Verne, Jules - Off on a Comet

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WORKS

JULES VERNE

Vol. IX

Off on a Comet Or

Hector Servadac

EDITED BY

CHARLES F. HORNE, Ph.D.

Professor of English, College of the City of New York;.INTRODUCTION TO VOLUME NINE OF THE

WORKS OF JULES VERNE

Among so many effective and artistic tales, it is difficult to give a

preference to one over all the rest. Yet, certainly, even amid Verne's

remarkable works, his "Off on a Comet" must be given high rank. Perhaps

this story will be remembered when even "Round the World in Eighty Days"

and "Michael Strogoff" have been obliterated by centuries of time. At least,

of the many books since written upon the same theme as Verne's, no one

has yet succeeded in equaling or even approaching it.

In one way "Off on a Comet" shows a marked contrast to Verne' earlier

books. Not only does it invade a region more remote than even the "Trip to

the Moon," but the author here abandons his usual scrupulously scientific

attitude. In order that he may escort us through the depths of

immeasurable space, show us what astronomy really knows of conditions

there and upon the other planets, Verne asks us to accept a situation

frankly impossible. The earth and a comet are brought twice into collision

without mankind in general, or even our astronomers, becoming conscious

of the fact. Moreover several people from widely scattered places are carried

off by the comet and returned uninjured. Yet further, the comet snatches

for the convenience of its travelers, both air and water. Little, useful tracts

of earth are picked up and, as it were, turned over and clapped down right

side up again upon the comet's surface. Even ships pass uninjured through

this remarkable somersault. These events all belong frankly to the realm of

fairyland.

If the situation were reproduced in actuality, if ever a comet should

come into collision with the earth, we can conceive two scientifically

possible results. If the comet were of such attenuation, such almost

infinitesimal mass as some of these celestial wanderers seem to be, we can

imagine our earth self-protective and possibly unharmed. If, on the other

hand, the comet had even a hundredth part of the size and solidity and

weight which Verne confers upon his monster so as to give his travelers a

home - in that case the collision would be unspeakably disastrous -especially

to the unlucky individuals who occupied the exact point of

contact.

But once granted the initial and the closing extravagance, the departure

and return of his characters, the alpha and omega of his tale, how closely

the author clings to facts between! How closely he follows, and imparts to

his readers, the scientific probabilities of the universe beyond our earth,

the actual knowledge so hard won by our astronomers! Other authors who,

since Verne, have told of trips through the planetary and stellar universe

have given free rein to fancy, to dreams of what might be found. Verne has

endeavored to impart only what is known to exist.

In the same year with "Off on a Comet," 1877, was published also the

tale variously named and translated as "The Black Indies," "The

Underground City," and "The Child of the Cavern." This story, like "Round

the World in Eighty Days" was first issued in "feuilleton" by the noted Paris

newspaper "Le Temps." Its success did not equal that of its predecessor in

this style. Some critics indeed have pointed to this work as marking the.beginning of a decline in the

author's power of awaking interest. Many of

his best works were, however, still to follow. And, as regards imagination

and the elements of mystery and awe, surely in the "Underground City"

with its cavern world, its secret, undiscoverable, unrelenting foe, the

"Harfang," bird of evil omen, and the "fire maidens" of the ruined castle,

surely with all these "imagination" is anything but lacking.

From the realistic side, the work is painstaking and exact as all the

author's works. The sketches of mines and miners, their courage and their

dangers, their lives and their hopes, are carefully studied. So also is the

emotional aspect of the deeps under ground, the blackness, the endless

wandering passages, the silence, and the awe.'.CHAPTER I A CHALLENGE

Nothing, sir, can induce me to surrender my claim."

"I am sorry, count, but in such a matter your views cannot modify

mine."

"But allow me to point out that my seniority unquestionably gives me a

prior right."

"Mere seniority, I assert, in an affair of this kind, cannot possibly entitle

you to any prior claim whatever."

"Then, captain, no alternative is left but for me to compel you to yield at

the sword's point."

"As you please, count; but neither sword nor pistol can force me to

forego my pretensions. Here is my card."

"And mine."

This rapid altercation was thus brought to an end by the formal

interchange of the names of the disputants. On one of the cards was

inscribed:

Captain Hector Servadac,

Staff Officer, Mostaganem.

On the other was the title:

Count Wassili Timascheff,

On board the Schooner Dobryna.

It did not take long to arrange that seconds should be appointed, who

would meet in Mostaganem at two o'clock that day; and the captain and the

count were on the point of parting from each other, with a salute of

punctilious courtesy, when Timascheff, as if struck by a sudden thought,

said abruptly:

"Perhaps it would be better, captain, not to allow the real cause of this

to transpire?"

