CHAPTER IV.THE PROFESSOR'S EXPERIENCES.
“Yes, my comet!” repeated the professor, and from time
to time he knitted his brows, and looked around him with
a defiant air, as though he could not get rid of the impression
that some one was laying an unwarranted claim
to its proprietorship, or that the individuals before him
were intruders upon his own proper domain.
But for a considerable while, Servadac, the count, and
the lieutenant remained silent and sunk in thought Here
then, at last, was the unriddling of the enigma they had
been so long endeavouring to solve; both the hypotheses
they had formed in succession had now to give way before
the announcement of the real truth. The first supposition,
that the rotatory axis of the earth had been subject to
some accidental modification, and the conjecture that
replaced it, namely, that a certain portion of the terrestrial
sphere had been splintered off and carried into space, had
both now to yield to the representation that the earth had
been grazed by an unknown comet, which had caught up
some scattered fragments from its surface, and was bearing
them far away into sidereal regions. Unfolded lay the
past and the present before them; but this only served to
awaken a keener interest about the future. Could the
professor throw any light upon that? they longed to
inquire, but did not yet venture to ask him.
Meanwhile Rosette assumed a pompous professional
air, and appeared to be waiting for the entire party to be
ceremoniously introduced to him. Nothing unwilling to
humour the vanity of the eccentric little man, Servadac
proceeded to go through the expected formalities.
“Allow me to present to you my excellent friend, the
Count Timascheff,” he said.
“You are very welcome,” said Rosette, bowing to the
count with a smile of condescension.
“Although I am not precisely a voluntary resident on
your comet, Mr. Professor, I beg to acknowledge your
courteous reception,” gravely responded Timascheff.
Servadac could not quite conceal his amusement at
the count's irony, but continued:
“This is Lieutenant Procope, the officer in command of
the Dobryna.”
The professor bowed again in frigid dignity.
“His yacht has conveyed us right round Gallia,” added
the captain.
“Round Gallia?” eagerly exclaimed the professor.
“Yes, entirely round it,” answered Servadac, and without
allowing time for reply, proceeded:
“And this is my orderly, Ben Zoof.”
“Aide-de-camp to his Excellency the Governour of
Gallia,” interposed Ben Zoof himself, anxious to maintain
his master's honour as well as his own.
Rosette scarcely bent his head.
The rest of the population of the Hive were all presented
in succession: the Russian sailors, the Spaniards,
young Pablo, and little Nina, on whom the professor,
evidently no lover of children, glared fiercely through his
formidable spectacles. Isaac Hakkabut, after his introduction,
begged to be allowed to ask one question.
“How soon may we hope to get back?” he inquired,
imploringly.
“Get back!” rejoined Rosette, sharply; “who talks of
getting back? We have hardly started yet.”
Seeing that the professor was inclined to get angry,
Captain Servadac adroitly gave a new turn to the conversation
by asking him whether he would gratify them
by relating his own recent experiences. The astronomer
seemed pleased with the proposal, and at once commenced
a verbose and somewhat circumlocutory address, of which
the following summary presents the main features.
The French Government, being desirous of verifying
the measurement already made of the arc of the meridian
of Paris, appointed a scientific commission for that purpose.
From that commission the name of Palmyrin
Rosette was omitted, apparently for no other reason than
his personal unpopularity. Furious at the slight, the professor
resolved to set to work independently on his own
account, and declaring that there were inaccuracies in the
previous geodesic operations, he determined to re-examine
the results of the last triangulation which had united
Formentera to the Spanish coast by a triangle, one of
the sides of which measured over a hundred miles, the
very operation which had already been so successfully
accomplished by Arago and Biot.
Accordingly, leaving Paris for the Balearic Isles, he
placed his observatory on the highest point of Formentera,
and accompanied as he was only by his servant, Joseph,
led the life of a recluse. He secured the services of a
former assistant, and despatched him to a high peak on
the coast of Spain, where he had to superintend a reverberator,
which, with the aid of a glass, could be seen from
Formentera. A few books and instruments, and two
months' victuals, was all the baggage he took with him,
except an excellent astronomical telescope, which was,
indeed, almost part and parcel of himself, and with which
he assiduously scanned the heavens, in the sanguine anticipation
of making some discovery which would immortalize
his name.
