Off on a Comet (19 page)

"Silence, Mordecai, you fool!" shouted Ben Zoof, who was accustomed
to call the Jew by any Hebrew name that came uppermost to his memory.
"Silence!"

Servadac was disposed to appease the old man's anxiety by promising
to see that justice was ultimately done; but, in a fever of frantic
excitement, he went on to implore that he might have the loan of a few
sailors to carry his ship to Algiers.

"I will pay you honestly; I will pay you
well
," he cried; but his
ingrained propensity for making a good bargain prompted him to add,
"provided you do not overcharge me."

Ben Zoof was about again to interpose some angry exclamation; but
Servadac checked him, and continued in Spanish: "Listen to me, my
friends. Something very strange has happened. A most wonderful event has
cut us off from Spain, from France, from Italy, from every country
of Europe. In fact, we have left the Old World entirely. Of the whole
earth, nothing remains except this island on which you are now taking
refuge. The old globe is far, far away. Our present abode is but an
insignificant fragment that is left. I dare not tell you that there is
any chance of your ever again seeing your country or your homes."

He paused. The Spaniards evidently had no conception of his meaning.

Negrete begged him to tell them all again. He repeated all that he had
said, and by introducing some illustrations from familiar things,
he succeeded to a certain extent in conveying some faint idea of the
convulsion that had happened. The event was precisely what he had
foretold. The communication was received by all alike with the most
supreme indifference.

Hakkabut did not say a word. He had listened with manifest attention,
his lips twitching now and then as if suppressing a smile. Servadac
turned to him, and asked whether he was still disposed to put out to sea
and make for Algiers.

The Jew gave a broad grin, which, however, he was careful to conceal
from the Spaniards. "Your Excellency jests," he said in French; and
turning to Count Timascheff, he added in Russian: "The governor has made
up a wonderful tale."

The count turned his back in disgust, while the Jew sidled up to little
Nina and muttered in Italian. "A lot of lies, pretty one; a lot of
lies!"

"Confound the knave!" exclaimed Ben Zoof; "he gabbles every tongue under
the sun!"

"Yes," said Servadac; "but whether he speaks French, Russian, Spanish,
German, or Italian, he is neither more nor less than a Jew."

On the following day, without giving himself any further concern about
the Jew's incredulity, the captain gave orders for the
Hansa
to be
shifted round to the harbor of the Shelif. Hakkabut raised no objection,
not only because he was aware that the move insured the immediate safety
of his tartan, but because he was secretly entertaining the hope that
he might entice away two or three of the
Dobryna's
crew and make his
escape to Algiers or some other port.

Operations now commenced for preparing proper winter quarters. Spaniards
and Russians alike joined heartily in the work, the diminution of
atmospheric pressure and of the force of attraction contributing such
an increase to their muscular force as materially facilitated all their
labors.

The first business was to accommodate the building adjacent to the
gourbi to the wants of the little colony. Here for the present the
Spaniards were lodged, the Russians retaining their berths upon the
yacht, while the Jew was permitted to pass his nights upon the
Hansa
.
This arrangement, however, could be only temporary. The time could not
be far distant when ships' sides and ordinary walls would fail to
give an adequate protection from the severity of the cold that must
be expected; the stock of fuel was too limited to keep up a permanent
supply of heat in their present quarters, and consequently they must
be driven to seek some other refuge, the internal temperature of which
would at least be bearable.

The plan that seemed to commend itself most to their consideration was,
that they should dig out for themselves some subterraneous pits similar
to "silos," such as are used as receptacles for grain. They presumed
that when the surface of Gallia should be covered by a thick layer of
ice, which is a bad conductor of heat, a sufficient amount of warmth
for animal vitality might still be retained in excavations of this kind.
After a long consultation they failed to devise any better expedient,
and were forced to resign themselves to this species of troglodyte
existence.

In one respect they congratulated themselves that they should be better
off than many of the whalers in the polar seas, for as it is impossible
to get below the surface of a frozen ocean, these adventurers have to
seek refuge in huts of wood and snow erected on their ships, which at
best can give but slight protection from extreme cold; but here, with a
solid subsoil, the Gallians might hope to dig down a hundred feet or so
and secure for themselves a shelter that would enable them to brave the
hardest severity of climate.

The order, then, was at once given. The work was commenced. A stock of
shovels, mattocks, and pick-axes was brought from the gourbi, and with
Ben Zoof as overseer, both Spanish majos and Russian sailors set to work
with a will.

It was not long, however, before a discovery, more unexpected than
agreeable, suddenly arrested their labors. The spot chosen for the
excavation was a little to the right of the gourbi, on a slight
elevation of the soil. For the first day everything went on prosperously
enough; but at a depth of eight feet below the surface, the navvies came
in contact with a hard surface, upon which all their tools failed to
make the slightest impression. Servadac and the count were at once
apprised of the fact, and had little difficulty in recognizing the
substance that had revealed itself as the very same which composed the
shores as well as the subsoil of the Gallian sea. It evidently formed
the universal substructure of the new asteroid. Means for hollowing it
failed them utterly. Harder and more resisting than granite, it could
not be blasted by ordinary powder; dynamite alone could suffice to rend
it.

The disappointment was very great. Unless some means of protection were
speedily devised, death seemed to be staring them in the face. Were the
figures in the mysterious documents correct? If so, Gallia must now be
a hundred millions of leagues from the sun, nearly three times the
distance of the earth at the remotest section of her orbit. The
intensity of the solar light and heat, too, was very seriously
diminishing, although Gourbi Island (being on the equator of an orb
which had its axes always perpendicular to the plane in which it
revolved) enjoyed a position that gave it a permanent summer. But no
advantage of this kind could compensate for the remoteness of the sun.
The temperature fell steadily; already, to the discomfiture of the
little Italian girl, nurtured in sunshine, ice was beginning to form in
the crevices of the rocks, and manifestly the time was impending when
the sea itself would freeze.

