Off on a Comet! a Journey through Planetary Space

by Jules Verne

  CHAPTER XVI. THE RESIDUUM OF A CONTINENT

  Almost unconsciously, the voyagers in the _Dobryna_ fell into the habitof using Gallia as the name of the new world in which they became awarethey must be making an extraordinary excursion through the realmsof space. Nothing, however, was allowed to divert them from theirostensible object of making a survey of the coast of the Mediterranean,and accordingly they persevered in following that singular boundarywhich had revealed itself to their extreme astonishment.

  Having rounded the great promontory that had barred her farther progressto the north, the schooner skirted its upper edge. A few more leaguesand they ought to be abreast of the shores of France. Yes, of France.

  But who shall describe the feelings of Hector Servadac when, instead ofthe charming outline of his native land, he beheld nothing but a solidboundary of savage rock? Who shall paint the look of consternation withwhich he gazed upon the stony rampart--rising perpendicularly for athousand feet--that had replaced the shores of the smiling south? Whoshall reveal the burning anxiety with which he throbbed to see beyondthat cruel wall?

  But there seemed no hope. Onwards and onwards the yacht made her way,and still no sign of France. It might have been supposed that Servadac'sprevious experiences would have prepared him for the discovery that thecatastrophe which had overwhelmed other sites had brought destructionto his own country as well. But he had failed to realize how it mightextend to France; and when now he was obliged with his own eyes towitness the waves of ocean rolling over what once had been the lovelyshores of Provence, he was well-nigh frantic with desperation.

  "Am I to believe that Gourbi Island, that little shred of Algeria,constitutes all that is left of our glorious France? No, no; it cannotbe. Not yet have we reached the pole of our new world. There is--theremust be--something more behind that frowning rock. Oh, that for a momentwe could scale its towering height and look beyond! By Heaven, I adjureyou, let us disembark, and mount the summit and explore! France liesbeyond."

  Disembarkation, however, was an utter impossibility. There was nosemblance of a creek in which the _Dobryna_ could find an anchorage.There was no outlying ridge on which a footing could be gained. Theprecipice was perpendicular as a wall, its topmost height crowned withthe same conglomerate of crystallized lamellae that had all along beenso pronounced a feature.

  With her steam at high pressure, the yacht made rapid progress towardsthe east. The weather remained perfectly fine, the temperaturebecame gradually cooler, so that there was little prospect of vaporsaccumulating in the atmosphere; and nothing more than a few cirri,almost transparent, veiled here and there the clear azure of the sky.Throughout the day the pale rays of the sun, apparently lessened in itsmagnitude, cast only faint and somewhat uncertain shadows; but at nightthe stars shone with surpassing brilliancy. Of the planets, some, it wasobserved, seemed to be fading away in remote distance. This was the casewith Mars, Venus, and that unknown orb which was moving in the orbit ofthe minor planets; but Jupiter, on the other hand, had assumed splendidproportions; Saturn was superb in its luster, and Uranus, which hithertohad been imperceptible without a telescope was pointed out byLieutenant Procope, plainly visible to the naked eye. The inference wasirresistible that Gallia was receding from the sun, and traveling faraway across the planetary regions.

  On the 24th of February, after following the sinuous course of whatbefore the date of the convulsion had been the coast line of thedepartment of Var, and after a fruitless search for Hyeres, thepeninsula of St. Tropez, the Lerius Islands, and the gulfs of Cannes andJouar, the _Dobryna_ arrived upon the site of the Cape of Antibes.

  Here, quite unexpectedly, the explorers made the discovery that themassive wall of cliff had been rent from the top to the bottom by anarrow rift, like the dry bed of a mountain torrent, and at the base ofthe opening, level with the sea, was a little strand upon which therewas just space enough for their boat to be hauled up.

  "Joy! joy!" shouted Servadac, half beside himself with ecstasy; "we canland at last!"

  Count Timascheff and the lieutenant were scarcely less impatient thanthe captain, and little needed his urgent and repeated solicitations:"Come on! Quick! Come on! no time to lose!"

  It was half-past seven in the morning, when they set their foot uponthis untried land. The bit of strand was only a few square yards inarea, quite a narrow strip. Upon it might have been recognizedsome fragments of that agglutination of yellow limestone which ischaracteristic of the coast of Provence. But the whole party was fartoo eager to wait and examine these remnants of the ancient shore; theyhurried on to scale the heights.

  The narrow ravine was not only perfectly dry, but manifestly had neverbeen the bed of any mountain torrent. The rocks that rested at thebottom--just as those which formed its sides--were of the same lamellousformation as the entire coast, and had not hitherto been subject to thedisaggregation which the lapse of time never fails to work. A skilledgeologist would probably have been able to assign them their properscientific classification, but neither Servadac, Timascheff, northe lieutenant could pretend to any acquaintance with their specificcharacter.

  Although, however, the bottom of the chasm had never as yet been thechannel of a stream, indications were not wanting that at some futuretime it would be the natural outlet of accumulated waters; for already,in many places, thin layers of snow were glittering upon the surface ofthe fractured rocks, and the higher the elevation that was gained, themore these layers were found to increase in area and in depth.

