“No! Joe, not wolves, but wild dogs; a famous breed that does not hesitate to attack the lion himself. They are the worst customers a traveller could meet, for they would instantly tear him to pieces.”
“Well, it isn’t Joe that’ll undertake to muzzle them!” responded that amiable youth. “After all, though, if that’s the nature of the beast, we mustn’t be too hard on them for it!”
Silence gradually settled down under the influence of the impending storm: the thickened air actually seemed no longer adapted to the transmission of sound; the atmosphere appeared MUFFLED, and, like a room hung with tapestry, lost all its sonorous reverberation. The “rover bird” so-called, the coroneted crane, the red and blue jays, the mocking-bird, the flycatcher, disappeared among the foliage of the immense trees, and all nature revealed symptoms of some approaching catastrophe.
At nine o’clock the Victoria hung motionless over Msene, an extensive group of villages scarcely distinguishable in the gloom. Once in a while, the reflection of a wandering ray of light in the dull water disclosed a succession of ditches regularly arranged, and, by one last gleam, the eye could make out the calm and sombre forms of palm-trees, sycamores, and gigantic euphorbiae.
“I am stifling!” said the Scot, inhaling, with all the power of his lungs, as much as possible of the rarefied air. “We are not moving an inch! Let us descend!”
“But the tempest!” said the doctor, with much uneasiness.
“If you are afraid of being carried away by the wind, it seems to me that there is no other course to pursue.”
“Perhaps the storm won’t burst to-night,” said Joe; “the clouds are very high.”
“That is just the thing that makes me hesitate about going beyond them; we should have to rise still higher, lose sight of the earth, and not know all night whether we were moving forward or not, or in what direction we were going.”
“Make up your mind, dear doctor, for time presses!”
“It’s a pity that the wind has fallen,” said Joe, again; “it would have carried us clear of the storm.”
“It is, indeed, a pity, my friends,” rejoined the doctor. “The clouds are dangerous for us; they contain opposing currents which might catch us in their eddies, and lightnings that might set on fire. Again, those perils avoided, the force of the tempest might hurl us to the ground, were we to cast our anchor in the tree-tops.”
“Then what shall we do?”
“Well, we must try to get the balloon into a medium zone of the atmosphere, and there keep her suspended between the perils of the heavens and those of the earth. We have enough water for the cylinder, and our two hundred pounds of ballast are untouched. In case of emergency I can use them.”
“We will keep watch with you,” said the hunter.
“No, my friends, put the provisions under shelter, and lie down; I will rouse you, if it becomes necessary.”
“But, master, wouldn’t you do well to take some rest yourself, as there’s no danger close on us just now?” insisted poor Joe.
“No, thank you, my good fellow, I prefer to keep awake. We are not moving, and should circumstances not change, we’ll find ourselves to-morrow in exactly the same place.”
“Good-night, then, sir!”
“Good-night, if you can only find it so!”
Kennedy and Joe stretched themselves out under their blankets, and the doctor remained alone in the immensity of space.
However, the huge dome of clouds visibly descended, and the darkness became profound. The black vault closed in upon the earth as if to crush it in its embrace.
All at once a violent, rapid, incisive flash of lightning pierced the gloom, and the rent it made had not closed ere a frightful clap of thunder shook the celestial depths.
“Up! up! turn out!” shouted Ferguson.
The two sleepers, aroused by the terrible concussion, were at the doctor’s orders in a moment.
“Shall we descend?” said Kennedy.
“No! the balloon could not stand it. Let us go up before those clouds dissolve in water, and the wind is let loose!” and, so saying, the doctor actively stirred up the flame of the cylinder, and turned it on the spirals of the serpentine siphon.