Chapter One.
Professor Von Schalckenberg makes a startling Suggestion.
The “Migrants’” Club stands on the most delightful site in all London; and it is, as the few who are intimately acquainted with it know full well, one of the most cosy and comfortable clubs in the great metropolis.
It is by no means a famous club; the building itself has a very simple, unpretentious elevation, with nothing whatever about it to attract the attention of the passer-by; but its interior is fitted up in such a style of combined elegance and comfort, and its domestic arrangements are so perfect, as to leave nothing to be desired.
Its numerous members are essentially wanderers upon the face of the earth—that is the one distinguishing characteristic wherein they most widely differ from their fellow-men—they are ceaseless travellers; mighty hunters in far-off lands; adventurous yachtsmen; eager explorers; with a small sprinkling of army and navy men. Their visits to their club are infrequent in the extreme; but, during the brief and widely separated intervals when they have the opportunity to put in an appearance there, they like to be made thoroughly comfortable; and no pains are spared to secure their complete gratification in this respect.
The smoke-room of the “Migrants’” presented an appearance of especial comfort and attractiveness on a certain cold and stormy February evening a few years ago. A large fire blazed in the polished steel grate and roared cheerfully up the chimney, in rivalry of the wind, which howled and scuffled and rumbled in the flue higher up. An agreeable temperature pervaded the room, making the lashing of the fierce rain on the window-panes sound almost pleasant as one basked in the light and warmth of the apartment and contrasted it with the state of cold and wet and misery which reigned supreme outside. A dozen opal-shaded gas-burners brilliantly lighted the room, and revealed the fact that it was handsomely and liberally furnished with luxurious divans, capacious easy-chairs, a piano, a table loaded with the papers and periodicals of the day, an enormous mirror over the black marble mantel-piece, a clock with a set of silvery chimes for the quarters, and a deep, mellow-toned gong for the hours, and so many pictures that the whole available surface of the walls was completely covered with them. These pictures—executed in both oil and water-colour—represented out-of-the-way scenes visited, or incidents participated in by the members who had executed them, and all possessed a considerable amount of artistic merit; it being a rule of the club that every picture should be submitted to a hanging committee of distinctly artistic members before it could be allowed a place upon the smoke-room walls.
The occupants of the room on the evening in question were four in number. One, a German, known as the Professor Heinrich von Schalckenberg, was half buried in the recesses of a huge arm-chair, from the depths of which he perused the pages of the Science Monthly, smoking meanwhile a pipe with a huge elaborately carved meerschaum bowl and a long cherry-wood stem. From the ferocious manner in which he glared through his spectacles at the pages of the magazine, from the impatience with which he from time to time dashed his disengaged hand through the masses of his iron-grey hair, and from the frequent ejaculations of “Pish!” “Psha!” “Ach!” and so on which escaped his lips, accompanied by vast volumes of smoke, it seemed evident that he was not altogether at one with the author whose article he was perusing. He was an explorer and a scientist.
Near the Herr Professor there reclined upon a divan the form of Sir Reginald Elphinstone, sometimes called by his friends “the handsome baronet,” said to be the richest commoner in England. At the age of thirty-five, having freely exposed himself to all known sources of peril, except those involved in a trip to the Polar regions, in his eager pursuit of sport and adventure, Sir Reginald seemed, for the moment, to have no object left him in life but to shoot as many rings as possible of cigar-smoke through each other, as he lay there on the divan in an attitude more easy than elegant.
Square in front of the fire, dreamily puffing at his cigar and apparently studying the merits of a painting hanging behind him, and on the reflected image of which in the mirror before him his eyes lazily rested, sat Cyril Lethbridge, ex-colonel of the Royal Engineers, a successful gold-seeker, and almost everything else to which a spice of adventure could possibly attach itself.
And next him again, on the side of the fire-place opposite to the Herr Professor, lounged Lieutenant Edward Mildmay, R.N.
The lieutenant was skimming through the daily papers. Presently he looked up and remarked to the colonel:
“I see that some Frenchmen have been making experiments in the navigation of balloons.”
“Ah, indeed!” responded the colonel, with his head thrown critically on one side, and his eyes still fixed on the reflection of the picture. “And with what result?”
“Oh, failure, of course.”
“And failure it always will be. The thing is simply an impossibility,” remarked the colonel.
