The Eternal Adam and other stories

by Jules Vernes

  ‘Come on, José!’ he shouted.

  The seaman stretched and yawned.

  ‘Which road do we take?’ asked Martinez.

  ‘Faith, I know two of them. Lieutenant.’

  Which?’

  ‘One goes by Zacualican, Tenancingo and Toluca. From Toluca to Mexico, the route’s good, for already we’ve scaled the Sierra Madre.’

  ‘And the other?’

  ‘That takes us a bit farther east, and then we’ll get near these fine mountains, Popocatepetl and Iectachuolt. That’s the safest, because it’s the least frequented. A nice walk of about fifteen leagues up a gentle slope!’

  ‘Settled for the longest way and let’s go!’ Martinez decided. ‘Where do we sleep tonight?’

  ‘Sailing a dozen knots or so, at Cuernavaca,’ the seaman replied.

  The two Spaniards went to the stable, had their horses saddled, and filled their mochillas, a sort of saddle-bag which forms part of the harness, with maize cakes, pomegranates and dried meat, for in the mountains they ran the risk of not getting enough food. Having paid the bill, they mounted their horses and swerved off to the right.

  Soon for the first time they saw the oak-forests, a tree of good augury, for the unhealthy emanations from the lower plateaux stop at their edge. Here, 1,500 yards above the sea, the travellers found themselves comfortable in a moderate temperature.

  However, getting higher and higher on the Anahuac plateau, they crossed the immense barriers which form the plain of Mexico.

  ‘Ah!’ exclaimed José, ‘here’s the first of the three rivers we’ve got to cross.’

  And, indeed, a river had worn its deep bed just at their feet.

  ‘Last time I was here, this river was dry,’ José commented. ‘Follow me, Lieutenant.’

  Going down a fairly gentle slope cut into the bed-rock, they reached a practicable ford.

  ‘That’s one!’ said José.

  ‘Are the others just as easy to cross?’ asked the lieutenant.

  ‘Just as easy,’ José replied. ‘During the rainy season these torrents swell and flow into the little Ixtolucca river which we’ll find in the mountains.’

  ‘And there’s nothing to be afraid of in this solitude?’

  ‘Nothing, unless it’s a Mexican dagger.’

  ‘That’s true enough,’ commented Martinez. ‘The Indians of these uplands have a tradition of being faithful to the dagger.’

  ‘Yes,’ the seaman laughed, ‘what a lot of names they’ve got for their favourite weapson: estoque, verdugo, puna, anchillo, beldoque, navaja! The name comes into their mouth as quickly as the dagger into their hands! Well, so much the better! Santa Maria! At least we shan’t have to fear invisible bullets from their long carbines! I don’t know anything more annoying than not to know the rascal who’s killing you!’

  ‘Who are the Indians who live in these mountains?’ asked Martinez.

  ‘Well, Lieutenant, who can count the different races who swarm in this El Dorado of a Mexico? I’ve studied the various crosses with the idea of making a good marriage one of these days. Each cross has a different name for the kids, and there’s dozens of them!’

  This was true, and the mixture of races in this country makes anthropological research very difficult. But in spite of the sailor’s conversation, Martinez kept falling into his usual taciturnity, and he sometimes kept away from his comrade, whose presence seemed to annoy him.

  Soon two other torrents cut the road in front of them. The lieutenant seemed disappointed at finding their beds dry, for he had counted on them for watering his horse.

  ‘Now here we are in a dead calm, Lieutenant, with no food and no water,’ said José. ‘Bah! Follow me! We’ll look among the oaks and elms for a tree which is called the ahuehuelt and which takes the place of the wisps of straw they use as signs for the inns. You always find a spring within its shade, and if it’s only water, faith, I can tell you that the water is the wine of the wilderness.’

  The horsemen went round the mountain spur, and soon they found the tree in question. But the promised spring had run dry, and it was obvious that it had done so recently.

  ‘That’s queer!’ José commented.

  ‘You might say it’s queer!’ Martinez had turned pale. ‘Come on, come on!’

  The travellers did not exchange another word until they had reached the village of Cachuimilchan, where they reduced the load in their saddle-bags. Then they made for Cuernavaca, towards the east.

