Off on a Comet! a Journey through Planetary Space

CHAPTER XII

AT THE MER­CY OF THE WINDS

As the af­fright­ed cor­morants had winged their flight to­wards the south, there sprang up a san­guine hope on board the schooner that land might be dis­cov­ered in that di­rec­tion. Thith­er, ac­cord­ing­ly, it was de­ter­mined to pro­ceed, and in a few hours af­ter quit­ting the is­land of the tomb, the _Do­bry­na_ was travers­ing the shal­low wa­ters that now cov­ered the penin­su­la of Dakhul, which had sep­arat­ed the Bay of Tu­nis from the Gulf of Ham­mamet. For two days she con­tin­ued an un­de­vi­at­ing course, and af­ter a fu­tile search for the coast of Tu­nis, reached the lat­itude of 34 de­grees.

Here, on the 11th of Febru­ary, there sud­den­ly arose the cry of “Land!” and in the ex­treme hori­zon, right ahead, where land had nev­er been be­fore, it was true enough that a shore was dis­tinct­ly to be seen. What could it be? It could not be the coast of Tripoli; for not on­ly would that low-​ly­ing shore be quite in­vis­ible at such a dis­tance, but it was cer­tain, more­over, that it lay two de­grees at least still fur­ther south. It was soon ob­served that this new­ly dis­cov­ered land was of very ir­reg­ular el­eva­tion, that it ex­tend­ed due east and west across the hori­zon, thus di­vid­ing the gulf in­to two sep­arate sec­tions and com­plete­ly con­ceal­ing the is­land of Jer­ba, which must lie be­hind. Its po­si­tion was du­ly traced on the _Do­bry­na_’s chart.

“How strange,” ex­claimed Hec­tor Ser­vadac, “that af­ter sail­ing all this time over sea where we ex­pect­ed to find land, we have at last come up­on land where we thought to find sea!”

“Strange, in­deed,” replied Lieu­tenant Pro­cope; “and what ap­pears to me al­most as re­mark­able is that we have nev­er once caught sight ei­ther of one of the Mal­tese tar­tans or one of the Lev­an­tine xe­becs that traf­fic so reg­ular­ly on the Mediter­ranean.”

“East­wards or west­wards,” asked the count–“which shall be our course? All far­ther progress to the south is checked.”

“West­wards, by all means,” replied Ser­vadac quick­ly. “I am long­ing to know whether any­thing of Al­ge­ria is left be­yond the She­lif; be­sides, as we pass Gour­bi Is­land we might take Ben Zoof on board, and then make away for Gibral­tar, where we should be sure to learn some­thing, at least, of Eu­ro­pean news.”

With his usu­al air of state­ly cour­tesy, Count Timascheff begged the cap­tain to con­sid­er the yacht at his own dis­pos­al, and de­sired him to give the lieu­tenant in­struc­tions ac­cord­ing­ly.

Lieu­tenant Pro­cope, how­ev­er, hes­itat­ed, and af­ter re­volv­ing mat­ters for a few mo­ments in his mind, point­ed out that as the wind was blow­ing di­rect­ly from the west, and seemed like­ly to in­crease, if they went to the west in the teeth of the weath­er, the schooner would be re­duced to the use of her en­gine on­ly, and would have much dif­fi­cul­ty in mak­ing any head­way; on the oth­er hand, by tak­ing an east­ward course, not on­ly would they have the ad­van­tage of the wind, but, un­der steam and can­vas, might hope in a few days to be off the coast of Egypt, and from Alexan­dria or some oth­er port they would have the same op­por­tu­ni­ty of get­ting tid­ings from Eu­rope as they would at Gibral­tar.

In­tense­ly anx­ious as he was to re­vis­it the province of Oran, and ea­ger, too, to sat­is­fy him­self of the wel­fare of his faith­ful Ben Zoof, Ser­vadac could not but own the rea­son­able­ness of the lieu­tenant’s ob­jec­tions, and yield­ed to the pro­pos­al that the east­ward course should be adopt­ed. The wind gave signs on­ly too threat­en­ing of the breeze ris­ing to a gale; but, for­tu­nate­ly, the waves did not cul­mi­nate in break­ers, but rather in a long swell which ran in the same di­rec­tion as the ves­sel.

