Kitabı oku: «Таинственный остров / Mysterious Island», sayfa 2
The balloon went up. But soon it began to descend again. It was impossible to repair the rent, through which the gas was rushing out.
At 4 o’clock, when the balloon was only 500 feet above the sea, the loud barking of a dog was heard.
“Top6 has seen something! Land! Land!”
They saw a high land. But it was still far, and it would take an hour to reach it. An hour! They did not know whether it was an island or a continent, as they were uninformed as to what part of the world the tempest had hurried them. But they knew that this land must be reached.
At 4 o’clock it was plain that the balloon could not sustain itself much longer. It grazed the surface of the sea.
A half hour later the land was scarcely a mile distant. The balloon made a bound into the air. It rose 1,500 feet, then began to descend and soon fell upon the sand. The passengers, assisting each other, hastened to the ground.
The basket had contained five passengers and a dog, but only four had been thrown upon the shore. The fifth one, then, had been washed off by the great wave. His friends cried:
“Perhaps he is trying to swim ashore. Save him! Let us save him!”
Chapter II
They were neither professional aeronauts noramateurs in aerial navigation7 whom the storm had thrown upon this coast. They were prisoners of war and succeeded to escape. Their aerial voyage had lasted five days. How did it happen?
This same year, in the month of February, 1865, many officers were captured by the enemy and confined within the city. One of the most famous of them was a Federal staff officer namedCyrus Smith8.
Cyrus Smith was a native ofMassachusetts9, an engineer by profession, and a scientist, to whom the Government had given, during the war, the direction of the railways.
He was thin, bony, lean, about forty-five years old, withheavy moustache10. His muscles showed remarkable firmness. He was as much a man of action as of study. He was highly educated, practical, clear-headed, and his temperament was superb. Cyrus Smith was also the personification of courage. He had been in every battle of the war.
At the same time with Cyrus Smith another important personage fell into the power ofthe Southerners11. This was no other than the honorable Gideon Spilett12, reporter to the New York Herald13. He obtained exact information and transmitted it to the journal in the quickest manner, and belonged in the first rank of the reporters.
A man of great merit; energetic, prompt, and ready; full of ideas; soldier and artist; vehement in council; resolute in action; thinking nothing of pain, fatigue, or danger when seeking information; a master of recondite information of the unpublished, the unknown, the impossible. He was one of those to whom all perils are welcome.
He also had been in all the battles, in the front rank, revolver in one hand and notebook in the other, his pencil never trembling in the midst of a cannonade. Gideon Spilett was tall, forty years old or more. Sandy-colored whiskers encircled his face. His eye was clear, lively, and quick moving.
Cyrus Smith and Gideon Spilett knew each other onlyby reputation14, but the two soon learned to appreciate each other.
Cyrus Smith had a devoted servant. This man was black, born of slave parents, whom Smith had freed. But the servant had no desire to leave his master, for whom he would have given his life. He was a man of thirty years, vigorous, agile, adroit, intelligent, quick, and self-possessed, sometimes ingenuous, always smiling, ready and honest. He was namedNebuchadnezzar15, but he answered to the nickname of Neb.
All these people were inRichmond16, and it was very difficult to get out. Nothing indicated an early release to the prisoners. The reporter had but one idea; to get out of Richmond at any risk. Many times, indeed, he tried the experiment, and was stopped by obstacles.
Meanwhile, the siege continued, and the prisoners were anxious to escape in order to join thearmy of Grant17; and among these was a certain Jonathan Forster18, who was a violent Southerner. This Jonathan Forster had conceived the idea of passing over the lines of the besiegers in a balloon.
