Jules Verne (4 page)

"Of course."

"Well you are the first to tell me so, Mr. Bombarnac. You are the first
to tell me so."

And thereupon the American goes out of the door and disappears. It is
to be hoped I shall know before we get to Pekin what it is that Strong,
Bulbul & Co. send out in such quantities. Five thousand cases a
week—what an output, and what a turnover!

I had soon finished my breakfast and was off again. During my walk I
was able to admire a few magnificent Lesghians; these wore the grayish
tcherkesse, with the cartridge belts on the chest, the bechmet of
bright red silk, the gaiters embroidered with silver, the boots flat,
without a heel, the white papak on the head, the long gun on the
shoulders, the schaska and kandijar at the belt—in short men of the
arsenal as there are men of the orchestra, but of superb aspect and who
ought to have a marvelous effect in the processions of the Russian
emperor.

It is already two o'clock, and I think I had better get down to the
boat. I must call at the railway station, where I have left my light
luggage at the cloakroom.

Soon I am off again, bag in one hand, stick in the other, hastening
down one of the roads leading to the harbor.

At the break in the wall where access is obtained to the quay, my
attention is, I do not know why, attracted by two people walking along
together. The man is from thirty to thirty-five years old, the woman
from twenty-five to thirty, the man already a grayish brown, with
mobile face, lively look, easy walk with a certain swinging of the
hips. The woman still a pretty blonde, blue eyes, a rather fresh
complexion, her hair frizzed under a cap, a traveling costume which is
in good taste neither in its unfashionable cut nor in its glaring
color. Evidently a married couple come in the train from Tiflis, and
unless I am mistaken they are French.

But although I look at them with curiosity, they take no notice of me.
They are too much occupied to see me. In their hands, on their
shoulders, they have bags and cushions and wraps and sticks and
sunshades and umbrellas. They are carrying every kind of little package
you can think of which they do not care to put with the luggage on the
steamer. I have a good mind to go and help them. Is it not a happy
chance—and a rare one—to meet with French people away from France?

Just as I am walking up to them, Ephrinell appears, drags me away, and
I leave the couple behind. It is only a postponement. I will meet them
again on the steamboat and make their acquaintance on the voyage.

"Well," said I to the Yankee, "how are you getting on with your cargo?"

"At this moment, sir, the thirty-seventh case is on the road."

"And no accident up to now?

"No accident."

"And what may be in those cases, if you please?

"In those cases? Ah! There is the thirty-seventh!" he exclaimed, and he
ran out to meet a truck which had just come onto the quay.

There was a good deal of bustle about, and all the animation of
departures and arrivals. Baku is the most frequented and the safest
port on the Caspian. Derbent, situated more to the north, cannot keep
up with it, and it absorbs almost the entire maritime traffic of this
sea, or rather this great lake which has no communication with the
neighboring seas. The establishment of Uzun Ada on the opposite coast
has doubled the trade which used to pass through Baku. The Transcaspian
now open for passengers and goods is the chief commercial route between
Europe and Turkestan.

In the near future there will perhaps be a second route along the
Persian frontier connecting the South Russian railways with those of
British India, and that will save travelers the navigation of the
Caspian. And when this vast basin has dried up through evaporation, why
should not a railroad be run across its sandy bed, so that trains can
run through without transhipment at Baku and Uzun Ada?

While we are waiting for the realization of this desideratum, it is
necessary to take the steamboat, and that I am preparing to do in
company with many others.

Our steamer is called the
Astara
, of the Caucasus and Mercury
Company. She is a big paddle steamer, making three trips a week from
coast to coast. She is a very roomy boat, designed to carry a large
cargo, and the builders have thought considerably more of the cargo
than of the passengers. After all, there is not much to make a fuss
about in a day's voyage.

There is a noisy crowd on the quay of people who are going off, and
people who have come to see them off, recruited from the cosmopolitan
population of Baku. I notice that the travelers are mostly Turkomans,
with about a score of Europeans of different nationalities, a few
Persians, and two representatives of the Celestial Empire. Evidently
their destination is China. .

