Molinas was working on the repairs to Commando no. 39 when savage animals, attracted by the odor of fresh flesh, suddenly arrived to inconvenience the workers considerably. A disagreeable encounter! A family of lions, a rhinoceros and his spouse, a few varied snakes and an entire tribe of alligators!
“Too much game!” Molinas exclaimed, beating a retreat toward the rear.
The propeller, temporarily dismantled, no longer being able to function, Commando no. 39 was condemned to immobility. And the invasion continued, lions and crocodiles redoubling their indiscretion.
“Take your pick according to taste—you have an embarrassment of choice!” said the lieutenant, who had a lugubrious sense of humor, to Molinas. “Would you prefer the stomach of a lion or the belly of a crocodile?”
“Get away!” cried Molinas. “As I said, all that’s nothing but game! Don’t we still have our provision of sulfuric acid? To the bunkers!”
With great difficulty, they succeeded in getting a carboy of acid up on to the rear platform, as well as a hand pump, and the defense was organized. Molina commenced by giving the stupid rhinoceros, which was threatening to damage the Commando, a taste of torpedo. The violent pastille blew him into fifty pieces, which appeared to surprise his lady wife enormously.
“Would you like one too, my dear Madame?” asked Molinas, graciously.
As the lions, serpents and crocodiles advanced toward the refuge of Molinas and his men, the pump came into play. A jet of sulfuric acid projected sometimes into the face of a lordly lion and sometimes into the gaping maw of an alligator, produced a considerable effect on the assailants.
What leaps! What twists! What roars!
“Gently, pumpers!” said Molinas. “Everyone shall have some!”
The well-manipulated pump continued the irrigation with sulfuric acid while two men hastily reassembled the propeller...
And suddenly, the Commando, with its improvised rudder, rose up into the air. Lions, serpents and crocodiles, burned, roasted and browned, leapt overboard and cashed on to the rocks.
IX. Aerial Battles
Commando 39 rejoined the aerial fleet above the Mediterranean. As time was pressing, the Engineer Admiral, after having congratulated Molinas, immediately sent him to the advance guard.
According to its instructions, the advance guard was supposed to signal the enemy fleet without engaging it in combat. Nevertheless, during the second night of the flight, the Commando, soaring at a great height in a mass of cloud, took a large enemy bombard by surprise, by falling upon it.
After taking his prize to the aerial arsenal at Antibes, Molinas set off again at top speed. The enemy fleet had been spotted, and one of the great aerial battles of the century was about to be engaged. The Commando took its place in the battle line at the extremity of the left wing, and Molinas, with his hand on the electric witches, searched with his eyes for an enemy worthy of him.
What a battle! What collisions! What ravages! What plunges from the heights of the Heavens into the depths of the sea! What heroism on both sides!
Long indecisive, victory was inclining in our direction when the sky, menacing for some time, unleashed a frightful tempest. Caught in the turbulence, the two fleets, still fighting, were carried beyond Gibraltar, above the Atlantic in fury.
For three days the surviving airships were carried on the wings of the storm. Glimpses were caught between two clouds, shots were fired, and the combatants lost sight of one another.
Suddenly, the wind dropped, and, not far between the blue of the sky and the green of the sea, the coast of America appeared.
“Mexico!” said Molinas, after taking a bearing.
He looked behind him. Only one enemy aircraft was still visible. The two airships, severely tried by the battle and the tempest, were steering very poorly. Both absolutely had to descend to the ground to repair their damage, but before then, they both wanted to fight.
Molinas aimed his gun himself, and luck sent the first projectile straight into the enemy’s hull.
The cannons roared uninterruptedly, the two airships spun, swerved, rose up and dived again, in order to catch one another out in some false move. The combat had taken them over a large town, whose inhabitants were following the ups and downs of the conflict anxiously. Already, a few projectiles had hit the town; there were grave accidents to deplore; three houses had blown up.
