Off on a Comet! a Journey through Planetary Space Read online

  CHAPTER V. A MYSTERIOUS SEA

  Violent as the commotion had been, that portion of the Algerian coastwhich is bounded on the north by the Mediterranean, and on the west bythe right bank of the Shelif, appeared to have suffered little change.It is true that indentations were perceptible in the fertile plain,and the surface of the sea was ruffled with an agitation that was quiteunusual; but the rugged outline of the cliff was the same as heretofore,and the aspect of the entire scene appeared unaltered. The stonehostelry, with the exception of some deep clefts in its walls, hadsustained little injury; but the gourbi, like a house of cards destroyedby an infant's breath, had completely subsided, and its two inmates laymotionless, buried under the sunken thatch.

  It was two hours after the catastrophe that Captain Servadac regainedconsciousness; he had some trouble to collect his thoughts, and thefirst sounds that escaped his lips were the concluding words of therondo which had been so ruthlessly interrupted;

  "Constant ever I will be, Constant...."

  His next thought was to wonder what had happened; and in order to findan answer, he pushed aside the broken thatch, so that his head appearedabove the _debris_. "The gourbi leveled to the ground!" he exclaimed,"surely a waterspout has passed along the coast."

  He felt all over his body to perceive what injuries he had sustained,but not a sprain nor a scratch could he discover. "Where are you, BenZoof?" he shouted.

  "Here, sir!" and with military promptitude a second head protruded fromthe rubbish.

  "Have you any notion what has happened, Ben Zoof?"

  "I've a notion, captain, that it's all up with us."

  "Nonsense, Ben Zoof; it is nothing but a waterspout!"

  "Very good, sir," was the philosophical reply, immediately followed bythe query, "Any bones broken, sir?"

  "None whatever," said the captain.

  Both men were soon on their feet, and began to make a vigorous clearanceof the ruins, beneath which they found that their arms, cookingutensils, and other property, had sustained little injury.

  "By-the-by, what o'clock is it?" asked the captain.

  "It must be eight o'clock, at least," said Ben Zoof, looking at the sun,which was a considerable height above the horizon. "It is almost timefor us to start."

  "To start! what for?"

  "To keep your appointment with Count Timascheff."

  "By Jove! I had forgotten all about it!" exclaimed Servadac. Thenlooking at his watch, he cried, "What are you thinking of, Ben Zoof? Itis scarcely two o'clock."

  "Two in the morning, or two in the afternoon?" asked Ben Zoof, againregarding the sun.

  Servadac raised his watch to his ear. "It is going," said he; "but, byall the wines of Medoc, I am puzzled. Don't you see the sun is in thewest? It must be near setting."

  "Setting, captain! Why, it is rising finely, like a conscript at thesound of the reveille. It is considerably higher since we have beentalking."

  Incredible as it might appear, the fact was undeniable that the sun wasrising over the Shelif from that quarter of the horizon behind whichit usually sank for the latter portion of its daily round. They wereutterly bewildered. Some mysterious phenomenon must not only havealtered the position of the sun in the sidereal system, but must evenhave brought about an important modification of the earth's rotation onher axis.

  Captain Servadac consoled himself with the prospect of reading anexplanation of the mystery in next week's newspapers, and turned hisattention to what was to him of more immediate importance. "Come, letus be off," said he to his orderly; "though heaven and earth betopsy-turvy, I must be at my post this morning."

  "To do Count Timascheff the honor of running him through the body,"added Ben Zoof.

  If Servadac and his orderly had been less preoccupied, they would havenoticed that a variety of other physical changes besides the apparentalteration in the movement of the sun had been evolved during theatmospheric disturbances of that New Year's night. As they descendedthe steep footpath leading from the cliff towards the Shelif, they wereunconscious that their respiration became forced and rapid, like that ofa mountaineer when he has reached an altitude where the air has becomeless charged with oxygen. They were also unconscious that their voiceswere thin and feeble; either they must themselves have become ratherdeaf, or it was evident that the air had become less capable oftransmitting sound.

