Robur the Conqueror. Jules Verne

a bolt, or if the key had been left in the lock.

      A few minutes’ work had no other result than to chip the bowie knife’s blades, dull them, transform them into thousand-toothed saws.

      “No bite, Phil Evans?”

      “No.”

      “Are we in a metal cell?”

      “Not at all, Uncle Prudent. When you hit the walls, they don’t give off any metallic sound.”

      “Ironwood, then?”

      “No! Not iron, and not wood.”

      “What is it then?”

      “That’s impossible to say, but in any case, a substance steel can’t bite.”

      Uncle Prudent, overtaken by a violent fit of anger, swore, kicked the floor ringingly, while his hands sought to strangle an imaginary Robur.

      “Calmly now, Uncle Prudent,” said Phil Evans to him, “calmly! Your turn to try it.”

      Uncle Prudent tried it, but the bowie knife could not open up a wall that its best blades could not so much as scratch, as if the wall were made of crystal.

      Thus, all escape was impracticable, even assuming it could be tried once the door was open.

      The prisoners had to resign themselves for the moment, which hardly fits the Yankee temperament, and leave all to chance, which is disgusting to eminently practical minds. But not without objurgations, strong language, violent invectives addressed to that Robur—who clearly was not a man to be moved by such things, no matter how little he showed in private life of the personage he had been in the midst of the Weldon Institute.

      Meanwhile, Frycollin was beginning to show some unmistakable signs of dizziness. Whether he was suffering from cramps in the stomach or cramps in the limbs, he was thrashing lamentably.

      Uncle Prudent thought it his duty to put an end to these gymnastics, by cutting the ropes that bound the Negro.

      Perhaps he soon regretted it. What followed was an interminable litany, in which agonies of fear were mixed with torments of hunger. Frycollin’s head was spinning as much as his stomach. It would have been difficult to say which of those two organs the Negro should have blamed more for what he was feeling.

      “Frycollin!” shouted Uncle Prudent.

      “Master Uncle! … Master Uncle! …” replied the Negro between two lugubrious wails.

      “It is possible we’ll be condemned to starve to death in this prison. But we’ve decided not to succumb until we’ve exhausted every means of feeding ourselves to prolong our lives …”

      “You’ll eat me?” cried Frycollin.

      “As one always eats a Negro in such a circumstance! … So, Frycollin, have a care to lie low …”

      “Or we’ll fry your collin!” added Phil Evans.²

      And Frycollin, very seriously, did fear being used to prolong two existences evidently more precious than his own. He therefore confined himself to silent moaning.

      Meanwhile, time was going by, and all attempts to force the door or the wall had remained in vain. What that wall was made of, impossible to know. It was not metal, not wood, not stone. Furthermore, the floor of the cell seemed to be made of the same material. When it was kicked, it let out a peculiar sound that Uncle Prudent would have been hard pressed to categorize among known noises. Another remark: this floor below them seemed to ring hollow, as if it did not rest directly on the ground of the clearing. Yes! The inexplicable frrr seemed to caress its underside. None of which was very reassuring.

      “Uncle Prudent?” said Phil Evans.

      “Phil Evans?” replied Uncle Prudent.

      “Do you think our cell has been moved?”

      “Not in the least.”

      “And yet, the first moment we were locked in, I could distinctly make out the fresh smell of grass, and the resin scent of those trees in the park. Now, I’ve inhaled the air over and over again, and it seems to me all those scents have disappeared …”

      “They have indeed.”

      “How do we explain that?”

      “We can explain it in any way at all, Phil Evans, except by the hypothesis that our prison has moved. I say again, if we were in a wagon on the road or a boat on the waves, we’d feel it.”

      Frycollin then let out a long groan that could have passed for his last breath, had it not been followed by many others.

      “I’d like to think that Robur will summon us before him soon,” resumed Phil Evans.

      “I certainly hope so,” cried Uncle Prudent, “and I’d tell him …”

      “What?”

      “That having begun as a blowhard, he’s finished up as a rogue!”

      At that moment, Phil Evans noticed that day was beginning to break. A glow, still vague, filtered through the narrow window cut in the upper half of the wall opposite the door. Therefore it must have been about four in the morning, since it is at that hour, in the month of June and in that latitude, that the Philadelphia horizon gleams in the first light of dawn.

      However, when Uncle Prudent tested his repeater watch—a masterpiece from his colleague’s own factory—the little bell indicated only a quarter to three, even though the watch clearly had not stopped.

      “How odd!” said Phil Evans. “At a quarter to three, it still ought to be night.”

      “Then my watch must be slow …” replied Uncle Prudent.

      “A watch from the Walton Watch Company?” shouted Phil Evans.

      Be that as it may, it was indeed day dawning. Little by little, the window was traced in white in the profound darkness of the cell. However, though dawn had arrived more prematurely than the fortieth parallel, which is that of Philadelphia, would permit, it did not occur with that speed characteristic of the lower latitudes.

      New observation from Uncle Prudent on that subject, new inexplicable phenomenon.

      “Perhaps we can hoist somebody up to the window,” observed Phil Evans, “and try to see where we are?”

      “We can,” replied Uncle Prudent.

      And, addressing Frycollin:

      “Here, Fry, on your feet!”

      The Negro rose.

      “Put your back against this wall,” Uncle Prudent went on, “and you, Phil Evans, be so kind as to climb on this lad’s shoulders, while I support you so you don’t fall.”

      “Willingly,” replied Phil Evans.

      An instant later, with his knees on Frycollin’s shoulders, he had his eyes level with the window.

      This window was covered, not with a lenticular lens like that of a ship’s porthole, but with a simple pane of glass. Though it was not very thick, it was enough to obstruct Phil Evans’s vision, as his field of view was excessively limited.

      “Well then, break the glass,” said Uncle Prudent, “and perhaps you’ll be able to see better.”

      Phil Evans struck the glass violently with the handle of his bowie knife. It made a silvery noise but did not break.

      Second strike, more violent. Same result.

      “Ha!” cried Phil Evans, “unbreakable glass!”

      And indeed, the window must have been made with glass treated by the inventor Siemens’s process,³ for, despite repeated strikes, it remained intact.

      Nonetheless, the space was now sufficiently lit to allow the eye to look outside—at least, within the