Off on a Comet - Jules Verne (classic english novels .TXT) 📗

deserted, lay outstretched before him.

On one occasion, Servadac, in reference to his orderly’s indomitable

perseverance, happened to remark that he thought he must have been born

in the heart of equatorial Africa; to which Ben Zoof replied, with the

utmost dignity, that he was born at Montmartre, which was all the same.

The worthy fellow was unwilling to own that, even in the matter of heat,

the tropics could in any way surpass his own much-loved home.

 

This unprecedented temperature very soon began to take effect upon

the products of the soil. The sap rose rapidly in the trees,

so that in the course of a few days buds, leaves, flowers, and fruit

had come to full maturity. It was the same with the cereals;

wheat and maize sprouted and ripened as if by magic,

and for a while a rank and luxuriant pasturage clothed

the meadows. Summer and autumn seemed blended into one.

If Captain Servadac had been more deeply versed in astronomy,

he would perhaps have been able to bring to bear his knowledge

that if the axis of the earth, as everything seemed to indicate,

now formed a right angle with the plane of the ecliptic,

her various seasons, like those of the planet Jupiter, would become

limited to certain zones, in which they would remain invariable.

But even if he had understood the rationale of the change,

the convulsion that had brought it about would have been as much

a mystery as ever.

 

The precocity of vegetation caused some embarrassment.

The time for the corn and fruit harvest had fallen simultaneously

with that of the haymaking; and as the extreme heat precluded

any prolonged exertions, it was evident “the population”

of the island would find it difficult to provide the necessary

amount of labor. Not that the prospect gave them much concern:

the provisions of the gourbi were still far from exhausted,

and now that the roughness of the weather had so happily subsided,

they had every encouragement to hope that a ship of some sort

would soon appear. Not only was that part of the Mediterranean

systematically frequented by the government steamers that watched

the coast, but vessels of all nations were constantly cruising

off the shore.

 

In spite, however, of all their sanguine speculations, no ship appeared.

Ben Zoof admitted the necessity of extemporizing a kind of parasol

for himself, otherwise he must literally have been roasted to death

upon the exposed summit of the cliff.

 

Meanwhile, Servadac was doing his utmost—it must be acknowledged,

with indifferent success—to recall the lessons of his school-days. He

would plunge into the wildest speculations in his endeavors to unravel

the difficulties of the new situation, and struggled into a kind of conviction

that if there had been a change of manner in the earth’s rotation on her axis,

there would be a corresponding change in her revolution round the sun,

which would involve the consequence of the length of the year being either

diminished or increased.

 

Independently of the increased and increasing heat, there was another

very conclusive demonstration that the earth had thus suddenly

approximated towards the sun. The diameter of the solar disc

was now exactly twice what it ordinarily looks to the naked eye;

in fact, it was precisely such as it would appear to an observer

on the surface of the planet Venus. The most obvious inference

would therefore be that the earth’s distance from the sun

had been diminished from 91,000,000 to 66,000,000 miles.

If the just equilibrium of the earth had thus been destroyed,

and should this diminution of distance still continue,

would there not be reason to fear that the terrestrial world

would be carried onwards to actual contact with the sun,

which must result in its total annihilation?

 

The continuance of the splendid weather afforded Servadac

every facility for observing the heavens. Night after night,

constellations in their beauty lay stretched before his eyes—

an alphabet which, to his mortification, not to say his rage,

he was unable to decipher. In the apparent dimensions of

the fixed stars, in their distance, in their relative position

with regard to each other, he could observe no change.

Although it is established that our sun is approaching the

constellation of Hercules at the rate of more than 126,000,000

miles a year, and although Arcturus is traveling through space

at the rate of fifty-four miles a second—three times faster

than the earth goes round the sun,—yet such is the remoteness

of those stars that no appreciable change is evident to the senses.

The fixed stars taught him nothing.

 

Far otherwise was it with the planets. The orbits of Venus and Mercury

are within the orbit of the earth, Venus rotating at an average distance

of 66,130,000 miles from the sun, and Mercury at that of 35,393,000.

After pondering long, and as profoundly as he could, upon these figures,

Captain Servadac came to the conclusion that, as the earth was now receiving

about double the amount of light and heat that it had been receiving

before the catastrophe, it was receiving about the same as the planet Venus;

he was driven, therefore, to the estimate of the measure in which the earth

must have approximated to the sun, a deduction in which he was confirmed

when the opportunity came for him to observe Venus herself in the splendid

proportions that she now assumed.

 

That magnificent planet which—as Phosphorus or Lucifer, Hesperus or Vesper,

the evening star, the morning star, or the shepherd’s star—has never failed

to attract the rapturous admiration of the most indifferent observers,

here revealed herself with unprecedented glory, exhibiting all the phases

of a lustrous moon in miniature. Various indentations in the outline

of its crescent showed that the solar beams were refracted into regions

of its surface where the sun had already set, and proved, beyond a doubt,

that the planet had an atmosphere of her own; and certain luminous points

projecting from the crescent as plainly marked the existence of mountains.

