Off on a Comet! a Journey through Planetary Space

CHAPTER XVI

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 as to pro­long day and night as at the poles of the earth, but the rays of the sun must reach us here on­ly very oblique­ly, and the cold, in all like­li­hood, will be in­tense.”

“So cold, do you think,” asked Ser­vadac, “that an­imal life must be ex­tinct?”

“I do not say that, cap­tain,” an­swered the lieu­tenant; “for, how­ev­er far our lit­tle world may be re­moved from the sun, I do not see why its tem­per­ature should fall be­low what pre­vails in those out­ly­ing re­gions be­yond our sys­tem where sky and air are not.” “And what tem­per­ature may that be?” in­quired the cap­tain with a shud­der.

“Fouri­er es­ti­mates that even in those vast un­fath­omable tracts, the tem­per­ature nev­er de­scends low­er than 60 de­grees,” said Pro­cope.

“Six­ty! Six­ty de­grees be­low ze­ro!” cried the count. “Why, there’s not a Rus­sian could en­dure it!”

“I beg your par­don, count. It is placed on record that the En­glish _have_ sur­vived it, or some­thing quite ap­prox­imate, up­on their Arc­tic ex­pe­di­tions. When Cap­tain Par­ry was on Melville Is­land, he knew the ther­mome­ter to fall to 56 de­grees,” said Pro­cope.

As the ex­plor­ers ad­vanced, they seemed glad to pause from time to time, that they might re­cov­er their breath; for the air, be­com­ing more and more rar­efied, made res­pi­ra­tion some­what dif­fi­cult and the as­cent fa­tigu­ing. Be­fore they had reached an al­ti­tude of 600 feet they no­ticed a sen­si­ble diminu­tion of the tem­per­ature; but nei­ther cold nor fa­tigue de­terred them, and they were re­solved to per­se­vere. For­tu­nate­ly, the deep stri­ae or fur­rows in the sur­face of the rocks that made the bot­tom of the ravine in some de­gree fa­cil­itat­ed their progress, but it was not un­til they had been toil­ing up for two hours more that they suc­ceed­ed in reach­ing the sum­mit of the cliff.

Ea­ger­ly and anx­ious­ly did they look around. To the south there was noth­ing but the sea they had tra­versed; to the north, noth­ing but one drear, in­hos­pitable stretch.

Ser­vadac could not sup­press a cry of dis­may. Where was his beloved France? Had he gained this ar­du­ous height on­ly to be­hold the rocks car­pet­ed with ice and snow, and reach­ing in­ter­minably to the far-​off hori­zon? His heart sank with­in him.

The whole re­gion ap­peared to con­sist of noth­ing but the same strange, uni­form min­er­al con­glom­er­ate, crys­tal­lized in­to reg­ular hexag­onal prisms. But what­ev­er was its ge­olog­ical char­ac­ter, it was on­ly too ev­ident that it had en­tire­ly re­placed the for­mer soil, so that not a ves­tige of the old con­ti­nent of Eu­rope could be dis­cerned. The love­ly scenery of Provence, with the grace of its rich and un­du­lat­ing land­scape; its gar­dens of cit­rons and or­anges ris­ing tier up­on tier from the deep red soil–all, all had van­ished. Of the veg­etable king­dom, there was not a sin­gle rep­re­sen­ta­tive; the most mea­ger of Arc­tic plants, the most in­signif­icant of lichens, could ob­tain no hold up­on that stony waste. Nor did the an­imal world as­sert the fee­blest sway. The min­er­al king­dom reigned supreme.

Cap­tain Ser­vadac’s deep de­jec­tion was in strange con­trast to his gen­er­al hi­lar­ity. Silent and tear­ful, he stood up­on an ice-​bound rock, strain­ing his eyes across the bound­less vista of the mys­te­ri­ous ter­ri­to­ry. “It can­not be!” he ex­claimed. “We must some­how have mis­tak­en our bear­ings. True, we have en­coun­tered this bar­ri­er; but France is there be­yond! Yes, France is _there!_ Come, count, come! By all that’s piti­ful, I en­treat you, come and ex­plore the far­thest verge of the ice-​bound track!”

He pushed on­wards along the rugged sur­face of the rock, but had not pro­ceed­ed far be­fore he came to a sud­den pause. His foot had come in con­tact with some­thing hard be­neath the snow, and, stoop­ing down, he picked up a lit­tle block of stony sub­stance, which the first glance re­vealed to be of a ge­olog­ical char­ac­ter al­to­geth­er alien to the uni­ver­sal rocks around. It proved to be a frag­ment of dis-​col­ored mar­ble, on which sev­er­al let­ters were in­scribed, of which the on­ly part at all de­ci­pher­able was the syl­la­ble “Vil.”

“Vil–Vil­la!” he cried out, in his ex­cite­ment drop­ping the mar­ble, which was bro­ken in­to atoms by the fall.

What else could this frag­ment be but the sole sur­viv­ing rem­nant of some sump­tu­ous man­sion that once had stood on this un­ri­valed site? Was it not the residue of some ed­ifice that had crowned the lux­uri­ant head­land of An­tibes, over­look­ing Nice, and com­mand­ing the gor­geous panora­ma that em­braced the Mar­itime Alps and reached be­yond Mona­co and Men­tone to the Ital­ian height of Bor­dighera? And did it not give in its sad and too con­vinc­ing tes­ti­mo­ny that An­tibes it­self had been in­volved in the great de­struc­tion? Ser­vadac gazed up­on the shat­tered mar­ble, pen­sive and dis­heart­ened.

Count Timascheff laid his hand kind­ly on the cap­tain’s shoul­der, and said, “My friend, do you not re­mem­ber the mot­to of the old Hope fam­ily?”

He shook his head mourn­ful­ly.

“_Orbe frac­to, spes il­loe­sa_,” con­tin­ued the count–“Though the world be shat­tered, hope is unim­paired.”

Ser­vadac smiled faint­ly, and replied that he felt rather com­pelled to take up the de­spair­ing cry of Dante, “All hope aban­don, ye who en­ter here.”

“Nay, not so,” an­swered the count; “for the present at least, let our max­im be _Nil des­peran­dum!_”