CHAPTER VI
THE YACHT “CINDERELLA”.
THE Cinderella (Proprietor and Commander Hereditary Prince Christian of Monte Cristo, the twenty-sixth of his name) was an auxiliary yacht of five hundred and thirty tons. She was schooner rigged, but had also a single screw with engines of three hundred and fifty horse-power, and carried sufficient coal to enable her to steam at full speed for twenty days. Her speed by steam in fair weather was about a dozen knots; but the speed could be considerably augmented by sailing when the weather was favourable. The exterior of the vessel showed a pointed hull, long and light, suggesting the motion of a well-bred horse. The fine proportions of her rigging, the perfect adjustment of her timbers, which enhanced a simplicity full of elegance, struck René’s practised eye at the first glance, inclined though he was by his profession to despise mere pleasure boats as inferior productions. To all appearances, the crew, in its perfect discipline, was copied from that of a man-of-war. The young lieutenant noted with satisfaction the frank and open faces of the men., an unfailing characteristic of men-of-war’s men.
The planks of the deck shone with cleanliness and all the brass was as bright as gold. The officer who received the prince’s guest was less satisfactory than the rest of the yacht. He introduced himself as Captain Sacripanti, second in command of the yacht: He was a little man, short and stout, with black hair shining with pomade, a showy necktie, a double watch-chain ornamented with lockets, and his fingers covered with rings; he looked in fact more like a Neapolitan valet than a seaman. His accent, too,’was that of a flunkey. He was one of those people of doubtful origin, who speak very badly, and with a coarse voice, all the languages of the Mediterranean countries.
Bowing very low, and showing a double row of very white teeth, he offered to conduct the young lieutenant to the commander,—an offer at once accepted. On going aft, René passed, one after the other, a saloon, a smoking-room, a dining-saloon, and a library luxuriously furnished. His guide knocked discreetly at the door of a state-room. “Come in,” cried a voice of thunder. The “second in command “ slid open the door in its groove and effaced himself to allow René to pass. “Lieutenant Caoudal,” he announced in a solemn voice. Upon this, a tall figure emerged from the depths of a monumental arm-chair, and, throwing on a round table the newspaper which he was reading with the aid of eye-glasses, came, with outstretched hand, to greet him:
“My dear M, Caoudal, how pleased I am to see you!” he cried, effusively. And he pressed the young man’s hand within his own, as if he were greeting a long-lost friend. He almost embraced him. Without manifesting any surprise, René expressed to him the pleasure he felt, on his side, at making the acquaintance of the Prince of Monte Cristo.
“Well! do you know, I see we shall get to be as thick as two thieves, upon my word,” cried the prince in an explosive manner, when René had finished speaking, “To begin with, I must tell you I am a very outspoken person. If people please me, I tell them so to their faces. If not,—well, I am equally plain with them. And I like you,—I like you very much. I am positively enchanted to make your acquaintance; enchanted to have you on board for a time; enchanted to find that our work interests you, and that you wish to take part in it. I hope you will enjoy being with us,” continued he with great volubility, paying not the slightest attention to the few polite words the lieutenant felt bound to utter. “If you are not satisfied with anything, you must tell me so, plainly, and I will endeavour to alter, — not my yacht, that would not be practicable, but, at least, I would see that things are rearranged to suit your taste. I wonder how you would like to look over my little wooden shoe, as I call my yacht. Ha! ha! ha!”
Falling in with his host’s noisy, hilarious mood, René declared that he was quite ready to look over the “shoe.” The prince, putting on a huge cap, led the way, and showed him every corner of it, from the deck to the hold, not omitting any detail. René was bound to admit that everything, outside and in, was perfect of its kind. Nothing was wanting which could be useful for the scientific work that the prince had undertaken; photographic studio, carpenter’s shop, forge, physical and chemical laboratory, all seemed admirably organized. Two or three dozen workmen, directed by foremen, occupied these various workshops. The prince said in his guest’s ear, in a stentorian whisper, that they were the pick of jolly fellows, and he “liked them extremely; otherwise he would tell them so squarely, and show them the way out.”
