CHAPTER XVI
THE RESIDUUM OF A CONTINENT
Almost unconsciously, the voyagers in the _Dobryna_ fell into the habit
of using Gallia as the name of the new world in which they became aware they
must be making an extraordinary excursion through the realms of space.
Nothing, however, was allowed to divert them from their ostensible object
of making a survey of the coast of the Mediterranean, and accordingly they
persevered in following that singular boundary which had revealed itself
to their extreme astonishment.
Having rounded the great promontory that had barred her farther
progress to the north, the schooner skirted its upper edge.
A few more leagues and they ought to be abreast of the shores
of France. Yes, of France.
But who shall describe the feelings of Hector Servadac when,
instead of the charming outline of his native land,
he beheld nothing but a solid boundary of savage rock?
Who shall paint the look of consternation with which he gazed upon
the stony rampart--rising perpendicularly for a thousand feet--
that had replaced the shores of the smiling south?
Who shall reveal the burning anxiety with which he throbbed
to see beyond that cruel wall?
But there seemed no hope. Onwards and onwards the yacht made
her way, and still no sign of France. It might have been supposed
that Servadac's previous experiences would have prepared him
for the discovery that the catastrophe which had overwhelmed
other sites had brought destruction to his own country as well.
But he had failed to realize how it might extend to France;
and when now he was obliged with his own eyes to witness
the waves of ocean rolling over what once had been the lovely
shores of Provence, he was well-nigh frantic with desperation.
"Am I to believe that Gourbi Island, that little shred of Algeria,
constitutes all that is left of our glorious France? No, no;
it cannot be. Not yet have we reached the pole of our new world.
There is--there must be--something more behind that frowning rock.
Oh, that for a moment we could scale its towering height and look beyond!
By Heaven, I adjure you, let us disembark, and mount the summit and explore!
France lies beyond."
Disembarkation, however, was an utter impossibility. There was no
semblance of a creek in which the _Dobryna_ could find an anchorage.
There was no outlying ridge on which a footing could be gained.
The precipice was perpendicular as a wall, its topmost height crowned
with the same conglomerate of crystallized lamellae that had all along
been so pronounced a feature.
With her steam at high pressure, the yacht made rapid progress towards
the east. The weather remained perfectly fine, the temperature
became gradually cooler, so that there was little prospect of vapors
accumulating in the atmosphere; and nothing more than a few cirri,
almost transparent, veiled here and there the clear azure of the sky.
Throughout the day the pale rays of the sun, apparently lessened
in its magnitude, cast only faint and somewhat uncertain shadows;
but at night the stars shone with surpassing brilliancy. Of the planets,
some, it was observed, seemed to be fading away in remote distance.
This was the case with Mars, Venus, and that unknown orb which was moving
in the orbit of the minor planets; but Jupiter, on the other hand,
had assumed splendid proportions; Saturn was superb in its luster,
and Uranus, which hitherto had been imperceptible without a telescope
was pointed out by Lieutenant Procope, plainly visible to the naked eye.
The inference was irresistible that Gallia was receding from the sun,
and traveling far away across the planetary regions.
On the 24th of February, after following the sinuous course of what before
the date of the convulsion had been the coast line of the department of Var,
and after a fruitless search for Hyeres, the peninsula of St. Tropez,
the Lerius Islands, and the gulfs of Cannes and Jouar, the _Dobryna_ arrived
upon the site of the Cape of Antibes.
Here, quite unexpectedly, the explorers made the discovery that the massive
wall of cliff had been rent from the top to the bottom by a narrow rift,
like the dry bed of a mountain torrent, and at the base of the opening,
level with the sea, was a little strand upon which there was just space
enough for their boat to be hauled up.
"Joy! joy!" shouted Servadac, half beside himself with ecstasy;
"we can land at last!"
Count Timascheff and the lieutenant were scarcely less impatient than
the captain, and little needed his urgent and repeated solicitations:
"Come on! Quick! Come on! no time to lose!"
It was half-past seven in the morning, when they set their foot upon
this untried land. The bit of strand was only a few square yards
in area, quite a narrow strip. Upon it might have been recognized
some fragments of that agglutination of yellow limestone which is
characteristic of the coast of Provence. But the whole party was far
too eager to wait and examine these remnants of the ancient shore;
they hurried on to scale the heights.
The narrow ravine was not only perfectly dry, but manifestly had never been
the bed of any mountain torrent. The rocks that rested at the bottom--
just as those which formed its sides--were of the same lamellous formation
as the entire coast, and had not hitherto been subject to the disaggregation
which the lapse of time never fails to work. A skilled geologist would
probably have been able to assign them their proper scientific classification,
but neither Servadac, Timascheff, nor the lieutenant could pretend to any
acquaintance with their specific character.
