Mathias Sandorf/Page 24

Mathias Sandorf - III,7

CHAPTER X. THE CASA DEGLI INGLESI.
day, about one o'clock in the afternoon, the doctor and Pierre Bathory completed their preparations to go ashore.

The gig received its passengers; but before he left, the doctor ordered Captain Kostrik to watch for the arrival of “Electric No. 2,” then hourly expected, and to send her out beyond the Farrighonis, otherwise known as the rocks of Polyphemus. If the plan succeeded: if Sarcany, or even Zirone and Carpena, were taken prisoners, the launch would be ready to convey them to Antekirtta, where he would have them in his power.

The gig put off. In a few minutes she reached the steps at the wharf. Dr. Antekirtt and Pierre had assumed the usual dress of tourists ascending the mountain, who may have to endure a temperature of fourteen degrees below freezing, while at the sea level it stands at fifty degrees above that point. A guide was in waiting with the horses, which at Nicolosi were to be replaced by mules, as more untiring and surer of foot.

The town of Catania is of little width, compared to its length, and was soon crossed. Nothing occurred to show that the doctor was watched and followed. Pierre and he, after taking the Belvidere road, began to ascend the earlier slopes of the mountain to which the Sicilians give the name of Mongibello, and of which the diameter is not less than twenty-five miles.

The road is uneven and winding. It turns aside frequently to avoid the lava streams and basaltic rocks solidified millions of years ago, the dry ravines filled in the spring-time with the impetuous torrents, and on its way it cuts through a well-wooded region of olive-trees, orange-trees, carob-trees, ash-trees and long-branched vines. This is the first of the three zones which gird the volcano, the “mountain of the smithy,” the Phœnician translation of the word Etna—“the spike of the earth and the pillar of the sky” for the geologists of an age when geological science did not exist.

After a couple of hours' climbing, during a halt of some minutes more needed by the horses than the riders, the doctor and Pierre beheld at their feet the town of Catania, the superb rival of Palermo. They could look down on the lines of its chief streets running parallel to the quays, the towers and domes of its hundred churches, the numerous and picturesque convents, and the houses in the pretentious style of the seventeenth century—all inclosed in the belt of green that encircles the city. In the foreground was the harbor, of which Etna itself formed the principal walls in the eruption of 1669 which destroyed fourteen towns and villages and claimed 18,000 victims, and poured out over the country more than a million cubic yards of lava.

Etna is quieter now, and it has well earned the right to rest. In fact there have been more than thirty eruptions since the Christian era. That Sicily has not been overwhelmed is a sufficient proof of the solidity of its foundation. It should be noted, however, that the volcano has not formed a permanent crater. It changes it as it pleases. The mountain falls in where one of the fire-vomiting abysses opens, and from the gap there spreads the lavic matter accumulated on the flanks. Hence the numerous small volcanoes—the Monte Rossi, a double mountain piled up in three months to a height of 400 feet by tho sands and scoriæ of 1669, Frumento, Simoni, Stornello, Crisinco, arranged like the turrets around a cathedral dome, to say nothing of the craters of 1809, 1811, 1819, 1838, 1852, 1865, 1875, whose funnels perforate the flanks of the central cone like the cells of a bee-hive.

After crossing the hamlet of Belvidere the guide took a short cut so as to reach the Kamertieri road near that from Nicolosi. The first cultivated zone extends almost from this town to 2,120 feet above. It was nearly four o'clock in the afternoon when Nicolosi appeared, and the travelers had not met with a single adventure along the nine miles from Catania, and had seen neither boars nor wolves. They had still twelve and a half miles to go before they reached the Casa degli Inglesi.

“How long will your excellency stop here?” asked the guide.

“No longer than necessary,” answered the doctor; “let us get in to-night about nine o'clock.”

“Forty minutes then?”

“Forty minutes be it.”

And that was enough to procure a hasty meal in one of the two inns of the town, which—be it said to the honor of the 3,000 inhabitants of Nicolosi, including the beggars who swarm in it—has rather a better culinary reputation than most Sicilian inns.

A piece of kid, some fruit, raisins, oranges, and pomegranates, and San Placido wine from the environs of Catania—there are very few more important towns in Italy in which an innkeeper would offer as much.

