The Enchanted City, page 17
Before retreating into the catacombs it was indispensable to give orders.
The engineer Duvivier, consulted by the leader of the expedition, declared that the blockade-runner would be completely organized within thirty-six hours, armed and ready to emerge; that the ship having now become unnecessary, it would scarcely take an hour to reduce to nothing the work that had taken so many days of hard labor; and that, to sink the little boat, it would be sufficient to open the panels in the ballast-hold and pierce a few holes in the hull below the flotation line.
“Do it,” said Monsieur Fresnel.
The engineer immediately headed for the harbor.
The Commandant had also sent for Monsieur Cornelius; he wanted to give him the responsibility of disarming the ramparts, destroying the neuroballistic artillery and of setting fire to the food stores.
The professor did not appear. The Commandant was told that he had returned to the catacombs, where he was listening, in the company of Samanou, because it seemed to him that the enemy had resumed the labor of mining.
At that moment, Isidore ran up, out of breath.
“I’ve come from the ramparts,” he said. “Monsieur Cornelius left me on sentry duty there… Oh!”
“Well?” demanded the Commandant.
“Spit it out, then,” added Captain Fox.
“Well, Messieurs, it’s unfortunate, but the Galla are in the city!”
“In the city!”
“Yes, a bad business! They launched an attack. I fired at them, with the Bibiris, but they ended up breaking through. They’ve all hastened in their wake. Their Mata Sonapanga is at the head of the column. They’re coming—they’re close behind…and look, here they are!”
The diabolical army had, in fact, finally contrived to force a way through the outer walls. A famished host was swarming into the fort, uttering cries of ferocious joy as if in chorus.
“Not a moment to lose,” said Captain Fox. “We have to get back to the grottos.”
“Impossible!” replied Fresnel. “That human avalanche is blocking the way. We’re already cut off from the temple staircase!”
“Yes,” Isidore affirmed. “They’ve already reached Chocolat’s hole.”
“We’re doomed, my dear Captain, and it’s me….”
“Doomed! Why? It’s sufficient for us to beat a retreat. Let’s fall back to the harbor, embark, and break through the blockade.”
“The Saint Michel! But you said yourself that she’s an impotent and ridiculous blockade-runner.”
“Too bad—but we don’t have any alternative, and for want of anything better….”
“You’re forgetting that I’ve given the order to sink her.”
“Damn it! That’s serious!”
“Run, Isidore—countermand the order. Stop Monsieur Duvivier!”
The cook set off like an arrow.
The Galla were still advancing.
The Biribis having rallied, Fresnel ordered them to begin precision fire. The circumstances demanded that this time, the powder must speak, even though they had very few cartridges. Captain Fox and his manservant, Jackson, each armed with a sixteen-shot rifle, supported Fresnel bravely, firing at the attackers.
Every bullet felled a Galla. Alas, that was an insignificant result. What could a few rifle shots do against such a compact mass? Was it possible for a handful of men to hold countless hordes at bay for long?
“Without wishing to command you, Commandant, hold on, hold firm—the Saint Michel is as solid as the Pont Neuf. Everything’s ready on board; we can set sail whenever you wish.”
It was Isidore who spoke thus. He was at the head of ten Kabindards, armed, like him, with carbines.
“Good,” said Fresnel. “Now there’s hope. We can beat a retreat coolly and methodically.”
“Hang on, old fellow,” muttered the former zouave, who had started shooting in his turn. “Just wait there—I’ll settle your hash. Bang! I believe that’s it. It seems to me that I got my man!”
Immediately, there is tumult in the Galla ranks.
Their columns stop. Circular eddies are produced in their mass. What is happening?
As you will have guessed, the former laureate of the firing range, the drummer Isidore, has hit the Sonapanga.
They take advantage of that moment of confusion. They retreat to the port, while firing at the enemy. They reach the dock! Quickly, they embark. They prepare to cast off.
“Let’s see,” says Monsieur Fresnel. “General staff, Biribis, Kabindards, is everyone here? Is everyone at his post? Make a roll call. With Captain Harry Fox and Jackson, Chocolat and Mimoun, whom we’ve recovered, there should be fifty of us on board, all told. Count well!”
