Chapter IV
IN WHICH A NEW CHARACTER APPEARS
"Citizens of the United States! My name is Robur. I am worthy of thename! I am forty years old, although I look but thirty, and I have aconstitution of iron, a healthy vigor that nothing can shake, amuscular strength that few can equal, and a digestion that would bethought first class even in an ostrich!"
They were listening! Yes! The riot was quelled at once by the totallyunexpected fashion of the speech. Was this fellow a madman or ahoaxer? Whoever he was, he kept his audience in hand. There was not awhisper in the meeting in which but a few minutes ago the storm wasin full fury.
And Robur looked the man he said he was. Of middle height andgeometric breadth, his figure was a regular trapezium with thegreatest of its parallel sides formed by the line of his shoulders.On this line attached by a robust neck there rose an enormousspheroidal head. The head of what animal did it resemble from thepoint of view of passional analogy? The head of a bull; but a bullwith an intelligent face. Eyes which at the least opposition wouldglow like coals of fire; and above them a permanent contraction ofthe superciliary muscle, an invariable sign of extreme energy. Shorthair, slightly woolly, with metallic reflections; large chest risingand falling like a smith's bellows; arms, hands, legs, feet, allworthy of the trunk. No mustaches, no whiskers, but a large Americangoatee, revealing the attachments of the jaw whose masseter muscleswere evidently of formidable strength. It has been calculated--whathas not been calculated?--that the pressure of the jaw of anordinary crocodile can reach four hundred atmospheres, while that ofa hound can only amount to one hundred. From this the followingcurious formula has been deduced: If a kilogram of dog produces eightkilograms of masseteric force, a kilogram of crocodile could producetwelve. Now, a kilogram of, the aforesaid Robur would not produceless than ten, so that he came between the dog and the crocodile.
From what country did this remarkable specimen come? It was difficultto say. One thing was noticeable, and that was that he expressedhimself fluently in English without a trace of the drawling twangthat distinguishes the Yankees of New England.
He continued: "And now, honorable citizens, for my mental faculties.You see before you an engineer whose nerves are in no way inferior tohis muscles. I have no fear of anything or anybody. I have a strengthof will that has never had to yield. When I have decided on a thing,all America, all the world, may strive in vain to keep me from it.When I have an idea, I allow no one to share it, and I do not permitany contradiction. I insist on these details, honorable citizens,because it is necessary you should quite understand me. Perhaps youthink I am talking too much about myself? It does not matter if youdo! And now consider a little before you interrupt me, as I have cometo tell you something that you may not be particularly pleased tohear."
A sound as of the surf on the beach began to rise along the first rowof seats--a sign that the sea would not be long in getting stormyagain.
"Speak, stranger!" said Uncle Prudent, who had some difficulty inrestraining himself.
And Robur spoke as follows, without troubling himself any more abouthis audience.
"Yes! I know it well! After a century of experiments that have led tonothing, and trials giving no results, there still exist ill-balancedminds who believe in guiding balloons. They imagine that a motor ofsome sort, electric or otherwise, might be applied to theirpretentious skin bags which are at the mercy of every current in theatmosphere. They persuade themselves that they can be masters of anaerostat as they can be masters of a ship on the surface of the sea.Because a few inventors in calm or nearly calm weather have succeededin working an angle with the wind, or even beating to windward in agentle breeze, they think that the steering of aerial apparatuslighter than the air is a practical matter. Well, now, look here; Youhundred, who believe in the realization of your dreams, are throwingyour thousands of dollars not into water but into space! You arefighting the impossible!"
Strange as it was that at this affirmation the members of the WeldonInstitute did not move. Had they become as deaf as they were patient?Or were they reserving themselves to see how far this audaciouscontradictor would dare to go?
Robur continued: "What? A balloon! When to obtain the raising of acouple of pounds you require a cubic yard of gas. A balloonpretending to resist the wind by aid of its mechanism, when thepressure of a light breeze on a vessel's sails is not less than thatof four hundred horsepower; when in the accident at the Tay Bridgeyou saw the storm produce a pressure of eight and a halfhundredweight on a square yard. A balloon, when on such a systemnature has never constructed anything flying, whether furnished withwings like birds, or membranes like certain fish, or certain mammalia--"
"Mammalia?" exclaimed one of the members.