Before five o'clock the doctor, Pierre, and the guide, mounted on their mules, were climbing the second stage of the ascent—the forest zone. Not that the trees there are numerous, for the wood-cutters, as everywhere else, are at work destroying the ancient forests, which will soon be no more than a mythologic remembrance. Here and there, however, in clumps and groups, along the sides of the lava streams and on the edges of the abysses, grow beeches and oaks and almost black-leaved figs, and then, still higher, firs and pines and birches. Even the cinders, mixed with a little mold, give birth to large masses of ferns, fraxinellas, and mallons, rising from a carpet of moss.

About eight o'clock in the evening the doctor and Pierre had already reached the 3280 feet almost marking the limit of perpetual snow, which on the flanks of Etna is abundant enough to supply all Italy and Sicily. They were then in the region of black lavas, cinders, and scoriæ which stretches away beyond an immense crevasse, the vast elliptic amphitheater of the Valle del Bove, forming cliffs from 1000 to 3000 feet high, at whose base lie the strata of trachyte and basalt which the elements have not yet destroyed.

In front rose the cone of the volcano, on which here and there a few phanerogams formed hemispheres of verdure. This central hump, which is quite a mountain in itself—a Pelion on Ossa rises till it reaches an altitude of 10,874 feet above the level of the sea.

Already the ground trembled under foot. Vibrations caused by the plutonic laboring ever present in the mountain ran beneath the patches of snow. The cloud of sulphurous vapors drawn down by the wind from the mouth of the crater occasionally reached to the base of the cone, and a shower of scoriæ, like incandescent coke, fell on the whitish carpet, where it hissed as it suddenly cooled.

The temperature was then very low—many degrees below zero—and respiration had become difficult, owing to the rarefaction of the air. The travelers wrapped their cloaks more closely round them. A biting wind cut across the shoulder of the mountain, whirling along the snow-flakes it had swept from the ground. From the height there could be seen the mouth whence issued the faintly flickering flame and many other secondary craters, narrow solfataras or gloomy depths, at the bottom of which could be heard the roaring of the subterranean fire—a continuous roaring, rising occasionally into a storm, as if it were due to an immense boiler from which the steam had forced up the valves. No eruption was anticipated, however, and all this internal rage was due to the rumblings of the higher crater and the eructations from the volcanic throats that opened out on to the cone.

It was then nine o'clock. The sky was resplendent with thousands of stars that the feeble density of the atmosphere at this altitude rendered still more sparkling. The moon's crescent was dipping in the west in the waters of the Æolian Sea. On a mountain that was not an active volcano the calm of the night would have been sublime.

“We ought to have arrived,” said the doctor.

“There is the Casa degli Inglesi,” answered the guide.

And he pointed to a short wall having two windows and a door, which its position had protected from the snow, about fifty paces away to the left, and nearly 1400 feet below the summit of the central zone. This was the house constructed in 1811 by the English officers then stationed in Sicily. It is built on a plateau at the base of the lava mass named Piano del Lago.

However, Dr. Antekirtt, Pierre Bathory, and the guide came up to the Casa degli Inglesi, and as soon as they reached it they knocked at the door, which was opened immediately. A moment afterward they were among their men.

The Casa degli Inglesi consists of only three rooms, with table, chairs, and cooking utensils; but that was enough for the climbers of Etna, after reaching a height of 9469 feet. Till then Luigi, fearing that the presence of his little detachment might be suspected, had not lighted a fire, although the cold was extreme. But now there was no need to continue the precaution, for Zirone knew that the doctor was to spend the night at the Casa degli Inglesi. Some wood found in reserve in the shed was therefore piled on the hearth, and soon a crackling flame gave the needed warmth and light.

The doctor took Luigi apart and asked him if anything had happened since he arrived.

“Nothing,” answered Luigi. “But I am afraid that our presence here is not as secret as we wished.”

“And why?”

“Because after we left Nicolosi, if I am not mistaken, we were followed by a man who disappeared just before we reached the base of the cone.”

“That is a pity, Luigi! That may prevent Zirone from having the honor to surprise me! Since sundown no one has been looking round the Casa degli Inglesi?”

“No one, sir,” answered Luigi; “I even took the precaution to search the ruins of the Philosopher's Tower; there is nobody there.”

