Off on a Comet by Jules Verne Read Free Book Online

was
duly set upon the stove, and Ben Zoof was prepared to wait awhile for
the water to boil. Taking up the eggs, he was surprised to notice that
they hardly weighed more than they would if they had been mere shells;
but he was still more surprised when he saw that before the water had
been two minutes over the fire it was at full boil.
    "By jingo!" he exclaimed, "a precious hot fire!"
    Servadac reflected. "It cannot be that the fire is hotter," he said,
"the peculiarity must be in the water." And taking down a centigrade
thermometer, which hung upon the wall, he plunged it into the skillet.
Instead of 100 degrees, the instrument registered only 66 degrees.
    "Take my advice, Ben Zoof," he said; "leave your eggs in the saucepan a
good quarter of an hour."
    "Boil them hard! That will never do," objected the orderly.
    "You will not find them hard, my good fellow. Trust me, we shall be able
to dip our sippets into the yolks easily enough."
    The captain was quite right in his conjecture, that this new phenomenon
was caused by a diminution in the pressure of the atmosphere. Water
boiling at a temperature of 66 degrees was itself an evidence that the
column of air above the earth's surface had become reduced by one-third
of its altitude. The identical phenomenon would have occurred at
the summit of a mountain 35,000 feet high; and had Servadac been in
possession of a barometer, he would have immediately discovered the fact
that only now for the first time, as the result of experiment, revealed
itself to him—a fact, moreover, which accounted for the compression of
the blood-vessels which both he and Ben Zoof had experienced, as well
as for the attenuation of their voices and their accelerated breathing.
"And yet," he argued with himself, "if our encampment has been projected
to so great an elevation, how is it that the sea remains at its proper
level?"
    Once again Hector Servadac, though capable of tracing consequences, felt
himself totally at a loss to comprehend their cause; hence his agitation
and bewilderment!
    After their prolonged immersion in the boiling water, the eggs were
found to be only just sufficiently cooked; the couscous was very much in
the same condition; and Ben Zoof came to the conclusion that in future
he must be careful to commence his culinary operations an hour earlier.
He was rejoiced at last to help his master, who, in spite of his
perplexed preoccupation, seemed to have a very fair appetite for
breakfast.
    "Well, captain?" said Ben Zoof presently, such being his ordinary way of
opening conversation.
    "Well, Ben Zoof?" was the captain's invariable response to his servant's
formula.
    "What are we to do now, sir?"
    "We can only for the present wait patiently where we are. We are
encamped upon an island, and therefore we can only be rescued by sea."
    "But do you suppose that any of our friends are still alive?" asked Ben
Zoof.
    "Oh, I think we must indulge the hope that this catastrophe has not
extended far. We must trust that it has limited its mischief to some
small portion of the Algerian coast, and that our friends are all alive
and well. No doubt the governor general will be anxious to investigate
the full extent of the damage, and will send a vessel from Algiers to
explore. It is not likely that we shall be forgotten. What, then, you
have to do, Ben Zoof, is to keep a sharp lookout, and to be ready, in
case a vessel should appear, to make signals at once."
    "But if no vessel should appear!" sighed the orderly.
    "Then we must build a boat, and go in search of those who do not come in
search of us."
    "Very good. But what sort of a sailor are you?"
    "Everyone can be a sailor when he must," said Servadac calmly.
    Ben Zoof said no more. For several succeeding days he scanned the
horizon unintermittently with his telescope. His watching was in vain.
No ship appeared upon the desert sea. "By the name of a Kabyle!" he
broke out impatiently, "his Excellency is grossly negligent!"
    Although the days and nights had