it is only fair to protest against that insulting comparison to blonde Phoebe, sweet Selene, the chaste sister of the radiant Apollo. What right have we to accuse of cowardice an orb that, ever since the world was a world, has always looked the earth square in the face, without ever turning her back?
Be that as it may, at this hour—it was very close to midnight—the crescent of the pale slandered one4 was beginning to disappear in the west behind the park’s tall foliage. Its rays slid through the branches, scattering some shards of light on the ground and making the space under the trees seem a little less dark.
This permitted Frycollin to cast about a more inquisitive glance.
“Brrr!” said he. “They’re still there, those scoundrels! Surely they’re getting closer!”
He could no longer contain himself, and going toward his master:
“Master Uncle,” he said.
For that was what he called him, and what the president of the Weldon Institute wanted to be called.
At that moment, the argument between the two rivals had reached its apex. And, just as they were busy instructing each other to take a running jump, Frycollin was violently enjoined to join them.
Then, as they went on arguing nose to nose, Uncle Prudent moved farther into the deserted plains of Fairmont Park, ever more distant from the Schuylkill River and the bridge they would have to go back over to return to the town.
The three of them were now in the center of a tall thicket of trees, their tops immersed in the last light of the moon. On the edge of this thicket a wide clearing spread out, a vast oval field marvelously suitable for the contests of a racing ring. Not one bump in the terrain to bother galloping horses, not one clump of trees to block the spectators’ view along a circular track of several miles.
And yet, if Uncle Prudent and Phil Evans had not been preoccupied with their dispute, if they had looked around with any attention, they would not have found the clearing looking as it usually did. Had a flour mill been built there since the previous evening? It really did look like a flour mill, with a whole set of windmills, their sails now immobile, grimacing in the half-darkness.
But neither the president nor the secretary of the Weldon Institute noticed that strange alteration to the landscape of Fairmont Park. Frycollin saw nothing of it either. It seemed to him that the prowlers were approaching, closing in, as if about to do some evil deed. He was convulsed by fear, his limbs paralyzed, his follicle system bristling—in short, in the most extreme state of terror.
In any case, while his legs collapsed into a kneel, he still had the energy to cry out one last time:
“Master Uncle! … Master Uncle!”
“Eh! what is it then?” replied Uncle Prudent.
Perhaps he and Phil Evans would have been glad to relieve their anger by giving the poor valet a sound thrashing. But they did not have the time, any more than the valet had time to reply to them.
A whistle had just pierced through the woods. At the same instant, a sort of electric star lit up in the middle of the clearing.
The three were in the center of a tall thicket of trees.
A signal, no doubt; and, in this case, a signal that the moment had come for some act of violence.
In less time than it takes to imagine it, six men bounded out of the thicket, two upon Uncle Prudent, two upon Phil Evans, two upon the valet Frycollin—these last two unnecessary, of course, for the Negro was incapable of defending himself.
The president and the secretary of the Weldon Institute, surprised though they were by the attack, tried to resist. They had neither the time nor the force. In a few seconds’ time, they were silenced by gags, blinded by blindfolds, overpowered, bound up, and carried swiftly across the clearing. What could they have thought, other than that they had run into some of those unscrupulous people who attack late-night strollers in the thick of a forest and strip them of their belongings? Nothing of that sort occurred, however. They were not even frisked, although Uncle Prudent still carried on his person, as was his habit, several thousand paper dollars.
In short, one minute after the aggression, without a single word exchanged between the aggressors, Uncle Prudent, Phil Evans, and Frycollin felt themselves being placed gently, not on the grass of the clearing, but on a sort of flooring that creaked under their weight. There they were stacked against each other. A door closed on them. And then, the grinding of a bolt in a lock informed them that they were prisoners.
Then they heard a continuous hum, something like a tremor, a frrrr with the rrr prolonged to infinity; and no other noise was perceptible in the midst of that calm night.
What a sensation the next day in Philadelphia! From the first hours, people knew what had happened the previous night at the Weldon Institute meeting: the appearance of a mysterious personage, a certain engineer called Robur—Robur the Conqueror!—the fight he seemed bent on waging against the balloonians, and then his inexplicable disappearance.
But it was quite another matter when the whole city learned that the president and secretary of the club had also disappeared, in their turn, on the night of June 12.
How thoroughly people searched all through the city and its surroundings! Uselessly, besides. The Philadelphia papers, and then the journals all over Pennsylvania, and then those all over America, took the fact and explained it in a hundred different ways, none of which happened to be the true one. Considerable sums were promised in proclamations and posters—not only to those who could retrieve the disappeared worthies, but to anyone who could produce some clue that could set a search party on their track. Nothing came of it. If the earth had opened up to swallow them whole, the president and secretary of the Weldon Institute could not have been any more absent from the surface of the globe.
They were carried swiftly across the clearing.
On this subject, the government journals demanded that the numbers of the police be heavily augmented, since such attacks might occur against the best citizens in the United States—and perhaps they were right …
True, the journals of the opposition demanded that these police be dismissed as useless, since such attacks might occur, without any possibility of retrieving the malefactors—and perhaps they were not wrong.
In sum, the police remained what it had been, what it will always be in the best of possible worlds that is not perfect and does not know how to become so.
CHAPTER
5
In which a suspension of hostilities is declared between the president and secretary of the Weldon Institute
Blindfolds over their eyes, gags in their mouths, ropes on their wrists, ropes on their feet, thus impossible to see, to speak, to move. Which did not make the situation of Uncle Prudent, Phil Evans, and the valet Frycollin any more acceptable. Besides, not to know who had carried out such an abduction, in what spot the victims had been thrown like
