Off on a Comet! a Journey through Planetary Space

CHAPTER XVIII

AN UN­EX­PECT­ED POP­ULA­TION

The _Do­bry­na_ was now back again at the is­land. Her cruise had last­ed from the 31st of Jan­uary to the 5th of March, a pe­ri­od of thir­ty-​five days (for it was leap year), cor­re­spond­ing to sev­en­ty days as ac­com­plished by the new lit­tle world.

Many a time dur­ing his ab­sence Hec­tor Ser­vadac had won­dered how his present vi­cis­si­tudes would end, and he had felt some mis­giv­ings as to whether he should ev­er again set foot up­on the is­land, and see his faith­ful or­der­ly, so that it was not with­out emo­tion that he had ap­proached the coast of the sole re­main­ing frag­ment of Al­ge­ri­an soil. But his ap­pre­hen­sions were ground­less; Gour­bi Is­land was just as he had left it, with noth­ing un­usu­al in its as­pect, ex­cept that a very pe­cu­liar cloud was hov­er­ing over it, at an al­ti­tude of lit­tle more than a hun­dred feet. As the yacht ap­proached the shore, this cloud ap­peared to rise and fall as if act­ed up­on by some in­vis­ible agen­cy, and the cap­tain, af­ter watch­ing it care­ful­ly, per­ceived that it was not an ac­cu­mu­la­tion of va­pors at all, but a dense mass of birds packed as close­ly to­geth­er as a swarm of her­rings, and ut­ter­ing deaf­en­ing and dis­cor­dant cries, amidst which from time to time the noise of the re­port of a gun could be plain­ly dis­tin­guished.

The _Do­bry­na_ sig­nal­ized her ar­rival by fir­ing her can­non, and dropped an­chor in the lit­tle port of the She­lif. Al­most with­in a minute Ben Zoof was seen run­ning, gun in hand, to­wards the shore; he cleared the last ridge of rocks at a sin­gle bound, and then sud­den­ly halt­ed. For a few sec­onds he stood mo­tion­less, his eyes fixed, as if obey­ing the in­struc­tions of a drill sergeant, on a point some fif­teen yards dis­tant, his whole at­ti­tude in­di­cat­ing sub­mis­sion and re­spect; but the sight of the cap­tain, who was land­ing, was too much for his equa­nim­ity, and dart­ing for­ward, he seized his mas­ter’s hand and cov­ered it with kiss­es. In­stead, how­ev­er, of ut­ter­ing any ex­pres­sions of wel­come or re­joic­ing at the cap­tain’s re­turn, Ben Zoof broke out in­to the most ve­he­ment ejac­ula­tions.

“Thieves, cap­tain! beast­ly thieves! Bedouins! pi­rates! dev­ils!”

“Why, Ben Zoof, what’s the mat­ter?” said Ser­vadac sooth­ing­ly.

“They are thieves! down­right, des­per­ate thieves! those in­fer­nal birds! That’s what’s the mat­ter. It is a good thing you have come. Here have I for a whole month been spend­ing my pow­der and shot up­on them, and the more I kill them, the worse they get; and yet, if I were to leave them alone, we should not have a grain of corn up­on the is­land.”

It was soon ev­ident that the or­der­ly had on­ly too much cause for alarm. The crops had ripened rapid­ly dur­ing the ex­ces­sive heat of Jan­uary, when the or­bit of Gal­lia was be­ing tra­versed at its per­ihe­lion, and were now ex­posed to the depre­da­tions of many thou­sands of birds; and al­though a good­ly num­ber of stacks at­test­ed the in­dus­try of Ben Zoof dur­ing the time of the _Do­bry­na_’s voy­age, it was on­ly too ap­par­ent that the por­tion of the har­vest that re­mained un­gath­ered was li­able to the most im­mi­nent risk of be­ing ut­ter­ly de­voured. It was, per­haps, on­ly nat­ural that this clus­tered mass of birds, as rep­re­sent­ing the whole of the feath­ered tribe up­on the sur­face of Gal­lia, should re­sort to Gour­bi Is­land, of which the mead­ows seemed to be the on­ly spot from which they could get sus­te­nance at all; but as this sus­te­nance would be ob­tained at the ex­pense, and prob­ably to the se­ri­ous detri­ment, of the hu­man pop­ula­tion, it was ab­so­lute­ly nec­es­sary that ev­ery pos­si­ble re­sis­tance should be made to the dev­as­ta­tion that was threat­ened.

