Page:Amazing Stories Volume 01 Number 02.djvu/58

Rh 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, which 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 implored for news of Europe.

Rosette made no immediate reply. After a moment or two of 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 minutes, 35.6 seconds 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 Servadae eagerly, "where are we?"

"You are on my comet, on Gallia itself!"

And the professor gazed around him with a perfect air of triumph.

ES, 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. Quite willing 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 around Gallia," added the captain.

"Around Gallia?" eagerly exclaimed the professor,

"Yes, entirely around it," answered Servadac, and without allowing time for reply, proceeded, "And this is my orderly, Ben Zoof."

"Aide-de-camp to his Excellency the Governor of Gallia," interposed Ben Zoof himself, anxious to maintain his master's honor as well as his own.

Rosette scarcely bent his head.

The rest of the population of the Hive were