Off on a Comet! a Journey through Planetary Space

CHAPTER V

A MYS­TE­RI­OUS SEA

Vi­olent as the com­mo­tion had been, that por­tion of the Al­ge­ri­an coast which is bound­ed on the north by the Mediter­ranean, and on the west by the right bank of the She­lif, ap­peared to have suf­fered lit­tle change. It is true that in­den­ta­tions were per­cep­ti­ble in the fer­tile plain, and the sur­face of the sea was ruf­fled with an ag­ita­tion that was quite un­usu­al; but the rugged out­line of the cliff was the same as hereto­fore, and the as­pect of the en­tire scene ap­peared un­al­tered. The stone hostel­ry, with the ex­cep­tion of some deep clefts in its walls, had sus­tained lit­tle in­jury; but the gour­bi, like a house of cards de­stroyed by an in­fant’s breath, had com­plete­ly sub­sid­ed, and its two in­mates lay mo­tion­less, buried un­der the sunken thatch.

It was two hours af­ter the catas­tro­phe that Cap­tain Ser­vadac re­gained con­scious­ness; he had some trou­ble to col­lect his thoughts, and the first sounds that es­caped his lips were the con­clud­ing words of the ron­do which had been so ruth­less­ly in­ter­rupt­ed; “Con­stant ev­er I will be, Con­stant . . . .”

His next thought was to won­der what had hap­pened; and in or­der to find an an­swer, he pushed aside the bro­ken thatch, so that his head ap­peared above the _de­bris_. “The gour­bi lev­eled to the ground!” he ex­claimed, “sure­ly a wa­ter­spout has passed along the coast.”

He felt all over his body to per­ceive what in­juries he had sus­tained, but not a sprain nor a scratch could he dis­cov­er. “Where are you, Ben Zoof?” he shout­ed.

“Here, sir!” and with mil­itary promp­ti­tude a sec­ond head pro­trud­ed from the rub­bish.

“Have you any no­tion what has hap­pened, Ben Zoof?”

“I’ve a no­tion, cap­tain, that it’s all up with us.”

“Non­sense, Ben Zoof; it is noth­ing but a wa­ter­spout!”

“Very good, sir,” was the philo­soph­ical re­ply, im­me­di­ate­ly fol­lowed by the query, “Any bones bro­ken, sir?”

“None what­ev­er,” said the cap­tain.

Both men were soon on their feet, and be­gan to make a vig­or­ous clear­ance of the ru­ins, be­neath which they found that their arms, cook­ing uten­sils, and oth­er prop­er­ty, had sus­tained lit­tle in­jury.

“By-​the-​by, what o’clock is it?” asked the cap­tain.

“It must be eight o’clock, at least,” said Ben Zoof, look­ing at the sun, which was a con­sid­er­able height above the hori­zon. “It is al­most time for us to start.”

“To start! what for?”

“To keep your ap­point­ment with Count Timascheff.”

“By Jove! I had for­got­ten all about it!” ex­claimed Ser­vadac. Then look­ing at his watch, he cried, “What are you think­ing of, Ben Zoof? It is scarce­ly two o’clock.”

“Two in the morn­ing, or two in the af­ter­noon?” asked Ben Zoof, again re­gard­ing the sun.

Ser­vadac raised his watch to his ear. “It is go­ing,” said he; “but, by all the wines of Medoc, I am puz­zled. Don’t you see the sun is in the west? It must be near set­ting.”

“Set­ting, cap­tain! Why, it is ris­ing fine­ly, like a con­script at the sound of the reveille. It is con­sid­er­ably high­er since we have been talk­ing.”

In­cred­ible as it might ap­pear, the fact was un­de­ni­able that the sun was ris­ing over the She­lif from that quar­ter of the hori­zon be­hind which it usu­al­ly sank for the lat­ter por­tion of its dai­ly round. They were ut­ter­ly be­wil­dered. Some mys­te­ri­ous phe­nomenon must not on­ly have al­tered the po­si­tion of the sun in the side­re­al sys­tem, but must even have brought about an im­por­tant mod­ifi­ca­tion of the earth’s ro­ta­tion on her ax­is.

