Was the Albatross seen by the Arabs, the Mozabites, and the Negroes who share amongst them the town of Wargla? Certainly, for she was saluted with many hundred gunshots, and the bullets fell back before they reached her.
Then came the night, that silent night in the desert of which Felicien David has so poetically told us the secrets.
During the following hours the course lay southwesterly, cutting across the routes of El Golea, one of which was explored in 1859 by the intrepid Duveyrier.
The darkness was profound. Nothing could be seen of the Trans-Saharan Railway constructing on the plans of Duponchel—a long ribbon of iron destined to bind together Algiers and Timbuktu by way of Laghouat and Gardaia, and destined eventually to run down into the Gulf of Guinea.
Then the Albatross entered the equatorial region below the tropic of Cancer. Six hundred miles from the northern frontier of the Sahara she crossed the route on which Major Laing met his death in 1846, and crossed the road of the caravans from Morocco to the Sudan, and that part of the desert swept by the Tuaregs, where could be heard what is called “the song of the sand,” a soft and plaintive murmur that seems to escape from the ground.
Only one thing happened. A cloud of locusts came flying along, and there fell such a cargo of them on board as to threaten to sink the ship. But all hands set to work to clear the deck, and the locusts were thrown over except a few hundred kept by Tapage for his larder. And he served them up in so succulent a fashion that Frycollin forgot for the moment his perpetual trances and said, “These are as good as prawns.”
The aeronef was then eleven hundred miles from the Wargla oasis and almost on the northern frontier of the Sudan. About two o’clock in the afternoon a city appeared in the bend of a large river. The river was the Niger. The city was Timbuktu.
If, up to then, this African Mecca had only been visited by the travelers of the ancient world, Batouta, Khazan, Imbert, Mungo Park, Adams, Laing, Caillé, Barth, Lenz, on that day by a most singular chance the two Americans could boast of having seen, heard, and smelt it, on their return to America—if they ever got back there.
Of having seen it, because their view included the whole triangle of three or four miles in circumference; of having heard it, because the day was one of some rejoicing and the noise was terrible; of having smelt it, because the olfactory nerve could not but be very disagreeably affected by the odors of the Youbou-Kamo square, where the meat-market stands close to the palace of the ancient Somai kings.
The engineer had no notion of allowing the president and secretary of the Weldon Institute to be ignorant that they had the extreme honor of contemplating the Queen of the Sudan, now in the power of the Tuaregs of Taganet.
“Gentlemen, Timbuktu!” he said, in the same tone as twelve days before he had said, “Gentlemen, India!” Then he continued, “Timbuktu is an important city of from twelve to thirteen thousand inhabitants, formerly illustrious in science and art. Perhaps you would like to stay there for a day or two?”
Such a proposal could only have been made ironically. “But,” continued he, “it would be dangerous among the Negroes, Berbers, and Foullanes who occupy it—particularly as our arrival in an aeronef might prejudice them against you.”
“Sir,” said Phil Evans, in the same tone, “for the pleasure of leaving you we would willingly risk an unpleasant reception from the natives. Prison for prison, we would rather be in Timbuktu than on the Albatross.”
“That is a matter of taste,” answered the engineer. “Anyhow, I shall not try the adventure, for I am responsible for the safety of the guests who do me the honor to travel with me.”
“And so,” said Uncle Prudent, explosively, “you are not content with being our jailer, but you insult us.”
“Oh! a little irony, that is all!”
“Are there any weapons on board?”
“Oh, quite an arsenal.”
“Two revolvers will do, if I hold one and you the other.”
“A duel!” exclaimed Robur, “a duel, which would perhaps cause the death of one of us.”
“Which certainly would cause it.”
“Well! No, Mr. President of the Weldon Institute, I very much prefer keeping you alive.”
“To be sure of living yourself. That is wise.”
“Wise or not, it suits me. You are at liberty to think as you like, and to complain to those who have the power to help you—if you can.”
“And that we have done, Mr. Robur.”
“Indeed!”
“Was it so difficult when we were crossing the inhabited part of Europe to drop a letter overboard?”
“Did you do that?” said Robur, in a paroxysm of rage.
“And if we have done it?”
“If you have done it—you deserve—”
“What, sir?”
“To follow your letter overboard.”
“Throw us over, then. We did do it.”
Robur stepped towards them. At a gesture from him Tom Turner and some of the crew ran up. The engineer was seriously tempted to put his threat into execution, and, fearful perhaps of yielding to it, he precipitately rushed into his cabin.
“Good!” exclaimed Phil Evans.
“And what he dare not do,” said Uncle Prudent, “I will do! Yes, I will do!”
At the moment the population of Timbuktu were crowding into the squares and roads and the terraces built like amphitheaters. In the rich quarters of Sankore and Sarahama, as in
