CHAPTER XI.FAR INTO SPACE.
A MONTH passed away. Gallia continued its course, bearing
its little population onwards, so far removed from the
ordinary influence of human passions that it might almost
be said that its sole ostensible vice was represented by the
greed and avarice of the miserable Jew.
After all, they were but making a voyage—a strange, yet
a transient, excursion through solar regions hitherto untraversed;
but if the professor's calculations were correct—
and why should they be doubted?—their little vessel was
destined, after a two years' absence, once more to return
“to port.” The landing, indeed, might be a matter of
difficulty; but with the good prospect before them of once
again standing on terrestrial shores, they had nothing to
do at present except to make themselves as comfortable
as they could in their present quarters.
Thus confident in their anticipations, neither the captain,
the count, nor the lieutenant felt under any serious
obligation to make any extensive provisions for the future;
they saw no necessity for expending the strength of the
people, during the short summer that would intervene upon
the long severity of winter, in the cultivation or the preservation
of their agricultural resources. Nevertheless, they
often found themselves talking over the measures they
would have been driven to adopt, if they had found themselves
permanently attached to their present home.
Even after the turning-point in their career, they knew
that at least nine months would have to elapse before the
sea would be open to navigation; but at the very first
arrival of summer they would be bound to arrange for the
Dobryna and the Hansa to re-transport themselves and all
their animals to the shores of Gourbi Island, where they
would have to commence their agricultural labours to
secure the crops that must form their winter store. During
four months or thereabouts, they would lead the lives of
farmers and of sportsmen; but no sooner would their haymaking
and their corn harvest have been accomplished,
than they would be compelled again, like a swarm of bees,
to retire to their semi-troglodyte existence in the cells of
Nina's Hive.
Now and then the captain and his friends found themselves
speculating whether, in the event of their having to
spend another winter upon Gallia, some means could not
be devised by which the dreariness of a second residence
in the recesses of the volcano might be escaped. Would
not another exploring expedition possibly result in the
discovery of a vein of coal or other combustible matter,
which could be turned to account in warming some
erection which they might hope to put up? A prolonged
existence in their underground quarters was felt to be
monotonous and depressing, and although it might be all
very well for a man like Professor Rosette, absorbed in
astronomical studies, it was ill suited to the temperaments
of any of themselves for any longer period than was
absolutely indispensable.
One contingency there was, almost too terrible to be
taken into account. Was it not to be expected that the
time might come when the internal fires of Gallia would
lose their activity, and the stream of lava would consequently
cease to flow? Why should Gallia be exempt from
the destiny that seemed to await every other heavenly
body? Why should it not roll onwards, like the moon, a
dark cold mass in space?
In the event of such a cessation of the volcanic
eruption, whilst the comet was still at so great a distance
from the sun, they would indeed be at a loss to find a
substitute for what alone had served to render life endurable
at a temperature of 60° below zero. Happily, however,
there was at present no symptom of the subsidence
of the lava's stream; the volcano continued its regular and
unchanging discharge, and Servadac, ever sanguine, declared
that it was useless to give themselves any anxiety
upon the matter.
On the 15th of December, Gallia was 276,000,000
leagues from the sun, and, as it was approximating to the
extremity of its axis major, would travel only some
11,000,000 or 12,000,000 leagues during the month.
Another world was now becoming a conspicuous object in
the heavens, and Palmyrin Rosette, after rejoicing in an
approach nearer to Jupiter than any other mortal man had
ever attained, was now to be privileged to enjoy a similar
opportunity of contemplating the planet Saturn. Not that
the circumstances were altogether so favourable. Scarcely
31,000,000 miles had separated Gallia from Jupiter; the
minimum distance of Saturn would not be less than
415,000,000 miles; but even this distance, although too
great to affect the comet's progress more than had been
duly reckoned on, was considerably shorter than what had
ever separated Saturn from the earth.
To get any information about the planet from Rosette
appeared quite impossible. Although equally by night
and by day he never seemed to quit his telescope, he did
not evince the slightest inclination to impart the result of
his observations. It was only from the few astronomical
works that happened to be included in the Dobryna's
library that any details could be gathered, but these were
sufficient to give a large amount of interesting information.
Ben Zoof, when he was made aware that the earth
would be invisible to the naked eye from the surface of
Saturn, declared that he then, for his part, did not care to
learn any more about such a planet; to him it was indispensable
that the earth should remain in sight, and it was
his great consolation that hitherto his native sphere had
never vanished from his gaze.
