CHAPTER V.A MYSTERIOUS SEA.
Violent as the commotion had been, that portion of the
Algerian coast which is bounded on the north by the
Mediterranean, and on the west by the right bank of
the Shelif, appeared to have suffered little change. It is
true that slight indentations were perceptible in the fertile
plain, and the surface of the sea was ruffled with an agitation
that was quite unusual; but the rugged outline of the
cliff was the same as heretofore, and the physical aspect
of the entire scene appeared generally unaltered. The
stone hostelry, with the exception of some deep clefts in
its walls, had sustained little injury; but the gourbi, like a
house of cards destroyed by an infant's breath, had completely
subsided, and its two inmates lay motionless, buried
under the sunken thatch.
It was two hours after the catastrophe that Captain
Servadac regained consciousness; he had some trouble to
collect his thoughts, and it is not altogether surprising
that the first sounds that escaped his lips were the concluding
words of the rondo which had been so ruthlessly
interrupted—
“Constant ever I will be,
Constant...”
His next thought was to wonder what had Happened;
and in order to find an answer to the question, he pushed
aside the broken thatch, so that his head appeared above
the débris.
“The gourbi levelled to the ground!” he exclaimed,
as he looked about him; “surely a waterspout has passed
along the coast.”
He felt all over his body to perceive what injuries he
had sustained, but not a sprain nor a scratch could he
discover.
“Where are you, Ben Zoof?” he shouted next
“Here, sir!” and with military promptitude a second
head protruded from the rubbish.
“Have you any notion what has happened, Ben Zoof?”
asked Servadac.
“I've a notion, captain, that it's all up with us.”
“Nonsense, Ben Zoof; it is nothing but a waterspout!”
“Very good, sir,” was the philosophical reply, immediately
followed by the query, “Any bones broken, sir?”
“None whatever,” said the captain.
Both men were soon on their feet, and began to make
a vigorous clearance of the ruins, beneath which they
found that their arms, cooking utensils, and other property
had sustained little injury.
“By-the-by, what o'clock is it?” asked the captain
presently.
“It must be eight o'clock, at least,” said Ben Zoor,
looking at the sun, which was a considerable height above
the horizon. “It is almost time for us to start”
“To start! what for?”
“To keep your appointment with Count Timascheff.”
“By Jove! I had forgotten all about it!” exclaimed
Servadac.
Then looking at his watch, he cried:—
“What are you thinking of, Ben Zoof? It is scarcely
two o'clock.”
“Two in the morning, or two in the afternoon?” asked
Ben Zoof, again regarding the sun.
Servadac raised his watch to his ear.
“It is going,” said he; “but, by all the wines of Medoc,
I am puzzled. Don't you see that the sun is in the west?
It must be near setting.”
“Setting, captain! Why, it is rising finely, like a conscript
at the sound of the reveille. It is considerably
higher since we have been talking.”
Incredible as it might appear, the fact was undeniable
that the sun was rising over the Shelif from that quarter
of the horizon behind which it usually sank for the latter
portion of its daily round. They were utterly bewildered.
Some mysterious phenomenon must not only have altered
the position of the sun in the sidereal system, but must
even have brought about an important modification of the
earth's rotation on her axis. If Captain Servadac could
now have laid hands upon a member of the Board of
Longitudes, he would doubtless have sought all manner
of information; but as it was, he consoled himself with the
prospect of reading an explanation of the mystery in next
week's newspapers, and turned his attention to what was
to him of more immediate importance.
“Come, let us be off,” said he to his orderly; “though
heaven and earth be topsy-turvy, I must be at my post
this morning.”
“To do Count Timascheff the honour of running him
through the body,” added Ben Zoof.
If Servadac and his orderly had been less preoccupied,
they would have noticed that a variety of other physical
changes besides the apparent alteration in the movement
of the sun had been evolved during the atmospheric disturbances
of that New Year's night. As they descended
the steep footpath leading from the cliff towards the Shelif.
they were unconscious that their respiration became forced
and rapid, like that of a mountaineer when he has reached
an altitude where the circumambient air has become less
charged with oxygen. They were also unconscious that
their voices were thin and feeble; either they must themselves
have become rather deaf, or it was evident that the
air had become less capable of transmitting sound.