"Yes! Mammalia! The bat, which flies, if I am not mistaken! Is thegentleman unaware that this flyer is a mammal? Did he ever see anomelette made of bat's eggs?"
The interrupter reserved himself for future interruption, and Roburresumed: "But does that mean that man is to give up the conquest ofthe air, and the transformation of the domestic and political mannersof the old world, by the use of this admirable means of locomotion?By no means. As he has become master of the seas with the ship, bythe oar, the sail, the wheel and the screw, so shall he become masterof atmospherical space by apparatus heavier than the air--for itmust be heavier to be stronger than the air!"
And then the assembly exploded. What a broadside of yells escapedfrom all these mouths, aimed at Robur like the muzzles of so manyguns! Was not this hurling a declaration of war into the very camp ofthe balloonists? Was not this a stirring up of strife between 'thelighter' and 'the heavier' than air?
Robur did not even frown. With folded arms he waited bravely tillsilence was obtained.
By a gesture Uncle Prudent ordered the firing to cease.
"Yes," continued Robur, "the future is for the flying machine. Theair affords a solid fulcrum. If you will give a column of air anascensional movement of forty-five meters a second, a man can supporthimself on the top of it if the soles of his boots have a superficiesof only the eighth of a square meter. And if the speed be increasedto ninety meters, he can walk on it with naked feet. Or if, by meansof a screw, you drive a mass of air at this speed, you get the sameresult."
What Robur said had been said before by all the partisans ofaviation, whose work slowly but surely is leading on to the solutionof the problem. To Ponton d'Amecourt, La Landelle, Nadar, De Luzy, DeLouvrie, Liais, Beleguir, Moreau, the brothers Richard, Babinet,Jobert, Du Temple, Salives, Penaud, De Villeneuve, Gauchot and Tatin,Michael Loup, Edison, Planavergne, and so many others, belongs thehonor of having brought forward ideas of such simplicity. Abandonedand resumed times without number, they are sure, some day to triumph.To the enemies of aviation, who urge that the bird only sustainshimself by warming the air he strikes, their answer is ready. Havethey not proved that an eagle weighing five kilograms would have tofill fifty cubic meters with his warm fluid merely to sustain himselfin space?
This is what Robur demonstrated with undeniable logic amid theuproar that arose on all sides. And in conclusion these are the wordshe hurled in the faces of the balloonists: "With your aerostats youcan do nothing--you will arrive at nothing--you dare do nothing!The boldest of your aeronauts, John Wise, although he has made anaerial voyage of twelve hundred miles above the American continent,has had to give up his project of crossing the Atlantic! And you havenot advanced one step--not one step--towards your end."
"Sir," said the president, who in vain endeavored to keep himselfcool, "you forget what was said by our immortal Franklin at the firstappearance of the fire balloon, 'It is but a child, but it willgrow!' It was but a child, and it has grown."
"No, Mr. President, it has not grown! It has got fatter--and this isnot the same thing!"
This was a direct attack on the Weldon Institute, which had decreed,helped, and paid for the making of a monster balloon. And sopropositions of the following kind began to fly about the room: "Turnhim out!"
"Throw him off the platform!" "Prove that he is heavierthan the air!"
But these were only words, not means to an end.
Robur remained impassible, and continued: "There is no progress foryour aerostats, my citizen balloonists; progress is for flyingmachines. The bird flies, and he is not a balloon, he is a piece ofmechanism!"
"Yes, he flies!" exclaimed the fiery Bat T. Fynn; "but he fliesagainst all the laws of mechanics."
"Indeed!" said Robur, shrugging his shoulders, and resuming, "Sincewe have begun the study of the flight of large and small birds onesimple idea has prevailed--to imitate nature, which never makesmistakes. Between the albatross, which gives hardly ten beats of thewing per minute, between the pelican, which gives seventy--"
"Seventy-one," said the voice of a scoffer.
"And the bee, which gives one hundred and ninety-two per second--"
"One hundred and ninety-three!" said the facetious individual.
"And, the common house fly, which gives three hundred and thirty--"
"And a half!"
"And the mosquito, which gives millions--"
"No, milliards!"
But Robur, the interrupted, interrupted not his demonstration."Between these different rates--" he continued.
"There is a difference," said a voice.
