Jules Vernes - Robur the Conqueror

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ROBUR THE CONQUEROR

By Jules Verne

Contents

I Mysterious sounds

II Agreement Impossible

III A Visitor is Announced

IV In Which a New Character Appears

V Another Disappearance

VI The President and Secretary Suspend Hostilities

VII On board the Albatross

VIII The Balloonists Refuse to be Convinced

IX Across the Prairie

X Westward--but Whither?

XI The Wide Pacific

XII Through the Himalayas

XIII Over the Caspian

XIV The Aeronef at Full Speed

XV A Skirmish in Dahomey

XVI Over the Atlantic

XVII The Shipwrecked Crew

XVIII Over the Volcano

XIX Anchored at Last

XX The Wreck of the Albatross

XXI The Institute Again

XXII The GoAhead is Launched

XXIII The Grand Collapse

Chapter I

MYSTERIOUS SOUNDS

BANG! Bang!

The pistol shots were almost simultaneous. A cow peacefully grazing

fifty yards away received one of the bullets in her back. She had

nothing to do with the quarrel all the same.

Neither of the adversaries was hit.

Who were these two gentlemen? We do not know, although this would be

an excellent opportunity to hand down their names to posterity. All

we can say is that the elder was an Englishman and the younger an

American, and both of them were old enough to know better.

So far as recording in what locality the inoffensive ruminant had

just tasted her last tuft of herbage, nothing can be easier. It was

on the left bank of Niagara, not far from the suspension bridge which

joins the American to the Canadian bank three miles from the falls.

The Englishman stepped up to the American.

"I contend, nevertheless, that it was 'Rule Britannia!'"

"And I say it was 'Yankee Doodle!'" replied the young American.

The dispute was about to begin again when one of the seconds--

doubtless in the interests of the milk trade--interposed.

"Suppose we say it was 'Rule Doodle' and 'Yankee Britannia' and

adjourn to breakfast?"

This compromise between the national airs of Great Britain and the

United States was adopted to the general satisfaction. The Americans

and Englishmen walked up the left bank of the Niagara on their way to

Goat Island, the neutral ground. between the falls. Let us leave them

in the presence of the boiled eggs and traditional ham, and floods

enough of tea to make the cataract jealous, and trouble ourselves no

more about them. It is extremely unlikely that we shall again meet

with them in this story.

Which was right; the Englishman or the American? It is not easy to

say. Anyhow the duel shows how great was the excitement, not only in

the new but also in the old world, with regard to an inexplicable

phenomenon which for a month or more had driven everybody to

distraction.

Never had the sky been so much looked at since the appearance of man

on the terrestrial globe. The night before an aerial trumpet had

blared its brazen notes through space immediately over that part of

Canada between Lake Ontario and Lake Erie. Some people had heard

those notes as "Yankee Doodle," others had heard them as "Rule

Britannia," and hence the quarrel between the Anglo-Saxons, which

ended with the breakfast on Goat Island. Perhaps it was neither one

nor the other of these patriotic tunes, but what was undoubted by all

was that these extraordinary sounds had seemed to descend from the

sky to the earth.

What could it be? Was it some exuberant aeronaut rejoicing on that

sonorous instrument of which the Renommee makes such obstreperous use?

No! There was no balloon and there were no aeronauts. Some strange

phenomenon had occurred in the higher zones of the atmosphere, a

phenomenon of which neither the nature nor the cause could be

explained. Today it appeared over America; forty-eight hours

afterwards it was over Europe; a week later it was in Asia over the

Celestial Empire.

Hence in every country of the world--empire, kingdom, or republic--

there was anxiety which it was important to allay. If you hear in

your house strange and inexplicable noises, do you not at once

endeavor to discover the cause? And if your search is in vain, do you

not leave your house and take up your quarters in another? But in

this case the house was the terrestrial globe! There are no means of

leaving that house for the moon or Mars, or Venus, or Jupiter, or

any other planet of the solar system. And so of necessity we have to

find out what it is that takes place, not in the infinite void, but

within the atmospherical zones. In fact, if there is no air there is

no noise, and as there was a noise--that famous trumpet, to wit--

the phenomenon must occur in the air, the density of which invariably

diminishes, and which does not extend for more than six miles round

our spheroid.

