Off on a Comet (35 page)

Thus coursing rapidly over the icy plain, the whole party had soon
exceeded the line that made the horizon from the shore. First, the rocks
of the coast were lost to view; then the white crests of the cliffs were
no longer to be seen; and at last, the summit of the volcano, with its
corona of vapor, was entirely out of sight. Occasionally the skaters
were obliged to stop to recover their breath, but, fearful of
frost-bite, they almost instantly resumed their exercise, and proceeded
nearly as far as Gourbi Island before they thought about retracing their
course.

But night was coming on, and the sun was already sinking in the east
with the rapidity to which the residents on Gallia were by this time
well accustomed. The sunset upon this contracted horizon was very
remarkable. There was not a cloud nor a vapor to catch the tints of the
declining beams; the surface of the ice did not, as a liquid sea would,
reflect the last green ray of light; but the radiant orb, enlarged by
the effect of refraction, its circumference sharply defined against the
sky, sank abruptly, as though a trap had been opened in the ice for its
reception.

Before the daylight ended. Captain Servadac had cautioned the party to
collect themselves betimes into one group. "Unless you are sure of your
whereabouts before dark," he said, "you will not find it after. We have
come out like a party of skirmishers; let us go back in full force."

The night would be dark; their moon was in conjunction, and would not be
seen; the stars would only give something of that "pale radiance" which
the poet Corneille has described.

Immediately after sunset the torches were lighted, and the long series
of flames, fanned by the rapid motion of their bearers, had much the
appearance of an enormous fiery banner. An hour later, and the volcano
appeared like a dim shadow on the horizon, the light from the crater
shedding a lurid glare upon the surrounding gloom. In time the glow of
the burning lava, reflected in the icy mirror, fell upon the troop of
skaters, and cast their lengthened shadows grotesquely on the surface of
the frozen sea.

Later still, half an hour or more afterwards, the torches were all but
dying out. The shore was close at hand. All at once, Ben Zoof uttered
a startled cry, and pointed with bewildered excitement towards the
mountain. Involuntarily, one and all, they plowed their heels into the
ice and came to a halt. Exclamations of surprise and horror burst from
every lip. The volcano was extinguished! The stream of burning lava had
suddenly ceased to flow!

Speechless with amazement, they stood still for some moments. There was
not one of them that did not realize, more or less, how critical was
their position. The sole source of the heat that had enabled them to
brave the rigor of the cold had failed them! death, in the cruellest of
all shapes, seemed staring them in the face—death from cold! Meanwhile,
the last torch had flickered out.

It was quite dark.

"Forward!" cried Servadac, firmly.

At the word of command they advanced to the shore; clambered with
no little difficulty up the slippery rocks; gained the mouth of the
gallery; groped their way into the common hall.

How dreary! how chill it seemed!

The fiery cataract no longer spread its glowing covering over the mouth
of the grotto. Lieutenant Procope leaned through the aperture. The pool,
hitherto kept fluid by its proximity to the lava, was already encrusted
with a layer of ice.

Such was the end of the New Year's Day so happily begun.

The whole night was spent in speculating, with gloomy forebodings, upon
the chances of the future. The temperature of the hall, now entirely
exposed to the outer air, was rapidly falling, and would quickly become
unendurable. Far too intense was the cold to allow anyone to remain at
the opening, and the moisture on the walls soon resolved itself into
icicles. But the mountain was like the body of a dying man, that retains
awhile a certain amount of heat at the heart after the extremities have
become cold and dead. In the more interior galleries there was still a
certain degree of warmth, and hither Servadac and his companions were
glad enough to retreat.

Here they found the professor, who, startled by the sudden cold, had
been fain to make a precipitate retreat from his observatory. Now would
have been the opportunity to demand of the enthusiast whether he would
like to prolong his residence indefinitely upon his little comet. It is
very likely that he would have declared himself ready to put up with any
amount of discomfort to be able to gratify his love of investigation;
but all were far too disheartened and distressed to care to banter him
upon the subject on which he was so sensitive.

