10
October 1862? midnight
Peters'
paper of this morning was revealed to be the ransom letter Fogg found in
William's crib. Peters' excitement was
unbounded. He waved his arms about so fast
he seemed to have six of them rather than the usual allotment of two. And when the winded and furious Fogg finally
arrived, Peters demanded to know where the paper had been acquired. Before I thought I answered, "London." Peters ran out promising that we would have
something called a "de-briefing" on the morrow. I suspect this may be another quizzing.
Now,
I have only shortly mentioned this document, but as a ransom letter it is past
confusing. It reads in part,
"Notice! REWARD OFFERED! If found, please call 1.800.555.1293 or
email us at tchersky@beammeup.consortium.com. Reward for return $5,000 American," this all
printed in a dozen European languages. The only things that made sense to us were "reward" and "tchersky." This letter brought us across Siberia in the
first beginnings of winter. Apparently
it is quite important to Peters as well.
Surely
no location on my earth can house what I've seen here at Tchersky, or perhaps
it is no time. I do not know, but can
believe almost anything after our fantastic adventures on the Phoenix. I find much here to excite my scientific
interest, but aside from our captivity there is much that repels as well. On the dexter hand, commonplace wonders abound,
for example the ingenious interlocking strips that closure almost all our
borrowed clothes, or the omnipresent (and horribly bright!) electric lighting,
or even this smoothly flowing pen with its translucent barrel. On the other sinister hand, every furnishing
and fitting is absolutely and perfectly uniform. One can scarce tell one room from the next there is so little to
distinguish them. The food and
beverages they bring to us are blandly tasteless beyond all belief! And as for such basic needs as privacy and
good manners, well, as I have heard them say here, you don't want to go
there. I suppose this is typical of
prisons, but I believe these rooms were not designed with that in mind.
As I
write Phileas and Passepartout sleep close in our men's dormitory unbothered by
this shielded electric lamp. Fogg is,
however, still infuriated with me for answering Peters regarding the ransom
letter. Even now sleeping, his backside
manages to convey furious disdain. Perhaps it is the rigid width of his broad shoulders, or the bristling
of his unfashionably short hair. But I
recall the events of just a few days ago, and I cannot respond to him in
kind. For now and the foreseeable
future, this hero will have my worship, whether he accepts it or no.
But
I procrastinate. I have resolved to
complete my unfolding of our arrival.
My
narration left Fogg in the rigging, attempting to correct the gondola's
suspension before we should drown in the lake below. The shore now visible out the bow window was still an eternity
away for our stalled craft. Fogg sawed
at this line and that. Loose cording
whipped about and the starboard gasbag hindered his every move. It was tricky work. He had to free no more lines than necessary,
too many and the gondola would part ways with the main ballonet.
Rebecca
observing beneath him on the starboard deck shouted in to us, "Hold on to
something, I think this is the last!" and indeed it was. The gondola slammed down and oscillated
uncontrollably. Rebecca tells me she
came very close to slipping off the outer deck, and hung for a short while from
the railing. In the observation room we
three were tossed back and forth, I having to seize Passepartout by his
clothing since his one good hand was not enough to hold him. We rolled about,
banging into furniture and benches, until the pendular motion of the gondola
finally ceased.
But
the horror of that cessation! Rebecca
in an extremity of distress, screamed at me through the broken starboard
window, "Higher, higher! We're dragging
Phileas in the lake!" With the freeing
of the gondola we had lost almost all of our remaining altitude and skimmed a
bare yard above the waters of Lake M_______. As an anchor we towed Fogg on his safety line and it was he that stilled
our swing.
Passepartout
lay on the deck senseless in pain, his arm damaged even more by the tossing, so
it was up to Miss Jude and I. Quickly I
freed the controls and set them all for rise, pulled the pins on the steering
globe, angled for the shore and told Miss Jude to "hold it there," and then ran
out to help Rebecca pull Fogg from the waters. I did not expect the Aurora to gain much altitude, but one thing the
Fogg cousins have taught me is the efficacy of hope.
It
was at this fateful moment that the Tchersky inhabitants introduced
themselves. Their whirligig machine had
been approaching us for some time, but we in our distress failed to observe
until its rushing wind batted at the ballonet and tugged at Fogg's body that
now hung by an ankle just over our starboard rail. Aurora shifted a little higher under the pressure of the
whirligig's onrushing air and began to float quickly to shore. I was amazed at this infernal machine; but
it seemed, at least for now, to assist us and I had no time to reflect or even
give a nod.
