Adrift in Pacific and Other Great Adventures – 17 Titles in One Volume (Illustrated Edition). Jules Verne
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you so,” said the pedlar.
“Yes, yes, that is really Nic!” said the shepherd. “And who is the girl who is coming out of Koltz’s house, with the red petticoat and the black bodice, as if to get in front of him?”
“Keep on looking, shepherd. You will soon recognize the girl, as you did the young man.”
“Ah! yes! It is Miriota—the lovely Miriota! Ah! the lovers, the lovers! This time I have got them at the end of my tube, and I shall not lose one of their little goings on!”
“What do you say to the telescope?”
“Eh? It does make you see far!”
As Frik was looking through a telescope for the first time, it follows that Werst was one of the most backward villages of the country of Klausenburg; and that this was so we shall soon see.
“Come, shepherd,” continued the pedlar, “look again; look farther than Werst. The village is too near us. Look beyond, farther beyond, I tell you!”
“Shall I have to pay any more?”
“No more.”
“Good! I will look towards the Hungarian Syl! Yes. There is the clock-tower at Livadzel. I recognize it by the cross which has lost one arm. And, beyond, in the valley, among the pines, I see the spire of Petroseny with its weathercock of zinc with the open beak as if it were calling its chickens; and, beyond, there is that tower pointing up amid the trees. But I suppose, pedlar, it is all at the same price?”
“All the same price, shepherd.”
Frik turned the telescope towards the plateau of Orgall; then with it he followed the curtain of forests darkening the slopes of Plesa, and the field of the objective framed the distant outline of the village.
“Yes!” he exclaimed, “the fourth branch is on the ground. I had seen aright. And no one will get it to make a torch of it for the night of St. John. Nobody, not even me! It would be to risk both body and soul. But do not trouble yourself about it. There is one who knows how to gather it to-night for his infernal fire—and that is the Chort!”
The Chort being the devil when he is invoked in the language of the country.
Perhaps the Jew might have demanded an explanation of these incomprehensible words, as he was not a native of the village of Werst or its environs, had not Frik exclaimed in a voice of terror mingled with surprise,—
“What is that mist escaping from the donjon? Is it a mist? No! One would say it was a smoke! It is not possible. For hundreds and hundreds of years no smoke has come from the chimneys of the castle!”
“If you see a smoke over there, shepherd, there is a smoke.”
“No, pedlar, no. It is the glass of your machine which is misty.”
“Clean it.”
“And when I have cleaned it—”
Frik shifted the telescope, and, having rubbed the glasses, he replaced it at his eye.
It was undoubtedly a smoke streaming from the upper part of the donjon. It mounted high in the air and mingled with the higher vapours.
Frik remained motionless and silent. All his attention was concentrated on the castle, from which the rising shadow began to touch the level of the plateau of Orgall.
Suddenly he lowered the telescope, and, thrusting his band into the pouch he wore under his frock, he said,—
“How much do you want for your tube?”
“A florin and a half!” said the pedlar.
And he would have sold the telescope for a florin if Frik had shown any desire to bargain for it. But the shepherd said not a word. Evidently under the influence of an astonishment as sudden as it was inexplicable, he plunged his hand to the bottom of his wallet and drew out the money.
“Are you buying the telescope for yourself?” asked the pedlar.
“No; for my master.”
“And he will pay you back?”
“Yes the two florins it costs me.”
“What! The two florins?”
“Eh! Certainly! That and no less. Good evening, my friend!”
“Good evening, shepherd.”
And Frik, whistling his dogs and urging on his flock, struck off rapidly in the direction of Werst.
The Jew, looking at him as he went, shook his head, as if he had been doing a trade with a madman.
“If I had known that,” he murmured, “I should have charged him more for that telescope.”
Then he adjusted his burden on his belt and shoulders and resumed his journey to Karlsburg along the right bank of the Syl.
Where did he go? It matters little. He passed out of this story. We shall meet with him no more.
CHAPTER II.
It matters not whether we are dealing with native rocks piled up by natural means in distant geological epochs, or with constructions due to the hand of man over which the breath of time has passed, the effect is much the same when viewed from a few miles off. Unworked stone and worked stone may easily be confounded. From afar, the same colour, the same lineaments, the same deviations of line in the perspective, the same uniformity of tint under the grey patina of centuries.
And so it was with this castle, otherwise known as the Castle of the Carpathians. To distinguish the indefinite outlines of this structure on the plateau of Orgall, which crowns the left of Vulkan Hill, was impossible. It did not stand out in relief from the background of mountains. What might have been taken as a donjon was only a stony mound; what might be supposed to be a curtain with its battlements might be only a rocky crest. The mass was vague, floating, uncertain. And in the opinion of many tourists the Castle of the Carpathians existed only in the imagination of the country people.
Evidently the simplest means of assuring yourself as to its existence would have been to have bargained with a guide from Vulkan or Werst, to have gone up the valley, scaled the ridge, and visited the buildings. But a guide would have been as difficult to find as the road leading to the castle. In the valley of both Syls no one would have agreed to be guide to a traveller, for no matter what remuneration, to the Castle of the Carpathians.
What they would have seen of this ancient habitation in the field of a telescope more powerful and better focussed than the trumpery thing bought by the shepherd Frik on account of his master Koltz, was this:—
Some 800 or 900 feet in the rear of Vulkan Hill lay a grey enclosure, covered with a mass of wall plants, and extending for from 400 to 500 feet along the irregularities of the plateau; at each end were two angular bastions, in the right of which grew the famous beech close by a slender watch-tower or look-out with a pointed roof; on the left a few patches of wall, strengthened by flying buttresses, supporting the tower of a chapel, the cracked bell of which was often sounded in high winds to the great alarm of the district; in the midst, crowned by its crenellated platform, a heavy, formidable donjon, with three rows of leaded windows, the first storey of which was surrounded by a circular terrace; on the platform a long metal spire, ornamented with a feudal virolet, or weathercock, stationary with rust, which a last puff of the north-west wind had set pointing to the south-east.
As to what was contained in this enclosure, if there was any habitable building within, if a drawbridge or a postern gave admittance to it, had been unknown for a number of years. In fact, although the Castle of the Carpathians