  The weather, which on the previous evening had been very foggy, hadentirely changed. The sky had assumed a singular tint, and was sooncovered with lowering clouds that completely hid the sun. There were,indeed, all the signs of a coming storm, but the vapor, on account ofthe insufficient condensation, failed to fall.

  The sea appeared quite deserted, a most unusual circumstance along thiscoast, and not a sail nor a trail of smoke broke the gray monotonyof water and sky. The limits of the horizon, too, had become muchcircumscribed. On land, as well as on sea, the remote distance hadcompletely disappeared, and it seemed as though the globe had assumed amore decided convexity.

  At the pace at which they were walking, it was very evident that thecaptain and his attendant would not take long to accomplish the threemiles that lay between the gourbi and the place of rendezvous. Theydid not exchange a word, but each was conscious of an unusual buoyancy,which appeared to lift up their bodies and give as it were, wings totheir feet. If Ben Zoof had expressed his sensations in words, he wouldhave said that he felt "up to anything," and he had even forgotten totaste so much as a crust of bread, a lapse of memory of which the worthysoldier was rarely guilty.

  As these thoughts were crossing his mind, a harsh bark was heard to theleft of the footpath, and a jackal was seen emerging from a large groveof lentisks. Regarding the two wayfarers with manifest uneasiness, thebeast took up its position at the foot of a rock, more than thirty feetin height. It belonged to an African species distinguished by ablack spotted skin, and a black line down the front of the legs. Atnight-time, when they scour the country in herds, the creatures aresomewhat formidable, but singly they are no more dangerous than a dog.Though by no means afraid of them, Ben Zoof had a particular aversionto jackals, perhaps because they had no place among the fauna of hisbeloved Montmartre. He accordingly began to make threatening gestures,when, to the unmitigated astonishment of himself and the captain, theanimal darted forward, and in one single bound gained the summit of therock.

  "Good Heavens!" cried Ben Zoof, "that leap must have been thirty feet atleast."

  "True enough," replied the captain; "I never saw such a jump."

  Meantime the jackal had seated itself upon its haunches, and was staringat the two men with an air of impudent defiance. This was too much forBen Zoof's forbearance, and stooping down he caught up a huge stone,when to his surprise, he found that it was no heavier than a piece ofpetrified sponge. "Confound the brute!" he exclaimed, "I might as wellthrow a piece of bread at him. What accounts for its being as light asthis?"

  Nothing daunted, however, he hurled the stone into the air. It missedits aim; but the jackal, deeming it on the whole prudent to decamp,disappeared across the trees and hedges with a series of bounds, whichcould only be likened to those that might be made by an india-rubberkangaroo. Ben Zoof was sure that his own powers of propelling must equalthose of a howitzer, for his stone, after a lengthened flight throughthe air, fell to the ground full five hundred paces the other side ofthe rock.

  The orderly was now some yards ahead of his master, and had reacheda ditch full of water, and about ten feet wide. With the intention ofclearing it, he made a spring, when a loud cry burst from Servadac. "BenZoof, you idiot! What are you about? You will break your back!"

  And well might he be alarmed, for Ben Zoof had sprung to a height offorty feet into the air. Fearful of the consequences that would attendthe descent of his servant to _terra firma_, Servadac bounded forwards,to be on the other side of the ditch in time to break his fall. But themuscular effort that he made carried him in his turn to an altitude ofthirty feet; in his ascent he passed Ben
Zoof, who had already commencedhis downward course; and then, obedient to the laws of gravitation, hedescended with increasing rapidity, and alighted upon the earth withoutexperiencing a shock greater than if he had merely made a bound of fouror five feet high.

  Ben Zoof burst into a roar of laughter. "Bravo!" he said, "we shouldmake a good pair of clowns."

