Robur the Conqueror by Jules Verne

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At the shout of "A whale! "A whale!" Uncle Prudent and Phil Evans
came out of their cabin. Perhaps there was a whaler in sight! In that
case all they had to do to escape from their flying prison was to
jump into the sea, and chance being picked up by the vessel.

The crew were all on deck. "Shall we try, sir?" asked Tom Turner.

"Yes," said Robur.

In the engine-room the engineer and his assistant were at their posts
ready to obey the orders signaled to them. The "Albatross" dropped
towards the sea, and remained, about fifty feet above it.

There was no ship in sight--of that the two colleagues soon assured
themselves--nor was there any land to be seen to which they could
swim, providing Robur made no attempt to recapture them.

Several jets of water from the spout holes soon announced the
presence of the whales as they came to the surface to breathe. Tom
Turner and one of the men were in the bow. Within his reach was one
of those javelin-bombs, of Californian make, which are shot from an
arquebus and which are shaped as a metallic cylinder terminated by a
cylindrical shell armed with a shaft having a barbed point. Robur was
a little farther aft, and with his right hand signaled to the
engineers, while with his left, he directed the steersman. He thus
controlled the aeronef in every way, horizontally and vertically, and
it is almost impossible to conceive with what speed and precision the
"Albatross" answered to his orders. She seemed a living being, of
which he was the soul.

"A whale! A whale!" shouted Tom Turner, as the back of a cetacean
emerged from the surface about four cable-lengths in front of the
"Albatross."

The "Albatross" swept towards it, and when she was within sixty feet
of it she stopped dead.

Tom Turner seized the arquebus, which was resting against a cleat on
the rail. He fired, and the projectile, attached to a long line,
entered the whale's body. The shell, filled with an explosive
compound, burst, and shot out a small harpoon with two branches,
which fastened into the animal's flesh.

"Look out!" shouted Turner.

Uncle Prudent and Phil Evans, much against their will, became greatly
interested in the spectacle.

The whale, seriously wounded, gave the sea such a slap with his tail,
that the water dashed up over the bow of the aeronef. Then he plunged
to a great depth, while the line, which had been previously wetted in
a tub of water to prevent its taking fire, ran out like lightning.
When the whale rose to the surface he started off at full speed in a
northerly direction.

It may be imagined with what speed the "Albatross" was towed in
pursuit. Besides, the propellers had been stopped. The whale was let
go as he would, and the ship followed him. Turner stood ready to cut
the line in case a fresh plunge should render this towing dangerous.

For half an hour, and perhaps for a distance of six miles, the
"Albatross" was thus dragged along, but it was obvious that the whale
was tiring. Then, at a gesture from Robur the assistant engineers
started the propellers astern, so as to oppose a certain resistance
to the whale, who was gradually getting closer.

Soon the aeronef was gliding about twenty-five feet above him. His
tail was beating the waters with incredible violence, and as he
turned over on his back an enormous wave was produced.

Suddenly the whale turned up again, so as to take a header, as it
were, and then dived with such rapidity that Turner had barely time
to cut the line.

The aeronef was dragged to the very surface of the water. A whirlpool
was formed where the animal had disappeared. A wave dashed up on to
the deck as if the aeronef were a ship driving against wind an tide,

Luckily, with a blow of the hatchet the mate severed the line, and
the "Albatross," freed from her tug, sprang aloft six hundred feet
under the impulse of her ascensional screws. Robur had maneuvered his
ship without losing his coolness for a moment.

A few minutes afterwards the whale returned to the surface--dead.
>From every side the birds flew down on to the carcass, and their
cries were enough to deafen a congress. The "Albatross," without
stopping to share in the spoil, resumed her course to the west.

In the morning of the 17th of June, at about six o'clock, land was
sighted on the horizon. This was the peninsula of Alaska, and the
long range of breakers of the Aleutian Islands.

The "Albatross" glided over the barrier where the fur seals. swarm
for the benefit of the Russo-American Company. An excellent business
is the capture of these amphibians, which are from six to seven feet
long, russet in color, and weigh from three hundred to four hundred
pounds. There they were in interminable files, ranged in line of
battle, and countable by thousands.

Although they did not move at the passage of the "Albatross," it was
otherwise with the ducks, divers, and loons, whose husky cries filled
the air as they disappeared beneath the waves and fled terrified from
the aerial monster.

