worked together with a little lard, which
boiled in water made excellent soup; and there were rashers of fried
ham, and for drink there was tea.

Neither had Frycollin been forgotten. He was taken forward and there
found some strong soup made of this bread. In truth he had to be very
hungry to eat at all, for his jaws shook with fear, and almost
refused to work. "If it was to break! If it was to break!" said the
unfortunate Negro. Hence continual faintings. Only think! A fall of
over four thousand feet, which would smash him to a jelly!

An hour afterwards Uncle Prudent and Phil Evans appeared on the deck.
Robur was no longer there. At the stem the man at the wheel in his
glass cage, his eyes fixed on the compass, followed imperturbably
without hesitation the route given by the engineer.

As for the rest of the crew, breakfast probably kept them from their
posts. An assistant engineer, examining the machinery, went from one
house to the other.

If the speed of the ship was great the two colleagues could only
estimate it imperfectly, for the "Albatross" had passed through the
cloud zone which the sun showed some four thousand feet below.

"I can hardly believe it," said Phil Evans.

"Don't believe it!" said Uncle Prudent. And going to the bow they
looked out towards the western horizon.

"Another town," said Phil Evans.

"Do you recognize it?"

"Yes! It seems to me to be Montreal."

"Montreal? But we only left Quebec two hours ago!"

"That proves that we must be going at a speed of seventy-five miles
an hour."

Such was the speed of the aeronef; and if the passengers were not
inconvenienced by it, it was because they were going with the wind.
In a calm such speed would have been difficult and the rate would
have sunk to that of an express. In a head-wind the speed would have
been unbearable.

Phil Evans was not mistaken. Below the "Albatross" appeared Montreal,
easily recognizable by the Victoria Bridge, a tubular bridge thrown
over the St. Lawrence like the railway viaduct over the Venice
lagoon. Soon they could distinguish the town's wide streets, its huge
shops, its palatial banks, its cathedral, recently built on the model
of St. Peter's at Rome, and then Mount Royal, which commands the city
and forms a magnificent park.

Luckily Phil Evans had visited the chief towns of Canada, and could
recognize them without asking Robur. After Montreal they passed
Ottawa, whose falls, seen from above, looked like a vast cauldron in
ebullition, throwing off masses of steam with grand effect.

"There is the Parliament House."

And he pointed out a sort of Nuremburg toy planted on a hill top.
This toy with its polychrome architecture resembled the House of
Parliament in London much as the Montreal cathedral resembles St.
Peter's at Rome. But that was of no consequence; there could be no
doubt it was Ottawa.

Soon the city faded off towards the horizon, and formed but a
luminous spot on the ground.

It was almost two hours before Robur appeared. His mate, Tom Turner,
accompanied him. He said only three words. These were transmitted to
the two assistant engineers in the fore and aft engine-houses. At a
sign the helmsman changed the-direction of the "Albatross" a couple
of points to the southwest; at the same time Uncle Prudent and Phil
Evans felt that a greater speed had been given to the propellers.

In fact, the speed had been doubled, and now surpassed anything that
had ever been attained by terrestrial Engines. Torpedo-boats do their
twenty-two knots an hour; railway trains do their sixty miles an
hour; the ice-boats on the frozen Hudson do their sixty-five miles an
hour; a machine built by the Patterson company, with a cogged wheel,
has done its eighty miles; and another locomotive between Trenton and
Jersey City has done its eighty-four.

But the "Albatross," at full speed, could do her hundred and twenty
miles an hour, or 176 feet per second. This speed is that of the
storm which tears up trees by the roots. It is the mean speed of the
carrier pigeon, and is only surpassed by the flight of the swallow
(220 feet per second) and that of the swift (274 feet per second).

In a word, as Robur had said, the "Albatross," by using the whole
force of her screws, could make the tour of the globe in two hundred
hours, or less than eight days.

Is it necessary to say so? The phenomenon whose appearance had so
much puzzled the people of both worlds was the aeronef of the
engineer. The trumpet which blared its startling fanfares through the
air was that of the mate, Tom Turner. The flag planted on the chief
monuments of Europe, Asia, America, was the flag of Robur the
Conqueror and his "Albatross."

