Off on a Comet (5 page)

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 trigonometrical 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 swept away, and the hamlet,
with its eight hundred inhabitants, 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 coast-line. 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.

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?"