Off on a Comet! a Journey through Planetary Space
sound asleep; and Ben Zoof, who was especially anxious that the repose
which promised to be so beneficial should not be disturbed, felt
considerable annoyance at hearing a loud knocking, evidently of some
blunt heavy instrument against a door that had been placed at the
entrance of the gallery, more for the purpose of retaining internal
warmth than for guarding against intrusion from without.
“Confound it!” said Ben Zoof. “I must put a stop to this;” and he made
his way towards the door.
“Who’s there?” he cried, in no very amiable tone.
“I.” replied the quavering voice.
“Who are you?”
“Isaac Hakkabut. Let me in; do, please, let me in.”
“Oh, it is you, old Ashtaroth, is it? What do you want? Can’t you get
anybody to buy your stuffs?”
“Nobody will pay me a proper price.”
“Well, old Shimei, you won’t find a customer here. You had better be
off.”
“No; but do, please--do, please, let me in,” supplicated the Jew. “I
want to speak to his Excellency, the governor.”
“The governor is in bed, and asleep.”
“I can wait until he awakes.”
“Then wait where you are.”
And with this inhospitable rejoinder the orderly was about to return to
his place at the side of his patient, when Servadac, who had been roused
by the sound of voices, called out, “What’s the matter, Ben Zoof?”
“Oh, nothing, sir; only that hound of a Hakkabut says he wants to speak
to you.”
“Let him in, then.”
Ben Zoof hesitated.
“Let him in, I say,” repeated the captain, peremptorily.
However reluctantly, Ben Zoof obeyed. The door was unfastened, and Isaac
Hakkabut, enveloped in an old overcoat, shuffled into the gallery. In a
few moments Servadac approached, and the Jew began to overwhelm him with
the most obsequious epithets. Without vouchsafing any reply, the captain
beckoned to the old man to follow him, and leading the way to the
central hall, stopped, and turning so as to look him steadily in the
face, said, “Now is your opportunity. Tell me what you want.”
“Oh, my lord, my lord,” whined Isaac, “you must have some news to tell
me.”
“News? What do you mean?”
“From my little tartan yonder, I saw the yawl go out from the rock here
on a journey, and I saw it come back, and it brought a stranger; and I
thought--I thought--I thought--”
“Well, you thought--what did you think?”
“Why, that perhaps the stranger had come from the northern shores of the
Mediterranean, and that I might ask him--”
He paused again, and gave a glance at the captain.
“Ask him what? Speak out, man?”
“Ask him if he brings any tidings of Europe,” Hakkabut blurted out at
last.
Servadac shrugged his shoulders in contempt and turned away. Here was
a man who had been resident three months in Gallia, a living witness
of all the abnormal phenomena that had occurred, and yet refusing to
believe that his hope of making good bargains with European traders was
at an end. Surely nothing, thought the captain, will convince the old
rascal now; and he moved off in disgust. The orderly, however, who
had listened with much amusement, was by no means disinclined for the
conversation to be continued. “Are you satisfied, old Ezekiel?” he
asked.
“Isn’t it so? Am I not right? Didn’t a stranger arrive here last night?”
inquired the Jew.
“Yes, quite true.”
“Where from?”
“From the Balearic Isles.”
“The Balearic Isles?” echoed Isaac.
“Yes.”
“Fine quarters for trade! Hardly twenty leagues from Spain! He must have
brought news from Europe!”
“Well, old Manasseh, what if he has?”
“I should like to see him.”
“Can’t be.”
The Jew sidled close up to Ben Zoof, and laying his hand on his arm,
said in a low and insinuating tone, “I am poor, you know; but I would
give you a few reals if you would let me talk to this stranger.”
But as if he thought he was making too liberal an offer, he added, “Only
it must be at once.”
“He is too tired; he is worn out; he is fast asleep,” answered Ben Zoof.
“But I would pay you to wake him.”
The captain had overheard the tenor of the conversation, and interposed
sternly, “Hakkabut! if you make the least attempt to disturb our
visitor, I shall have you turned outside that door immediately.”
“No offense, my lord, I hope,” stammered out the Jew. “I only meant--”
“Silence!” shouted Servadac. The old man hung his head, abashed.
“I will tell you what,” said Servadac after a brief interval; “I will
give you leave to hear what this stranger has to tell as soon as he is
able to tell us anything; at present we have not heard a word from his
lips.”
The Jew looked perplexed.
“Yes,” said Servadac; “when we hear his story, you shall hear it too.”
“And I hope it will be to your liking, old Ezekiel!” added Ben Zoof in a
voice of irony.
They had none of them long to wait, for within a few minutes Rosette’s
peevish voice was heard calling, “Joseph! Joseph!”
The professor did not open his eyes, and appeared to be slumbering on,
but very shortly afterwards called out again, “Joseph! Confound the
fellow! where is he?” It was evident that he was half dreaming about
a former servant now far away on the ancient globe. “Where’s my
blackboard, Joseph?”
“Quite safe, sir,” answered Ben Zoof, quickly.
Rosette unclosed his eyes and fixed them full upon the orderly’s face.
“Are you Joseph?” he asked.
“At your service, sir,” replied Ben Zoof with imperturbable gravity.
“Then get me my coffee, and be quick about it.”
Ben Zoof left to go into the kitchen, and Servadac approached the
professor in order to assist him in rising to a sitting posture.
“Do you recognize your quondam pupil, professor?” he asked.
