The Literary World Seventh Reader Part 36

"The periscope is shot away! Full speed forward!"

The engineer seized the handle of a lever and asked, "Which way?"

"Forward! forward!"

Andrey went into the conning tower; straight in front of him foamy eddies whirled furiously. The dark hull of a ship appeared, obscuring the light.

"Stop!" shouted Andrey. "Fire another one! Full speed backward!" He closed his eyes.

For a moment it seemed to him that the end had come. He was hurled by the explosion of the torpedo into the corridor and dashed against the wall. The outcries of the men were drowned by the m.u.f.fled thud of the inrushing water. The light went out; the _Kate_ began to rotate and sink.

The boat did not stay long in the deep; freed from the weight of two torpedoes, she slowly began to rise, stopped before reaching the surface, and commenced to sink again as the water continued to leak into her hull.

A sailor found Andrey in a narrow pa.s.sage unconscious, though breathing regularly. The man dressed the captain's wounds, but could not bring him to his senses. Another sailor tried to revive Yakovlev, but soon saw that that officer was dead. All the available hands toiled at the pumps, while the engineer and his two a.s.sistants worked frantically at the engine.

The _Kate_ was near the surface, but as the periscope and the indicator had been destroyed, it was impossible to tell precisely where she was.

On the other hand, to unscrew the hatch and look out would subject the boat to the risk of being flooded. Finally, the engineer reported that it was necessary to replace the cylinder, but that this was difficult to do because the supply of candles was giving out. Kuritzyn, a sailor who had a.s.sumed command, ordered the men at the pumps to pump until they dropped dead, if necessary, but to raise the boat at least one yard. The men obeyed in grim silence. Presently the last candle went out. "It's all over, boys," said some one, and the pumps stopped. The only sound that now broke the silence was the monotonous splash of water leaking down on the periscope screen.

"Follow me," said Kuritzyn hoa.r.s.ely to two of the men. "Let us unscrew the hatches. What's the use of fooling any longer?"

Feeling their way in the darkness, several men followed the leader into the corridor and up the spiral staircase in the main hatchway. When they reached the top, they grasped the bolts of the lid.

"Here's our finish," said one of the men.

Just then the sound of footsteps on the outside of the boat reached their ears. Some one was walking on the _Kate's_ hull!

"Down to the ballast tanks!" Kuritzyn ordered. "When I fire, blow them out. We are ordered not to surrender the boat."

With his revolver between his teeth, he pressed the bolt. The lid yielded; light and air rushed into the opening.

"Hey, who is there?" Kuritzyn shouted.

"Russians, Russians," replied a voice.

"Thank G.o.d!" said Kuritzyn in a tone of intense grat.i.tude.

COUNT ALEXIS TOLSTOI.

=HELPS TO STUDY=

Tell of the preparations made for the submerging of the _Kate_.

Describe the scene within the vessel. What accident halted the boat? Describe the events that followed. Where did the _Kate_ find anchorage? Describe her exit from the bay. What flag was it that bore a black eagle? What was the fate of the ship bearing that flag?

SUPPLEMENTARY READING

Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea--Jules Verne.

The Pilot--J. Fenimore Cooper.

A VOYAGE TO THE MOON

The moon, being the nearest to the earth of all the heavenly bodies, has always occupied the imagination of men. Many fanciful accounts have been written of voyages to the moon, of which the following story by Edgar Allan Poe is among the best. So wonderful has been the advance of science that it is conceivable that at some distant time in the future the inhabitants of this world may possibly be able to visit the beautiful body which lights the night for us.

I

After a long and arduous devotion to the study of physics and astronomy, I, Hans Pfaal of Rotterdam, at length determined to construct a balloon of my own along original lines and to try a flight in it. Accordingly I had made an enormous bag out of cambric muslin, varnished with caoutchouc for protection against the weather. I procured all the instruments needed for a prolonged ascent and finally prepared for the inflation of the balloon. Herein lay my secret, my invention, the thing in which my balloon differed from all the balloons that had gone before.

Out of a peculiar [v]metallic substance and a very common acid I was able to manufacture a gas of a density about 37.4 less than that of hydrogen, and thus by far the lightest substance ever known. It would serve to carry the balloon to heights greater than had been attained before, for hydrogen is the gas usually used.

The hour for my experiment in ballooning finally arrived. I had chosen the night as the best time for the ascension, because I should thereby avoid annoyances caused by the curiosity of the ignorant and the idle.