The task he had undertaken demanded the utmost
patience. Night after night, in order to fix the apex of
his triangle, he had to linger on the watch for the assistant's
signal-light, but he did not forget that his predecessors,
Arago and Biot, had had to wait sixty-one days
for a similar purpose. What retarded the work was the
dense fog which, it has been already mentioned, at that
time enveloped not only that part of Europe, but almost
the entire world.
Never failing to turn to the best advantage the few
intervals when the mist lifted a little, the astronomer would
at the same time cast an inquiring glance at the firmament,
as he was greatly interested in the revision of the
chart of the heavens, in the region contiguous to the constellation
Gemini.
To the naked eye this constellation consists of only
six stars, but through a telescope ten inches in diameter,
as many as six thousand are visible. Rosette, however,
did not possess a reflector of this magnitude, and was
obliged to content himself with the good but comparatively
small instrument he had.
On one of these occasions, whilst carefully gauging the
recesses of Gemini, he espied a bright speck which was
unregistered in the chart, and which at first he took for
a small star that had escaped being entered in the catalogue.
But the observation of a few separate nights soon
made it manifest that the star was rapidly changing its
position with regard to the adjacent stars, and the astronomer's
heart began to leap at the thought that the
renown of the discovery of a new planet would be associated
with his name.
Redoubling his attention, he soon satisfied himself that
what he saw was not a planet; the rapidity of its displacement
rather forced him to the conjecture that it must be
a comet, and this opinion was soon strengthened by the
appearance of a coma, and subsequently confirmed, as
the body approached the sun, by the development of a
tail.
A comet! The discovery was fatal to all further
progress in the triangulation. However conscientiously
the assistant on the Spanish coast might look to the
kindling of the beacon. Rosette had no glances to spare
for that direction; he had no eyes except for the one
object of his notice, no thoughts apart from that one
quarter of the firmament.
A comet! No time must be lost in calculating its
elements.
Now, in order to calculate the elements of a comet,
it is always deemed the safest mode of procedure to
assume the orbit to be a parabola. Ordinarily, comets
are conspicuous at their perihelia, as being their shortest
distances from the sun, which is the focus of their orbit,
and inasmuch as a parabola is but an ellipse with its axis
indefinitely produced, for some short portion of its pathway
the orbit may be indifferently considered either one
or the other; but in this particular case the professor was
right in adopting the supposition of its being parabolic.
Just as in a circle, it is necessary to know three points
to determine the circumference; so in ascertaining the
elements of a comet, three different positions must be
observed before what astronomers call its “ephemeris”
can be established.
But Professor Rosette did not content himself with
three positions; taking advantage of every rift in the fog
he made ten, twenty, thirty observations both in right
ascension and in declination, and succeeded in working
out with the most minute accuracy the five elements of the
comet which was evidently advancing with astounding
rapidity towards the earth.
These elements were:
1. The inclination of the plane of the cometary orbit
to the plane of the ecliptic, an angle which is generally
considerable, but in this case the planes were proved to
coincide.
2. The position of the ascending node, or the point
where the comet crossed the terrestrial orbit.
These two elements being obtained, the position in
space of the comet's orbit was determined.
2. The direction of the axis major of the orbit, which
was found by calculating the longitude of the comet's
perihelion.
4. The perihelion distance from the sun, which settled
the precise form of the parabola.
5. The motion of the comet, as being retrograde, or,
unlike the planets, from east to west.[1]
Rosette thus found himself able to calculate the date
at which the comet would reach its perihelion, and, overjoyed
at his discovery, without thinking of calling it
Palmyra or Rosetta, after his own name, he resolved that
it should be known as Gallia.
His next business was to draw up a formal report.