“No, bardon me, colonel, id is not an imbossibilidy by any means.”
This from the professor.
“Indeed? Then how do you account for it, professor, that all attempts to navigate a balloon have hitherto failed?” asked the colonel.
“Begause, my dear zir, the aeronauts have never yed realised all the requiremends of zuccess,” replied the professor, laying down his magazine as though quite prepared to go thoroughly into the question.
The colonel accepted the challenge, and, rousing himself from his semi-recumbent posture, said:
“That is quite possible; but what are the requirements of success?”
The professor knocked the ashes out of his meerschaum, refilled it with the utmost deliberation, carefully lighted it, gave a few vigorous puffs, and replied:
“The requiremends of zuccess in balloon navigation are very zimilar to those which enable a man to draverse the ocean. If a man wants to make a voyage agross the ocean he embargs in a ship, not on a life-buoy. Now a balloon is nothing more than a life-buoy; id zusdains a man, but that is all. Id drifts aboud with the currends of air jusd as a life-buoy drifts aboud with the currends of ocean, and the only advandage which the aeronaud has over the man with the life-buoy is thad the former can ascend or descend in search of a favourable air currend, whereas the ladder is obliged do dake the ocean currends as they come.”
“Very true,” remarked the colonel; “and what do you deduce from that, professor?”
“I deduse from thad thad the man who wands to navigade the air musd do as his brother the sailor does, he musd have a ship.”
“Well, is not a balloon a sort of air ship?”
“You may gall it zo iv you like, colonel, I do nod; I call it merely a buoy,” returned the professor. “A ship is a zomething gabable of moving in the elemend which zustains it; a balloon is ingabable of any indebendend movement in the air; it drifts aboud at the mercy of every idle wind that blows. Id is like a ship on a breathless sea; withoud any means of brobulsion the ship lies motionless, or drifts at the mercy of the currends. Bud give the ship a means of brobulsion, and navigation ad once begomes bossible. And zo will it be with balloons.”
“Well, that has already been tried,” remarked the colonel; “but the buoyancy of a balloon is too slight to permit of its being fitted with engines and a boiler.”
“My vriendt,” said the professor impressively, “whad would you think of the man who tried to pud the engines and boilers of an Atlantic liner in a leedle boad?”
“I should think him an unmitigated ass,” retorted the colonel.
“Jusd so. Yed thad is whad the aeronauds have been doing; they have been drying to make the leedle boad-balloon garry the brobelling bower of the aerial ship. In other words, they have not made their balloons large enough.”
“Then you think they have not yet reached the practical limit to the size of a balloon?” asked the colonel.
“They have—very nearly—if balloons are do be made only of silk,” was the reply. “Bud if navigable balloons are to be gonsdrugded, aeronauds musd durn do other maderials and adobd another form. As I said before, they musd build a shib, and she musd be of sufficiend size to float in the air and to garry all her eguipments.”
“But such an aerial ship would be a veritable monster” protested the colonel.
“Zo are the Adlandic liners of the presend day,” quietly answered the professor.
“Phew!” whistled the colonel. The baronet rose from the divan, flung away the stump of his cigar, and settled himself to listen, and perhaps take part in the singular conversation.
“And of what would you build your aerial ship, professor?” asked the colonel when he had in some measure recovered from his astonishment.
“Of the lighdesd and, ad the zame dime, sdrongesd maderial I gould find,” answered the professor. “Once get the aeronaud to realise thad greadly ingreased bulk and a differend form are necessary, and id will nod be long before he will find a suitable building maderial. Iv I were an aeronaud I should dry medal.”
“Metal!” exclaimed the colonel. “Oh, come, professor; now you are romancing, you know. A ship of metal would never float in the atmosphere.”