Naturally the newspapers took up the question in their thousands, and

treated it in every form, throwing on it both light and darkness,

recording many things about it true or false, alarming and

tranquillizing their readers--as the sale required--and almost

driving ordinary people mad. At one blow party politics dropped

unheeded--and the affairs of the world went on none the worse for it.

But what could this thing be? There was not an observatory that was

not applied to. If an observatory could not give a satisfactory

answer what was the use of observatories? If astronomers, who doubled

and tripled the stars a hundred thousand million miles away, could

not explain a phenomenon occurring only a few miles off, what was the

use of astronomers?

The observatory at Paris was very guarded in what it said. In the

mathematical section they had not thought the statement worth

noticing; in the meridional section they knew nothing about it; in

the physical observatory they had not come across it; in the geodetic

section they had had no observation; in the meteorological section

there had been no record; in the calculating room they had had

nothing to deal with. At any rate this confession was a frank one,

and the same frankness characterized the replies from the observatory

of Montsouris and the magnetic station in the park of St. Maur. The

same respect for the truth distinguished the Bureau des Longitudes.

The provinces were slightly more affirmative. Perhaps in the night of

the fifth and the morning of the sixth of May there had appeared a

flash of light of electrical origin which lasted about twenty

seconds. At the Pic du Midi this light appeared between nine and ten

in the evening. At the Meteorological Observatory on the Puy de Dome

the light had been observed between one and two o'clock in the

morning; at Mont Ventoux in Provence it had been seen between two and

three o'clock; at Nice it had been noticed between three and four

o'clock; while at the Semnoz Alps between Annecy, Le Bourget, and Le

Leman, it had been detected just as the zenith was paling with the

dawn.

Now it evidently would not do to disregard these observations

altogether. There could be no doubt that a light had been observed at

different places, in succession, at intervals, during some hours.

Hence, whether it had been produced from many centers in the

terrestrial atmosphere, or from one center, it was plain that the

light must have traveled at a speed of over one hundred and twenty

miles an hour.

In the United Kingdom there was much perplexity. The observatories

were not in agreement. Greenwich would not consent to the proposition

of Oxford. They were agreed on one point, however, and that was: "It

was nothing at all!"

But, said one, "It was an optical illusion!" While the, other

contended that, "It was an acoustical illusion!" And so they

disputed. Something, however, was, it will be seen, common to both

"It was an illusion."

Between the observatory of Berlin and the observatory of Vienna the

discussion threatened to end in international complications; but

Russia, in the person of the director of the observatory at Pulkowa,

showed that both were right. It all depended on the point of view

from which they attacked the phenomenon, which, though impossible in

theory, was possible in practice.

In Switzerland, at the observatory of Sautis in the canton of

Appenzell, at the Righi, at the Gabriss, in the passes of the St.

Gothard, at the St. Bernard, at the Julier, at the Simplon, at

Zurich, at Somblick in the Tyrolean Alps, there was a very strong

disinclination to say anything about what nobody could prove--and

that was nothing but reasonable.

But in Italy, at the meteorological stations on Vesuvius, on Etna in

the old Casa Inglesi, at Monte Cavo, the observers made no hesitation

in admitting the materiality of the phenomenon, particularly as they

had seen it by day in the form of a small cloud of vapor, and by

night in that of a shooting star. But of what it was they knew

nothing.

Scientists began at last to tire of the mystery, while they continued

to disagree about it, and even to frighten the lowly and the

ignorant, who, thanks to one of the wisest laws of nature, have

formed, form, and will form the immense majority of the world's

inhabitants. Astronomers and meteorologists would soon have dropped

the subject altogether had not, on the night of the 26th and 27th,

the observatory of Kautokeino at Finmark, in Norway, and during the

night of the 28th and 29th that of Isfjord at Spitzbergen--Norwegian

one and Swedish the other--found themselves agreed in recording that

in the center of an aurora borealis there had appeared a sort of huge

bird, an aerial monster, whose structure they were unable to

determine, but who, there was no doubt, was showering off from his

body certain corpuscles which exploded like bombs.