Dur­ing the last fort­night the high tem­per­ature had been grad­ual­ly di­min­ish­ing, un­til it now reached an av­er­age of 20 de­grees Cent. (or 68 de­grees Fahr.), and some­times de­scend­ed as low as 15 de­grees. That this diminu­tion was to be at­tribut­ed to the change in the earth’s or­bit was a ques­tion that ad­mit­ted of lit­tle doubt. Af­ter ap­proach­ing so near to the sun as to cross the or­bit of Venus, the earth must now have re­ced­ed so far from the sun that its nor­mal dis­tance of nine­ty-​one mil­lions of miles was great­ly in­creased, and the prob­abil­ity was great that it was ap­prox­imat­ing to the or­bit of Mars, that plan­et which in its phys­ical con­sti­tu­tion most near­ly re­sem­bles our own. Nor was this sup­po­si­tion sug­gest­ed mere­ly by the low­er­ing of the tem­per­ature; it was strong­ly cor­rob­orat­ed by the re­duc­tion of the ap­par­ent di­am­eter of the sun’s disc to the pre­cise di­men­sions which it would as­sume to an ob­serv­er ac­tu­al­ly sta­tioned on the sur­face of Mars. The nec­es­sary in­fer­ence that seemed to fol­low from these phe­nom­ena was that the earth had been pro­ject­ed in­to a new or­bit, which had the form of a very elon­gat­ed el­lipse.

Very slight, how­ev­er, in com­par­ison was the re­gard which these as­tro­nom­ical won­ders at­tract­ed on board the _Do­bry­na_. All in­ter­est there was too much ab­sorbed in ter­res­tri­al mat­ters, and in as­cer­tain­ing what changes had tak­en place in the con­fig­ura­tion of the earth it­self, to per­mit much at­ten­tion to be paid to its er­rat­ic move­ments through space.

The schooner kept brave­ly on her way, but well out to sea, at a dis­tance of two miles from land. There was good need of this pre­cau­tion, for so pre­cip­itous was the shore that a ves­sel driv­en up­on it must in­evitably have gone to pieces; it did not of­fer a sin­gle har­bor of refuge, but, smooth and per­pen­dic­ular as the walls of a fortress, it rose to a height of two hun­dred, and oc­ca­sion­al­ly of three hun­dred feet. The waves dashed vi­olent­ly against its base. Up­on the gen­er­al sub­stra­tum rest­ed a mas­sive con­glom­er­ate, the crys­tal­liza­tions of which rose like a for­est of gi­gan­tic pyra­mids and obelisks.

But what struck the ex­plor­ers more than any­thing was the ap­pear­ance of sin­gu­lar new­ness that per­vad­ed the whole of the re­gion. It all seemed so re­cent in its for­ma­tion that the at­mo­sphere had had no op­por­tu­ni­ty of pro­duc­ing its wont­ed ef­fect in soft­en­ing the hard­ness of its lines, in round­ing the sharp­ness of its an­gles, or in mod­ify­ing the col­or of its sur­face; its out­line was clear­ly marked against the sky, and its sub­stance, smooth and pol­ished as though fresh from a founder’s mold, glit­tered with the metal­lic bril­lian­cy that is char­ac­ter­is­tic of pyrites. It seemed im­pos­si­ble to come to any oth­er con­clu­sion but that the land be­fore them, con­ti­nent or is­land, had been up­heaved by sub­ter­ranean forces above the sur­face of the sea, and that it was main­ly com­posed of the same metal­lic el­ement as had char­ac­ter­ized the dust so fre­quent­ly up­lift­ed from the bot­tom.

The ex­treme naked­ness of the en­tire tract was like­wise very ex­traor­di­nary. Else­where, in var­ious quar­ters of the globe, there may be ster­ile rocks, but there are none so adamant as to be al­to­geth­er un­fur­rowed by the fil­aments en­gen­dered in the moist residu­um of the con­densed va­por; else­where there may be bar­ren steeps, but none so rigid as not to af­ford some hold to veg­eta­tion, how­ev­er low and el­emen­tary may be its type; but here all was bare, and blank, and des­olate–not a symp­tom of vi­tal­ity was vis­ible.

Such be­ing the con­di­tion of the ad­ja­cent land, it could hard­ly be a mat­ter of sur­prise that all the sea-​birds, the al­ba­tross, the gull, the sea-​mew, sought con­tin­ual refuge on the schooner; day and night they perched fear­less­ly up­on the yards, the re­port of a gun fail­ing to dis­lodge them, and when food of any sort was thrown up­on the deck, they would dart down and fight with ea­ger vo­rac­ity for the prize. Their ex­treme avid­ity was rec­og­nized as a proof that any land where they could ob­tain a sus­te­nance must be far re­mote.

