Off on a Comet! a Journey through Planetary Space

CHAPTER VII

BEN ZOOF WATCH­ES IN VAIN

In a few min­utes the gov­er­nor gen­er­al and his pop­ula­tion were asleep. The gour­bi be­ing in ru­ins, they were obliged to put up with the best ac­com­mo­da­tion they could find in the ad­ja­cent erec­tion. It must be owned that the cap­tain’s slum­bers were by no means sound; he was ag­itat­ed by the con­scious­ness that he had hith­er­to been un­able to ac­count for his strange ex­pe­ri­ences by any rea­son­able the­ory. Though far from be­ing ad­vanced in the knowl­edge of nat­ural phi­los­ophy, he had been in­struct­ed, to a cer­tain de­gree, in its el­emen­tary prin­ci­ples; and, by an ef­fort of mem­ory, he man­aged to re­call some gen­er­al laws which he had al­most for­got­ten. He could un­der­stand that an al­tered in­cli­na­tion of the earth’s ax­is with re­gard to the eclip­tic would in­tro­duce a change of po­si­tion in the car­di­nal points, and bring about a dis­place­ment of the sea; but the hy­poth­esis en­tire­ly failed to ac­count, ei­ther for the short­en­ing of the days, or for the diminu­tion in the pres­sure of the at­mo­sphere. He felt that his judg­ment was ut­ter­ly baf­fled; his on­ly re­main­ing hope was that the chain of mar­vels was not yet com­plete, and that some­thing far­ther might throw some light up­on the mys­tery.

Ben Zoof’s first care on the fol­low­ing morn­ing was to pro­vide a good break­fast. To use his own phrase, he was as hun­gry as the whole pop­ula­tion of three mil­lion Al­ge­ri­ans, of whom he was the rep­re­sen­ta­tive, and he must have enough to eat. The catas­tro­phe which had over­whelmed the coun­try had left a dozen eggs un­in­jured, and up­on these, with a good dish of his fa­mous cous­cous, he hoped that he and his mas­ter might have a suf­fi­cient­ly sub­stan­tial meal. The stove was ready for use, the cop­per skil­let was as bright as hands could make it, and the beads of con­densed steam up­on the sur­face of a large stone al-​caraza gave ev­idence that it was sup­plied with wa­ter. Ben Zoof at once light­ed a fire, singing all the time, ac­cord­ing to his wont, a snatch of an old mil­itary re­frain.

Ev­er on the look­out for fresh phe­nom­ena, Cap­tain Ser­vadac watched the prepa­ra­tions with a cu­ri­ous eye. It struck him that per­haps the air, in its strange­ly mod­ified con­di­tion, would fail to sup­ply suf­fi­cient oxy­gen, and that. the stove, in con­se­quence, might not ful­fill its func­tion. But no; the fire was light­ed just as usu­al, and fanned in­to vig­or by Ben Zoof ap­ply­ing his mouth in lieu of bel­lows, and a bright flame start­ed up from the midst of the twigs and coal. The skil­let was du­ly set up­on the stove, and Ben Zoof was pre­pared to wait awhile for the wa­ter to boil. Tak­ing up the eggs, he was sur­prised to no­tice that they hard­ly weighed more than they would if they had been mere shells; but he was still more sur­prised when he saw that be­fore the wa­ter had been two min­utes over the fire it was at full boil.

“By jin­go!” he ex­claimed, “a pre­cious hot fire!”

Ser­vadac re­flect­ed. “It can­not be that the fire is hot­ter,” he said, “the pe­cu­liar­ity must be in the wa­ter.” And tak­ing down a centi­grade ther­mome­ter, which hung up­on the wall, he plunged it in­to the skil­let. In­stead of 100 de­grees, the in­stru­ment reg­is­tered on­ly 66 de­grees.

“Take my ad­vice, Ben Zoof,” he said; “leave your eggs in the saucepan a good quar­ter of an hour.”

“Boil them hard! That will nev­er do,” ob­ject­ed the or­der­ly.

“You will not find them hard, my good fel­low. Trust me, we shall be able to dip our sip­pets in­to the yolks eas­ily enough.”