At
last Rebecca and I could hoist Fogg on deck. The beating wind of the whirligig had blown off Rebecca's hat and her
Titian hair whipped wildly in its wind. In fact this current of air blew on us so hard, there was no choice but
to drag Fogg's body into the salon where after untying the safety line, we
could close the hatch and minister to him.
My
hands were numb and my skin turning white. Rebecca looked no better but she was already on her knees. "Phileas! Phil! Phil!" she cried over and
over, shaking him and chafing his hands. I placed my fingers in my mouth to remove their numbness and then sought
Fogg's carotid pulse under his chin. Nothing. His skin was icy and
bluish white, his eyes open and widely staring. A cut on his brow failed to bleed. The man was without question dead. With pain in my heart I told Rebecca so but her wild face denied
it. She would have it that her cousin
could be revived and continued desperately to chafe his hands and arms. Then when I tried to pull her away, she used
a practiced move to escape me and returned to her dead cousin's side. She took his limp shoulders and began to
shake them crying, "Don't leave me here, Phil. Not alone! Please not alone!"
I
dared not try to pull her away again but it hurt me to watch this. My own hands shook and my eyes stung. I could not bear it. Half of my heart lie dead on the floor and
the other half looked to be gone to madness! So I gazed away into the observation room where I could see Miss Jude
struggling with the unruly helm. Brave
girl, her diminutive height made leverage on the globe hard enough without the
icy coating of Passepartout's blood. It's a wonder she had any success at all.
Abandoning
my grief in hope of rescuing the still living, I went and helped Miss Jude lock
the helm globe in place again. Passepartout by this time was on his knees but looked like to return to
the deck at any moment. I helped the
poor man into the protection of the salon and laid him down. Tears now streamed unheeded from Miss
Rebecca's eyes. In the minute she had
spent alone with her cousin's unresponsive body, she had made her peace. She came to help Passepartout.
"Jules! Jules!" Miss Jude screamed. "We're going to smash!" She had abandoned the helm and ran toward
me. Behind her I could see snow covered
land rushing toward us.
"Down!"
I shouted and pushed Miss Jude to the deck just inside the salon entrance. Once again the Aurora's engineering designs
were tested and proven true. The
gondola dragged twenty feet through the snow before stopping but held together
with never a dent, although I felt sure the undercarriage must be completely
collapsed or missing. While the
observation room had filled with snow and our portside portholes were buried,
the starboard portholes showed daylight and we were mostly level.
The
pressure from the whirligig must have indeed been powerful. It had been no more than five minutes since
Fogg fell in the water and we were at that time at least a half mile from
shore. Whether we willed it or no, the
Aurora had landed. But what was
surprising, except for one of us, we still breathed.
Then
incongruity of incongruities, someone knocked on the starboard hatch.
Rebecca
and I looked at each other. As
Passepartout could not rise to perform manservant duties, I acted in his stead
and was face to face with a tall blond man even younger than myself backed by
three more men with rifles in their arms. "Hi, I'm Gavin Michaels. Are you
folks OK?" the blond one asked in accents reminiscent of our trip to Georgia. Looking past me, Michaels saw Fogg's
lifeless body, and then quickly brought something to his mouth, saying, "Jesse,
looks like the guy they keel-hauled is down. Grab the de-fib kit," he craned his neck some more, "and some
blankets. They all look pretty
bad. And haul ass, hon!"
"Be
there in a sec!" was the feminine voiced reply.
Having
said this, Michaels pushed past me without further ceremony and knelt beside
Fogg's lifeless head. As I had, he felt
the carotid artery and announced to the room in general, "No pulse!" He knelt
at Fogg's chest. Hand coupled in hand,
he pushed down firmly on Fogg's sternum, one, two, three, four times. One of
Michael's companions put down his rifle and knelt beside Fogg on the other
side. This one put his hand behind
Phileas's neck and pulled it up, tilting the head back. Then the visitor pinched Fogg's nose, pulled
at his chin, took a deep breath, bent over and blew it out into the man's
mouth. He did this for several
repetitions. Then the man at the chest
resumed again. I came to realize both
men were counting. Michael's assistant
asked of Rebecca, the closest of us to him, "What's his name, ma'am?" She provided it to him, her voice hoarse and
much subdued. The man began to shout in
Fogg's ear, "Fogg, Phileas Fogg! Wake
up, man!" They continued on in this
manner, compressions, breaths, name shouting, tirelessly and without despair at
Fogg's lack of response.
