Doubling the Cape—The forecastle—Lectures on cosmography by Professor Joe—On the steering of balloons—On the study of atmospheric currents—Eureka!

THE Resolute was steaming rapidly towards the Cape of Good Hope. The weather continued fine though the sea was growing rougher. On the 30th of March, twenty-seven days after they left London, Table Mountain was seen silhouetted against the horizon. Cape Town, situated at the foot of an amphitheatre of hills, could be made out through marine glasses, and soon the Resolute dropped anchor in the harbour. But the captain was only stopping to coal. This was done in one day, and the ship proceeded south to double the southern extremity of Africa and enter the Mozambique Channel.

This was not Joe's first sea-voyage, and he had not taken long to make himself at home on board. His straightforwardness and good temper made him universally popular. A large share of his master's fame was reflected upon him. He was listened to like an oracle and made no more mistakes than anyone else might have done. And so, while the doctor was conducting his course of description in the officers' quarters, Joe held the forecastle and yarned in his own sweet way; a course, incidentally, that has been followed by the greatest historians of all time.

His subject was naturally aerial travel. Joe found difficulty in making some of the more sceptical spirits swallow the idea of the expedition, but once this was accepted, the imagination of the sailors, stimulated by Joe's account, began to regard nothing as impossible. The brilliant narrator convinced his audience that the expedition would be followed by many others; it was only the beginning of a long series of superhuman adventures.

'You see, you fellows, once a man has started this kind of travel, he can't get on without it; so, on our next expedition, instead of going sideways we'll go straight up higher and higher.'

'That's good,' said one astonished listener. 'Then you'll get to the moon.'

'The moon!' Joe retorted. 'Bless my soul, that's much too ordinary. Everybody goes to the moon. Besides, there's no water there and you'd have to take a big lot of stores, and even bottles of air if you wanted to breathe.'

'Is there any gin there?' asked a sailor who was very partial to that beverage.

'There's nothing else, mate. No, no moon for us. We're going to have a trip among those pretty stars, those jolly old planets my master's often told me about. We're going to start off with a trip to Saturn—'

'The one with the ring?' asked the quartermaster.

'Yes, a wedding ring. But they don't know what's happened to his wife.'

'What, you're going as high as that?' exclaimed a cabin-boy in amazement. 'Your master must be the devil himself.'

'The devil? He's too good for that.'

'And what next after Saturn?' asked one of the less patient of his audience.

'After Saturn? Oh, well, we'll have a look at Jupiter. That's a funny place, now, where a day is only nine and a half hours long. A good place for loafers, and the year lasts twelve years, which is nice for people who've only six months to live. It gives them a bit longer.'

'Twelve years?' the boy exclaimed.

'Yes, sonny. So in that country you'd still be drinking your mother's milk and that old fellow of fifty or so would still be a kid of four and a half.'

'Would you believe it!' cried the whole forecastle as one man.

'It's the absolute truth,' said Joe with conviction. 'But what can you expect? If you will persist in hanging on to this world you'll never learn anything; you'll stay a lot of ignorant sailors. Come and have a look at Jupiter and you'll see. And you've jolly well got to keep your weather eye open up there, some of those satellites are nasty customers!'

They laughed, but they half-believed him, and he talked to them about Neptune, where sailors are sure of a rousing reception, and Mars, where the soldiers monopolise the pavement, which after a bit becomes intolerable. As for Mercury, that was an ugly place, full of thieves and shopkeepers so alike, that it was difficult to distinguish one from another. And, lastly, he gave them a really charming picture of Venus.

'And when we get back from this expedition,' he went on, 'they'll give us the Southern Cross shining up there in God's buttonhole.'

'And you'll certainly deserve it!' the sailors replied.

And so the long evenings in the forecastle were spent in cheerful conversation, while the doctor's instructive talks pursued their course elsewhere. One day the conversation turned to the steering of balloons, and Fergusson was asked to give his views on this subject.

'I don't believe,' he said, 'that it will ever be possible to steer balloons. I know all the methods that have been tried or suggested. Not one has succeeded, not one is practicable. You will understand that I have had to study this question, which is, of course, of great interest to me, but I've failed to solve the problem with the data that the present state of mechanical science makes available. It would be necessary to invent a motor of extraordinary power and incredible lightness. And, in addition, it will be impossible to resist any considerable air current. Up to now effort has been most concentrated on steering the car rather than the balloon, which is a mistake.'

'But there's a close relationship between a balloon and a ship; and a ship can be steered,' someone replied.

'Oh no,' Dr Fergusson replied, 'the density of air is infinitely less than that of water; and besides, the ship is only half-immersed, while a balloon is completely enveloped in the atmosphere and does not move relatively to the surrounding air.'

'So you think aeronautics has spoken its last word?'

'No; indeed not! We shall have to find some other way, and if we can't steer a balloon we shall have to find out how to keep it in favourable atmospheric currents. As one gets up higher these become much more uniform and are constant in their direction. They're no longer influenced by the valleys and mountains which score the earth's surface, and, as you know, that is the principal cause of both the changes of the wind and the irregularity of its strength. Once these zones are determined, the balloon will merely have to enter the currents that suit it.'

'But in that case,' interposed Captain Pennet, 'in order to reach them you'd have to keep going up and down. There's the real difficulty, my dear doctor.'

'And why, captain?'

'Well, I grant you, the difficulty will only arise in the case of long journeys, not on short trips.'

'For what reason, may I ask?'

'Because you can only rise by throwing out ballast, and only come down by letting out gas, and if you go on doing that, your stores of gas and ballast will soon run out.'

'My dear Pennet, that's the whole point, the whole difficulty science has to overcome. The point is not to steer balloons but to move them up and down without losing gas, which is the life-force, the blood and the soul, so to speak, of a balloon.'

'You're right, my dear doctor, but this difficulty has not been overcome yet. This method has not yet been discovered.'

'I beg your pardon. It has.'

'By whom?'

'By me.'

'You!'

'You can rest assured that otherwise I should not have risked this voyage across Africa in a balloon. I should have run out of gas in twentyfour hours.'

'But you said nothing of this in England.'

'No; I didn't want to start a public argument. There seemed no point in that. I made my preliminary experiments in secret, and was entirely satisfied, so there was no need to make any more.'

'Indeed! And may one ask, my dear Fergusson, what your secret is?'

'It's this, gentlemen, and it's very simple.'

The attention of the audience was strained to the utmost, and the doctor quietly went on as follows. 6WXcv4dBw3+tqpt3hqsyQLo4mcM3Sw9tY2cw9dk6j9aTYr6cdEPW7td7FeYa9GYd