Once sat­is­fied that Ser­vadac and his friends would co­op­er­ate with him in the raid up­on “the thieves,” Ben Zoof be­came calm and con­tent, and be­gan to make var­ious in­quiries. “And what has be­come,” he said, “of all our old com­rades in Africa?”

“As far as I can tell you,” an­swered the cap­tain, “they are all in Africa still; on­ly Africa isn’t by any means where we ex­pect­ed to find it.”

“And France? Mont­martre?” con­tin­ued Ben Zoof ea­ger­ly. Here was the cry of the poor fel­low’s heart.

As briefly as he could, Ser­vadac en­deav­ored to ex­plain the true con­di­tion of things; he tried to com­mu­ni­cate the fact that Paris, France, Eu­rope, nay, the whole world was more than eighty mil­lions of leagues away from Gour­bi Is­land; as gen­tly and cau­tious­ly as he could he ex­pressed his fear that they might nev­er see Eu­rope, France, Paris, Mont­martre again.

“No, no, sir!” protest­ed Ben Zoof em­phat­ical­ly; “that is all non­sense. It is al­to­geth­er out of the ques­tion to sup­pose that we are not to see Mont­martre again.” And the or­der­ly shook his head res­olute­ly, with the air of a man de­ter­mined, in spite of ar­gu­ment, to ad­here to his own opin­ion.

“Very good, my brave fel­low,” replied Ser­vadac, “hope on, hope while you may. The mes­sage has come to us over the sea, ‘Nev­er de­spair’; but one thing, nev­er­the­less, is cer­tain; we must forth­with com­mence ar­range­ments for mak­ing this is­land our per­ma­nent home.”

Cap­tain Ser­vadac now led the way to the gour­bi, which, by his ser­vant’s ex­er­tions, had been en­tire­ly re­built; and here he did the hon­ors of his mod­est es­tab­lish­ment to his two guests, the count and the lieu­tenant, and gave a wel­come, too, to lit­tle Ni­na, who had ac­com­pa­nied them on shore, and be­tween whom and Ben Zoof the most friend­ly re­la­tions had al­ready been es­tab­lished.

The ad­ja­cent build­ing con­tin­ued in good preser­va­tion, and Cap­tain Ser­vadac’s sat­is­fac­tion was very great in find­ing the two hors­es, Zephyr and Galette, com­fort­ably housed there and in good con­di­tion.

Af­ter the en­joy­ment of some re­fresh­ment, the par­ty pro­ceed­ed to a gen­er­al con­sul­ta­tion as to what steps must be tak­en for their fu­ture wel­fare. The most press­ing mat­ter that came be­fore them was the con­sid­er­ation of the means to be adopt­ed to en­able the in­hab­itants of Gal­lia to sur­vive the ter­ri­ble cold, which, in their ig­no­rance of the true ec­cen­tric­ity of their or­bit, might, for aught they knew, last for an al­most in­def­inite pe­ri­od. Fu­el was far from abun­dant; of coal there was none; trees and shrubs were few in num­ber, and to cut them down in prospect of the cold seemed a very ques­tion­able pol­icy; but there was no doubt some ex­pe­di­ent must be de­vised to pre­vent dis­as­ter, and that with­out de­lay.