"Far better," replied Servadac; "it is undesirable in every way for any

names to be mentioned."

"In that case, however," continued the count, "it will be necessary to

assign an ostensible pretext of some kind. Shall we allege a musical

dispute? a contention in which I feel bound to defend Wagner, while you

are the zealous champion of Rossini?"

"I am quite content," answered Servadac, with a smile; and with another

low bow they parted.

The scene, as here depicted, took place upon the extremity of a little

cape on the Algerian coast, between Mostaganem and Tenes, about two

miles from the mouth of the Shelif. The headland rose more than sixty feet

above the sea-level, and the azure waters of the Mediterranean, as they

softly kissed the strand, were tinged with the reddish hue of the ferriferous

rocks that formed its base. It was the 31st of December. The noontide sun,

which usually illuminated the various projections of the coast with a

dazzling brightness, was hidden by a dense mass of cloud, and the fog,

which for some unaccountable cause, had hung for the last two months

over nearly every region in the world, causing serious interruption to traffic.between continent and

continent, spread its dreary veil across land and

sea.

After taking leave of the staff-officer, Count Wassili Timascheff wended

his way down to a small creek, and took his seat in the stern of a light four-oar

that had been awaiting his return; this was immediately pushed off

from shore, and was soon alongside a pleasure-yacht, that was lying to, not

many cable lengths away.

At a sign from Servadac, an orderly, who had been standing at a

respectful distance, led forward a magnificent Arabian horse; the captain

vaulted into the saddle, and followed by his attendant, well mounted as

himself, started off towards Mostaganem. It was half-past twelve when the

two riders crossed the bridge that had been recently erected over the Shelif,

and a quarter of an hour later their steeds, flecked with foam, dashed

through the Mascara Gate, which was one of five entrances opened in the

embattled wall that encircled the town.

At that date, Mostaganem contained about fifteen thousand inhabitants,

three thousand of whom were French. Besides being one of the principal

district towns of the province of Oran, it was also a military station.

Mostaganem rejoiced in a well-sheltered harbor, which enabled her to

utilize all the rich products of the Mina and the Lower Shelif. It was the

existence of so good a harbor amidst the exposed cliffs of this coast that

had induced the owner of the Dobryna to winter in these parts, and for two

months the Russian standard had been seen floating from her yard, whilst

on her mast-head was hoisted the pennant of the French Yacht Club, with

the distinctive letters M.C.W.T., the initials of Count Timascheff.

Having entered the town, Captain Servadac made his way towards

Matmore, the military quarter, and was not long in finding two friends on

whom he might rely - a major of the 2nd Fusileers, and a captain of the

8th Artillery. The two officers listened gravely enough to Servadac's request

that they would act as his seconds in an affair of honor, but could not

resist a smile on hearing that the dispute between him and the count had

originated in a musical discussion. Surely, they suggested, the matter

might be easily arranged; a few slight concessions on either side, and all

might be amicably adjusted. But no representations on their part were of

any avail. Hector Servadac was inflexible.

"No concession is possible," he replied, resolutely. "Rossini has been

deeply injured, and I cannot suffer the injury to be unavenged. Wagner is a

fool. I shall keep my word. I am quite firm."

"Be it so, then," replied one of the officers; "and after all, you know, a

sword-cut need not be a very serious affair."

"Certainly not," rejoined Servadac; "and especially in my case, when I

have not the slightest intention of being wounded at all."

Incredulous as they naturally were as to the assigned cause of the

quarrel, Servadac's friends had no alternative but to accept his explanation,

and without farther parley they started for the staff office, where, at two

o'clock precisely, they were to meet the seconds of Count Timascheff. Two

hours later they had returned. All the preliminaries had been arranged; the

count, who like many Russians abroad was an aide-de-camp of the Czar,.had of course proposed

swords as the most appropriate weapons, and the

duel was to take place on the following morning, the first of January, at

nine o'clock, upon the cliff at a spot about a mile and a half from the mouth

of the Shelif. With the assurance that they would not fail to keep their

appointment with military punctuality, the two officers cordially wrung

their friend's hand and retired to the Zulma Cafe for a game at piquet.

Captain Servadac at once retraced his steps and left the town.

For the last fortnight Servadac had not been occupying his proper

lodgings in the military quarters; having been appointed to make a local

levy, he had been living in a gourbi, or native hut, on the Mostaganem

coast, between four and five miles from the Shelif. His orderly was his sole

companion, and by any other man than the captain the enforced exile

would have been esteemed little short of a severe penance.