  The country had now become extremely rugged, and confronted the travellers with gigantic peaks whose basaltic summits checked the clouds coming from the ocean. Beyond a large rock they sighted Cochicalcho Fort, built by the ancient Mexicans on a plateau of 9,000 square yards. They made for the gigantic cone which forms its base and which is crowned by tottering rocks and grimacing ruins.

  Having dismounted and tethered their steeds to the trunk of an elm, Martinez and José, anxious to verify the direction of the road, climbed, helped by the irregularities of the ground, to the summit of the cone.

  Night fell and, robbing the various objects of their colour, gave them a fantastic appearance. The old fort vaguely suggested an enormous bison, crouching down with motionless head; and the wild imagination of Martinez made him fancy he could see shadows moving about on the flanks of the monstrous animal. He said nothing, however, for fear of laying himself open to taunts from the incredulous José. The latter slowly wandered off along the mountain paths and whenever he vanished behind some obstacle, he guided his companion by the sound of his ‘St James’, and ‘Santa Maria’.

  Suddenly a huge night-bird, uttering a raucous cry, rose heavily on its mighty wings.

  Martinez pulled up sharply.

  An enormous block of stone was visibly swaying on its base about thirty feet above him. Suddenly it came loose, and, smashing everything in its way with the speed and noise of thunder, it was engulfed in the abyss below.

  ‘Santa Maria!’ cried the seaman – ‘Hi! Lieutenant?’

  ‘José?’

  ‘Over here.’

  The two Spaniards moved towards one another.

  ‘What an avalanche! Let’s go down,’ suggested the seaman.

  Martinez followed him without saying a word, and they soon got down to the lower plains.

  Here a large furrow marked the track of the rock.

  ‘Santa Maria!’ exclaimed José. ‘Look, our horses have vanished – they’re crushed flat.’

  ‘Good God!’ Martinez gave an incredulous gasp.

  ‘Look here!’

  What was more, the tree to which the animals were tethered had gone with them.

  ‘If we’d been down there!’ was the seaman’s philosophic comment.

  Martinez was gripped by a violent feeling of terror.

  ‘The snake, the spring, the avalanche!’ he muttered.

  Then he turned his haggard eyes on José.

  ‘Aren’t you going to say something about Captain Don Orteva?’ he asked, his lips contracted with anger.

  José recoiled.

  ‘Oh, no nonsense, Lieutenant! We’ll take off our hats to our poor beasts, and then move on! It doesn’t do any good to hang about here when the old mountain is shaking its mane!’

  The two Spaniards pushed on without saying another word, and in the middle of the night they reached Cuernavaca. But they found it impossible to get any horses, and it was on foot that they made their way to Popocatepetl.

  5-From Cuernavaca to Popocatepetl

  The temperature was cold and vegetation completely absent. These inaccessible heights belonged to the glacial zone, known as ‘cold country’. Already the lines of the foggy regions showed their dry outlines between the last oak of the more elevated lands, and springs became even more rare in a soil consisting largely of splintered trachytes and porous amygdaloids.

  For six long hours the lieutenant and his companion dragged themselves painfully along, cutting their hands against the edges of the rock and their feet agai
nst the sharp stones in their path. Soon weariness forced them to sit down, and José got busy preparing some food.

  ‘A devil of an idea not to have taken the usual road!’ he muttered.

  They both hoped, however, to find at Aracopistla, a village lost among the mountains, some means of transport to finish their journey. But what was their disappointment when they found only the same destitution, the complete lack of everything, and the same inhospitality as at Cuernavaca! None the less, they had to get on.

  At last there towered before them the huge cone of Popocatepetl, so tall that the eye lost itself among the clouds when it sought to find the peak. The way was desperately arid. On all sides fathomless precipices were excavated in the slopes, and the dizzy footpaths seemed to sway beneath the feet of those who used them. To make out the road, they had to climb part of the mountain, 5,500 yards high, which the Indians call the ‘Smoking Rock’ and which still bore the traces of recent eruptions. Dark crevasses traversed its steep sides. Since José had last been that way, new cataclysms had convulsed these solitudes, which he could no longer recognise. So he went astray in the midst of impracticable footpaths, and often he stopped and listened, for heavy rumblings ran here and there through the gaps in the enormous cone.