The vict­ual­ing of the lit­tle colony of­fered no im­me­di­ate dif­fi­cul­ty. Wa­ter was abun­dant, and the cis­terns could hard­ly fail to be re­plen­ished by the nu­mer­ous streams that me­an­dered along the plains; more­over, the Gal­lian Sea would ere long be frozen over, and the melt­ed ice (wa­ter in its con­gealed state be­ing di­vest­ed of ev­ery par­ti­cle of salt) would af­ford a sup­ply of drink that could not be ex­haust­ed. The crops that were now ready for the har­vest, and the flocks and herds scat­tered over the is­land, would form an am­ple re­serve. There was lit­tle doubt that through­out the win­ter the soil would re­main un­pro­duc­tive, and no fresh fod­der for do­mes­tic an­imals could then be ob­tained; it would there­fore be nec­es­sary, if the ex­act du­ra­tion of Gal­lia’s year should ev­er be cal­cu­lat­ed, to pro­por­tion the num­ber of an­imals to be re­served to the re­al length of the win­ter.

The next thing req­ui­site was to ar­rive at a true es­ti­mate of the num­ber of the pop­ula­tion. With­out in­clud­ing the thir­teen En­glish­men at Gibral­tar, about whom he was not par­tic­ular­ly dis­posed to give him­self much con­cern at present, Ser­vadac put down the names of the eight Rus­sians, the two French­man, and the lit­tle Ital­ian girl, eleven in all, as the en­tire list of the in­hab­itants of Gour­bi Is­land.

“Oh, par­don me,” in­ter­posed Ben Zoof, “you are mis­tak­ing the state of the case al­to­geth­er. You will be sur­prised to learn that the to­tal of peo­ple on the is­land is dou­ble that. It is twen­ty-​two.”

“Twen­ty-​two!” ex­claimed the cap­tain; “twen­ty-​two peo­ple on this is­land? What do you mean?”

“The op­por­tu­ni­ty has not oc­curred,” an­swered Ben Zoof, “for me to tell you be­fore, but I have had com­pa­ny.”

“Ex­plain your­self, Ben Zoof,” said Ser­vadac. “What com­pa­ny have you had?”

“You could not sup­pose,” replied the or­der­ly, “that my own unas­sist­ed hands could have ac­com­plished all that har­vest work that you see has been done.”

“I con­fess,” said Lieu­tenant Pro­cope, “we do not seem to have no­ticed that.”

“Well, then,” said Ben Zoof, “if you will be good enough to come with me for about a mile, I shall be able to show you my com­pan­ions. But we must take our guns,”

“Why take our guns?” asked Ser­vadac. “I hope we are not go­ing to fight.”

“No, not with men,” said Ben Zoof; “but it does not an­swer to throw a chance away for giv­ing bat­tle to those thieves of birds.”

Leav­ing lit­tle Ni­na and her goat in the gour­bi, Ser­vadac, Count Timascheff, and the lieu­tenant, great­ly mys­ti­fied, took up their guns and fol­lowed the or­der­ly. All along their way they made un­spar­ing slaugh­ter of the birds that hov­ered over and around them. Near­ly ev­ery species of the feath­ered tribe seemed to have its rep­re­sen­ta­tive in that liv­ing cloud. There were wild ducks in thou­sands; snipe, larks, rooks, and swal­lows; a count­less va­ri­ety of sea-​birds–wid­geons, gulls, and seamews; be­side a quan­ti­ty of game–quails, par­tridges, and wood­cocks. The sports­men did their best; ev­ery shot told; and the depreda­tors fell by dozens on ei­ther hand.

In­stead of fol­low­ing the north­ern shore of the is­land, Ben Zoof cut oblique­ly across the plain. Mak­ing their progress with the un­wont­ed ra­pid­ity which was at­tributable to their spe­cif­ic light­ness, Ser­vadac and his com­pan­ions soon found them­selves near a grove of sycamores and eu­ca­lyp­tus massed in pic­turesque con­fu­sion at the base of a lit­tle hill. Here they halt­ed.

“Ah! the vagabonds! the ras­cals! the thieves!” sud­den­ly ex­claimed Ben Zoof, stamp­ing his foot with rage.

“How now? Are your friends the birds at their pranks again?” asked the cap­tain.