  But the captain was inclined to take a more serious view of the matter.For a few seconds he stood lost in thought, then said solemnly, "BenZoof, I must be dreaming. Pinch me hard; I must be either asleep ormad."

  "It is very certain that something has happened to us," said Ben Zoof."I have occasionally dreamed that I was a swallow flying over theMontmartre, but I never experienced anything of this kind before; itmust be peculiar to the coast of Algeria."

  Servadac was stupefied; he felt instinctively that he was not dreaming,and yet was powerless to solve the mystery. He was not, however, the manto puzzle himself for long over any insoluble problem. "Come what may,"he presently exclaimed, "we will make up our minds for the future to besurprised at nothing."

  "Right, captain," replied Ben Zoof; "and, first of all, let us settleour little score with Count Timascheff."

  Beyond the ditch lay a small piece of meadow land, about an acre inextent. A soft and delicious herbage carpeted the soil, whilst treesformed a charming framework to the whole. No spot could have been chosenmore suitable for the meeting between the two adversaries.

  Servadac cast a hasty glance round. No one was in sight. "We are thefirst on the field," he said.

  "Not so sure of that, sir," said Ben Zoof.

  "What do you mean?" asked Servadac, looking at his watch, which he hadset as nearly as possible by the sun before leaving the gourbi; "it isnot nine o'clock yet."

  "Look up there, sir. I am much mistaken if that is not the sun;" and asBen Zoof spoke, he pointed directly overhead to where a faint white discwas dimly visible through the haze of clouds.

  "Nonsense!" exclaimed Servadac. "How can the sun be in the zenith, inthe month of January, in lat. 39 degrees N.?"

  "Can't say, sir. I only know the sun is there; and at the rate he hasbeen traveling, I would lay my cap to a dish of couscous that in lessthan three hours he will have set."

  Hector Servadac, mute and motionless, stood with folded arms. Presentlyhe roused himself, and began to look about again. "What means all this?"he murmured. "Laws of gravity disturbed! Points of the compass reversed!The length of day reduced one half! Surely this will indefinitelypostpone my meeting with the count. Something has happened; Ben Zoof andI cannot both be mad!"

  The orderly, meantime, surveyed his master with the greatest equanimity;no phenomenon, however extraordinary, would have drawn from him asingle exclamation of surprise. "Do you see anyone, Ben Zoof?" asked thecaptain, at last.

  "No one, sir; the count has evidently been and gone." "But supposingthat to be the case," persisted the captain, "my seconds would havewaited, and not seeing me, would have come on towards the gourbi. I canonly conclude that they have been unable to get here; and as for CountTimascheff--"

  Without finishing his sentence. Captain Servadac, thinking it justprobable that the count, as on the previous evening, might come bywater, walked to the ridge of rock that overhung the shore, in orderto ascertain if the _Dobryna_ were anywhere in sight. But the sea wasdeserted, and for the first time the captain noticed that, althoughthe wind was calm, the waters were unusually agitated, and seethed andfoamed as though they were boiling. It was very certain that the yachtwould have found a difficulty in holding her own in such a swell.Another thing that now struck Servadac was the extraordinary contractionof the horizon. Under ordinary circumstances, his elevated positionwould have allowed him a radius of vision at least five and twenty milesin length; but the terrestrial sphere seemed, in the course of the lastfew hours, to have become considerably reduced in volume, and he couldnow see for a distance of only six miles in every direction.

  Meantime, with the agility of a monkey, Ben Zoof had clambered to thetop of a eucalyptus, and from his lofty perch was surveying thecountry to the south, as well as towards both Tenes and Mostaganem. Ondescending, be informed the captain that the plain was deserted.

  "We will make our way to the river, and get over into Mostaganem," saidthe captain.

