Mathias Sandorf/Page 25

Mathias Sandorf - IV,1

CHAPTER XII. CEUTA.
the 21st of September, three weeks after the doctor left Catania, a swift steam yacht—the “Ferrato”—could have been seen running before a north-easterly breeze between the European cape, the English hold on Spanish ground, and the African cape, the Spaniards hold on Moorish ground. If we are to believe mythology, the twelve miles that separate these capes from each other were cleared away by Hercules—a predecessor of De Lesseps who let in the Atlantic by knocking a hole with his club in the border of the Mediterranean.

Point Pescade would not have forgotten to tell this to his friend Cape Matifou as he showed him to the north the rock of Gibraltar, and to the south Mount Hacho. And Cape Matifou would have appreciated at its full value this wonderful feat, and not a shade of envy overshadowed his simple, modest soul. The Provençal Hercules would have bowed low before the son of Jupiter and Alcmena.

But Cape Matifou was not among the yacht's passengers, and neither was Point Pescade. One taking care of the other, both had remained at Antekirtta. If, later on, their assistance became necessary, they could be summoned by telegram, and brought from the island by one of the “Electrics.”

On the “Ferrato” were the doctor and Pierre Bathory, and in command were Kostrik and Luigi. The last expedition to Sicily in search of Sarcany and Toronthal had resulted in nothing beyond the death of Zirone. They had therefore decided to resume the chase by obtaining from Carpena all the information he possessed as to Sarcany and his accomplice; and as the Spaniard had been sent to the galleys and shipped to Ceuta, they were on their way there to find him.

Ceuta is a small fortified town, a sort of Spanish Gibraltar, built on the eastern slopes of Mount Hacho; and it was in sight of its harbor that the yacht was now steaming some three miles from the coast. No more animated spot exists than this famous strait. It is the mouth of the Mediterranean. Through it come the thousands of vessels from Northern Europe and the two Americas, bound for hundreds of ports on the coast of the inland sea. Through it come the powerful mail-boats and ships of war, for which the genius of a Frenchman has opened a way to the Indian Ocean and the Southern Seas. Nothing can be more picturesque than this narrow channel through the mountains. To the north are the sierras of Andalusia. To the south, along the strangely varied coast-line, from Cape Spartel to Almina, are the black summits of the Bullones, the Apes' Hill, and the Seven Brothers. To the right and left are picturesque towns crouching in the curves of the bays, straggling on the flanks of the lower hills and stretching along the beaches at the base of the mountainous background—such as Tarifa, Algesiras, Tangiers, and Ceuta. Between the two shores, cut by the prows of the rapid steamers that stop not for wind or wave, and the sailing vessels that the westerly winds keep back at times in hundreds, there stretches the expanse of ever-moving water, ever changing, here gray and streaked with foam, there blue and calm, and broken into restless bills that mark the zigzagged current-line. No one can remain insensible to the sublime beauties that the two continents, Europe and Africa, bring face to face along the double panorama of the Straits of Gibraltar.

Swiftly does the “Ferrato” approach the African coast. The bay at the back of which Tangiers is hidden begins to close, while the rock of Ceuta becomes more visible as the shore beyond trends away to the south. Above, toward the top of Mount Hacho, there appears a fort, built on the site of a Roman citadel, in which the sentries keep constant watch over the straits and the Moorish territory of which Ceuta is but a slip.

At ten o'clock the “Ferrato” dropped anchor in the harbor, or rather about two cable-lengths from the pier which receives the full strength of the sea; for there is nothing but an open roadstead exposed to the surf of the Mediterranean waves. Fortunately when vessels can not anchor to the west of Ceuta, they find a second anchorage on the other side of the rock, in which they lie sheltered from the easterly winds.

When the health officer had been on board, and the clean bill duly passed, about one o'clock in the afternoon, the doctor, accompanied by Pierre, went ashore, and landed at the little quay at the foot of the town walls. That he was fully determined to carry off Carpena did not admit of a doubt. But how would he do so? Nothing could be done until he had seen the place and made himself acquainted with the circumstances, and then he would be able to decide if it were best to carry off the Spaniard by force, or help him to escape.

