Off on a Comet! a Journey through Planetary Space, Jules Verne [good books to read for beginners .txt] 📗

flecked with foam, dashed through the Mascara Gate, which was one of five entrances opened in the embattled wall that encircled the town.

At that date, Mostaganem contained about fifteen thousand inhabitants, three thousand of whom were French. Besides being one of the principal district towns of the province of Oran, it was also a military station. Mostaganem rejoiced in a well-sheltered harbor, which enabled her to utilize all the rich products of the Mina and the Lower Shelif. It was the existence of so good a harbor amidst the exposed cliffs of this coast that had induced the owner of the Dobryna to winter in these parts, and for two months the Russian standard had been seen floating from her yard, whilst on her mast-head was hoisted the pennant of the French Yacht Club, with the distinctive letters M. C. W. T., the initials of Count Timascheff.

Having entered the town, Captain Servadac made his way towards Matmore, the military quarter, and was not long in finding two friends on whom he might rely—a major of the 2nd Fusileers, and a captain of the 8th Artillery. The two officers listened gravely enough to Servadac’s request that they would act as his seconds in an affair of honor, but could not resist a smile on hearing that the dispute between him and the count had originated in a musical discussion. Surely, they suggested, the matter might be easily arranged; a few slight concessions on either side, and all might be amicably adjusted. But no representations on their part were of any avail. Hector Servadac was inflexible.

“No concession is possible,” he replied, resolutely. “Rossini has been deeply injured, and I cannot suffer the injury to be unavenged. Wagner is a fool. I shall keep my word. I am quite firm.”

“Be it so, then,” replied one of the officers; “and after all, you know, a sword-cut need not be a very serious affair.”

“Certainly not,” rejoined Servadac; “and especially in my case, when I have not the slightest intention of being wounded at all.”

Incredulous as they naturally were as to the assigned cause of the quarrel, Servadac’s friends had no alternative but to accept his explanation, and without farther parley they started for the staff office, where, at two o’clock precisely, they were to meet the seconds of Count Timascheff. Two hours later they had returned. All the preliminaries had been arranged; the count, who like many Russians abroad was an aide-de-camp of the Czar, had of course proposed swords as the most appropriate weapons, and the duel was to take place on the following morning, the first of January, at nine o’clock, upon the cliff at a spot about a mile and a half from the mouth of the Shelif. With the assurance that they would not fail to keep their appointment with military punctuality, the two officers cordially wrung their friend’s hand and retired to the Zulma Cafe for a game at piquet. Captain Servadac at once retraced his steps and left the town.

For the last fortnight Servadac had not been occupying his proper lodgings in the military quarters; having been appointed to make a local levy, he had been living in a gourbi, or native hut, on the Mostaganem coast, between four and five miles from the Shelif. His orderly was his sole companion, and by any other man than the captain the enforced exile would have been esteemed little short of a severe penance.

On his way to the gourbi, his mental occupation was a very laborious effort to put together what he was pleased to call a rondo, upon a model of versification all but obsolete. This rondo, it is unnecessary to conceal, was to be an ode addressed to a young widow by whom he had been captivated, and whom he was anxious to marry, and the tenor of his muse was intended to prove that when once a man has found an object in all respects worthy of his affections, he should love her “in all simplicity.” Whether the aphorism were universally true was not very material to the gallant captain, whose sole ambition at present was to construct a roundelay of which this should be the prevailing sentiment. He indulged the fancy that he might succeed in producing a composition which would have a fine effect here in Algeria, where poetry in that form was all but unknown.

“I know well enough,” he said repeatedly to himself, “what I want to say. I want to tell her that I love her sincerely, and wish to marry her; but, confound it! the words won’t rhyme. Plague on it! Does nothing rhyme with ‘simplicity’? Ah! I have it now:

‘Lovers should, whoe’er they be, Love in all simplicity.’

But what next? how am I to go on? I say, Ben Zoof,” he called aloud to his orderly, who was trotting silently close in his rear, “did you ever compose any poetry?”

“No, captain,” answered the man promptly: “I have never made any verses, but I have seen them made fast enough at a booth during the fete of Montmartre.”

“Can you remember them?”

“Remember them! to be sure I can. This is the way they began:

‘Come in! come in! you’ll not repent The entrance money you have spent; The wondrous mirror in this place Reveals your future sweetheart’s face.’”

“Bosh!” cried Servadac in disgust; “your verses are detestable trash.”

“As good as any others, captain, squeaked through a reed pipe.”

“Hold your tongue, man,” said Servadac peremptorily; “I have made another couplet.

‘Lovers should, whoe’er they be, Love in all simplicity; Lover, loving honestly, Offer I myself to thee.’”

Beyond this, however, the captain’s poetical genius was impotent to carry him; his farther efforts were unavailing, and when at six o’clock he reached the gourbi, the four lines still remained the limit of his composition.