<SPAN name="startofbook"></SPAN>
<h4>Facing the Flag by Jules Verne</h4>
<P class=normal><b>[Redactor’s Note:</b> <i>Facing the Flag</i> {number
<b>V044</b> in the T&M listing of Verne’s works} is an anonymous translation
of <i>Face au drapeau</i> (1896) first published in the U.S. by F. Tennyson
Neely in 1897, and later (circa 1903) republished from the same plates by Hurst
and F.M. Lupton (Federal Book Co.). Two apparent errors, which occur also in the
french editions, have been made: the replacement of “Sivan” by “Swan” and of
“Roandoke” by “Roanoke”. This is a different translation from the one published
by Sampson & Low in England entitled <i>For the Flag</i> (1897) translated
by Mrs. Cashel Hoey.<b>]</b></p>
<hr>
<DIV align=center>
<h2>FACING THE FLAG</h2>
<H5>BY</h5>
<h3>J U L E S V E R N E</h3>
<H5>AUTHOR OF "AROUND THE WORLD IN EIGHTY DAYS"; "TWENTY<br/>THOUSAND LEAGUES
UNDER THE SEA"; "FROM THE EARTH TO THE MOON," ETC.</h5>
<p> </p>
<P class=center>New York</p>
<P class=center>THE F. M. LUPTON PUBLISHING COMPANY</p>
<P class=center>PUBLISHERS</p>
<hr>
<P class=center>Copyright, 1897<br/>by<br/>F. TENNYSON NEELY</p>
<hr>
<table cellSpacing=1 cellPadding=2 width="70%" border=0>
<CAPTION><b>CONTENTS</b></CAPTION>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>CHAP </td>
<td> </td></tr>
<tr>
<td width="20%">I.</td>
<td>Healthful House</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>II.</td>
<td>Count d'Artigas</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>III.</td>
<td>Kidnapped</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>IV.</td>
<td>The Schooner “Ebba”</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>V.</td>
<td>Where am I.--(Notes by Simon Hart, the Engineer.)</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>VI.</td>
<td>On Deck</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>VII.</td>
<td>Two Days at Sea</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>VIII.</td>
<td>Back Cup</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>IX.</td>
<td>Inside Back Cup</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>X.</td>
<td>Ker Karraje</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>XI.</td>
<td>Five Weeks in Back Cup</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>XII.</td>
<td>Engineer Serko’s Advice</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>XIII.</td>
<td>God Be with It</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>XIV.</td>
<td>Battle Between the “Sword” and the Tug</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>XV.</td>
<td>Expectation</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>XVI.</td>
<td>Only a few more Hours</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>XVII.</td>
<td>One against Five</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>XVIII.</td>
<td>On Board the “Tonnant”</td></tr></tbody></table></DIV>
<hr>
<h4>FACING THE FLAG.</h4>
<h4>CHAPTER I.</h4>
<h4>HEALTHFUL HOUSE.</h4>
<p>The <i>carte de visite</i> received that day, June 15, 189—, by the director
of the establishment of Healthful House was a very neat one, and simply bore,
without escutcheon or coronet, the name:</p>
<P class=center>COUNT D’ARTIGAS.</p>
<p>Below this name, in a corner of the card, the following address was written
in lead pencil:</p>
<p>“On board the schooner <i>Ebba</i>, anchored off New-Berne, Pamlico
Sound.”</p>
<p>The capital of North Carolina—one of the forty-four states of the Union at
this epoch—is the rather important town of Raleigh, which is about one hundred
and fifty miles in the interior of the province. It is owing to its central
position that this city has become the seat of the State legislature, for there
are others that equal and even surpass it in industrial and commercial
importance, such as Wilmington, Charlotte, Fayetteville, Edenton, Washington,
Salisbury, Tarborough, Halifax, and New-Berne. The latter town is situated on
estuary of the Neuse River, which empties itself into Pamlico Sound, a sort of
vast maritime lake protected by a natural dyke formed by the isles and islets of
the Carolina coast.</p>
<p>The director of Healthful House could never have imagined why the card should
have been sent to him, had it not been accompanied by a note from the Count
d’Artigas soliciting permission to visit the establishment. The personage in
question hoped that the director would grant his request, and announced that he
would present himself in the afternoon, accompanied by Captain Spade, commander
of the schooner <i>Ebba</i>.</p>
<p>This desire to penetrate to the interior of the celebrated sanitarium, then
in great request by the wealthy invalids of the United States, was natural
enough on the part of a foreigner. Others who did not bear such a high-sounding
name as the Count d’Artigas had visited it, and had been unstinting in their
compliments to the director. The latter therefore hastened to accord the
authorization demanded, and added that he would be honored to open the doors of
the establishment to the Count d’Artigas.</p>
<p>Healthful House, which contained a select <i>personnel</i>, and was assured
of the co-operation of the most celebrated doctors in the country, was a private
enterprise. Independent of hospitals and almshouses, but subjected to the
surveillance of the State, it comprised all the conditions of comfort and
salubrity essential to establishments of this description designed to receive an
opulent <i>clientele</i>.</p>
<p>It would have been difficult to find a more agreeable situation than that of
Healthful House. On the landward slope of a hill extended a park of two hundred