“A zimilar remarg was made nod zo very many years ago when id was suggesded that ocean shibs could be buildt of medal,” retorted the professor. “Yed there are thousands of medal shibs in exisdenze do-day; and there can be no doubt as do the facd thad they fload. And zo will an aerial shib. The gread—in facd the only diffiguldy in the madder is thad air is eight hundred dimes lighder than wader; and an air shib of given dimensions musd therefore be ad leasd eight hundred dimes lighder than her ocean sisder do enable her do fload in the atmosphere. The broblem, then, is this: How are you to gonsdrugt a medal shib, of given dimensions, sdrong enough do hold dogether and withsdand the shock of goming do earth, yed of less weighd than her own bulk of air? With the medals hitherdoo ad our disbosal, I admid thad the dask is a diffiguld one; bud I maindain thad id is by no means an imbossibilidy. An ocean shib musd be buildt sdrong enough nod only do susdain the weighd of her gargo—often amounding do upwards of a thousand dons—bud also do withstand the dremendous and incessandly varying sdrain do which she is exbosed when garrying thad gargo through a moundainous sea. This enormous sdrength necessidades the use of a gorresbonding thickness—and therefore weighd—of the medal used in her gonsdruction. Such brovision would of gourse be unnecessary in the gase of an aerial shib; begause no one would dream of garrying an ounze of unnecessary weighd through the air; and there are no moundain seas in the admosphere to sdrain a shib. A vasd saving in weighd would resuld from these zirgumsdances alone; and a further saving—zufficiend, I believe, to aggomblish the desired object—gan, no doubd, be effecded by skilful engineers, one of whose greadesd driumphs id is do design sdrugdures in which the maximum of sdrength is zecured with the minimum of weighd. Id musd nod be forgodden, either, thad an air shib musd, in one imbordand bardigular, be dreated exactly like her ocean sisder. An ocean shib gonsdrugded, say, of sdeel, will sink if filled with wader, begause sdeel is heavier than wader, bulk for bulk; bud bump oud all the wader from her inderior, and if she be proberly gonsdrugded, she will fload on the elemend she is indended do navigade. And the same with an air shib: bump out all or nearly all the air which she gondains, and if she be gonsdrugded in aggordanze with the brincibles I have indigaded, she will fload in the lighder elemend.”
“Upon my word, professor, you have argued your case extremely well,” exclaimed the colonel. “I can see only one difficulty in the way; and that is in the matter of weight.”
“Which diffiguldy I have gombledely gonquered,” triumphantly exclaimed the professor, rising excitedly from his seat with flushed cheeks and flashing eyes. “Do me, Heinrich von Schalckenberg, belongs the honour and glory of having made dwo mosd imbordand disgoveries, disgoveries of ingalgulable value do the worldt, disgoveries which will enable me do soar ad will indo the highesd regions of the embyrean, do skim the surface of the ocean, or do blunge do ids lowesd debths.”
“Bravo, professor; that was positively dramatic!” exclaimed the baronet. “You have mistaken your business, my dear sir; you were undoubtedly born to be an actor. But what are these two most important discoveries of which you so exultantly speak?”
“They are a new medal and a new power,” exclaimed the professor. Then, fumbling in his breast-pocket, he drew forth a wallet from which he extracted a small rectangular plate of—apparently—polished silver. It measured about five inches long by four inches broad, and was about a quarter of an inch thick.
“There, Sir Reginald,” he exclaimed, offering the plate to the baronet, “dell me whad you think of thad.”
“Very pretty indeed,” commented Sir Reginald, as he held out his hand to take it. “What is it? Silver? Phew! No; it can’t be that,” as his fingers closed upon it; “it is far too light for silver. Why, it seems to be absolutely devoid of weight altogether. What is it, professor?”
“Thad, my good sir, is my new medal, which I gall ‘aethereum’ begause of ids wonderful lighdness. See here.”
There was a very handsome cut glass water-jug, full, standing on the table in a capacious salver of hammered brass. The professor took up the jug and emptied it into the salver, almost filling the latter. Then he laid the glittering slab of metal down on the surface of the water, where it floated as buoyantly as though it had been an empty box constructed of the lightest cardboard. The professor raised the salver from the table and agitated the water, to show that the metal actually floated.
“Why, it floats as lightly as a cork!” exclaimed the colonel in the utmost astonishment.
“Korg!” exclaimed the professor disdainfully, “korg is heavy gombared with this. This is the lighdesd solid known. Loog ad this.”
The professor lifted the plate of metal out of the water, and, wiping it dry very carefully with his silk pocket-handkerchief, held it suspended, flat side downwards, between his finger and thumb. Then, when he had poised it as nearly horizontal as he could guess at, he let it go. It wavered about in the air as a thin sheet of paper would have done, and finally sailed aslant and very gently to the ground, amid the astonished exclamations of the beholders, by whom it was immediately examined with the utmost curiosity.