“No,” said Isidore, “not everyone’s here. Samanou hasn’t replied present, nor has Monsieur Cornelius. They’re still out there, you know, in the tunnels you call catacombs, like those under Montrouge, not far from the Gare des Sceaux.”
“My God!” What can we do?”
“Poor Samanou!”
“Let’s go find them.”
“No, it’s impossible.”
“Poor Monsieur Cornelius!”
While these dolorous exclamations are overlapping aboard the Saint Michel, immense clamors rose up, which bring forth violent echoes from the city. They are no longer, as there were a little while before, cries of war or triumph. It is a concert of moans, screeches and terrible howls, a mixture of plaints that seem to voice rage, terror and despair.
“In the name of Heaven, what’s happening?” the passengers on the blockade-runner ask one another, tremulously. “Alas, there’s no doubt about it—our companions have just fallen into enemy hands. They’re being massacred and we can’t help them. Oh, unfortunate Samanou! Poor Monsieur Cornelius!”
Commandant Fresnel has reflected. The situation is grave, the moment decisive. It is impossible to go ashore to attempt to prevent a disaster. It is impossible to remain moored in the presence of the victorious Galla. Those tenacious warriors will not be shaken for long. They will resume their forward movement. In ten minutes they will be on the quays. There is only one way out of the predicament: it is necessary to leave, as quickly as possible.
The previous day, Monsieur Duvivier has had the bottom of the piles of the barricade sawn through. Those piles are now only maintained in place by a few strips of wood. A hawser is attached to it, and the Kabindards haul away. The boom collapses. The entrance to the harbor is clear. The pass is free.
En route!
The Saint Michel moves off and leaves the harbor. She is on the waters of the lake!
It is just in time, because the horde of Galla has erupted onto the quays—but those victors are flooding onto them in extreme disorder. They are raising their arms to the heavens as they run. They seem bewildered. Their cries and howls have redoubled their intensity.
The passengers cannot comprehend such disorientation on the part of the new masters of the city, but they do not have the leisure to seek an explanation. There, on the lake, are other adversaries, to whom they must face up resolutely. No hesitation! Clear the decks for combat and forward ho!
The Saint Michel performs well. With the first thrust of her spur she has broken through the blockade-line of the besiegers. She is out of the prison! Unfortunately, the impact has reduced her speed. The enemy craft are gaining on her; she might not get much further.
Alas no—now she is surrounded!
Daous, rafts, dugout canoes—a thousand vessels of every species—have surged forth from all points of the compass and formed a circle around their living prey. Other boats are still appearing. They are flying over the lake and thickening that iron band. The blue waters of the Tanganyika can no longer be seen. Its surface has disappeared beneath a forest of floating wood.
The Saint Michel defends herself! Her dolphins drop enormous bocks of stone, sinking the pirogues that dare to draw alongside her. Her onagers hurl a hail of earthenware pots onto the decks of the enemy daous, inside which are balls of venomous serpents whose bite is fatal, as immediately fatal as that of the speckled cobra. The fall shatters the vases, and the fearful crewmen scatter or jump into the water. The crenellations of the blockade-runner give passage to the barrels of rifles, and every rifle shot fells an attacker.
Alas, the Galla have a vast numerical advantage. Scarcely has one of their vessels sunk when it is replaced by ten more. When one of their sailors is hit by a bullet, fifty new assailants are there, advancing the position that the victim occupied.
On board, three Biribis and as many Kabinards are already out of action. To complete the misfortune, Monsieur Fresnel has been hit in the chest by an arrow. Fortunately, the wound is not serious, but it is painful, and it causes him to suspend the exercise of his command.
The Galla are getting bolder. Now they are diving into the water like the Malays of the Indian Sea, in order to attempt to board the little battleship. Around the sides, the stern and the bow of the ship, multitudes of black heads with flat hair appear, like bouquets of aquatic plants with grimacing faces. Some of those intrepid individuals climb up, catch hold of the rigging and leap onto the roof that protects the deck.
