气球上的五星期 英文版 Five Weeks in a Balloon
儒勒.凡尔纳 Jules Verne
CHAPTER FIRST.
The End of a much-applauded Speech.--The Presentation of Dr. SamuelFerguson.--Excelsior.--Full-length Portrait of the Doctor.--A Fatalistconvinced.--A Dinner at the Travellers' Club.--Several Toasts for theOccasion.
There was a large audience assembled on the 14th ofJanuary, 1862, at the session of the Royal GeographicalSociety, No. 3 Waterloo Place, London. The president,Sir Francis M----, made an important communication tohis colleagues, in an address that was frequentlyinterrupted by applause.
This rare specimen of eloquence terminated with thefollowing sonorous phrases bubbling over with patriotism:
"England has always marched at the head of nations"(for, the reader will observe, the nations always marchat the head of each other), "by the intrepidity of herexplorers in the line of geographical discovery." (Generalassent). "Dr. Samuel Ferguson, one of her most glorioussons, will not reflect discredit on his origin." ("No,indeed!" from all parts of the hall.)
"This attempt, should it succeed" ("It will succeed!"),"will complete and link together the notions, as yetdisjointed, which the world entertains of African cartology"(vehement applause); "and, should it fail, it will,at least, remain on record as one of the most daringconceptions of human genius!" (Tremendous cheering.)
"Huzza! huzza!" shouted the immense audience,completely electrified by these inspiring words.
"Huzza for the intrepid Ferguson!" cried one of themost excitable of the enthusiastic crowd.
The wildest cheering resounded on all sides; the nameof Ferguson was in every mouth, and we may safely believethat it lost nothing in passing through Englishthroats. Indeed, the hall fairly shook with it.
And there were present, also, those fearless travellersand explorers whose energetic temperaments had bornethem through every quarter of the globe, many of themgrown old and worn out in the service of science. Allhad, in some degree, physically or morally, undergone thesorest trials. They had escaped shipwreck; conflagration;Indian tomahawks and war-clubs; the fagot and thestake; nay, even the cannibal maws of the South SeaIslanders. But still their hearts beat high during SirFrancis M----'s address, which certainly was the finestoratorical success that the Royal Geographical Society ofLondon had yet achieved.
But, in England, enthusiasm does not stop short withmere words. It strikes off money faster than the dies ofthe Royal Mint itself. So a subscription to encourage Dr.Ferguson was voted there and then, and it at once attainedthe handsome amount of two thousand five hundredpounds. The sum was made commensurate with theimportance of the enterprise.
A member of the Society then inquired of the presidentwhether Dr. Ferguson was not to be officially introduced.
"The doctor is at the disposition of the meeting,"replied Sir Francis.
"Let him come in, then! Bring him in!" shouted theaudience. "We'd like to see a man of such extraordinarydaring, face to face!"
"Perhaps this incredible proposition of his is onlyintended to mystify us," growled an apoplectic oldadmiral.
"Suppose that there should turn out to be no suchperson as Dr. Ferguson?" exclaimed another voice, witha malicious twang.
"Why, then, we'd have to invent one!" replied afacetious member of this grave Society.
"Ask Dr. Ferguson to come in," was the quiet remarkof Sir Francis M----.
And come in the doctor did, and stood there, quiteunmoved by the thunders of applause that greeted hisappearance.
He was a man of about forty years of age, of mediumheight and physique. His sanguine temperament wasdisclosed in the deep color of his cheeks. His countenancewas coldly expressive, with regular features, and a largenose--one of those noses that resemble the prow of a ship,and stamp the faces of men predestined to accomplishgreat discoveries. His eyes, which were gentle andintelligent, rather than bold, lent a peculiar charm tohis physiognomy. His arms were long, and his feet wereplanted with that solidity which indicates a great pedestrian.
A calm gravity seemed to surround the doctor's entireperson, and no one would dream that he could become theagent of any mystification, however harmless.
Hence, the applause that greeted him at the outsetcontinued until he, with a friendly gesture, claimed silenceon his own behalf. He stepped toward the seat that hadbeen prepared for him on his presentation, and then,standing erect and motionless, he, with a determinedglance, pointed his right forefinger upward, andpronounced aloud the single word--
"Excelsior!"