The twelve hundred miles of the Behring Sea between the first of the
Aleutians and the extreme end of Kamtschatka were traversed during
the twenty-four hours of this day and the following night. Uncle
Prudent and Phil Evans found that here was no present chance of
putting their project of escape into execution. Flight was not to be
thought of among the deserts of Eastern Asia, nor on the coast of the
sea of Okhotsk. Evidently the "Albatross" was bound for Japan or
China, and there, although it was not perhaps quite safe to trust
themselves to the, mercies of the Chinese or Japanese, the two
friends had made up their minds to run if the aeronef stopped.

But would she stop? She was not like a bird which grows fatigued by
too long a flight, or like a balloon which has to descend for want of
gas. She still had food for many weeks and her organs were of
marvelous strength, defying all weakness and weariness.

During the 18th of June she swept over the peninsula of Kamtschatka,
and during the day there was a glimpse of Petropaulovski and the
volcano of Kloutschew. Then she rose again to cross the Sea of
Okhotsk, running down by the Kurile Isles, which seemed to be a
breakwater pierced by hundreds of channels. On the 19th, in the
morning, the "Albatross" was over the strait of La Perouse between
Saghalien and Northern Japan, and had reached the mouth of the great
Siberian river, the Amoor.

Then there came a fog so dense that the aeronef had to rise above it.
At the altitude she was there was no obstacle to be feared, no
elevated monuments to hinder her passage, no mountains against which
there was risk of being shattered in her flight. The country was only
slightly varied. But the fog was very disagreeable, and made
everything on board very damp.

All that was necessary was to get above this bed of mist, which was
nearly thirteen hundred feet thick, and the ascensional screws being
increased in speed, the "Albatross" was soon clear of the fog and in
the sunny regions of the sky. Under these circumstances, Uncle
Prudent and Phil Evans would have found some difficulty in carrying
out their plan of escape, even admitting that they could leave the
aeronef.

During the day, as Robur passed them he stopped for a moment, and
without seeming to attach any importance to what he said, addressed
them carelessly as follows: "Gentlemen, a sailing-ship or a steamship
caught in a fog from which it cannot escape is always much delayed.
It must not move unless it keeps its whistle or its horn going. It
must reduce its speed, and any instant a collision may be expected.
The "Albatross" has none of these things to fear. What does fog
matter to her? She can leave it when she chooses. The whole of space
is hers." And Robur continued his stroll without waiting for an
answer, and the puffs of his pipe were lost in the sky.

"Uncle Prudent," said Phil Evans, "it seems that this astonishing
"Albatross" never has anything to fear."

"That we shall see!" answered the president of the Weldon Institute.

"The fog lasted three days, the 19th, 20th, and 21st of June, with
regrettable persistence. An ascent had to be made to clear the
Japanese mountain of Fujiyama. When the curtain of mist was drawn
aside there lay below them an immense city, with palaces, villas,
gardens, and parks. Even without seeing it Robur had recognized it by
the barking of the innumerable dogs, the cries of the birds of prey,
and above all, by the cadaverous odor which the bodies of its
executed criminals gave off into space.

The two colleagues were out on the deck while the engineer was taking
his observations in case. he thought it best to continue his course
through the fog.

"Gentlemen," said he, "I have no reason for concealing from you that
this town is Tokyo, the capital of Japan."

Uncle Prudent did not reply. In the presence of the engineer he was
almost choked, as if his lungs were short of air.

"This view of Tokyo," continued Robur, "is very curious."

"Curious as it may be --" replied Phil Evans.

"It is not as good as Peking?" interrupted the engineer.

"That is what I think, and very shortly you shall have an opportunity
of judging."

Impossible to be more agreeable!

The "Albatross" then gliding southeast, had her course changed four
points, so as to head to the eastward.

Chapter XII

THROUGH THE HIMALAYAS

During, the night the fog cleared off. There were symptoms of an
approaching typhoon--a rapid fall of the barometer, a disappearance
of vapor, large clouds of ellipsoid form clinging to a copper sky,
and, on the opposite horizon, long streaks of carmine on a
slate-colored field, with a large sector quite clear in the north.
Then the sea was smooth and calm and at sunset assumed a deep scarlet
hue.

Fortunately the typhoon broke more to the south, and had no other
result than to sweep away the mist which had been accumulating during
the last three days.

In an hour they had traversed the hundred and twenty-five miles of
the Korean strait, and while the typhoon was raging on the coast of
China, the "Albatross" was over the Yellow Sea. During the 22nd and
23rd she was over the Gulf of Pechelee, and on the 24th she was
ascending the valley of the Peiho on her way to the capital of the
Celestial Empire.

