Off on a Comet! a Journey through Planetary Space

CHAPTER XV

AN ENIG­MA FROM THE SEA

Lieu­tenant Pro­cope had been left on board in charge of the _Do­bry­na_, and on re­sum­ing the voy­age it was a task of some dif­fi­cul­ty to make him un­der­stand the fact that had just come to light. Some hours were spent in dis­cus­sion and in at­tempt­ing to pen­etrate the mys­ter­ies of the sit­ua­tion.

There were cer­tain things of which they were per­fect­ly cer­tain. They could be un­der no mis­ap­pre­hen­sion as to the dis­tance they had pos­itive­ly sailed from Gour­bi Is­land to­wards the east be­fore their fur­ther progress was ar­rest­ed by the un­known shore; as near­ly as pos­si­ble that was fif­teen de­grees; the length of the nar­row strait by which they had made their way across that land to re­gain the open sea was about three miles and a half; thence on­ward to the is­land, which they had been as­sured, on ev­idence that they could not dis­be­lieve, to be up­on the site of Gibral­tar, was four de­grees; while from Gibral­tar to Gour­bi Is­land was sev­en de­grees or but lit­tle more. What was it al­to­geth­er? Was it not less than thir­ty de­grees? In that lat­itude, the de­gree of lon­gi­tude rep­re­sents eight and forty miles. What, then, did it all amount to? In­du­bitably, to less than 1,400 miles. So brief a voy­age would bring the _Do­bry­na_ once again to her start­ing-​point, or, in oth­er words, would en­able her to com­plete the cir­cum­nav­iga­tion of the globe. How changed the con­di­tion of things! Pre­vi­ous­ly, to sail from Mal­ta to Gibral­tar by an east­ward course would have in­volved the pas­sage of the Suez Canal, the Red Sea, the In­di­an Ocean, the Pa­cif­ic, the At­lantic; but what had hap­pened now? Why, Gibral­tar had been reached as if it had been just at Cor­fu, and some three hun­dred and thir­ty de­grees of the earth’s cir­cuit had van­ished ut­ter­ly.

Af­ter al­low­ing for a cer­tain mar­gin of mis­cal­cu­la­tion, the main fact re­mained un­de­ni­able; and the nec­es­sary in­fer­ence that Lieu­tenant Pro­cope drew from the round of the earth be­ing com­plet­ed in 1 ,400 miles, was that the earth’s di­am­eter had been re­duced by about fif­teen six­teenths of its length.

“If that be so,” ob­served the count, “it ac­counts for some of the strange phe­nom­ena we wit­ness. If our world has be­come so in­signif­icant a spheroid, not on­ly has its grav­ity di­min­ished, but its ro­tary speed has been ac­cel­er­at­ed; and this af­fords an ad­equate ex­pla­na­tion of our days and nights be­ing thus cur­tailed. But how about the new or­bit in which we are mov­ing?”

He paused and pon­dered, and then looked at Pro­cope as though await­ing from him some fur­ther elu­ci­da­tion of the dif­fi­cul­ty. The lieu­tenant hes­itat­ed. When, in a few mo­ments, he be­gan to speak, Ser­vadac smiled in­tel­li­gent­ly, an­tic­ipat­ing the an­swer he was about to hear.

“My con­jec­ture is,” said Pro­cope, “that a frag­ment of con­sid­er­able mag­ni­tude has been de­tached from the earth; that it has car­ried with it an en­ve­lope of the earth’s at­mo­sphere, and that it is now trav­el­ing through the so­lar sys­tem in an or­bit that does not cor­re­spond at all with the prop­er or­bit of the earth.”

The hy­poth­esis was plau­si­ble; but what a mul­ti­tude of be­wil­der­ing spec­ula­tions it en­tailed! If, in truth, a cer­tain mass had been bro­ken off from the ter­res­tri­al sphere, whith­er would it wend its way? What would be the mea­sure of the ec­cen­tric­ity of its path? What would be its pe­ri­od round the sun? Might it not, like a comet, be car­ried away in­to the vast in­fin­ity of space? or, on the oth­er hand, might it not be at­tract­ed to the great cen­tral source of light and heat, and be ab­sorbed in it? Did its or­bit cor­re­spond with the or­bit of the eclip­tic? and was there no chance of its ev­er unit­ing again with the globe, from which it had been torn off by so sud­den and vi­olent a dis­rup­tion?

A thought­ful si­lence fell up­on them all, which Ser­vadac was the first to break. “Lieu­tenant,” he said, “your ex­pla­na­tion is in­ge­nious, and ac­counts for many ap­pear­ances; but it seems to me that in one point it fails.”