Never had one of Bright's or Cobden's sudden onslaughts,never had one of Palmerston's abrupt demandsfor funds to plate the rocks of the English coast with iron,made such a sensation. Sir Francis M----'s address wascompletely overshadowed. The doctor had shown himselfmoderate, sublime, and self-contained, in one; he haduttered the word of the situation--
"Excelsior!"
The gouty old admiral who had been finding fault, wascompletely won over by the singular man before him, andimmediately moved the insertion of Dr. Ferguson's speechin "The Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Societyof London."
Who, then, was this person, and what was the enterprisethat he proposed?
Ferguson's father, a brave and worthy captain in theEnglish Navy, had associated his son with him, from theyoung man's earliest years, in the perils and adventures ofhis profession. The fine little fellow, who seemed to havenever known the meaning of fear, early revealed a keenand active mind, an investigating intelligence, and aremarkable turn for scientific study; moreover, he discloseduncommon address in extricating himself from difficulty;he was never perplexed, not even in handling his fork forthe first time--an exercise in which children generallyhave so little success.
His fancy kindled early at the recitals he read of daringenterprise and maritime adventure, and he followedwith enthusiasm the discoveries that signalized the first partof the nineteenth century. He mused over the glory of theMungo Parks, the Bruces, the Caillies, the Levaillants,and to some extent, I verily believe, of Selkirk (RobinsonCrusoe), whom he considered in no wise inferior to therest. How many a well-employed hour he passed withthat hero on his isle of Juan Fernandez! Often he criticisedthe ideas of the shipwrecked sailor, and sometimesdiscussed his plans and projects. He would have donedifferently, in such and such a case, or quite as well atleast--of that he felt assured. But of one thing he wassatisfied, that he never should have left that pleasant island,where he was as happy as a king without subjects--no, not if the inducement held out had been promotion tothe first lordship in the admiralty!
It may readily be conjectured whether these tendencieswere developed during a youth of adventure, spent inevery nook and corner of the Globe. Moreover, his father,who was a man of thorough instruction, omitted no opportunityto consolidate this keen intelligence by seriousstudies in hydrography, physics, and mechanics, alongwith a slight tincture of botany, medicine, and astronomy.
Upon the death of the estimable captain, Samuel Ferguson,then twenty-two years of age, had already madehis voyage around the world. He had enlisted in theBengalese Corps of Engineers, and distinguished himselfin several affairs; but this soldier's life had not exactlysuited him; caring but little for command, he had not beenfond of obeying. He, therefore, sent in his resignation,and half botanizing, half playing the hunter, he made hisway toward the north of the Indian Peninsula, and crossedit from Calcutta to Surat--a mere amateur trip for him.
From Surat we see him going over to Australia, andin 1845 participating in Captain Sturt's expedition, whichhad been sent out to explore the new Caspian Sea, supposedto exist in the centre of New Holland.
Samuel Ferguson returned to England about 1850,and, more than ever possessed by the demon of discovery,he spent the intervening time, until 1853, in accompanyingCaptain McClure on the expedition that went aroundthe American Continent from Behring's Straits to CapeFarewell.
Notwithstanding fatigues of every description, and inall climates, Ferguson's constitution continued marvellouslysound. He felt at ease in the midst of the most completeprivations; in fine, he was the very type of thethoroughly accomplished explorer whose stomach expandsor contracts at will; whose limbs grow longer or shorteraccording to the resting-place that each stage of a journeymay bring; who can fall asleep at any hour of the day orawake at any hour of the night.
Nothing, then, was less surprising, after that, than tofind our traveller, in the period from 1855 to 1857, visitingthe whole region west of the Thibet, in company with thebrothers Schlagintweit, and bringing back some curiousethnographic observations from that expedition.