Leaning over the rail, the two colleagues, as the engineer had told
them, could see distinctly the immense city, the wall which divides
it into two parts--the Manchu town, and the Chinese town--the
twelve suburbs which surround it, the large boulevards which radiate
from its center, the temples with their green and yellow roofs bathed
in the rising sun, the grounds surrounding the houses of the
mandarins; then in the middle of the Manchu town the eighteen hundred
acres of the Yellow town, with its pagodas, its imperial gardens, its
artificial lakes, its mountain of coal which towers above the
capital; and in the center of the Yellow town, like a square of
Chinese puzzle enclosed in another, the Red town, that is the
imperial palace, with all the peaks of its outrageous architecture.

Below the "Albatross" the air was filled with a singular harmony. It
seemed to be a concert of Aeolian harps. In the air were a hundred
kites of different forms, made of sheets of palm-leaf, and having at
their upper end a sort of bow of light wood with a thin slip of
bamboo beneath. In the breath of the wind these slips, with all their
notes varied like those of a harmonicon, gave forth a most melancholy
murmuring. It seemed as though they were breathing musical oxygen.

It suited Robur's whim to run close up to this aerial orchestra, and
the "Albatross" slowed as she glided through the sonorous waves which
the kites gave off through the atmosphere.

But immediately an extraordinary effect was produced amongst the
innumerable population. Beatings of the tomtoms and sounds of other
formidable instruments of the Chinese orchestra, gun reports by the
thousand, mortars fired in hundreds, all were brought into play to
scare away the aeronef. Although the Chinese astronomers may have
recognized the aerial machine as the moving body that had given rise
to such disputes, it was to the Celestial million, from the humblest
tankader to the best-buttoned mandarin, an apocalyptical monster
appearing in the sky of Buddha.

The crew of the "Albatross" troubled themselves very little about
these demonstrations. But the strings which held the kites, and were
tied to fixed pegs in the imperial gardens, were cut or quickly
hauled in; and the kites were either drawn in rapidly, sounding
louder as they sank, or else fell like a bird shot through both
wings, whose song ends with its last sigh.

A noisy fanfare escaped from Tom Turner's trumpet, and drowned the
final notes of the aerial concert. It did not interrupt the
terrestrial fusillade. At last a shell exploded a few feet below the
"Albatross," and then she mounted into the inaccessible regions of
the sky.

Nothing happened during the few following days of which the prisoners
could take advantage. The aeronef kept on her course to the
southwest, thereby showing that it was intended to take her to India.
Twelve hours after leaving Peking, Uncle Prudent and Phil Evans
caught a glimpse of the Great Wall in the neighborhood of Chen-Si.
Then, avoiding the Lung Mountains, they passed over the valley of the
Hoangho and crossed the Chinese border on the Tibet side.

Tibet consists of high table-lands without vegetation, with here and
there snowy peaks and barren ravines, torrents fed by glaciers,
depressions with glittering beds of salt, lakes surrounded by
luxurious forests, with icy winds sweeping over all.

The barometer indicated an altitude of thirteen thousand feet above
the level of the sea. At that height the temperature, although it was
in the warmest months of the northern hemisphere, was only a little
above freezing. This cold, combined with the speed of the
"Albatross," made the voyage somewhat trying, and although the
friends had warm traveling wraps, they preferred to keep to their
cabin.

It need hardly be said that to keep the aeronef in this rarefied
atmosphere the suspensory screws had to be driven at extreme speed.
But they worked with perfect regularity, and the sound of their wings
almost acted as a lullaby.

During this day, appearing from below about the size of a carrier
pigeon, she passed over Garlock, a town of western Tibet, the capital
of the province of Cari Khorsum.

On the 27th of June, Uncle Prudent and Phil Evans sighted an enormous
barrier, broken here and there by several peaks, lost in the snows
that bounded the horizon.

Leaning against the fore-cabin, so as to keep their places
notwithstanding the speed of the ship, they watched these colossal
masses, which seemed to be running away from the aeronef.

"The Himalayas, evidently," said Phil Evans; "and probably Robur is
going round their base, so as to pass into India."

"So much the worse," answered Uncle Prudent. "On that immense
territory we shall perhaps be able to --"

"Unless he goes round by Burma to the east, or Nepal to the West."

"Anyhow, I defy him to go through them."