acres planted with the magnificent vegetation that grows so luxuriantly in that
part of North America, which is equal in latitude to the Canary and Madeira
Islands. At the furthermost limit of the park lay the wide estuary of the Neuse,
swept by the cool breezes of Pamlico Sound and by the winds that blew from the
ocean beyond the narrow <i>lido</i> of the coast.</p>
<p>Healthful House, where rich invalids were cared for under such excellent
hygienic conditions, was more generally reserved for the treatment of chronic
complaints; but the management did not decline to admit patients affected by
mental troubles, when the latter were not of an incurable nature.</p>
<p>It thus happened—a circumstance that was bound to attract a good deal of
attention to Healthful House, and which perhaps was the motive for the visit of
the Count d’Artigas—that a person of world-wide notoriety had for eighteen
months been under special observation there.</p>
<p>This person was a Frenchman named Thomas Roch, forty-five years of age. He
was, beyond question, suffering from some mental malady, but expert alienists
admitted that he had not entirely lost the use of his reasoning faculties. It
was only too evident that he had lost all notion of things as far as the
ordinary acts of life were concerned; but in regard to subjects demanding the
exercise of his genius, his sanity was unimpaired and unassailable—a fact which
demonstrates how true is the <i>dictum</i> that genius and madness are often
closely allied! Otherwise his condition manifested itself by complete loss of
memory;—the impossibility of concentrating his attention upon anything, lack of
judgment, delirium and incoherence. He no longer even possessed the natural
animal instinct of self-preservation, and had to be watched like an infant whom
one never permits out of one’s sight. Therefore a warder was detailed to keep
close watch over him by day and by night in Pavilion No. 17, at the end of
Healthful House Park, which had been specially set apart for him.</p>
<p>Ordinary insanity, when it is not incurable, can only be cured by moral
means. Medicine and therapeutics are powerless, and their inefficacy has long
been recognized by specialists. Were these moral means applicable to the case of
Thomas Roch? One may be permitted to doubt it, even amid the tranquil and
salubrious surroundings of Healthful House. As a matter of fact the very
symptoms of uneasiness, changes of temper, irritability, queer traits of
character, melancholy, apathy, and a repugnance for serious occupations were
distinctly apparent; no treatment seemed capable of curing or even alleviating
these symptoms. This was patent to all his medical attendants.</p>
<p>It has been justly remarked that madness is an excess of subjectivity; that
is to say, a state in which the mind accords too much to mental labor and not
enough to outward impressions. In the case of Thomas Roch this indifference was
practically absolute. He lived but within himself, so to speak, a prey to a
fixed idea which had brought him to the condition in which we find him. Could
any circumstance occur to counteract it—to “exteriorize” him, as it were? The
thing was improbable, but it was not impossible.</p>
<p>It is now necessary to explain how this Frenchman came to quit France, what
motive attracted him to the United States, why the Federal government had judged
it prudent and necessary to intern him in this sanitarium, where every utterance
that unconsciously escaped him during his crises were noted and recorded with
the minutest care.</p>
<p>Eighteen months previously the Secretary of the Navy at Washington, had
received a demand for an audience in regard to a communication that Thomas Roch
desired to make to him.</p>
<p>As soon as he glanced at the name, the secretary perfectly understood the
nature of the communication and the terms which would accompany it, and an
immediate audience was unhesitatingly accorded.</p>
<p>Thomas Roch’s notoriety was indeed such that, out of solicitude for the
interests confided to his keeping, and which he was bound to safeguard, he could
not hesitate to receive the petitioner and listen to the proposals which the
latter desired personally to submit to him.</p>
<p>Thomas Roch was an inventor—an inventor of genius. Several important
discoveries had brought him prominently to the notice of the world. Thanks to
him, problems that had previously remained purely theoretical had received
practical application. He occupied a conspicuous place in the front rank of the
army of science. It will be seen how worry, deceptions, mortification, and the
outrages with which he was overwhelmed by the cynical wits of the press combined
to drive him to that degree of madness which necessitated his internment in
Healthful House.</p>
<p>His latest invention in war-engines bore the name of Roch’s Fulgurator. This
apparatus possessed, if he was to be believed, such superiority over all others,
that the State which acquired it would become absolute master of earth and
ocean.</p>
<p>The deplorable difficulties inventors encounter in connection with their
inventions are only too well known, especially when they endeavor to get them
adopted by governmental commissions. Several of the most celebrated examples are
still fresh in everybody’s memory. It is useless to insist upon this point,
because there are sometimes circumstances underlying affairs of this kind upon
which it is difficult to obtain any light. In regard to Thomas Roch, however, it
is only fair to say that, as in the case of the majority of his predecessors,
his pretensions were excessive. He placed such an exorbitant price upon his new