Cap­tain Ser­vadac con­soled him­self with the prospect of read­ing an ex­pla­na­tion of the mys­tery in next week’s news­pa­pers, and turned his at­ten­tion to what was to him of more im­me­di­ate im­por­tance. “Come, let us be off,” said he to his or­der­ly; “though heav­en and earth be top­sy-​turvy, I must be at my post this morn­ing.”

“To do Count Timascheff the hon­or of run­ning him through the body,” added Ben Zoof.

If Ser­vadac and his or­der­ly had been less pre­oc­cu­pied, they would have no­ticed that a va­ri­ety of oth­er phys­ical changes be­sides the ap­par­ent al­ter­ation in the move­ment of the sun had been evolved dur­ing the at­mo­spher­ic dis­tur­bances of that New Year’s night. As they de­scend­ed the steep foot­path lead­ing from the cliff to­wards the She­lif, they were un­con­scious that their res­pi­ra­tion be­came forced and rapid, like that of a moun­taineer when he has reached an al­ti­tude where the air has be­come less charged with oxy­gen. They were al­so un­con­scious that their voic­es were thin and fee­ble; ei­ther they must them­selves have be­come rather deaf, or it was ev­ident that the air had be­come less ca­pa­ble of trans­mit­ting sound.

The weath­er, which on the pre­vi­ous evening had been very fog­gy, had en­tire­ly changed. The sky had as­sumed a sin­gu­lar tint, and was soon cov­ered with low­er­ing clouds that com­plete­ly hid the sun. There were, in­deed, all the signs of a com­ing storm, but the va­por, on ac­count of the in­suf­fi­cient con­den­sa­tion, failed to fall.

The sea ap­peared quite de­sert­ed, a most un­usu­al cir­cum­stance along this coast, and not a sail nor a trail of smoke broke the gray monotony of wa­ter and sky. The lim­its of the hori­zon, too, had be­come much cir­cum­scribed. On land, as well as on sea, the re­mote dis­tance had com­plete­ly dis­ap­peared, and it seemed as though the globe had as­sumed a more de­cid­ed con­vex­ity.

At the pace at which they were walk­ing, it was very ev­ident that the cap­tain and his at­ten­dant would not take long to ac­com­plish the three miles that lay be­tween the gour­bi and the place of ren­dezvous. They did not ex­change a word, but each was con­scious of an un­usu­al buoy­an­cy, which ap­peared to lift up their bod­ies and give as it were, wings to their feet. If Ben Zoof had ex­pressed his sen­sa­tions in words, he would have said that he felt “up to any­thing,” and he had even for­got­ten to taste so much as a crust of bread, a lapse of mem­ory of which the wor­thy sol­dier was rarely guilty.

As these thoughts were cross­ing his mind, a harsh bark was heard to the left of the foot­path, and a jack­al was seen emerg­ing from a large grove of lentisks. Re­gard­ing the two way­far­ers with man­ifest un­easi­ness, the beast took up its po­si­tion at the foot of a rock, more than thir­ty feet in height. It be­longed to an African species dis­tin­guished by a black spot­ted skin, and a black line down the front of the legs. At night-​time, when they scour the coun­try in herds, the crea­tures are some­what formidable, but singly they are no more dan­ger­ous than a dog. Though by no means afraid of them, Ben Zoof had a par­tic­ular aver­sion to jack­als, per­haps be­cause they had no place among the fau­na of his beloved Mont­martre. He ac­cord­ing­ly be­gan to make threat­en­ing ges­tures, when, to the un­mit­igat­ed as­ton­ish­ment of him­self and the cap­tain, the an­imal dart­ed for­ward, and in one sin­gle bound gained the sum­mit of the rock.

“Good Heav­ens!” cried Ben Zoof, “that leap must have been thir­ty feet at least.”

“True enough,” replied the cap­tain; “I nev­er saw such a jump.”

Mean­time the jack­al had seat­ed it­self up­on its haunch­es, and was star­ing at the two men with an air of im­pu­dent de­fi­ance. This was too much for Ben Zoof’s for­bear­ance, and stoop­ing down he caught up a huge stone, when to his sur­prise, he found that it was no heav­ier than a piece of pet­ri­fied sponge. “Con­found the brute!” he ex­claimed, “I might as well throw a piece of bread at him. What ac­counts for its be­ing as light as this?”