“See that a man is always on guard at the door! You can see a good way to-night, for it is so clear, and it is important that we should not be surprised.”

The doctor's orders were executed, and when he had taken his place on a stool by the fire the men lay down on the bundles of straw around him. Cape Matifou, however, came up to the doctor. He looked at him without daring to speak. But it was easy to understand what made him anxious.

“You wish to know what has become of Point Pescade?” asked the doctor. “Patience! He will return soon, although he is now playing a game that might cost him his neck.”

An hour elapsed, and nothing occurred to trouble the solitude around the central cone. Not a shadow appeared on the shining slope in front of the Piarro del Lago. Both the doctor and Pierre experienced an impatience and even an anxiety that they could not restrain. If unfortunately Zirone had been warned of the presence of the little detachment he would never dare to attack the Casa degli Inglesi. The scheme had failed. And yet somehow it was necessary to get hold of this accomplice of Sarcany, failing Sarcany himself.

A little before ten o'clock the report of a gun was heard about half a mile below the Casa degli Inglesi.

They all went out and looked about, but saw nothing suspicious.

“It was unmistakably a gun!” said Pierre.

“Perhaps some one out after an eagle or a boar!” answered Luigi.

“Come in,” said the doctor, “and keep yourselves out of sight.”

They went back into the house.

But ten minutes afterward the sailor on guard without rushed in hurriedly.

“All hands!” he said. “I think I can see—”

“Many of them?” asked Pierre.

“No, only one!”

The doctor, Pierre, Luigi, Cape Matifou went to the door, taking care to keep out of the light.

They saw a man bounding along like a chamois, and crossing the lines of the old lava which ran alongside the plateau. He was alone, and in a few bounds he fell into the arms that were held open for him—the arms of Cape Matifou.

It was Point Pescade.

“Quick! Quick! Undercover, doctor!” he exclaimed.

In an instant all were inside the Casa degli Inglesi, and the door was immediately shut.

“And Zirone?” asked the doctor, “what has become of him? You have had to leave him?”

“Yes, to warn you!”

“Is he not coming?”

“In twenty minutes he will be here.”

“So much the better.”

“No! So much the worse! I do not know how he was told that you had first sent up a dozen men.”

“Probable by the mountaineer that followed us!” said Luigi.

“Anyhow he knows it,” answered Pescade, “and he saw that you were trying to get him in a trap.”

“He will come then!” said Pierre.

“He is coming, Mr. Pierre! But to the dozen recruits he had from Malta there has been added the rest of the band, who came in this very morning to Santa Grotta.”

“And how many bandits are there?” asked the doctor.

“Fifty,” replied Pescade.

The position of the doctor and his little band, consisting of the eleven sailors, Luigi, Pierre, Cape Matifou and Point Pescade—sixteen against fifty—was rather alarming; and if anything was to be done it should be done immediately.

But in the first place the doctor wanted to know from Pescade what had happened, and this is what he was told:

That morning Zirone had returned from Catania, where he had passed the night, and he it was whom the doctor had noticed prowling about the gardens of the Villa Bellini. When he returned to Santa Grotta he found a mountaineer who gave him the information that a dozen men, coming from different directions, had occupied the Casa degli Inglesi.

Zirone immediately understood how matters lay. It was no longer he who was trapping the doctor, but the doctor who was trapping him. Point Pescade, however, insisted that Zirone ought to attack the Casa degli Inglesi, assuring him that the Maltese would soon settle the doctor's little band. But Zirone remained none the less undecided what he should do, and the urgency of Point Pescade appeared so suspicious that Zirone gave orders that he should be watched, which Pescade easily and immediately discovered. It is probable that Zirone would have given up his idea of carrying off the doctor had not his band been re-enforced about three o'clock in the afternoon. Then, with fifty men under his orders, he no longer hesitated, and leaving Santa Grotta with all his followers, he advanced on the Casa degli Inglesi.