On­wards thus for sev­er­al days the _Do­bry­na_ fol­lowed the con­tour of the in­hos­pitable coast, of which the fea­tures would oc­ca­sion­al­ly change, some­times for two or three miles as­sum­ing the form of a sim­ple ar­ris, sharply de­fined as though cut by a chis­el, when sud­den­ly the pris­mat­ic lamel­lae soar­ing in rugged con­fu­sion would again re­cur; but all along there was the same ab­sence of beach or tract of sand to mark its base, nei­ther were there any of those shoals of rock that are or­di­nar­ily found in shal­low wa­ter. At rare in­ter­vals there were some nar­row fis­sures, but not a creek avail­able for a ship to en­ter to re­plen­ish its sup­ply of wa­ter; and the wide road­steads were un­pro­tect­ed and ex­posed to well-​nigh ev­ery point of the com­pass.

But af­ter sail­ing two hun­dred and forty miles, the progress of the _Do­bry­na_ was sud­den­ly ar­rest­ed. Lieu­tenant Pro­cope, who had sed­ulous­ly in­sert­ed the out­line of the new­ly re­vealed shore up­on the maps, an­nounced that it had ceased to run east and west, and had tak­en a turn due north, thus form­ing a bar­ri­er to their con­tin­uing their pre­vi­ous di­rec­tion. It was, of course, im­pos­si­ble to con­jec­ture how far this bar­ri­er ex­tend­ed; it co­in­cid­ed pret­ty near­ly with the four­teenth merid­ian of east lon­gi­tude; and if it reached, as prob­ably it did, be­yond Sici­ly to Italy, it was cer­tain that the vast basin of the Mediter­ranean, which had washed the shores alike of Eu­rope, Asia, and Africa, must have been re­duced to about half its orig­inal area.

It was re­solved to pro­ceed up­on the same plan as hereto­fore, fol­low­ing the bound­ary of the land at a safe dis­tance. Ac­cord­ing­ly, the head of the _Do­bry­na_ was point­ed north, mak­ing straight, as it was pre­sumed, for the south of Eu­rope. A hun­dred miles, or some­what over, in that di­rec­tion, and it was to be an­tic­ipat­ed she would come in sight of Mal­ta, if on­ly that an­cient is­land, the her­itage in suc­ces­sion of Phoeni­cians, Carthagini­ans, Si­cil­ians, Ro­mans, Van­dals, Greeks, Ara­bi­ans, and the knights of Rhodes, should still be un­de­stroyed.

But Mal­ta, too, was gone; and when, up­on the 14th, the sound­ing-​line was dropped up­on its site, it was on­ly with the same re­sult so of­ten­times ob­tained be­fore.

“The dev­as­ta­tion is not lim­it­ed to Africa,” ob­served the count.

“As­sured­ly not,” as­sent­ed the lieu­tenant; adding, “and I con­fess I am al­most in de­spair whether we shall ev­er as­cer­tain its lim­its. To what quar­ter of Eu­rope, if Eu­rope still ex­ists, do you pro­pose that I should now di­rect your course?”

“To Sici­ly, Italy, France!” ejac­ulat­ed Ser­vadac, ea­ger­ly,–“any­where where we can learn the truth of what has be­fall­en us.”

“How if we are the sole sur­vivors?” said the count, grave­ly.

Hec­tor Ser­vadac was silent; his own se­cret pre­sen­ti­ment so thor­ough­ly co­in­cid­ed with the doubts ex­pressed by the count, that he re­frained from say­ing an­oth­er word.

The coast, with­out de­vi­ation, still tend­ed to­wards the north. No al­ter­na­tive, there­fore, re­mained than to take a west­er­ly course and to at­tempt to reach the north­ern shores of the Mediter­ranean. On the l6th the _Do­bry­na_ es­sayed to start up­on her al­tered way, but it seemed as if the el­ements had con­spired to ob­struct her progress. A fu­ri­ous tem­pest arose; the wind beat dead in the di­rec­tion of the coast, and the dan­ger in­curred by a ves­sel of a ton­nage so light was nec­es­sar­ily very great.