Finally, a better-directed shell went right through the enemy airship, with became ungovernable and slowly sank downwards. Then, abandoning all precaution, she sent a dozen projectiles one after another at Commando 39. An immense cry of horror went up from the ground; the two airships, spinning in a cloud of smoke, appeared to be falling directly on to the town.
A frightful fall! A terrible crash! With a thunderous noise, the enemy airship fell perpendicularly on to a monument and disappeared into the rubble, while the Commando, slowing in its fall and describing a curve, penetrated relatively gently, prow first, into a block of elegant houses.
Everything splintered. The perforated roof opened up; the prow of the Commando, after passing through three ceilings and breaking all the partition walls, finally came to rest on the ground floor of a beautiful building, in a delightful apartment, on furniture on to which Molinas, covered in glory and contusions, tumbled unconscious.
The demoiselle of the house, a charming señorita of the Mexican aristocracy, lay in a faint beside Molinas, who was on the brink of death. She was the first to recover consciousness. Help was organized. Dolores, the young Mexican, did not want to leave to anyone else the case of the hero who had broken into her bedroom…and probably also into her heart.
A fortnight later, when Molinas, having become the lion of the town, was almost convalescent, Dolores’ father, in a black coat, came to propose to Fabius that he enter his family, as he had entered his house.
The commander of Commando 39 was free. The telephonograph announced to the six continents of the world that a glorious peace had just been sighed.
And that is how my friend Fabius Molinas, cured and married, took the road to France again triumphantly, a short while thereafter, on the Commando 39, repaired, reprovisioned and joyfully decked with flags.
Albert Robida: THE ENGINEER VON SATANAS
Prologue
That all these things happened was the fault of the venerable Abbé Gottlieb, prior of the Augustine convent at Freiburg im Brisgau in 13 or thereabouts.
He was a saintly man, but he was old—very old—gentle and timid, almost child-like, half deaf and three-quarters blind.
One day, he received a visit from a young rogue of a student who claimed that he had enough of deceptive science and the errors of society, and wanted to become a monk, in order no longer to occupy himself with anything but the salvation of his soul, by means of meditation and prayer.
“Accept me as a novice in your convent, Father,” he groaned, in a cavernous, hypocritically tearful voice. “I have many since to expiate. It’s only here, in the refuge of the Augustine convent, sanctified by your virtues, sheltered from all temptations, that I can dream of cleansing my soul appropriately—with the aid of your advice and your examples, Father.”
Alas, the venerable abbé did not see, in the physiognomy of the rogue, a certain truly disquieting sarcastic smile, nor his green eyes, nor, on his forehead, two black patches underlining two protuberances that resembled flattened horns.
He did not see anything! He consented to receive the novice Schwartz, and everything was settled. The old world had ended and a new world began.4
At any rate, as soon as the novice Schwartz was introduced, the existence of the convent seemed singularly troubled. The Augustine monks, so meek and so pious, who provided the edification of the town, as they did in all the Germans’ burgraviats, margraviats, duchies and grand duchies, suddenly became anxious, nervous, susceptible and quick to disputation. The Augustine’s beautiful chapel no longer saw a full attendance every day at all the offices. The idle monks only arrived
one at a time, slowly. Often, they even left Father Gottlieb all alone in the chapel, in his abbatial pulpit, and the latter was frequently obliged to ring the bell for matins himself.
The cloister where the monks had once strolled two by two, gravely, talking about edifying matters, resounded with arguments and vociferations, when it was not with laughter and songs.
Only the monk Schwartz consoled the poor prior somewhat; in him alone was piety and austerity still manifest, and all the virtues by which the good Augustines of Freiburg had once been distinguished. In chapel, when the other monks were asleep on their benches, his was the voice that was heard accompanying the quavering of the old abbé: a strange, resounding voice, with rumblings and rollings like an organ, and sudden boomings that made the windows shake.
At the sound of that voice the sleeping monks woke up, to quarrel more bitterly. Schwartz sniggered, the old abbé wept, and the convent became a veritable Hell.
