Off on a Comet, Jules Verne [10 ebook reader .txt] 📗
- Author: Jules Verne
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had no doubt been swallowed up by the encroaching waters.
It seemed, therefore, more than probable that a similar fate had
overtaken the larger towns beyond the Shelif.
In the evening the explorers encamped, as previously, in a nook
of the shore which here abruptly terminated their new domain,
not far from where they might have expected to find the important
village of Memounturroy; but of this, too, there was now no trace.
“I had quite reckoned upon a supper and a bed at Orleansville to-night,”
said Servadac, as, full of despondency, he surveyed the waste of water.
“Quite impossible,” replied Ben Zoof, “except you had gone by a boat.
But cheer up, sir, cheer up; we will soon devise some means for getting
across to Mostaganem.”
“If, as I hope,” rejoined the captain, “we are on a peninsula,
we are more likely to get to Tenes; there we shall hear the news.”
“Far more likely to carry the news ourselves,” answered Ben Zoof,
as he threw himself down for his night’s rest.
Six hours later, only waiting for sunrise, Captain Servadac
set himself in movement again to renew his investigations.
At this spot the shore, that hitherto had been running
in a southeasterly direction, turned abruptly to the north,
being no longer formed by the natural bank of the Shelif,
but consisting of an absolutely new coastline. No land was in sight.
Nothing could be seen of Orleansville, which ought to have been
about six miles to the southwest; and Ben Zoof, who had mounted
the highest point of view attainable, could distinguish sea,
and nothing but sea, to the farthest horizon.
Quitting their encampment and riding on, the bewildered explorers
kept close to the new shore. This, since it had ceased to be formed
by the original river bank, had considerably altered its aspect.
Frequent landslips occurred, and in many places deep chasms rifted
the ground; great gaps furrowed the fields, and trees, half uprooted,
overhung the water, remarkable by the fantastic distortions of their
gnarled trunks, looking as though they had been chopped by a hatchet.
The sinuosities of the coast line, alternately gully and headland,
had the effect of making a devious progress for the travelers,
and at sunset, although they had accomplished more than twenty miles,
they had only just arrived at the foot of the Merdeyah Mountains,
which, before the cataclysm, had formed the extremity of the chain
of the Little Atlas. The ridge, however, had been violently ruptured,
and now rose perpendicularly from the water.
On the following morning Servadac and Ben Zoof traversed one of the
mountain gorges; and next, in order to make a more thorough acquaintance
with the limits and condition of the section of Algerian territory
of which they seemed to be left as the sole occupants, they dismounted,
and proceeded on foot to the summit of one of the highest peaks.
From this elevation they ascertained that from the base of the Merdeyah
to the Mediterranean, a distance of about eighteen miles, a new coast
line had come into existence; no land was visible in any direction;
no isthmus existed to form a connecting link with the territory of Tenes,
which had entirely disappeared. The result was that Captain Servadac
was driven to the irresistible conclusion that the tract of land which
he had been surveying was not, as he had at first imagined, a peninsula;
it was actually an island.
Strictly speaking, this island was quadrilateral, but the sides
were so irregular that it was much more nearly a triangle,
the comparison of the sides exhibiting these proportions:
The section of the right bank of the Shelif, seventy-two miles;
the southern boundary from the Shelif to the chain of the Little Atlas,
twenty-one miles; from the Little Atlas to the Mediterranean,
eighteen miles; and sixty miles of the shore of the Mediterranean itself,
making in all an entire circumference of about 171 miles.
“What does it all mean?” exclaimed the captain, every hour growing
more and more bewildered.
“The will of Providence, and we must submit,” replied Ben Zoof,
calm and undisturbed. With this reflection, the two men
silently descended the mountain and remounted their horses.
Before evening they had reached the Mediterranean. On their road
they failed to discern a vestige of the little town of Montenotte;
like Tenes, of which not so much as a ruined cottage was visible
on the horizon, it seemed to be annihilated.
On the following day, the 6th of January, the two men made
a forced march along the coast of the Mediterranean, which they
found less altered than the captain had at first supposed;
but four villages had entirely disappeared, and the headlands,
unable to resist the shock of the convulsion, had been detached
from the mainland.
The circuit of the island had been now completed, and the explorers,
after a period of sixty hours, found themselves once more beside
the ruins of their gourbi. Five days, or what, according to the
established order of things, would have been two days and a half,
had been occupied in tracing the boundaries of their new domain;
and they had ascertained beyond a doubt that they were the sole
human inhabitants left upon the island.
“Well, sir, here you are, Governor General of Algeria!” exclaimed Ben Zoof,
as they reached the gourbi.
“With not a soul to govern,” gloomily rejoined the captain.
“How so? Do you not reckon me?”
“Pshaw! Ben Zoof, what are you?”
“What am I? Why, I am the population.”
The captain deigned no reply, but, muttering some expressions
of regret for the fruitless trouble he had taken about his rondo,
betook himself to rest.
