CHAPTER XV.AN ENIGMA FROM THE SEA.
Lieutenant Procope had been left on board in charge
of the Dobryna, and on resuming the voyage it was a task
of some difficulty to make him understand the fact that
had just come to light. Some hours were spent in discussion
and in attempting to penetrate the mysteries of the
situation.
There were certain things of which they were perfectly
certain. They could be under no misapprehension as to the
distance they had positively sailed from Gourbi Island
towards the east before their further progress was arrested
by the unknown shore; as nearly as possible that was
fifteen degrees: the length of the narrow strait by which
they had made their way across that land to regain the
open sea was about three miles and a half; thence onward
to the island, which they had been assured, on evidence that
they could not disbelieve, to be upon the site of Gibraltar,
was four degrees; while from Gibraltar to Gourbi Island
was seven degrees or but little more. What was it altogether?
Was it not less than thirty degrees? In that
latitude, the degree of longitude represents eight and
forty miles. What, then, did it all amount to? Indubitably,
to less than 1400 miles. So brief a voyage would bring
the Dobryna once again to her starting-point, or, in other
words, would enable her to complete the circumnavigation
of the globe. How changed the condition of things!
Previously, to sail from Malta to Gibraltar by an eastward
course would have involved the passage of the Suez Canal,
the Red Sea, the Indian Ocean, the Pacific, the Atlantic;
but what had happened now? Why, Gibraltar had been
reached as if it had been just at Corfu, and some three
hundred and thirty degrees of the earth's circuit had
vanished utterly.
After allowing for a certain margin of miscalculation,
the main fact remained undeniable; and the necessary
inference that Lieutenant Procope drew from the round of
the earth being completed in 1400 miles, was that the
earth's diameter had been reduced by about fifteen sixteenths
of its length.
“If that be so,” observed the count, “it accounts for
some of the strange phenomena we witness. If our world
has become so insignificant a spheroid, not only has its
gravity diminished, but its rotatory speed has been accelerated;
and this affords an adequate explanation of our
days and nights being thus curtailed. But how about the
new orbit in which we are moving?”
He paused and pondered, and then looked at Procope
as though awaiting from him some further elucidation of
the difficulty.
The lieutenant hesitated. When, in a few moments, he
began to speak, Servadac smiled intelligently, anticipating
the answer he was about to hear.
“My conjecture is,” said Procope, “that a fragment of
considerable magnitude has been detached from the earth;
that it has carried with it an envelope of the earth's atmosphere,
and that it is now travelling through the solar
system in an orbit that does not correspond at all with the
proper orbit of the earth.”
The hypothesis was plausible; but what a multitude of
bewildering speculations it entailed!
If, in truth, a certain mass had been broken off from
the terrestrial sphere, whither would it wend its way?
What would be the measure of the eccentricity of its path?
What would be its period round the sun? Might it not,
like a comet, be carried away into the vast infinity of
space? or, on the other hand, might it not be attracted to
the great central source of light and heat, and be absorbed in
it? Did its orbit correspond with the orbit of the ecliptic?
and was there no chance of its ever uniting again with the
globe, from which it had been torn off by so sudden and
violent a disruption?
A thoughtful silence fell upon them all, which Servadac
was the first to break.
“Lieutenant,” he said, “your explanation is ingenious,
and accounts for many appearances; but it seems to me
that in one point it fails.”
“How so?” replied Procope. “To my mind the theory
meets all objections.”
“I think not,” Servadac answered. “In one point, at
least, it appears to me to break down completely.”
“What is that?” asked the lieutenant.
“Stop a moment,” said the captain. “Let us see that
we understand each other right. Unless I mistake you,
your hypothesis is that a fragment of the earth, comprising
the Mediterranean and its shores from Gibraltar to Malta,
has been developed into a new asteroid, which is started on
an independent orbit in the solar regions. Is not that
your meaning?”
“Precisely so,” the lieutenant acquiesced.
“Well, then,” continued Servadac, “it seems to me to
be at fault in this respect: it fails, and fails completely,
to account for the geological character of the land that we
have found now encompassing this sea. Why, if the new
land is a fragment of the old—why does it not retain its
old formation? What has become of the granite and the
calcareous deposits? How is it that these should all be
changed into a mineral concrete with which we have no
acquaintance?”
No doubt, it was a serious objection; for, however
likely it might be that a mass of the earth on being
detached would be eccentric in its movements, there was
no probable reason to be alleged why the material of its
substance should undergo so complete a change. There
was nothing to account for the fertile shores, rich in vegetation,
being transformed into rocks arid and barren
beyond precedent.