Point Pescade saw that the doctor and his people were lost if he did not warn them in time, so as to let them escape, or, at least, put them on their guard. He waited until the gang were in sight of the Casa degli Inglesi, the position of which he did not know. The light shining in the windows rendered it visible about nine o'clock, when he was less than two miles off on the slopes of the cone. As soon as he saw it, Point Pescade set off at a run. A gun was fired at him by Zirone—the one that was heard up at the Casa—but it missed him. With his acrobatic agility, he was soon out of range. And that is how he had arrived at the house only about twenty minutes in advance of Zirone.

CHAPTER XI. THE FIGHT ON MOUNT ETNA.
Point Pescade had told his story, a clasp from the doctor's hand thanked him for what he had done. The next question was how to foil the brigands. To leave the Casa degli Inglesi, and retreat in the middle of the night down the flanks of the volcano, with Zirone and his people knowing every footpath and every refuge, was to expose themselves to complete destruction. To wait for daylight to entrench themselves and defend themselves in the house, would be a far more advantageous plan. When the day came, if they had to retreat, they could at least do so in broad daylight, and would not go out, like blind men, down the precipices and solfataras. The decision was, therefore, to remain and fight. The preparations for the defense immediately commenced.

At first the two windows of the Casa degli Inglesi had to be closed, and their shutters firmly fastened down. As embrasures there were the openings between where the rafters of the roof rested on the front wall. Each man was provided with a quick-firing rifle and twenty cartridges. The doctor, Pierre, and Luigi could assist with their revolvers, but Cape Matifou had only his arms, and Point Pescade had only his hands. Perhaps they were not the worst armed.

Nearly forty minutes passed and no attempt at attack had been made. Zirone, knowing that Dr. Antekirtt had been warned by Point Pescade, and could not be surprised, had possibly abandoned his idea. With fifty men under his command and all the advantage that a thorough knowledge of the ground could give him, he had certainly all the chances on his side.

Suddenly about eleven o'clock the sentry reported a number of men approaching in skirmishing order so as to attack the hut on three sides—the fourth side, for its backing on to the slope, afforded no possible retreat. The maneuver having been discovered, the door was shut and barricaded, and the men took their posts near the rafters with orders not to fire unless they were sure of their object.

Zirone and his men advanced slowly and cautiously, taking advantage of the cover of the rocks to reach the crest of the Piarro del Lago. On this crest there were heaped up enormous masses of trachyte and basalt, intended probably to protect the Casa degli Inglesi from being destroyed by the snow during the winter. Having reached this plateau the assailants could more easily charge up to the house, break through the door or windows, and with the aid of their superior numbers carry off the doctor and his people.

Suddenly there was a report. A light smoke drifted in between the rafters. A man fell mortally wounded. The bandits at once rushed back and disappeared behind the rocks. But gradually, profiting by the unevenness of the ground, Zirone brought his men to the foot of the Piarro del Lago; but he did not do so until a dozen shots had been fired from the eaves of the Casa degli Inglesi—and two more of his associates were stretched dead on the snow.

Zirone then gave the word to storm, and at the cost of several more wounded the whole band rushed on the Casa degli Inglesi. The door was riddled with bullets, and two sailors were wounded, but not seriously, and had to stand aside while the struggle grew brisker. With their pikes and hatchets the assailants attempted to break in the door and one of the windows, and a sortie had to be undertaken to repel them under an incessant fusillade from all sides. Luigi had his hand pierced by a bullet, and Pierre, without the assistance of Cape Matifou, would have been killed by a pike thrust, had not Hercules seized the pike and settled its possessor at one blow.

During this sortie Cape Matifou was quite a terror. Twenty times was he shot at, and not a bullet reached him. If Zirone won Point Pescade was a dead man, and the thought of this redoubled his anger. Against such resistance the assailants had again to retreat; and the doctor and his friends returned into the Casa and reviewed their position.

“What ammunition have you left?” asked he.

“Ten or a dozen cartridges per man,” said Luigi.

“And what o'clock is it?”

“Hardly midnight.”

Four hours still to daybreak! The men must be more careful with the ammunition, for some of it would be wanted to protect the retreat at the earliest streak of dawn.

But how could they defend the approaches or prevent the capture of the Casa degli Inglesi if Zirone and his band again tried an assault? And that is what he did in a quarter of an hour's time, after taking all the wounded to the rear under shelter of a line of lava that did duty for an intrenchment. When they had done this the bandits, enraged at the resistance, and drunk with fury at the sight of five or six of their injured comrades, mounted the ridge and appeared on the crest of the plateau.