His highness’s appearance was truly extraordinary. Physically, he was a veritable Colossus; tall, broad in proportion, — aldermanic proportion, — very red in the face, with prominent eyes and a large aquiline nose, or, rather, enormous beak, which gave him a fantastic resemblance to a parrot. He had a ringing voice, and gesticulated a great deal; his laugh was Homeric in its amplitude; and his manners, as we have seen, were exuberantly cordial. He affected an openness, a frankness bordering on blunt-ness. An incessant talker, he used a hundred words where ten would have served. But what struck René at the outset was the philosophical disdain he professed on all occasions for the sovereign rank to which he was born. It is true his principality consisted of nothing more than an islet, two or three hundred acres in extent, whose chief industry and sole source of revenue was an argentiferous lead mine, worked by seven or eight hundred convicts, which he let to a neighbouring nation. If he was to be believed, he cared for nothing in the world but personal merit. He affirmed that the meanest scavenger, if intellectually endowed, was worth more to him than an emperor on his throne. One would have thought that he wished, by this ostentatious display of principles, to excuse himself for
On board the “Cinderella”.
having been born some fifty years previously heir to a large fortune as well as a princely crown. At least he had the good taste to spend a good third of it in useful scientific work.
“I look upon myself as a steward,” he volunteered. *’My fortune is not my own. I only manage it for the benefit of those who have none. As to my name! bah! what is that? As the immortal Shakespeare says, ‘A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.’ I protest to you that I attach no importance whatever to it, and that I would as soon go by the name of Big John, as Monte Cristo,” But he never missed an opportunity of reminding one of the twelve hundred years of ancestors more or less authentic. In five minutes René knew him through and through. Ridiculous though he was, he could not dislike him, and the prospect of spending a few weeks on board so charming a vessel was not to be despised. The prince insisted on himself showing him to his cabin. It was most elegant and commodious, and opened on the library. He begged the young fellow to consider himself at home, and to tell him if he would like anything altered to suit his convenience. René assured him in all sincerity that he had never been so comfortably lodged, and they went up on deck the best friends in the world.
The object of the present voyage of the Cinderella was to sound some of the Atlantic shoals, and René lost no time in asking to be shown the apparatus to be used for the purpose. The investigation had an interest for him little dreamt of by Monte Cristo, who took him at once to the place where it was standing ready for use. It was an enormous block of lead, weighing twenty tons; round its upper extremity was coiled a solid rope of measuring silk, which Monte Cristo pronounced, not without pride, to be five hundred yards in length.
“You see,” said the prince, much pleased at being able to play the showman, “our monstrous plummet is hollowed out at the base, and has a coating of grease. When it has lain long enough at the bottom it is slowly drawn up by means of this windlass; it reappears covered with shells, gravel, grasses, débris of all sorts which it picks up in dragging along at the bottom of the sea. It is by studying the nature of this débris with the magnifying-glass that we draw our conclusions concerning the kinds of vegetable and animal life (often new to us) concealed in, these beds under water.”
“Indeed!” said René, surprised and disappointed, “have you no other method of research?”
“Why, no, my dear fellow! What more would you have than a plummet like mine? What do you find defective in it?”
“Nothing in itself, certainly. It is a superb plummet, but, if I may be permitted to make a suggestion, it is that another machine, somewhat akin to it, be used for examining the sea-bottom.”
“But what sort of machine would you suggest? Would you have me send a photographic camera a thousand feet under water? And by what means, may I ask?”
“A camera? no.”
“What, then?”
“A man! Yes, I confess, sir, I should not have asked to join in your researches, if I had not indulged the hope of going myself to the sea-bottom. I cling to the hope of seeing, with my own eyes, what goes on down there, and all the shells that could possibly attach themselves to the largest plummet in the world would tell me absolutely nothing! The least glance in person would serve my purpose.”
“He, he!” and the prince went off in an explosion of laughter. “I dare say, my young friend; I, too, should like extremely to see, with my own eyes, what is going on among the fishes. But just one thing stands in my way, you see. It is impossible, simply impossible!”
“Why impossible?”
“For a very good reason; namely, that we make our soundings at such depths that we could not possibly provide our divers with a respiratory tube long enough, and, if we sent our men to explore the depths, what steps could we take to provide them with air to breathe?”
René reflected a minute before replying.