“Ah, yes, yes; you are Servadac,” replied Rosette. “It is twelve years
or more since I saw you; I hope you have improved.”
“Quite a reformed character, sir, I assure you,” said Servadac, smiling.
“Well, that’s as it should be; that’s right,” said the astronomer with
fussy importance. “But let me have my coffee,” he added impatiently; “I
cannot collect my thoughts without my coffee.”
Fortunately, Ben Zoof appeared with a great cup, hot and strong. After
draining it with much apparent relish, the professor got out of bed,
walked into the common hall, round which he glanced with a pre-occupied
air, and proceeded to seat himself in an armchair, the most comfortable
which the cabin of the _Dobryna_ had supplied. Then, in a voice full
of satisfaction, and that involuntarily recalled the exclamations of
delight that had wound up the two first of the mysterious documents that
had been received, he burst out, “Well, gentlemen, what do you think of
Gallia?”
There was no time for anyone to make a reply before Isaac Hakkabut had
darted forward.
“By the God--”
“Who is that?” asked the startled professor; and he frowned, and made a
gesture of repugnance.
Regardless of the efforts that were made to silence him, the Jew
continued, “By the God of Abraham, I beseech you, give me some tidings
of Europe!”
“Europe?” shouted the professor, springing from his seat as if he were
electrified; “what does the man want with Europe?”
“I want to get there!” screeched the Jew; and in spite of every exertion
to get him away, he clung most tenaciously to the professor’s chair, and
again and again implored for news of Europe.
Rosette made no immediate reply. After a moment or two’s reflection, he
turned to Servadac and asked him whether it was not the middle of April.
“It is the twentieth,” answered the captain.
“Then to-day,” said the astronomer, speaking with the greatest
deliberation--“to-day we are just three millions of leagues away from
Europe.”
The Jew was utterly crestfallen.
“You seem here,” continued the professor, “to be very ignorant of the
state of things.”
“How far we are ignorant,” rejoined Servadac, “I cannot tell. But I will
tell you all that we do know, and all that we have surmised.” And
as briefly as he could, he related all that had happened since
the memorable night of the thirty-first of December; how they had
experienced the shock; how the _Dobryna_ had made her voyage; how they
had discovered nothing except the fragments of the old continent at
Tunis, Sardinia, Gibraltar, and now at Formentera; how at intervals
the three anonymous documents had been received; and, finally, how
the settlement at Gourbi Island had been abandoned for their present
quarters at Nina’s Hive.
The astronomer had hardly patience to hear him to the end. “And what do
you say is your surmise as to your present position?” he asked.
“Our supposition,” the captain replied, “is this. We imagine that we
are on a considerable fragment of the terrestrial globe that has been
detached by collision with a planet to which you appear to have given
the name of Gallia.”
“Better than that!” cried Rosette, starting to his feet with excitement.
“How? Why? What do you mean?” cried the voices of the listeners.
“You are correct to a certain degree,” continued the professor. “It is
quite true that at 47’ 35.6” after two o’clock on the morning of the
first of January there was a collision; my comet grazed the earth; and
the bits of the earth which you have named were carried clean away.”
They were all fairly bewildered.
“Where, then,” cried Servadac eagerly, “where are we?”
“You are on my comet, on Gallia itself!”
And the professor gazed around him with a perfect air of triumph.
CHAPTER III. THE PROFESSOR’S EXPERIENCES
“Yes, my comet!” repeated the professor, and from time to time he
knitted his brows, and looked around him with a defiant air, as though
he could not get rid of the impression that someone was laying an
unwarranted claim to its proprietorship, or that the individuals before
him were intruders upon his own proper domain.
But for a considerable while, Servadac, the count, and the lieutenant
remained silent and sunk in thought. Here then, at last, was the
unriddling of the enigma they had been so long endeavoring to solve;
both the hypotheses they had formed in succession had now to give way
before the announcement of the real truth. The first supposition, that
the rotatory axis of the earth had been subject to some accidental
modification, and the conjecture that replaced it, namely, that a
certain portion of the terrestrial sphere had been splintered off and
carried into space, had both now to yield to the representation that
the earth had been grazed by an unknown comet, which had caught up some
scattered fragments from its surface, and was bearing them far away into
sidereal regions. Unfolded lay the past and the present before them; but
this only served to awaken a keener interest about the future. Could the
professor throw any light upon that? they longed to inquire, but did not
yet venture to ask him.
Meanwhile Rosette assumed a pompous professional air, and appeared to
be waiting for the entire party to be ceremoniously introduced to him.
Nothing unwilling to humor the vanity of the eccentric little man,
Servadac proceeded to go through the expected formalities.
“Allow me to present to you my excellent friend, the Count Timascheff,”
he said.
“You are very welcome,” said Rosette, bowing to the count with a smile
of condescension.
“Although I am not precisely a voluntary resident on your comet, Mr.
Professor, I beg to acknowledge your courteous reception,” gravely
responded Timascheff.
Servadac could not quite conceal his amusement at the count’s irony, but
continued, “This is Lieutenant Procope, the officer in command of the
_Dobryna_.”
The professor bowed again in frigid dignity.
“His yacht has conveyed us right round Gallia,” added the captain.
“Round Gallia?” eagerly exclaimed the professor.
“Yes, entirely round it,” answered Servadac, and without allowing time
for reply, proceeded, “And this is my orderly, Ben Zoof.”