engine that it was practicably impossible to treat with him.</p>
<p>This was due to the fact—and it should not be lost sight of—that in respect
of previous inventions which had been most fruitful in result, he had been
imposed upon with the greatest audacity. Being unable to obtain therefrom the
profits which he had a right to expect, his temper had become soured. He became
suspicious, would give up nothing without knowing just what he was doing, impose
conditions that were perhaps unacceptable, wanted his mere assertions accepted
as sufficient guarantee, and in any case asked for such a large sum of money on
account before condescending to furnish the test of practical experiment that
his overtures could not be entertained.</p>
<p>In the first place he had offered the fulgurator to France, and made known
the nature of it to the commission appointed to pass upon his proposition. The
fulgurator was a sort of auto-propulsive engine, of peculiar construction,
charged with an explosive composed of new substances and which only produced its
effect under the action of a deflagrator that was also new.</p>
<p>When this engine, no matter in what way it was launched, exploded, not on
striking the object aimed at, but several hundred yards from it, its action upon
the atmospheric strata was so terrific that any construction, warship or
floating battery, within a zone of twelve thousand square yards, would be blown
to atoms. This was the principle of the shell launched by the Zalinski pneumatic
gun with which experiments had already been made at that epoch, but its results
were multiplied at least a hundred-fold.</p>
<p>If, therefore, Thomas Roch’s invention possessed this power, it assured the
offensive and defensive superiority of his native country. But might not the
inventor be exaggerating, notwithstanding that the tests of other engines he had
conceived had proved incontestably that they were all he had claimed them to be?
This, experiment could alone show, and it was precisely here where the rub came
in. Roch would not agree to experiment until the millions at which he valued his
fulgurator had first been paid to him.</p>
<p>It is certain that a sort of disequilibrium had then occurred in his mental
faculties. It was felt that he was developing a condition of mind that would
gradually lead to definite madness. No government could possibly condescend to
treat with him under the conditions he imposed.</p>
<p>The French commission was compelled to break off all negotiations with him,
and the newspapers, even those of the Radical Opposition, had to admit that it
was difficult to follow up the affair.</p>
<p>In view of the excess of subjectivity which was unceasingly augmenting in the
profoundly disturbed mind of Thomas Roch, no one will be surprised at the fact
that the cord of patriotism gradually relaxed until it ceased to vibrate. For
the honor of human nature be it said that Thomas Roch was by this time
irresponsible for his actions. He preserved his whole consciousness only in so
far as subjects bearing directly upon his invention were concerned. In this
particular he had lost nothing of his mental power. But in all that related to
the most ordinary details of existence his moral decrepitude increased daily and
deprived him of complete responsibility for his acts.</p>
<p>Thomas Roch’s invention having been refused by the commission, steps ought to
have been taken to prevent him from offering it elsewhere. Nothing of the kind
was done, and there a great mistake was made.</p>
<p>The inevitable was bound to happen, and it did. Under a growing irritability
the sentiment of patriotism, which is the very essence of the citizen—who before
belonging to himself belongs to his country— became extinct in the soul of the
disappointed inventor. His thoughts turned towards other nations. He crossed the
frontier, and forgetting the ineffaceable past, offered the fulgurator to
Germany.</p>
<p>There, as soon as his exorbitant demands were made known, the government
refused to receive his communication. Besides, it so happened that the military
authorities were just then absorbed by the construction of a new ballistic
engine, and imagined they could afford to ignore that of the French
inventor.</p>
<p>As the result of this second rebuff Roch’s anger became coupled with
hatred—an instinctive hatred of humanity—especially after his <i>pourparlers</i>
with the British Admiralty came to naught. The English being practical people,
did not at first repulse Thomas Roch. They sounded him and tried to get round
him; but Roch would listen to nothing. His secret was worth millions, and these
millions he would have, or they would not have his secret. The Admiralty at last
declined to have anything more to do with him.</p>
<p>It was in these conditions, when his intellectual trouble was growing daily
worse, that he made a last effort by approaching the American Government. That
was about eighteen months before this story opens.</p>
<p>The Americans, being even more practical than the English, did not attempt to
bargain for Roch’s fulgurator, to which, in view of the French chemist’s
reputation, they attached exceptional importance. They rightly esteemed him a
man of genius, and took the measures justified by his condition, prepared to
indemnify him equitably later.</p>
<p>As Thomas Roch gave only too visible proofs of mental alienation, the
Administration, in the very interest of his invention, judged it prudent to
sequestrate him.</p>
<p>As is already known, he was not confined in a lunatic asylum, but was
conveyed to Healthful House, which offered every guarantee for the proper