Some shelter must be found before the temperature should fall to 60
degrees below zero. Otherwise death was inevitable. Hitherto, for the
last few days, the thermometer had been registering an average of about
6 degrees below zero, and it had become matter of experience that the
stove, although replenished with all the wood that was available, was
altogether inadequate to effect any sensible mitigation of the severity
of the cold. Nor could any amount of fuel be enough. It was certain
that ere long the very mercury and spirit in the thermometers would be
congealed. Some other resort must assuredly be soon found, or they must
perish. That was clear.

The idea of betaking themselves to the
Dobryna
and
Hansa
could not
for a moment be seriously entertained; not only did the structure of the
vessels make them utterly insufficient to give substantial shelter,
but they were totally unfitted to be trusted as to their stability when
exposed to the enormous pressure of the accumulated ice.

Neither Servadac, nor the count, nor Lieutenant Procope were men to
be easily disheartened, but it could not be concealed that they felt
themselves in circumstances by which they were equally harassed and
perplexed. The sole expedient that their united counsel could suggest
was to obtain a refuge below ground, and
that
was denied them by the
strange and impenetrable substratum of the soil; yet hour by hour the
sun's disc was lessening in its dimensions, and although at midday some
faint radiance and glow were to be distinguished, during the night the
painfulness of the cold was becoming almost intolerable.

Mounted upon Zephyr and Galette, the captain and the count scoured the
island in search of some available retreat. Scarcely a yard of ground
was left unexplored, the horses clearing every obstacle as if they were,
like Pegasus, furnished with wings. But all in vain. Soundings were made
again and again, but invariably with the same result; the rock, hard as
adamant, never failed to reveal itself within a few feet of the surface
of the ground.

The excavation of any silo being thus manifestly hopeless, there seemed
nothing to be done except to try and render the buildings alongside the
gourbi impervious to frost. To contribute to the supply of fuel, orders
were given to collect every scrap of wood, dry or green, that the island
produced; and this involved the necessity of felling the numerous
trees that were scattered over the plain. But toil as they might at the
accumulation of firewood, Captain Servadac and his companions could not
resist the conviction that the consumption of a very short period would
exhaust the total stock. And what would happen then?

Studious if possible to conceal his real misgivings, and anxious that
the rest of the party should be affected as little as might be by his
own uneasiness, Servadac would wander alone about the island, racking
his brain for an idea that would point the way out of the serious
difficulty. But still all in vain.

One day he suddenly came upon Ben Zoof, and asked him whether he had no
plan to propose. The orderly shook his head, but after a few moments'
pondering, said: "Ah! master, if only we were at Montmartre, we would
get shelter in the charming stone-quarries."

"Idiot!" replied the captain, angrily, "if we were at Montmartre, you
don't suppose that we should need to live in stone-quarries?"

But the means of preservation which human ingenuity had failed to secure
were at hand from the felicitous provision of Nature herself. It was on
the 10th of March that the captain and Lieutenant Procope started off
once more to investigate the northwest corner of the island; on their
way their conversation naturally was engrossed by the subject of
the dire necessities which only too manifestly were awaiting them. A
discussion more than usually animated arose between them, for the two
men were not altogether of the same mind as to the measures that ought
to be adopted in order to open the fairest chance of avoiding a fatal
climax to their exposure; the captain persisted that an entirely
new abode must be sought, while the lieutenant was equally bent upon
devising a method of some sort by which their present quarters might
be rendered sufficiently warm. All at once, in the very heat of his
argument, Procope paused; he passed his hand across his eyes, as if to
dispel a mist, and stood, with a fixed gaze centered on a point towards
the south. "What is that?" he said, with a kind of hesitation. "No, I am
not mistaken," he added; "it is a light on the horizon."

"A light!" exclaimed Servadac; "show me where."

"Look there!" answered the lieutenant, and he kept pointing steadily in
its direction, until Servadac also distinctly saw the bright speck in
the distance.

It increased in clearness in the gathering shades of evening. "Can it be
a ship?" asked the captain.

"If so, it must be in flames; otherwise we should not be able to see it
so far off," replied Procope.

"It does not move," said Servadac; "and unless I am greatly deceived, I
can hear a kind of reverberation in the air."

For some seconds the two men stood straining eyes and ears in rapt
attention. Suddenly an idea struck Servadac's mind. "The volcano!" he
cried; "may it not be the volcano that we saw, whilst we were on board
the
Dobryna?
"

The lieutenant agreed that it was very probable.

"Heaven be praised!" ejaculated the captain, and he went on in the tones
of a keen excitement: "Nature has provided us with our winter quarters;
the stream of burning lava that is flowing there is the gift of a
bounteous Providence; it will provide us all the warmth we need. No time
to lose! To-morrow, my dear Procope, to-morrow we will explore it all;
no doubt the life, the heat we want is reserved for us in the heart and
bowels of our own Gallia!"

Whilst the captain was indulging in his expressions of enthusiasm,
Procope was endeavoring to collect his thoughts. Distinctly he
remembered the long promontory which had barred the
Dobryna's
progress
while coasting the southern confines of the sea, and which had obliged
her to ascend northwards as far as the former latitude of Oran; he
remembered also that at the extremity of the promontory there was a
rocky headland crowned with smoke; and now he was convinced that he was
right in identifying the position, and in believing that the smoke had
given place to an eruption of flame.

When Servadac gave him a chance of speaking, he said, "The more I
consider it, captain, the more I am satisfied that your conjecture is
correct. Beyond a doubt, what we see is the volcano, and to-morrow we
will not fail to visit it."