Not only did he at once recognize that a collision with
the earth was possible, but he soon foresaw that it was inevitable,
and that it must happen on the night of the 31st
of December; moreover, as the bodies were moving in opposite
directions, the shock could hardly fail to be violent.
To say that he was elated at the prospect was far
below the truth; his delight amounted almost to delirium.
Any one else would have hurried from the solitude of Formentera
in sheer fright; but, without communicating a
word of his startling discovery, he remained resolutely
at his post. From occasional newspapers which he had
received, he had learnt that fogs, dense as ever, continued
to envelop both hemispheres, so that he was assured that
the existence of the comet was utterly unknown elsewhere;
and the ignorance of the world as to the peril that
threatened it averted the panic that would have followed
the publication of the facts, and left the philosopher of
Formentera in sole possession of the great secret. He
clung to his post with the greater persistency, because his
calculations had led him to the conclusion that the comet
would strike the earth somewhere to the south of Algeria,
and as it had a solid nucleus, he felt sure that, as he
expressed it, the effect would be “unique,” and he was
anxious to be in the vicinity.
The shock came, and with it the results already recorded.
Palmyrin Rosette was suddenly separated from
his servant Joseph, and when, after a long period of unconsciousness,
he came to himself, he found that he was
the solitary occupant of the only fragment that survived
of the Balearic Archipelago.
Such was the substance of the narrative which the professor
gave with sundry repetitions and digressions; while
he was giving it, he frequently paused and frowned as if
irritated in a way that seemed by no means justified by
the patient and good-humoured demeanour of his audience.
“But now, gentlemen,” added the professor, “I must
tell you something more. Important changes have resulted
from the collision; the cardinal points have been
displaced; gravity has been diminished: not that I ever
supposed for a minute, as you did, that I was still upon
the earth. No! the earth, attended by her moon, continued
to rotate along her proper orbit. But we, gentlemen,
have nothing to complain of; our destiny might
have been far worse; we might all have been crushed to
death, or the comet might have remained in adhesion to
the earth; and in neither of these cases should we have
had the satisfaction of making this marvellous excursion
through untraversed solar regions. No, gentlemen, I
repeat it, we have nothing to regret.”
And as the professor spoke, he seemed to kindle with
the emotion of such supreme contentment that no one
had the heart to gainsay his assertion. Ben Zoof alone
ventured an unlucky remark to the effect that if the comet
had happened to strike against Montmartre, instead of a
bit of Africa, it would have met with some resistance.
“Pshaw!” said Rosette, disdainfully. “A mole-hill
like Montmartre would have been ground to powder in a
moment.”
“Mole-hill!” exclaimed Ben Zoof, stung to the quick.
“I can tell you it would have caught up your bit of a
comet and worn it like a feather in a cap.”
The professor looked angry, and Servadac having imposed
silence upon his orderly, explained the worthy
soldier's sensitiveness on all that concerned Montmartre.
Always obedient to his master, Ben Zoof held his tongue;
but he felt that he could never forgive the slight that had
been cast upon his beloved home.
It was now all-important to learn whether the astronomer
had been able to continue his observations, and
whether he had learned sufficient of Gallia's path through
space to make him competent to determine, at least
approximately, the period of its revolution round the sun.
With as much tact and caution as he could. Lieutenant
Procope endeavoured to intimate the general desire for
some information on this point.
“Before the shock, sir,” answered the professor, “I had
conclusively demonstrated the path of the comet; but, in
consequence of the modifications which that shock has
entailed upon my comet's orbit, I have been compelled
entirely to recommence my calculations.”
The lieutenant looked disappointed.
“Although the orbit of the earth was unaltered,” continued
the professor, “the result of the collision was the
projection of the comet into a new orbit altogether.”
“And may I ask,” said Procope, deferentially, “whether
you have got the elements of the fresh orbit?”
“Yes.”
“Then perhaps you know....”
