Off on a Comet! a Journey through Planetary Space

CHAPTER XVII

A SEC­OND ENIG­MA

Up­on re-​em­bark­ing, the be­wil­dered ex­plor­ers be­gan to dis­cuss the ques­tion whether it would not now be de­sir­able to make their way back to Gour­bi Is­land, which was ap­par­ent­ly the on­ly spot in their new world from which they could hope to de­rive their fu­ture sus­te­nance. Cap­tain Ser­vadac tried to con­sole him­self with the re­flec­tion that Gour­bi Is­land was, af­ter all, a frag­ment of a French colony, and as such al­most like a bit of his dear France; and the plan of re­turn­ing thith­er was on the point of be­ing adopt­ed, when Lieu­tenant Pro­cope re­marked that they ought to re­mem­ber that they had not hith­er­to made an en­tire cir­cuit of the new shores of the sea on which they were sail­ing.

“We have,” he said, “nei­ther in­ves­ti­gat­ed the north­ern shore from the site of Cape An­tibes to the strait that brought us to Gibral­tar, nor have we fol­lowed the south­ern shore that stretch­es from the strait to the Gulf of Cabes. It is the old coast, and not the new, that we have been trac­ing; as yet, we can­not say pos­itive­ly that there is no out­let to the south; as yet, we can­not as­sert that no oa­sis of the African desert has es­caped the catas­tro­phe. Per­haps, even here in the north, we may find that Italy and Sici­ly and the larg­er is­lands of the Mediter­ranean may still main­tain their ex­is­tence.”

“I en­tire­ly con­cur with you,” said Count Timascheff. “I quite think we ought to make our sur­vey of the con­fines of this new basin as com­plete as pos­si­ble be­fore we with­draw.”

Ser­vadac, al­though he ac­knowl­edged the just­ness of these ob­ser­va­tions, could not help plead­ing that the ex­plo­rations might be de­ferred un­til af­ter a vis­it had been paid to Gour­bi Is­land.

“De­pend up­on it, cap­tain, you are mis­tak­en,” replied the lieu­tenant;” the right thing to do is to use the _Do­bry­na_ while she is avail­able.”

“Avail­able! What do you mean?” asked the count, some­what tak­en by sur­prise.

“I mean,” said Pro­cope, “that the far­ther this Gal­lia of ours re­cedes from the sun, the low­er the tem­per­ature will fall. It is like­ly enough, I think, that be­fore long the sea will be frozen over, and nav­iga­tion will be im­pos­si­ble. Al­ready you have learned some­thing of the dif­fi­cul­ties of travers­ing a field of ice, and I am sure, there­fore, you will ac­qui­esce in my wish to con­tin­ue our ex­plo­rations while the wa­ter is still open.”

“No doubt you are right, lieu­tenant,” said the count. “We will con­tin­ue our search while we can for some re­main­ing frag­ment of Eu­rope. Who shall tell whether we may not meet with some more sur­vivors from the catas­tro­phe, to whom it might be in our pow­er to af­ford as­sis­tance, be­fore we go in­to our win­ter quar­ters?”

Gen­er­ous and al­to­geth­er un­selfish as this sen­ti­ment re­al­ly was, it was ob­vi­ous­ly to the gen­er­al in­ter­est that they should be­come ac­quaint­ed, and if pos­si­ble es­tab­lish friend­ly re­la­tions, with any hu­man in­hab­itant who might be shar­ing their own strange des­tiny in be­ing rolled away up­on a new plan­et in­to the in­fini­tude of space. All dif­fer­ence of race, all dis­tinc­tion of na­tion­al­ity, must be merged in­to the one thought that, few as they were, they were the sole sur­viv­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tives of a world which it seemed ex­ceed­ing­ly im­prob­able that they would ev­er see again; and com­mon sense dic­tat­ed that they were bound to di­rect all their en­er­gies to in­sure that their as­ter­oid should at least have a unit­ed and sym­pa­thiz­ing pop­ula­tion.