At this date Saturn was revolving at a distance of
420,000,000 miles from Gallia, and consequently 874,440,000
miles from the sun, receiving only a hundredth part of
the light and heat which that luminary bestows upon
the earth. On consulting their books of reference, the
colonists found that Saturn completes his revolution round
the sun in a period of 29 years and 167 days, travelling at
the rate of more than 21,000 miles an hour along an orbit
measuring 5490 millions of miles in length. His circumference
is about 220,000 miles; his superficies, 144,000
millions of square miles; his volume, 143,846 millions of
cubic miles. Saturn is 735 times larger than the earth,
consequently he is smaller than Jupiter; in mass he is
only 90 times greater than the earth, which gives him a
density less than that of water. He revolves on his axis
in 10 hours 29 minutes, causing his own year to consist of
86,630 days; and his seasons, on account of the great
inclination of his axis to the plane of his orbit, are each of
the length of seven terrestrial years.
Although the light received from the sun is comparatively
feeble, the nights upon Saturn must be splendid.
Eight satellites—Mimas, Enceladus, Tethys, Dione, Rhea,
Titan, Hyperion, and Japetus—accompany the planet;
Mimas, the nearest to its primary, rotating on its axis in
22½ hours, and revolving at a distance of only 120,800
miles, whilst Japetus, the most remote, occupies 79 days in
its rotation, and revolves at a distance of 2,314,000 miles.
Another most important contribution to the magnificence
of the nights upon Saturn is the triple ring with
which, as a brilliant setting, the planet is encompassed.
To an observer at the equator, this ring, which has been
estimated by Sir William Herschel as scarcely 100 miles
in thickness, must have the appearance of a narrow band
of light passing through the zenith 12,000 miles above his
head. As the observer, however, increases his latitude
either north or south, the band will gradually widen out
into three detached and concentric rings, of which the
innermost, dark though transparent, is 9625 miles in
breadth; the intermediate one, which is brighter than the
planet itself, being 17,605 miles broad; and the outer, of a
dusky hue, being 8660 miles broad.
Such, they read, is the general outline of this strange
appendage, which revolves in its own plane in 10 hours
32 minutes. Of what matter it is composed, and how it
resists disintegration, is still an unsettled question; but it
might almost seem that the Designer of the universe, in
permitting its existence, had been willing to impart to His
intelligent creatures the manner in which celestial bodies are
evolved, and that this remarkable ring-system is a remnant
of the nebula from which Saturn was himself developed,
and which, from some unknown cause, has become solidified.
If at any time it should disperse, it would either fall into
fragments upon the surface of Saturn, or the fragments,
mutually coalescing, would form additional satellites to
circle round the planet in its path.
To any observer stationed on the planet, between the
extremes of lat. 45° on either side of the equator, these
wonderful rings would present various strange phenomena.
Sometimes they would appear as an illuminated arch, with
the shadow of Saturn passing over it like the hour-hand
over a dial; at other times they would be like a semi-aureole
of light. Very often, too, for periods of several
years, daily eclipses of the sun must occur through the
interposition of this triple ring.
Truly, with the constant rising and setting of the
satellites, some with bright discs at their full, others like
silver crescents, in quadrature, as well as by the encircling
rings, the aspect of the heavens from the surface of Saturn
must be as impressive as it is gorgeous.
Unable, indeed, the Gallians were to realize all the
marvels of this strange world. After all, they were practically
a thousand times further off than the great astronomers
have been able to approach by means of their giant
telescopes. But they did not complain; their little comet,
they knew, was far safer where it was; far better out of
the reach of an attraction which, by affecting their path,
might have annihilated their best hopes.
While thus they failed to attain to any great personal
acquaintance with the glories of Saturn, still less did they
penetrate into any of the mysteries of the more distant
world of Uranus, although that planet, which from the
earth appears only as a star of the sixth magnitude, did
become visible to their naked eye. Yet as to the satellites
which accompany him on his revolution of 84 years, at a
distance of 1,753,851,000 miles from the sun, it must be
owned that not one of them was ever to be discerned.
With regard to Neptune, the most distant planet of our
system (until an Adams or Le Verrier of the future shall
discover another still more remote), he was beyond the
range of vision. Possibly he came within the focus of the
professor's telescope, but if so, the professor admitted no
one to the honour of his confidence. The general community,
to inform themselves of any particulars as to the
planet's elements, had once again to fall back upon their
books. There they read that Neptune's mean distance
from the sun is 2,746,271,000 miles; that the period of his
revolution is 165 years; that, a spheroid 150 times greater
than the earth, he travels along his gigantic orbit at the
rate of 12,000 miles an hour; and that he is accompanied
by one satellite, which performs its subsidiary orbit at a
distance of about 220,000 miles.
