CHAPTER XVIII.AN UNEXPECTED POPULATION.
The Dobryna was now back again at the island. Her
cruise had lasted from the 31st of January to the 5th of
March, a period of thirty-five days (for it was leap-year),
corresponding to seventy days as accomplished by the new
little world.
Many a time during his absence Hector Servadac had
wondered how his present vicissitudes would end, and
he had felt some misgivings as to whether he should ever
again set foot upon the island, and see his faithful orderly,
so that it was not without emotion that he had approached
the coast of the sole remaining fragment of Algerian soil.
But his apprehensions were groundless; Gourbi Island
was just as he had left it, with nothing unusual in its aspect,
except that a very peculiar cloud was hovering over it, at
an altitude of little more than a hundred feet. As the
yacht approached the shore, this cloud appeared to rise
and fall as if acted upon by some invisible agency, and the
captain, after watching it carefully, perceived that it was
not an accumulation of vapours at all, but a dense mass of
birds packed as closely together as a swarm of herrings, and
uttering deafening and discordant cries, amidst which from
time to time the noise of the report of a gun could be
plainly distinguished.
The Dobryna signalized her arrival by firing her
cannon, and dropped anchor in the little port of the
Sheliff. Almost within a minute Ben Zoof was seen running,
gun in hand, towards the shore; he cleared the last
ridge of rocks at a single bound, and then suddenly halted.
For a few seconds he stood motionless, his eyes fixed, as if
obeying the instructions of a drill-sergeant, on a point some
fifteen yards distant, his whole attitude indicating submission
and respect; but the sight of the captain, who was
landing, was too much for his equanimity, and darting
forward, he seized his master's hand and covered it with
kisses. Instead, however, of uttering any expressions of
welcome or rejoicing at the captain's return, Ben Zoof
broke out into the most vehement ejaculations:
“Thieves, captain! beastly thieves! Bedouins! pirates!
devils!”
“Why, Ben Zoof, what's the matter?” said Servadac
soothingly.
“They are thieves! downright, desperate thieves! those
infernal birds! That's what's the matter. It is a good
thing you have come. Here have I for a whole month
been spending my powder and shot upon them, and the
more I kill them, the worse they get; and yet, if I were to
leave them alone, we should not have a grain of corn upon
the island.”
It was soon evident that the orderly had only too
much cause for alarm. The crops had ripened rapidly
during the excessive heat of January, when the orbit of
Gallia was being traversed at its perihelion, and were now
exposed to the depredations of many thousands of birds;
and although a goodly number of stacks attested the
industry of Ben Zoof during the time of the Dobryna's
voyage, it was only too apparent that the portion of the
harvest that remained ungathered was liable to the most
imminent risk of being utterly devoured. It was, perhaps,
only natural that this clustered mass of birds, as representing
the whole of the feathered tribe upon the surface of
Gallia, should resort to Gourbi Island, of which the
meadows seemed to be the only spot from which they
could get sustenance at all; but as this sustenance would
be obtained at the expense, and probably to the serious
detriment, of the human population, it was absolutely
necessary that every possible resistance should be made to
the devastation that was threatened.
Once satisfied that Servadac and his friends would
co-operate with him in the raid upon “the thieves,” Ben
Zoof became calm and content, and began to make various
inquiries.
“And what has become,” he said, “of all our old
comrades in Africa?”
“As far as I can tell you,” answered the captain, “they
are all in Africa still; only Africa isn't by any means where
we expected to find it.”
“And France? Montmartre?” continued Ben Zoof
eagerly.
Here was the cry of the poor fellow's heart.
As briefly as he could, Servadac endeavoured to
explain the true condition of things; he tried to communicate
the fact that Paris, France, Europe, nay, the whole
world was more than eighty millions of leagues away
from Gourbi Island; as gently and cautiously as he could
he expressed his fear that they might never see Europe,
France, Paris, Montmartre again.
“No, no, sir!” protested Ben Zoof emphatically; “that
is all nonsense. It is altogether out of the question to
suppose that we are not to see Montmartre again.”
And the orderly shook his head resolutely, with the ail
of a man determined, in spite of argument, to adhere to his
own opinion.
“Very good, my brave fellow,” replied Servadac;
“hope on, hope while you may. The message has come to
us over the sea, ' Never despair; ' but one thing, nevertheless,
is certain; we must forthwith commence arrangements
for making this island our permanent home.”