It was on the 25th of Febru­ary that the yacht left the lit­tle creek in which she had tak­en refuge, and set­ting off at full steam east­wards, she con­tin­ued her way along the north­ern shore. A brisk breeze tend­ed to in­crease the keen­ness of the tem­per­ature, the ther­mome­ter be­ing, on an av­er­age, about two de­grees be­low ze­ro. Salt wa­ter freezes on­ly at a low­er tem­per­ature than fresh; the course of the _Do­bry­na_ was there­fore unim­ped­ed by ice, but it could not be con­cealed that there was the great­est ne­ces­si­ty to main­tain the ut­most pos­si­ble speed.

The nights con­tin­ued love­ly; the chilled con­di­tion of the at­mo­sphere pre­vent­ed the for­ma­tion of clouds; the con­stel­la­tions gleamed forth with un­sul­lied lus­ter; and, much as Lieu­tenant Pro­cope, from nau­ti­cal con­sid­er­ations, might re­gret the ab­sence of the moon, he could not do oth­er­wise than own that the mag­nif­icent nights of Gal­lia were such as must awak­en the en­thu­si­asm of an as­tronomer. And, as if to com­pen­sate for the loss of the moon­light, the heav­ens were il­lu­mi­nat­ed by a su­perb show­er of falling stars, far ex­ceed­ing, both in num­ber and in bril­lian­cy, the phe­nom­ena which are com­mon­ly dis­tin­guished as the Au­gust and Novem­ber me­te­ors; in fact, Gal­lia was pass­ing through that me­te­oric ring which is known to lie ex­te­ri­or to the earth’s or­bit, but al­most con­cen­tric with it. The rocky coast, its metal­lic sur­face re­flect­ing the glow of the daz­zling lu­mi­nar­ies, ap­peared lit­er­al­ly stip­pled with light, whilst the sea, as though spat­tered with burn­ing hail­stones, shone with a phos­pho­res­cence that was per­fect­ly splen­did. So great, how­ev­er, was the speed at which Gal­lia was re­ced­ing from the sun, that this me­te­oric storm last­ed scarce­ly more than four and twen­ty hours.

Next day the di­rect progress of the _Do­bry­na_ was ar­rest­ed by a long pro­jec­tion of land, which obliged her to turn south­wards, un­til she reached what for­mer­ly would have been the south­ern ex­trem­ity of Cor­si­ca. Of this, how­ev­er, there was now no trace; the Strait of Boni-​fa­cio had been re­placed by a vast ex­panse of wa­ter, which had at first all the ap­pear­ance of be­ing ut­ter­ly desert; but on the fol­low­ing morn­ing the ex­plor­ers un­ex­pect­ed­ly sight­ed a lit­tle is­land, which, un­less it should prove, as was on­ly too like­ly, to be of re­cent ori­gin they con­clud­ed, from its sit­ua­tion, must be a por­tion of the north­ern­most ter­ri­to­ry of Sar­dinia.

The _Do­bry­na_ ap­proached the land as near­ly as was pru­dent, the boat was low­ered, and in a few min­utes the count and Ser­vadac had land­ed up­on the islet, which was a mere plot of mead­ow land, not much more than two acres in ex­tent, dot­ted here and there with a few myr­tle-​bush­es and lentisks, in­ter­spersed with some an­cient olives. Hav­ing as­cer­tained, as they imag­ined, that the spot was de­void of liv­ing crea­ture, they were on the point of re­turn­ing to their boat, when their at­ten­tion was ar­rest­ed by a faint bleat­ing, and im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter­wards a soli­tary she-​goat came bound­ing to­wards the shore. The crea­ture had dark, al­most black hair, and small curved horns, and was a spec­imen of that do­mes­tic breed which, with con­sid­er­able jus­tice, has gained for it­self the ti­tle of “the poor man’s cow.” So far from be­ing alarmed at the pres­ence of strangers, the goat ran nim­bly to­wards them, and then, by its move­ments and plain­tive cries, seemed to be en­tic­ing them to fol­low it.

“Come,” said Ser­vadac; “let us see where it will lead us; it is more than prob­able it is not alone.”

The count agreed; and the an­imal, as if com­pre­hend­ing what was said, trot­ted on gen­tly for about a hun­dred paces, and stopped in front of a kind of cave or bur­row that was half con­cealed by a grove of lentisks. Here a lit­tle girl, sev­en or eight years of age, with rich brown hair and lus­trous dark eyes, beau­ti­ful as one of Muril­lo’s an­gels, was peep­ing shy­ly through the branch­es. Ap­par­ent­ly dis­cov­er­ing noth­ing in the as­pect of the strangers to ex­cite her ap­pre­hen­sions, the child sud­den­ly gained con­fi­dence, dart­ed for­wards with out­stretched hands, and in a voice, soft and melo­di­ous as the lan­guage which she spoke, said in Ital­ian:

“I like you; you will not hurt me, will you?”

