Off on a Comet - Jules Verne (classic english novels .TXT) 📗
- Author: Jules Verne
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that had been experienced.
To these general observations Captain Servadac objected that
he thought it unlikely that any one on board a ship would use
a telescope-case for this purpose, but would be sure to use
a bottle as being more secure; and, accordingly, he should rather
be inclined to believe that the message had been set afloat
by some savant left alone, perchance, upon some isolated coast.
“But, however interesting it might be,” observed the count,
“to know the author of the lines, to us it is of far greater
moment to ascertain their meaning.”
And taking up the paper again, he said, “Perhaps we might analyze it
word by word, and from its detached parts gather some clue to its sense
as a whole.”
“What can be the meaning of all that cluster of interrogations
after Gallia?” asked Servadac.
Lieutenant Procope, who had hitherto not spoken, now broke his silence
by saying, “I beg, gentlemen, to submit my opinion that this document
goes very far to confirm my hypothesis that a fragment of the earth
has been precipitated into space.”
Captain Servadac hesitated, and then replied, “Even if it does,
I do not see how it accounts in the least for the geological
character of the new asteroid.”
“But will you allow me for one minute to take my supposition
for granted?” said Procope. “If a new little planet has been formed,
as I imagine, by disintegration from the old, I should conjecture
that Gallia is the name assigned to it by the writer of this paper.
The very notes of interrogation are significant that he was in doubt
what he should write.”
“You would presume that he was a Frenchman?” asked the count.
“I should think so,” replied the lieutenant.
“Not much doubt about that,” said Servadac; “it is all in French,
except a few scattered words of English, Latin, and Italian,
inserted to attract attention. He could not tell into whose
hands the message would fall first.”
“Well, then,” said Count Timascheff, “we seem to have found a name
for the new world we occupy.”
“But what I was going especially to observe,” continued the lieutenant,
“is that the distance, 59,000,000 leagues, represents precisely
the distance we ourselves were from the sun on the 15th.
It was on that day we crossed the orbit of Mars.”
“Yes, true,” assented the others.
“And the next line,” said the lieutenant, after reading it aloud,
“apparently registers the distance traversed by Gallia, the new little planet,
in her own orbit. Her speed, of course, we know by Kepler’s laws,
would vary according to her distance from the sun, and if she were—
as I conjecture from the temperature at that date—on the 15th of January
at her perihelion, she would be traveling twice as fast as the earth,
which moves at the rate of between 50,000 and 60,000 miles an hour.”
“You think, then,” said Servadac, with a smile, “you have determined
the perihelion of our orbit; but how about the aphelion?
Can you form a judgment as to what distance we are likely
to be carried?”
“You are asking too much,” remonstrated the count.
“I confess,” said the lieutenant, “that just at present I
am not able to clear away the uncertainty of the future;
but I feel confident that by careful observation at various
points we shall arrive at conclusions which not only will
determine our path, but perhaps may clear up the mystery about
our geological structure.”
“Allow me to ask,” said Count Timascheff, “whether such a new asteroid would
not be subject to ordinary mechanical laws, and whether, once started,
it would not have an orbit that must be immutable?”
“Decidedly it would, so long as it was undisturbed by the attraction
of some considerable body; but we must recollect that, compared to
the great planets, Gallia must be almost infinitesimally small,
and so might be attracted by a force that is irresistible.”
“Altogether, then,” said Servadac, “we seem to have settled it to our
entire satisfaction that we must be the population of a young little
world called Gallia. Perhaps some day we may have the honor of being
registered among the minor planets.”
“No chance of that,” quickly rejoined Lieutenant Procope. “Those minor
planets all are known to rotate in a narrow zone between the orbits
of Mars and Jupiter; in their perihelia they cannot approximate the sun
as we have done; we shall not be classed with them.”
“Our lack of instruments,” said the count, “is much to be deplored;
it baffles our investigations in every way.”
“Ah, never mind! Keep up your courage, count!” said Servadac, cheerily.
And Lieutenant Procope renewed his assurances that he entertained
good hopes that every perplexity would soon be solved.
“I suppose,” remarked the count, ” that we cannot attribute much importance
to the last line: ‘Va bene! All right!! Parfait!!!’”
The captain answered, “At least, it shows that whoever wrote it
had no murmuring or complaint to make, but was quite content
with the new order of things.”
THE RESIDUUM OF A CONTINENT
Almost unconsciously, the voyagers in the Dobryna fell into the habit
of using Gallia as the name of the new world in which they became aware they
must be making an extraordinary excursion through the realms of space.
Nothing, however, was allowed to divert them from their ostensible object
of making a survey of the coast of the Mediterranean, and accordingly they
persevered in following that singular boundary which had revealed itself
to their extreme astonishment.
Having rounded the great promontory that had barred her farther
progress to the north, the schooner skirted its upper edge.