Captain Servadac now led the way to the gourbi,
which, by his servant's exertions, had been entirely rebuilt;
and here he did the honours of his modest establishment to
his two guests, the count and the lieutenant, and gave a
welcome, too, to little Nina, who had accompanied them on
shore, and between whom and Ben Zoof the most friendly
relations had already been established.
The adjacent building continued in good preservation,
and Captain Servadac's satisfaction was very great in
finding the two horses, Zephyr and Galette, comfortably
housed there and in good condition.
After the enjoyment of some refreshment, the party
proceeded to a general consultation as to what steps must
be taken for their future welfare. The most pressing
matter that came before them was the consideration of the
means to be adopted to enable the inhabitants of Gallia to
survive the terrible cold, which, in their ignorance of the
true eccentricity of their orbit, might, for aught they knew,
last for an almost indefinite period. Fuel was far from
abundant; of coal there was none; trees and shrubs were
few in number, and to cut them down in prospect of the
cold seemed a very questionable policy; but there was no
doubt some expedient must be devised to prevent disaster,
and that without delay.
The victualling of the little colony offered no immediate
difficulty. Water was abundant, and the cisterns
could hardly fail to be replenished by the numerous
streams that meandered along the plains; moreover, the
Gallian Sea would ere long be frozen over, and the melted
ice (water in its congealed state being divested of every
particle of salt) would afford a supply of drink that could
not be exhausted. The crops that were now ready for the
harvest, and the flocks and herds scattered over the island,
would form an ample reserve. There was little doubt that
throughout the winter the soil would remain unproductive,
and no fresh fodder for domestic animals could then be
obtained; it would therefore be necessary, if the exact
duration of Gallia's year should ever be calculated, to proportion
the number of animals to be reserved to the real
length of the winter.
The next thing requisite was to arrive at a true
estimate of the number of the population. Without
including the thirteen Englishmen at Gibraltar, about whom
he was not particularly disposed to give himself much
concern at present, Servadac put down the names of the
eight Russians, the two Frenchmen, and the little Italian
girl, eleven in all, as the entire list of the inhabitants of
Gourbi Island.
“Oh, pardon me,” interposed Ben Zoof, “you are
mistaking the state of the case altogether. You will be
surprised to learn that there are twenty-two people on the
island.”
“Twenty-two!” exclaimed the captain; “twenty-two
people on this island? What do you mean?”
“The opportunity has not occurred,” answered Ben
Zoof, “for me to tell you before, but I have had company
here.”
“Explain yourself, Ben Zoof,” said Servadac. “What
company have you had?”
“You could not suppose,” replied the orderly, “that
my own unassisted hands could have accomplished all the
harvest-work that you see has been done.”
“I confess,” said Lieutenant Procope, “we do not seem
to have noticed that.”
“Well, then,” said Ben Zoof, “if you will be good
enough to come with me for about a mile, I shall be able
to show you my companions. But we must take our
guns,” he added.
“Why take our guns?” asked Servadac. “I hope we
are not going to fight.”
“No, not with men,” said Ben Zoof; “but it does not
answer to throw a chance away for giving battle to those
thieves of birds.”
Leaving little Nina and her goat in the gourbi,
Servadac, Count Timascheff, and the lieutenant, greatly
mystified, took up their guns and followed the orderly.
All along their way they made unsparing slaughter of the
birds that hovered over and around them. Nearly every
species of the feathered tribe seemed to have its representative
in that living cloud. There were wild ducks in
thousands; snipe, larks, rooks, and swallows; a countless
variety of sea-birds—widgeons, gulls, and seamews; besides
a quantity of game—quails, partridges, and woodcocks.
The sportsmen did their best; every shot told; and the
depredators fell by dozens on either hand.
Instead of following the northern shore of the island,
Ben Zoof cut obliquely across the plain. Making their
progress with the unwonted rapidity which was attributable
to their specific lightness, Servadac and his companions
soon found themselves near a grove of sycamores and
eucalyptus massed in picturesque confusion at the base of
a little hill. Here they halted.
“Ah! the vagabonds! the rascals! the thieves!”
suddenly exclaimed Ben Zoof, stamping his foot with rage.
“How now? Are your friends the birds at their pranks
again?” asked the captain.
“No, I don't mean the birds: I mean those lazy
beggars that are shirking their work. Look here; look
there!” And as Ben Zoof spoke, he pointed to some
scythes, and sickles, and other implements of husbandry
that had been left upon the ground.
“What is it you mean?” asked Servadac, getting
somewhat impatient.
“Hush, hush! listen!” was all Ben Zoof's reply; and
he raised his finger as if in warning.