The defenders of the Saint Michel have not ceased fire. They are still shooting…but alas, it is their last bullets that they are firing. Captain Harry Fox has emptied his cartridge case. One more rifle shot and then…nothing more!
The English gentleman fires the final cartridge. That done, he bends down tranquilly over Monsieur Frennel, who is lying on a reed mat.
“It’s over, Commandant,” he says to him. “I’ve lost my bet. I shan’t arrive in London via Tanganyika. It’s a pity to remain half way. We have no more to do than save honor and respectability. We can’t decently fall into the hands of these freshwater mariners. What if we were to blow ourselves up?”
“Blow up!” replied Monsieur Fresnel, with a bitter laugh. “We don’t possess a grain of powder.”
“Well, that’s true. Then I propose the damp path instead of the dry one. What if we were to sink ourselves?”
“You’re a worthy officer, a brave man. Take command of the ship and act as you see fit.”
“Yes sir, directly!”
“Your hand—I’ll shake it one last time.”
“Certainly! Gladly….”
“Forgive me! It’s because of us, and for us, that you’re here, that you’re going to die! If you hadn’t encountered us, you’d now be sheltered in the grottos.”
“Oh well! I would have liked to win my twenty-five thousand pound bet, but I accepted my loss ten minutes ago. It’s all the same to me to be aboard your little ship. I told you that it wouldn’t get through—but that’s not the question. The essential thing is to know that she can’t be running any danger, and I know that she isn’t.”
“Who’s she?”
“Queen Touloumia, the faithful ally of Her Majesty the Queen of Great Britain. God save the Queen! I can assure that it’s all the same to me, provided that we die an honorable death, Monsieur Duvivier can sink us quickly. England forever!”
“Listen—I can only do one last thing for you that will give you pleasure, but I offer it to you.”
“What’s that?”
“At the moment when we moved off, I had my colors nailed to the stern of the Saint Michel, just in case. Nail your flag alongside my tricolor. Our national colors will disappear together beneath the waters of the lake, while we die as brothers.”
Captain Harry Fox was unable to open his mouth. The humorist was profoundly moved. He clasped the hand that the wounded man held out to him, and disappeared.
A witness to that heart-rending scene, the excellent Chocolat felt overwhelmed by an entirely legitimate emotion. So, even though he had eaten breakfast at dawn, and very solidly, as was his habit, he experienced at that moment a sharp need for refreshment.
Alas, he, too, observes a heart-breaking fact. It is not only cartridges that were lacking aboard the Saint Michel. His private provisions of food are also exhausted. He has nothing left in his sack but six cans of preserves. When he has consumed the contents, the game bag with the joyful metallic clink will no longer ring with anything but emptiness, or rather nothingness. A sad—a very sad—prospect!
However, the lanky fellow plunges his hand into his sack in a melancholy fashion and pulls out a can—a tin-plated cylinder of respectable diameter. It is doubtless marinated tuna….
He will soon find out, because Chocolat took out his big knife. He gets ready to prize open the lid, with a dexterity born of long practice.
At that moment Isidore arrives, who has also come to visit his master—a final visit! He perceives Chocolat, who has completed his operation. He sees what the tin contains.
His arms fall inert by his sides, so great is his shock—but the prostration does not last long.
“Monsieur Duvivier!” he shouts. “Monsieur Duvivier! Stop again! Don’t sink the ship! Monsieur Fox—where’s Monsieur Fox? I need to talk to Monsieur Fox!”
The English captain is unable to reply. He has just been struck by a hatchet at the moment when he was setting up the two flags side by side at the stern of the blockade-runner. He has lost consciousness, and blood is inundating his face.
“Monsieur Duvivier!” Isidore repeats. “Monsieur Duvivier, look at these—look at Chocolat’s tins!”
Having verified the exactitude of what Isidore has observed, the engineer immediately summons the carpenter and the mechanics. The latter hasten to bring long spars of wood, to the end of which they attach the tin-plate cylinders.