  The Shelif was not more than a mile and a half from the meadow, butno time was to be lost if the two men were to reach the town beforenightfall. Though still hidden by heavy clouds, the sun was evidentlydeclining fast; and what was equally inexplicable, it was not followingthe oblique curve that in these latitudes and at this time of year mightbe expected, but was sinking perpendicularly on to the horizon.

  As he went along, Captain Servadac pondered deeply. Perchance someunheard-of phenomenon had modified the rotary motion of the globe; orperhaps the Algerian coast had been transported beyond the equatorinto the southern hemisphere. Yet the earth, with the exception of thealteration in its convexity, in this part of Africa at least, seemed tohave undergone no change of any very great importance. As far as the eyecould reach, the shore was, as it had ever been, a succession ofcliffs, beach, and arid rocks, tinged with a red ferruginous hue. Tothe south--if south, in this inverted order of things, it might stillbe called--the face of the country also appeared unaltered, and someleagues away, the peaks of the Merdeyah mountains still retained theiraccustomed outline.

  Presently a rift in the clouds gave passage to an oblique ray of lightthat clearly proved that the sun was setting in the east.

  "Well, I am curious to know what they think of all this at Mostaganem,"said the captain. "I wonder, too, what the Minister of War will say whenhe receives a telegram informing him that his African colony has become,not morally, but physically disorganized; that the cardinal pointsare at variance with ordinary rules, and that the sun in the month ofJanuary is shining down vertically upon our heads."

  Ben Zoof, whose ideas of discipline were extremely rigid, at oncesuggested that the colony should be put under the surveillance of thepolice, that the cardinal points should be placed under restraint, andthat the sun should be shot for breach of discipline.

  Meantime, they were both advancing with the utmost speed. Thedecompression of the atmosphere made the specific gravity of theirbodies extraordinarily light, and they ran like hares and leaped likechamois. Leaving the devious windings of the footpath, they went asa crow would fly across the country. Hedges, trees, and streams werecleared at a bound, and under these conditions Ben Zoof felt that hecould have overstepped Montmartre at a single stride. The earth seemedas elastic as the springboard of an acrobat; they scarcely touched itwith their feet, and their only fear was lest the height to which theywere propelled would consume the time which they were saving by theirshort cut across the fields.

  It was not long before their wild career brought them to the right bankof the Shelif. Here they were compelled to stop, for not only had thebridge completely disappeared, but the river itself no longer existed.Of the left bank there was not the slightest trace, and the right bank,which on the previous evening had bounded the yellow stream, as itmurmured peacefully along the fertile plain, had now become the shore ofa tumultuous ocean, its azure waters extending westwards far as the eyecould reach, and annihilating the tract of country which had hithertoformed the district of Mostaganem. The shore coincided exactly with whathad been the right bank of the Shelif, and in a slightly curved lineran north and south, whilst the adjacent groves and meadows all retainedtheir previous positions. But the river-bank had become the shore of anunknown sea.

  Eager to throw some light upon the mystery, Servadac hurriedly made hisway through the oleander bushes that overhung the shore, took up somewater in the hollow of his hand, and carried it to his lips. "Saltas brine!" he exclaimed, as soon as he had tasted it. "The sea hasundoubtedly swallowed up all the western part of Algeria."

  "It will not last long, sir," said Ben Zoof. "It is, probably, only asevere flood."

  The captain shook his head. "Worse than t
hat, I fear, Ben Zoof," hereplied with emotion. "It is a catastrophe that may have veryserious consequences. What can have become of all my friends andfellow-officers?"

  Ben Zoof was silent. Rarely had he seen his master so much agitated;and though himself inclined to receive these phenomena with philosophicindifference, his notions of military duty caused his countenance toreflect the captain's expression of amazement.

  But there was little time for Servadac to examine the changes which afew hours had wrought. The sun had already reached the eastern horizon,and just as though it were crossing the ecliptic under the tropics,it sank like a cannon ball into the sea. Without any warning, day gaveplace to night, and earth, sea, and sky were immediately wrapped inprofound obscurity.