“How so?” replied Pro­cope. “To my mind the the­ory meets all ob­jec­tions.”

“I think not,” Ser­vadac an­swered. “In one point, at least, it ap­pears to me to break down com­plete­ly.”

“What is that?” asked the lieu­tenant.

“Stop a mo­ment,” said the cap­tain. “Let us see that we un­der­stand each oth­er right. Un­less I mis­take you, your hy­poth­esis is that a frag­ment of the earth, com­pris­ing the Mediter­ranean and its shores from Gibral­tar to Mal­ta, has been de­vel­oped in­to a new as­ter­oid, which is start­ed on an in­de­pen­dent or­bit in the so­lar re­gions. Is not that your mean­ing?”

“Pre­cise­ly so,” the lieu­tenant ac­qui­esced.

“Well, then,” con­tin­ued Ser­vadac, “it seems to me to be at fault in this re­spect: it fails, and fails com­plete­ly, to ac­count for the ge­olog­ical char­ac­ter of the land that we have found now en­com­pass­ing this sea. Why, if the new land is a frag­ment of the old–why does it not re­tain its old for­ma­tion? What has be­come of the gran­ite and the cal­care­ous de­posits? How is it that these should all be changed in­to a min­er­al con­crete with which we have no ac­quain­tance?”

No doubt, it was a se­ri­ous ob­jec­tion; for, how­ev­er like­ly it might be that a mass of the earth on be­ing de­tached would be ec­cen­tric in its move­ments, there was no prob­able rea­son to be al­leged why the ma­te­ri­al of its sub­stance should un­der­go so com­plete a change. There was noth­ing to ac­count for the fer­tile shores, rich in veg­eta­tion, be­ing trans­formed in­to rocks arid and bar­ren be­yond prece­dent.

The lieu­tenant felt the dif­fi­cul­ty, and owned him­self un­pre­pared to give at once an ad­equate so­lu­tion; nev­er­the­less, he de­clined to re­nounce his the­ory. He as­sert­ed that the ar­gu­ments in fa­vor of it car­ried con­vic­tion to his mind, and that he en­ter­tained no doubt but that, in the course of time, all ap­par­ent­ly an­tag­onis­tic cir­cum­stances would be ex­plained so as to be­come con­sis­tent with the view he took. He was care­ful, how­ev­er, to make it un­der­stood that with re­spect to the orig­inal cause of the dis­rup­tion he had no the­ory to of­fer; and al­though he knew what ex­pan­sion might be the re­sult of sub­ter­ranean forces, he did not ven­ture to say that he con­sid­ered it suf­fi­cient to pro­duce so tremen­dous an ef­fect. The ori­gin of the catas­tro­phe was a prob­lem still to be solved.

“Ah! well,” said Ser­vadac, “I don’t know that it mat­ters much where our new lit­tle plan­et comes from, or what it is made of, if on­ly it car­ries France along with it.”

“And Rus­sia,” added the count.

“And Rus­sia, of course,” said Ser­vadac, with a po­lite bow.

There was, how­ev­er, not much room for this san­guine ex­pec­ta­tion, for if a new as­ter­oid had thus been brought in­to ex­is­tence, it must be a sphere of ex­treme­ly lim­it­ed di­men­sions, and there could be lit­tle chance that it em­braced more than the mer­est frac­tion of ei­ther France or Rus­sia. As to Eng­land, the to­tal ces­sa­tion of all tele­graph­ic com­mu­ni­ca­tion be­tween her shores and Gibral­tar was a vir­tu­al proof that Eng­land was be­yond its com­pass.

And what was the true mea­sure­ment of the new lit­tle world? At Gour­bi Is­land the days and nights were of equal length, and this seemed to in­di­cate that it was sit­uat­ed on the equa­tor; hence the dis­tance by which the two poles stood apart would be half what had been reck­oned would be the dis­tance com­plet­ed by the _Do­bry­na_ in her cir­cuit. That dis­tance had been al­ready es­ti­mat­ed to be some­thing un­der 1,400 miles, so that the Arc­tic Pole of their re­cent­ly fash­ioned world must be about 350 miles to the north, and the Antarc­tic about 350 miles to the south of the is­land. Com­pare these cal­cu­la­tions with the map, and it is at once ap­par­ent that the north­ern­most lim­it bare­ly touched the coast of Provence, while the south­ern­most reached to about lat. 20 de­grees N., and fell in the heart of the desert. The prac­ti­cal test of these con­clu­sions would be made by fu­ture in­ves­ti­ga­tion, but mean­while the fact ap­peared very much to strength­en the pre­sump­tion that, if Lieu­tenant Pro­cope had not ar­rived at the whole truth, he had made a con­sid­er­able ad­vance to­wards it.

