Off on a Comet! Part 25

"Well, old Mana.s.seh, 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 a.s.sist 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 a.s.sure 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 doc.u.ments 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 G.o.d--"

"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 G.o.d 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 doc.u.ments 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