CHAPTER XII
SUNWARD HO!
"By the way," said Gazen to me, "I've got a new theory for the risingand sinking of the sun behind the cliffs at Womla--a theory that willsimply explode Professor Possil, and shake the Royal AstronomicalSociety to its foundations."
The astronomer and I were together in the observatory, where he wasadjusting his telescope to look at the sun. After our misadventure withthe flying ape, we had returned to our former station on the summit ofthe mountain, to pick up the drawing materials of Miss Carmichael; butas Gazen was anxious to get as near the sun as possible, and beingdisgusted with the infernal scenery as well as the foetid, malarialatmosphere of Mercury, we left as soon as we had replenished our cisternfrom the pools in the rock.
"Another theory?" I responded. "Thought you had settled that question."
"Alas, my friend, theories, like political treatises, are made to bebroken."
"Well, what do you think of it now?"
"You remember how we came to the conclusion that Schiaparelli was right,and that the planet Venus, by rotating about her own axis in the sametime as she takes to revolve around the sun, always keeps the same faceturned to the sun, one hemisphere being in perpetual light and summer,whilst the other is in perpetual darkness and winter?"
"Yes."
"You remember, too, how we explained the growing altitude of the sun inthe heavens which culminated on the great day of the Festival, bysupposing that the axis of the planet swayed to and from the sun so asto tilt each pole towards the sun, and the other from it, alternately,thus producing what by courtesy we may call the seasons in Womla?"
"Yes."
"Well, judging from the observations I have made, we were probably rightso far; but if you recollect, I accounted for the mysterious daily riseand set of the sun, if I may use the words, by changes in the density ofthe atmosphere bending the solar rays, and making the disk appear torise and sink periodically, though in reality it does nothing of thekind. A similar effect is well-known on the earth. It produces the'after glow' on the peaks of the Alps when the sun is far below thehorizon; it sometimes makes the sun bob up and down again after sunset,and it has been known to make the sun show in the Arctic regions threeweeks before the proper time. I had some difficulty in understanding howthe effect could take place so regularly."
"I think you ascribed it to the interaction of the solar heat and theevaporation from the surface."
"Quite so. I assumed that when the sun is low the vapours above the edgeof the crater and elsewhere cool and condense, thus bending the rays andseeming to lift the sun higher; but after a time the rays heat andrarefy the vapours, thus lowering the sun again. It seemed a plausiblehypothesis and satisfied me for a time, but still not altogether, andnow I believe I have made a discovery."
"And it is?"
"That Venus is a wobbler."
"A wobbler?"
"That she wobbles--that she doesn't keep steady--swings from side toside. You have seen a top, how stiff and erect it is when it is spinningfast, and how it wobbles when it is spinning slow, just before itfalls. Well, I think something of the kind is going on with Venus. Theearth may be compared to a top that is whirling fast, and Venus to onethat has slowed down. She is less able than the earth to resist thedisturbing attraction of the sun on the inequalities of her figure, andtherefore she wobbles. In addition to the slow swinging of her axiswhich produces her 'seasons,' she has a quicker nodding, which givesrise to day and night in some favoured spots like Womla."
"After all," said I, "tis a feminine trait. _Souvent femme varie._"
"Oh, she is constant to her lord the sun," rejoined Gazen. "She neverturns her back upon him, but if I have not discovered a mare's nest,which is very likely, she becks and bows to him a good deal, and thusmaintains her 'infinite variety.'"
The cloudy surface of Mercury now lay far beneath us, and the glowingdisc of the sun, which appeared four or five times larger than it doeson the earth, had taken a bluish tinge--a proof that we had reached avery great altitude.
"What a magnificent 'sun-spot!'" exclaimed the professor in a tone ofadmiration. "Just take a peep at it."
I placed my eye to the telescope, and saw the glowing surface of thedisc resolved into a marvellous web of shining patches on a dimmerbackground, and in the midst a large blotch which reminded me of aquarry hole as delineated on the plan of a surveyor.
"Have you been able to throw any fresh light on these mysterious'spots?'" I enquired.
"I am more than ever persuaded they are breaks in the photosphere causedby eruptions of heated matter, chiefly gaseous from theinterior--eruptions such as might give rise to craters like that ofWomla, or those of the moon, were the sun cooler. No doubt that eminentauthority, Professor Sylvanus Pettifer Possil, regards them as aerialhurricanes; but the more I see, the more I am constrained to regardSylvanus Pettifer Possil as a silly vain asteroid."
While Gazen was yet speaking we both became sensible of an unwontedstillness in the car.
The machinery had ceased to vibrate.
Our feelings at this discovery were akin to those of passengers in anocean steamer when the screw stops--a welcome relief to the monotony ofthe voyage, a vague apprehension of danger, and curiosity to learn whathad happened.