  Already the sun was setting. Great clouds, massing against the sky, made the air even darker. Rain and storm were threatening; they are very common in these regions, where the soil favours the evaporation of water. The last of the vegetation had disappeared from these rocks, whose summit was lost in the eternal snows.

  ‘I can’t go any further!’ José was dropping with weariness.

  ‘Get on, anyhow!’ Martinez spoke in a fever of impatience.

  Soon thunder-claps were re-echoing in the crevasses of Popocatepetl.

  ‘Devil take me if I can find my way in these lost paths,’ complained José.

  ‘Get up and get on!’ Martinez told him roughly. He forced José to stumble forward.

  ‘And not a human being to guide us!’ the seaman grumbled.

  ‘So much the better!’ Martinez told him.

  ‘You don’t know then, that every year a thousand murders are committed in Mexico, and that the country isn’t safe?’

  ‘So much the better!’ said Martinez again.

  Great drops of water were sparkling here and there on the rocks, lit by the last gleams from the sky.

  ‘When once we’ve crossed the peaks all around us, what do we see next?’ asked the lieutenant.

  ‘Mexico to the left, Puebla to the right,’ replied José. ‘If we can see anything, that is! But we shan’t see anything! It’s too black! In front of us will be the mountain of Icctacihualt, with a good road down in the ravine. But devil take us if we ever get to it!’

  ‘Get on!’

  José was right. The Mexican plateau is enclosed in an immense square of mountains. It forms a vast oval, 18 leagues long and 67 round, hemmed in by tall slopes among which can be seen to the south-west Popocatepetl and Icctacihualt.

  Once having reached the crest of these barriers, the traveller finds no difficulty in getting down into the Anahuac plateau, and then pushing on northwards along a good road to Mexico. In the long avenues of elms and poplars he can admire the cypress planted by the Aztec dynasty, and the schinds, like the weeping willows of the west. Here and there cultivated fields and flower-gardens display their products, while the apple trees, pomegranate trees, and cherry trees flourish under a light blue sky which makes the air of these heights dry and rarefied.

  The thunder-claps now broke out, repeatedly and with great violence, among the mountains. The wind and rain, hitherto silent, intensified the echoes.

  José cursed at every step. Lieutenant Martinez, pale and silent, cast evil glances at his companion, who now appeared in his eyes like an accomplice he wanted to get rid of.

  A sudden flash of lightning lit up the gloom. The seaman and lieutenant were on the edge of a precipice.

  Martinez strode up to José. He gripped the man’s shoulder, and when the thunder had died away he said ‘José, I’m frightened!’

  ‘Frightened of the storm?’

  ‘Not of the storm in the sky, José, but I’m frightened of the storm that’s rising within me.’

  ‘Oh, so you’re still thinking about Don Orteva! ... Go along with you, Lieutenant, you make me laugh,’ replied José; but he did not laugh at all, for Martinez was staring at him with haggard eyes.

  A frightful clap of thunder roared out.

  ‘Quiet, José, be quiet!’ Martinez no longer seemed master of himself.

  ‘This is a fine night to preach at me!’ the seaman retorted. ‘If you’re afraid, Lieutenant, shut your eyes and stop up your ears!’

  ‘I fancy,’ gasped Martinez, ‘that I can see the captain ... Don Orteva ... with his head smashed! ... there ... there.’

  A black mass, lit up the next moment by a flash of lightning, was towering twenty paces away from the lieutenant and his companion.

  At that very instant José saw Martinez quite close to him, pale, frantic, and sinister, and his hand grasping a dagger!

  ‘What ...!’ he exclaimed.

  A flash of lightning flared around them.

  ‘Help!’ screamed José.

  Only one body was left in that place. Like a second Cain, Martinez was rushing away through the storm, his hand grasping his bloodstained dagger.

  A few moments later two men bent over the seaman’s body and said, ‘There’s one of them.’

  Martinez was wandering like a madman through the dark solitudes: he was running, his head bare, through the torrents of rain.

  ‘Help! Help!’ he screamed, stumbling across the slippery rocks.