Listening attentively, Servadac and his associates
could distinctly recognize a human voice, accompanied by
the notes of a guitar and by the measured click of castanets.
“Spaniards!” said Servadac.
“No mistake about that, sir,” replied Ben Zoof; “a
Spaniard would rattle his castanets at the cannon's
mouth.”
“But what is the meaning of it all?” asked the
captain, more puzzled than before.
“Hark!” said Ben Zoof; “it is the old man's turn
now.”
And then a voice, at once gruff and harsh, was heard
vociferating:
“My money! my money! when will you pay me my
money? Pay me what you owe me, you miserable majos!”
Meanwhile the song continued:
“Tu sandunga y cigarro
Y una cana de Jerez,
Mi jamelgo y un trabuco.
Que mas gloria puede haver?
Para Alcarrazas, chichana.
Para trigo, Trebujena,
Y para ninas bonitas,
San Lucar de Barrameda.”
Servadac's knowledge of Gascon enabled him partially
to comprehend the rollicking tenor of the Spanish patriotic
air, but his attention was again arrested by the voice of
the old man growling savagely:
“Pay me you shall; yes, by the God of Abraham, you
shall pay me.”
“A Jew!” exclaimed Servadac.
“Ay, sir, and worst of all, a German Jew,” said Ben
Zoof.
The party was now just on the point of entering the
thicket, when a singular spectacle made them pause. A
group of Spaniards had just begun dancing their national
fandango, and the extraordinary lightness which had
become the physical property of every object in the new
planet made the dancers bound to a height of thirty feet
or more into the air, considerably above the tops of the
trees. What followed was irresistibly comic. Four sturdy
majos had dragged along with them an old man incapable
of resistance, and compelled him, nolens volens, to join in
the dance; and as they all kept appearing and disappearing
above the bank of foliage, their grotesque attitudes, combined
with the pitiable countenance of their helpless
victim, could not do otherwise than recall most forcibly the
story of Sancho Panza tossed in a blanket by the merry
drapers of Segovia.
Servadac, the count, Procope, and Ben Zoof now proceeded
to make their way through the thicket until they
came to a little glade, where they came upon two men
stretched idly on the grass, one of them playing the guitar,
and the other a pair of castanets; both were exploding
with laughter, as they urged the performers to greater and
yet greater exertions in the dance. At the sight of
strangers they paused in their music, and simultaneously
the dancers, with their victim, alighted gently on the
sward. Breathless and half exhausted as was the Jew, he
rushed with an effort towards Servadac, and exclaimed in
French, marked by a strong Teutonic accent:
“Oh, my lord governour, help me, help! These rascals
defraud me of my rights; they rob me; but, in the name
of the God of Israel, I ask you to see justice done!”
The captain glanced inquiringly towards Ben Zoof,
and the orderly, by a significant nod, made his master
understand that he was to play the part that was implied
by the title. He took the cue, and promptly ordered the
Jew to hold his tongue at once. The man bowed his head
in servile submission, and folded his hands upon his breast.
Servadac surveyed him leisurely.
He was a man of about fifty, but from his appearance
might well have been taken for at least ten years older.
Small and skinny, with eyes bright and cunning, a hooked
nose, a short yellow beard, unkempt hair, huge feet, and
long bony hands, he presented all the typical characteristics
of the German Jew, the heartless, wily usurer, the
hardened miser and skinflint. As iron is attracted by the
magnet, so was this Shylock attracted by the sight of gold,
nor would he have hesitated to draw the life-blood of his
creditors, if by such means he could secure his claims.
Although by descent and birth a Jew, he was ready to
profess himself a Mahometan or a heathen whenever
circumstances arose which he thought might be turned to
his own advantage.
His name was Isaac Hakkabut, and he was a native of
the Prussian (now German) city of Cologne. Nearly the
whole of his time, however, he informed Captain Servadac,
had been spent upon the sea, his real business being that
of a merchant trading at all the ports of the Mediterranean.
A tartan, a small vessel of two hundred tons burden, conveyed
his entire stock of merchandise, and, to say the truth,
was a sort of floating emporium, conveying nearly every
possible article of commerce, from a lucifer match to the
radiant fabrics of Frankfort and Epinal. Without wife or
children, and having no settled home, Isaac Hakkabut
lived almost entirely on board the Hansa, as he had
named his tartan; and engaging a mate, with a crew of
three men, as being adequate to work so light a craft, he
cruised along the coasts of Algeria, Tunis, Egypt, Turkey,
and Greece, visiting, moreover, most of the harbours of the
Levant. Careful to be always well supplied with the
products in most general demand—coffee, sugar, rice,
tobacco, cotton-stuffs, and gunpowder—and being at all
times ready to barter, and prepared to deal in second-hand
wares, he had contrived to amass considerable wealth.
