Off on a Comet (2 page)

"Be it so, then," replied one of the officers; "and after all, you know,
a sword-cut need not be a very serious affair."

"Certainly not," rejoined Servadac; "and especially in my case, when I
have not the slightest intention of being wounded at all."

Incredulous as they naturally were as to the assigned cause of the
quarrel, Servadac's friends had no alternative but to accept his
explanation, and without farther parley they started for the staff
office, where, at two o'clock precisely, they were to meet the seconds
of Count Timascheff. Two hours later they had returned. All the
preliminaries had been arranged; the count, who like many Russians
abroad was an aide-de-camp of the Czar, had of course proposed swords
as the most appropriate weapons, and the duel was to take place on the
following morning, the first of January, at nine o'clock, upon the cliff
at a spot about a mile and a half from the mouth of the Shelif. With
the assurance that they would not fail to keep their appointment with
military punctuality, the two officers cordially wrung their friend's
hand and retired to the Zulma Cafe for a game at piquet. Captain
Servadac at once retraced his steps and left the town.

For the last fortnight Servadac had not been occupying his proper
lodgings in the military quarters; having been appointed to make a local
levy, he had been living in a gourbi, or native hut, on the Mostaganem
coast, between four and five miles from the Shelif. His orderly was his
sole companion, and by any other man than the captain the enforced exile
would have been esteemed little short of a severe penance.

On his way to the gourbi, his mental occupation was a very laborious
effort to put together what he was pleased to call a rondo, upon a model
of versification all but obsolete. This rondo, it is unnecessary to
conceal, was to be an ode addressed to a young widow by whom he had been
captivated, and whom he was anxious to marry, and the tenor of his muse
was intended to prove that when once a man has found an object in
all respects worthy of his affections, he should love her "in all
simplicity." Whether the aphorism were universally true was not very
material to the gallant captain, whose sole ambition at present was to
construct a roundelay of which this should be the prevailing sentiment.
He indulged the fancy that he might succeed in producing a composition
which would have a fine effect here in Algeria, where poetry in that
form was all but unknown.

"I know well enough," he said repeatedly to himself, "what I want to
say. I want to tell her that I love her sincerely, and wish to marry
her; but, confound it! the words won't rhyme. Plague on it! Does nothing
rhyme with 'simplicity'? Ah! I have it now:

'Lovers should, whoe'er they be,
Love in all simplicity.'

But what next? how am I to go on? I say, Ben Zoof," he called aloud to
his orderly, who was trotting silently close in his rear, "did you ever
compose any poetry?"

"No, captain," answered the man promptly: "I have never made any verses,
but I have seen them made fast enough at a booth during the fete of
Montmartre."

"Can you remember them?"

"Remember them! to be sure I can. This is the way they began:

'Come in! come in! you'll not repent
The entrance money you have spent;
The wondrous mirror in this place
Reveals your future sweetheart's face.'"

"Bosh!" cried Servadac in disgust; "your verses are detestable trash."

"As good as any others, captain, squeaked through a reed pipe."

"Hold your tongue, man," said Servadac peremptorily; "I have made
another couplet.

'Lovers should, whoe'er they be,
Love in all simplicity;
Lover, loving honestly,
Offer I myself to thee.'"

Beyond this, however, the captain's poetical genius was impotent to
carry him; his farther efforts were unavailing, and when at six o'clock
he reached the gourbi, the four lines still remained the limit of his
composition.

At the time of which I write, there might be seen in the registers of
the Minister of War the following entry:

SERVADAC (
Hector
), born at St. Trelody in the district of Lesparre,
department of the Gironde, July 19th, 18—.

Property:
1200 francs in rentes.

Length of service:
Fourteen years, three months, and five days.

Service:
Two years at school at St. Cyr; two years at L'Ecole
d'Application; two years in the 8th Regiment of the Line; two years in
the 3rd Light Cavalry; seven years in Algeria.

Campaigns:
Soudan and Japan.

Rank:
Captain on the staff at Mostaganem.

Decorations:
Chevalier of the Legion of Honor, March 13th, 18—.