By
this time our other two visitors had put down their rifles. One labored over Passepartout and his ugly
wound, while the other came to check Miss Jude and I for damage. I watched Rebecca and Passepartout. Jean leaned his dark head against Rebecca as
she held him in her arms. Their faces
were like two mirrors, each with the same expression of pain, bewilderment and
hope. They could not lift their eyes
from the work of the two men on the floor. I fear I myself trembled, and Miss Jude tucked her silver head against
my shoulder, unable to bear the proceedings, although God bless her, she stood
strongly on her own two feet.
Another
knock at the door was followed by the entrance of a young trousers-clad and
brown-skinned woman I deduced was Jesse. She handed blankets to one of the earlier arrivals and hurried over to
Fogg's side with a small metal case. As
we survivors were gently draped with covers, Jesse opened her case to reveal a
panel with knobs and other mysterious appointments. Michaels who knelt at Fogg's torso ripped his wool shirt open,
revealing a white and motionless chest. Jesse picked up two flat-iron like items on coiled cords. Holding them in the air, she said,
"Charging!" then, "It says it's ready!"
"Clear!"
said the man at Fogg's head, and both men moved back. Jesse applied the flat irons to the bare chest and then Phileas's
whole body contracted in paroxysm. I
have seen such a convulsion once before in Paris, a laboratory demonstration
using electricity on a frog. Electricity! They were treating
him with electricity!
And
then the unlooked for miracle, the incredible, the fantastic happened. Fogg began to choke. They rolled him over on his side and he spit
out a great mouthful of water. The man
had been dead for five minutes or more and yet he lived again. Rebecca tried to force herself past Jesse,
but was pulled away. "Not yet,
Ma'am. We gotta stabilize him," her
captor told her. All of us cried and
laughed at the same time, the visitors included. The two men who had breathed
for Phileas slapped hands together high in the air. Jesse yelped something that sounded like, "Wahoo!" One of the visitors then said, "Girl, you
rule," and also slapped her hand up high.
Have
I conveyed the profoundness of our relief?
The
remainder is as I wrote before. We were
brought here to Tchersky, although we were not told that until much later. Michaels and his crew left us in Doctor
Talbott's care. Fogg took much time to
fully re-awaken, and I slept some while waiting or talked quietly to reassure
Miss Jude and Passepartout. Rebecca
stayed constantly at Fogg's side and only took herself to bed after speaking to
her cousin.
When
Fogg opened his eyes, Rebecca's face was a revelation. As Passepartout says, these two cousins
beatify together and most certainly after such a separation. Words flew back and forth. "Rebecca, I thought I'd lost you," were
Fogg's first raspy words as he awakened and found himself holding his cousin's
hand. As it turns out, he'd seen her
hanging off the starboard rail just before his own plunge into the water.
"No,
you didn't. But I did lose you," was
Rebecca's soft reply, "and got you back again." Fogg, of course, had no memory of his revival so only frowned and
shook his head.
"Where
are we?" and then with a squint, "I say, could you cover up the windows? The light hurts my eyes." It was 8:00 in the evening and the sun had
gone down. Fogg complained of the
wondrously bright electric lights. As I
had already learned how to adjust the lighting, I obliged and turned out a few
of the surgery's ceiling lamps.
"We're
at Tchersky," Rebecca told him. "The
kidnappers seem to have captured us."
"What?"
he said as the habits of command took over and he tried to arise. Rebecca pushed him firmly down again. He continued, "We were at least two days
away when I shot the sun yesterday noon."
"Day
before yesterday," Rebecca replied. Fogg's lips shaped an "Oh" of a reply.
Passepartout
came shyly up and gave his master a Gallic kiss upon both cheeks. Fogg's surprised reaction was, "That bad
off, was I? Must have given you quite a
scare. You all look so solemn."
"Terrified
us more like it," I assured him.
At that moment the physicians and
guards came in and we had to leave Fogg. We were shown to these two connected dormitories that we've been
imprisoned in since. They brought Fogg
on a wheeled bed to join us the next day.
I
think Fogg rather frightens Miss Jude now and she cannot bear to bring her blue
eyes to his. Perhaps she sees in him
Frankenstein's monster. This bothers
him, I know. He would not have
anything, much less his person, disturb such an innocent. On the other hand, Rebecca and Passepartout
seek Fogg's company frequently and touch him often. This equally disconcerts him. It can be a burden to see so clearly your worth in the eyes of others.
But
it is now four o'clock in the morning so I must repair to my bed or suffer the
consequences on the morrow. Adieu, my
journal.