The lieutenant felt the difficulty, and owned himself
unprepared to give at once an adequate solution; nevertheless,
he declined to renounce his theory. He asserted
that the arguments in favour of it carried conviction to
his mind, and that he entertained no doubt but that, in the
course of time, all apparently antagonistic circumstances
would be explained so as to become consistent with the
view he took. He was careful, however, to make it understood
that with respect to the original cause of the disruption
he had no theory to offer; and although he knew
what expansion might be the result of subterranean forces,
he did not venture to say that he considered it sufficient to
produce so tremendous an effect. The origin of the catastrophe
was a problem still to be solved.
“Ah! well,” said Servadac, “I don't know that it
matters much where our new little planet comes from, or
what it is made of, if only it carries France along with it.”
“And Russia,” added the count.
“And Russia, of course,” said Servadac, with a polite
bow.
There was, however, not much room for this sanguine
expectation, for if a new asteroid had thus been brought
into existence, it must be a sphere of extremely limited
dimensions, and there could be little chance that it embraced
more than the merest fraction of either France or
Russia. As to England, the total cessation of all telegraphic
communication between her shores and Gibraltar
was a virtual proof that England was beyond its compass.
And what was the true measurement of the new little
world? At Gourbi Island the days and nights were of
equal length, and this seemed to indicate that it was
situated on the equator; hence the distance by which the
two poles stood apart would be half what had been
reckoned would be the distance completed by the Dobryna
in her circuit. That distance had been already estimated
to be something under 1400 miles, so that the Arctic Pole
of their recently fashioned world must be about 350 miles
to the north, and the Antarctic about 350 miles to the
south of the island. Compare these calculations with the
map, and it is at once apparent that the northernmost
limit barely touched the coast of Provence, while the
southernmost reached to about lat. 29° N., and fell in the
heart of the desert. The practical test of these conclusions
would be made by future investigation, but meanwhile the
fact appeared very much to strengthen the presumption
that, if Lieutenant Procope had not arrived at the whole
truth, he had made a considerable advance towards it.
The weather, ever since the storm that had driven the
Dobryna into the creek, had been magnificent. The wind
continued favourable, and now under both steam and
canvas, she made a rapid progress towards the north, a
direction in which she was free to go in consequence of the
total disappearance of the Spanish coast, from Gibraltar
right away to Alicante. Malaga, Almeria, Cape Gata, Carthagena,
Cape Palos—all were gone. The sea was rolling
over the southern extent of the peninsula, so that the yacht
advanced to the latitude of Seville before it sighted any
land at all, and then, not shores such as the shores of
Andalusia, but a bluff and precipitous cliff, in its geological
features resembling exactly the stern and barren rock that
she had coasted beyond the site of Malta. Here the sea
made a decided indentation on the coast; it ran up in an
acute-angled triangle till its apex coincided with the very
spot upon which Madrid had stood. But as hitherto the
sea had encroached upon the land, the land in its turn
now encroached upon the sea; for a frowning headland
stood out far into the basin of the Mediterranean, and
formed a promontory stretching out beyond the proper
places of the Balearic Isles, Curiosity was all alive. There
was the intensest interest awakened to determine whether
no vestige could be traced of Majorca, Minorca, or any of
the group, and it was during a deviation from the direct
course for the purpose of a more thorough scrutiny, that
one of the sailors raised a thrill of general excitement by
shouting, “A bottle in the sea!”
Here, then, at length was a communication from the
outer world. Surely now they would find a document
which would throw some light upon all the mysteries that
had happened? Had not the day now dawned that should
set their speculations all at rest?
It was the morning of the 21st of February. The
count, the captain, the lieutenant, everybody hurried to the
forecastle; the schooner was dexterously put about, and
all was eager impatience until the supposed bottle was
hauled on deck.
It was not, however, a bottle; it proved to be a round
leather telescope-case, about a foot long, and the first thing
to do before investigating its contents was to make a careful
examination of its exterior. The lid was fastened on
by wax, and so securely that it would take a long immersion
before any water could penetrate; there was no
maker's name to be deciphered; but impressed very plainly
with a seal on the wax were the two initials “P. R.”
When the scrutiny of the outside was finished, the wax
was removed and the cover opened, and the lieutenant
drew out a slip of ruled paper, evidently torn from a
common note-book. The paper had an inscription written
in four lines, which were remarkable for the profusion of
notes of admiration and interrogation with which they
were interspersed:—
“Gallia???
Ab sole, au 15 fév. dist. 59,000,000 l.!
Chemin parcouru de janv. à fév. 82,000,000 l.!!
Va bene! All right!! Parfait!!!”
There was a general sigh of disappointment. They
turned the paper over and over, and handed it from one
to another.
“What does it all mean?” exclaimed the count.