On his way to the gourbi, his mental occupation was a very laborious

effort to put together what he was pleased to call a rondo, upon a model of

versification all but obsolete. This rondo, it is unnecessary to conceal, was

to be an ode addressed to a young widow by whom he had been captivated,

and whom he was anxious to marry, and the tenor of his muse was

intended to prove that when once a man has found an object in all respects

worthy of his affections, he should love her "in all simplicity." Whether the

aphorism were universally true was not very material to the gallant captain,

whose sole ambition at present was to construct a roundelay of which this

should be the prevailing sentiment. He indulged the fancy that he might

succeed in producing a composition which would have a fine effect here in

Algeria, where poetry in that form was all but unknown.

"I know well enough," he said repeatedly to himself, "what I want to say.

I want to tell her that I love her sincerely, and wish to marry her; but,

confound it! the words won't rhyme. Plague on it! Does nothing rhyme with

'simplicity'? Ah! I have it now:

'Lovers should, whoe'er they be,

Love in all simplicity.'

But what next? how am I to go on? I say, Ben Zoof," he called aloud to

his orderly, who was trotting silently close in his rear, "did you ever

compose any poetry?"

"No, captain," answered the man promptly: "I have never made any

verses, but I have seen them made fast enough at a booth during the fete of

Montmartre."

"Can you remember them?"

"Remember them! to be sure I can. This is the way they began:

'Come in! come in! you'll not repent

The entrance money you have spent;

The wondrous mirror in this place

Reveals your future sweetheart's face.'"

"Bosh!" cried Servadac in disgust; "your verses are detestable trash."

"As good as any others, captain, squeaked through a reed pipe."

"Hold your tongue, man," said Servadac peremptorily; "I have made

another couplet.

'Lovers should, whoe'er they be,.Love in all simplicity;

Lover, loving honestly,

Offer I myself to thee.'"

Beyond this, however, the captain's poetical genius was impotent to

carry him; his farther efforts were unavailing, and when at six o'clock he

reached the gourbi, the four lines still remained the limit of his

composition..CHAPTER II CAPTAIN SERVADAC AND HIS ORDERLY

At the time of which I write, there might be seen in the registers of the

Minister of War the following entry:

SERVADAC ('Hector'), born at St. Trelody in the district of Lesparre,

department of the Gironde, July 19th, 18 - .

'Property:' 1200 francs in rentes.

'Length of service:' Fourteen years, three months, and five days.

'Service:' Two years at school at St. Cyr; two years at L'Ecole

d'Application; two years in the 8th Regiment of the Line; two years in the

3rd Light Cavalry; seven years in Algeria.

'Campaigns:' Soudan and Japan.

'Rank:' Captain on the staff at Mostaganem.

'Decorations:' Chevalier of the Legion of Honor, March 13th, 18 - .

Hector Servadac was thirty years of age, an orphan without lineage and

almost without means. Thirsting for glory rather than for gold, slightly

scatter-brained, but warm-hearted, generous, and brave, he was eminently

formed to be the protege of the god of battles.

For the first year and a half of his existence he had been the foster-child

of the sturdy wife of a vine-dresser of Medoc - a lineal descendant of the

heroes of ancient prowess; in a word, he was one of those individuals whom

nature seems to have predestined for remarkable things, and around whose

cradle have hovered the fairy godmothers of adventure and good luck.

In appearance Hector Servadac was quite the type of an officer; he was

rather more than five feet six inches high, slim and graceful, with dark

curling hair and mustaches, well-formed hands and feet, and a clear blue

eye. He seemed born to please without being conscious of the power he

possessed. It must be owned, and no one was more ready to confess it than

himself, that his literary attainments were by no means of a high order. "We

don't spin tops" is a favorite saying amongst artillery officers, indicating

that they do not shirk their duty by frivolous pursuits; but it must be

confessed that Servadac, being naturally idle, was very much given to

"spinning tops." His good abilities, however, and his ready intelligence had

carried him successfully through the curriculum of his early career. He was

a good draughtsman, an excellent rider - having thoroughly mastered the

successor to the famous "Uncle Tom" at the riding-school of St. Cyr - and in

the records of his military service his name had several times been included

in the order of the day.

The following episode may suffice, in a certain degree, to illustrate his

character. Once, in action, he was leading a detachment of infantry

through an intrenchment. They came to a place where the side-work of the

trench had been so riddled by shell that a portion of it had actually fallen

in, leaving an aperture quite unsheltered from the grape-shot that was

pouring in thick and fast. The men hesitated. In an instant Servadac

mounted the side-work, laid himself down in the gap, and thus filling up

the breach by his own body, shouted, "March on!"