Not a shot was fired as they crossed the open, and hence Zirone concluded that the besieged were running short of ammunition. The idea of carrying off a millionaire was just the thing to excite the cupidity of the scoundrels that followed him. Such was their fury during this attack that they forced the door and the window, and would have taken the house by assault had not a volley point blank killed five or six of them. They had, therefore, to return to the foot of the plateau, not without wounding two of the sailors, who could take no further part in the fray.

Four or five rounds were all that remained to the defenders of the Casa degli Inglesi. Under these circumstances retreat even during daylight had almost become impossible. They felt that they were lost if help did not come. But where could help come from? Unfortunately they could not expect that Zirone and his companions would give up their enterprise. They were still nearly forty in number, unhurt and well armed. They knew that the besieged would soon be unable to reply to their fire, and they returned to the charge.

Suddenly enormous blocks like the rocks of an avalanche came rolling down the slope and crushed three between them before they had time to step aside.

Cape Matifou had started the rocks in order to hurl them over the crest of the Piarro del Lago. But this means of defense was not enough. The heap of rocks would soon be used up, and the besieged would have to surrender or seek help from outside.

Suddenly an idea occurred to Point Pescade which he did not care to mention to the doctor for fear that he would not give his consent. But he went and whispered it to Cape Matifou.

He knew from what he had heard at Santa Grotta that a detachment of gendarmes was at Cassone. To reach Cassone would only take an hour, and it would take another hour to get back. Could he not run away and fetch this detachment? Yes, but only by passing through the besiegers, and making off to the westward.

“It is necessary for me to go through, and I will through!” he said. “I am an acrobat, or I am not.”

And he told Cape Matifou what he proposed to do.

“But,” said Matifou, “your risk—”

“I will go!”

Cape Matifou never dared to resist Point Pescade.

Both then went to the right of the Casa degli Inglesi, where the snow had accumulated to a considerable depth.

Ten minutes afterward, while the struggle continued along the front, Cape Matifou appeared pushing before him a huge snowball, and among the rocks that the sailors continued to hurl on to their assailants he sent the snowball, which rolled down the slope past Zirone's men, and stopped fifty yards in the rear at the bottom of a gentle hollow. It half broke with the shock; it opened and from it emerged a living man, active and “a little malicious,” as he said of himself.

It was Point Pescade. Inclosed in the carapace of hardened snow, he had dared being started on the slope of the mountain at the risk of being rolled into the depths of some abyss!

And now he was free, he made the best haste he could along the footpaths to Cassone.

It was then half past twelve.

At this moment the doctor, not seeing Pescade, thought he was wounded. He called him.

“Gone!” said Cape Matifou.

“Gone?”

“Yes! To get some help!”

“And how?”

“In a snowball!”

And Cape Matifou told him what Pescade had done.

“Ah! Brave fellow!” exclaimed the doctor. “Courage, my friends! The scoundrels will not have us after all.”

And the masses of rock continued to roll down on the assailants, although the means of defense were rapidly becoming exhausted.

About three o'clock in the morning the doctor, Pierre, Luigi, Cape Matifou, and the sailors, carrying their wounded, would have to evacuate the house and allow it to fall into the possession of Zirone, twenty of whose companions had been killed. The retreat would have to be up the central cone—that heap of lava, scoriæ and cinders, whose summit, the crater, was an abyss of fire. All, however, were to ascend the cone, and carry their wounded with them. Of the 1000 feet they would have to climb over 700 feet would be through the sulphurous fumes that the winds beat down from the top.

The day began to break, and already the crests of the Calabrian Mountains above the eastern coast of the Straits of Messina were tipped with the coming light. But in the position in which the doctor and his men found themselves the day had no chance of being welcomed. They would have to fight as they retreated up the slope, using their last cartridges and hurling down the last masses of rock that Matifou sent flying along with such superhuman strength. They had almost given themselves up for lost when the sound of guns was heard below them. A moment of indecision was observed among the bandits; they hesitated; and then they broke into full flight down the mountain side. They had sighted the gendarmes who had arrrived from Cassone, Point Pescade at their head.