This time the doctor did not attempt to remain incognito. Quite the contrary. Already his correspondents had been on board and gone off again to announce the arrival of so famous an individual. Who throughout that Arab country from Suez to Cape Spartel had not heard of the reputation of the learned taleb who now lived in retirement at Antekirtta in the Syrtic Sea? And so the Spaniards, like the Moors, gave him a hearty welcome, and as there were no restrictions on visiting the “Ferrato,” very many boats came off to her.

All this excitement was evidently part of the doctor's plan. His celebrity was to be brought in to help his enterprise. Pierre and he did nothing to restrain the public enthusiasm. An open carriage obtained from the chief hotel enabled them to visit the town with its narrow streets of gloomy houses destitute of character and color, and its little squares with sickly, dusty trees shading some miserable inn or one or two official buildings. In a word, there was nothing original to be seen except perhaps in the Moorish quarter, where color had not entirely disappeared.

About three o'clock the doctor requested to be taken to the governor of Ceuta, whom he wished to visit—an act of courtesy quite natural on the part of a stranger of distinction.

It need scarcely be said that the governor was not a civil functionary. Ceuta is above all things a military colony. It contains about 10,000 people, officers and soldiers, merchants, fishermen or coasting sailors housed in the town and along the strip of land whose prolongation toward the east completes the Spanish possession.

Ceuta was then administered by Colonel Guyarre. He had under his orders three battalions of infantry detached from the continental army to serve their time in Africa, one regiment permanently quartered in the colony, two batteries of artillery, a company of engineers and a company of Moors, whose families occupied special quarters. The convicts amounted to nearly 2000.

To reach the governor's house the carriage had to traverse a macadamized road outside the town which ran through the colony to its eastern end. On each side of the road a narrow band between the foot of the hills and the waste along be beach is well tilled, thanks to the assiduous labor of the inhabitants, who have a hard struggle against the poverty of the soil. Vegetables of all sorts and even trees are there to be found—and the laborers are many.

For the convicts are sentenced to various periods ranging from twenty years to detention for life, and are set to work in various ways under conditions determined by the government. They are not only employed by the state in special workshops, on the fortifications and the roads which require constant repair, but fulfill the duties of urban police when their good conduct permits

During his visit to Ceuta the doctor met several of these moving about freely in the streets of the town, and even engaged in domestic work, but he saw a much larger number outside the fortifications, employed on the roads and in the fields. To which class Carpena belonged it was important he should know, as his scheme would have to be modified to suit the man's being at work, guarded or unguarded, either for the State or a private individual.

“But,” said he to Pierre, “as his conviction is so recent it is unlikely that he would have obtained the advantages accorded to old stagers for good conduct.”

“But if he is under lock and key?” asked Pierre

“Then his capture will be more difficult, but it must be managed.”

The carriage rolled slowly along. At a couple of hundred yards beyond the fortifications a number of convicts under a guard were working at macadamizing the road. They were about fifty, some breaking stones, others scattering them, and others rolling them in. The carriage had to proceed slowly along the side where the repairs had not been commenced.

Suddenly the doctor touched Pierre's arm.

“There he is!” said he, in a low voice.

A man was resting on the handle of his pickax, about twenty paces in front of his companions.

It was Carpena.

The doctor, after fifteen years, recognized the salt-marsh worker of Istria in his convict garb, as Maria Ferrato had recognized him in his Maltese dress in the lanes of the Manderaggio. He was even then only pretending to work. Unfit for any trade, he could not be employed in any of the workshops, and he was not really able to break stones on the road.

Although the doctor had recognized him, Carpena had not recognized Count Mathias Sandorf. He had only seen him for so short a time on the banks of the canal and in the house of Ferrato, the fisherman, when he brought in the police. But like everybody else he had heard that Dr. Antekirtt had arrived at Ceuta; and Dr. Antekirtt he remembered was the personage of whom Zirone had spoken during their interview near the grotto of Polyphemus on the coast of Sicily. He was the man whom Sarcany had warned them to beware of, he was the millionaire over whom Zirone's band had met their destruction at the Casa degli Inglesi.