Noth­ing daunt­ed, how­ev­er, he hurled the stone in­to the air. It missed its aim; but the jack­al, deem­ing it on the whole pru­dent to de­camp, dis­ap­peared across the trees and hedges with a se­ries of bounds, which could on­ly be likened to those that might be made by an in­dia-​rub­ber kan­ga­roo. Ben Zoof was sure that his own pow­ers of pro­pelling must equal those of a how­itzer, for his stone, af­ter a length­ened flight through the air, fell to the ground full five hun­dred paces the oth­er side of the rock.

The or­der­ly was now some yards ahead of his mas­ter, and had reached a ditch full of wa­ter, and about ten feet wide. With the in­ten­tion of clear­ing it, he made a spring, when a loud cry burst from Ser­vadac. “Ben Zoof, you id­iot! What are you about? You will break your back!”

And well might he be alarmed, for Ben Zoof had sprung to a height of forty feet in­to the air. Fear­ful of the con­se­quences that would at­tend the de­scent of his ser­vant to _ter­ra fir­ma_, Ser­vadac bound­ed for­wards, to be on the oth­er side of the ditch in time to break his fall. But the mus­cu­lar ef­fort that he made car­ried him in his turn to an al­ti­tude of thir­ty feet; in his as­cent he passed Ben Zoof, who had al­ready com­menced his down­ward course; and then, obe­di­ent to the laws of grav­ita­tion, he de­scend­ed with in­creas­ing ra­pid­ity, and alight­ed up­on the earth with­out ex­pe­ri­enc­ing a shock greater than if he had mere­ly made a bound of four or five feet high.

Ben Zoof burst in­to a roar of laugh­ter. “Bra­vo!” he said, “we should make a good pair of clowns.”

But the cap­tain was in­clined to take a more se­ri­ous view of the mat­ter. For a few sec­onds he stood lost in thought, then said solemn­ly, “Ben Zoof, I must be dream­ing. Pinch me hard; I must be ei­ther asleep or mad.”

“It is very cer­tain that some­thing has hap­pened to us,” said Ben Zoof. “I have oc­ca­sion­al­ly dreamed that I was a swal­low fly­ing over the Mont­martre, but I nev­er ex­pe­ri­enced any­thing of this kind be­fore; it must be pe­cu­liar to the coast of Al­ge­ria.”

Ser­vadac was stu­pe­fied; he felt in­stinc­tive­ly that he was not dream­ing, and yet was pow­er­less to solve the mys­tery. He was not, how­ev­er, the man to puz­zle him­self for long over any in­sol­uble prob­lem. “Come what may,” he present­ly ex­claimed, “we will make up our minds for the fu­ture to be sur­prised at noth­ing.”

“Right, cap­tain,” replied Ben Zoof; “and, first of all, let us set­tle our lit­tle score with Count Timascheff.”

Be­yond the ditch lay a small piece of mead­ow land, about an acre in ex­tent. A soft and de­li­cious herbage car­pet­ed the soil, whilst trees formed a charm­ing frame­work to the whole. No spot could have been cho­sen more suit­able for the meet­ing be­tween the two ad­ver­saries.

Ser­vadac cast a hasty glance round. No one was in sight. “We are the first on the field,” he said.

“Not so sure of that, sir,” said Ben Zoof.

“What do you mean?” asked Ser­vadac, look­ing at his watch, which he had set as near­ly as pos­si­ble by the sun be­fore leav­ing the gour­bi; “it is not nine o’clock yet.”

“Look up there, sir. I am much mis­tak­en if that is not the sun;” and as Ben Zoof spoke, he point­ed di­rect­ly over­head to where a faint white disc was dim­ly vis­ible through the haze of clouds.

“Non­sense!” ex­claimed Ser­vadac. “How can the sun be in the zenith, in the month of Jan­uary, in lat. 39 de­grees N.?”