Lieu­tenant Pro­cope was ex­treme­ly un­easy. He took in all sail, struck his top­masts, and re­solved to re­ly en­tire­ly on his en­gine. But the per­il seemed on­ly to in­crease. Enor­mous waves caught the schooner and car­ried her up to their crests, whence again she was plunged deep in­to the abysses that they left. The screw failed to keep its hold up­on the wa­ter, but con­tin­ual­ly re­volved with use­less speed in the va­cant air; and thus, al­though the steam was forced on to the ex­tremest lim­it con­sis­tent with safe­ty, the ves­sel held her way with the ut­most dif­fi­cul­ty, and re­coiled be­fore the hur­ri­cane.

Still, not a sin­gle re­sort for refuge did the in­ac­ces­si­ble shore present. Again and again the lieu­tenant asked him­self what would be­come of him and his com­rades, even if they should sur­vive the per­il of ship­wreck, and gain a foot­ing up­on the cliff. What re­sources could they ex­pect to find up­on that scene of des­ola­tion? What hope could they en­ter­tain that any por­tion of the old con­ti­nent still ex­ist­ed be­yond that drea­ry bar­ri­er?

It was a try­ing time, but through­out it all the crew be­haved with the great­est courage and com­po­sure; con­fi­dent in the skill of their com­man­der, and in the sta­bil­ity of their ship, they per­formed their du­ties with steadi­ness and un­ques­tion­ing obe­di­ence.

But nei­ther skill, nor courage, nor obe­di­ence could avail; all was in vain. De­spite the strain put up­on her en­gine, the schooner, bare of can­vas (for not even the small­est stay-​sail could have with­stood the vi­olence of the storm), was drift­ing with ter­rif­ic speed to­wards the men­ac­ing precipices, which were on­ly a. few short miles to lee­ward. Ful­ly alive to the hope­less­ness of their sit­ua­tion, the crew were all on deck.

“All over with us, sir!” said Pro­cope to the count. “I have done ev­ery­thing that man could do; but our case is des­per­ate. Noth­ing short of a mir­acle can save us now. With­in an hour we must go to pieces up­on yon­der rocks.”

“Let us, then, com­mend our­selves to the prov­idence of Him to Whom noth­ing is im­pos­si­ble,” replied the count, in a calm, clear voice that could be dis­tinct­ly heard by all; and as he spoke, he rev­er­ent­ly un­cov­ered, an ex­am­ple in which he was fol­lowed by all the rest.

The de­struc­tion of the ves­sel seem­ing thus in­evitable, Lieu­tenant Pro­cope took the best mea­sures he could to in­sure a few days’ sup­ply of food for any who might es­cape ashore. He or­dered sev­er­al cas­es of pro­vi­sions and kegs of wa­ter to be brought on deck, and saw that they were se­cure­ly lashed to some emp­ty bar­rels, to make them float af­ter the ship had gone down.

Less and less grew the dis­tance from the shore, but no creek, no in­let, could be dis­cerned in the tow­er­ing wall of cliff, which seemed about to top­ple over and in­volve them in an­ni­hi­la­tion. Ex­cept a change of wind or, as Pro­cope ob­served, a su­per­nat­ural rift­ing of the rock, noth­ing could bring de­liv­er­ance now. But the wind did not veer, and in a few min­utes more the schooner was hard­ly three ca­bles’ dis­tance from the fa­tal land. All were aware that their last mo­ment had ar­rived. Ser­vadac and the count grasped each oth­er’s hands for a long farewell; and, tossed by the tremen­dous waves, the schooner was on the very point of be­ing hurled up­on the cliff, when a ring­ing shout was heard. “Quick, boys, quick! Hoist the jib, and right the tiller!”

Sud­den and startling as the un­ex­pect­ed or­ders were, they were ex­ecut­ed as if by mag­ic.

The lieu­tenant, who had shout­ed from the bow, rushed astern and took the helm, and be­fore any­one had time to spec­ulate up­on the ob­ject of his ma­neu­vers, he shout­ed again, “Look out! sharp! watch the sheets!”

An in­vol­un­tary cry broke forth from all on board. But it was no cry of ter­ror. Right ahead was a nar­row open­ing in the sol­id rock; it was hard­ly forty feet wide. Whether it was a pas­sage or no, it mat­tered lit­tle; it was at least a refuge; and, driv­en by wind and wave, the _Do­bry­na_, un­der the dex­ter­ous guid­ance of the lieu­tenant, dashed in be­tween its per­pen­dic­ular walls.

Had she not im­mured her­self in a per­pet­ual prison?