Adrift in Pacific and Other Great Adventures – 17 Titles in One Volume (Illustrated Edition). Jules Verne
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over him, she clasped him in her arms.
“He is dead!” she exclaimed, “he is dead!”
“No, he is not dead,” replied Doctor Patak, “but he deserves to be—and so do I!”
The truth is, the forester was unconscious. His limbs were stiff, his face bloodless, his respiration hardly moved his chest. As for the doctor, his face was not as colourless as his companion’s, owing to the walk having restored his usual brick-red tint.
Miriota’s voice, so tender, so heartrending, could not awake Nic Deck from the torpor in which he was plunged. When he had been brought into the village and laid in a room in Master Koltz’s house, he had not uttered a word. A few moments afterwards, however, his eyes opened, and when he saw the girl stooping over him, a smile played on his lips; but when he tried to raise himself he could not. A part of his body was paralyzed as if he had been struck with hemiplegia. At the same time, wishing to comfort Miriota, he said to her—in a very feeble voice, it is true,—
“It will be nothing, it will be nothing.”
“Nic—my poor Nic!” said the girl.
“A little over-fatigue, dear Miriota, and a little excitement. It will be over soon, with your nursing.”
But the patient required calm and repose; and so Master Koltz went away, leaving Miriota near the young forester, who could not have wished for a more attentive nurse, and soon fell asleep.
Meanwhile, the innkeeper Jonas related to a numerous audience, and in a loud voice so as to be heard by all, what had happened after their departure.
Master Koltz, the shepherd, and himself, after finding the footpath cut by Nic Deck and the doctor, had gone on towards the Castle of the Carpathians. For two hours they made their way up the Plesa slopes, and the edge of the forest was not more than half a mile off, when two men appeared. These were the doctor and the forester, one quite helpless in his legs, the other just about to fall at the foot of a tree, owing to exhaustion.
To run to the doctor; to interrogate him, but without being able to obtain a single word, for he was too stupefied to reply; to make a litter with the branches, to lay Nic Deck on it, to put Patak on his feet,—did not take very long. Then Master Koltz and the shepherd, who relieved Jonas from time to time, resumed the road to Werst.
As to saying why Nic Deck was in such a state, and if he had entered the ruins of the castle, the innkeeper knew no more than Master Koltz or the shepherd Frik, and the doctor had not yet sufficiently recovered his spirits to satisfy their curiosity.
But if Patak had not yet spoken, it was necessary for him to speak now. He was in safety in the village, surrounded by his friends, and in the midst of his patients. He had nothing to fear from the things at the castle. And even if they had wrung from him an oath to be silent, to say nothing of what he had seen at the Castle of the Carpathians, the public interest required that he should ignore that oath.
“Compose yourself, doctor,” said Master Koltz, “and try and remember.”
“You wish me to speak?”
“In the name of the inhabitants of Werst, and for the sake of the safety of the village, I order you to do so.”
A large glass of rakiou, brought in by Jonas, had the effect of restoring to the doctor the use of his tongue, and in broken sentences he expressed himself in these terms:—
“We went off, both of us, Nic and I. Fools, fools! It took nearly all day to get through those wretched forests. We did not get up to the castle before it was getting dark. I still tremble at it—I will tremble at it all my life. Nic wanted to go in. Yes! He wanted to spend the night in the donjon, as much as to say to sleep in the bedroom of Beelzebub.”
Doctor Patak said these things in a voice so cavernous that all who heard him shuddered.
“I did not consent!” he continued; “no, I did not consent. And what would have happened if I had yielded to Nic Deck’s desires? My hair stands on end to think of it.”
And if the doctor’s hair did not stand on end, it was because his hand wandered mechanically over his poll.
“Nic accordingly resigned himself to camping on the Orgall plateau. What a night! my friends, what a night! Try to rest when the spirits will not let you sleep an hour—no, not even one hour. Suddenly fiery monsters appeared in the clouds, regular balauris! They hurled themselves on to the plateau to devour us.”
Every look was turned towards the sky, to make sure that a few spectres were not there in full gallop.
“And a few moments after,” continued the doctor, ” the chapel bell began to clang!”
Every ear was stretched towards the horizon, and more than one of the crowd believed they could hear the distant ringing in the direction of the castle, so much had the doctor’s recital impressed his audience.
“Suddenly,” he went on, “fearful bellowings filled the air, or rather the roaring of wild beasts. Then a bright light darted from the windows of the donjon. An infernal flame illumined all the plateau up to the fir forest. Nic Deck and I looked at one another. Ah! the terrible vision! We were like two corpses—two corpses which the lurid light set making horrible grimaces at each other.”
And to look at Doctor Patak, with his convulsed face and his wild eyes, there really would have been some excuse for asking if he had not returned from that other world whither he had already sent so many of his kind.
He had to be left to recover his breath, for he was incapable of continuing his story. This cost Jonas a second glass of rakiou, which appeared to bring back to the doctor some portion of the senses which the other spirits had made him lose.
“But what happened to poor Nic Deck?” asked Master Koltz.
And, not without reason, the biro attached extreme importance to the doctor’s reply, for it was the young forester who had been personally threatened by the voice of the spirits in the saloon of the “King Mathias.”
“As far as I remember,” continued the doctor, “the daylight returned. I besought Nic Deck to abandon his projects. But you know him—he could not be more obstinate if he would. He went down into the ditch, and I was forced to follow him, for he dragged me along with him. Besides, I really do not know what I did. Nic went on up to the gate. He caught hold of the chain of the draw bridge, with which he pulled himself up the wall. At this moment the sense of our position occurred. There was still time to stop him, that rash—I say more—that sacrilegious young man. For the last time I ordered him to come down, to come back on the road to Werst. ‘No!’ he shouted to me. I would have run away—yes, my friends, I confess it—I would have fled, and there is not one of you who would not have had the same thought in my place! But it was in vain I tried to move from the ground. My feet were nailed, screwed, rooted. I tried to free them—it was impossible. I tried to struggle—it was useless!”
And Doctor Patak imitated the desperate movements of a man held by the legs, as a fox is held in a trap. Then, resuming his story, he said,—
“At this moment there was a cry—and such a cry! It was Nic Deck who uttered it. His hands had let go the chain, and he fell to the bottom of the ditch as if he had been struck by an invisible hand.”
The doctor, it is clear, had told what had happened, and his imagination had added nothing, excited though it might be. Just as he had described them, so had the prodigies appeared of which the Orgall plateau had been the scene during the preceding night.
What had happened after Nic Deck’s fall was as follows—The forester had fainted, and Doctor Patak was incapable of helping him, for his boots were stuck to the ground, and he could not get his swollen feet out of them. Suddenly the invisible force that detained him vanished. His legs were free. He rushed towards his companion, and, what must be considered a noble act of courage, he bathed Nic Deck’s face with his handkerchief, which he dipped in the water of the stream. The forester recovered consciousness, but his left arm and a part of his body were helpless after the frightful