What passed in Carpena's brain when he found himself so unexpectedly in the doctor's presence? Did he receive an impression with that instantaneousness which characterizes certain photographic processes? It would be difficult to say. But he did feel that the doctor had taken possession of him by a sort of moral ascendency, that his personality had been annihilated, that a strange will had taken the place of his own will. In vain he would have resisted; he had to yield to the domination.

The carriage stopped and the doctor continued to gaze into his eyes with penetrating fixity. The brilliancy of those eyes produced, in Carpena's brain a strange and irresistible effect. Gradually the Spaniard's senses faded. His eyelids blinked and closed and retained only a flickering vibration. Then the anæsthesia became complete and he fell by the side of the road without his companions seeing anything of what had passed; and there he slept in a magnetic sleep from which not one of them could rouse him.

The doctor gave orders for the coachman to drive on to the governor's house. The scene had not occupied more than half a minute. No one had noticed what had passed between the Spaniard and the doctor—no one except Pierre Bathory.

“Now that man is mine,” said the doctor, “and I can do what I like with him.”

“Shall we find out all he knows?” asked Pierre.

“No, but he will do all that I require, and that unconsciously. At the first glance I gave at the scoundrel I saw I could become his master, and substitute my will for his.”

“But the man was not ill.”

“Eh! Do you think then that these effects of hypnosis can only be produced on neuropaths? No, Pierre, the most refractory are not safe from them. On the contrary, it is necessary that the subject should have a will of his own, and I was favored by circumstances in finding in Carpena a nature entirely disposed to submit to my influence. And so he will remain asleep until I choose to wake him.”

“Exactly,” said Pierre, “but what is the good of it seeing that even in the state he now finds himself it is impossible to make him tell us what we are so anxious to know?”

“Doubtless,” answered the doctor, “and it is obvious that I can not make him say what I do not know myself. But he is in my power. I can make him do what I please and when I think fit I shall make him do it, and he will be powerless to prevent it. For example, to-morrow, or the day after, or a week after, or six months after, even if he has awoke, if I desire him to leave Ceuta he will leave Ceuta!”

“Leave Ceuta!” said Pierre. “Gain his liberty! But will the warders let him? The influence of the suggestion can not make him break his chain, nor open the prison gate, nor scale an unscalable wall—”

“No Pierre,” replied the doctor, “I can not compel him to do what I could not do myself, and it is for that reason that I am now on my way to visit the Governor of Ceuta.”

The doctor was not exaggerating. The fact of the influence of suggestion in the hypnotic state is now admitted. The works and observations of Charcot, Brown-Sequard, Azam, Richet, Dumontpallier, Maudslay, Bernheim, Hack Tuke, Reiger, and many others leave no doubt on the subject. During his travels in the East the doctor had studied some of the more curious cases, and had added to that branch of physiology a rich contingent of new observations. He was thoroughly well informed as to the phenomena and the results that could be obtained from them. Gifted himself with great suggestive power, which he had often exercised in Asia Minor, it was on it that he relied to carry off Carpena, if chance had not made the Spaniard insensible to its influence.

But if the doctor was henceforth master of Carpena, if he could make him do what he liked in suggesting to him his own will, it was still necessary that the prisoner should be free to move when the time came for him to accomplish whatever might be his work. And this permission the doctor hoped to obtain from Colonel Guyarre in such a form as to render it possible for the Spaniard to escape.

Ten minutes later the carriage arrived at the entrance to the large barracks just inside the Spanish boundary, and drew up before the governor's house.

Colonel Guyarre had already been informed that Dr. Antekirtt was in Ceuta. Thanks to the reputation he had gained by his talents and fortune, this famous individual was a sort of monarch on his travels, and as soon as he entered the reception-room the colonel gave a hearty welcome to him and his young companion, Pierre Bathory, and at the outset offered to put at their entire disposal the “little piece of Spain so fortunately cut off from the Moorish territory.”