“Hurt you, my child?” an­swered Ser­vadac. “No, in­deed; we will be your friends; we will take care of you.”

And af­ter a few mo­ments’ scruti­ny of the pret­ty maid­en, he added:

“Tell us your name, lit­tle one.”

“Ni­na!” was the child’s re­ply.

“Well, then, Ni­na, can you tell us where we are?”

“At Madale­na, I think,” said the lit­tle girl; “at least, I know I was there when that dread­ful shock came and al­tered ev­ery­thing.”

The count knew that Madale­na was close to Capre­ra, to the north of Sar­dinia, which had en­tire­ly dis­ap­peared in the dis­as­ter. By dint of a se­ries of ques­tions, he gained from the child a very in­tel­li­gent ac­count of her ex­pe­ri­ences. She told him that she had no par­ents, and had been em­ployed in tak­ing care of a flock of goats be­long­ing to one of the landown­ers, when one day, all of a sud­den, ev­ery­thing around her, ex­cept this lit­tle piece of land, had been swal­lowed up, and that she and Marzy, her pet goat, had been left quite alone. She went on to say that at first she had been very fright­ened; but when she found that the earth did not shake any more, she had thanked the great God, and had soon made her­self very hap­py liv­ing with Marzy. She had enough food, she said, and had been wait­ing for a boat to fetch her, and now a boat had come and she was quite ready to go away; on­ly they must let her goat go with her: they would both like so much to get back to the old farm.

“Here, at least, is one nice lit­tle in­hab­itant of Gal­lia,” said Cap­tain Ser­vadac, as he ca­ressed the child and con­duct­ed her to the boat.

Half an hour lat­er, both Ni­na and Marzy were safe­ly quar­tered on board the yacht. It is need­less to say that they re­ceived the hearti­est of wel­comes. The Rus­sian sailors, ev­er su­per­sti­tious, seemed al­most to re­gard the com­ing of the child as the ap­pear­ance of an an­gel; and, in­cred­ible as it may seem, more than one of them won­dered whether she had wings, and amongst them­selves they com­mon­ly re­ferred to her as “the lit­tle Madon­na.”

Soon out of sight of Madale­na, the _Do­bry­na_ for some hours held a south­east­er­ly course along the shore, which here was fifty leagues in ad­vance of the for­mer coast-​line of Italy, demon­strat­ing that a new con­ti­nent must have been formed, sub­sti­tut­ed as it were for the old penin­su­la, of which not a ves­tige could be iden­ti­fied. At a lat­itude cor­re­spond­ing with the lat­itude of Rome, the sea took the form of a deep gulf, ex­tend­ing back far be­yond the site of the Eter­nal City; the coast mak­ing a wide sweep round to the for­mer po­si­tion of Cal­abria, and jut­ting far be­yond the out­line of “the boot,” which Italy re­sem­bles. But the bea­con of Messi­na was not to be dis­cerned; no trace, in­deed, sur­vived of any por­tion of Sici­ly; the very peak of Et­na, 11,000 feet as it had reared it­self above the lev­el of the sea, had van­ished ut­ter­ly.

An­oth­er six­ty leagues to the south, and the _Do­bry­na_ sight­ed the en­trance of the strait which had af­ford­ed her so prov­iden­tial a refuge from the tem­pest, and had con­duct­ed her to the frag­men­tary rel­ic of Gibral­tar. Hence to the Gulf of Cabes had been al­ready ex­plored, and as it was uni­ver­sal­ly al­lowed that it was un­nec­es­sary to re­new the search in that di­rec­tion, the lieu­tenant start­ed off in a trans­verse course, to­wards a point hith­er­to un­in­ves­ti­gat­ed. That point was reached on the 3rd of March, and thence the coast was con­tin­uous­ly fol­lowed, as it led through what had been Tu­nis, across the province of Con­stan­tine, away to the oa­sis of Ziban; where, tak­ing a sharp turn, it first reached a lat­itude of 32 de­grees, and then re­turned again, thus form­ing a sort of ir­reg­ular gulf, en­closed by the same un­vary­ing bor­der of min­er­al con­crete. This colos­sal bound­ary then stretched away for near­ly 150 leagues over the Sa­hara desert, and, ex­tend­ing to the south of Gour­bi Is­land, oc­cu­pied what, if Mo­roc­co had still ex­ist­ed, would have been its nat­ural fron­tier.