"Indeed!" said a voice.

The next day, the 28th of June, the "Albatross" was in front of the
huge mass above the province of Zang. On the other side of the chain
was the province of Nepal. These ranges block the road into India
from the north. The two northern ones, between which the aeronef was
gliding like a ship between enormous reefs are the first steps of the
Central Asian barrier. The first was the Kuen Lung, the other the
Karakorum, bordering the longitudinal valley parallel to the
Himalayas, from which the Indus flows to the west and the
Brahmapootra to the east.

What a superb orographical system! More than two hundred summits have
been measured, seventeen of which exceed twenty-five thousand feet.
In front of the "Albatross," at a height of twenty-nine thousand
feet, towered Mount Everest. To the right was Dhawalagiri, reaching
twenty-six thousand eight hundred feet, and relegated to second place
since the measurement of Mount Everest.

Evidently Robur did not intend to go over the top of these peaks; but
probably he knew the passes of the Himalayas, among others that of
Ibi Ganim, which the brothers Schlagintweit traversed in 1856 at a
height of twenty-two thousand feet. And towards it he went.

Several hours of palpitation, becoming quite painful followed; and
although the rarefaction of the air was not such as to necessitate
recourse being had to the special apparatus for renewing oxygen in
the cabins, the cold was excessive.

Robur stood in the bow, his sturdy figure wrapped in a great-coat. He
gave the orders, while Tom Turner was at the helm. The engineer kept
an attentive watch on his batteries, the acid in which fortunately
ran no risk of congelation. The screws, running at the full strength
of the current, gave forth a note of intense shrillness in spite of
the trifling density of the air. The barometer showed twenty-three
thousand feet in altitude.

Magnificent was the grouping of the chaos of mountains! Everywhere
were brilliant white summits. There were no lakes, but glaciers
descending ten thousand feet towards the base. There was no herbage,
only a few phanerogams on the limit of vegetable life. Down on the
lower flanks of the range were splendid forests of pines and cedars.
Here were none of the gigantic ferns and interminable parasites
stretching from tree to tree as in the thickets of the jungle. There
were no animals--no wild horses, or yaks, or Tibetan bulls.
Occasionally a scared gazelle showed itself far down the slopes.
There were no birds, save a couple of those crows which can rise to
the utmost limits of the respirable air.

The pass at last was traversed. The "Albatross" began to descend.
Coming from the hills out of the forest region there was now beneath
them an immense plain stretching far and wide.

Then Robur stepped up to his guests, and in a pleasant voice
remarked, "India, gentlemen!"

Chapter XIII

OVER THE CASPIAN

The Engineer had no intention of taking his ship over the wondrous
lands of Hindustan. To cross the Himalayas was to show how admirable
was the machine he commanded; to convince those who would not be
convinced was all he wished to do.

But if in their hearts Uncle Prudent and his colleague could not help
admiring so perfect an engine of aerial locomotion, they allowed none
of their admiration to be visible. All they thought of was how to
escape. They did not even admire the superb spectacle that lay
beneath them as the "Albatross" flew along the river banks of the
Punjab.

At the base of the Himalayas there runs a marshy belt of country, the
home of malarious vapors, the Terai, in which fever is endemic. But
this offered no obstacle to the "Albatross," or, in any way, affected
the health of her crew. She kept on without undue haste towards the
angle where India joins on to China and Turkestan, and on the 29th of
June, in the early hours of the morning, there opened to view the
incomparable valley of Cashmere.

Yes! Incomparable is this gorge between the major and the minor
Himalayas--furrowed by the buttresses in which the mighty range dies
out in the basin of the Hydaspes, and watered by the capricious
windings of the river which saw the struggle between the armies of
Porus and Alexander, when India and Greece contended for Central
Asia. The Hydaspes is still there, although the two towns founded by
the Macedonian in remembrance of his victory have long since
disappeared.

During the morning the aeronef was over Serinuggur, which is better
known under the name of Cashmere. Uncle Prudent and his companion
beheld the superb city clustered along both banks of the river; its
wooden bridges stretching across like threads, its villas and their
balconies standing out in bold outline, its hills shaded by tall
poplars, its roofs grassed over and looking like molehills; its
numerous canals, with boats like nut-shells, and boatmen like ants;
its palaces, temples, kiosks, mosques, and bungalows on the
outskirts; and its old citadel of Hari-Pawata on the slope of the
hill like the most important of the forts of Paris on the slope of
Mont Valerien.