“We thank yon for your offer,” was the doctor's reply in Spanish, a language which, like him, Pierre understood and spoke fluently. “But I am not sure that we shall be able to take advantage of your kindness.”

“Oh! The colony is not a large one, Doctor Antekirtt,” answered the governor. “In half a day you could get round it! Are you going to stay here any time?”

“Four or five hours at the most,” said the doctor, “I must leave to-night for Gibraltar, where I have an appointment to-morrow morning.”

“Leave this evening!” exclaimed the governor. “Allow me to insist! I assure you, Doctor Antekirtt, that our military colony is worth studying thoroughly! You have doubtless seen much and observed much during your travels, but perhaps have not paid much attention to the question of prison discipline; and I assure you that Ceuta is worth study, not only by scientific men, but by economists.”

Naturally the governor was not without some conceit in singing the praises of his colony, but he did not exaggerate in the least. The administrative system of Ceuta is considered one of the best in the world, both as affecting the material well-being of the convicts and their moral amelioration. The governor insisted that a man in Dr. Antekirtt's position should delay his departure so as to honor by a visit the different departments of the Penitentiary.

“That would be impossible, but to-day I am at your service, and if you like—”

“It is four o'clock,” said Colonel Guyarre, “and you see there is so little time—”

“Quite so,” said the doctor, “and I am in a similar fix, for just as you wish me to do the honors of your colony, I am anxious to do you the honors of my yacht.”

“Can not you postpone for to-day your departure to Gibraltar?”

“I would do so if an appointment had not been arranged for me for to-morrow, and which, as I say, compels me to sail.”

“That is really annoying!” replied the governor, “and I shall never console myself for not having kept you longer! But take care! I have got your vessel under the guns of my forts and I can sink her if I give the word!”

“And the reprisals?” answered the doctor with a laugh. “Are you prepared for a war with the mighty Kingdom of Antekirtta?”

“I know that would be serious!” replied the governor, in the same tone. “But what would we not risk to keep you here twenty-four hours longer?”

Pierre did not take part in this conversation. He contented himself with wondering if the doctor was making any progress toward the object he had in view. The decision to leave Ceuta that evening astonished him not a little. How, in so short a time, could he take the indispensable steps for bringing about Carpena's escape? In a few hours the convicts would be sent back to jail and shut up for the night, and then to get the Spaniard away was a very doubtful undertaking indeed.

But Pierre saw that the doctor was acting on a quickly formed plan when he heard the reply—

“Really, I am deeply grieved that I can not accept your invitation—to-day at least! But we might perhaps arrange it in some way?”

“Say on, doctor, say on!”

“As I must be at Gibraltar to-morrow morning, I must leave here to-night. But I do not think my stay on the rock will last more than two or three days. It is now Thursday, and instead of continuing my voyage up the north of the Mediterranean, nothing could be easier than for me to call at Ceuta on Sunday morning—”

“Nothing could be easier,” interrupted the governor, “and nothing would give me greater pleasure. Of course my vanity has something to do with it, but who has not some vanity in this world? So it is agreed, Dr. Antekirtt, Sunday?”

“Yes, on one condition!”

“Whatever it be, I accept!”

“That you and your aid-de-camp come to breakfast with me on the ‘Ferrato.’”

“With pleasure, but on one condition also!”

“Following you, whatever it be, I accept.”

“That Monsieur Bathory and you come and dine with me!”

“Very good, and we will go the rounds between breakfast and dinner.”

“And I will abuse my authority to make you admire all the splendors of my kingdom!” replied Guyarre, shaking hands with the doctor.

Pierre also accepted the invitation, and bowed respectfully to the very obliging and very much satisfied Governor of Ceuta.

The doctor then prepared to take his leave, and Pierre read in his eyes that he had gained his object. But the governor would not allow them to leave alone, and accompanied them to the town. The three, therefore, took their seats in the carriage, and drove along the only road which put the residence in communication with Ceuta.