“You have seen for yourselves and gan therefore judge how marvellously lighd this medal is,” continued the professor when the plate had been handed back to him; “bud ids sdrength you musd dake my word for, as I have no means ad hand do illusdrade id. Ids sdrength is as wonderful as ids lighdness, being—zo var as I have had obbordunidy do desd id—exactly one hundred dimes thad of the besd sdeel.”
“If that be the case, professor, then I should say you have solved the problem of aerial navigation,” remarked the colonel. “But you spoke of having also discovered a new power. What is it?”
The professor once more instituted a search in his pockets, and at length produced a small paper packet, which, on being opened, was found to contain about a table-spoonful of green metallic-looking crystals.
“There id is,” he said, handing the packet to the colonel for inspection.
“Um!” ejaculated the colonel, turning the crystals over slowly with his finger. “Quite new to me; I don’t recognise them at all. And what is the nature of the power derivable from these crystals?”
“Dreated in one way they give off elegdricidy; dreated in another way they yield an exbansive gas, which may be subsdiduded for either gunbowder or sdeam,” answered the professor.
“Are they explosive, then?” asked the colonel.
“Nod in their bresend form. You mighd doss all those crysdals indo the fire with imbunidy; but bowder them and mix indo a baste with a zerdain acid, and whad you now hold in your hand would develop exblosive bower enough to demolish this building,” was the quiet reply.
The professor’s little audience looked at him incredulously; a look to which he responded by saying:
“Id is quide drue, I assure you,” in such convincing tones as left no room for further doubt. They knew the professor well; knew him to be quite incapable of the slightest attempt at deception or exaggeration.
“Then, if I have understood you aright, you will construct your aerial ship of your new metal, and apply your new power to give motion to her machinery?” said the colonel.
“Yes. Thad is do say, I would if I bossessed the means do build such a ship as I have described. Bud I am a scientist, and therefore boor. Never mind; I have no doubt thad, when I make my discoveries known, I shall find some wealthy man who, for the sake of science, will find der money,” said the professor hopefully.
“How much would it cost to build an aerial ship such as you have been speaking of?” asked the baronet.
“Oh! I cannod say. Nod zo very much. Berhabs a hundred thousandt bounds,” was the reply.
“Phew! That’s rather ‘steep,’ as the Yankees say. But—‘a fool and his money are soon parted’—if you are convinced that your scheme is really practicable, professor, I will find the needful,” remarked the baronet.
“Bragdigable! My dear sir, id is as bragdigable as id is to build a shib which will navigade the ocean. I have thoughd the madder oudt, and there is nod a single weak boindt anywhere in my scheme. Led me have der money and I will brovide you with the means of zoaring above the grest of Mount Everest, or of exbloring the deepest ocean valleys,” exclaimed the professor enthusiastically.
“Good!” remarked the baronet quietly. “That is a bargain. Meet me here at noon to-morrow, and we will go together to my bankers, where I will transfer one hundred thousand pounds to your account. And—what say you, gentlemen?—when this wonderful ship is completed will you join the professor and me in an experimental trip round the world?”
“I shall be delighted,” exclaimed the colonel.
“Nothing would please me better,” remarked the lieutenant.
And so it was agreed.
“Well,” remarked the baronet reflectively, and as though he already began to feel doubtful as to the wisdom of his agreement with the professor, “if it has no other good result it will at least afford employment to a few of the unfortunate fellows who are now hanging about idle day after day.”
The professor looked up sharply.
“What!” he exclaimed. “Of whom are you sbeaging, my dear Sir Reginald?”
“I am speaking of the unfortunate individual known as ‘the British Workman,’” was the baronet’s quiet reply.
“Am I do understandt thad you make the embloymend of English workmen a gondition of the underdaking?” asked the professor somewhat sharply.
“By no means, my dear sir,” answered Sir Reginald; “I shall not attempt to impose conditions of any kind upon you. But I should naturally expect that, if English workmen are as capable of executing the work as foreigners, the former would be given the preference in a matter involving the expenditure of say a hundred thousand pounds of an Englishman’s money.”
