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Page 41
In an hour they had traversed the hundred and twenty-five miles of
the Korean strait, and while the typhoon was raging on the coast of
China, the "Albatross" was over the Yellow Sea. During the 22nd and
23rd she was over the Gulf of Pechelee, and on the 24th she was
ascending the valley of the Peiho on her way to the capital of the
Celestial Empire.
Leaning over the rail, the two colleagues, as the engineer had told
them, could see distinctly the immense city, the wall which divides
it into two parts--the Manchu town, and the Chinese town--the
twelve suburbs which surround it, the large boulevards which radiate
from its center, the temples with their green and yellow roofs bathed
in the rising sun, the grounds surrounding the houses of the
mandarins; then in the middle of the Manchu town the eighteen hundred
acres of the Yellow town, with its pagodas, its imperial gardens, its
artificial lakes, its mountain of coal which towers above the
capital; and in the center of the Yellow town, like a square of
Chinese puzzle enclosed in another, the Red town, that is the
imperial palace, with all the peaks of its outrageous architecture.
Below the "Albatross" the air was filled with a singular harmony. It
seemed to be a concert of Aeolian harps. In the air were a hundred
kites of different forms, made of sheets of palm-leaf, and having at
their upper end a sort of bow of light wood with a thin slip of
bamboo beneath. In the breath of the wind these slips, with all their
notes varied like those of a harmonicon, gave forth a most melancholy
murmuring. It seemed as though they were breathing musical oxygen.
It suited Robur's whim to run close up to this aerial orchestra, and
the "Albatross" slowed as she glided through the sonorous waves which
the kites gave off through the atmosphere.
But immediately an extraordinary effect was produced amongst the
innumerable population. Beatings of the tomtoms and sounds of other
formidable instruments of the Chinese orchestra, gun reports by the
thousand, mortars fired in hundreds, all were brought into play to
scare away the aeronef. Although the Chinese astronomers may have
recognized the aerial machine as the moving body that had given rise
to such disputes, it was to the Celestial million, from the humblest
tankader to the best-buttoned mandarin, an apocalyptical monster
appearing in the sky of Buddha.
The crew of the "Albatross" troubled themselves very little about
these demonstrations. But the strings which held the kites, and were
tied to fixed pegs in the imperial gardens, were cut or quickly
hauled in; and the kites were either drawn in rapidly, sounding
louder as they sank, or else fell like a bird shot through both
wings, whose song ends with its last sigh.
A noisy fanfare escaped from Tom Turner's trumpet, and drowned the
final notes of the aerial concert. It did not interrupt the
terrestrial fusillade. At last a shell exploded a few feet below the
"Albatross," and then she mounted into the inaccessible regions of
the sky.
Nothing happened during the few following days of which the prisoners
could take advantage. The aeronef kept on her course to the
southwest, thereby showing that it was intended to take her to India.
Twelve hours after leaving Peking, Uncle Prudent and Phil Evans
caught a glimpse of the Great Wall in the neighborhood of Chen-Si.
Then, avoiding the Lung Mountains, they passed over the valley of the
Hoangho and crossed the Chinese border on the Tibet side.
Tibet consists of high table-lands without vegetation, with here and
there snowy peaks and barren ravines, torrents fed by glaciers,
depressions with glittering beds of salt, lakes surrounded by
luxurious forests, with icy winds sweeping over all.
The barometer indicated an altitude of thirteen thousand feet above
the level of the sea. At that height the temperature, although it was
in the warmest months of the northern hemisphere, was only a little
above freezing. This cold, combined with the speed of the
"Albatross," made the voyage somewhat trying, and although the
friends had warm traveling wraps, they preferred to keep to their
cabin.
It need hardly be said that to keep the aeronef in this rarefied
atmosphere the suspensory screws had to be driven at extreme speed.
But they worked with perfect regularity, and the sound of their wings
almost acted as a lullaby.
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