As the result of Servadac’s computations, he formed the opinion that Venus

could hardly be at a greater distance than 6,000,000 miles from the earth.

 

“And a very safe distance, too,” said Ben Zoof, when his master

told him the conclusion at which he had arrived.

 

“All very well for two armies, but for a couple of planets

not quite so safe, perhaps, as you may imagine. It is my

impression that it is more than likely we may run foul of Venus,”

said the captain.

 

“Plenty of air and water there, sir?” inquired the orderly.

 

“Yes; as far as I can tell, plenty,” replied Servadac.

 

“Then why shouldn’t we go and visit Venus?”

 

Servadac did his best to explain that as the two planets were

of about equal volume, and were traveling with great velocity

in opposite directions, any collision between them must be attended

with the most disastrous consequences to one or both of them.

But Ben Zoof failed to see that, even at the worst, the catastrophe

could be much more serious than the collision of two railway trains.

 

The captain became exasperated. “You idiot!” he angrily exclaimed;

“cannot you understand that the planets are traveling a thousand

times faster than the fastest express, and that if they meet,

either one or the other must be destroyed? What would become

of your darling Montmartre then?”

 

The captain had touched a tender chord. For a moment Ben Zoof stood with

clenched teeth and contracted muscles; then, in a voice of real concern,

he inquired whether anything could be done to avert the calamity.

 

“Nothing whatever; so you may go about your own business,”

was the captain’s brusque rejoinder.

 

All discomfited and bewildered, Ben Zoof retired without a word.

 

During the ensuing days the distance between the two planets continued

to decrease, and it became more and more obvious that the earth,

on her new orbit, was about to cross the orbit of Venus. Throughout this

time the earth had been making a perceptible approach towards Mercury,

and that planet—which is rarely visible to the naked eye,

and then only at what are termed the periods of its greatest

eastern and western elongations—now appeared in all its splendor.

It amply justified the epithet of “sparkling” which the ancients

were accustomed to confer upon it, and could scarcely fail

to awaken a new interest. The periodic recurrence of its phases;

its reflection of the sun’s rays, shedding upon it a light

and a heat seven times greater than that received by the earth;

its glacial and its torrid zones, which, on account of the great

inclination of the axis, are scarcely separable; its equatorial bands;

its mountains eleven miles high;—were all subjects of observation

worthy of the most studious regard.

 

But no danger was to be apprehended from Mercury; with Venus

only did collision appear imminent. By the l8th of January

the distance between that planet and the earth had become reduced

to between two and three millions of miles, and the intensity

of its light cast heavy shadows from all terrestrial objects.

It might be observed to turn upon its own axis in twenty-three

hours twenty-one minutes—an evidence, from the unaltered duration

of its days, that the planet had not shared in the disturbance.

On its disc the clouds formed from its atmospheric vapor were plainly

perceptible, as also were the seven spots, which, according to Bianchini,

are a chain of seas. It was now visible in broad daylight.

Buonaparte, when under the Directory, once had his attention

called to Venus at noon, and immediately hailed it joyfully,

recognizing it as his own peculiar star in the ascendant.

Captain Servadac, it may well be imagined, did not experience

the same gratifying emotion.

 

On the 20th, the distance between the two bodies had again

sensibly diminished. The captain had ceased to be surprised

that no vessel had been sent to rescue himself and his

companion from their strange imprisonment; the governor

general and the minister of war were doubtless far differently

occupied, and their interests far otherwise engrossed.

What sensational articles, he thought, must now be teeming to

the newspapers! What crowds must be flocking to the churches!

The end of the world approaching! the great climax close at hand!

Two days more, and the earth, shivered into a myriad atoms,

would be lost in boundless space!

 

These dire forebodings, however, were not destined to be realized.

Gradually the distance between the two planets began to increase;

the planes of their orbits did not coincide, and accordingly

the dreaded catastrophe did not ensue. By the 25th, Venus was

sufficiently remote to preclude any further fear of collision.

Ben Zoof gave a sigh of relief when the captain communicated

the glad intelligence.

 

Their proximity to Venus had been close enough to demonstrate

that beyond a doubt that planet has no moon or satellite such

as Cassini, Short, Montaigne of Limoges, Montbarron, and some

other astronomers have imagined to exist. “Had there been such

a satellite,” said Servadac, “we might have captured it in passing.

But what can be the meaning,” he added seriously, “of all this

displacement of the heavenly bodies?”

 

“What is that great building at Paris, captain, with a top like a cap?”

asked Ben Zoof.

 

“Do you mean the Observatory?”

 

“Yes, the Observatory. Are there not people living in the Observatory

who could explain all this?”

 

“Very likely; but what of that?”

 

“Let us be philosophers, and wait patiently until we can

hear their explanation.”

 

Servadac smiled. “Do you know what it is to be a philosopher,

Ben Zoof?” he asked.

 

“I am a soldier, sir,” was the servant’s prompt rejoinder, “and I

have learnt to know that ‘what can’t be cured must be endured.’”

 

The captain made no reply, but for a