“Can’t say, sir. I on­ly know the sun is there; and at the rate he has been trav­el­ing, I would lay my cap to a dish of cous­cous that in less than three hours he will have set.”

Hec­tor Ser­vadac, mute and mo­tion­less, stood with fold­ed arms. Present­ly he roused him­self, and be­gan to look about again. “What means all this?” he mur­mured. “Laws of grav­ity dis­turbed! Points of the com­pass re­versed! The length of day re­duced one half! Sure­ly this will in­def­inite­ly post­pone my meet­ing with the count. Some­thing has hap­pened; Ben Zoof and I can­not both be mad!”

The or­der­ly, mean­time, sur­veyed his mas­ter with the great­est equa­nim­ity; no phe­nomenon, how­ev­er ex­traor­di­nary, would have drawn from him a sin­gle ex­cla­ma­tion of sur­prise. “Do you see any­one, Ben Zoof?” asked the cap­tain, at last.

“No one, sir; the count has ev­ident­ly been and gone.” “But sup­pos­ing that to be the case,” per­sist­ed the cap­tain, “my sec­onds would have wait­ed, and not see­ing me, would have come on to­wards the gour­bi. I can on­ly con­clude that they have been un­able to get here; and as for Count Timascheff–“

With­out fin­ish­ing his sen­tence. Cap­tain Ser­vadac, think­ing it just prob­able that the count, as on the pre­vi­ous evening, might come by wa­ter, walked to the ridge of rock that over­hung the shore, in or­der to as­cer­tain if the _Do­bry­na_ were any­where in sight. But the sea was de­sert­ed, and for the first time the cap­tain no­ticed that, al­though the wind was calm, the wa­ters were un­usu­al­ly ag­itat­ed, and seethed and foamed as though they were boil­ing. It was very cer­tain that the yacht would have found a dif­fi­cul­ty in hold­ing her own in such a swell. An­oth­er thing that now struck Ser­vadac was the ex­traor­di­nary con­trac­tion of the hori­zon. Un­der or­di­nary cir­cum­stances, his el­evat­ed po­si­tion would have al­lowed him a ra­dius of vi­sion at least five and twen­ty miles in length; but the ter­res­tri­al sphere seemed, in the course of the last few hours, to have be­come con­sid­er­ably re­duced in vol­ume, and he could now see for a dis­tance of on­ly six miles in ev­ery di­rec­tion.

Mean­time, with the agili­ty of a mon­key, Ben Zoof had clam­bered to the top of a eu­ca­lyp­tus, and from his lofty perch was sur­vey­ing the coun­try to the south, as well as to­wards both Tenes and Mosta­ganem. On de­scend­ing, be in­formed the cap­tain that the plain was de­sert­ed.

“We will make our way to the riv­er, and get over in­to Mosta­ganem,” said the cap­tain.

The She­lif was not more than a mile and a half from the mead­ow, but no time was to be lost if the two men were to reach the town be­fore night­fall. Though still hid­den by heavy clouds, the sun was ev­ident­ly de­clin­ing fast; and what was equal­ly in­ex­pli­ca­ble, it was not fol­low­ing the oblique curve that in these lat­itudes and at this time of year might be ex­pect­ed, but was sink­ing per­pen­dic­ular­ly on to the hori­zon.

As he went along, Cap­tain Ser­vadac pon­dered deeply. Per­chance some un­heard-​of phe­nomenon had mod­ified the ro­tary mo­tion of the globe; or per­haps the Al­ge­ri­an coast had been trans­port­ed be­yond the equa­tor in­to the south­ern hemi­sphere. Yet the earth, with the ex­cep­tion of the al­ter­ation in its con­vex­ity, in this part of Africa at least, seemed to have un­der­gone no change of any very great im­por­tance. As far as the eye could reach, the shore was, as it had ev­er been, a suc­ces­sion of cliffs, beach, and arid rocks, tinged with a red fer­rug­inous hue. To the south–if south, in this in­vert­ed or­der of things, it might still be called–the face of the coun­try al­so ap­peared un­al­tered, and some leagues away, the peaks of the Merdeyah moun­tains still re­tained their ac­cus­tomed out­line.