  "Here is a trace of fresh water, the first that Gallia has exhibited,"said the count to his companions, as they toiled up the precipitouspath.

  "And probably," replied the lieutenant, "as we ascend we shall find notonly snow but ice. We must suppose this Gallia of ours to be a sphere,and if it is so, we must now be very close to her Arctic regions; it istrue that her axis is not so much inclined as to prolong day and nightas at the poles of the earth, but the rays of the sun must reach us hereonly very obliquely, and the cold, in all likelihood, will be intense."

  "So cold, do you think," asked Servadac, "that animal life must beextinct?"

  "I do not say that, captain," answered the lieutenant; "for, howeverfar our little world may be removed from the sun, I do not see why itstemperature should fall below what prevails in those outlying regionsbeyond our system where sky and air are not." "And what temperature maythat be?" inquired the captain with a shudder.

  "Fourier estimates that even in those vast unfathomable tracts, thetemperature never descends lower than 60 degrees," said Procope.

  "Sixty! Sixty degrees below zero!" cried the count. "Why, there's not aRussian could endure it!"

  "I beg your pardon, count. It is placed on record that the English_have_ survived it, or something quite approximate, upon their Arcticexpeditions. When Captain Parry was on Melville Island, he knew thethermometer to fall to 56 degrees," said Procope.

  As the explorers advanced, they seemed glad to pause from time to time,that they might recover their breath; for the air, becoming more andmore rarefied, made respiration somewhat difficult and the ascentfatiguing. Before they had reached an altitude of 600 feet they noticeda sensible diminution of the temperature; but neither cold nor fatiguedeterred them, and they were resolved to persevere. Fortunately, thedeep striae or furrows in the surface of the rocks that made the bottomof the ravine in some degree facilitated their progress, but it was notuntil they had been toiling up for two hours more that they succeeded inreaching the summit of the cliff.

  Eagerly and anxiously did they look around. To the south there wasnothing but the sea they had traversed; to the north, nothing but onedrear, inhospitable stretch.

  Servadac could not suppress a cry of dismay. Where was his belovedFrance? Had he gained this arduous height only to behold the rockscarpeted with ice and snow, and reaching interminably to the far-offhorizon? His heart sank within him.

  The whole region appeared to consist of nothing but the same strange,uniform mineral conglomerate
, crystallized into regular hexagonalprisms. But whatever was its geological character, it was only tooevident that it had entirely replaced the former soil, so that not avestige of the old continent of Europe could be discerned. Thelovely scenery of Provence, with the grace of its rich and undulatinglandscape; its gardens of citrons and oranges rising tier upon tierfrom the deep red soil--all, all had vanished. Of the vegetable kingdom,there was not a single representative; the most meager of Arctic plants,the most insignificant of lichens, could obtain no hold upon that stonywaste. Nor did the animal world assert the feeblest sway. The mineralkingdom reigned supreme.

  Captain Servadac's deep dejection was in strange contrast to his generalhilarity. Silent and tearful, he stood upon an ice-bound rock, straininghis eyes across the boundless vista of the mysterious territory. "Itcannot be!" he exclaimed. "We must somehow have mistaken our bearings.True, we have encountered this barrier; but France is there beyond! Yes,France is _there!_ Come, count, come! By all that's pitiful, I entreatyou, come and explore the farthest verge of the ice-bound track!"

  He pushed onwards along the rugged surface of the rock, but had notproceeded far before he came to a sudden pause. His foot had come incontact with something hard beneath the snow, and, stooping down, hepicked up a little block of stony substance, which the first glancerevealed to be of a geological character altogether alien to theuniversal rocks around. It proved to be a fragment of dis-coloredmarble, on which several letters were inscribed, of which the only partat all decipherable was the syllable "Vil."

  "Vil--Villa!" he cried out, in his excitement dropping the marble, whichwas broken into atoms by the fall.

  What else could this fragment be but the sole surviving remnant of somesumptuous mansion that once had stood on this unrivaled site? Was it notthe residue of some edifice that had crowned the luxuriant headland ofAntibes, overlooking Nice, and commanding the gorgeous panorama thatembraced the Maritime Alps and reached beyond Monaco and Mentone to theItalian height of Bordighera? And did it not give in its sad and tooconvincing testimony that Antibes itself had been involved in the greatdestruction? Servadac gazed upon the shattered marble, pensive anddisheartened.

  Count Timascheff laid his hand kindly on the captain's shoulder, andsaid, "My friend, do you not remember the motto of the old Hope family?"

  He shook his head mournfully.

  "_Orbe fracto, spes illoesa_," continued the count--"Though the world beshattered, hope is unimpaired."

  Servadac smiled faintly, and replied that he felt rather compelled totake up the despairing cry of Dante, "All hope abandon, ye who enterhere."

  "Nay, not so," answered the count; "for the present at least, let ourmaxim be _Nil desperandum!_"