A Journey in Other Worlds Part 5

"I'll go now, so as to be ready," he said, getting up and going towards the door to which Sylvia followed him.

A man in livery stood at the step of the phaeton. Ayrault got in and turned on the current, and his man climbed up behind.

On turning into the main road Ayrault was about to increase his speed, when Sylvia, who had taken a short cut appeared at the wayside carrying her hat in one hand and her gloves in the other.

"I couldn't let you go all by yourself," she said. "The fact is, I wanted to be with you."

"You are the sweetest thing that ever lived, and I'll love you all my days," he said, getting down and helping Sylvia to the seat beside him.

"What a nuisance this fellow behind is!" he continued--referring to the groom--"for, though he is a Russian, and speaks but little English, it is unpleasant to feel he is there."

"You'll have to write your sweet nothings, instead of saying them,"

Sylvia replied.

"For you to leave around for other girls to see," answered Ayrault with a smile.

"I don't know what your other girls do," she returned, "but with me you are safe."

Ayrault fairly made his phaeton spin, going up the grades like a shot and down like a bird. On reaching New York, he left Sylvia at her house, then ran his machine to a florist's, where he ordered some lilies and roses, and then steered his way to his club, where he dressed for dinner. Shortly before the time he repaired to Delmonico's--which name had become historical, though the founders themselves were long dead--and sat guard at a table till Sylvia, wearing his flowers and looking more beautiful than any of them, arrived with her mother and father, and Bearwarden, whom they knew very well.

"How are the exams getting on, Miss Preston?" Bearwarden asked.

"Pretty well," she replied, with a smile. "We had English literature yesterday, and natural history the day before. Next week we have chemistry and philosophy."

"What are you taking in natural history?" asked Bearwarden, with interest.

"Oh, princ.i.p.ally physical geography, geology, and meteorology," she replied. "I think them entrancing."

"It must be a consolation," said Ayrault, "when your best hat is spoiled by rain, to know the reason why. Your average," he continued, addressing Sylvia, "was ninety in the semi-annuals, and I haven't a doubt that the finals will maintain your record for the year."

"Don't be too sure," she replied. "I have been loafing awfully, and had to engage a 'grind' as a coach."

After dinner they went to the play, where they saw a presentation of Society at the Close of the Twentieth Century, which Sylvia and Ayrault enjoyed immensely.

A few days after the Delmonico dinner, while Bearwarden, Cortlandt, and Ayrault sat together discussing their plans, the servant announced Ayrault's family physician, Dr. Tubercle Germiny, who had been requested to call.

"Delighted to see you, doctor," said Ayrault, shaking hands. "You know Col. Bearwarden, our President, and Dr. Cortlandt--an LL. D., however, and not a medico."

"I have had the pleasure," replied Dr. Germiny, shaking hands with both.

"As you may be aware, doctor," said Ayrault, when they were seated, "we are about to take a short trip to Jupiter, and, if time allows, to Saturn. We have come to you, as one familiar with every known germ, for a few precautionary suggestions and advice concerning our medicine-chest."

"Indeed!" replied Dr. Germiny, "a thorough knowledge of bacteriology is the groundwork of therapeutics. It is practically admitted that every ailment, with the exception of mechanical injuries, is the direct result of a specific germ; and even in accidents and simple fractures, no matter what may be the nature of the bruise, a micro-organism soon announces its presence, so that if not the parent, it is the inseparable companion, in fact the shadow, of disease. Now, though not the first cause in this instance, it has been indubitably proved, that much of the effect, the fever and pain, are produced and continued by the active, omnipresent, sleepless sperm. Either kill the micrococcus or heal the wound, and you are free from both. It being, therefore, granted that the ills of life are in the air, we have but to find the peculiar nature of the case in hand, its habits, tastes, and const.i.tution, in order to destroy it. Impoverish the soil on which it thrives, before its arrival, if you can foresee the nature of the inoculation to which you will be exposed, by a dilute solution of itself, and supply it only with what it particularly dislikes. For an already established tubercle requiring rapid action of the blood, such as may well exist among the birds and vertebrates of Jupiter and Saturn, I suggest a hypodermic rattlesnake injection, while hydrocyanic acid and tarantula saliva may also come in well. The combinations that so long destroyed us have already become our panacea."

"I see you have these poisons at your fingers' ends," said Ayrault, "and we shall feel the utmost confidence in the remedies and directions you prescribe."

They found that, in addition to their medicine-chest, they would have to make room for the following articles, and also many more: six shot-guns (three double-barrel 12-bores, three magazine 10-bores,) three rifles, three revolvers; a large supply of ammunition (explosive and solid b.a.l.l.s), hunting-knives, fishing-tackle, compa.s.s, s.e.xtant, geometrical instruments, canned food for forty days, appliance for renewing air, clothing, rubber boots, apergetic apparatus, protection-wires, aneroid barometer, and kodaks.

CHAPTER VIII.

GOOD-BYE.

At last the preparations were completed, and it was arranged that the Callisto should begin its journey at eleven o'clock A. M., December 21st--the northern hemisphere's shortest day.