  Then he suddenly heard a swirling noise.

  It was the little river Ixtolucca, falling 500 feet below him.

  A few paces away a rope bridge had been thrown across this very torrent. Secured to both banks by a few spikes driven into the rock, it was swinging in the wind like a thread extended through the void.

  Martinez, hanging on to the lianas, crawled slowly across the bridge. By sheer effort he succeeded in reaching the opposite bank.

  There a shadow rose up in front of him.

  Without saying a word, he recoiled and made his way back to the other bank.

  There, too, was another human form.

  He went back on his knees to the middle of the bridge, his hands clenched in despair.

  ‘Martinez, I am Pablo!’ said a voice.

  ‘Martinez, I am Jacopo!’ said another.

  ‘You are a traitor! You shall die!’

  ‘You are a murderer! You shall die!’

  Two sharp blows could be heard. The spikes which had secured the two ends of the bridge gave way beneath the axe.

  A horrible cry re-echoed, and Martinez, clutching wildly, was hurled into the gulf.

  A league down-stream, the midshipman and the boatswain met, after having forded the river Ixtolucca.

  ‘I have avenged Don Orteva!’ exclaimed Jacopo.

  ‘And I,’ replied Pablo, ‘I have avenged Spain!’

  In this way was born the navy of the Mexican Confederation. The two Spanish ships, handed over by the traitors, remained with the new republic, and they became the kernel of the tiny fleet which recently fought for Texas and California against the United States of America.

  A Drama in the Air

  In the month of September, 185-, I arrived at Frankfort-on-the-Main. My passage through the principal German cities had been brilliantly marked by balloon ascents; but as yet no German had accompanied me in my car, and the fine experiments made at Paris by MM. Green, Eugene Godard, and Poitevin had not tempted the grave Teutons to essay aerial voyages.

  But scarcely had the news of my approaching ascent spread through Frankfort, than three of the principal citizens begged the favour of being allowed to ascend with me. Two days afterwards we were to start from the Place de la Comedie. I began at once to get my balloon ready. It was of silk
, prepared with gutta-percha, a substance impermeable by acids or gasses; and its volume, which was 3,000 cubic yards, enabled it to ascend to the loftiest heights.

  The day of the ascent was that of the great September fair, which attracts so many people to Frankfort. Lighting gas, of a perfect quality and of great lifting power, had been furnished to me in excellent condition, and about eleven o’clock the balloon was filled; but only three-quarters filled, – an indispensable precaution, for, as one rises, the atmosphere diminishes in density, and the fluid enclosed within the balloon, acquiring more elasticity, might burst its sides. My calculations had furnished me with exactly the quantity of gas necessary to carry up my companions and myself.

  We were to start at noon. The impatient crowd which pressed around the enclosed space, filling the enclosed square, overflowing into the contiguous streets, and covering the houses from the ground floor to the slated gables, presented a striking scene. The high winds of the preceding days had subsided. An oppressive heat fell from the cloudless sky. Scarcely a breath animated the atmosphere. In such weather, one might descend again upon the very spot whence he had risen.

  I carried 300 pounds of ballast in bags; the car, quite round, four feet in diameter, was comfortably arranged; the hempen cords which supported it stretched symmetrically over the upper hemisphere of the balloon; the compass was in place, the barometer suspended in the circle which united the supporting cords, and the anchor carefully put in order. All was now ready for the ascent.

  Among those who pressed around the enclosure, I remarked a young man with a pale face and agitated features. The sight of him impressed me. He was an eager spectator of my ascents, whom I had already met in several German cities. With an uneasy air, he closely watched the curious machine, as it lay motionless a few feet above the ground; and he remained silent among those about him.

  Twelve o’clock came. The moment had arrived, but my travelling companions did not appear.

  I sent to their houses, and learnt that one had left for Hamburg, another for Vienna, and the third for London. Their courage had failed them at the moment of undertaking one of those excursions which, thanks to the ability of living aeronauts, are free from all danger. As they formed, in some sort, a part of the programme of the day, the fear had seized them that they might be forced to execute it faithfully, and they had fled far from the scene at the instant when the balloon was being filled. Their courage was evidently the inverse ratio of their speed – in decamping.