It was the first of April. The night was dark; there was not a star to be seen; and a drizzling rain, falling at intervals, made me very uncomfortable. But my chief anxiety was concerning the balloon, which, in spite of the varnish with which it was defended, began to grow rather heavy with the moisture. I therefore set my a.s.sistants to working, and in about four hours and a half I found the balloon sufficiently inflated. I attached the car and put all my implements in it--a telescope, a barometer, a thermometer, an [v]electrometer, a compa.s.s, a magnetic needle, a seconds watch, a bell, and other things. I had further procured a globe of gla.s.s, exhausted of air and carefully closed with a stopper, not forgetting a special apparatus for condensing air, a copious supply of water, and a large quant.i.ty of provisions, such as [v]pemmican, in which much [v]nutriment is contained in comparatively little bulk. I also secured a cat in the car.

It was now nearly daybreak, and I thought it high time to take my departure. I immediately cut the single cord which held me to the earth, and was pleased to find that I shot upward with [v]inconceivable rapidity, carrying with all ease one hundred and seventy-five pounds of leaden ballast and able to have carried as much more.

Scarcely, however, had I attained the height of fifty yards, when roaring and rumbling up after me in the most [v]tumultuous and terrible manner, came so dense a hurricane of fire and gravel and burning wood and blazing metal that my very heart sunk within me and I fell down in the car, trembling with terror. Some of my chemical materials had exploded immediately beneath me almost at the moment of my leaving earth. The balloon at first collapsed, then furiously expanded, then whirled round and round with sickening [v]velocity, and finally, reeling and staggering like a drunken man, hurled me over the rim of the car; and in the moment of my fall I lost consciousness.

I had no knowledge of what had saved me. When I partially recovered the sense of existence, I found the day breaking, the balloon at a [v]prodigious height over a wilderness of ocean, and not a trace of land to be discovered far and wide within the limits of the vast horizon. My sensations, however, upon thus recovering, were by no means so [v]replete with agony as might have been antic.i.p.ated. Indeed, there was much of madness in the calm survey which I began to take of my situation. I drew up to my eyes each of my hands, one after the other, and wondered what occurrence could have given rise to the swelling of the veins and the horrible blackness of the finger nails. I afterward carefully examined my head, shaking it repeatedly and feeling it with minute attention, until I succeeded in satisfying myself that it was not, as I had more than half suspected, larger than the balloon. It now occurred to me that I suffered great uneasiness in the joint of my left ankle, and a dim consciousness of my situation began to glimmer through my mind. I began to understand that my foot had caught in a rope and that I was hanging downward outside the car. But strange to say! I was neither astonished nor horror-stricken. If I felt any emotion at all, it was a sort of chuckling satisfaction at the cleverness I was about to display in getting myself out of this [v]dilemma.

With great caution and deliberation, I put my hands behind my back and unfastened the large iron buckle which belonged to the waistband of my pantaloons. This buckle had three teeth, which, being somewhat rusty, turned with great difficulty on their axis. I brought them, however, after some trouble, at right angles to the body of the buckle and was glad to find them remain firm in that position. Holding with my teeth the instrument thus obtained, I proceeded to untie the knot of my cravat; it was at length accomplished. To one end of the cravat I then made fast the buckle, and the other end I tied, for greater security, tightly around my wrist. Drawing now my body upward, with a prodigious exertion of muscular force, I succeeded, at the very first trial, in throwing the buckle over the car, and entangling it, as I had antic.i.p.ated, in the circular rim of the wicker-work.

My body was now inclined toward the side of the car at an angle of about forty-five degrees; but it must not be understood that I was therefore only forty-five degrees below the [v]perpendicular. So far from it, I still lay nearly level with the plane of the horizon, for the change of position which I had acquired had forced the bottom of the car considerably outward from my position, which was accordingly one of the most extreme peril. It should be remembered, however, that when I fell from the car, if I had fallen with my face turned toward the balloon, instead of turned outwardly from it as it actually was--or if, in the second place, the cord by which I was suspended had chanced to hang over the upper edge instead of through a crevice near the bottom of the car--in either of these cases, I should have been unable to accomplish even as much as I had now accomplished. I had therefore every reason to be grateful, although, in point of fact, I was still too stupid to be anything at all, and hung for perhaps a quarter of an hour in that extraordinary manner, without making the slightest farther exertion, and in a singularly tranquil state of idiotic enjoyment.

This feeling, however, did not fail to die rapidly away, and thereunto succeeded horror and dismay, and a sense of utter helplessness and ruin.

In fact, the blood so long acc.u.mulating in the vessels of my head and throat, and which had hitherto buoyed up my spirits with delirium, had now begun to retire within its proper channels, and the distinctness which was thus added to my perception of the danger merely served to deprive me of the self-possession and courage to encounter it. But this weakness was, luckily for me, of no very great duration. In good time came to my rescue the spirit of despair, and with frantic cries and struggles, I jerked my body upward, till, at length, clutching with a vice-like grip the long-desired rim, I writhed my person over it and fell headlong and shuddering within the car.

