"I feel sure that both the Ararats are yet well above the water line. We must get out of this region as quickly as possible. Luckily the swirl of the current is now setting us eastward. We are on its northern edge. It will carry the Ark down south of Mount Demavend, and the Elburz range, and over the Persian plateau, and if we can escape from it, as I hope, by getting away over Beluchistan, we can go directly over India and skirt the southern side of the Himalayas. Then we shall be near the goal which we have had in mind."
"Bless me!" said the captain, staring with mingled admiration and doubt at Cosmo Versal, "if you couldn"t beat old Noah round the world, and give him half the longitude. But I"d rather _you"d_ navigate this hooker. The ghost of Captain Sumner itself couldn"t work a traverse over Beluchistan."
"You"ll do it all right," returned Cosmo, "and the next time you drop your anchor it will probably be on the head of Mount Everest."
CHAPTER XXIII
ROBBING THE CROWN OF THE WORLD
Now that they were going with the current instead of striving to stem it, the Ark made much more rapid way than during the time that it was drifting toward the Black Sea.
They averaged at least six knots, and, with the aid of the current, could have done much better, but they thought it well to be cautious, especially as they had so little means of guessing at their exact location from day to day. The water was rough.
There was, most of the time, little wind, and often a large number of the pa.s.sengers a.s.sembled in the saloon.
The noise of the deluge on the roof was so much greater than it had been at the start that it was difficult to converse, but there was plenty of light, and they could, at least, see one another, and communicate by signs if not very easily by the voice. Cosmo"s library was well selected, and many pa.s.sed hours in reading stories of the world they were to see no more!
King Richard and Amos Blank imitated Cosmo and the captain by furnishing themselves with a speaking-tube, which they put alternately to their lips and their ears, and thus held long conversations, presumably exchanging with one another the secrets of high finance and kingly government.
Both of them had enough historical knowledge and sufficient imagination to be greatly impressed by the fact that they were drifting, amidst this terrible storm, over the vast empire that Alexander the Great had conquered.
They mused over the events of the great Macedonian"s long marches through deserts and over mountains, and the king, who loved the story of these glories of the past, though he had cultivated peace in his own dominions, often sighed while they recalled them to one another. Lord Swansdown and the other Englishmen aboard seldom joined their king since he had preferred the company of an unt.i.tled American to theirs.
The first named could not often have made a member of the party if he had wished, for he kept his room most of the time, declaring that he had never been so beastly seasick in his life. He thought that such an abominable roller as the Ark should never have been permitted to go into commission, don"t you know.
On the morning of the twelfth day after they left the neighborhood of Mount Ararat Captain Arms averred that their position must be somewhere near longitude 69 degrees east, lat.i.tude 26 degrees north.
"Then you have worked your traverse over Beluchistan very well," said Cosmo, "and we are now afloat above the valley of the River Indus. We have the desert of northwestern India ahead, and from that locality we can continue right down the course of the Ganges. In fact it would be perfectly safe to turn northward and skirt the Himalayas within reach of the high peaks. I think that"s what I"ll do."
"If you go fooling round any more peaks," shouted Captain Arms, in a fog-horn voice, "you"ll have to do your own steering! I"ve had enough of that kind of navigation!"
Nevertheless when Cosmo Versal gave the order the captain turned the prow of the Ark toward the presumable location of the great Himalayan range, although the rebellion of his spirit showed in the erect set of his whiskers. They were now entirely beyond the influence of the whirl that had at first got them into trouble, and then helped them out of it, in western Asia.
Behind the barrier of the ancient "Roof of the World" the sea was relatively calm, although, at times, they felt the effect of currents pouring down from the north, which had made their way through the lofty pa.s.ses from the Tibetan side.
Cosmo calculated from his estimate of the probable rate of rise of the flood and from the direction and force of the currents that all but the very highest of the Pamirs must already be submerged.
It was probable, he thought, that the water had attained a level of between seventeen and eighteen thousand feet. This, as subsequent events indicated, was undoubtedly an underestimate. The downpour in the north must have been far greater than Cosmo thought, and the real height of the flood was considerably in excess of what he supposed.
If they could have seen some of the gigantic peaks as they approached the mountains in the eastern Punjab, south of Cashmere, they would have been aware of the error.
As it was, owing to the impossibility of seeing more than a short distance even when the light was brightest, they kept farther south than was really necessary, and after pa.s.sing, as they believed, over Delhi, steered south by east, following substantially the course that Cosmo had originally named along the line of the Ganges valley.
