Page:Works of Jules Verne - Parke - Vol 1.djvu/217

Rh of his left hand towards the ceiling, and uttered the word " Excelsior! "

Never had an unexpected popular measure of Messrs. Cobden or Bright never had a demand by Lord Palmerston for an extra vote to arm the English coast defenses met with equal success. The doctor was at once sublime, powerful, unassuming, and prudent. He had struck the key-note of the situation.

"Excelsior!"

The old commodore, completely "brought up in the wind " by this extraordinary man, moved that the entire speech of Doctor Ferguson be entered in the Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society.

Now, who was this Doctor Ferguson, and to what enterprise was he about to devote himself ? The father of Ferguson was a captain in the English merchant service, and had accustomed his son, from his earliest years, to the dangers and risks of his own profession. The brave lad, who knew not what fear meant, soon displayed an adventurous spirit and desire for information, and a remarkable predilection for scientific research. He also showed a wonderful aptitude for getting out of scrapes, and he was never embarrassed, not even when using a fork for the first time, in which attempt children are not generally successful.

As he grew older, his imagination became stimulated by tales of hairbreadth escapes and records of maritime discovery. He followed diligently the routes of those travelers who made the first part of the nineteenth century famous in history. He longed for the glories of Mungo Park, of Bruce, Caille, and Levaillant, and even of Selkirk and Robinson Crusoe, which were to him in no way inferior. How many happy hours had he passed in the Island of Juan Fernandez? He sometimes approved of the ideas of the shipwrecked sailor, sometimes he denied the propriety of his plans and projects. He would himself have acted differently, to better effect perhaps, or at least as well, at any rate.

However, one thing was certain: he would never have quitted that pleasant island, where he would have been as happy as a king without subjects no, not if they had offered to make him First Lord of the Admiralty!