Off on a Comet! Part 30

A frown came over the professor's countenance. Servadac saw it, and gave his orderly a sign that he should desist entirely from his bantering.

"I require, gentlemen," resumed Rosette, "first of all to know by how much the weight of a kilogramme here differs from its weight upon the earth; the attraction, as we have said, being less, the weight will proportionately be less also."

"Then an ordinary pair of scales, being under the influence of attraction, I suppose, would not answer your purpose," submitted the lieutenant.

"And the very kilogramme weight you used would have become lighter," put in the count, deferentially.

"Pray, gentlemen, do not interrupt me," said the professor, authoritatively, as if _ex cathedra_. "I need no instruction on these points."

Procope and Timascheff demurely bowed their heads.

The professor resumed. "Upon a steelyard, or spring-balance, dependent upon mere tension or flexibility, the attraction will have no influence.

If I suspend a weight equivalent to the weight of a kilogramme, the index will register the proper weight on the surface of Gallia. Thus I shall arrive at the difference I want: the difference between the earth's attraction and the comet's. Will you, therefore, have the goodness to provide me at once with a steelyard and a tested kilogramme?"

The audience looked at one another, and then at Ben Zoof, who was thoroughly acquainted with all their resources. "We have neither one nor the other," said the orderly.

The professor stamped with vexation.

"I believe old Hakkabut has a steelyard on board his tartan," said Ben Zoof, presently.

"Then why didn't you say so before, you idiot?" roared the excitable little man.

Anxious to pacify him, Servadac a.s.sured him that every exertion should be made to procure the instrument, and directed Ben Zoof to go to the Jew and borrow it.

"No, stop a moment," he said, as Ben Zoof was moving away on his, errand; "perhaps I had better go with you myself; the old Jew may make a difficulty about lending us any of his property."

"Why should we not all go?" asked the count; "we should see what kind of a life the misanthrope leads on board the _Hansa_."

The proposal met with general approbation. Before they started, Professor Rosette requested that one of the men might be ordered to cut him a cubic decimeter out of the solid substance of Gallia. "My engineer is the man for that," said the count; "he will do it well for you if you will give him the precise measurement."

"What! you don't mean," exclaimed the professor, again going off into a pa.s.sion, "that you haven't a proper measure of length?"

Ben Zoof was sent off to ransack the stores for the article in question, but no measure was forthcoming. "Most likely we shall find one on the tartan," said the orderly.

"Then let us lose no time in trying," answered the professor, as he hustled with hasty strides into the gallery.

The rest of the party followed, and were soon in the open air upon the rocks that overhung the sh.o.r.e. They descended to the level of the frozen water and made their way towards the little creek where the _Dobryna_ and the _Hansa_ lay firmly imprisoned in their icy bonds.

The temperature was low beyond previous experience; but well m.u.f.fled up in fur, they all endured it without much actual suffering. Their breath issued in vapor, which was at once congealed into little crystals upon their whiskers, beards, eyebrows, and eyelashes, until their faces, covered with countless snow-white p.r.i.c.kles, were truly ludicrous. The little professor, most comical of all, resembled nothing so much as the cub of an Arctic bear.

It was eight o'clock in the morning. The sun was rapidly approaching the zenith; but its disc, from the extreme remoteness, was proportionately dwarfed; its beams being all but dest.i.tute of their proper warmth and radiance. The volcano to its very summit and the surrounding rocks were still covered with the unsullied mantle of snow that had fallen while the atmosphere was still to some extent charged with vapor; but on the north side the snow had given place to the cascade of fiery lava, which, making its way down the sloping rocks as far as the vaulted opening of the central cavern, fell thence perpendicularly into the sea. Above the cavern, 130 feet up the mountain, was a dark hole, above which the stream of lava made a bifurcation in its course. From this hole projected the case of an astronomer's telescope; it was the opening of Palmyrin Rosette's observatory.

Sea and land seemed blended into one dreary whiteness, to which the pale blue sky offered scarcely any contrast. The sh.o.r.e was indented with the marks of many footsteps left by the colonists either on their way to collect ice for drinking purposes, or as the result of their skating expeditions; the edges of the skates had cut out a labyrinth of curves complicated as the figures traced by aquatic insects upon the surface of a pool.