“Something mysterious here!” said Servadac “But
yet,” he continued, after a pause, “one thing is tolerably
certain: on the 15th, six days ago, some one was alive to
write it.”
“Yes; I presume there is no reason to doubt the
accuracy of the date,” assented the count.
To this strange conglomeration of French, English,
Italian, and Latin, there was no signature attached; nor
was there anything to give a clue as to the locality in
which it had been committed to the waves. A telescope-case
would probably be the property of some one on board
a ship; and the figures obviously referred to the astronomical
wonders that had been experienced.
To these general observations Captain Servadac objected
that he thought it unlikely that any one on board a
ship would use a telescope-case for this purpose, but would
be sure to use a bottle as being more secure; and, accordingly,
he should rather be inclined to believe that the
message had been set afloat by some savant left alone,
perchance, upon some isolated coast.
“But, however interesting it might be,” observed the
count, “to know the author of the lines, to us it is of far
greater moment to ascertain their meaning.”
And taking up the paper again, he said—
“Perhaps we might analyze it word by word, and from
its detached parts gather some clue to its sense as a whole.”
“What can be the meaning of all that cluster of interrogations
after Gallia?” asked Servadac.
Lieutenant Procope, who had hitherto not spoken, now
broke his silence by saying—
“I beg, gentlemen, to submit my opinion that this
document goes very far to confirm my hypothesis that a
fragment of the earth has been precipitated into space.”
Captain Servadac hesitated, and then replied—
“Even if it does, I do not see how it accounts in the
least for the geological character of the new asteroid.”
“But will you allow me for one minute to take my
supposition for granted?” said Procope. “If a new little
planet has been formed, as I imagine, by disintegration
from the old, I should conjecture that Gallia is the name
assigned to it by the writer of this paper. The very notes
of interrogation are significant that he was in doubt what
he should write.”
“You would presume that he was a Frenchman?”
asked the count.
“I should think so,” replied the lieutenant.
“Not much doubt about that,” said Servadac; “it is
all in French, except a few scattered words of English,
Latin, and Italian, inserted plainly to attract attention.
He could not tell into whose hands the message would fall
first.”
“Well, then,” said Count Timascheff, “we seem to
have found a name for the new world we occupy.”
“But what I was going especially to observe,” continued
the lieutenant, “is that the distance, 59,000,000
leagues, represents precisely the distance we ourselves were
from the sun on the 15th. It was on that day we crossed
the orbit of Mars.”
“Yes, true,” assented the others.
“And the next line,” said the lieutenant, after reading
it aloud, “apparently registers the distance traversed by
Gallia, the new little planet, in her own orbit. Her speed,
of course, we know by Kepler's laws, would vary according
to her distance from the sun, and if she were—as I conjecture
from the temperature at that date—on the 15th of
January at her perihelion, she would be travelling twice as
fast as the earth, which moves at the rate of between
50,000 and 60,000 miles an hour.”
“You think, then,” said Servadac, with a smile, “you
have determined the perihelion of our orbit: but how
about the aphelion? Can you form a judgment as to what
distance we are likely to be carried?”
“You are asking too much,” remonstrated the count.
“I confess,” said the lieutenant, “that just at present I
am not able to clear away the uncertainty of the future;
but I feel confident that by careful observation at various
points we shall arrive at conclusions which not only will
determine our path, but perhaps may clear up the mystery
about our geological structure.”
“Allow me to ask,” said Count Timascheff, “whether
such a new asteroid would not be subject to ordinary
mechanical laws, and whether, once started, it would not
have an orbit that must be immutable?”
“Decidedly it would, so long as it was undisturbed by
the attraction of some considerable body; but we must
recollect that, compared to the great planets, Gallia must
be almost infinitesimally small, and so might be attracted
by a force that is irresistible.”
“Altogether, then,” said Servadac, “we seem to have
settled it to our entire satisfaction that we must be the
population of a young little world called Gallia. Perhaps
some day we may have the honour of being registered
amongst the minor planets.”
“No chance of that,” quickly rejoined Lieutenant
Procope. “Those minor planets all are known to rotate in
a narrow zone between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter;
in their perihelia they cannot approximate the sun as we
have done; we shall not be classed with them.”
“Our lack of instruments,” said the count, “is much to
be deplored; it baffles our investigations in every way.”
“Ah, never mind! Keep up your courage, count!”
said Servadac, cheerily.
And Lieutenant Procope renewed his assurances that
he entertained good hopes that every perplexity would
soon be solved.
“I suppose,” remarked the count, “that we cannot
attribute much importance to the last line—
Va bene! All right!! Parfait!!!”
The captain answered—
“At least, it shows that whoever wrote it had no murmuring
or complaint to make, but was quite content with
the new order of things.”
