“Master Tapage!” said the poor fellow, giving a despairing look at the screws.
“At your service, Frycollin.”
“Did this thing ever smash?”
“No, but it will end by smashing.”
“Why? Why?”
“Because everything must end.”
“And the sea is beneath us!”
“If we are to fall, it is better to fall in the sea.”
“We shall be drowned.”
“We shall be drowned, but we shall not be smashed to a jelly.”
The next moment Frycollin was on all fours, creeping to the back of his cabin.
During this day the aeronef was only driven at moderate speed. She seemed to skim the placid surface of the sea, which lay glistening in the sunshine about a hundred feet beneath. Uncle Prudent and his companion remained in their cabin, so that they did not meet with Robur, who walked about smoking alone or talking to the mate. Only half the screws were working, yet that was enough to keep the apparatus afloat in the lower zones of the atmosphere.
The crew, as a change from the ordinary routine, would have endeavored to catch a few fish had there been any sign of them; but all that could be seen on the surface of the sea were a few of those yellow-bellied whales which measure about eighty feet in length. These are the most formidable cetaceans in the northern seas, and whalers are very careful in attacking them, for their strength is prodigious. However, in harpooning one of these whales, either with the ordinary harpoon, the Fletcher fuse, or the javelin-bomb, of which there was an assortment on board, there would have been no danger to the men of the Albatross.
But what was the good of such useless massacre? Doubtless to show off the powers of the aeronef to the members of the Weldon Institute. And so Robur gave orders for the capture of one of these monstrous cetaceans.
At the shout of “A whale! A whale!” Uncle Prudent and Phil Evans came out of their cabin. Perhaps there was a whaler in sight! In that case all they had to do to escape from their flying prison was to jump into the sea, and chance being picked up by the vessel.
The crew were all on deck. “Shall we try, sir?” asked Tom Turner.
“Yes,” said Robur.
In the engine-room the engineer and his assistant were at their posts ready to obey the orders signaled to them. The Albatross dropped towards the sea, and remained, about fifty feet above it.
There was no ship in sight—of that the two colleagues soon assured themselves—nor was there any land to be seen to which they could swim, providing Robur made no attempt to recapture them.
Several jets of water from the spout holes soon announced the presence of the whales as they came to the surface to breathe. Tom Turner and one of the men were in the bow. Within his reach was one of those javelin-bombs, of Californian make, which are shot from an arquebus and which are shaped as a metallic cylinder terminated by a cylindrical shell armed with a shaft having a barbed point. Robur was a little farther aft, and with his right hand signaled to the engineers, while with his left, he directed the steersman. He thus controlled the aeronef in every way, horizontally and vertically, and it is almost impossible to conceive with what speed and precision the Albatross answered to his orders. She seemed a living being, of which he was the soul.
“A whale! A whale!” shouted Tom Turner, as the back of a cetacean emerged from the surface about four cable-lengths in front of the Albatross.
The Albatross swept towards it, and when she was within sixty feet of it she stopped dead.
Tom Turner seized the arquebus, which was resting against a cleat on the rail. He fired, and the projectile, attached to a long line, entered the whale’s body. The shell, filled with an explosive compound, burst, and shot out a small harpoon with two branches, which fastened into the animal’s flesh.
“Look out!” shouted Turner.
Uncle Prudent and Phil Evans, much against their will, became greatly interested in the spectacle.
The whale, seriously wounded, gave the sea such a slap with his tail, that the water dashed up over the bow of the aeronef. Then he plunged to a great depth, while the line, which had been previously wetted in a tub of water to prevent its taking fire, ran out like lightning. When the whale rose to the surface he started off at full speed in a northerly direction.
It may be imagined with what speed the Albatross was towed in pursuit. Besides, the propellers had been stopped. The whale was let go as he would, and the ship followed him. Turner stood ready to cut the line in case a fresh plunge should render this towing dangerous.
For half an hour, and perhaps for a distance of six miles, the Albatross was thus dragged along, but it was obvious that the whale was tiring. Then, at a gesture from Robur the assistant engineers started the propellers astern, so as to oppose a certain resistance to the whale, who was gradually getting closer.
Soon the aeronef was gliding about twenty-five feet above him. His tail was beating the waters with incredible violence, and as he turned over on his back an enormous wave was produced.
Suddenly the whale turned up again, so as to take a header, as it were, and then dived with such rapidity that Turner had barely time to cut the line.
The aeronef was dragged to the very surface of the water. A whirlpool was formed where the animal had disappeared. A wave dashed up on to the deck as if the aeronef were a ship driving against wind and tide.
Luckily, with a blow of the hatchet the mate severed the line, and the Albatross, freed from her tug, sprang aloft six hundred feet under the impulse of her ascensional screws. Robur had maneuvered his ship without losing his coolness for a moment.
A few minutes afterwards the whale