During these different journeys, Ferguson had beenthe most active and interesting correspondent of theDaily Telegraph, the penny newspaper whose circulationamounts to 140,000 copies, and yet scarcely suffices for itsmany legions of readers. Thus, the doctor had becomewell known to the public, although he could not claimmembership in either of the Royal Geographical Societiesof London, Paris, Berlin, Vienna, or St. Petersburg, oryet with the Travellers' Club, or even the Royal PolytechnicInstitute, where his friend the statistician Cockburnruled in state.
The latter savant had, one day, gone so far as to proposeto him the following problem: Given the number ofmiles travelled by the doctor in making the circuit of theGlobe, how many more had his head described than hisfeet, by reason of the different lengths of the radii?--or,the number of miles traversed by the doctor's head andfeet respectively being given, required the exact heightof that gentleman?
This was done with the idea of complimenting him,but the doctor had held himself aloof from all the learnedbodies--belonging, as he did, to the church militant andnot to the church polemical. He found his time betteremployed in seeking than in discussing, in discoveringrather than discoursing.
There is a story told of an Englishman who came oneday to Geneva, intending to visit the lake. He was placedin one of those odd vehicles in which the passengers sitside by side, as they do in an omnibus. Well, it so happenedthat the Englishman got a seat that left him withhis back turned toward the lake. The vehicle completedits circular trip without his thinking to turn around once,and he went back to London delighted with the Lake of Geneva.
"I do not follow my route;" he often said, "it is myroute that follows me."
The reader will not be surprised, then, at the calmnesswith which the doctor received the applause that welcomedhim in the Royal Society. He was above all suchtrifles, having no pride, and less vanity. He looked uponthe proposition addressed to him by Sir Francis M---- asthe simplest thing in the world, and scarcely noticed theimmense effect that it produced.
When the session closed, the doctor was escorted tothe rooms of the Travellers' Club, in Pall Mall. A superbentertainment had been prepared there in his honor. Thedimensions of the dishes served were made to correspondwith the importance of the personage entertained, and theboiled sturgeon that figured at this magnificent repast wasnot an inch shorter than Dr. Ferguson himself.
proposition of his is onlyintended to mystify?
Numerous toasts were offered and quaffed, in the winesof France, to the celebrated travellers who had made theirnames illustrious by their explorations of African territory.The guests drank to their health or to their memory,in alphabetical order, a good old English way of doing thething. Among those remembered thus, were: Abbadie,Adams, Adamson, Anderson, Arnaud, Baikie, Baldwin,Barth, Batouda, Beke, Beltram, Du Berba, Bimbachi,Bolognesi, Bolwik, Belzoni, Bonnemain, Brisson, Browne,Bruce, Brun-Rollet, Burchell, Burckhardt, Burton, Cailland,Caillie, Campbell, Chapman, Clapperton, Clot-Bey,Colomieu, Courval, Cumming, Cuny, Debono, Decken,Denham, Desavanchers, Dicksen, Dickson, Dochard, DuChaillu, Duncan, Durand, Duroule, Duveyrier, D'Escayrac,De Lauture, Erhardt, Ferret, Fresnel, Galinier, Galton,Geoffroy, Golberry, Hahn, Halm, Harnier, Hecquart,Heuglin, Hornemann, Houghton, Imbert, Kauffmann,Knoblecher, Krapf, Kummer, Lafargue, Laing, Lafaille,Lambert, Lamiral, Lampriere, John Lander, RichardLander, Lefebvre, Lejean, Levaillant, Livingstone, MacCarthy,Maggiar, Maizan, Malzac, Moffat, Mollien, Monteiro, Morrison,Mungo Park, Neimans, Overweg, Panet, Partarrieau,Pascal, Pearse, Peddie, Penney, Petherick, Poncet, Prax,Raffenel, Rabh, Rebmann, Richardson, Riley, Ritchey,Rochet d'Hericourt, Rongawi, Roscher, Ruppel, Saugnier,Speke, Steidner, Thibaud, Thompson, Thornton, Toole,Tousny, Trotter, Tuckey, Tyrwhitt, Vaudey, Veyssiere,Vincent, Vinco, Vogel, Wahlberg, Warrington, Washington,Werne, Wild, and last, but not least, Dr. Ferguson,who, by his incredible attempt, was to link together theachievements of all these explorers, and complete the seriesof African discovery.