Hector Servadac was thirty years of age, an orphan without lineage and
almost without means. Thirsting for glory rather than for gold, slightly
scatter-brained, but warm-hearted, generous, and brave, he was eminently
formed to be the protege of the god of battles.

For the first year and a half of his existence he had been the
foster-child of the sturdy wife of a vine-dresser of Medoc—a lineal
descendant of the heroes of ancient prowess; in a word, he was one of
those individuals whom nature seems to have predestined for remarkable
things, and around whose cradle have hovered the fairy godmothers of
adventure and good luck.

In appearance Hector Servadac was quite the type of an officer; he was
rather more than five feet six inches high, slim and graceful, with dark
curling hair and mustaches, well-formed hands and feet, and a clear blue
eye. He seemed born to please without being conscious of the power he
possessed. It must be owned, and no one was more ready to confess it
than himself, that his literary attainments were by no means of a high
order. "We don't spin tops" is a favorite saying amongst artillery
officers, indicating that they do not shirk their duty by frivolous
pursuits; but it must be confessed that Servadac, being naturally idle,
was very much given to "spinning tops." His good abilities, however,
and his ready intelligence had carried him successfully through the
curriculum of his early career. He was a good draughtsman, an excellent
rider—having thoroughly mastered the successor to the famous "Uncle
Tom" at the riding-school of St. Cyr—and in the records of his military
service his name had several times been included in the order of the
day.

The following episode may suffice, in a certain degree, to illustrate
his character. Once, in action, he was leading a detachment of infantry
through an intrenchment. They came to a place where the side-work of the
trench had been so riddled by shell that a portion of it had actually
fallen in, leaving an aperture quite unsheltered from the grape-shot
that was pouring in thick and fast. The men hesitated. In an instant
Servadac mounted the side-work, laid himself down in the gap, and thus
filling up the breach by his own body, shouted, "March on!"

And through a storm of shot, not one of which touched the prostrate
officer, the troop passed in safety.

Since leaving the military college, Servadac, with the exception of
his two campaigns in the Soudan and Japan, had been always stationed in
Algeria. He had now a staff appointment at Mostaganem, and had lately
been entrusted with some topographical work on the coast between Tenes
and the Shelif. It was a matter of little consequence to him that the
gourbi, in which of necessity he was quartered, was uncomfortable and
ill-contrived; he loved the open air, and the independence of his life
suited him well. Sometimes he would wander on foot upon the sandy shore,
and sometimes he would enjoy a ride along the summit of the cliff;
altogether being in no hurry at all to bring his task to an end. His
occupation, moreover, was not so engrossing but that he could find
leisure for taking a short railway journey once or twice a week; so
that he was ever and again putting in an appearance at the general's
receptions at Oran, and at the fetes given by the governor at Algiers.

It was on one of these occasions that he had first met Madame de L—,
the lady to whom he was desirous of dedicating the rondo, the first four
lines of which had just seen the light. She was a colonel's widow,
young and handsome, very reserved, not to say haughty in her manner, and
either indifferent or impervious to the admiration which she inspired.
Captain Servadac had not yet ventured to declare his attachment; of
rivals he was well aware he had not a few, and amongst these not the
least formidable was the Russian Count Timascheff. And although the
young widow was all unconscious of the share she had in the matter, it
was she, and she alone, who was the cause of the challenge just given
and accepted by her two ardent admirers.

During his residence in the gourbi, Hector Servadac's sole companion
was his orderly, Ben Zoof. Ben Zoof was devoted, body and soul, to his
superior officer. His own personal ambition was so entirely absorbed in
his master's welfare, that it is certain no offer of promotion—even had
it been that of aide-de-camp to the Governor-General of Algiers—would
have induced him to quit that master's service. His name might seem
to imply that he was a native of Algeria; but such was by no means the
case. His true name was Laurent; he was a native of Montmartre in Paris,
and how or why he had obtained his patronymic was one of those anomalies
which the most sagacious of etymologists would find it hard to explain.