Next morning, Servadac thus addressed his people. "My friends, except
from cold, we have nothing to fear. Our provisions are ample—more than
enough for the remaining period of our sojourn in this lone world of
ours; our preserved meat is already cooked; we shall be able to
dispense with all fuel for cooking purposes. All that we require is
warmth—warmth for ourselves; let us secure that, and all may be well.
Now, I do not entertain a doubt but that the warmth we require is
resident in the bowels of this mountain on which we are living; to
the depth of those bowels we must penetrate; there we shall obtain the
warmth which is indispensable to our very existence."

His tone, quite as much as his words, restored confidence to many of his
people, who were already yielding to a feeling of despair. The count and
the lieutenant fervently, but silently, grasped his hand.

"Nina," said the captain, "you will not be afraid to go down to the
lower depths of the mountain, will you?"

"Not if Pablo goes," replied the child.

"Oh yes, of course, Pablo will go. You are not afraid to go, are you,
Pablo?" he said, addressing the boy.

"Anywhere with you, your Excellency," was the boy's prompt reply.

And certain it was that no time must be lost in penetrating below
the heart of the volcano; already the most protected of the many
ramifications of Nina's Hive were being pervaded by a cold that was
insufferable. It was an acknowledged impossibility to get access to the
crater by the exterior declivities of the mountain-side; they were far
too steep and too slippery to afford a foothold. It must of necessity be
entered from the interior.

Lieutenant Procope accordingly undertook the task of exploring all the
galleries, and was soon able to report that he had discovered one which
he had every reason to believe abutted upon the central funnel. His
reason for coming to this conclusion was that the caloric emitted by the
rising vapors of the hot lava seemed to be oozing, as it were, out of
the tellurium, which had been demonstrated already to be a conductor
of heat. Only succeed in piercing through this rock for seven or eight
yards, and the lieutenant did not doubt that his way would be opened
into the old lava-course, by following which he hoped descent would be
easy.

Under the lieutenant's direction the Russian sailors were immediately
set to work. Their former experience had convinced them that spades and
pick-axes were of no avail, and their sole resource was to proceed
by blasting with gunpowder. However skillfully the operation might be
carried on, it must necessarily occupy several days, and during that
time the sufferings from cold must be very severe.

"If we fail in our object, and cannot get to the depths of the mountain,
our little colony is doomed," said Count Timascheff.

"That speech is not like yourself," answered Servadac, smiling. "What
has become of the faith which has hitherto carried you so bravely
through all our difficulties?"

The count shook his head, as if in despair, and said, sadly, "The Hand
that has hitherto been outstretched to help seems now to be withdrawn."

"But only to test our powers of endurance," rejoined the captain,
earnestly. "Courage, my friend, courage! Something tells me that this
cessation of the eruption is only partial; the internal fire is not all
extinct. All is not over yet. It is too soon to give up; never despair!"

Lieutenant Procope quite concurred with the captain. Many causes, he
knew, besides the interruption of the influence of the oxygen upon the
mineral substances in Gallia's interior, might account for the stoppage
of the lava-flow in this one particular spot, and he considered it more
than probable that a fresh outlet had been opened in some other part of
the surface, and that the eruptive matter had been diverted into the new
channel. But at present his business was to prosecute his labors so
that a retreat might be immediately effected from their now untenable
position.

Restless and agitated, Professor Rosette, if he took any interest in
these discussions, certainly took no share in them. He had brought his
telescope down from the observatory into the common hall, and there at
frequent intervals, by night and by day, he would endeavor to continue
his observations; but the intense cold perpetually compelled him to
desist, or he would literally have been frozen to death. No sooner,
however, did he find himself obliged to retreat from his study of the
heavens, than he would begin overwhelming everybody about him with
bitter complaints, pouring out his regrets that he had ever quitted his
quarters at Formentera.

