Suddenly, he rediscovers an energy that he thought dead; with a shiver, he has straightened up—fir he perceives, out there on the line of demarcation between the blue of the sky and that of the Ocean, a sort of twisted fog with a distinct profile.
“Terra Nova!” he murmurs, feebly. “Is it real?”
But the distant line became clearer. Because of the fantastic speed of the eagle, the vision changes from one second to the next. In the gray and foggy mass bright patches appear at intervals, alongside other, darker patches. Now the image is freeing itself from the halo that surrounds it; details are displayed, like those of a photographic plate in the developer-and Rozal discovers, here a lighthouse, there a rocky point, further on a forest, and white houses. It’s America!
Ships have set a course for a point much further south. The pilot soon understands that he is too far north, and that his apparatus, in spite of its power of penetration, has drifted—but the wind had a considerable effect on a cannonball launched from a gun in 1914. Come on! It requires determination! Determination—always determination.
Rozal, making an abrupt effort, decides not to come down at a distance from his destination; it is necessary that his descent takes place at the precise location he has sworn to reach. And if he does not retain enough physical strength to remain master of his landing maneuver, well, he will crash in the very city to which his audacious dream deiced him! No, he will descend, without any accident, on the platform prepared in New York harbor; he will arrive at the agreed location, like a gentleman. He is determined!
The he makes an effort of will. The eagle veers, resumed its progress, calculates its route by that of the boats. Rozal learns, according to his map, that he is passing over the coast of Long Island.
Soon, ahead of him, a majestic city with tall buildings that scrape the sky, a formidable city, which two watery arms seem to be embracing.
New York!
A little while ago, he slowed down; he is only advancing at 150 kilometers an hour. And the astonished engineer experiences a sensation of relaxation and calm, a reassuring wellbeing. That considerable diminution of speed has put an end to the vertigo, and the strange noises that filled his brain have faded away.
Little by little, life is returning to him. Thought is once again, decidedly, master of his dementia, of the debilitating darkness—and he cannot resist the desire to cry out, with the full might of his lungs, to the gigantic statue of Liberty standing at the entrance to New York harbor: “Vive la France!” in order to assure himself that he is not entirely modified. Great seabirds are circling around him, also screeching. Some, thinking themselves invisible in rapid flight, have collided with the steel monoplane and fallen, broken and inert, into the sea.
It is three o’clock in the afternoon, according to a colossal clock. Now, Rozal left France at three o’clock in the morning; as he has been flying for fourteen hours consecutively, he has thus gained five hours, and that observation makes him smile.40 He thinks that if he could construct an apparatus three times as fast, he could accomplish the fabulous feat of stopping the progress of daylight, for him. If he left France at midday, heading westwards, it would always be midday in the region over which he was flying; he would have dispensed with night! More rapid than time, he would distance himself—him, the superman that a proud American woman has misunderstood, wounded...
“Damn!”
He has the presence of mind to start up the turbine, suddenly, having just perceived that he was falling! “That’s what comes of thinking about something else, when it’s a matter of landing right away!”
The bird rebounds under the new impulse of the formidable force of the turbine and the propeller, regaining the etheric heights, where he begins to describe gigantic circles, like an eagle that has discovered some prey from on high, or its nest, and is preparing majestically to descend to Earth.
VII. New York’s Enthusiasm
In New York, the fantastically modern city whose activity resembles dementia, an extraordinary agitation had reigned has since midday, for not a single man of the leisured class, not a single worker, street-porter or schoolboy, was unaware that a Frenchman is due to descend that day from the sky, having come from beyond the sea, from Paris—an impossibility!
Special editions of the newspapers recorded Rozal’s departure, and as the press had been advertising the attempt for a fortnight, along with details regarding the engineer and his invention, everyone knew that it was serious. Moreover, special editions made mention of three marconigrams sent by steamers of the White Star Line, the Cunard Company and the Transatlantic Company. They announced the passage of the bird over some meridian or other at different times—which permitted the newspaper editors to calculate the precise moment at which the monoplane would appear.
New York had never known such a fever. There had never been so many people in the streets. The crowd had moved, en masse, toward the docks, for it was in the harbor that Rozal was to come down. For that purpose, a sort of platform 100 meters long and 20 wide had been erected on linked-up barges, a little in front of the Brooklyn Bridge at the entrance to the East River—but that enormous landing-platform was invaded by reporters and curiosity-seekers, skilled at insinuation, whom the police were obliged o hold back. Twenty-five story buildings under construction extended skeletal silhouettes toward the gray sky, only their iron frameworks completed, for the most part. All the corner-pieces and crossbeams, suspended over the void, often to sixty meters up, were as many implausible perches on which reckless and stoical spectators were waiting.
In the street, people who were hastening on foot, having been unable to get aboard the elevated trains or the innumerable electric tramways, were walking with their noses in the air, for fear of arriving too late to contemplate the birdman’s arrival, and they were being knocked down by locomotives or automobiles traveling at top speed. One of them remained there, crippled, on the sidewalk, without asking for help, for fear of being taken away too quickly; he was still waiting, with his eyes fixed on the sky.