The cap­tain was quite right in his con­jec­ture, that this new phe­nomenon was caused by a diminu­tion in the pres­sure of the at­mo­sphere. Wa­ter boil­ing at a tem­per­ature of 66 de­grees was it­self an ev­idence that the col­umn of air above the earth’s sur­face had be­come re­duced by one-​third of its al­ti­tude. The iden­ti­cal phe­nomenon would have oc­curred at the sum­mit of a moun­tain 35,000 feet high; and had Ser­vadac been in pos­ses­sion of a barom­eter, he would have im­me­di­ate­ly dis­cov­ered the fact that on­ly now for the first time, as the re­sult of ex­per­iment, re­vealed it­self to him–a fact, more­over, which ac­count­ed for the com­pres­sion of the blood-​ves­sels which both he and Ben Zoof had ex­pe­ri­enced, as well as for the at­ten­ua­tion of their voic­es and their ac­cel­er­at­ed breath­ing. “And yet,” he ar­gued with him­self, “if our en­camp­ment has been pro­ject­ed to so great an el­eva­tion, how is it that the sea re­mains at its prop­er lev­el?”

Once again Hec­tor Ser­vadac, though ca­pa­ble of trac­ing con­se­quences, felt him­self to­tal­ly at a loss to com­pre­hend their cause; hence his ag­ita­tion and be­wil­der­ment!

Af­ter their pro­longed im­mer­sion in the boil­ing wa­ter, the eggs were found to be on­ly just suf­fi­cient­ly cooked; the cous­cous was very much in the same con­di­tion; and Ben Zoof came to the con­clu­sion that in fu­ture he must be care­ful to com­mence his culi­nary op­er­ations an hour ear­li­er. He was re­joiced at last to help his mas­ter, who, in spite of his per­plexed pre­oc­cu­pa­tion, seemed to have a very fair ap­petite for break­fast.

“Well, cap­tain?” said Ben Zoof present­ly, such be­ing his or­di­nary way of open­ing con­ver­sa­tion.

“Well, Ben Zoof?” was the cap­tain’s in­vari­able re­sponse to his ser­vant’s for­mu­la.

“What are we to do now, sir?”

“We can on­ly for the present wait pa­tient­ly where we are. We are en­camped up­on an is­land, and there­fore we can on­ly be res­cued by sea.”

“But do you sup­pose that any of our friends are still alive?” asked Ben Zoof.

“Oh, I think we must in­dulge the hope that this catas­tro­phe has not ex­tend­ed far. We must trust that it has lim­it­ed its mis­chief to some small por­tion of the Al­ge­ri­an coast, and that our friends are all alive and well. No doubt the gov­er­nor gen­er­al will be anx­ious to in­ves­ti­gate the full ex­tent of the dam­age, and will send a ves­sel from Al­giers to ex­plore. It is not like­ly that we shall be for­got­ten. What, then, you have to do, Ben Zoof, is to keep a sharp look­out, and to be ready, in case a ves­sel should ap­pear, to make sig­nals at once.”

“But if no ves­sel should ap­pear!” sighed the or­der­ly.

“Then we must build a boat, and go in search of those who do not come in search of us.”

“Very good. But what sort of a sailor are you?”

“Ev­ery­one can be a sailor when he must,” said Ser­vadac calm­ly.

Ben Zoof said no more. For sev­er­al suc­ceed­ing days he scanned the hori­zon un­in­ter­mit­tent­ly with his tele­scope. His watch­ing was in vain. No ship ap­peared up­on the desert sea. “By the name of a Kabyle!” he broke out im­pa­tient­ly, “his Ex­cel­len­cy is gross­ly neg­li­gent!”

Al­though the days and nights had be­come re­duced from twen­ty-​four hours to twelve, Cap­tain Ser­vadac would not ac­cept the new con­di­tion of things, but re­solved to ad­here to the com­pu­ta­tions of the old cal­en­dar. Notwith­stand­ing, there­fore, that the sun had risen and set twelve times since the com­mence­ment of the new year, he per­sist­ed in call­ing the fol­low­ing day the 6th of Jan­uary. His watch en­abled him to keep an ac­cu­rate ac­count of the pass­ing hours.

In the course of his life, Ben Zoof had read a few books. Af­ter pon­der­ing one day, he said: “It seems to me, cap­tain, that you have turned in­to Robin­son Cru­soe, and that I am your man Fri­day. I hope I have not be­come a ne­gro.”

“No,” replied the cap­tain. “Your com­plex­ion isn’t the fairest in the world, but you are not black yet.”

“Well, I had much soon­er be a white Fri­day than a black one,” re­joined Ben Zoof.