A few more leagues and they ought to be abreast of the shores
of France. Yes, of France.
But who shall describe the feelings of Hector Servadac when,
instead of the charming outline of his native land,
he beheld nothing but a solid boundary of savage rock?
Who shall paint the look of consternation with which he gazed upon
the stony rampart—rising perpendicularly for a thousand feet—
that had replaced the shores of the smiling south?
Who shall reveal the burning anxiety with which he throbbed
to see beyond that cruel wall?
But there seemed no hope. Onwards and onwards the yacht made
her way, and still no sign of France. It might have been supposed
that Servadac’s previous experiences would have prepared him
for the discovery that the catastrophe which had overwhelmed
other sites had brought destruction to his own country as well.
But he had failed to realize how it might extend to France;
and when now he was obliged with his own eyes to witness
the waves of ocean rolling over what once had been the lovely
shores of Provence, he was well-nigh frantic with desperation.
“Am I to believe that Gourbi Island, that little shred of Algeria,
constitutes all that is left of our glorious France? No, no;
it cannot be. Not yet have we reached the pole of our new world.
There is—there must be—something more behind that frowning rock.
Oh, that for a moment we could scale its towering height and look beyond!
By Heaven, I adjure you, let us disembark, and mount the summit and explore!
France lies beyond.”
Disembarkation, however, was an utter impossibility. There was no
semblance of a creek in which the Dobryna could find an anchorage.
There was no outlying ridge on which a footing could be gained.
The precipice was perpendicular as a wall, its topmost height crowned
with the same conglomerate of crystallized lamellae that had all along
been so pronounced a feature.
With her steam at high pressure, the yacht made rapid progress towards
the east. The weather remained perfectly fine, the temperature
became gradually cooler, so that there was little prospect of vapors
accumulating in the atmosphere; and nothing more than a few cirri,
almost transparent, veiled here and there the clear azure of the sky.
Throughout the day the pale rays of the sun, apparently lessened
in its magnitude, cast only faint and somewhat uncertain shadows;
but at night the stars shone with surpassing brilliancy. Of the planets,
some, it was observed, seemed to be fading away in remote distance.
This was the case with Mars, Venus, and that unknown orb which was moving
in the orbit of the minor planets; but Jupiter, on the other hand,
had assumed splendid proportions; Saturn was superb in its luster,
and Uranus, which hitherto had been imperceptible without a telescope
was pointed out by Lieutenant Procope, plainly visible to the naked eye.
The inference was irresistible that Gallia was receding from the sun,
and traveling far away across the planetary regions.
On the 24th of February, after following the sinuous course of what before
the date of the convulsion had been the coast line of the department of Var,
and after a fruitless search for Hyeres, the peninsula of St. Tropez,
the Lerius Islands, and the gulfs of Cannes and Jouar, the Dobryna arrived
upon the site of the Cape of Antibes.
Here, quite unexpectedly, the explorers made the discovery that the massive
wall of cliff had been rent from the top to the bottom by a narrow rift,
like the dry bed of a mountain torrent, and at the base of the opening,
level with the sea, was a little strand upon which there was just space
enough for their boat to be hauled up.
“Joy! joy!” shouted Servadac, half beside himself with ecstasy;
“we can land at last!”
Count Timascheff and the lieutenant were scarcely less impatient than
the captain, and little needed his urgent and repeated solicitations:
“Come on! Quick! Come on! no time to lose!”
It was half-past seven in the morning, when they set their foot upon
this untried land. The bit of strand was only a few square yards
in area, quite a narrow strip. Upon it might have been recognized
some fragments of that agglutination of yellow limestone which is
characteristic of the coast of Provence. But the whole party was far
too eager to wait and examine these remnants of the ancient shore;
they hurried on to scale the heights.
The narrow ravine was not only perfectly dry, but manifestly had never been
the bed of any mountain torrent. The rocks that rested at the bottom—
just as those which formed its sides—were of the same lamellous formation
as the entire coast, and had not hitherto been subject to the disaggregation
which the lapse of time never fails to work. A skilled geologist would
probably have been able to assign them their proper scientific classification,
but neither Servadac, Timascheff, nor the lieutenant could pretend to any
acquaintance with their specific character.
Although, however, the bottom of the chasm had never as yet been the channel
of a stream, indications were not wanting that at some future time it would
be the natural outlet of accumulated waters; for already, in many places,
thin layers of snow were glittering upon the surface of the fractured rocks,
and the higher the elevation that was gained, the more these layers were found
to increase in area and in depth.
“Here is a trace of fresh water, the first that Gallia has exhibited,”
said the count to his companions, as they toiled up the precipitous path.
“And probably,” replied the lieutenant, “as we ascend we shall find not
only snow but ice. We must suppose this Gallia of ours to be a sphere,
and if it is so, we must now be very close to her Arctic regions;
it is true that her axis is not so much inclined
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