And if up to then the engineer had taken many precautions against
being recognized, if by preference he traveled at night, clearing the
way with his electric lights, and during the day vanishing into the
zones above the clouds, he seemed now to have no wish to keep his
secret hidden. And if he had come to Philadelphia and presented
himself at the meeting of the Weldon Institute, was it not that they
might share in his prodigious discovery, and convince "ipso facto"
the most incredulous? We know how he had been received, and we see
what reprisals he had taken on the president and secretary of the
club.

Again did Robur approach his prisoners, who affected to be in no way
surprised at what they saw, of what had succeeded in spite of them.
Evidently beneath the cranium of these two Anglo-Saxon heads there
was a thick crust of obstinacy, which would not be easy to remove.

On his part, Robur did not seem to notice anything particular, and
coolly continued the conversation which he had begun two hours before.

"Gentlemen," said he, "you ask yourselves doubtless if this
apparatus, so marvelously adapted for aerial locomotion, is
susceptible of receiving greater speed. It is not worth while to
conquer space if we cannot devour it. I wanted the air to be a solid
support to me, and it is. I saw that to struggle against the wind I
must be stronger than the wind, and I am. I had no need of sails to
drive me, nor oars nor wheels to push me, nor rails to give me a
faster road. Air is what I wanted, that was all. Air surrounds me as
it surrounds the submarine boat, and in it my propellers act like the
screws of a steamer. That is how I solved the problem of aviation.
That is what a balloon will never do, nor will any machine that is
lighter than air."

Silence, absolute, on the part of the colleagues, which did not for a
moment disconcert the engineer. He contented himself with a
half-smile, and continued in his interrogative style, "Perhaps you
ask if to this power of the "Albatross" to move horizontally there is
added an equal power of vertical movement--in a word, if, when, we
visit the higher zones of the atmosphere, we can compete with an
aerostat? Well, I should not advise you to enter the "Go-Ahead"
against her!"

The two colleagues shrugged their shoulders. That was probably what
the engineer was waiting for.

Robur made a sign. The propelling screws immediately stopped, and
after running for a mile the "Albatross" pulled up motionless.

At a second gesture from Robur the suspensory helices revolved at a
speed that can only be compared to that of a siren in acoustical
experiments. Their f-r-r-r-r rose nearly an octave in the scale of
sound, diminishing gradually in intensity as the air became more
rarified, and the machine rose vertically, like a lark singing his
song in space.

"Master! Master!" shouted Frycollin. "See that it doesn't break!"

A smile of disdain was Robur's only reply. In a few minutes the
"Albatross" had attained the height of 8,700 feet, and extended the
range of vision by seventy miles, the barometer having fallen 480
millimeters.

Then the "Albatross" descended. The diminution of the pressure in
high altitudes leads to the diminution of oxygen in the air, and
consequently in the blood. This has been the cause of several serious
accidents which have happened to aeronauts, and Robur saw no reason
to run any risk.

The "Albatross" thus returned to the height she seemed to prefer, and
her propellers beginning again, drove her off to the southwest.

"Now, sirs, if that is what you wanted you can reply." Then, leaning
over the rail, he remained absorbed in contemplation.

When he raised his head the president and secretary of the Weldon
Institute stood by his side.

"Engineer Robur," said Uncle Prudent, in vain endeavoring to control
himself, "we have nothing to ask about what you seem to believe, but
we wish to ask you a question which we think you would do well to
answer."

"Speak."

"By what right did you attack us in Philadelphia in Fairmount Park?
By what right did you shut us up in that prison? By what right have
you brought us against our will on board this flying machine?"

"And by what right, Messieurs Balloonists, did you insult and
threaten me in your club in such a way that I am astonished I came
out of it alive?"

"To ask is not to answer," said Phil Evans, "and I repeat, by what
right?"

"Do you wish to know?"

"If you please."

"Well, by the right of the strongest!"

"That is cynical."

"But it is true."

"And for how long, citizen engineer," asked Uncle Prudent, who was
nearly exploding, "for how long do you intend to exercise that right?"

"How can you?" said Robur, ironically, "how can you ask me such a
question when you have only to cast down your eyes to enjoy a
spectacle unparalleled in the world?"

The "Albatross" was then sweeping across the immense expanse of Lake
Ontario. She had just crossed the country so poetically described by
Cooper. Then she followed the southern shore and headed for the
celebrated river which pours into it the waters of Lake Erie,
breaking them to powder in its cataracts.

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