treatment of his malady. Yet, though the most careful attention had been devoted
to him, no improvement had manifested itself.</p>
<p>Thomas Roch, let it be again remarked—this point cannot be too often insisted
upon—incapable though he was of comprehending and performing the ordinary acts
and duties of life, recovered all his powers when the field of his discoveries
was touched upon. He became animated, and spoke with the assurance of a man who
knows whereof he is descanting, and an authority that carried conviction with
it. In the heat of his eloquence he would describe the marvellous qualities of
his fulgurator and the truly extraordinary effects it caused. As to the nature
of the explosive and of the deflagrator, the elements of which the latter was
composed, their manufacture, and the way in which they were employed, he
preserved complete silence, and all attempts to worm the secret out of him
remained ineffectual. Once or twice, during the height of the paroxysms to which
he was occasionally subject, there had been reason to believe that his secret
would escape him, and every precaution had been taken to note his slightest
utterance. But Thomas Roch had each time disappointed his watchers. If he no
longer preserved the sentiment of self-preservation, he at least knew how to
preserve the secret of his discovery.</p>
<p>Pavilion No. 17 was situated in the middle of a garden that was surrounded by
hedges, and here Roch was accustomed to take exercise under the surveillance of
his guardian. This guardian lived in the same pavilion, slept in the same room
with him, and kept constant watch upon him, never leaving him for an hour. He
hung upon the lightest words uttered by the patient in the course of his
hallucinations, which generally occurred in the intermediary state between
sleeping and waking—watched and listened while he dreamed.</p>
<p>This guardian was known as Gaydon. Shortly after the sequestration of Thomas
Roch, having learned that an attendant speaking French fluently was wanted, he
had applied at Healthful House for the place, and had been engaged to look after
the new inmate.</p>
<p>In reality the alleged Gaydon was a French engineer named Simon Hart, who for
several years past had been connected with a manufactory of chemical products in
New Jersey. Simon Hart was forty years of age. His high forehead was furrowed
with the wrinkle that denoted the thinker, and his resolute bearing denoted
energy combined with tenacity. Extremely well versed in the various questions
relating to the perfecting of modern armaments, Hart knew everything that had
been invented in the shape of explosives, of which there were over eleven
hundred at that time, and was fully able to appreciate such a man as Thomas
Roch. He firmly believed in the power of the latter’s fulgurator, and had no
doubt whatever that the inventor had conceived an engine that was capable of
revolutionizing the condition of both offensive and defensive warfare on land
and sea. He was aware that the demon of insanity had respected the man of
science, and that in Roch’s partially diseased brain the flame of genius still
burned brightly. Then it occurred to him that if, during Roch’s crises, his
secret was revealed, this invention of a Frenchman would be seized upon by some
other country to the detriment of France. Impelled by a spirit of patriotism, he
made up his mind to offer himself as Thomas Roch’s guardian, by passing himself
off as an American thoroughly conversant with the French language, in order that
if the inventor did at any time disclose his secret, France alone should benefit
thereby. On pretext of returning to Europe, he resigned his position at the New
Jersey manufactory, and changed his name so that none should know what had
become of him.</p>
<p>Thus it came to pass that Simon Hart, alias Gaydon, had been an attendant at
Healthful House for fifteen months. It required no little courage on the part of
a man of his position and education to perform the menial and exacting duties of
an insane man’s attendant; but, as has been before remarked, he was actuated by
a spirit of the purest and noblest patriotism. The idea of depriving Roch of the
legitimate benefits due to the inventor, if he succeeded in learning his secret,
never for an instant entered his mind.</p>
<p>He had kept the patient under the closest possible observation for fifteen
months yet had not been able to learn anything from him, or worm out of him a
single reply to his questions that was of the slightest value. But he had become
more convinced than ever of the importance of Thomas Roch’s discovery, and was
extremely apprehensive lest the partial madness of the inventor should become
general, or lest he should die during one of his paroxysms and carry his secret
with him to the grave.</p>
<p>This was Simon Hart’s position, and this the mission to which he had wholly
devoted himself in the interest of his native country.</p>
<p>However, notwithstanding his deceptions and troubles, Thomas Roch’s physical
health, thanks to his vigorous constitution, was not particularly affected. A
man of medium height, with a large head, high, wide forehead, strongly-cut
features, iron-gray hair and moustache, eyes generally haggard, but which became
piercing and imperious when illuminated by his dominant idea, thin lips closely
compressed, as though to prevent the escape of a word that could betray his
secret—such was the inventor confined in one of the pavilions of Healthful
House, probably unconscious of his sequestration, and confided to the
surveillance of Simon Hart the engineer, become Gaydon the warder.</p>
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