"Is there anything wrong, Carmichael?" asked Gazen through the speakingtube.
There was no response.
"I say, Carmichael, is anything the matter?" he reiterated in a loudertone.
Still no answer.
We were now thoroughly alarmed, and though it was against the rules, wedescended into the machinery room. The cause of Carmichael's silence wasonly too apparent. We saw him lying on the floor beside his strangemachine, with his head leaning against the wall. There was a placidexpression on his face, and he appeared to slumber; but we soon foundthat he was either in a faint or dead. Without loss of time we tried thefirst simple restoratives at hand, but they proved of no avail.
Gazen went and called Miss Carmichael.
She had been resting in her cabin after her trying experience with thedragon, and although most anxious about her father, and far from wellherself, she behaved with calm self-possession.
"I think the heat has overcome him," she said, after a quickexamination; and truly the cabin was insufferably hot, thanks to themachinery and the fervid rays of the sun.
We could not open the scuttles and admit fresh air, for there was littleor none to admit.
"I shall try oxygen," she said on reflecting a moment.
Accordingly, while Gazen, in obedience to her directions began to workCarmichael's arms up and down, after the method of artificialrespiration which had brought me round at the outset of our journey, sheand I administered oxygen gas from one of our steel bottles to his lungsby means of a makeshift funnel applied to his mouth. In some fifteen ortwenty minutes he began to show signs of returning animation, and soonafterwards, to our great relief, he opened his eyes.
At first he looked about him in a bewildered way, and then he seemed torecollect his whereabouts. After an ineffectual attempt to speak, andmove his limbs, he fixed his eyes with a meaning expression on theengines.
We had forgotten their stoppage. Miss Carmichael sprang to investigatethe cause.
"They are jammed," she said after a short inspection. "The essentialpart is jammed with the heat. Whatever is to be done?"
We stared at each other blankly as the terrible import of her words camehome to us. Unless we could start the machines again, we must inevitablyfall back on Mercury. Perhaps we were falling now!
We endeavoured to think of a ready and practicable means of cooling theengines, but without success. The water and oil on board was lukewarm;none of us knew how to make a freezing mixture even if we had thematerials; our stock of liquid air had long been spent.
Miss Carmichael tried to make her father understand the difficulty inhopes that he would suggest a remedy, but all her efforts were in vain.Carmichael lay with his eyes closed in a kind of l
ethargy or paralysis.
"Perhaps, when we are falling through the planet's atmosphere," said I,"if we open the scuttles and let the cold air blow through the room, itwill cool the engines."
"I'm afraid there will not be time," replied Gazen, shaking his head;"we shall fall much faster than we rose. The friction of the air againstthe car will generate heat. We shall drop down like a meteoric stone andbe smashed to atoms."
"We have parachutes," said Miss Carmichael, "do you think we shall beable to save our lives?"
"I doubt it," answered Gazen sadly. "They would be torn and whirledaway."
"So far as I can see there is only one hope for us," said I. "If weshould happen to fall into a deep sea or lake, the car would rise to thesurface again."
"Yes, that is true," responded Gazen; "the car is hollow and light. Itwould float. The water would also cool the machines and we mightescape."
The bare possibility cheered us with a ray of hope.
"If we only had time, my father might recover, and I believe he wouldsave us yet," said Miss Carmichael.
"I wonder how much time we have," muttered Gazen.
"We can't tell," said I. "It depends on the height we had reached andthe speed we were going at when the engines stopped. We shall rise likea ball thrown into the air and then fall back to the ground."
"I wonder if we are still rising," ejaculated Gazen. "Let us take a lookat the planet."
"Don't be long," pleaded Miss Carmichael, as we turned to go."Meanwhile, I shall try and bring my father round."
On getting to the observatory, we consulted the atmospheric pressuregauge and found it out of use, a sign that we had attained an altitudebeyond the atmosphere of Mercury, and were now in empty space.
We turned to the planet, whose enormous disc, muffled in cloud, wasshining lividly in the weird sky. At one part of the limb a range oflofty mountain peaks rose above the clouds and chequered them withshadow.
Fixing our eyes upon this landmark we watched it with bated breath. Wasit coming nearer, or was it receding from us? That was the momentousquestion.
My feelings might be compared to those of a prisoner at the bar watchingthe face of the juryman who is about to deliver the verdict.
After a time--I know not how long--but it seemed an age--the professorexclaimed,
"I believe we are still rising."
It was my own impression, for the peak I was regarding had grown as Ithought smaller, but I did not feel sure, and preferred to trust themore experienced eyes of the astronomer.
"I shall try the telescope," he went on; "we are a long way from theplanet."