Present­ly a rift in the clouds gave pas­sage to an oblique ray of light that clear­ly proved that the sun was set­ting in the east.

“Well, I am cu­ri­ous to know what they think of all this at Mosta­ganem,” said the cap­tain. “I won­der, too, what the Min­is­ter of War will say when he re­ceives a tele­gram in­form­ing him that his African colony has be­come, not moral­ly, but phys­ical­ly dis­or­ga­nized; that the car­di­nal points are at vari­ance with or­di­nary rules, and that the sun in the month of Jan­uary is shin­ing down ver­ti­cal­ly up­on our heads.”

Ben Zoof, whose ideas of dis­ci­pline were ex­treme­ly rigid, at once sug­gest­ed that the colony should be put un­der the surveil­lance of the po­lice, that the car­di­nal points should be placed un­der re­straint, and that the sun should be shot for breach of dis­ci­pline.

Mean­time, they were both ad­vanc­ing with the ut­most speed. The de­com­pres­sion of the at­mo­sphere made the spe­cif­ic grav­ity of their bod­ies ex­traor­di­nar­ily light, and they ran like hares and leaped like chamois. Leav­ing the de­vi­ous wind­ings of the foot­path, they went as a crow would fly across the coun­try. Hedges, trees, and streams were cleared at a bound, and un­der these con­di­tions Ben Zoof felt that he could have over­stepped Mont­martre at a sin­gle stride. The earth seemed as elas­tic as the spring­board of an ac­ro­bat; they scarce­ly touched it with their feet, and their on­ly fear was lest the height to which they were pro­pelled would con­sume the time which they were sav­ing by their short cut across the fields.

It was not long be­fore their wild ca­reer brought them to the right bank of the She­lif. Here they were com­pelled to stop, for not on­ly had the bridge com­plete­ly dis­ap­peared, but the riv­er it­self no longer ex­ist­ed. Of the left bank there was not the slight­est trace, and the right bank, which on the pre­vi­ous evening had bound­ed the yel­low stream, as it mur­mured peace­ful­ly along the fer­tile plain, had now be­come the shore of a tu­mul­tuous ocean, its azure wa­ters ex­tend­ing west­wards far as the eye could reach, and an­ni­hi­lat­ing the tract of coun­try which had hith­er­to formed the dis­trict of Mosta­ganem. The shore co­in­cid­ed ex­act­ly with what had been the right bank of the She­lif, and in a slight­ly curved line ran north and south, whilst the ad­ja­cent groves and mead­ows all re­tained their pre­vi­ous po­si­tions. But the riv­er-​bank had be­come the shore of an un­known sea.

Ea­ger to throw some light up­on the mys­tery, Ser­vadac hur­ried­ly made his way through the ole­an­der bush­es that over­hung the shore, took up some wa­ter in the hol­low of his hand, and car­ried it to his lips. “Salt as brine!” he ex­claimed, as soon as he had tast­ed it. “The sea has un­doubt­ed­ly swal­lowed up all the west­ern part of Al­ge­ria.”

“It will not last long, sir,” said Ben Zoof. “It is, prob­ably, on­ly a se­vere flood.”

The cap­tain shook his head. “Worse than that, I fear, Ben Zoof,” he replied with emo­tion. “It is a catas­tro­phe that may have very se­ri­ous con­se­quences. What can have be­come of all my friends and fel­low-​of­fi­cers?”

Ben Zoof was silent. Rarely had he seen his mas­ter so much ag­itat­ed; and though him­self in­clined to re­ceive these phe­nom­ena with philo­soph­ic in­dif­fer­ence, his no­tions of mil­itary du­ty caused his coun­te­nance to re­flect the cap­tain’s ex­pres­sion of amaze­ment.

But there was lit­tle time for Ser­vadac to ex­am­ine the changes which a few hours had wrought. The sun had al­ready reached the east­ern hori­zon, and just as though it were cross­ing the eclip­tic un­der the trop­ics, it sank like a can­non ball in­to the sea. With­out any warn­ing, day gave place to night, and earth, sea, and sky were im­me­di­ate­ly wrapped in pro­found ob­scu­ri­ty.