The weather, which on the previous evening had been
very foggy, had entirely changed. The sky had assumed
a singular tint, and was soon covered with lowering clouds
that completely hid the sun. There were, indeed, all the
signs of a coming storm, but the vapour, on account of
the insufficient condensation, failed to get resolved.
The sea appeared quite deserted, a most unusual circumstance
along this coast, and not a sail nor a trail of
smoke broke the grey monotony of water and sky. The
limits of the horizon, too, had become much circumscribed.
On land, as well as on sea, the remote distance had completely
disappeared, and it seemed as though the globe
had assumed a more decided convexity.
At the pace at which they were walking, it was very
evident that the captain and his attendant would not take
long to accomplish the three miles that lay between the
gourbi and the place of rendezvous. They did not exchange
a word, but each was conscious of an unusual
buoyancy, which appeared to lift up their bodies and give,
as it were, wings to their feet. If Ben Zoof had expressed
his sensations in words, he would have said that he felt
“up to anything,” and he had even forgotten to taste so
much as a crust of bread, a lapse of memory of which the
worthy soldier was rarely guilty.
As these thoughts were crossing his mind, a harsh
bark was heard to the left of the footpath, and a jackal
was seen emerging from a large grove of lentisks. Regarding
the two wayfarers with manifest uneasiness, the
beast took up its position at the foot of a rock, more than
thirty feet in height. It belonged to an African species
distinguished by a black spotted skin, and a black line
down the front of the legs. At night-time, when they
scour the country in herds, the creatures are somewhat
formidable, but singly they are no more dangerous than
a dog. Though by no means afraid of them, Ben Zoof
had a particular aversion to jackals, perhaps because they
had no place among the fauna of his beloved Montmartre.
He accordingly began to make threatening gestures, when,
to the unmitigated astonishment of himself and the captain,
the animal darted forward, and in one single bound
gained the summit of the rock.
“Good heavens!” cried Ben Zoof, “that leap must
have been thirty feet at least.”
“True enough,” replied the captain; “I never saw
such a jump.”
Meantime the jackal had seated itself upon its
haunches, and was staring at the two men with an air
of impudent defiance. This was too much for Ben Zoof's
forbearance, and stooping down he caught up a huge
stone, when, to his surprise, he found that it was no heavier
than a piece of petrified sponge.
“Confound the brute!” he exclaimed, “I might as well
throw a piece of bread at him. What accounts for its
being as light as this?”
Nothing daunted, however, he hurled the stone into the
air. It missed its aim; but the jackal, deeming it on the
whole prudent to decamp, disappeared across the trees and
hedges with a series of bounds, which could only be likened
to those that might be made by an india-rubber kangaroo.
Ben Zoof was sure that his own powers of propelling must
equal those of a howitzer, for his stone, after a lengthened
flight through the air, fell to the ground full five hundred
paces the other side of the rock.
The orderly was now some yards ahead of his master,
and had reached a ditch full of water, and about ten feet
wide. With the intention of clearing it, he made a spring,
when a loud cry burst from Servadac—
“Ben Zoof, you idiot I What are you about? You'll
break your back.”
And well might he be alarmed, for Ben Zoof had
sprung to a height of forty feet into the air. Fearful of
the consequences that would attend the descent of his
servant to terra firma, Servadac bounded forwards, to be
on the other side of the ditch in time to break his fall. But
the muscular effort that he made carried him in his turn to
an altitude of thirty feet; in his ascent he passed Ben Zoof,
who had already commenced his downward course; and
then, obedient to the laws of gravitation, he descended
with increasing rapidity, and alighted upon the earth without
experiencing a shock greater than if he had merely
made a bound of four or five feet high. Ben Zoof burst
into a roar of laughter.
“Bravo!” he said, “we should make a good pair of
clowns.”
But the captain was inclined to take a more serious
view of the matter. For a few seconds he stood lost in
thought; then, laying his hand upon the orderly's shoulder,
he said solemnly—
“Ben Zoof, I must be dreaming. Pinch me hard; I
must be either asleep or mad.”
