there warn’t no ships at all, and we had the sky and
the whole ocean all to ourselves, and the roomiest place
I ever see and the lonesomest.
CHAPTER IV.
STORM
AND it got lonesomer and lonesomer. There was
the big sky up there, empty and awful deep; and
the ocean down there without a thing on it but just the
waves. All around us was a ring, where the sky and
the water come together; yes, a monstrous big ring it
was, and we right in the dead center of it — plumb in
the center. We was racing along like a prairie fire, but
it never made any difference, we couldn’t seem to git
past that center no way. I couldn’t see that we ever
gained an inch on that ring. It made a body feel
creepy, it was so curious and unaccountable.
Well, everything was so awful still that we got to
talking in a very low voice, and kept on getting creepier
and lonesomer and less and less talky, till at last the
talk ran dry altogether, and we just set there and
“thunk,” as Jim calls it, and never said a word the
longest time.
The professor never stirred till the sun was overhead,
then he stood up and put a kind of triangle to his eye,
and Tom said it was a sextant and he was taking the
sun to see whereabouts the balloon was. Then he
ciphered a little and looked in a book, and then he
begun to carry on again. He said lots of wild things,
and, among others, he said he would keep up this
hundred-mile gait till the middle of to-morrow after-
noon, and then he’d land in London.
We said we would be humbly thankful.
He was turning away, but he whirled around when
we said that, and give us a long look of his blackest
kind — one of the maliciousest and suspiciousest looks
I ever see. Then he says:
“You want to leave me. Don’t try to deny it.”
We didn’t know what to say, so we held in and
didn’t say nothing at all.
He went aft and set down, but he couldn’t seem to
git that thing out of his mind. Every now and then he
would rip out something about it, and try to make us
answer him, but we dasn’t.
It got lonesomer and lonesomer right along, and it
did seem to me I couldn’t stand it. It was still worse
when night begun to come on. By and by Tom
pinched me and whispers:
“Look!”
I took a glance aft, and see the professor taking a
whet out of a bottle. I didn’t like the looks of that.
By and by he took another drink, and pretty soon he
begun to sing. It was dark now, and getting black
and stormy. He went on singing, wilder and wilder,
and the thunder begun to mutter, and the wind to
wheeze and moan among the ropes, and altogether it
was awful. It got so black we couldn’t see him any
more, and wished we couldn’t hear him, but we could.
Then he got still; but he warn’t still ten minutes till
we got suspicious, and wished he would start up his
noise again, so we could tell where he was. By and by
there was a flash of lightning, and we see him start to
get up, but he staggered and fell down. We heard
him scream out in the dark:
“They don’t want to go to England. All right, I’ll
change the course. They want to leave me. I know
they do. Well, they shall — and NOW!”
I ‘most died when he said that. Then he was still
again — still so long I couldn’t bear it, and it did seem
to me the lightning wouldn’t EVER come again. But at
last there was a blessed flash, and there he was, on his
hands and knees crawling, and not four feet from us.
My, but his eyes was terrible! He made a lunge for
Tom, and says, “Overboard YOU go!” but it was
already pitch-dark again, and I couldn’t see whether
he got him or not, and Tom didn’t make a sound.