It was so implausible, so crazy, and so wonderful, too, that attempt of Rozal’s! The Americans were transfixed by it—and they intended to show the genius inventor their warm admiration. Paris to New York in fourteen hours! When the fastest steamers took six days! The great businessmen could not get over it—but as they saw, in the Frenchman’s discovery, an admirable means of correspondence and, in consequence, of progress and business, there were some among them making plans to get their hands on Rozal as soon as he came down and offering him millions for the concession of his patent.
Oh, it the husband of Nelly Mackay had known the total of the formidable sums that the launchers of businesses—not to mention organizers of aeronautical exhibitions throughout the United States—were thinking of offering him, that fighter, who had not always been able to pay his workers, and whom a proud wife had sent away, accusing him of only having been in love with her money, would have smiled bitterly.
Three o’clock! The banks of the Hudson are black with crowds. From Long Beach to the Gowanus Canal, from Jersey City to Brooklyn, at Richmond, on the heights of Staten Island and those of Prospect Park, all the way to Jamaica in Queens, multitudes of people are disseminated, awaiting the arrival of the superman who will fall from the sky. Around the wooden platform on which Rozal is due to land—that was agreed on departure with a delegate from the Aero-Club of America—a flotilla of police steam-launches disperses the host of boats chartered by the audacious.
And now, suddenly, a mighty shout fills the air, an indescribably howl of enthusiasm uttered by thousands of throats. A frantic “hurrah” departs from the Earth toward the sky in which the silhouette of the steel bird had abruptly appeared.
“How small it is!” cry the incredulous.
They remain dumbstruck as they watch that seemingly-light arrow with short wings circling above describe vertiginous spirals, like a leaf detached from a tree by a whirlwind on a stormy day. It is hard to imagine that there is
a man inside that minuscule turning beast. Not until it seen to stop circling, and to settle on the planks laid over the barges, will it be possible to believe that it is true.
But what is it waiting for?
Impatience grips the crowd, which is steaming its feet. Immediately, the officials assume that Rozal cannot see the platform, and they send in haste for large French flags that are waved in the middle and at the four corners of the raft.
In vain! Still, the bird is continuing its fantastic circling in the sky. What is happening? Already, the craziest conjectures are circulating. It is suggested that the pilot is not longer master of his apparatus, or that perhaps he has fainted, or is dead. The bird, left to its own devices and not falling because of the engine that is rotating incessantly, is describing those capricious curves, those inexplicable orbits, because no one is any longer operating the udder.
Already, the boldest aviator in America has leapt into a motor-boat; he is heading for Elizabeth, New Jersey, where the hangar sheltering his aircraft is located. He has declared that he wants to “go and see!” Learning of his decision, the crowd becomes alarmed. What will happen? Will not the bird, ceasing to circle, soon fall heavily upon the city, crashing into a cornice or killing twenty people in some street? The excitement reaches its peak; anxious gazes obstinately follow the disconcerting revolutions of the glorious apparatus that does not want to land.
Suddenly, cries of fright go up: the flying arrow has turned nose-down, making an abrupt dive—but it has righted itself twenty meters from the water, and is flying once again toward the clouds. It is seen to circle again, climb up higher—every high—then head out to sea with the speed of a bullet.
Afterwards, the incomprehensible airplane comes back toward the harbor. It sets a course for the wooden platform, which it follows at a slope. As no breeze is troubling the calm of the atmosphere, no one doubts that it will land normally now, and they understand that Rozal wanted to excite the crowd. Then, without resentment, they get ready to give him a frantic welcome.
But how fast he is going! In a matter of seconds, he has returned from the sea and is soon above the spot reserved for him.
“Oh!” cry the thousands of spectators, in unison.
For a second time, there is a frightful, rapid, even lightning-fast fall; the bird does not right itself until it is a few meters above the hull of an enormous transatlantic liner, on to which it nearly throws itself, like a beetle at a wall. And they understand, this time, that the man is not joking, and that he is the victim of the astonishing force that has brought him so far, and which, at present, cannot be tamed.
Now everyone is oppressed by anguish—and it is a relief, and breathing becomes less painful, when they see the bird with the shiny wings, on which the Sun momentarily sets a steely gleam, gain height again and soar away over the wooded hills and valleys of Long Island.
They wait for more than an hour for it to return. Already, the most contradictory rumors are circulating. People perched on a twenty-story skyscraper have descended precipitately; they affirm that the airplane has come down behind a hill in the vicinity of Harbor Hill. Others have seen it continue its vertiginous course toward the open sea and disappear into the mist.
But when the conviction sinks in that it will not return to New York bay, a great sadness takes possession of the crowd, so excited a little while before—not to mention that the air is deteriorating, that curiosity-seekers are collapsing here and there, felled by the temperature and sunstroke. And the long processions that are already moving away, disappointed and melancholy, through the city’s arteries, are reminiscent of retreating troops who have lost a battle.