“It is clear that the difficulty of providing respirable air is the only thing that stands in the way,” said he, at last. “ Well, if we cannot make a tube sufficiently long, we must think of some other expedient, that’s all.”
“Hum, ha! let us see,” said the prince, crossing his arms on his ample chest.
“Look here; it will be necessary, according to my idea, to contrive a special diving apparatus; an apparatus for shoal soundings. If only a supply of respir-able air, sufficient to last for three or four hours, could be assured to the diver! Round the suspension cable a telephonic wire should be coiled, which should keep the explorer in communication with those on deck, so that he could be drawn up as soon as he gives the word, and, in case he gave no sign of life after a given interval, he could be drawn up, without losing a minute, by means of a steam-engine.”
“Do you know, that is the most ingenious plan I ever heard of!” cried the prince, enchanted, “only we have no such diving apparatus.”
“That is true.”
“What, then?”
“We must invent one. Haven’t you here. on board, complete workshops, and first-rate workmen?”
“Certainly; there are none better than mine, I flatter myself.”
“Very well; with your permission, I will at once set to work in the library, and begin to work out my plan of a diving apparatus, and I hope, before long, to make drawings exact enough for your workmen to construct a most satisfactory one.”
“If you do that, I really must embrace you,” cried the prince, enthusiastically, foreseeing, already, the reports that would be addressed to the learned societies, and the interest that would be connected with his name. “If you succeed, upon my word! I would willingly give you a year or two’s revenue of my principality.”
“I would not ask for so much as that,” said René, laughingly; “only allow me to take my first journey in it alone, when it is completed, and to choose myself the site of my soundings, at least, to begin with.”
“Assuredly, my dear boy. You shall do just as you wish. When will it suit you to begin?”
“As soon as we set out.”
“Bravo! And you wish to sail towards —?”
“I particularly wish to explore the region of the Sargassian Sea. When we arrive at the point where 25° E. longitude crosses 36° N. latitude, we will make a halt, and proceed to sound.”
“Oh! Ah! You have decided ideas; that is clear. And what do you expect to discover at that exact spot? Plenty of driftwood, no doubt. What else?”
“Experience has taught me, indeed, that the sea is covered at that spot with a quantity of sea-wrack, which the savants call fucus natans, and our sailors, very aptly, tropical grapes, or gulf-wrack. It is a sea plant, the stalks of which terminate in watery bladders. But what does it matter? All that will only bore you, I fancy —”
“Indeed, your diving apparatus will disturb such a movable carpet. Well, sir, you have only to command. The library and the workmen are at your disposal, and I will at once give word as to our route.”
And the prince went off, leaving his guest in a high state of satisfaction as seeing himself on the way to find his mysterious Undine. And, as the yacht weighed anchor and set sail, the young officer shut himself up in the library, where, thanks to considerable ability in drawing, and with the help of the necessary technical books, Indian ink, coloured crayons, compass, and drawing-board, he soon produced (on paper at least) the apparatus of which he dreamed. He made more than twenty copies before succeeding to his satisfaction, and, at last, handed to the workmen a plan which seemed to him to unite all the wished-for conditions, and, under his directions, the work was carried out in the workshop.
The prince had not overrated the cleverness of his men. They were experienced, practical workmen, who were fully qualified to carry out difficult instructions. The diving apparatus designed by René was an immense circular chest, about seven hundred cubic feet in size, and, for ballast, was weighted at its base with rather more than two tons of lead. This base was furnished with steel braces, bound by strong bands of steel to suspension grapnels; and these, in their turn, were attached to tackle placed on either side of the vessel. A set of pulleys and the steam capstan ought to lower and raise the apparatus at will. The submersible chest or diving-bell, to give it a simpler name, was provided with windows and small port-holes of thick but perfectly transparent glass, which would allow a ray of electric light to shine in all directions, and light up the surrounding waters. The source of light was a movable lamp, hung from the ceiling, and fed for several hours by an accumulator. This accumulator was fixed in the framework of a soft sofa, which formed, with a work-table, two easy chairs, and an ordinary chair, the furniture of the cabin. Near to the sofa was concealed, at the bottom of a large china vase, a bottle with two small tubes, which emitted automatically a small quantity of oxygen, when the button setting it in motion was pressed.