BEN ZOOF WATCHES IN VAIN
In a few minutes the governor general and his population were asleep.
The gourbi being in ruins, they were obliged to put up with
the best accommodation they could find in the adjacent erection.
It must be owned that the captain’s slumbers were by no means sound;
he was agitated by the consciousness that he had hitherto been unable
to account for his strange experiences by any reasonable theory.
Though far from being advanced in the knowledge of natural
philosophy, he had been instructed, to a certain degree, in its
elementary principles; and, by an effort of memory, he managed
to recall some general laws which he had almost forgotten.
He could understand that an altered inclination of the earth’s axis
with regard to the ecliptic would introduce a change of position
in the cardinal points, and bring about a displacement of the sea;
but the hypothesis entirely failed to account, either for the shortening
of the days, or for the diminution in the pressure of the atmosphere.
He felt that his judgment was utterly baffled; his only remaining
hope was that the chain of marvels was not yet complete, and that
something farther might throw some light upon the mystery.
Ben Zoof’s first care on the following morning was to provide
a good breakfast. To use his own phrase, he was as hungry
as the whole population of three million Algerians, of whom
he was the representative, and he must have enough to eat.
The catastrophe which had overwhelmed the country had left
a dozen eggs uninjured, and upon these, with a good dish of his
famous couscous, he hoped that he and his master might have
a sufficiently substantial meal. The stove was ready for use,
the copper skillet was as bright as hands could make it,
and the beads of condensed steam upon the surface of a large
stone al-caraza gave evidence that it was supplied with water.
Ben Zoof at once lighted a fire, singing all the time,
according to his wont, a snatch of an old military refrain.
Ever on the lookout for fresh phenomena, Captain Servadac
watched the preparations with a curious eye. It struck him
that perhaps the air, in its strangely modified condition,
would fail to supply sufficient oxygen, and that.
the stove, in consequence, might not fulfill its function.
But no; the fire was lighted just as usual, and fanned into
vigor by Ben Zoof applying his mouth in lieu of bellows,
and a bright flame started up from the midst of the twigs and coal.
The skillet was duly set upon the stove, and Ben Zoof
was prepared to wait awhile for the water to boil.
Taking up the eggs, he was surprised to notice that they hardly
weighed more than they would if they had been mere shells;
but he was still more surprised when he saw that before the water
had been two minutes over the fire it was at full boil.
“By jingo!” he exclaimed, “a precious hot fire!”
Servadac reflected. “It cannot be that the fire is hotter,”
he said, “the peculiarity must be in the water.” And taking
down a centigrade thermometer, which hung upon the wall,
he plunged it into the skillet. Instead of 100 degrees,
the instrument registered only 66 degrees.
“Take my advice, Ben Zoof,” he said; “leave your eggs in the saucepan
a good quarter of an hour.”
“Boil them hard! That will never do,” objected the orderly.
“You will not find them hard, my good fellow. Trust me, we shall
be able to dip our sippets into the yolks easily enough.”
The captain was quite right in his conjecture, that this new phenomenon
was caused by a diminution in the pressure of the atmosphere.
Water boiling at a temperature of 66 degrees was itself an evidence
that the column of air above the earth’s surface had become
reduced by one-third of its altitude. The identical phenomenon
would have occurred at the summit of a mountain 35,000 feet high;
and had Servadac been in possession of a barometer, he would have
immediately discovered the fact that only now for the first time,
as the result of experiment, revealed itself to him—a fact,
moreover, which accounted for the compression of the blood-vessels
which both he and Ben Zoof had experienced, as well as for
the attenuation of their voices and their accelerated breathing.
“And yet,” he argued with himself, “if our encampment has been
projected to so great an elevation, how is it that the sea remains
at its proper level?”
Once again Hector Servadac, though capable of tracing consequences,
felt himself totally at a loss to comprehend their cause;
hence his agitation and bewilderment!
After their prolonged immersion in the boiling water,
the eggs were found to be only just sufficiently cooked;
the couscous was very much in the same condition;
and Ben Zoof came to the conclusion that in future he must be
careful to commence his culinary operations an hour earlier.
He was rejoiced at last to help his master, who, in spite
of his perplexed preoccupation, seemed to have a very fair
appetite for breakfast.
“Well, captain?” said Ben Zoof presently, such being his ordinary
way of opening conversation.
“Well, Ben Zoof?” was the captain’s invariable response
to his servant’s formula.
“What are we to do now, sir?”
“We can only for the present wait patiently where we are.
We are encamped upon an island, and therefore we can only be
rescued by sea.”
“But do you suppose that any of our friends are still alive?”
asked Ben Zoof.
“Oh, I think we must indulge the hope that this catastrophe has not
extended far. We must trust that it has limited its mischief to some small
portion of the Algerian coast, and that our friends are all alive and well.
No doubt the governor general will be anxious to investigate the full
extent of the damage, and will send a vessel from Algiers to explore.
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