The distance of 2,000,000,000 of miles at which Neptune
revolves, represents, according to our present knowledge,
the extreme limits of the solar system; yet, enormous
as that number may sound, it is quite insignificant when
compared with the number which represents the radius of
the sidereal group to which our sun is attached.
The sun, in fact, appears to form part of the expansive
nebula known as the Milky Way, in which he occupies the
modest place of a star of about the fourth magnitude.
Had Gallia been projected beyond the limits of the sun's
attraction, it is within the province of imagination to conjecture
that she would have taken for her new centre the
nearest of the fixed stars. This star is Alpha in the constellation
Centaur; its distance from the sun is more than
16 millions of millions of miles, a number the prodigiousness
of which may be realized to a certain degree by the
statement that light, which travels at the rate of 186,000
miles a second, would occupy no less than three years
and a half in traversing the interval between the star and
our sun.
The distances of several of the brightest of the fixed
stars have been estimated. Amongst others, Vega in the
constellation Lyra is 100 millions of millions of miles
away; Sirius in Canis Major, 123 millions of millions; the
Pole-star, 282 millions of millions; and Capella, 340
millions of millions of miles, a figure represented by no
less than fifteen digits.
The hard numerical statement of these enormous
figures, however, fails altogether in any adequate way to
convey a due impression of the magnitude of these distances.
Astronomers, in their ingenuity, have endeavoured
to use some other basis, and have found “the velocity of
light” to be convenient for their purpose. They have
made their representations something in this way:—
“Suppose,” they say, “an observer endowed with an
infinite length of vision: suppose him stationed on the
surface of Capella; looking thence towards the earth, he
would be a spectator of events that had happened seventy
years previously: transport him to a star ten times distant,
and he will be reviewing the terrestrial sphere of 720
years back: carry him away further still, to a star so
remote that it requires something less than nineteen
centuries for light to reach it, and he would be a witness of
the birth and death of Christ: convey him further again,
and he shall be looking upon the dread desolation of the
Deluge: take him away further yet (for space is infinite),
and he shall be a spectator of the Creation of the spheres.
History is thus stereotyped in space; nothing once accomplished
can ever be effaced.”
Who can altogether be astonished that Palmyrin
Rosette, with his burning thirst for astronomical research,
should have been conscious of a longing for yet wider
travel through the sidereal universe? With his comet
now under the influence of one star, now of another, what
various systems might he not have explored! what
undreamt-of marvels might not have revealed themselves
before his gaze! The stars, fixed and immovable in name,
are all of them in motion, and Gallia might have followed
them in their untracked way.
This motion of the fixed stars is really very rapid
Arcturus is travelling at the rate of at least fifty-four miles
a second; our sun is approaching Hercules at the rate
of 240 miles a minute; and yet so great is the distance
that observers on the earth have hitherto been unable to
discern any appreciable difference.
Still, eventually, because the stars are thus moving at
unequal rates of velocity, there must ensue a change in
their relative positions; and astronomers have produced
diagrams representing the appearance they will present
some 50,000 years hence. In these diagrams the irregular
quadrilateral of Ursa Major takes the form of a long cross,
and the pentagon of Orion has resolved itself into a
quadrilateral.
But even if Gallia had been transported to other
systems, it would not have been competent to Palmyrin
Rosette to view these “secular inequalities” of the
spheres; the contemplation, however, of other marvels,
exceeding what the solar system has to offer, would more
than sufficiently have ravished his view. He would have
seen for himself that other planetary groups are not
always governed by a single sun, but that occasionally two,
three, four, or even six suns will revolve about each other
with reciprocal influence. He would have found, too, in
these compound systems, suns of various hue—red, yellow,
green, orange, purple, and white—lighting up their planets
with rays of glorious colouring; one sun perhaps setting
in clearest green, another rising in resplendent crimson, or
in dazzling yellow; at times two suns together mingling
the tints of their varied beams; and perpetually, day after
day, the whole horizon decked with all the colours of the
rainbow.
But Gallia had a narrow destiny. She was not to be
allowed to wander away into the range of attraction of
another centre; nor to mingle with the star clusters, some
of which have been entirely, others partially resolved; nor
was she to lose herself amongst the 5000 nebulæ which
have resisted hitherto the grasp of the most powerful
reflectors. No; Gallia was neither to pass beyond the
limits of the solar system, nor to travel out of sight of the
terrestrial sphere. Her orbit was circumscribed to little
over 1500 millions of miles; and, in comparison with the
infinite space beyond, this was a mere nothing.