Opposite to it, and under the cover of a second vase, was placed a metallic bath, which René, without saying anything to any one, reserved, to be filled with barytic water. It is well known that protoxyde of barytes or baryta, discovered by the German chemist, Scheele, has the remarkable property of absorbing, with extreme precision, the carbonic acid of the atmosphere. The young lieutenant was convinced that a bath of baryta, mixed at need with a slight addition of oxygen, ought to be sufficient to maintain for many hours the respirable properties of the seven hundred cubic feet of air, and experience would justify his theory.
Thus equipped, carefully varnished, and waxed, the submersible chamber had the appearance of a large and elegant officers’ cabin. It was made still more complete by four india-rubber bags symmetrically placed at the bottom, and rounded off, like the fingers of a glove; the bags would allow of a human hand, guided by the electric light, to feel and seize hold of specimens of gravel, sand, or submarine plants. Specimens picked up thus, and brought into the interior of the chamber, should surely have a better chance of arriving safe and sound at the surface than by the primitive method of laying a coat of grease on the traditional plummet.
Finally, in order to achieve the realization of the programme René had traced, a telephonic wire inclosed in a thick covering, like that of the suspending cable, kept the diver in constant communication with the chief mate, posted at the capstan. Any appeal could be immediately heard, every order executed without possibility of mistake. So that even if it should prove less manageable, and less sure than an ordinary apparatus, the new diving-bell would, in reality, be more supple and obedient than any previously in use.
Once begun, the work advanced with the greatest speed. René, giving himself up entirely to the work, showed an ardour which astonished and charmed his host. By nature and by training the prince was indisposed to work, or personal effort of any kind; and though, as a man desirous of being thought up to date, and with modern, enlightened views, he was ambitious of scientific laurels, it would never have entered his head to win them except by proxy. To toil and struggle in order to extort one revelation, more or less, from Nature, so tenacious of her secrets, was all very well for “ poor devils born and reared in the obscure multitude.” To employ the capital he hardly knew how to spend, in enterprises which would bring him honour without robbing him of one minute of his “far niente,” certainly!—but to give himself personally to it, that was quite another affair. So that he was greatly surprised to see René, at an age when one thinks more of amusement than of helping the world’s progress, handling plane and saw, like a workingman, plunging his hands without hesitation into pitch or nauseous glue, working away as if his daily bread depended on it. He enjoyed the novelty of it, and, won by the fire and activity of his young collaborator, he indulged the liveliest hope of seeing his name cited with eulogies by learned societies and venerated by future generations.
Meanwhile the yacht arrived at the quiet waters of the mysterious sea, and for the last eight hours they had contented themselves with tacking about, while the workmen put the last touches to their work. How often, leaning over the stern-railing, had René endeavoured to pierce the gray-green depths! Was it indeed here that this enigmatical creature breathed, whose clear voice still vibrated in the depths of his being? Was it here, under this sombre wall with its shining surface, under this formidable volume of dark waters, that the young fairy lived, moved, and thought?
At night an irresistible force would draw René out- from his cabin. He would lean his elbows on the rails, and, while the twinkling stars seemed to watch him, seek with greedy eyes to pierce the black waves often lit up with phosphorescent fires. Sometimes a ray of moonlight made him tremble! Was it she? Could it be her dazzling arms stretched out from the waters to beckon him?
One evening, towards midnight—was it a dream? was he asleep?—he thought he heard once more the song he never could forget. It was far, far away like the mournful cry of a bird gliding over the waters, fanned by the breeze. The impression was so strong that he sprang to his feet, and, with an irresistible impulse, responded by a musical phrase, a phrase thrown to the winds from his young warm voice, which sounded to him like a superhuman salutation. But no sound came back to him this time. Doubtless he had been deceived, or his dream had taken the vividness of reality. He struck his forehead, and asked himself if he were mad; and the movement brought his ring into view. No! he was not dreaming! No! he was not mad, since the ring was still on his finger. And, at the idea that this ring linked him to the marvellous Undine, that by this link he was forced to seek her and to find her, he felt capable of daring anything.
Ah! he knew now why Ulysses had sealed the ears of his companions, when passing near the Cape of the Sirens. He had experienced a like charm, and he who had once heard the magic singing must and would hear it again, if it cost him his life!