"How far do you think?"
"Many thousand miles at least."
"So much the better. We shall get more time."
"Humph! prolonging the agony, that's all. I begin to wish it was allover."
Gazen directed his instrument on the planet, and we resumed ourobservations.
"We are no longer rising," said Gazen after a time. "I suppose we arenear the turning-point."
As a prisoner scans the countenance of the judge who is about topronounce the sentence of life or death, I scanned the cloudy surfaceunderneath us, to see if I could discover any signs of an ocean thatwould break our fall, but the vapours were too thick and compact.
Every instant I expected to hear the fatal intelligence that our descenthad begun.
"Strange!" muttered Gazen by-and-by, as if speaking to himself.
"What is strange?"
"We are neither rising nor falling now. We don't seem to move."
"Impossible!"
"Nevertheless, it's a fact," he exclaimed at the end of some minutes."The focus of the telescope is constant. We are evidently standingstill."
His words sounded like a reprieve to a condemned man on the morning ofhis execution, and in the revulsion of my feeling I shouted,
"Hurrah!"
"What can it mean?" cried Gazen.
"Simply this," said I joyfully. "We have reached the 'dead-point,' wherethe attraction of Mercury on the car is balanced by the attraction ofthe sun. It can't be anything else."
"Wait a minute," said Gazen, making a rapid calculation. "Yes, yes,probably you are right. I did not think we had come so far; but I hadforgotten that gravitation on Mercury is only half as strong as it is onthe Earth or Venus. Let us go and tell Miss Carmichael."
We hurried downstairs to the engine room and found her kneeling besideher father, who was no better.
She did not seem much enlivened by the good news.
"What will that do for us?" she enquired doubtfully.
"We can remain here as long as we like, suspended between the Sun andMercury," replied Gazen.
"Is it better to linger and die in a living tomb than be dashed topieces and have done with it?"
"But we shall gain time for your father to recover."
"I am afraid my father will never recover in this place. The heat iskilling him. Unless we can get further away from the sun he will die,I'm sure he will."
Her eyes filled with tears.
"Don't distress yourself, dear Miss Carmichael, please don't," saidGazen tenderly. "Now that we have time to think, perhaps we shall hitupon some plan."
An idea flashed into my head.
"Look here," said I to Gazen, "you remember our conversation in yourobservatory one day on the propelling power of rockets--how a rocketmight be used to drive a car through space?"
"Yes; but we have no rockets."
"No, but we have rifles, and rifle bullets fired from the car, thoughnot so powerful, will have a similar effect."
"Well?"
"The car is now at rest in space. A slight impulse will direct it oneway or another. Why should we not send it off in such a way that infalling towards Mercury it will not strike the planet, but circle roundit; or if it should fall towards the surface, will do so at a greatslant, and allow the atmosphere to cool the engines."
"Let me see," said Gazen, drawing a diagram in his note-book, andstudying it attentively. "Yes, there is something in that. It's aforlorn hope at best, but perhaps it's our only hope. If we could onlyget into the shadow of the planet we might be saved."
As delay might prove fatal to Carmichael, and since it was uncertainwhether he could right the engines in their present situation, wedecided to act on the suggestion without loss of time. Gazen and Icalculated the positions of the rifles and the number of shots to befired in order to give the required impetus to the car. The engine-room,being well provided with scuttles, was chosen as the scene of ouroperations. A brace of magazine rifles were fixed through two of thescuttles in such a way that the recoil of the shots would urge the carin an oblique direction backwards, so as to clear or almost clear theplanet, allowance being made for the forward motion of the latter in itsorbit. Needless to say, the barrel of each rifle was packed round so asto keep the air in the car from escaping into space.
At a given signal the rifles were discharged simultaneously by Gazen andmyself. There was little noise, but the car trembled with the shock, andthe prostrate man opened his eyes.
Had it produced the desired effect? We could not tell without an appealto the telescope.
"I'll be back in a moment," cried Gazen, springing upstairs to theobservatory.
"Do you feel any better, father?" enquired Miss Carmichael, laying hercool hand on the invalid's fevered brow.
He winked, and tried to nod in the affirmative. "Were you asleep,father? Did the shock rouse you?"
He winked again.
"Do you know what we are doing?" Before he could answer the foot ofGazen sounded on the stair. He had left us with an eager, almost aconfident eye. He came back looking grave in the extreme.
"We are not falling towards Mercury," he said gloomily. "_We are rushingto the sun!_"
I cannot depict our emotion at this awful announcement which changed ourhopes into despair. Probably it affected each of us in a differentmanner. I cannot recollect my own feelings well enough to analyse them,and su
ppose I must have been astounded for a time. A vision of the car,plunging through an atmosphere of flame, into the fiery entrails of thesun, flashed across my excited brain, and then I seemed to lose thepower of thought.