Adapt­ing her course to these de­vi­ations of the coast­line, the _Do­bry­na_ was steer­ing north­wards, and had bare­ly reached the lim­it of the bay, when the at­ten­tion of all on board was ar­rest­ed by the phe­nomenon of a vol­cano, at least 3,000 feet high, its crater crowned with smoke, which oc­ca­sion­al­ly was streaked by tongues of flame.

“A burn­ing moun­tain!” they ex­claimed.

“Gal­lia, then, has some in­ter­nal heat,” said Ser­vadac.

“And why not, cap­tain?” re­joined the lieu­tenant. “If our as­ter­oid has car­ried with it a por­tion of the old earth’s at­mo­sphere, why should it not like­wise re­tain some­thing of its cen­tral fire?”

“Ah, well!” said the cap­tain, shrug­ging his shoul­ders, “I dare say there is caloric enough in our lit­tle world to sup­ply the wants of its pop­ula­tion.”

Count Timascheff in­ter­rupt­ed the si­lence that fol­lowed this con­ver­sa­tion by say­ing, “And now, gen­tle­men, as our course has brought us on our way once more to­wards Gibral­tar, what do you say to our re­new­ing our ac­quain­tance with the En­glish­men? They will be in­ter­est­ed in the re­sult of our voy­age.”

“For my part,” said Ser­vadac, “I have no de­sire that way. They know where to find Gour­bi Is­land; they can be­take them­selves thith­er just when they please. They have plen­ty of pro­vi­sions. If the wa­ter freezes, 120 leagues is no very great dis­tance. The re­cep­tion they gave us was not so cor­dial that we need put our­selves out of the way to re­peat our vis­it.”

“What you say is too true,” replied the count. “I hope we shall show them bet­ter man­ners when they con­de­scend to vis­it us.”

“Ay,” said Ser­vadac, “we must re­mem­ber that we are all one peo­ple now; no longer Rus­sian, French, or En­glish. Na­tion­al­ity is ex­tinct.”

“I am sad­ly afraid, how­ev­er,” con­tin­ued the count, “that an En­glish­man will be an En­glish­man ev­er.”

“Yes,” said the cap­tain, “that is al­ways their fail­ing.”

And thus all fur­ther thought of mak­ing their way again to the lit­tle gar­ri­son of Gibral­tar was aban­doned.

But even if their spir­it of cour­tesy had dis­posed them to re­new their ac­quain­tance with the British of­fi­cers, there were two cir­cum­stances that just then would have ren­dered such a pro­pos­al very un­ad­vis­able. In the first place, Lieu­tenant Pro­cope was con­vinced that it could not be much longer now be­fore the sea would be en­tire­ly frozen; and, be­sides this, the con­sump­tion of their coal, through the speed they had main­tained, had been so great that there was on­ly too much rea­son to fear that fu­el would fail them. Any­how, the strictest econ­omy was nec­es­sary, and it was ac­cord­ing­ly re­solved that the voy­age should not be much pro­longed. Be­yond the vol­canic peak, more­over, the wa­ters seemed to ex­pand in­to a bound­less ocean, and it might be a thing full of risk to be frozen up while the yacht was so in­ad­equate­ly pro­vi­sioned. Tak­ing all these things in­to ac­count, it was agreed that fur­ther in­ves­ti­ga­tions should be de­ferred to a more fa­vor­able sea­son, and that, with­out de­lay, the _Do­bry­na_ should re­turn to Gour­bi Is­land.

This de­ci­sion was es­pe­cial­ly wel­come to Hec­tor Ser­vadac, who, through­out the whole of the last five weeks, had been ag­itat­ed by much anx­ious thought on ac­count of the faith­ful ser­vant he had left be­hind.

