Chapter 5: 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 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 aspect of the entire scene appeared 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 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, he pushed aside the broken thatch, so that his head appeared above the debris. “The gourbi leveled to the ground!” he exclaimed, “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.

“Here, sir!” and with military promptitude a second head protruded from the rubbish.

“Have you any notion what has happened, Ben Zoof?”

“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.

“It must be eight o’clock, at least,” said Ben Zoof, 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 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.

Captain Servadac 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 honor 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 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 vapor, on account of the insufficient condensation, failed to fall.

The sea appeared quite deserted, a most unusual circumstance along this coast, and not a sail nor a trail of smoke broke the gray 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! What are you about? You will 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 said solemnly, “Ben Zoof, I must be dreaming. Pinch me hard; I must be either asleep or mad.”