And through a storm of shot, not one of which touched the prostrate

officer, the troop passed in safety..Since leaving the military college, Servadac, with the exception of

his

two campaigns in the Soudan and Japan, had been always stationed in

Algeria. He had now a staff appointment at Mostaganem, and had lately

been entrusted with some topographical work on the coast between Tenes

and the Shelif. It was a matter of little consequence to him that the gourbi,

in which of necessity he was quartered, was uncomfortable and ill-contrived;

he loved the open air, and the independence of his life suited him

well. Sometimes he would wander on foot upon the sandy shore, and

sometimes he would enjoy a ride along the summit of the cliff; altogether

being in no hurry at all to bring his task to an end. His occupation,

moreover, was not so engrossing but that he could find leisure for taking a

short railway journey once or twice a week; so that he was ever and again

putting in an appearance at the general's receptions at Oran, and at the

fetes given by the governor at Algiers.

It was on one of these occasions that he had first met Madame de L -- ,

the lady to whom he was desirous of dedicating the rondo, the first four

lines of which had just seen the light. She was a colonel's widow, young

and handsome, very reserved, not to say haughty in her manner, and either

indifferent or impervious to the admiration which she inspired. Captain

Servadac had not yet ventured to declare his attachment; of rivals he was

well aware he had not a few, and amongst these not the least formidable

was the Russian Count Timascheff. And although the young widow was all

unconscious of the share she had in the matter, it was she, and she alone,

who was the cause of the challenge just given and accepted by her two

ardent admirers.

During his residence in the gourbi, Hector Servadac's sole companion

was his orderly, Ben Zoof. Ben Zoof was devoted, body and soul, to his

superior officer. His own personal ambition was so entirely absorbed in his

master's welfare, that it is certain no offer of promotion - even had it been

that of aide-de-camp to the Governor-General of Algiers - would have

induced him to quit that master's service. His name might seem to imply

that he was a native of Algeria; but such was by no means the case. His

true name was Laurent; he was a native of Montmartre in Paris, and how or

why he had obtained his patronymic was one of those anomalies which the

most sagacious of etymologists would find it hard to explain.

Born on the hill of Montmartre, between the Solferino tower and the mill

of La Galette, Ben Zoof had ever possessed the most unreserved admiration

for his birthplace; and to his eyes the heights and district of Montmartre

represented an epitome of all the wonders of the world. In all his travels,

and these had been not a few, he had never beheld scenery which could

compete with that of his native home. No cathedral - not even Burgos itself

- could vie with the church at Montmartre. Its race-course could well hold

its own against that at Pentelique; its reservoir would throw the

Mediterranean into the shade; its forests had flourished long before the

invasion of the Celts; and its very mill produced no ordinary flour, but

provided material for cakes of world-wide renown. To crown all, Montmartre

boasted a mountain - a veritable mountain; envious tongues indeed might

pronounce it little more than a hill; but Ben Zoof would have allowed.himself to be hewn in pieces

rather than admit that it was anything less

than fifteen thousand feet in height.

Ben Zoof's most ambitious desire was to induce the captain to go with

him and end his days in his much-loved home, and so incessantly were

Servadac's ears besieged with descriptions of the unparalleled beauties and

advantages of this eighteenth arrondissement of Paris, that he could

scarcely hear the name of Montmartre without a conscious thrill of

aversion. Ben Zoof, however, did not despair of ultimately converting the

captain, and meanwhile had resolved never to leave him. When a private in

the 8th Cavalry, he had been on the point of quitting the army at twenty-eight

years of age, but unexpectedly he had been appointed orderly to

Captain Servadac. Side by side they fought in two campaigns. Servadac had

saved Ben Zoof's life in Japan; Ben Zoof had rendered his master a like

service in the Soudan. The bond of union thus effected could never be

severed; and although Ben Zoof's achievements had fairly earned him the

right of retirement, he firmly declined all honors or any pension that might

part him from his superior officer. Two stout arms, an iron constitution, a

powerful frame, and an indomitable courage were all loyally devoted to his

master's service, and fairly entitled him to his 'soi-disant' designation of

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WORKSofJULESVERNEVol.IXOffonaCometOrHectorServadacEDITEDBYCHARLESF.HORNE,Ph.D.ProfessorofEnglish,CollegeoftheCityofNewYork;.INTRODUCTIONTOVOLUMENINEOFTHEWORKSOFJULESVERNEAmongsomanyeffectiveandartistictales,itisdifficulttogiveapreferencetooneoveralltherest.Yet,certainly,evenamidVerne'sremarkablework...

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