“It is very certain that something has happened to us,”
said Ben Zoof, “I have occasionally dreamt that I was a
swallow flying over Montmartre, but I never experienced
anything of this kind before; it must be peculiar to the
coast of Algeria.”
Servadac was stupefied; he felt instinctively that he
was not dreaming, and yet was powerless to solve the
mystery. He was not, however, the man to puzzle himself
for long over any insoluble problem.
“Come what may,” he presently exclaimed, “we will
make up our minds for the future to be surprised at
nothing.”
“Right, captain,” replied Ben Zoof; “and, first of all,
let us settle our little score with Count Timascheff.”
Beyond the ditch lay a small piece of meadow land,
about an acre in extent. A soft and delicious herbage
carpeted the soil, whilst trees of about fifty years' growth—
evergreen oaks, palms, bread-fruits, sycamores, interspersed
with cactuses and aloes, and topped by two or three fine
specimens of the eucalyptus—formed a charming framework
to the whole. No spot could have been chosen more
suitable for the meeting between the two adversaries.
Servadac cast a hasty glance round the meadow. No
one was in sight.
“We are the first on the field,” he said.
“Not so sure of that, sir,” said Ben Zoof.
“What do you mean?” asked Servadac, looking at
his watch, which he had set as near as possible by the
sun before leaving the gourbi; “it is not nine o'clock yet.”
“Look up there, sir. I am much mistaken if that is not
the sun;” and as Ben Zoof spoke, he pointed directly overhead
to where a faint white disc was dimly visible through
the haze of clouds.
“Nonsense!” exclaimed Servadac. “How can the sun
be in the zenith in the month of January, in lat. 39° N.?”
“Can't say, sir. I only know the sun is there; and at
the rate he has been travelling, I would lay my cap to
a dish of cous-cous[1] that in less than three hours he will
have set.”
Hector Servadac, mute and motionless, stood with
folded arms. Presently he roused himself, and began to
examine the various quarters of the horizon.
“What means all this?” he murmured. “Laws of
gravity disturbed! Points of the compass reversed! The
length of day reduced one half! Surely this will indefinitely
postpone my meeting with the count. Something
has happened; Ben Zoof and I cannot both be mad!”
The orderly, meantime, surveyed his master with the
greatest equanimity; no phenomenon, however extraordinary,
would have drawn from him a single exclamation of
surprise.
“Do you see any one, Ben Zoof?” asked the captain,
at last.
“No one, sir; the count has evidently been and gone.”
“But supposing that to be the case,” persisted the
I captain, “my seconds would have waited, and not seeing
me, would have come on towards the gourbi. I can only
conclude that they have been unable to get here; and as
for Count Timascheff”
Without finishing his sentence, Captain Servadac,
thinking it just probable that the count, as on the previus
evening, might come by water, walked to the ridge
of rock that overhung the shore, in order to ascertain
if the Dobryna were anywhere in sight. But the sea was
deserted, and for the first time the captain noticed that,
although the wind was calm, the waters were unusually
agitated, and seethed and foamed as though they were
boiling. It was very certain that the yacht would have
found a difficulty in holding her own in such a swell.
Another thing that now struck Servadac was the extraordinary
contraction of the horizon. Under ordinary circumstances,
his elevated position would have allowed him
a radius of vision at least five and twenty miles in length;
but the terrestrial sphere seemed, in the course of the last
few hours, to have become considerably reduced in volume,
and he could now see for a distance of only six miles in
every direction.
Meantime, with the agility of a monkey, Ben Zoof had
clambered to the top of a eucalyptus, and from his lofty
perch was surveying the country to the south, as well as
towards both Tenes and Mostaganem. On descending, he
informed the captain that the plain was entirely deserted.
“We will make our way to the river, and get over into
Mostaganem,” said the captain.
The Shelif was not more than a mile and a half from
the meadow, but no time was to be lost if the two men
were to reach the town before nightfall. Though still
hidden by heavy clouds, the sun was evidently declining
fast; and, what was equally inexplicable, it was not following
the oblique curve that in these latitudes and at this
time of year might be expected, but was sinking
perpendicularly on to the horizon.
