CHAPTER XXII.A FROZEN OCEAN.
The moon! She had disappeared for weeks; was she
now returning? Had she been faithless to the earth? and
had she now approached to be a satellite of the new-born
world?
“Impossible!” said Lieutenant Procope; “the earth
is millions and millions of leagues away, and it is not
probable that the moon has ceased to revolve about her.”
“Why not?” remonstrated Servadac. “It would not
be more strange than the other phenomena which we have
lately witnessed. Why should not the moon have fallen
within the limits of Gallia's attraction, and become her
satellite?”
“Upon that supposition,” put in the count, “I should
think that it would be altogether unlikely that three
months would elapse without our seeing her.”
“Quite incredible!” continued Procope. “And there
Is another thing which totally disproves the captain's
hypothesis; the magnitude of Gallia is far too insignificant
for her power of attraction to carry off the moon.”
“But,” persisted Servadac, “why should not the same
convulsion that tore us away from the earth have torn
away the moon as well? After wandering about as she
would for a while in the solar regions, I do not see why she
should not have attached herself to us.”
The lieutenant repeated his conviction that it was not
likely.
“But why not?” again asked Servadac impetuously.
“Because, I tell you, the mass of Gallia is so inferior to
that of the moon, that Gallia would become the moon's
satellite; the moon could not possibly become hers.”
“Assuming, however,” continued Servadac, “such to be
the case”
“I am afraid,” said the lieutenant, interrupting him,
“that I cannot assume anything of the sort even for a
moment.”
Servadac smiled good-humouredly.
“I confess you seem to have the best of the argument,
and if Gallia had become a satellite of the moon, it would
not have taken three months to catch sight of her. I
suppose you are right.”
While this discussion had been going on, the satellite,
or whatever it might be, had been rising steadily above the
horizon, and had reached a position favourable for observation.
Telescopes were brought, and it was very soon
ascertained, beyond a question, that the new luminary was
not the well-known Phoebe of terrestrial nights; it had no
feature in common with the moon. Although it was
apparently much nearer to Gallia than the moon to the
earth, its superficies was hardly one-tenth as large, and so
feebly did it reflect the light of the remote sun, that it
scarcely emitted radiance enough to extinguish the dim
lustre of stars of the eighth magnitude. Like the sun, it
had risen in the west, and was now at its full. To mistake
its identity with the moon was absolutely impossible; not
even Servadac could discover a trace of the seas, chasms,
craters, and mountains which have been so minutely
delineated in lunar charts; and it could not be denied
that any transient hope that had been excited as to their
once again being about to enjoy the peaceful smiles of
“the queen of night” must all be resigned.
Count Timascheff finally suggested, though somewhat
doubtfully, the question of the probability that Gallia, in
her course across the zone of the minor planets, had
carried off one of them; but whether it was one of the 169
asteroids already included in the astronomical catalogues,
or one previously unknown, he did not presume to determine.
The idea to a certain extent was plausible,
inasmuch as it has been ascertained that several of the
telescopic planets are of such small dimensions that a
good walker might make a circuit of them in four and
twenty hours; consequently Gallia, being of superior
volume, might be supposed capable of exercising a power
of attraction upon any of these miniature microcosms.
The first night in Nina's Hive passed without special
incident; and next morning a regular scheme of life was
definitely laid down. “My lord governour” (as Ben Zoof.
until he was peremptorily forbidden, delighted to call
Servadac) had a wholesome dread of idleness and its consequences,
and insisted upon each member of the party
undertaking some special duty to fulfil. There was plenty
to do. The domestic animals required a great deal of
attention; a supply of food had to be secured and preserved;
fishing had to be carried on while the condition of
the sea would allow it; and in several places the galleries
had to be further excavated to render them more available
for use. Occupation, then, need never be wanting, and
the daily round of labour could go on in orderly routine.
A perfect concord ruled the little colony. The Russians
and Spaniards amalgamated well, and both did their
best to pick up various scraps of French, which was considered
the official language of the place. Servadac himself
undertook the tuition of Pablo and Nina, Ben Zoof
being their companion in play-hours, when he entertained
them with enchanting stories in the best Parisian French,
about “a lovely city at the foot of a mountain,” where he
almost promised one day to take them.
The end of March came, but the cold was not intense
to such a degree as to confine any of the party to the
interior of their resort; several excursions were made along
the shore, and for a radius of three or four miles the
adjacent district was carefully explored. Investigation,
however, always ended in the same result; turn their
course in whatever direction they would, they found that
the country retained everywhere its desert character, rocky,
barren, and without a trace of vegetation. Here and there
a slight layer of snow or a thin coating of ice arising from
atmospheric condensation indicated the existence of superficial
moisture, but it would require a period indefinitely
long, exceeding human reckoning, before that moisture
could collect into a stream and roll downwards over the
stony strata to the sea. It seemed at present out of their
power to determine whether the land upon which they
were so happily settled was an island or a continent, and
till the cold was abated they feared to undertake any
lengthened expedition to ascertain the actual extent of the
strange concrete of metallic crystallization.
