Off on a Comet, Jules Verne [10 ebook reader .txt] 📗

CHAPTER VI

THE CAPTAIN MAKES AN EXPLORATION

 

Hector Servadac was not the man to remain long unnerved by any

untoward event. It was part of his character to discover the why

and the wherefore of everything that came under his observation,

and he would have faced a cannon ball the more unflinchingly

from understanding the dynamic force by which it was propelled.

Such being his temperament, it may well be imagined that he was

anxious not to remain long in ignorance of the cause of the phenomena

which had been so startling in their consequences.

 

“We must inquire into this to-morrow,” he exclaimed, as darkness

fell suddenly upon him. Then, after a pause, he added:

“That is to say, if there is to be a to-morrow; for if I were

to be put to the torture, I could not tell what has become

of the sun.”

 

“May I ask, sir, what we are to do now?” put in Ben Zoof.

 

“Stay where we are for the present; and when daylight appears—

if it ever does appear—we will explore the coast to the west and south,

and return to the gourbi. If we can find out nothing else,

we must at least discover where we are.”

 

“Meanwhile, sir, may we go to sleep?”

 

“Certainly, if you like, and if you can.”

 

Nothing loath to avail himself of his master’s permission, Ben Zoof

crouched down in an angle of the shore, threw his arms over his eyes,

and very soon slept the sleep of the ignorant, which is often sounder

than the sleep of the just. Overwhelmed by the questions that crowded

upon his brain, Captain Servadac could only wander up and down the shore.

Again and again he asked himself what the catastrophe could portend.

Had the towns of Algiers, Oran, and Mostaganem escaped the inundation?

Could he bring himself to believe that all the inhabitants, his friends,

and comrades had perished; or was it not more probable that the Mediterranean

had merely invaded the region of the mouth of the Shelif? But this

supposition did not in the least explain the other physical disturbances.

Another hypothesis that presented itself to his mind was that the African

coast might have been suddenly transported to the equatorial zone.

But although this might get over the difficulty of the altered altitude

of the sun and the absence of twilight, yet it would neither account

for the sun setting in the east, nor for the length of the day being

reduced to six hours.

 

“We must wait till to-morrow,” he repeated; adding, for he had become

distrustful of the future, “that is to say, if to-morrow ever comes.”

 

Although not very learned in astronomy, Servadac was acquainted

with the position of the principal constellations. It was

therefore a considerable disappointment to him that, in consequence

of the heavy clouds, not a star was visible in the firmament.

To have ascertained that the pole-star had become displaced

would have been an undeniable proof that the earth was revolving

on a new axis; but not a rift appeared in the lowering clouds,

which seemed to threaten torrents of rain.

 

It happened that the moon was new on that very day; naturally, therefore,

it would have set at the same time as the sun. What, then, was the captain’s

bewilderment when, after he had been walking for about an hour and a half,

he noticed on the western horizon a strong glare that penetrated even

the masses of the clouds.

 

“The moon in the west!” he cried aloud; but suddenly bethinking himself,

he added: “But no, that cannot be the moon; unless she had shifted very much

nearer the earth, she could never give a light as intense as this.”

 

As he spoke the screen of vapor was illuminated to such a degree

that the whole country was as it were bathed in twilight.

“What can this be?” soliloquized the captain. “It cannot be the sun,

for the sun set in the east only an hour and a half ago.

Would that those clouds would disclose what enormous luminary lies

behind them! What a fool I was not to have learnt more astronomy!

Perhaps, after all, I am racking my brain over something that is

quite in the ordinary course of nature.”

 

But, reason as he might, the mysteries of the heavens still

remained impenetrable. For about an hour some luminous body,

its disc evidently of gigantic dimensions, shed its rays upon

the upper strata of the clouds; then, marvelous to relate,

instead of obeying the ordinary laws of celestial mechanism,

and descending upon the opposite horizon, it seemed to retreat

farther off, grew dimmer, and vanished.

 

The darkness that returned to the face of the earth was not more

profound than the gloom which fell upon the captain’s soul.

