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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!”
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