“No, I don’t mean the birds: I mean those lazy beg­gars that are shirk­ing their work. Look here; look there!” And as Ben Zoof spoke, he point­ed to some scythes, and sick­les, and oth­er im­ple­ments of hus­bandry that had been left up­on the ground.

“What is it you mean?” asked Ser­vadac, get­ting some­what im­pa­tient.

“Hush, hush! lis­ten!” was all Ben Zoof’s re­ply; and he raised his fin­ger as if in warn­ing.

Lis­ten­ing at­ten­tive­ly, Ser­vadac and his as­so­ciates could dis­tinct­ly rec­og­nize a hu­man voice, ac­com­pa­nied by the notes of a gui­tar and by the mea­sured click of cas­tanets.

“Spaniards!” said Ser­vadac.

“No mis­take about that, sir,” replied Ben Zoof; “a Spaniard would rat­tle his cas­tanets at the can­non’s mouth.”

“But what is the mean­ing of it all?” asked the cap­tain, more puz­zled than be­fore.

“Hark!” said Ben Zoof; “it is the old man’s turn.”

And then a voice, at once gruff and harsh, was heard vo­cif­er­at­ing, “My mon­ey! my mon­ey! when will you pay me my mon­ey? Pay me what you owe me, you mis­er­able ma­jos.”

Mean­while the song con­tin­ued: _”Tu san­dun­ga y cigar­ro, Y una cana de Jerez, Mi jamel­go y un tra­bu­co, Que mas glo­ria puede haver?”_

Ser­vadac’s knowl­edge of Gas­con en­abled him par­tial­ly to com­pre­hend the rol­lick­ing tenor of the Span­ish pa­tri­ot­ic air, but his at­ten­tion was again ar­rest­ed by the voice of the old man growl­ing sav­age­ly, “Pay me you shall; yes, by the God of Abra­ham, you shall pay me.”

“A Jew!” ex­claimed Ser­vadac.

“Ay, sir, a Ger­man Jew,” said Ben Zoof.

The par­ty was on the point of en­ter­ing the thick­et, when a sin­gu­lar spec­ta­cle made them pause. A group of Spaniards had just be­gun danc­ing their na­tion­al fan­dan­go, and the ex­traor­di­nary light­ness which had be­come the phys­ical prop­er­ty of ev­ery ob­ject in the new plan­et made the dancers bound to a height of thir­ty feet or more in­to the air, con­sid­er­ably above the tops of the trees. What fol­lowed was ir­re­sistibly com­ic. Four stur­dy ma­jos had dragged along with them an old man in­ca­pable of re­sis­tance, and com­pelled him, _nolens volens_, to join in the dance; and as they all kept ap­pear­ing and dis­ap­pear­ing above the bank of fo­liage, their grotesque at­ti­tudes, com­bined with the pitiable coun­te­nance of their help­less vic­tim, could not do oth­er­wise than re­call most forcibly the sto­ry of San­cho Pan­za tossed in a blan­ket by the mer­ry drap­ers of Segovia.

Ser­vadac, the count, Pro­cope, and Ben Zoof now pro­ceed­ed to make their way through the thick­et un­til they came to a lit­tle glade, where two men were stretched idly on the grass, one of them play­ing the gui­tar, and the oth­er a pair of cas­tanets; both were ex­plod­ing with laugh­ter, as they urged the per­form­ers to greater and yet greater ex­er­tions in the dance. At the sight of strangers they paused in their mu­sic, and si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly the dancers, with their vic­tim, alight­ed gen­tly on the sward.

Breath­less and half ex­haust­ed as was the Jew, he rushed with an ef­fort to­wards Ser­vadac, and ex­claimed in French, marked by a strong Teu­ton­ic ac­cent, “Oh, my lord gov­er­nor, help me, help! These ras­cals de­fraud me of my rights; they rob me; but, in the name of the God of Is­rael, I ask you to see jus­tice done!”