Though six months' operations could hardly be expected to have produced much change in the inclination of the earth's axis, the autumn held on wonderfully, and December was p.r.o.nounced very mild. Fully a million people were in and about Van Cortlandt Park hours before the time announced for the start, and those near looked inquiringly at the trim little air-ship, that, having done well on the trial trip, rested on her longitudinal and transverse keels, with a battery of chemicals alongside, to make sure of a full power supply.

The President and his Cabinet--including, of course, the shining lights of the State and Navy Departments--came from Washington. These, together with Mr. and Mrs. Preston, and a number of people with pa.s.ses, occupied seats arranged at the sides of the platform; while sightseers and scientists a.s.sembled from every part of the world.

"There's a ship for you!" said Secretary Stillman to the Secretary of the Navy. "She'll not have to be dry-docked for barnacles, neither will the least breeze make the pa.s.sengers sick."

"That's all you landlubbers think of," replied Deepwaters. "I remember one of the kings over in Europe said to me, as he introduced me to the queen: 'Your Secretary of State is a great man, but why does he always part his hair in the middle?'

"'So that it shall not turn his head,' I replied.

"'But with so gallant and handsome an officer as you to lean upon,' he answered, 'I should think he could look down on all the world.'

Whereupon I asked him what he'd take to drink."

"Your apology is accepted," replied Secretary Stillman.

Cortlandt also came from Washington, where, as chief of the Government's Expert Examiners Board, he had temporary quarters.

Bearwarden sailed over the spectators' heads in one of the Terrestrial Axis Straightening Company's flying machines, while Ayrault, to avoid the crowd, had come to the Callisto early, and was showing the interior arrangements to Sylvia, who had accompanied him. She was somewhat piqued because at the last moment he had not absolutely insisted on carrying her off, or offered, if necessary, to displace his presidential and Doctor-of-Laws friends in order to make room.

"You will have an ideal trip," she said, looking over some astronomical star-charts and photographic maps of Jupiter and Saturn that lay on the table, with a pair of compa.s.ses, "and I hope you won't lose your way."

"I shall need no compa.s.s to find my way back," replied Ayrault, "if I ever succeed in leaving this planet; neither will star-charts be necessary, for you will be a magnet stronger than any compa.s.s, and, compared with my star, all others are dim."

"You should write a book," said Sylvia, "and put some of those things in it." She was wearing a bunch of forget-me-nots and violets that she had cut from a small flower-garden of potted plants Ayrault had sent her, which she had placed in her father's conservatory.

At this moment the small chime clock set in the Callisto's wood-work rang out quarter to eleven. As the sounds died away, Sylvia became very pale, and began to regret in her womanly way that she had allowed her hero to attempt this experiment.

"Oh," she said, clinging to his arm, "it was very wrong of me to let you begin this. I was so dazzled by the splendour of your scheme when I heard it, and so anxious that you should have the glory of being the first to surpa.s.s Columbus, that I did not realize the full meaning. I thought, also, you seemed rather ready to leave me," she added gently, "and so said little; you do not know how it almost breaks my heart now that I am about to lose you. It was quixotic to let you undertake this journey."

"An undertaker would have given me his kind offices for one even longer, had I remained here," replied Ayrault. "I cannot live in this humdrum world without you. The most sustained excitement cannot even palliate what seems to me like unrequited love."

"O d.i.c.k!" she exclaimed, giving him a reproachful glance, "you mustn't say that. You know you have often told me my reason for staying and taking my degree was good. My lot will be very much harder than yours, for you will forget me in the excitement of discovery and adventure; but I--what can I do in the midst of all the old a.s.sociations?"

"Never mind, sweetheart," he said, kissing her hand, "I have seemed on the verge of despair all the time."

Seeing that their separation must shortly begin, Ayrault tried to a.s.sume a cheerful look; but as Sylvia turned her eyes away they were suspiciously moist.

Just one minute before the starting-time Ayrault took Sylvia back to her mother, and, after pressing her hand and having one last long look into her--or, as he considered them, HIS--deep-sea eyes, he returned to the Callisto, and was standing at the foot of the telescopic aluminum ladder when his friends arrived. As all baggage and impedimenta had been sent aboard and properly stowed the day before, the travellers had not to do but climb to and enter by the second-story window. It distressed Bearwarden that the north pole's exact declination on the 21st day of December, when the axis was most inclined, could not be figured out by the hour at which they were to start, so as to show what change, if any, had already been brought about, but the astronomers were working industriously, and promised that, if it were finished by midnight, they would telegraph the result into s.p.a.ce by flash-light code.

Raising his hat to his fiancee and his prospective parents-in-law, Ayrault followed them up. To draw in and fold the ladder was but the work of a moment. As the clocks in the neighbouring steeples began to strike eleven, Ayrault touched the switch that would correspond to the throttle of an engine, and the motors began to work at rapidly increasing speed. Slowly the Callisto left her resting-place as a Galatea might her pedestal, only, instead of coming down, she rose still higher.

A large American flag hanging from the window, which, as they started, fluttered as in a southern zephyr, soon began to flap as in a stiff breeze as the car's speed increased. With a final wave, at which a battery of twenty-one field-pieces made the air ring with a salute, and the mult.i.tude raised a mighty cheer, they drew it in and closed the window, sealing it hermetically in order to keep in the air that, had an opening remained, would soon have become rarefied.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Callisto was going straight up.]