“Quide zo,” concurred the professor; “and you would be perfectly justified in such an expegdation if the Bridish workman was the steady, indusdrious, reliable fellow he once was. Bud, unfordunadely, he is nod the same, zo var ad leasd as reliabilidy is concerned. You gannod any longer debend ubon him. Id is no longer bossible to underdake a work of any imbordance withoudt the gonsdand haunting fear that your brogress will be inderrubted—berhaps ad a most cridical juncture—by a ‘sdrike,’ The greadt quesdion which, above all others, do-day agidades the British mind is: ‘Do whadt cause is the bresendt debression of drade addribudable?’ And, in my obinion, gendlemen, the answer to that quesdion is thad id is very largely due do the consdandly recurring sdrikes which have become almosdt a habid with the Bridish workman. The ‘sdrike’ is the most formidable engine which has ever been brought indo oberation do seddle the differences bedween embloyer and embloyed; and, whilst I am willing to admid thad in certain cases id has resulded in the repression and redress of long-sdanding oppression and injusdice, id has been used with such a lack of discrimination as do have almost ruined the drade of the goundry. With the invention of the ‘sdrike’ the workman thoughd he had ad lasd discovered the means of enriching himself ad the expense of his embloyer, or of securing his fair and righdful share of the brofids of his labour, as he described id; and, udderly ignorand of the laws of bolidigal egonomy, recognising in the ‘sdrike’ merely an insdrumend for forcing a higher rade of wages from his embloyer, he has gone on recklessly using id undil the unfordunade gabidalist, finding himself unable do produce his wares ad a cost which will enable him do successfully gompede with the manufagdurers of other goundries, has been gombelled to glose his works and remove his gabidal and his energies to a spodt where he gan find workmen less unreasonable in their demands. There is no more capable or valuable workman in existence than the English artisan, if he gould only be induced to do his honest best for his embloyer; there is hardly any branch of industry in which he is nod ad leasd the equal, if not very greadly the suberior of the foreigner; and id is even yet in his power to recover the command of the world’s market by the suberior excellence of his broductions, if he could only be brevailed upon do abandon sdrikes and do be satisfied with a wage which will allow the cabidalist a fair and moderade redurn for the use of his money and brains and for the risks he has do run. If the British workman would gollecdively make up his mind to do this, and would acquaindt the gabidalist with his decision, we should speedily see a revival of drade and embloymend for every really capable workman. Bud in the meantime there unfordunadely seems do be very little chance of this; and in so delicade a madder as the gonsdrugdion of this ship of ours, it would be nod only unwise, but also unfair to you to run the risk of a failure through the embloymendt of untractable or unreliable workmen; and if, therefore, you had insisted on my embloying Englishmen, I should have been relugdandly gombelled do wash my hands of the whole affair. Ad the same dime I feel id due do myself do say thad, even had you nod mendioned the madder, I should have done my best to secure Englishmen for the work, as of course I shall now; bud I do nod feel very sanguine as do the resuldt.”
“My dear professor!” exclaimed the baronet, smiling at the intense earnestness of the German, “are you not laying on the colour rather thickly? I admit with sorrow that your portrait is only too truthful—as a portrait—still I cannot help thinking it rather highly coloured. They are surely not all as despicable as you have painted them?”
“No,” answered the professor with enthusiasm, “no they are nod. Id was only a few weeks ago thad I read of the workmen of a cerdain firm bresending their employers with a full week’s work free, in order to helb the firm out of their beguniary diffiguldies. Now, they, I admid, were fine, noble, sensible fellows; they had indelligence enough to regognize the diffiguldies of the siduation, and do grabble with them in a sensible way. I warrand you they always worked honesdly and efficiendly whether their embloyer’s eye was on them or nod. And they will find their reward in due time; their embloyers will never rest until they have recouped the men for their generous sacrifice. But where will you find another body of men like them? They are only the one noble, grand exception which goes do brove my rule.”
“Well, professor, though what you have said is, in the main, only too true, I cannot agree with you altogether; I believe there are a few good, intelligent, reliable men to be found here and there, in addition to those splendid fellows of whom you have just told us,” said the baronet. “But,” he continued, “I will not attempt to constrain you in any way. If you cannot find exactly what you want here, import men from abroad, by all means. I have a great deal of sympathy for want and suffering when they are the result of misfortune; but when they are brought on by a man’s own laziness or perversity he must go elsewhere for sympathy and help; I have none to spare for people of that sort.”