Still no ship ap­peared; and Cap­tain Ser­vadac, af­ter the ex­am­ple of all pre­vi­ous Cru­soes, be­gan to con­sid­er it ad­vis­able to in­ves­ti­gate the re­sources of his do­main. The new ter­ri­to­ry of which he had be­come the monarch he named Gour­bi Is­land. It had a su­per­fi­cial area of about nine hun­dred square miles. Bul­locks, cows, goats, and sheep ex­ist­ed in con­sid­er­able num­bers; and as there seemed al­ready to be an abun­dance of game, it was hard­ly like­ly that a fu­ture sup­ply would fail them. The con­di­tion of the ce­re­als was such as to promise a fine in­gath­er­ing of wheat, maize, and rice; so that for the gov­er­nor and his pop­ula­tion, with their two hors­es, not on­ly was there am­ple pro­vi­sion, but even if oth­er hu­man in­hab­itants be­sides them­selves should yet be dis­cov­ered, there was not the re­motest prospect of any of them per­ish­ing by star­va­tion.

From the 6th to the 13th of Jan­uary the rain came down in tor­rents; and, what was quite an un­usu­al oc­cur­rence at this sea­son of the year, sev­er­al heavy storms broke over the is­land. In spite, how­ev­er, of the con­tin­ual down­fall, the heav­ens still re­mained veiled in cloud. Ser­vadac, more­over, did not fail to ob­serve that for the sea­son the tem­per­ature was un­usu­al­ly high; and, as a mat­ter still more sur­pris­ing, that it kept steadi­ly in­creas­ing, as though the earth were grad­ual­ly and con­tin­uous­ly ap­prox­imat­ing to the sun. In pro­por­tion to the rise of tem­per­ature, the light al­so as­sumed greater in­ten­si­ty; and if it had not been for the screen of va­por in­ter­posed be­tween the sky and the is­land, the ir­ra­di­ation which would have il­lu­mined all ter­res­tri­al ob­jects would have been vivid be­yond all prece­dent.

But nei­ther sun, moon, nor star ev­er ap­peared; and Ser­vadac’s ir­ri­ta­tion and an­noy­ance at be­ing un­able to iden­ti­fy any one point of the fir­ma­ment may be more read­ily imag­ined than de­scribed. On one oc­ca­sion Ben Zoof en­deav­ored to mit­igate his mas­ter’s im­pa­tience by ex­hort­ing him to as­sume the res­ig­na­tion, even if he did not feel the in­dif­fer­ence, which he him­self ex­pe­ri­enced; but his ad­vice was re­ceived with so an­gry a re­buff that he re­tired in all haste, abashed, to ré­sumé his watch­man’s du­ty, which he per­formed with ex­em­plary per­se­ver­ance. Day and night, with the short­est pos­si­ble in­ter­vals of rest, de­spite wind, rain, and storm, he mount­ed guard up­on the cliff– but all in vain. Not a speck ap­peared up­on the des­olate hori­zon. To say the truth, no ves­sel could have stood against the weath­er. The hur­ri­cane raged with tremen­dous fury, and the waves rose to a height that seemed to de­fy cal­cu­la­tion. Nev­er, even in the sec­ond era of cre­ation, when, un­der the in­flu­ence of in­ter­nal heat, the wa­ters rose in va­por to de­scend in del­uge back up­on the world, could me­te­oro­log­ical phe­nom­ena have been de­vel­oped with more im­pres­sive in­ten­si­ty.

But by the night of the 13th the tem­pest ap­peared to have spent its fury; the wind dropped; the rain ceased as if by a spell; and Ser­vadac, who for the last six days had con­fined him­self to the shel­ter of his roof, has­tened to join Ben Zoof at his post up­on the cliff. Now, he thought, there might be a chance of solv­ing his per­plex­ity; per­haps now the huge disc, of which he had had an im­per­fect glimpse on the night of the 31st of De­cem­ber, might again re­veal it­self; at any rate, he hoped for an op­por­tu­ni­ty of ob­serv­ing the con­stel­la­tions in a clear fir­ma­ment above.

The night was mag­nif­icent. Not a cloud dimmed the lus­ter of the stars, which span­gled the heav­ens in sur­pass­ing bril­lian­cy, and sev­er­al neb­ulae which hith­er­to no as­tronomer had been able to dis­cern with­out the aid of a tele­scope were clear­ly vis­ible to the naked eye.

By a nat­ural im­pulse, Ser­vadac’s first thought was to ob­serve the po­si­tion of the pole-​star. It was in sight, but so near to the hori­zon as to sug­gest the ut­ter im­pos­si­bil­ity of its be­ing any longer the cen­tral piv­ot of the side­re­al sys­tem; it oc­cu­pied a po­si­tion through which it was out of the ques­tion that the ax­is of the earth in­def­inite­ly pro­longed could ev­er pass. In his im­pres­sion he was more thor­ough­ly con­firmed when, an hour lat­er, he no­ticed that the star had ap­proached still near­er the hori­zon, as though it had be­longed to one of the zo­di­acal con­stel­la­tions.