In Europe not a doubt was thrown on this observation of the stations

in Finmark and Spitzbergen. But what appeared the most phenomenal

about it was that the Swedes and Norwegians could find themselves in

agreement on any subject whatever.

There was a laugh at the asserted discovery in all the observatories

of South America, in Brazil, Peru, and La Plata, and in those of

Australia at Sydney, Adelaide, and Melbourne; and Australian laughter

is very catching.

To sum up, only one chief of a meteorological station ventured on a

decided answer to this question, notwithstanding the sarcasms that

his solution provoked. This was a Chinaman, the director of the

observatory at Zi-Ka-Wey which rises in the center of a vast plateau

less than thirty miles from the sea, having an immense horizon and

wonderfully pure atmosphere. "It is possible," said he, "that the

object was an aviform apparatus--a flying machine!"

What nonsense!

But if the controversy was keen in the old world, we can imagine what

it was like in that portion of the new of which the United States

occupy so vast an area.

A Yankee, we know, does not waste time on the road. He takes the

street that leads him straight to his end. And the observatories of

the American Federation did not hesitate to do their best. If they

did not hurl their objectives at each other's heads, it was because

they would have had to put them back just when they most wanted to

use them. In this much-disputed question the observatories of

Washington in the District of Columbia, and Cambridge in

Massachusetts, found themselves opposed by those of Dartmouth College

in New Hampshire, and Ann Arbor in Michigan. The subject of their

dispute was not the nature of the body observed, but the precise

moment of its observation. All of them claimed to have seen it the

same night, the same hour, the same minute, the same second, although

the trajectory of the mysterious voyager took it but a moderate

height above the horizon. Now from Massachusetts to Michigan, from

New Hampshire to Columbia, the distance is too great for this double

observation, made at the same moment, to be considered possible.

Dudley at Albany, in the state of New York, and West Point, the

military academy, showed that their colleagues were wrong by an

elaborate calculation of the right ascension and declination of the

aforesaid body.

But later on it was discovered that the observers had been deceived

in the body, and that what they had seen was an aerolite. This

aerolite could not be the object in question, for how could an

aerolite blow a trumpet?

It was in vain that they tried to get rid of this trumpet as an

optical illusion. The ears were no more deceived than the eyes.

Something had assuredly been seen, and something had assuredly been

heard. In the night of the 12th and 13th of May--a very dark night--

the observers at Yale College, in the Sheffield Science School, had

been able to take down a few bars of a musical phrase in D major,

common time, which gave note for note, rhythm for rhythm, the chorus

of the Chant du Depart.

"Good," said the Yankee wags. "There is a French band well up in the

air."

"But to joke is not to answer." Thus said the observatory at Boston,

founded by the Atlantic Iron Works Society, whose opinions in matters

of astronomy and meteorology began to have much weight in the world

of science.

Then there intervened the observatory at Cincinnati, founded in 1870,

on Mount Lookout, thanks to the generosity of Mr. Kilgour, and known

for its micrometrical measurements of double stars. Its director

declared with the utmost good faith that there had certainly been

something, that a traveling body had shown itself at very short

periods at different points in the atmosphere, but what were the

nature of this body, its dimensions, its speed, and its trajectory,

it was impossible to say.

It was then a journal whose publicity is immense--the "New York

Herald"--received the anonymous contribution hereunder.

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摘要：

ROBURTHECONQUERORByJulesVerneContentsIMysterioussoundsIIAgreementImpossibleIIIAVisitorisAnnouncedIVInWhichaNewCharacterAppearsVAnotherDisappearanceVIThePresidentandSecretarySuspendHostilitiesVIIOnboardtheAlbatrossVIIITheBalloonistsRefusetobeConvincedIXAcrossthePrairieXWestward--butWhither?XITheWideP...

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