As he went along, Captain Servadac pondered deeply.
Perchance some unheard-of phenomenon had modified
the rotatory motion of the globe; or perhaps the Algerian
coast had been transported beyond the equator into the
southern hemisphere. Yet the earth (with the exception
of the alteration in its convexity), in this part of Africa at
least, seemed to have undergone no change of any very great
importance. As far as the eye could reach, the shore was,
as it had ever been, a succession of cliffs, beach, and arid
rocks, tinged with a red ferruginous hue. To the south—
if south, in this inverted order of things, it might still be
called—the face of the country also appeared unaltered,
and, three leagues away, the peaks of the Merdeyah mountains
still retained their accustomed outline.
Presently a rift in the clouds gave passage to an oblique
ray of light that clearly proved that the sun was
setting in the east.
“Well, I am curious to know what they think of all
this at Mostaganem,” said the captain. “I wonder, too,
what the Minister of War will say when he receives a
telegram informing him that his African colony has
become, not morally, but physically disorganized; that
the cardinal points are at variance with ordinary rules,
and that the sun in the month of January is shining down
vertically upon our heads.”
Ben Zoof, whose ideas of discipline were extremely
rigid, at once suggested that the colony should be put
under the surveillance of the police, that the cardinal
points should be placed under restraint, and that the sun
should be shot for breach of discipline.
Meantime, they were both advancing with the utmost
speed. The decompression of the atmosphere made the
specific gravity of their bodies extraordinarily light, and
they ran like hares and leaped like chamois. Leaving the
devious windings of the footpath, they went as a crow
would fly, or as the Americans would say, “took a bee's
flight” across the country. Hedges, trees, and streams
were cleared at a bound, and under these conditions Ben
Zoof felt that he could have overstepped Montmartre at
a single stride. The earth seemed as elastic as the springboard
of an acrobat; they scarcely touched it with their
feet, and their only fear was lest the height to which they
were propelled would consume the time which they were
saving by their short cut across the fields.
It was not long before their wild career brought them
to the right bank of the Shelif. Here they were compelled
to stop, for not only had the bridge completely disappeared,
but the river itself no longer existed. Of the left
bank there was not the slightest trace, and the right bank,
which on the previous evening had bounded the yellow
stream, as it murmured peacefully along the fertile plain,
had now become the shore of a tumultuous ocean, its azure
waters extending westwards far as the eye could reach,
and annihilating the tract of country which had hitherto
formed the district of Mostaganem. The shore coincided
exactly with what had been the right bank of the Shelif,
and in a slightly curved line ran north and south. The
catastrophe of which this part of Africa had been the scene
had evidently had no effect in altering its configuration,
which was still precisely identical with that laid down by
the latest hydrographical survey, whilst the adjacent groves
and meadows all retained their previous positions. But
the river-bank had now become the shore of an unknown
sea.
Eager to throw some light upon the mystery, Servadac
hurriedly made his way through the oleander bushes that
overhung the shore, took up some water in the hollow of
his hand, and carried it to his lips.
“Salt as brine!” he exclaimed, as soon as he had
tasted it. “The sea has undoubtedly swallowed up all the
western part of Algeria.”
“It will not last long, sir,” said Ben Zoof. “It is,
probably, only a severe flood.”
The captain shook his head.
“Worse than that, I fear, Ben Zoof,” he replied with
emotion. “It is a catastrophe that cannot fail to be
attended with very serious consequences. What can have
become of all my friends and fellow-officers?”
Ben Zoof was silent. Rarely had he seen his master
so much agitated; and though himself inclined to receive
these phenomena with philosophic indifference, his notions
of military duty caused his countenance to reflect the
captain's expression of amazement.
But there was little time for Servadac to examine the
changes which a few hours had wrought. The sun had
already reached the eastern horizon, and just as though
it were crossing the ecliptic under the tropics, it sank
like a cannon-ball into the sea. Without any warning,
day had rapidly given place to night, and earth, sea, and
sky were immediately wrapped in profound obscurity.
1^ Cous-cous: an African dish composed of the flour of millet,
ith meat and the bark of the adansonia.