“All done?” says the engineer. “A bit of fuse, now—fix it! Everything ready? Right—light up!”
The fuses are set alight, and the spars thrown into the water to either side of the Saint Michel, level with the quarters.
Scarcely ten seconds have gone by when two mighty explosions are produced, almost simultaneously, one to port and the other to starboard.
In making his last provisions Chocolat has made a mistake. What he had mistaken for tins of food, for a meal, were dynamite cartridges.
Chapter XXIV
Deliverance
The explosion of the makeshift torpedoes improvised by Monsieur Duvivier was followed, a few moments later, by considerable effects. The passengers aboard the Saint Michel saw four enemy daous plunged under water, twenty pirogues hurled into the air, a dozen rafts blasted to smithereens and the debris of all those vessels raining down into the lake, pell-mell with dead or wounded men.
All the Galla swimmers were struck dead; their bodies were floating in the midst of a hecatomb of fish and hippopotamuses, similarly thunderstruck.
An admirable spectacle for the Europeans who were about to perish—a terrifying one for the savages who thought they had won!
The flotilla of the Galla flees in fear.
The lake is free. They can continue out into open water—but no; one of the ship’s paddle wheels has broken during that minute-long battle. The explosion of the starboard torpedo has smashed the paddles of the wheel. It is impossible to progress. The Saint Michel is wounded; she is condemned temporarily to immobility.
Thanks to the efforts of the gaff and the oar, the engineer Duvivier brings her to the shore of a little islet. There, delivered from her assailants, the blockade-runner can be repaired.
After a week, the desired repairs had been completed; the carpenter, the smith and the mechanics had caused that last traces of the damage sustained in the course of the naval battle of April the seventeenth to disappear.
While those tasks were being carried out, Dr. Quentin had lavished all his care on the wounded. Monsieur Fresnel was already much better; on the twenty-fifth, the doctor gave him permission to get up. As for Captain Harry Fox, his wound was serious. Nevertheless, all hope was not lost; they thought that they would be able to save him.
On the following day, the twenty-sixth of April, the Saint Michel quit the chance mooring and drew away from the shore of the island that had sheltered her. It had set a course for Kisimbasimba. It was a mission of discovery, to search for the absentees, Professor Cornelius and the mossenga Samanou.
The lake was deserted: not a sail on the horizon, not a single daou, canoe or raft. The flotilla of the diabolical army had left no trace of its passage over Lake Tanganyika.
They draw near to Kisimbasimba. No one! They cannot see anyone at all. It is deserted, abandoned, the extraordinary city where, a few days before, the land forces of the diabolical army were swarming, shouting and howling.
Everywhere, a deathly silence reigns.
Commandant Fresnel is notified of that fact. Equipped with his telescope, he gets ready to come up on deck. He is stopped on the way by a hand that is held out to him. It is the hand of Captain Fox.
“Monsieur,” says the wounded man, in a faint voice, “I sense that I only have a few moments left. Listen to a dying man, I beg you.”
“We’ll save you.”
“No, it’s over, I assure you. I’m going contentedly, if you don’t mind.”
“We want you to live.”
“No, no, I tell you. Listen to me. It depends on you whether I win my bet. In order to win it, I have to return to England via Tanganyika.”
“Yes, we’ll take you back by that route.”
“Forgive me, Monsieur, I’m going to die—but it hasn’t been stipulated that I have to come back alive. I can arrive back in London dead or alive, as I choose. Promise me that you’ll take my body back.”
The Commandant shakes the poor fellow’s hand.
“Good,” said Captain Fox. “Thank you. My bet is therefore won, thanks to your kindness. Twenty-five thousand pounds to come from my inheritance and the twenty-five thousand stake that’s due to me—that makes fifty thousand pounds, doesn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Please have the fifty thousand pounds given on my behalf to the director of the African Civilization Society. That makes, doesn’t it, more than a million francs?”
“Certainly.”
“I desire that that sum be employed to establish on a secure foundation, worthy of a civilized nation, the throne of Touloumia, the ally of Her Majesty the Queen of England.”