Born on the hill of Montmartre, between the Solferino tower and the
mill of La Galette, Ben Zoof had ever possessed the most unreserved
admiration for his birthplace; and to his eyes the heights and district
of Montmartre represented an epitome of all the wonders of the world.
In all his travels, and these had been not a few, he had never
beheld scenery which could compete with that of his native home.
No cathedral—not even Burgos itself—could vie with the church at
Montmartre. Its race-course could well hold its own against that at
Pentelique; its reservoir would throw the Mediterranean into the shade;
its forests had flourished long before the invasion of the Celts; and
its very mill produced no ordinary flour, but provided material
for cakes of world-wide renown. To crown all, Montmartre boasted a
mountain—a veritable mountain; envious tongues indeed might pronounce
it little more than a hill; but Ben Zoof would have allowed himself
to be hewn in pieces rather than admit that it was anything less than
fifteen thousand feet in height.

Ben Zoof's most ambitious desire was to induce the captain to go with
him and end his days in his much-loved home, and so incessantly were
Servadac's ears besieged with descriptions of the unparalleled beauties
and advantages of this eighteenth arrondissement of Paris, that he
could scarcely hear the name of Montmartre without a conscious thrill
of aversion. Ben Zoof, however, did not despair of ultimately converting
the captain, and meanwhile had resolved never to leave him. When a
private in the 8th Cavalry, he had been on the point of quitting
the army at twenty-eight years of age, but unexpectedly he had been
appointed orderly to Captain Servadac. Side by side they fought in two
campaigns. Servadac had saved Ben Zoof's life in Japan; Ben Zoof had
rendered his master a like service in the Soudan. The bond of union thus
effected could never be severed; and although Ben Zoof's achievements
had fairly earned him the right of retirement, he firmly declined all
honors or any pension that might part him from his superior officer. Two
stout arms, an iron constitution, a powerful frame, and an indomitable
courage were all loyally devoted to his master's service, and fairly
entitled him to his
soi-disant
designation of "The Rampart of
Montmartre." Unlike his master, he made no pretension to any gift
of poetic power, but his inexhaustible memory made him a living
encyclopaedia; and for his stock of anecdotes and trooper's tales he was
matchless.

Thoroughly appreciating his servant's good qualities, Captain Servadac
endured with imperturbable good humor those idiosyncrasies, which in
a less faithful follower would have been intolerable, and from time
to time he would drop a word of sympathy that served to deepen his
subordinate's devotion.

On one occasion, when Ben Zoof had mounted his hobby-horse, and
was indulging in high-flown praises about his beloved eighteenth
arrondissement, the captain had remarked gravely, "Do you know, Ben
Zoof, that Montmartre only requires a matter of some thirteen thousand
feet to make it as high as Mont Blanc?"

Ben Zoof's eyes glistened with delight; and from that moment Hector
Servadac and Montmartre held equal places in his affection.

Composed of mud and loose stones, and covered with a thatch of turf and
straw, known to the natives by the name of "driss," the gourbi, though a
grade better than the tents of the nomad Arabs, was yet far inferior
to any habitation built of brick or stone. It adjoined an old stone
hostelry, previously occupied by a detachment of engineers, and which
now afforded shelter for Ben Zoof and the two horses. It still
contained a considerable number of tools, such as mattocks, shovels, and
pick-axes.

Uncomfortable as was their temporary abode, Servadac and his attendant
made no complaints; neither of them was dainty in the matter either of
board or lodging. After dinner, leaving his orderly to stow away the
remains of the repast in what he was pleased to term the "cupboard of
his stomach." Captain Servadac turned out into the open air to smoke his
pipe upon the edge of the cliff. The shades of night were drawing on.
An hour previously, veiled in heavy clouds, the sun had sunk below the
horizon that bounded the plain beyond the Shelif.

The sky presented a most singular appearance. Towards the north,
although the darkness rendered it impossible to see beyond a quarter
of a mile, the upper strata of the atmosphere were suffused with a
rosy glare. No well-defined fringe of light, nor arch of luminous rays,
betokened a display of aurora borealis, even had such a phenomenon been
possible in these latitudes; and the most experienced meteorologist
would have been puzzled to explain the cause of this striking
illumination on this 31st of December, the last evening of the passing
year.