"Out of the frying-pan into the fire," said I at last, in frivolousreaction.
"His will be done!" murmured Miss Carmichael, instinctively drawingcloser to her father, who seemed to realise our jeopardy.
"We must look the matter in the face," said Gazen, with a sigh.
"What a death!" I exclaimed, "to sit and watch the vast glowing furnacethat is to swallow us up come nearer and nearer, second after second,minute after minute, hour after hour."
"The nearer we approach the sun the faster we shall go," said Gazen."For one thing, we shall be dead long before we reach him. The heat willstifle us. It will be all over in a few hours."
What a death! To see, to feel ourselves roasting as in an oven. It wastoo horrible.
"Are you certain there is no mistake?" I asked at length.
"Quite," replied Gazen. "Come and see for yourself."
We had all but gained the door when Miss Carmichael followed us.
"Professor," she said, with a tremor in her voice, and a look ofsupplication in her eyes, "you will come back soon--you will not leaveus long."
"No, my darling--I beg your pardon," answered Gazen, obeying the impulseof his heart. "God knows I would give my life to save you if I could."
In another instant he had locked her in his arms.
I left them together, and ascended to the observatory, where Gazen soonafterwards rejoined me.
"I'm the happiest man alive," said he, with a beaming countenance."Congratulate me. I'm betrothed to Miss Carmichael."
I took his proffered hand, scarcely knowing whether to laugh or cry.
"It seems to me that I have found my life in losing it," he continuedwith a grim smile. "Saturn! what a courtship is ours--what anengagement--what a bridal bed! But there, old fellow, I'm afraid I'mhappier than you--alone in spirit, and separated from her you love.Perhaps I was wrong to carry you away from Venus--it has not turned outwell--but I acted for the best. Forgive me!"
I wrung his hand in silence.
"Now let us take a look through the telescope," he went on, wiping hiseyes, and adjusting the instrument. "You will see how soon it gets outof focus. We are flying from Mercury, my friend, faster and faster."
It was true.
"But I don't understand how that should be," said I. "The firing oughtto have had a contrary effect."
"The rifles are not to blame," answered Gazen. "If we had used themearlier we might have saved ourselves. But all the time that we werediscussing ways and means, and making our preparations to shoot, wewere gradually drifting towards the sun without knowing it. Weoverlooked the fact that the orbit of Mercury is very far from circular,and that he is now moving further away from the sun every instant. As aconsequence his attractive power over the car is growing weaker everymoment. The car had reached the 'dead-point' where the attractivepowers of the sun and planet over it just balanced each other; but asthat of the planet grew feebler the balance turned, and the car wasdrawn with ever accelerating velocity towards the sun."
"Like enough."
"I can satisfy you of it by pointing the telescope at a sun-spot," saidGazen, bringing the instrument to bear upon the sun. "You will then seehow fast we are running to perdition. I say--what would our friends inLondon think if they could see us now? Wouldn't old Possil snigger!Well, I shall get the better of him at last. I shall solve the greatmystery of the 'sun-spots' and the 'willow leaves.' Only he will neverknow it. That's a bitter drop in the cup!"
So saying, he applied his eye to the telescope, his ruling passionstrong in death. For myself, as often as I had admired the gloriousluminary, I could not think of it now without a shudder, and fell aprey to my own melancholy ruminations.
So this was the end! After all our care and forethought, after all ourstruggles, after all our success, to perish miserably like moths in acandle, to plunge headlong into that immense conflagration as a vesseldives into the ocean, and is never heard of more! Not a vestige of us,not even a charred bone to tell the tale. Alumion--our friends athome--when they admired the sun would they ever fancy that it was ourgrave--ever dream that our ashes were whirling in its flames. The cry ofOthello, in his despair, which I had learned at school, came back to mymind--"Blow me about in winds! Roast me in sulphur! Wash me insteep-down gulfs of liquid fire!"
Regrets, remorse, and bitter reflections overwhelmed me. Why had we notstayed in Venus? Why had we come to Mercury? Why had we endeavoured todo so much? What folly had drawn me into this mad venture at all? No, Icould not say that. I could not call it folly which had brought me toAlumion. I had no regret, but on the contrary an unspeakable joy andgratitude on that score. But why had we attempted to approach so nearthe sun, daring the heat, which had jammed our engines, and disabledour best intellect; risking the powerful attraction that was hurrying usto our doom?
Suddenly a peculiar thrill shook the car. With a bounding heart Istarted to my feet and dashed into the engine-room. It was true then.Yes, it was true. _The engines were at work, and we were saved!_