The
Astara
is loaded up. The hold is not big enough, and a good deal
of the cargo has overflowed onto the deck. The stern is reserved for
passengers, but from the bridge forward to the topgallant forecastle,
there is a heap of cases covered with tarpaulins to protect them from
the sea.

There Ephrinell's cases have been put. He has lent a hand with Yankee
energy, determined not to lose sight of his valuable property, which is
in cubical cases, about two feet on the side, covered with patent
leather, carefully strapped, and on which can be read the stenciled
words, "Strong, Bulbul & Co., Now York."

"Are all your goods on board?" I asked the American.

"There is the forty-second case just coming," he replied.

And there was the said case on the back of a porter already coming
along the gangway.

It seemed to me that the porter was rather tottery, owing perhaps to a
lengthy absorption of vodka.

"Wait a bit!" shouted Ephrinell. Then in good Russian, so as to be
better understood, he shouted:

"Look out! Look out!"

It is good advice, but it is too late. The porter has just made a false
step. The case slips from his shoulders, falls—luckily over the rail
of the
Astara
—breaks in two, and a quantity of little packets of
paper scatter their contents on the deck.

What a shout of indignation did Ephrinell raise! What a whack with his
fist did he administer to the unfortunate porter as he repeated in a
voice of despair: "My teeth, my poor teeth!"

And he went down on his knees to gather up his little bits of
artificial ivory that were scattered all about, while I could hardly
keep from laughing.

Yes! It was teeth which Strong, Bulbul & Co., of New York made! It was
for manufacturing five thousand cases a week for the five parts of the
world that this huge concern existed! It was for supplying the dentists
of the old and new worlds; it was for sending teeth as far as China,
that their factory required fifteen hundred horse power, and burned a
hundred tons of coal a day! That is quite American!

After all, the population of the globe is fourteen hundred million, and
as there are thirty-two teeth per inhabitant, that makes forty-five
thousand millions; so that if it ever became necessary to replace all
the true teeth by false ones, the firm of Strong, Bulbul & Co. would
not be able to supply them.

But we must leave Ephrinell gathering up the odontological treasures of
the forty-second case. The bell is ringing for the last time. All the
passengers are aboard. The
Astara
is casting off her warps.

Suddenly there are shouts from the quay. I recognize them as being in
German, the same as I had heard at Tiflis when the train was starting
for Baku.

It is the same man. He is panting, he runs, he cannot run much farther.
The gangway has been drawn ashore, and the steamer is already moving
off. How will this late comer get on board?

Luckily there is a rope out astern which still keeps the
Astara
near
the quay. The German appears just as two sailors are manoeuvring with
the fender. They each give him a hand and help him on board.

Evidently this fat man is an old hand at this sort of thing, and I
should not be surprised if he did not arrive at his destination.

However, the
Astara
is under way, her powerful paddles are at work,
and we are soon out of the harbor.

About a quarter of a mile out there is a sort of boiling, agitating the
surface of the sea, and showing some deep trouble in the waters. I was
then near the rail on the starboard quarter, and, smoking my cigar, was
looking at the harbor disappearing behind the point round Cape
Apcheron, while the range of the Caucasus ran up into the western
horizon.

Of my cigar there remained only the end between my lips, and taking a
last whiff, I threw it overboard.

In an instant a sheet of flame burst out all round the steamer The
boiling came from a submarine spring of naphtha, and the cigar end had
set it alight.

Screams arise. The
Astara
rolls amid sheaves of flame; but a movement
of the helm steers us away from the flaming spring, and we are out of
danger.

The captain comes aft and says to me in a frigid tone:

"That was a foolish thing to do."

And I reply, as I usually reply under such circumstances:

"Really, captain, I did not know—"

"You ought always to know, sir!"

These words are uttered in a dry, cantankerous tone a few feet away
from me.

I turn to see who it is.

It is the Englishwoman who has read me this little lesson.