On the eventful night of the 1st of January the Hansa
had been at Ceuta, the point on the coast of Morocco
exactly opposite Gibraltar. The mate and three sailors
had all gone on shore, and, in common with many of their
fellow-creatures, had entirely disappeared; but the most
projecting rock of Ceuta had been undisturbed by the
general catastrophe, and half a score of Spaniards, who
had happened to be upon it, had escaped with their lives.
They were all Andalusian majos, agricultural labourers, and
naturally as careless and apathetic as men of their class
usually are, but they could not help being very considerably
embarrassed when they discovered that they were left in
solitude upon a detached and isolated rock. They took
what mutual counsel they could, but became only more
and more perplexed. One of them was named Negrete,
and he, as having travelled somewhat more than the rest,
was tacitly recognized as a sort of leader; but although he
was by far the most enlightened of them all, he was quite
incapable of forming the least conception of the nature of
what had occurred. The one thing upon which they could
not fail to be conscious was that they had no prospect of
obtaining provisions, and consequently their first business
was to devise a scheme for getting away from their present
abode. The Hansa was lying off shore. The Spaniards
would not have had the slightest hesitation in summarily
taking possession of her, but their utter ignorance of seamanship
made them reluctantly come to the conclusion that
the more prudent policy was to make terms with the owner.
And now came a singular part of the story. Negrete
and his companions had meanwhile received a visit from
two English officers from Gibraltar. What passed between
them the Jew did not know; he only knew that, immediately
after the conclusion of the interview, Negrete
came to him and ordered him to set sail at once for the
nearest point of Morocco. The Jew, afraid to disobey, but
with his eye ever upon the main chance, stipulated that at
the end of their voyage the Spaniards should pay for their
passage—terms to which, as they would to any other, they
did not demur, knowing that they had not the slightest
intention of giving him a single real.
The Hansa had weighed anchor on the 3rd of February.
The wind blew from the west, and consequently
the working of the tartan was easy enough. The unpractised
sailors had only to hoist their sails and, though
they were quite unconscious of the fact, the breeze carried
them to the only spot upon the little world they occupied
which could afford them a refuge.
Thus it fell out that one morning Ben Zoof, from his
look-out on Gourbi Island, saw a ship, not the Dobryna,
appear upon the horizon, and make quietly down towards
what had formerly been the right bank of the Sheliff.
Such was Ben Zoof's version of what had occurred, as
he had gathered it from the new-comers. He wound up
his recital by remarking that the cargo of the Hansa
would be of immense service to them; he expected, indeed,
that Isaac Hakkabut would be difficult to manage, but
considered there could be no harm in appropriating the
goods for the common welfare, since there could be no
opportunity now for selling them.
Ben Zoof added:
“And as to the difficulties between the Jew and his
passengers, I told him that the governour-general was
absent on a tour of inspection, and that as soon as he
came back he would see everything equitably settled.”
Smiling at his orderly's tactics, Servadac turned to
Hakkabut, and told him that he would take care that his
claims should be duly investigated and all proper demands
should be paid.
The man appeared satisfied, and, for the time at least,
desisted from his complaints and importunities.
When the Jew had retired, Count Timascheff asked:
“But how in the world can you ever make those fellows
pay anything?”
“They have lots of money,” said Ben Zoof.
“Not likely,” replied the count; “when did you ever
know Spaniards like them to have lots of money?”
“But I have seen it myself,” said Ben Zoof; “and it
is English money.”
“English money!” echoed Servadac; and his mind
again reverted (as it had done upon the first mention of a
visit from English officers to the Spaniards) to the excursion
made by the colonel and the major from Gibraltar,
and about which they had been so reticent.
“We must inquire more about this,” he said.
Then, addressing Count Timascheff, he added:
“Altogether, I think, count, the countries of Europe are
fairly represented by the population of Gallia.”
“True, captain,” answered the count; “we have only
a fragment of a world, but it contains natives of France,
Russia, Italy, Spain, and England. Even Germany may
be said to have a representative in the person of this
miserable Jew.”
“And even in him,” said Servadac, “perhaps we shall
not find so indifferent a representative as we at present
imagine.”