VIII. His Wife: A Collaborator
All morning, at her post behind the window of the sumptuous dwelling on Long Island, Nelly gazed out to sea. She was pale, emotional, impatient and nervous. Several times, Mrs. Flower had approached her, half-smiling and half-distressed, prey, like her niece to various sentiments, dominant among them the read of the danger that was threatening Rozal and the joy of thinking that his success would make him the greatest Frenchman of the twentieth century. (Huh? Who could tell, in 1914, what the discoveries humans might have made, and what changes might have taken place in the frontiers that divided them, by the year 2000?)
“Come on, child,” said the old aunt, “don’t stand there like that, thoughtful and anxious. The New York Herald, you know, maintains that your ‘adventurer’ can’t appear before three o’clock, and it’s not yet noon!”
The other replied, in a grave, warm and simultaneously admiring voice: “Oh, Aunt, with him, one never knows!”
“How you’ve changed! When I think of the state in which I found you, in spring, when you summoned me, after that terrible scene with our husband! Then, you were shivering with hatred and horror…Rozal was an adventurer. He is one, moreover—he loves adventure. And now...”
“He’s a hero! Yes’ it’s me who was guilty, too harsh, too proud. I’ve been well punished. But if he only knew! If someone could have told him how I love him again, anew! No, not anew: I feel that I never ceased to be his. My pride rebelled one day; but all my womanly being, enamored, firmly held—yes, captured—by his kisses, has remained faithful and submissive to him. The amorous woman had forgiven him instantly...”
“Oh, you little rascal! How well you hide your sentiments! But I guessed them, you know! Old aunts understand everything.”
Nelly pressed herself against her worthy relative, and her eyes filled with a childish dread. “Do you think he still loves me, and still wants me?”
“I don’t know! When such squalls have passed through a garden, the flowers have difficulty righting their stems. Laid low by the tempest, wounded, as if scythed down, they need strong ardent sunlight to bring them back to life.”
“For him, I’ll be the sun. My blondeness was his joy, out there on the Côte d’Azur, the intoxication of his eyes and everything. I want him to know long days of enchantment, thanks to me.”
“And if he were to refuse?”
Nelly hid her head in her hands. After a few moments, she looked up, her face bathed in tears.
“If he refused? Then, yes, that would be the proof that he never loved me. But an instinct tells me that I’m not mistaken. It’s for me that he’s coming, do you hear? For me, he is daring this astonishing and sublime feat! People of all lands and all races are waiting for him in their thousands over there in New York harbor—but it’s for me alone that he has come!”
“What are you going to do?”
Nelly had truly not thought about that. She was so convinced that her husband had only risked this made adventure to reconquer her, she was so glad to be the objective of that effort, that she had not imagined for a single second that she would be obliged to do anything to get close to him, to meet him half way. In her dream—that of a woman in love scenting happiness and pleasure—she thought that it was sufficient to remain there, behind that window, and that, at any moment, she would see him appear over the trees on the hill opposite, and that he would land, gently, like the blue bird of legend in her summer park.
Disconcerted, she stammered: “If he doesn’t come to get me, I’ll never dare to go to him...”
Mrs. Flower smiled. “Come on, child, don’t worry. Old aunts have the genius of ambassadors. When Monsieur Rozal has landed in his apparatus and the official enthusiasm allows him a moment of respite, I’ll go to see him.”
“Oh no, aunt! Never! He’d think that I sent you!”
“So?”
“Spare me that humiliation...”
Mrs. Flower shrugged her shoulders. A trifle brusquely, she said: “Leave it to me. In the meantime, come and have some lunch.”
“I don’t want to leave this window.”
“We’ll put Ketty there. If she sees anything, she’ll alert us.”
But Nelly refused, with a gesture of her pretty blonde head. “No, no…it’s me who wants to be the first to see him! If you want, Aunt, we’ll eat
lunch here. Besides, look—from here the summer is splendid…the sky is pure, magnificent: the sky of his victory...”
“Stubborn child…you can have your way. We’ll make the meal last, in order to offer coffee to your husband, if he deigns to see us as he passes over Long Island.”
Nelly smiled at the joke. “But he won’t pass far from here!” she said. “We’re exactly on the route. And with a little luck...”
“You’ll wave your handkerchief? What if you blew him kisses?”
Nelly blushed and sighed: “If I were sure that he couldn’t see me...”
“Oh, it’s not the desire that you lack! And to think that these two enfants terribles adored one another, and that they have, even so, gladly broken one another’s hearts!”
Mrs. Flower muttered something else, which Nelly did not hear, and rang in order to give the necessary orders.
The lunch was, by turns, cheerful and melancholy. As the minutes went by, Nelly, exceedingly nervous, passed from the most extreme confidence from the most absolute despair.
“No, Aunt, I can’t eat, I assure you: emotion is choking me. Suppose that what he’s doing is mad. Can it be that one man, alone, with no one to relieve him at the moment when fatigue ought to overwhelm him, without escort, can reach the end of that unprecedented race through the air over thousands of kilometers? No, Aunt, there are limits to human strength, and my husband...”
“Your husband! How you pronounce that word, with a sigh!”
“My dear husband! Yes, the more I think about his enterprise, the more I divine the secret reason for it, the dearer he is to me, the more I want, again, to be his wife. My God, my God! As long as nothing happens to him!”
The Human Arrow Page 24