He had not had to go as far as the village. The gendarmes had heard the firing and were already on the road. All he had to do was to lead them to the Casa degli Inglesi.

Then the doctor and his men took the offensive. Cape Matifou, as if he were an avalanche himself, bounded on the nearest and knocked down two before they had time to get away, and then he rushed at Zirone.

“Bravo, old Cape! Bravo!” shouted Pescade, running up. “Down with him! Lay him flat! The contest, gentlemen, the desperate contest between Zirone and Cape Matifou!”

Zirone heard him, and with the hand that remained free he fired his revolver at Pescade, who fell to the ground.

And then there was a terrible scene. Cape Matifou had seized Zirone and was dragging him along by his neck. The wretch, half-strangled, could do nothing to help himself.

In vain the doctor, who wished to have him alive, shouted out for him to be spared. In vain Pierre and Luigi rushed up to stop him. Cape Matifou thought of one thing only—Zirone had mortally wounded Point Pescade! He heard nothing, he saw nothing. He gave one last leap on to the edge of the gaping crater of a solfatara, and hurled the bandit into the abyss of fire!

Point Pescade, seriously wounded, was lifted on to the doctor's knee. He examined and bathed the wound. When Cape Matifou returned to him, great tears were rolling down his cheeks.

“Never fear, old Cape; never fear! It is nothing!” murmured Pescade.

Cape Matifou took him in his arms like a child, and followed by all, went down the side of the cone, while the gendarmes gave chase to the last fugitive of Zirone's band.

Six hours afterward the doctor and his men had returned to Catania, and were on board the “Ferrato.” Point Pescade was laid in the cabin, with Dr. Antekirtt for surgeon, and Cape Matifou for nurse; he was well looked after. His wound, a bullet in the shoulder, was not of a serious kind. His cure was only a question of time. When he wanted sleep Cape Matifou told him tales, always the same tales and Point Pescade was soon in sound slumber.

However, the doctor's campaign had opened unsuccessfully. After nearly falling into Zirone's hands he had not been able to get hold of Sarcany's companion and obtain the information from him that he wanted—and all owing to Cape Matifou! Although the doctor stayed at Catania for eight days he could obtain no news of Sarcany. If Sarcany had intended to rejoin Zirone in Sicily his plans had been changed probably when he heard the result of the attempt on Dr. Antekirtt.

The “Ferrato” put to sea on the 8th of September, bound for Antekirtta, and she arrived after a rapid passage.

Then the doctor, Pierre, and Luigi conferred as to their future plans. The first thing to do was obviously to get hold of Carpena, who ought to know what had become of Sarcany and Silas Toronthal.

Unfortunately for the Spaniard, although he escaped the destruction of Zirone's band he remained at Santa Grotta, and his good fortune was of short duration. In fact, ten days afterward one of the doctor's agents informed him that Carpena had been arrested at Syracuse—not as an accomplice of Zirone, but for a crime committed more than fifteen years ago, a murder at Almayate in the province of Malaga, which had caused his flight to Rovigno.

Three weeks later Carpena, whose extradition was obtained, was condemned to the galleys and sent to the coast of Morocco, to Ceuta, which is one of the chief penitentiary establishments of Spain.

“At last,” said Pierre, “there is one of the scoundrels settled for life!”

“For life? No!” answered the doctor. “If Andrea Ferrato died in prison, it is not in prison that Carpena ought to die.”

1 Works have now been commenced by the Italian government and the municipality of Catania for transforming the Casa degli Inglesi into an observatory. This house, which is sometimes called the Casa Etnea, after having been kept up for a long lime by M. Gemellaro, the brother of the geologist of that name, had just been restored by the Alpine Club. Not very far away there loomed in the darkness the ruins of Roman origin which are known as the Tower of the Philosophers. From it legend states that Empedocles was precipitated into the crater; in fact, it would require a singular dose of philosophy to spend eight hours of solitude in such a spot, and we can quite understand the act of the celebrated philosopher of Agrigentum.

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The first sentence of the preceding footnote is a translation of Verne's footnote. The remainder is the translation of a paragraph of Verne's text, mistakenly added to the footnote by Munro.

2 Translator's error. Verne: trois mille mètres, 3,000 metres, or 9,843 feet.