What is more, that rage of disputes spread outside the walls of the convent, in starts and surges, when Schwartz’s voice, singing in the chapel, burst forth with bellowings that made the whose edifice vibrate and caused the steeple to oscillate. Domestic troubles, squabbles between burgers and the lower classes, brawls and scuffles over everything—the entire town and the surrounding areas went crazy, in a perpetual fury of fighting, and the duke, who was ruining himself with armor and arbalests, marched back and forth over his lands, showing his teeth and seeking a quarrel with his neighbors.
At the convent, the monk Schwartz deployed a prodigious activity. He seemed to be everywhere at once, circulating in the corridors and the cloister, always sniggering, with a kind of grating sound that made the two points of his long red beard stick out; and he sang in the chapel, where his mere appearance caused something akin to a shiver of fear to pass through the old colonnettes, and something like the pulse of a tocsin through the bell-tower.
He received numerous visits, from lords with nobly rebarbative faces, messengers with shady expressions and students of famished appearance, and he spent long hours of the day and night in his cell, occupied with mysterious labors.
Brother Schwartz’s cell made the other monks anxious; they ran away from it in terror. Sulfurous vapors and nauseating fumes escaped from it continually, and sometimes even flashes like lightning and long rapid flames—not to mention the muffled growls that had caused the monks to flee from the neighboring cells.
Inside, it was a genuine den of alchemy. There was no crucifix or holy images on the walls, but retorts and flasks of all kinds, furnaces, basins, mortars, bottles, incomprehensible documents nailed to the wall, old books and dog-eared parchments.
And Schwartz worked, pulverized, crushed and kneaded, always stirring, scuttling and sniggering...
The visits multiplied. Did not a day arrive when the Duke himself arrived at the convent, with three or four individuals who had their faces buried up to the nose in their cloaks?
Thicker smoke spread from the monk Schwartz’s cell, swirling around the galleries and the cloister.
Schwartz’s face became more and more disquieting; his eyes launched fulgurations, his beard danced and writhed as hoarse and creaky sniggers passed through this throat.
Finally, there was massive popular excitement one day in the vicinity of the convent, and an upheaval in the Augustines’ abode.
Here comes the Grand Duke again, with a numerous retinue, with mounted lords, leaders of troops and captains decked in shiny armor. They have been summoned by the monk Schwartz for a final experiment.
The monks are convinced the Brother Schwartz has found the means, at the peril of his soul, to manufacture gold, and has offered the secret to the Duke, in exchange for honors, in addition to some solid fief.
The noble lords crowd behind the prince in the corridors of the convent, while the latter is content to stick his head around the door of the laboratory cell in order to cast a suspicious glance around it.
A strange sight, that cell and the things inside! That big barrel, carefully covered, must be full of the product of the monk’s industry, and the smaller casks glimpsed to either side in the smoke. The monk has obviously not been lying to them. It is the triumph!
Brother Schwartz sniggers and rubs his hands. Yes, it is the triumph—you shall see, noble lords!
He whispers for a long time into the ear of the Duke, whose eyes grow wide and sparkle with satisfaction. He gives each of the lords a piece of parchment on which he has scrawled his formula, along with a cask full of a specimen, which he engages them to take home immediately and put it in a safe place.
Brother Schwartz is still sniggering and taking long strides around his cell and the corridor; at every step the gangling monk seems to expand and get taller; phosphorescent gleams pass through his eyes. In front of him the proud burgraves and mercenary leaders feel little frissons running through their bones.
The monk asks them to step away. He is going to carry out one last experiment; they will see well enough from the far side of the garden.
Now they are huddled, slightly anxiously, under the abbé’s trees, noses in the air, looking toward the gallery to which the cells open.
They do not have to wait long...
Suddenly, there are sinister rumblings, jets of flame, a frightful suffocating odor…and then a mighty explosion resounds, which throws them all to the ground, terrified. A tongue of flame roses up, dancing, into the sky, as high as the steeple of the chapel, which oscillates and leans over, and beneath the flame, whirlwinds of bitter smoke spurt forth...