"There is a possibility of finding a practical solution. When De Lucyshowed that the stag beetle, an insect weighing only two grammes,could lift a weight of four hundred grammes, or two hundred times itsown weight, the problem of aviation was solved. Besides, it has beenshown that the wing surface decreases in proportion to the increaseof the size and weight of the animal. Hence we can look forward tosuch contrivances--"
"Which would never fly!" said secretary Phil Evans.
"Which have flown, and which will fly," said Robur, without being inthe least disconcerted, "and which we can call streophores,helicopters, orthopters--or, in imitation of the word 'nef,' whichcomes from 'navis,' call them from 'avis,' 'efs,'--by means of whichman will become the master of space. The helix--"
"Ah, the helix!" replied Phil Evans. "But the bird has no helix; thatwe know!"
"So," said Robur; "but Penaud has shown that in reality the birdmakes a helix, and its flight is helicopteral. And the motor of thefuture is the screw--"
"From such a maladee Saint Helix keep us free!" sung out one of themembers, who had accidentally hit upon the air from Herold's "Zampa."
And they all took up the chorus: "From such a maladee Saint Helixkeep us free!" with such intonations and variations as would havemade the French composer groan in his grave.
As the last notes died away in a frightful discord Uncle Prudent tookadvantage of the momentary calm to say, "Stranger, up to now, we letyou speak without interruption." It seemed that for the president ofthe Weldon Institute shouts, yells, and catcalls were notinterruptions, but only an exchange of arguments.
"But I may remind you, all the same, that the theory of aviation iscondemned beforehand, and rejected by the majority of American andforeign engineers. It is a system which was the cause of the death ofthe Flying Saracen at Constantinople, of the monk Volador at Lisbon,of De Leturn in 1852, of De Groof in 1864, besides the victims Iforget since the mythological Icarus--"
"A system," replied Robur, "no more to be condemned than that whosemartyrology contains the names of Pilatre de Rozier at Calais, ofBlanchard at Paris, of Donaldson and Grimwood in Lake Michigan, ofSivel and of Croce-Spinelli, and others whom it takes good care, toforget."
This was a counter-thrust with a vengeance.
"Besides," continued Robur, "With your balloons as good as you canmake them you will never obtain any speed worth mentioning. It wouldtake you ten years to go round the world--and a flying machine coulddo it in a week!"
Here arose a new tempest of protests and denials which lasted forthree long minutes. And then Phil Evans look up the word.
"Mr. Aviator," he said "you who talk so much of the benefits ofaviation, have you ever aviated?"
"I have."
"And made the conquest of the air?"
"Not unlikely."
"Hooray for Robur the Conqueror!" shouted an ironical voice.
"Well, yes! Robur the Conqueror! I accept the name and I will bearit, for I have a right to it!"
"We beg to doubt it!" said Jem Chip.
"Gentlemen," said Robur, and his brows knit, "when I have justseriously stated a serious thing I do not permit anyone to reply tome by a flat denial, and I shall be glad to know the name of theinterrupter."
"My name is Chip, and I am a vegetarian."
"Citizen Chip," said Robur, "I knew that vegetarians had longeralimentary canals than other men--a good foot longer at the least.That is quite long enough; and so do not compel me to make you anylonger by beginning at your ears and--"
"Throw him out."
"Into the street with him!"
"Lynch him!"
"Helix him!"
The rage of the balloonists burst forth at last. They rushed at theplatform. Robur disappeared amid a sheaf of hands that were thrownabout as if caught in a storm. In vain the steam whistle screamed itsfanfares on to the assembly. Philadelphia might well think that afire was devouring one of its quarters and that all the waters of theSchuyllkill could not put it out.
Suddenly there was a recoil in the tumult. Robur had put his handsinto his pockets and now held them out at the front ranks of theinfuriated mob.
In each hand was one of those American institutions known asrevolvers which the mere pressure of the fingers is enough tofire--pocket mitrailleuses in fact.
And taking advantage not only of the recoil of his assailants butalso of the silence which accompanied it.
"Decidedly," said he, "it was not Amerigo that discovered the NewWorld, it was Cabot! You are not Americans, citizen balloonists! Youare only Cabo--"
Four or five shots cracked out, fired into space. They hurt nobody.Amid the smoke, the engineer vanished; and when it had thinned awaythere was no trace of him. Robur the Conqueror had flown, as if someapparatus of aviation had borne him into the air.