By ascending one day to the summit of the volcano,
Captain Servadac and the count succeeded in getting a
general idea of the aspect of the country. The mountain
itself was an enormous block rising symmetrically to a
height of nearly 3000 feet above the level of the sea, in
the form of a truncated cone, of which the topmost section
was crowned by a wreath of smoke issuing continuously
from the mouth of a narrow crater.
Under the old condition of terrestrial things, the ascent
of this steep acclivity would have been attended with
much fatigue, but as the effect of the altered condition of
the law of gravity, the travellers performed perpetual prodigies
in the way of agility, and in little over an hour
reached the edge of the crater, without more sense of exertion
than if they had traversed a couple of miles on level
ground. Gallia had its drawbacks, but it had some compensating
advantages.
Telescopes in hand, the explorers from the summit
scanned the surrounding view. Their anticipations had
already realized what they saw. Just as they expected, on
the north, east, and west lay the Gallian Sea, smooth and
motionless as a sheet of glass, the cold having, as it were,
congealed the atmosphere so that there was not a breath
of wind. Towards the south there seemed no limit to the
land, and the volcano formed the apex of a triangle, of
which the base was beyond the reach of vision. Viewed
even from this height, whence distance would do much to
soften the general asperity, the surface nevertheless seemed
to be bristling with its myriads of hexagonal lamellæ, and
to present difficulties which, to an ordinary pedestrian,
would be insurmountable.
“O for some wings, or else a balloon!” cried Servadac,
as he gazed around him; and then, looking down to the
rock upon which they were standing, he added, “We seem
to have been transplanted to a soil strange enough in its
chemical character to bewilder the savants at a museum.”
“And do you observe, captain,” asked the count, “how
the convexity of our little world curtails our view? See,
how circumscribed is the horizon!”
Servadac replied that he had noticed the same circumstance
from the top of the cliffs of Gourbi Island.
“Yes,” said the count; “it becomes more and more
obvious that ours is a very tiny world, and that Gourbi
Island is the sole productive spot upon its surface. We
have had a short summer, and who knows whether we are
not entering upon a winter that may last for years, perhaps
for centuries?”
“But we must not mind, count,” said Servadac, smiling.
“We have agreed, you know, that, come what may, we are
to be philosophers.”
“Ay, true, my friend,” rejoined the count; “we must be
philosophers and something more; we must be grateful to
the good Protector who has hitherto befriended us, and we
must trust His mercy to the end.”
For a few moments they both stood in silence, and
contemplated land and sea; then, having given a last
glance over the dreary panorama, they prepared to wend
their way down the mountain. Before, however, they
commenced their descent, they resolved to make a closer
examination of the crater. They were particularly struck
by what seemed to them almost the mysterious calmness
with which the eruption was effected. There was none of
the wild disorder and deafening tumult that usually accompany
the discharge of volcanic matter, but the heated
lava, rising with a uniform gentleness, quietly overran the
limits of the crater, like the flow of water from the bosom
of a peaceful lake. Instead of a boiler exposed to the
action of an angry fire, the crater rather resembled a brimming
basin, of which the contents were noiselessly escaping.
Nor were there any igneous stones or red-hot cinders
mingled with the smoke that crowned the summit; a circumstance
that quite accorded with the absence of the
pumice-stones, obsidians, and other minerals of volcanic
origin with which the base of a burning mountain is generally
strewn.
Captain Servadac was of opinion that this peculiarity
augured favourably for the continuance of the eruption.
Extreme violence in physical, as well as in moral nature,
is never of long duration. The most terrible storms, like
the most violent fits of passion, are not lasting; but here
the calm flow of the liquid fire appeared to be supplied
from a source that was inexhaustible, in the same way as
the waters of Niagara, gliding on steadily to their final
plunge, would defy all effort to arrest their course.
Before the evening of this day closed in, a most
important change was effected in the condition of the
Gallian Sea by the intervention of human agency. Notwithstanding
the increasing cold, the sea, unruffled as it
was by a breath of wind, still retained its liquid state. It
is an established fact that water, under this condition of
absolute stillness, will remain uncongealed at a temperature
several degrees below zero, whilst experiment, at the same
time, shows that a very slight shock will often be sufficient
to convert it into solid ice.
It had occurred to Servadac that if some communication
could be opened with Gourbi Island, there would be
a fine scope for hunting expeditions. Having this ultimate
object in view, he assembled his little colony upon a
projecting rock at the extremity of the promontory, and
having called Nina and Pablo out to him in front, he said
“Now, Nina, do you think you could throw something
into the sea?”
“I think I could,” replied the child, “but I am sure
that Pablo would throw it a great deal further than I can.”
“Never mind, you shall try first.”
Putting a fragment of ice into Nina's hand, he addressed
himself to Pablo:
“Look out, Pablo; you shall see what a nice little
fairy Nina is! Throw, Nina, throw, as hard as you can.”
Nina balanced the piece of ice two or three times in
her hand, and threw it forward with all her strength.
A sudden thrill seemed to vibrate across the motionless
waters to the distant horizon, and the Gallian Sea had
become a solid sheet of ice!