The tran­sit from the vol­cano to the is­land was not long, and was marked by on­ly one no­tice­able in­ci­dent. This was the find­ing of a sec­ond mys­te­ri­ous doc­ument, in char­ac­ter pre­cise­ly sim­ilar to what they had found be­fore. The writ­er of it was ev­ident­ly en­gaged up­on a cal­cu­la­tion, prob­ably con­tin­ued from day to day, as to the mo­tions of the plan­et Gal­lia up­on its or­bit, and com­mit­ting the re­sults of his reck­on­ings to the waves as the chan­nel of com­mu­ni­ca­tion.

In­stead of be­ing en­closed in a tele­scope-​case, it was this time se­cured in a pre­served-​meat tin, her­met­ical­ly sealed, and stamped with the same ini­tials on the wax that fas­tened it. The great­est care was used in open­ing it, and it was found to con­tain the fol­low­ing mes­sage:

“Gal­lia Ab sole, au 1 mars, dist. 78,000,000 1.! Chemin par­cou­ru de fev. a mars: 59,000,000 1.! _Va bene! All right! Nil des­peran­dum!_

En­chante!”

“An­oth­er enig­ma!” ex­claimed Ser­vadac; “and still no in­tel­li­gi­ble sig­na­ture, and no ad­dress. No clear­ing up of the mys­tery!”

“I have no doubt, in my own mind,” said the count, “that it is one of a se­ries. It seems to me prob­able that they are be­ing sent broad­cast up­on the sea.”

“I won­der where the hare-​brained _sa­vant_ that writes them can be liv­ing?” ob­served Ser­vadac.

“Very like­ly he may have met with the fate of AE­sop’s ab­stract­ed as­tronomer, who found him­self at the bot­tom of a well.”

“Ay; but where _is_ that well?” de­mand­ed the cap­tain.

This was a ques­tion which the count was in­ca­pable of set­tling; and they could on­ly spec­ulate afresh as to whether the au­thor of the rid­dles was dwelling up­on some soli­tary is­land, or, like them­selves, was nav­igat­ing the wa­ters of the new Mediter­ranean. But they could de­tect noth­ing to guide them to a def­inite de­ci­sion.

Af­ter thought­ful­ly re­gard­ing the doc­ument for some time. Lieu­tenant Pro­cope pro­ceed­ed to ob­serve that he be­lieved the pa­per might be con­sid­ered as gen­uine, and ac­cord­ing­ly, tak­ing its state­ments as re­li­able, he de­duced two im­por­tant con­clu­sions: first, that where­as, in the month of Jan­uary, the dis­tance trav­eled by the plan­et (hy­po­thet-​ical­ly called Gal­lia) had been record­ed as 82,000,000 leagues, the dis­tance trav­eled in Febru­ary was on­ly 59,- 000,000 leagues–a dif­fer­ence of 23,000,000 leagues in one month; sec­ond­ly, that the dis­tance of the plan­et from the sun, which on the 15th of Febru­ary had been 59,000,000 leagues, was on the 1st of March 78,000,000 leagues– an in­crease of 19,000,000 leagues in a fort­night. Thus, in pro­por­tion as Gal­lia re­ced­ed from the sun, so did the rate of speed di­min­ish by which she trav­eled along her or­bit; facts to be ob­served in per­fect con­for­mi­ty with the known laws of ce­les­tial mech­anism.

“And your in­fer­ence?” asked the count.

“My in­fer­ence,” replied the lieu­tenant, “is a con­fir­ma­tion of my sur­mise that we are fol­low­ing an or­bit de­cid­ed­ly el­lip­ti­cal, al­though we have not yet the ma­te­ri­al to de­ter­mine its ec­cen­tric­ity.”

“As the writ­er ad­heres to the ap­pel­la­tion of Gal­lia, do you not think,” asked the count, “that we might call these new wa­ters the Gal­lian Sea?”

“There can be no rea­son to the con­trary, count,” replied the lieu­tenant; “and as such I will in­sert it up­on my new chart.”

“Our friend,” said Ser­vadac, “seems to be more and more grat­ified with the con­di­tion of things; not on­ly has he adopt­ed our mot­to, ‘_Nil des­peran­dum!_’ but see how en­thu­si­as­ti­cal­ly he has wound up with his ‘_En­chante!_’”

The con­ver­sa­tion dropped.

A few hours lat­er the man on watch an­nounced that Gour­bi Is­land was in sight.