On the 4th of January, by persevering industry, the process of boring
was completed, and the lieutenant could hear that fragments of the
blasted rock, as the sailors cleared them away with their spades, were
rolling into the funnel of the crater. He noticed, too, that they did
not fall perpendicularly, but seemed to slide along, from which he
inferred that the sides of the crater were sloping; he had therefore
reason to hope that a descent would be found practicable.

Larger and larger grew the orifice; at length it would admit a man's
body, and Ben Zoof, carrying a torch, pushed himself through it,
followed by the lieutenant and Servadac. Procope's conjecture proved
correct. On entering the crater, they found that the sides slanted at
the angle of about 4 degrees; moreover, the eruption had evidently been
of recent origin, dating probably only from the shock which had invested
Gallia with a proportion of the atmosphere of the earth, and beneath
the coating of ashes with which they were covered, there were various
irregularities in the rock, not yet worn away by the action of the lava,
and these afforded a tolerably safe footing.

"Rather a bad staircase!" said Ben Zoof, as they began to make their way
down.

In about half an hour, proceeding in a southerly direction, they had
descended nearly five hundred feet. From time to time they came
upon large excavations that at first sight had all the appearance of
galleries, but by waving his torch, Ben Zoof could always see their
extreme limits, and it was evident that the lower strata of the mountain
did not present the same system of ramification that rendered the Hive
above so commodious a residence.

It was not a time to be fastidious; they must be satisfied with such
accommodation as they could get, provided it was warm. Captain Servadac
was only too glad to find that his hopes about the temperature were to
a certain extent realized. The lower they went, the greater was the
diminution in the cold, a diminution that was far more rapid than that
which is experienced in making the descent of terrestrial mines. In
this case it was a volcano, not a colliery, that was the object of
exploration, and thankful enough they were to find that it had not
become extinct. Although the lava, from some unknown cause, had
ceased to rise in the crater, yet plainly it existed somewhere in an
incandescent state, and was still transmitting considerable heat to
inferior strata.

Lieutenant Procope had brought in his hand a mercurial thermometer,
and Servadac carried an aneroid barometer, by means of which he could
estimate the depth of their descent below the level of the Gallian Sea.
When they were six hundred feet below the orifice the mercury registered
a temperature of 6 degrees below zero.

"Six degrees!" said Servadac; "that will not suit us. At this low
temperature we could not survive the winter. We must try deeper down. I
only hope the ventilation will hold out."

There was, however, nothing to fear on the score of ventilation.
The great current of air that rushed into the aperture penetrated
everywhere, and made respiration perfectly easy.

The descent was continued for about another three hundred feet, which
brought the explorers to a total depth of nine hundred feet from their
old quarters. Here the thermometer registered 12 degrees above zero—a
temperature which, if only it were permanent, was all they wanted. There
was no advantage in proceeding any further along the lava-course; they
could already hear the dull rumblings that indicated that they were at
no great distance from the central focus.

"Quite near enough for me!" exclaimed Ben Zoof. "Those who are chilly
are welcome to go as much lower as they like. For my part, I shall be
quite warm enough here."

After throwing the gleams of torch-light in all directions, the
explorers seated themselves on a jutting rock, and began to debate
whether it was practicable for the colony to make an abode in these
lower depths of the mountain. The prospect, it must be owned, was not
inviting. The crater, it is true, widened out into a cavern sufficiently
large, but here its accommodation ended. Above and below were a few
ledges in the rock that would serve as receptacles for provisions; but,
with the exception of a small recess that must be reserved for Nina,
it was clear that henceforth they must all renounce the idea of
having separate apartments. The single cave must be their dining-room,
drawing-room, and dormitory, all in one. From living the life of rabbits
in a warren, they were reduced to the existence of moles, with the
difference that they could not, like them, forget their troubles in a
long winter's sleep.