They were voyaging much slower now, and after another ten days had pa.s.sed an unexpected change came on. The downpour diminished in severity, and at times the sun broke forth, and for an hour or two the rain would cease entirely, although the sky had a coppery tinge, and at night small stars were not clearly visible.
Cosmo was greatly surprised at this. He could only conclude that the central part of the nebula had been less extensive, though more dense, than he had estimated. It was only thirty-four days since the deluge had recommenced, and unless present appearances were deceptive, its end might be close at hand.
Captain Arms seized the opportunity to make celestial and solar observations which delighted his seaman"s heart, and with great glee he informed Cosmo that they were in longitude 88 degrees 20 minutes east, lat.i.tude 24 degrees 15 minutes north, and he would stake his reputation as a navigator upon it.
"Almost exactly the location of Moorshedabad, in Bengal," said Cosmo, consulting his chart. "The mighty peak of Kunchingunga is hardly more than two hundred miles toward the north, and Mount Everest, the highest point in the world, is within a hundred miles of that!"
"But you"re not going skimming around _them_!" cried the captain with some alarm.
"I shall, if the sky continues in its present condition, go as far as Darjeeling," replied Cosmo. "Then we can turn eastward and get over upper Burmah and so on into China. From there we can turn north again.
"I think we can manage to get into Tibet somewhere between the ranges.
It all depends upon the height of the water, and that I can ascertain exactly by getting a close look at Kunchingunga. I would follow the line of the Brahmaputra River if I dared, but the way is too beset with perils."
"I think you"ve made a big mistake," said the captain. "Why didn"t you come directly across Russia, after first running up to the Black Sea from the Mediterranean, and so straight into Tibet?"
"I begin to think that that"s what I ought to have done," responded Cosmo, thoughtfully, "but when we started the water was not high enough to make me sure of that route, and after we got down into Egypt I didn"t want to run back. But I guess it would have been better."
"Better a sight than steering among these five-mile peaks," growled Captain Arms. "How high does Darjeeling lie? I don"t want to run aground again."
"Oh, that"s perfectly safe," responded Cosmo. "Darjeeling is only about 7,350 feet above the old sea-level. I think we can go almost to the foot of Kunchingunga without any danger."
"Well, the name sounds dangerous enough in itself," said the captain, "but I suppose you"ll have your way. Give me the bearings and we"ll be off."
They took two days to get to the location of Darjeeling, for at times the sky darkened and the rain came down again in tremendous torrents.
But these spells did not last more than two or three hours, and the weather cleared between them.
As soon as they advanced beyond Darjeeling, keeping a sharp outlook for Kunchingunga, Cos...o...b..gan to perceive the error of his calculation of the height of the flood.
The mountain should still have projected more than three thousand feet above the waves, allowing that the average rise during the thirty-six days since the recommencement of the flood had been six hundred feet a day.
But, in fact, they did not see it at all, and thought at first that it had been totally submerged. At last they found it, a little rocky island, less than two hundred feet above the water, according to Cosmo"s careful measure, made from a distance of a quarter of a mile.
"This is great news for us," he exclaimed, as soon as he had completed the work. "This will save us a long journey round. The water must now stand at about 27,900 feet, and although there are a considerable number of peaks in the Himalayas approaching such an elevation, there are only three or four known to reach or exceed it, of which Kunchingunga is one.
"We can, then, run right over the roof of the world, and there we"ll be, in Tibet. Then we can determine from what side it is safest to approach Mount Everest, for I am very desirous to get near that celebrated peak, and, if possible, see it go under."
"But the weather isn"t safe yet," objected Captain Arms. "Suppose we should be caught in another downpour, and everything black about us! I"m not going to navigate this ship by searchlight among mountains twenty-eight thousand feet tall, when the best beam that ever shot from a mirror won"t show an object a hundred fathoms away."
"Very well," Cosmo replied, "we"ll circle around south for a few days and see what will happen. I think myself that it"s not quite over yet.
The fact is, I hope it isn"t, for now that it has gone so far, I"d like to see the top-knot of the earth covered."
"Well, it certainly couldn"t do any more harm if it got up as high as the moon," responded the captain.
They spent four days sailing to and fro over India, and during the first three of those days there were intermittent downpours. But the whole of the last period of twenty-four hours was entirely without rain, and the color of the sky changed so much that Cosmo declared he would wait no longer.
"Everest," he said, "is only 940 feet higher than Kunchingunga, and it may be sunk out of sight before we can get there."
"Do you think the water is still rising?" asked De Beauxchamps, while King Richard and Amos Blank listened eagerly for the reply, for now that the weather had cleared, the old company was all a.s.sembled on the bridge.