Across the quarter of a mile of level ground that lay between the mountain and the creek, a series of footprints, frozen hard into the snow, marked the course taken by Isaac Hakkabut on his last return from Nina's Hive.

On approaching the creek, Lieutenant Procope drew his companions'

attention to the elevation of the _Dobryna's_ and _Hansa's_ waterline, both vessels being now some fifteen feet above the level of the sea.

"What a strange phenomenon!" exclaimed the captain.

"It makes me very uneasy," rejoined the lieutenant; "in shallow places like this, as the crust of ice thickens, it forces everything upwards with irresistible force."

"But surely this process of congelation must have a limit!" said the count.

"But who can say what that limit will be? Remember that we have not yet reached our maximum of cold," replied Procope.

"Indeed, I hope not!" exclaimed the professor; "where would be the use of our traveling 200,000,000 leagues from the sun, if we are only to experience the same temperature as we should find at the poles of the earth?"

"Fortunately for us, however, professor," said the lieutenant, with a smile, "the temperature of the remotest s.p.a.ce never descends beyond 70 degrees below zero."

"And as long as there is no wind," added Servadac, "we may pa.s.s comfortably through the winter, without a single attack of catarrh."

Lieutenant Procope proceeded to impart to the count his anxiety about the situation of his yacht. He pointed out that by the constant superposition of new deposits of ice, the vessel would be elevated to a great height, and consequently in the event of a thaw, it must be exposed to a calamity similar to those which in polar seas cause destruction to so many whalers.

There was no time now for concerting measures offhand to prevent the disaster, for the other members of the party had already reached the spot where the _Hansa_ lay bound in her icy trammels. A flight of steps, recently hewn by Hakkabut himself, gave access for the present to the gangway, but it was evident that some different contrivance would have to be resorted to when the tartan should be elevated perhaps to a hundred feet.

A thin curl of blue smoke issued from the copper funnel that projected above the ma.s.s of snow which had acc.u.mulated upon the deck of the _Hansa_. The owner was sparing of his fuel, and it was only the non-conducting layer of ice enveloping the tartan that rendered the internal temperature endurable.

"Hi! old Nebuchadnezzar, where are you?" shouted Ben Zoof, at the full strength of his lungs.

At the sound of his voice, the cabin door opened, and the Jew's head and shoulders protruded onto the deck.

CHAPTER VI. MONEY AT A PREMIUM

"Who's there? I have nothing here for anyone. Go away!" Such was the inhospitable greeting with which Isaac Hakkabut received his visitors.

"Hakkabut! do you take us for thieves?" asked Servadac, in tones of stern displeasure.

"Oh, your Excellency, my lord, I did not know that it was you," whined the Jew, but without emerging any farther from his cabin.

"Now, old Hakkabut, come out of your sh.e.l.l! Come and show the governor proper respect, when he gives you the honor of his company," cried Ben Zoof, who by this time had clambered onto the deck.

After considerable hesitation, but still keeping his hold upon the cabin-door, the Jew made up his mind to step outside. "What do you want?" he inquired, timorously.

"I want a word with you," said Servadac, "but I do not want to stand talking out here in the cold."

Followed by the rest of the party, he proceeded to mount the steps. The Jew trembled from head to foot. "But I cannot let you into my cabin. I am a poor man; I have nothing to give you," he moaned piteously.

"Here he is!" laughed Ben Zoof, contemptuously; "he is beginning his chapter of lamentations over again. But standing out here will never do.

Out of the way, old Hakkabut, I say! out of the way!" and, without more ado, he thrust the astonished Jew on one side and opened the door of the cabin.

Servadac, however, declined to enter until he had taken the pains to explain to the owner of the tartan that he had no intention of laying violent hands upon his property, and that if the time should ever come that his cargo was in requisition for the common use, he should receive a proper price for his goods, the same as he would in Europe.

"Europe, indeed!" muttered the Jew maliciously between his teeth.

"European prices will not do for me. I must have Gallian prices--and of my own fixing, too!"