"That would be Venice," said Phil Evans, "if we were in Europe."

"And if we, were in Europe," answered Uncle Prudent, "we should know
how to find the way to America."

The "Albatross" did not linger over the lake through which the river
flows, but continued her flight down the valley of the Hydaspes.

For half an hour only did she descend to within thirty feet of the
river and remained stationary. Then, by means of an india-rubber
pipe, Tom Turner and his men replenished their water supply, which
was drawn up by a pump worked by the accumulators. Uncle Prudent and
Phil Evans stood watching the operation. The same idea occurred to
each of them. They were only a few feet from the surface of the
stream. They were both good swimmers. A plunge would give them their
liberty; and once they had reached the river, how could Robur get
them back again? For his propellers to work, he must keep at least
six feet above the ground.

In a moment all the chances pro and con were run over in their heads.
In a moment they were considered, and the prisoners rushed to throw
themselves overboard, when several pairs of hands seized them by the
shoulders.

They had been watched; and flight was utterly impossible.

This time they did not yield without resisting. They tried to throw
off those who held them. But these men of the "Albatross" were no
children.

"Gentlemen," said the engineer, "when people, have the pleasure of
traveling with Robur the Conqueror, as you have so well named him, on
board his admirable "Albatross," they do not leave him in that way. I
may add you never leave him."

Phil Evans drew away his colleague, who was about to commit some act
of violence. They retired to their cabin, resolved to escape, even if
it cost them their lives.

Immediately the "Albatross" resumed her course to the west. During
the day at moderate speed she passed over the territory of
Cabulistan, catching a momentary glimpse of its capital, and crossed
the frontier of the kingdom of Herat, nearly seven hundred miles from
Cashmere.

In these much-disputed countries, the open road for the Russians to
the English possessions in India, there were seen many columns and
convoys, and, in a word, everything that constitutes in men and
material an army on the march. There were heard also the roar of the
cannon and the crackling of musketry. But the engineer never meddled
with the affairs of others where his honor or humanity was not
concerned. He passed above them. If Herat as we are told, is the key
of Central Asia, it mattered little to him if it was kept in an
English or Muscovite pocket. Terrestrial interests were nothing to
him who had made the air his domain.

Besides, the country soon disappeared in one of those sandstorms
which are so frequent in these regions. The wind called the "tebbad"
bears along the seeds of fever in the impalpable dust it raises in
its passage. And many are the caravans that perish in its eddies.

To escape this dust, which might have interfered with the working of
the screws, the "Albatross" shot up some six thousand feet into a
purer atmosphere.

And thus vanished the Persian frontier and the extensive plains. The
speed was not excessive, although there were no rocks ahead, for the
mountains marked on the map are of very moderate altitude. But as the
ship approached the capital, she had to steer clear of Demavend,
whose snowy peak rises some twenty-two thousand feet, and the chain
of Elbruz, at whose foot is built Teheran.

As soon as the day broke on the 2nd of July the peak of Demavend
appeared above the sandstorm, and the "Albatross" was steered so as
to pass over the town, which the wind had wrapped in a mantle of dust.

However, about six o'clock her crew could see the large ditches that
surround it, and the Shah's palace, with its walls covered with
porcelain tiles, and its ornamental lakes, which seemed like huge
turquoises of beautiful blue.

It was but a hasty glimpse. The "Albatross" now headed for the north,
and a few hours afterwards she was over a little hill at the northern
angle of the Persian frontier, on the shores of a vast extent of
water which stretched away out of sight to the north and east.

The town was Ashurada, the most southerly of the Russian stations.
The vast extent of water was a sea. It was the Caspian.

The eddies of sand had been passed. There was a view of a group of
European houses rising along a promontory, with a church tower in the
midst of them.

The "Albatross" swooped down towards the surface of the sea. Towards
evening she was running along the coast-which formerly belonged to
Turkestan, but now belongs to Russia--and in the morning of the 3rd
of July she was about three hundred feet above the Caspian.

There was no land in sight, either on the Asiatic or European side.
On the surface of the sea a few white sails were bellying in the
breeze. These were native vessels recognizable by their peculiar
rig--kesebeys, with two masts; kayuks, the old pirate-boats, with one
mast; teimils, and smaller craft for trading and fishing. Here and
there a few puffs of smoke rose up to the "Albatross" from the
funnels of the Ashurada streamers, which the Russians keep as the
police of these Turcoman waters.

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