I am always suspicious of a traveler's "impressions." These impressions
are subjective—a word I use because it is the fashion, although I am
not quite sure what it means. A cheerful man looks at things
cheerfully, a sorrowful man looks at them sorrowfully. Democritus would
have found something enchanting about the banks of the Jordan and the
shores of the Dead Sea. Heraclitus would have found something
disagreeable about the Bay of Naples and the beach of the Bosphorus. I
am of a happy nature—you must really pardon me if I am rather
egotistic in this history, for it is so seldom that an author's
personality is so mixed up with what he is writing about—like Hugo,
Dumas, Lamartine, and so many others. Shakespeare is an exception, and
I am not Shakespeare—and, as far as that goes, I am not Lamartine, nor
Dumas, nor Hugo.

However, opposed as I am to the doctrines of Schopenhauer and Leopardi,
I will admit that the shores of the Caspian did seem rather gloomy and
dispiriting. There seemed to be nothing alive on the coast; no
vegetation, no birds. There was nothing to make you think you were on a
great sea. True, the Caspian is only a lake about eighty feet below the
level of the Mediterranean, but this lake is often troubled by violent
storms. A ship cannot "get away," as sailors say: it is only about a
hundred leagues wide. The coast is quickly reached eastward or
westward, and harbors of refuge are not numerous on either the Asiatic
or the European side.

There are a hundred passengers on board the
Astara
—a large number of
them Caucasians trading with Turkestan, and who will be with us all the
way to the eastern provinces of the Celestial Empire.

For some years now the Transcaspian has been running between Uzun Ada
and the Chinese frontier. Even between this part and Samarkand it has
no less than sixty-three stations; and it is in this section of the
line that most of the passengers will alight. I need not worry about
them, and I will lose no time in studying them. Suppose one of them
proves interesting, I may pump him and peg away at him, and just at the
critical moment he will get out.

No! All my attention I must devote to those who are going through with
me. I have already secured Ephrinell, and perhaps that charming
Englishwoman, who seems to me to be going to Pekin. I shall meet with
other traveling companions at Uzun Ada. With regard to the French
couple, there is nothing more at present, but the passage of the
Caspian will not be accomplished before I know something about them.
There are also these two Chinamen who are evidently going to China. If
I only knew a hundred words of the "Kouan-hoa," which is the language
spoken in the Celestial Empire, I might perhaps make something out of
these curious guys. What I really want is some personage with a story,
some mysterious hero traveling
incognito
, a lord or a bandit. I must
not forget my trade as a reporter of occurrences and an interviewer of
mankind—at so much a line and well selected. He who makes a good
choice has a good chance.

I go down the stairs to the saloon aft. There is not a place vacant.
The cabins are already occupied by the passengers who are afraid of the
pitching and rolling. They went to bed as soon as they came on board,
and they will not get up until the boat is alongside the wharf at Uzun
Ada. The cabins being full, other travelers have installed themselves
on the couches, amid a lot of little packages, and they will not move
from there.

As I am going to pass the night on deck, I return up the cabin stairs.
The American is there, just finishing the repacking of his case.

"Would you believe it!" he exclaims, "that that drunken moujik actually
asked me for something to drink?"

"I hope you have lost nothing, Monsieur Ephrinell?" I reply.

"No; fortunately."

"May I ask how many teeth you are importing into China in those cases?"

"Eighteen hundred thousand, without counting the wisdom teeth!"

And Ephrinell began to laugh at this little joke, which he fired off on
several other occasions during the voyage. I left him and went onto the
bridge between the paddle boxes.

It is a beautiful night, with the northerly wind beginning to freshen.
In the offing, long, greenish streaks are sweeping over the surface of
the sea. It is possible that the night may be rougher than we expect.
In the forepart of the steamer are many passengers, Turkomans in rags,
Kirghizes wrapped up to the eyes, moujiks in emigrant costume—poor
fellows, in fact, stretched on the spare spars, against the sides, and
along the tarpaulins. They are almost all smoking or nibbling at the
provisions they have brought for the voyage. The others are trying to
sleep and forget their fatigue, and perhaps their hunger.