“I know this, sir, that at 47 min. 35.6 sec. after two
o'clock on the morning of the 1st of January last, Gallia,
in passing its ascending node, came in contact with the
earth; that on the 1Oth of January it crossed the orbit of
Venus; that it reached its perihelion on the 15th; that it
re-crossed the orbit of Venus; that on the 1st of February
it passed its descending node; on the 13th crossed the
orbit of Mars; entered the zone of the telescopic planets
on the 10th of March, and, attracting Nerina, carried it off
as a satellite.”
Servadac interposed:
“We are already acquainted with well-nigh all these
extraordinary facts; many of them, moreover, we have
learned from documents which we have picked up, and
which, although unsigned, we cannot entertain a doubt
have originated with you.”
Professor Rosette drew himself up proudly and said:
“Of course they originated with me. I sent them off
by hundreds. From whom else could they come?”
“From no one but yourself, certainly,” rejoined the
count, with grave politeness.
Hitherto the conversation had thrown no light upon
the future movements of Gallia, and Rosette was disposed
apparently to evade, or at least to postpone, the subject
When, therefore. Lieutenant Procope was about to press his
inquiries in a more categorical form, Servadac, thinking it
advisable not prematurely to press the little savant too far,
interrupted him by asking the professor how he accounted
for the earth having suffered so little from such a formidable
concussion,
“I account for it in this way,” answered Rosette: “the
earth was travelling at the rate of 28,000 leagues an hour,
and Gallia at the rate of 57,000 leagues an hour, therefore
the result was the same as though a train rushing along at
a speed of about 86,000 leagues an hour had suddenly
encountered some obstacle. The nucleus of the comet,
being excessively hard, has done exactly what a ball would
do fired with that velocity close to a pane of glass. It has
crossed the earth without cracking it.”
“It is possible you may be right,” said Servadac,
thoughtfully.
“Right! of course I am right!” replied the snappish
professor. Soon, however, recovering his equanimity, he
continued: “It is fortunate that the earth was only touched
obliquely; if the comet had impinged perpendicularly, it
must have ploughed its way deep below the surface, and
the disasters it might have caused are beyond reckoning.
Perhaps,” he added, with a smile, “even Montmartre might
not have survived the calamity.”
“Sir!” shouted Ben Zoof, quite unable to bear the
unprovoked attack.
“Quiet. Ben Zoof!” said Servadac, sternly.
Fortunately for the sake of peace, Isaac Hakkabut,
who at length was beginning to realize something of the
true condition of things, came forward at this moment,
and in a voice trembling with eagerness, implored the professor
to tell him when they would all be back again upon
the earth.
“Are you in a great hurry?” asked the professor,
coolly.
The Jew was about to speak again, when Captain
Servadac interposed:
“Allow me to say that, in somewhat more scientific
terms, I was about to ask you the same question. Did I
not understand you to say that, as the consequence of the
collision, the character of the comet's orbit has been
changed?”
“You did, sir.”
“Did you imply that the orbit has ceased to be a
parabola?”
“Just so.”
“Is it then an hyperbola? and are we to be carried on
far and away into remote distance, and never, never to
return?”
“I did not say an hyperbola.”
“And is it not?”
“It is not.”
“Then it must be an ellipse?”
“Yes.”
“And does its plane coincide with the plane of the
earth?”
“Yes.”
“Then it must be a periodic comet?”
“It is.”
Servadac involuntarily raised a ringing shout of joy
that echoed again along the gallery.
“Yes;” continued the professor, “Gallia is a periodic
comet, and allowing for the perturbations to which it is
liable from the attraction of Mars and Jupiter and Saturn,
it will return to the earth again in two years precisely.”
“You mean that in two years after the first shock,
Gallia will meet the earth at the same point as they met
before?” said Lieutenant Procope.
“I am afraid so,” said Rosette.
“Why afraid?”
“Because we are doing exceedingly well as we are.”
The professor stamped his foot upon the ground, by way
of emphasis, and added, “If I had my will, Gallia should
never return to the earth again!”
1^ Of 252 comets, 123 have a direct
and 129 a retrograde motion.