Everything was incomprehensible. The simplest mechanical rules

seemed falsified; the planets had defied the laws of gravitation;

the motions of the celestial spheres were erroneous as those of a

watch with a defective mainspring, and there was reason to fear

that the sun would never again shed his radiance upon the earth.

 

But these last fears were groundless. In three hours’ time, without any

intervening twilight, the morning sun made its appearance in

the west, and day once more had dawned. On consulting his watch,

Servadac found that night had lasted precisely six hours.

Ben Zoof, who was unaccustomed to so brief a period of repose,

was still slumbering soundly.

 

“Come, wake up!” said Servadac, shaking him by the shoulder;

“it is time to start.”

 

“Time to start?” exclaimed Ben Zoof, rubbing his eyes.

“I feel as if I had only just gone to sleep.”

 

“You have slept all night, at any rate,” replied the captain;

“it has only been for six hours, but you must make it enough.”

 

“Enough it shall be, sir,” was the submissive rejoinder.

 

“And now,” continued Servadac, “we will take the shortest way back

to the gourbi, and see what our horses think about it all.”

 

“They will think that they ought to be groomed,” said the orderly.

 

“Very good; you may groom them and saddle them as quickly as you like.

I want to know what has become of the rest of Algeria:

if we cannot get round by the south to Mostaganem, we must

go eastwards to Tenes.” And forthwith they started.

Beginning to feel hungry, they had no hesitation in gathering

figs, dates, and oranges from the plantations that formed

a continuous rich and luxuriant orchard along their path.

The district was quite deserted, and they had no reason to fear

any legal penalty.

 

In an hour and a half they reached the gourbi.

Everything was just as they had left it, and it was evident

that no one had visited the place during their absence.

All was desolate as the shore they had quitted.

 

The preparations for the expedition were brief and simple.

Ben Zoof saddled the horses and filled his pouch with biscuits

and game; water, he felt certain, could be obtained in abundance

from the numerous affluents of the Shelif, which, although they

had now become tributaries of the Mediterranean, still meandered

through the plain. Captain Servadac mounted his horse Zephyr,

and Ben Zoof simultaneously got astride his mare Galette,

named after the mill of Montmartre. They galloped off in

the direction of the Shelif, and were not long in discovering

that the diminution in the pressure of the atmosphere had precisely

the same effect upon their horses as it had had upon themselves.

Their muscular strength seemed five times as great as hitherto;

their hoofs scarcely touched the ground, and they seemed

transformed from ordinary quadrupeds into veritable hippogriffs.

Happily, Servadac and his orderly were fearless riders;

they made no attempt to curb their steeds, but even urged them

to still greater exertions. Twenty minutes sufficed to carry them

over the four or five miles that intervened between the gourbi

and the mouth of the Shelif; then, slackening their speed,

they proceeded at a more leisurely pace to the southeast, along what

had once been the right bank of the river, but which, although it

still retained its former characteristics, was now the boundary

of a sea, which extending farther than the limits of the horizon,

must have swallowed up at least a large portion of the province

of Oran. Captain Servadac knew the country well; he had at one

time been engaged upon a trigo-nometrical survey of the district,

and consequently had an accurate knowledge of its topography.

His idea now was to draw up a report of his investigations:

to whom that report should be delivered was a problem he had

yet to solve.

 

During the four hours of daylight that still remained,

the travelers rode about twenty-one miles from the river mouth.

To their vast surprise, they did not meet a single human being.

At nightfall they again encamped in a slight bend of the shore,

at a point which on the previous evening had faced the mouth

of the Mina, one of the left-hand affluents of the Shelif,

but now absorbed into the newly revealed ocean. Ben Zoof made

the sleeping accommodation as comfortable as the circumstances

would allow; the horses were clogged and turned out to feed

upon the rich pasture that clothed the shore, and the night

passed without special incident.

 

At sunrise on the following morning, the 2nd of January, or what,

according to the ordinary calendar, would have been the night of the 1st,

the captain and his orderly remounted their horses, and during

the six-hours’ day accomplished a distance of forty-two miles.

The right bank of the river still continued to be the margin

of the land, and only in one spot had its integrity been impaired.

This was about twelve miles from the Mina, and on the site of the annex

or suburb of Surkelmittoo. Here a large portion of the bank had been