The governor would not have been a Spaniard if he had not enlarged on the more or less contestable beauties of the little colony, on the improvements he proposed to introduce in both military and civic matters, on superiority of the situation of the ancient Abyla to that of Calpe, on the fact of its being possible to make of it a Gibraltar as impregnable as that belonging to Britain, and of course he protested against the insolence of Mr. Ford in saying that “Ceuta ought to belong to England, for Spain does nothing, and hardly knows how to keep it,” and showed great irritation against the English, “who never put their foot on a piece of ground without the foot taking root.”

“Yes,” he remarked, “before they think of taking Ceuta let them take care of Gibraltar! There is a mountain there that Spain will one day shake down on their heads!”

The doctor, without inquiring how the Spaniards were to bring about such a geological commotion, did not contest the statement, which was made with all the loftiness of a hidalgo. And besides, the conversation was interrupted by the sudden stoppage of the vehicle. The driver had to pull in his horses before a crowd of some fifty convicts that barred the road.

The governor beckoned to one of the sergeants to approach. The sergeant immediately advanced to the carriage with military step, and with his heels together and his hand at his peak, waited to be spoken to.

The other prisoners and warders were drawn up on each side of the road.

“What is the matter?” asked the governor.

“Excellency,” replied the sergeant, “here is a convict we have found on the bank who seems to be asleep, and we can not wake him.”

“How long has he been in that state?”

“About an hour.”

“Has he been asleep all the time?”

“He has, your excellency. He is as insensible as if he was dead. We have shaken him, and prodded him, and even fired a pistol close to his ear. But he feels nothing and hears nothing.”

“Why did you not send for the surgeon?” asked the governor.

“I did send for him, your excellency, but he was not at home, and until he comes we do not know what to do with this man.”

“Well, take him to the hospital.”

The sergeant was about to execute the order when the doctor intervened.

“Will your excellency allow me, as a physician, to examine this recalcitrant sleeper? I shall not be sorry to have a closer look at him.”

“And it is really your trade, is it not?” answered the governor. “A lucky rascal to be a patient of Doctor Antekirtt! He will not have much cause to complain.”

The three left the carriage and the doctor walked up to the convict, who was stretched at full length by the side of the road. In the man's heavy sleep the only signs of life were the panting respiration and the beating of the pulse.

The doctor made a sign that the crowd should stand away from him. Then he bent over the inert body, spoke to it in a low voice, looked at it for some time, as if he wished to penetrate its brain with his will.

Then he arose.

“It is nothing,” said he. “The man has simply fallen into a magnetic sleep!”

“Indeed!” said the governor. “That is very curious! And can you wake him?”

“Nothing can be easier,” answered the doctor. And after touching Carpena's forehead he gently lifted his eye-lids and said:

“Awake! I will it so!”

Carpena shook himself and opened his eyes, though he still remained in a state of somnolence. The doctor made several passes across his face so as to stir the cushion of air, and gradually the torpor left him. Then he sat up; then unconscious of all that had happened he took his place among his companions.

The governor, the doctor, and Pierre Bathory stepped into the carriage and resumed their road to the town.

“Had not that rascal had something to drink?” asked the governor.

“I do not think so,” replied the doctor. “It was only a simple effect of somnambulism.”

“But how is it produced?”

“That I can not say. Perhaps the man is subject to such attacks. But now he is on his legs again, and none the worse for it.”

Soon the carriage reached the fortifications, entered the town, crossed it obliquely, and stopped in the little square above the wharf.

The doctor and the governor took leave of each other with great cordiality.

“There is the ‘Ferrato,’” said the doctor, pointing to the yacht, which was gracefully riding at her anchor.

“You will not forget that you have accepted my invitation to breakfast on board of her on Sunday?”

“No more than you will forget, Doctor Antekirtt, that yon are to dine with me on Sunday evening.”

“I shall not fail to be with you!”

They separated; and the governor did not leave the wharf until the gig had started.

And when as they were on their way back Pierre asked the doctor if all had gone as he wished, the reply was:

“Yes! On Sunday evening, with the permission of the Governor of Ceuta, Carpena will be on board the ‘Ferrato.’”

At eight o'clock the steam yacht left her anchorage, proceeded to the north, and Mount Hacho, the most prominent height of this part of the Moorish coast, soon vanished in the mists of the night.