Half of the convent is lying on the ground, thick walls broken, arches smashed, with a quantity of poor monks crushed and crippled.
Of the monk Schwartz not the slightest trace, not the most wretched morsel, was found. Some people, who had good eyes, claimed to have clearly distinguished him in mid-air, in the fiery tongues of the explosion, capering madly, immeasurably grown and still sniggering, with enormous horns on his forehead and a long tail.
The Duke, the noble lords and the captains, undamaged, merely frightened, ran away swiftly to their homes, in order to put away the casks of the specimen offered by Schwartz in safe places, along with the formula for renewing the provision at will.
A marvelous gift, more precious than potable gold! It is soon perceived in the world that Schwartz’s discovery has not fallen into the hands of negligent idlers.
And that is only a beginning, that coarse little powder, simple and easy to use—exactly what was needed, in times of obscurity, for rude and primitive men habituated, most of all, to striking hard in battles. Meek searchers and excellent chemists would subsequently improve it greatly!
Second Prologue
1909: The Solemn Inauguration of the Palace of Peace in The Hague
One Congress succeeds another for the inauguration of the superb and grandiose Palace of Peace erected at the expense on the American billionaire Carnegie5 to the glory of modern civilization, triumphant over the somber ideas of the past.
There is a Congress of scientists and pacifist philosophers, the flower of all the Academies, all illustrious, all venerable or in the process of becoming so, and all venerated, the champions of peaceful and fecund progress, which is working for the wellbeing of peoples, transforming the world, and is about to bring about an Edenic era, a renascent Golden Age for all the races of the Earth.
And finally, there is a diplomatic Congress: ministers and statesmen, decorated with all possible orders, perhaps less venerable in appearance, but full of good will, won over to great and noble pacifist ideas, sent by their respective governments to draw up appropriate international conventions codifying the new rights of peoples and imposing obligatory arbitration to regulate peacefully all the questions, all the difficulties and all the differences that might emerge between nations in the future...
What a magnificent prospect is opening before pacified humankind—a marvelous vision! All the old quarrels extinct, mildness and benevolence universal! The triu
mph of science, man dominant over matter, domesticating the blind forces of nature, subjugating the elements in order to put them in the service of creative, redemptive and regenerative Progress! Wellbeing, fecundity, expansion and happiness everywhere!
That is what they were saying, those benevolent scientists in spectacles, while congratulating one another and offering felicitations to the present generations for living in such a beautiful, gentle and glorious epoch! A fusion of peoples, a universal embrace!
And the diplomats nodded in assent, as they signed protocols and conventions.
Conclusively finished, the ages of brutality and Medieval barbarity! All chains fallen, the old fortresses crumbling, frontiers being effaced, the earth is opening up and offering itself, entire, to human genius. Modern man is carving and slicing across the continents, going to search in the entails of the globe for hidden riches that will gives impetus to industries and carrying wellbeing and abundance everywhere. He is exploring the abysms of the seas, capturing and directing natural energies, correcting torrents and straightening cataracts, utilizing the lightning of the heavens for all kinds of tasks—and now he is launching himself into the clouds with his airplanes and his dirigibles, and flying at full tilt through the immensities of the azure, in the immediate vicinity of God!
What joy! How sweet it is to live in such beautiful times, and finally to see the realization of the dreams of all the seekers of the ideal, all the illustrious thinkers of yore!
For six weeks, every evening, the emotional speeches of philosophers and scientists, and the elegant harangues of Statesmen, transmitted by the telegraph and reproduced in all languages by the newspapers of the entire world, have been carrying the good news everywhere.
The Congress, having completed its work, is holding one last session before the great banquet that, naturally, will mark its closure before the separation. The International Convention has just been signed by the diplomats and chargés d’affaires of all the powers. On this solemn day, History is inscribing on its tablets the definitive triumph of ideas of enlightenment and progress over the powers of darkness and violence.
The Engineer Von Satanas Page 5