one simple idea has prevailed: that all that has to be done is to imitate nature, for nature is never wrong. Between the albatross, who flaps its wings at most ten times a minute, and the pelican, who does so seventy times—”
“Seventy-one!” said a jeering voice.
“And the bee at 192 times a second—”
“A hundred and ninety-three!” came the mocking cry.
“And the fly at 330—”
“Three hundred thirty and a half!”
“And the mosquito at millions—”
“No—billions!”
But Robur, interrupted, did not interrupt his demonstration.
“Between these various figures—” he resumed.
“There’s a long way to jump!” returned a voice.
“—there is the possibility of finding a practical solution. On the day Monsieur de Lucy proved that the stag beetle, that insect weighing only two grams, can lift a burden of four hundred grams, or two hundred times its own weight, the problem of aviation was solved. Furthermore, it was shown that wing surface decreases relative to the augmentation of the dimension and weight of the animal. Since then, people have been able to imagine or construct more than sixty apparatuses …”
“Which will never be able to fly!” shouted the secretary Phil Evans.
“Which have flown, or will fly,” replied Robur, not at all disconcerted. “And, whether we call them streophores, helicopters, orthopters, or, in imitation of the French word ‘nef,’ meaning ‘vessel,’ from navis, we employ the word avis and call them ‘efs,’ we arrive at the apparatus whose creation will render man master of space.”
“Ah! the propeller!” riposted Phil Evans. “But the bird has no propeller … that we know of!”
“It has,” replied Robur. “As Monsieur Pénaud demonstrated, in reality the bird acts as a propeller, and its flight is helicoidal. Therefore, the motor of the future is the propeller, the helix—”
“From such an evil spell,
Saint Helix, preserve us!”
sang one of the spectators, who, by chance, remembered that tune from Hérold’s Zampa.6
And everyone took up the refrain in chorus, with such intonations as to make the French composer shudder in his grave.
Then, after the last notes had been drowned in a horrendous uproar, Uncle Prudent, taking advantage of a momentary calm, thought it his duty to say:
“Citizen stranger, until now we’ve let you speak without interruption …”
It would appear that, for the president of the Weldon Institute, those retorts, those shouts, those pointless digressions, were not even interruptions, but a mere exchange of arguments.
“However,” he continued, “I must remind you that the theory of aviation was condemned in advance and rejected by the majority of American and foreign engineers. A system that leaves in its wake the deaths of the Flying Saracen in Constantinople, of the monk Voador in Lisbon, of Letur in 1854, of Groof in 1874, without counting the other victims I’ve forgotten, not to mention the mythological Icarus …”
“That system,” snapped Robur, “is no more damnable than the one whose martyrs include Pilâtre de Rozier in Calais, Madame Blanchard in Paris, Donaldson and Grimwood wrecked in Lake Michigan, Sivel, Crocè-Spinelli, Eloy, and so many others you take such care to forget!”
This was a “tac-au-tac” riposte, as they say in fencing.
“Besides,” went on Robur, “in your balloons, perfected though they may be, you could never achieve a really practical speed. You would take ten years to go around the world—which a flying machine could do in eight days!”
Fresh shouts of protest and denial, which lasted three long minutes, up to the moment when Phil Evans could take the floor.
“Mr. Aviator,” he said, “you who taunt us with the glories of aviation, have you ever aviated?”
“Of course I have!”
“And made the conquest the air?”
“Perhaps, sir!”
“Hurrah for Robur the Conqueror!” shouted an ironic voice.
“Why, yes! Robur the Conqueror. I accept the name, and I will use it, for I have that right!”
“We’ll allow ourselves to doubt that!” shouted Jem Cip.
“Gentlemen,” returned Robur, knitting his brow, “when I come to discuss something seriously, I do not accept denials for replies, and I would be glad to know the name of the person to whom I speak …” “I’m Jem Cip … a vegetarian …”
“Citizen Jem Cip,” replied Robur, “I’m aware that vegetarians generally have longer intestines than other men—longer by a foot at least. Which is already a good deal; so don’t force me to stretch them even further, beginning with your ears …”
“To the door!”
“To the street!”
“Dismember him!”
“Lynch law!”
“Twist him into a propeller!”
The balloonians’ fury had reached its limit. They had risen from their seats. They surrounded the platform. Robur disappeared amid a shower of arms that buffeted him like the wind of a tempest. In vain the steam whistle sent out volleys of fanfares over the assembly! That evening, Philadelphia must have imagined that fire was devouring one of its districts, and that all the water in the Schuylkill River could not put it out.
“You aren’t Americans.”
Suddenly, a movement of recoil shook through the tumult. Robur, pulling his hands out of his pockets, extended them toward the first ranks of the mob.
Slipped upon these hands were a pair of brass knuckles, which also served as revolvers and could be fired off by pressure from the fingers—in fact, little pocket machine guns.7
And then, taking advantage not only of his assailants’ recoil, but also of the silence that accompanied it:
“Decidedly,” he said, “it wasn’t Amerigo Vespucci who discovered the New World, it was Sebastian Cabot! You aren’t Americans, citizen balloonians! You’re only cabbageheads!”8
At that moment, four or five gunshots rang into the void. They hit nobody. The engineer disappeared amid the smoke, and when it had cleared, no trace of him was found. Robur the Conqueror had taken flight, just as if some flying machine had carried him off into the sky.