The cap­tain glanced in­quir­ing­ly to­wards Ben Zoof, and the or­der­ly, by a sig­nif­icant nod, made his mas­ter un­der­stand that he was to play the part that was im­plied by the ti­tle. He took the cue, and prompt­ly or­dered the Jew to hold his tongue at once. The man bowed his head in servile sub­mis­sion, and fold­ed his hands up­on his breast.

Ser­vadac sur­veyed him leisure­ly. He was a man of about fifty, but from his ap­pear­ance might well have been tak­en for at least ten years old­er. Small and skin­ny, with eyes bright and cun­ning, a hooked nose, a short yel­low beard, un­kempt hair, huge feet, and long bony hands, he pre­sent­ed all the typ­ical char­ac­ter­is­tics of the Ger­man Jew, the heart­less, wily usurer, the hard­ened miser and skin­flint. As iron is at­tract­ed by the mag­net, so was this Shy­lock at­tract­ed by the sight of gold, nor would he have hes­itat­ed to draw the life-​blood of his cred­itors, if by such means he could se­cure his claims.

His name was Isaac Hakkabut, and he was a na­tive of Cologne. Near­ly the whole of his time, how­ev­er, he in­formed Cap­tain Ser­vadac, had been spent up­on the sea, his re­al busi­ness be­ing that of a mer­chant trad­ing at all the ports of the Mediter­ranean. A tar­tan, a small ves­sel of two hun­dred tons bur­den, con­veyed his en­tire stock of mer­chan­dise, and, to say the truth, was a sort of float­ing em­po­ri­um, con­vey­ing near­ly ev­ery pos­si­ble ar­ti­cle of com­merce, from a lu­cifer match to the ra­di­ant fab­rics of Frank-​fort and Epinal. With­out wife or chil­dren, and hav­ing no set­tled home, Isaac Hakkabut lived al­most en­tire­ly on board the _Hansa_, as he had named his tar­tan; and en­gag­ing a mate, with a crew of three men, as be­ing ad­equate to work so light a craft, he cruised along the coasts of Al­ge­ria, Tu­nis, Egypt, Turkey, and Greece, vis­it­ing, more­over, most of the har­bors of the Lev­ant. Care­ful to be al­ways well sup­plied with the prod­ucts in most gen­er­al de­mand–cof­fee, sug­ar, rice, to­bac­co, cot­ton stuffs, and gun­pow­der–and be­ing at all times ready to barter, and pre­pared to deal in sec-​ond­hand wares, he had con­trived to amass con­sid­er­able wealth.

On the event­ful night of the 1st of Jan­uary the _Hansa_ had been at Ceu­ta, the point on the coast of Mo­roc­co ex­act­ly op­po­site Gibral­tar. The mate and three sailors had all gone on shore, and, in com­mon with many of their fel­low-​crea­tures, had en­tire­ly dis­ap­peared; but the most pro­ject­ing rock of Ceu­ta had been undis­turbed by the gen­er­al catas­tro­phe, and half a score of Spaniards, who had hap­pened to be up­on it, had es­caped with their lives. They were all An­dalu­sian ma­jos, agri­cul­tur­al la­bor­ers, and nat­ural­ly as care­less and ap­athet­ic as men of their class usu­al­ly are, but they could not help be­ing very con­sid­er­ably em­bar­rassed when they dis­cov­ered that they were left in soli­tude up­on a de­tached and iso­lat­ed rock. They took what mu­tu­al coun­sel they could, but be­came on­ly more and more per­plexed. One of them was named Ne­grete, and he, as hav­ing trav­eled some­what more than the rest, was tac­it­ly rec­og­nized as a sort of lead­er; but al­though he was by far the most en­light­ened of them all, he was quite in­ca­pable of form­ing the least con­cep­tion of the na­ture of what had oc­curred. The one thing up­on which they could not fail to be con­scious was that they had no prospect of ob­tain­ing pro­vi­sions, and con­se­quent­ly their first busi­ness was to de­vise a scheme for get­ting away from their present abode. The _Hansa_ was ly­ing off shore. The Spaniards would not have had the slight­est hes­ita­tion in sum­mar­ily tak­ing pos­ses­sion of her, but their ut­ter ig­no­rance of sea­man­ship made them re­luc­tant­ly come to the con­clu­sion that the more pru­dent pol­icy was to make terms with the own­er.