The weath­er, ev­er since the storm that had driv­en the _Do­bry­na_ in­to the creek, had been mag­nif­icent. The wind con­tin­ued fa­vor­able, and now un­der both steam and can­vas, she made a rapid progress to­wards the north, a di­rec­tion in which she was free to go in con­se­quence of the to­tal dis­ap­pear­ance of the Span­ish coast, from Gibral­tar right away to Al­icante. Mala­ga, Alme­ria, Cape Ga­ta, Car-​tha­ge­na. Cape Pa­los– all were gone. The sea was rolling over the south­ern ex­tent of the penin­su­la, so that the yacht ad­vanced to the lat­itude of Seville be­fore it sight­ed any land at all, and then, not shores such as the shores of An­dalu­sia, but a bluff and pre­cip­itous cliff, in its ge­olog­ical fea­tures re­sem­bling ex­act­ly the stern and bar­ren rock that she had coast­ed be­yond the site of Mal­ta. Here the sea made a de­cid­ed in­den­ta­tion on the coast; it ran up in an acute-​an­gled tri­an­gle till its apex co­in­cid­ed with the very spot up­on which Madrid had stood. But as hith­er­to the sea had en­croached up­on the land, the land in its turn now en­croached up­on the sea; for a frown­ing head­land stood out far in­to the basin of the Mediter­ranean, and formed a promon­to­ry stretch­ing out be­yond the prop­er places of the Balearic Isles. Cu­rios­ity was all alive. There was the in­tens­est in­ter­est awak­ened to de­ter­mine whether no ves­tige could be traced of Ma­jor­ca, Mi­nor­ca, or any of the group, and it was dur­ing a de­vi­ation from the di­rect course for the pur­pose of a more thor­ough scruti­ny, that one of the sailors raised a thrill of gen­er­al ex­cite­ment by shout­ing, “A bot­tle in the sea!”

Here, then, at length was a com­mu­ni­ca­tion from the out­er world. Sure­ly now they would find a doc­ument which would throw some light up­on all the mys­ter­ies that had hap­pened? Had not the day now dawned that should set their spec­ula­tions all at rest?

It was the morn­ing of the 21st of Febru­ary. The count, the cap­tain, the lieu­tenant, ev­ery­body hur­ried to the fore­cas­tle; the schooner was dex­ter­ous­ly put about, and all was ea­ger im­pa­tience un­til the sup­posed bot­tle was hauled on deck.

It was not, how­ev­er, a bot­tle; it proved to be a round leather tele­scope-​case, about a foot long, and the first thing to do be­fore in­ves­ti­gat­ing its con­tents was to make a care­ful ex­am­ina­tion of its ex­te­ri­or. The lid was fas­tened on by wax, and so se­cure­ly that it would take a long im­mer­sion be­fore any wa­ter could pen­etrate; there was no mak­er’s name to be de­ci­phered; but im­pressed very plain­ly with a seal on the wax were the two ini­tials “P. R.”

When the scruti­ny of the out­side was fin­ished, the wax was re­moved and the cov­er opened, and the lieu­tenant drew out a slip of ruled pa­per, ev­ident­ly torn from a com­mon note-​book. The pa­per had an in­scrip­tion writ­ten in four lines, which were re­mark­able for the pro­fu­sion of notes of ad­mi­ra­tion and in­ter­ro­ga­tion with which they were in­ter­spersed:

“Gal­lia??? _Ab sole_, au 15 fev. 59,000,000 1. ! Chemin par­cou­ru de janv. a fev. 82,000,000 1. !! _Va bene! All right!!_ Par­fait!!!”

There was a gen­er­al sigh of dis­ap­point­ment. They turned the pa­per over and over, and hand­ed it from one to an­oth­er. “What does it all mean?” ex­claimed the count.

“Some­thing mys­te­ri­ous here!” said Ser­vadac. “But yet,” he con­tin­ued, af­ter a pause, “one thing is tol­er­ably cer­tain: on the 15th, six days ago, some­one was alive to write it.”

“Yes; I pre­sume there is no rea­son to doubt the ac­cu­ra­cy of the date,” as­sent­ed the count.

To this strange con­glom­er­ation of French, En­glish, Ital­ian, and Latin, there was no sig­na­ture at­tached; nor was there any­thing to give a clue as to the lo­cal­ity in which it had been com­mit­ted to the waves. A tele­scope-​case would prob­ably be the prop­er­ty of some one on board a ship; and the fig­ures ob­vi­ous­ly re­ferred to the as­tro­nom­ical won­ders 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.”