The pole-​star be­ing man­ifest­ly thus dis­placed, it re­mained to be dis­cov­ered whether any oth­er of the ce­les­tial bod­ies had be­come a fixed cen­ter around which the con­stel­la­tions made their ap­par­ent dai­ly rev­olu­tions. To the so­lu­tion of this prob­lem Ser­vadac ap­plied him­self with the most thought­ful dili­gence. Af­ter pa­tient ob­ser­va­tion, he sat­is­fied him­self that the re­quired con­di­tions were an­swered by a cer­tain star that was sta­tion­ary not far from the hori­zon. This was Ve­ga, in the con­stel­la­tion Lyra, a star which, ac­cord­ing to the pre­ces­sion of the equinox­es, will take the place of our pole-​star 12,000 years hence. The most dar­ing imag­ina­tion could not sup­pose that a pe­ri­od of 12,000 years had been crowd­ed in­to the space of a fort­night; and there­fore the cap­tain came, as to an eas­ier con­clu­sion, to the opin­ion that the earth’s ax­is had been sud­den­ly and im­mense­ly shift­ed; and from the fact that the ax­is, if pro­duced, would pass through a point so lit­tle re­moved above the hori­zon, he de­duced the in­fer­ence that the Mediter­ranean must have been trans­port­ed to the equa­tor.

Lost in be­wil­der­ing maze of thought, he gazed long and in­tent­ly up­on the heav­ens. His eyes wan­dered from where the tail of the Great Bear, now a zo­di­acal con­stel­la­tion, was scarce­ly vis­ible above the wa­ters, to where the stars of the south­ern hemi­sphere were just break­ing on his view. A cry from Ben Zoof re­called him to him­self.

“The moon!” shout­ed the or­der­ly, as though over­joyed at once again be­hold­ing what the po­et has called:

“The kind com­pan­ion of ter­res­tri­al night;”

and he point­ed to a disc that was ris­ing at a spot pre­cise­ly op­po­site the place where they would have ex­pect­ed to see the sun. “The moon!” again he cried.

But Cap­tain Ser­vadac could not al­to­geth­er en­ter in­to his ser­vant’s en­thu­si­asm. If this were ac­tu­al­ly the moon, her dis­tance from the earth must have been in­creased by some mil­lions of miles. He was rather dis­posed to sus­pect that it was not the earth’s satel­lite at all, but some plan­et with its ap­par­ent mag­ni­tude great­ly en­larged by its ap­prox­ima­tion to the earth. Tak­ing up the pow­er­ful field-​glass which he was ac­cus­tomed to use in his sur­vey­ing op­er­ations, he pro­ceed­ed to in­ves­ti­gate more care­ful­ly the lu­mi­nous orb. But he failed to trace any of the lin­ea­ments, sup­posed to re­sem­ble a hu­man face, that mark the lu­nar sur­face; he failed to de­ci­pher any in­di­ca­tions of hill and plain; nor could he make out the au­re­ole of light which em­anates from what as­tronomers have des­ig­nat­ed Mount Ty­cho. “It is not the moon,” he said slow­ly.

“Not the moon?” cried Ben Zoof. “Why not?”

“It is not the moon,” again af­firmed the cap­tain.

“Why not?” re­peat­ed Ben Zoof, un­will­ing to re­nounce his first im­pres­sion.

“Be­cause there is a small satel­lite in at­ten­dance.” And the cap­tain drew his ser­vant’s at­ten­tion to a bright speck, ap­par­ent­ly about the size of one of Jupiter’s satel­lites seen through a mod­er­ate tele­scope, that was clear­ly vis­ible just with­in the fo­cus of his glass.

Here, then, was a fresh mys­tery. The or­bit of this plan­et was as­sured­ly in­te­ri­or to the or­bit of the earth, be­cause it ac­com­pa­nied the sun in its ap­par­ent mo­tion; yet it was nei­ther Mer­cury nor Venus, be­cause nei­ther one nor the oth­er of these has any satel­lite at all.

The cap­tain stamped and stamped again with min­gled vex­ation, ag­ita­tion, and be­wil­der­ment. “Con­found it!” he cried, “if this is nei­ther Venus nor Mer­cury, it must be the moon; but if it is the moon, whence, in the name of all the gods, has she picked up an­oth­er moon for her­self?”

The cap­tain was in dire per­plex­ity.