When I had recovered from the weakness caused by being so long in that position and the horror from which I had suffered, I found that all my implements were in place and that neither ballast nor provisions had been lost.

It is now high time that I should explain the object of my voyage. I had been hara.s.sed for long by poverty and creditors. In this state of mind, wishing to live and yet wearied with life, my deep studies in astronomy opened a resource to my imagination. I determined to depart, yet live--to leave the world, yet continue to exist--in short, to be plain, I resolved, let come what would, to force a pa.s.sage, if possible, to the moon.

This was not so mad as it seems. The moon's actual distance from the earth was the first thing to be attended to. The mean or average interval between the centers of the two planets is only about 237,000 miles. But at certain times the moon and earth are much nearer than at others, and if I could contrive to meet the moon at the moment when it was nearest earth, the above-mentioned distance would be materially lessened. But even taking the average distance and deducting the [v]radius of the earth and the moon, the actual interval to be traversed under average circ.u.mstances would be 231,920 miles. Now this, I reflected, was no very extraordinary distance. Traveling on the land has been repeatedly accomplished at the rate of sixty miles an hour; and indeed a much greater speed may be antic.i.p.ated. But even at this velocity it would take me no more than 161 days to reach the surface of the moon. There were, however, many particulars inducing me to believe that my average rate of traveling might possibly very much exceed that of sixty miles an hour.

The next point to be regarded was one of far greater importance. We know that at 18,000 feet above the surface of the earth we have pa.s.sed one-half the material, or, at all events, one-half the [v]ponderable body of air upon the globe. It is also calculated that at a height of eighty miles the [v]rarefaction of air is so great that animal life can be sustained in no manner. But I did not fail to perceive that these calculations are founded on our experimental knowledge of the air in the immediate vicinity of the earth, and that it is taken for granted that animal life is incapable of [v]modification. I thought that no matter how high we may ascend we cannot arrive at a limit beyond which no atmosphere is to be found. It must exist, I argued, although it may exist in a state of [v]infinite rarefaction.

Having adopted this view of the subject, I had little farther hesitation. Granting that on my pa.s.sage I should meet with atmosphere essentially the same as at the surface of the earth, I thought that, by means of my very ingenious apparatus for that purpose, I should readily be able to condense it in sufficient quant.i.ty for breathing. This would remove the chief obstacle in a journey to the moon.

I now turned to view the prospect beneath me. At twenty minutes past six o'clock, the barometer showed an elevation of 26,000 feet, or five miles to a fraction. The outlook seemed unbounded. I beheld as much as a sixteen-hundredth part of the whole surface of the globe. The sea appeared as unruffled as a mirror, although, by means of the telescope, I could perceive it to be in a state of violent agitation. I now began to experience, at intervals, severe pain in the head, especially about the ears, due to the rarefaction of the air. The cat seemed to suffer no inconvenience whatever.

I was rising rapidly, and by seven o'clock the barometer indicated an alt.i.tude of no less than nine miles and a half. I began to find great difficulty in drawing my breath. My head, too, was excessively painful; and, having felt for some time a moisture about my cheeks, I at length discovered it to be blood, which was oozing quite fast from the drums of my ears. These symptoms were more than I had expected and occasioned me some alarm. At this juncture, very imprudently and without consideration, I threw out from the car three five-pound pieces of ballast. The increased rate of ascent thus obtained carried me too rapidly into a highly rarefied layer of atmosphere, and the result nearly proved fatal to my expedition and myself. I was suddenly seized with a spasm, which lasted for more than five minutes, and even when this in a measure ceased, I could catch my breath only at long intervals, and in a gasping manner--bleeding all the while copiously at the nose and ears and even slightly at the eyes.

The cat mewed piteously, and, with her tongue hanging out of her mouth, staggered to and fro in the car as if under the influence of poison. I now too late discovered the great rashness of which I had been guilty in discharging my ballast, and my agitation was excessive. I expected nothing less than death, and death in a few minutes. I lay down in the bottom of the car and endeavored to collect my faculties. In this I so far succeeded as to determine upon the experiment of losing blood.

Having no lancet, I was obliged to open a vein in my arm with the blade of a penknife. The blood had hardly commenced flowing when I experienced a sensible relief, and by the time I had lost about half a basin-full most of the worst symptoms were gone. The difficulty of breathing, however, was diminished in a very slight degree, and I found that it would be soon positively necessary to make use of my condenser.

By eight o'clock I had actually attained an elevation of seventeen miles above the surface of the earth. Thus it seemed to me evident that my rate of ascent was not only on the increase, but that the progress would have been apparent to a slight extent even had I not discharged the ballast which I did. The pains in my head and ears returned at intervals and with violence, and I still continued to bleed occasionally at the nose; but upon the whole I suffered much less than might have been expected. I now unpacked the condensing apparatus and got it ready for immediate use.