And now came a sin­gu­lar part of the sto­ry. Ne­grete and his com­pan­ions had mean­while re­ceived a vis­it from two En­glish of­fi­cers from Gibral­tar. What passed be­tween them the Jew did not know; he on­ly knew that, im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter the con­clu­sion of the in­ter­view, Ne­grete came to him and or­dered him to set sail at once for the near­est point of Mo­roc­co. The Jew, afraid to dis­obey, but with his eye ev­er up­on the main chance, stip­ulat­ed that at the end of their voy­age the Spaniards should pay for their pas­sage– terms to which, as they would to any oth­er, they did not de­mur, know­ing that they had not the slight­est in­ten­tion of giv­ing him a sin­gle re­al.

The _Hansa_ had weighed an­chor on the 3rd of Febru­ary. The wind blew from the west, and con­se­quent­ly the work­ing of the tar­tan was easy enough. The un­prac­ticed sailors had on­ly to hoist their sails and, though they were quite un­con­scious of the fact, the breeze car­ried them to the on­ly spot up­on the lit­tle world they oc­cu­pied which could af­ford them a refuge.

Thus it fell out that one morn­ing Ben Zoof, from his look­out on Gour­bi Is­land, saw a ship, not the _Do­bry­na_, ap­pear up­on the hori­zon, and make qui­et­ly down to­wards what had for­mer­ly been the right bank of the She­lif.

Such was Ben Zoof’s ver­sion of what had oc­curred, as he had gath­ered it from the new-​com­ers. He wound up his recital by re­mark­ing that the car­go of the _Hansa_ would be of im­mense ser­vice to them; he ex­pect­ed, in­deed, that Isaac Hakkabut would be dif­fi­cult to man­age, but con­sid­ered there could be no harm in ap­pro­pri­at­ing the goods for the com­mon wel­fare, since there could be no op­por­tu­ni­ty now for sell­ing them.

Ben Zoof added, “And as to the dif­fi­cul­ties be­tween the Jew and his pas­sen­gers, I told him that the gov­er­nor gen­er­al was ab­sent on a tour of in­spec­tion, and that he would see ev­ery­thing eq­ui­tably set­tled.”

Smil­ing at his or­der­ly’s tac­tics, Ser­vadac turned to Hakkabut, and told him that he would take care that his claims should be du­ly in­ves­ti­gat­ed and all prop­er de­mands should be paid. The man ap­peared sat­is­fied, and, for the time at least, de­sist­ed from his com­plaints and im­por­tu­ni­ties.

When the Jew had re­tired, Count Timascheff asked, “But how in the world can you ev­er make those fel­lows pay any­thing?”

“They have lots of mon­ey,” said Ben Zoof.

“Not like­ly,” replied the count; “when did you ev­er know Spaniards like them to have lots of mon­ey?”

“But I have seen it my­self,” said Ben Zoof; “and it is En­glish mon­ey.”

“En­glish mon­ey!” echoed Ser­vadac; and his mind again re­vert­ed to the ex­cur­sion made by the colonel and the ma­jor from Gibral­tar, about which they had been so ret­icent. “We must in­quire more about this,” he said.

Then, ad­dress­ing Count Timascheff, he added, “Al­to­geth­er, I think the coun­tries of Eu­rope are fair­ly rep­re­sent­ed by the pop­ula­tion of Gal­lia.”

“True, cap­tain,” an­swered the count; “we have on­ly a frag­ment of a world, but it con­tains na­tives of France, Rus­sia, Italy, Spain, and Eng­land. Even Ger­many may be said to have a rep­re­sen­ta­tive in the per­son of this mis­er­able Jew.”

“And even in him,” said Ser­vadac, “per­haps we shall not find so in­dif­fer­ent a rep­re­sen­ta­tive as we at present imag­ine.”