Although, however, the bottom of the chasm had never as yet been the channel
of a stream, indications were not wanting that at some future time it would
be the natural outlet of accumulated waters; for already, in many places,
thin layers of snow were glittering upon the surface of the fractured rocks,
and the higher the elevation that was gained, the more these layers were found
to increase in area and in depth.
"Here is a trace of fresh water, the first that Gallia has exhibited,"
said the count to his companions, as they toiled up the precipitous path.
"And probably," replied the lieutenant, "as we ascend we shall find not
only snow but ice. We must suppose this Gallia of ours to be a sphere,
and if it is so, we must now be very close to her Arctic regions;
it is true that her axis is not so much inclined as to prolong day
and night as at the poles of the earth, but the rays of the sun must
reach us here only very obliquely, and the cold, in all likelihood,
will be intense."
"So cold, do you think," asked Servadac, "that animal life must be extinct?"
"I do not say that, captain," answered the lieutenant;
"for, however far our little world may be removed from the sun,
I do not see why its temperature should fall below what prevails in
those outlying regions beyond our system where sky and air are not."
"And what temperature may that be?" inquired the captain
with a shudder.
"Fourier estimates that even in those vast unfathomable tracts,
the temperature never descends lower than 60 degrees," said Procope.
"Sixty! Sixty degrees below zero!" cried the count.
"Why, there's not a Russian could endure it!"
"I beg your pardon, count. It is placed on record that the English _have_
survived it, or something quite approximate, upon their Arctic expeditions.
When Captain Parry was on Melville Island, he knew the thermometer to fall
to 56 degrees," said Procope.
As the explorers advanced, they seemed glad to pause from time to time,
that they might recover their breath; for the air, becoming more and
more rarefied, made respiration somewhat difficult and the ascent fatiguing.
Before they had reached an altitude of 600 feet they noticed a sensible
diminution of the temperature; but neither cold nor fatigue deterred them,
and they were resolved to persevere. Fortunately, the deep striae or furrows
in the surface of the rocks that made the bottom of the ravine in some degree
facilitated their progress, but it was not until they had been toiling up
for two hours more that they succeeded in reaching the summit of the cliff.
Eagerly and anxiously did they look around. To the south there
was nothing but the sea they had traversed; to the north,
nothing but one drear, inhospitable stretch.
Servadac could not suppress a cry of dismay. Where was his
beloved France? Had he gained this arduous height only to behold
the rocks carpeted with ice and snow, and reaching interminably
to the far-off horizon? His heart sank within him.
The whole region appeared to consist of nothing but the same strange,
uniform mineral conglomerate, crystallized into regular hexagonal prisms.
But whatever was its geological character, it was only too evident
that it had entirely replaced the former soil, so that not
a vestige of the old continent of Europe could be discerned.
The lovely scenery of Provence, with the grace of its rich and
undulating landscape; its gardens of citrons and oranges rising
tier upon tier from the deep red soil--all, all had vanished.
Of the vegetable kingdom, there was not a single representative;
the most meager of Arctic plants, the most insignificant of lichens,
could obtain no hold upon that stony waste. Nor did the animal world
assert the feeblest sway. The mineral kingdom reigned supreme.
Captain Servadac's deep dejection was in strange contrast to his
general hilarity. Silent and tearful, he stood upon an ice-bound rock,
straining his eyes across the boundless vista of the mysterious territory.
"It cannot be!" he exclaimed. "We must somehow have mistaken our bearings.
True, we have encountered this barrier; but France is there beyond!
Yes, France is _there!_ Come, count, come! By all that's pitiful,
I entreat you, come and explore the farthest verge of the ice-bound track!"
He pushed onwards along the rugged surface of the rock,
but had not proceeded far before he came to a sudden pause.
His foot had come in contact with something hard beneath the snow,
and, stooping down, he picked up a little block of stony substance,
which the first glance revealed to be of a geological
character altogether alien to the universal rocks around.
It proved to be a fragment of dis-colored marble, on which several
letters were inscribed, of which the only part at all decipherable
was the syllable "Vil."
"Vil--Villa!" he cried out, in his excitement dropping the marble,
which was broken into atoms by the fall.
What else could this fragment be but the sole surviving remnant
of some sumptuous mansion that once had stood on this unrivaled site?
Was it not the residue of some edifice that had crowned the luxuriant
headland of Antibes, overlooking Nice, and commanding the gorgeous panorama
that embraced the Maritime Alps and reached beyond Monaco and Mentone
to the Italian height of Bordighera? And did it not give in its sad
and too convincing testimony that Antibes itself had been involved
in the great destruction? Servadac gazed upon the shattered marble,
pensive and disheartened.
Count Timascheff laid his hand kindly on the captain's shoulder, and said,
"My friend, do you not remember the motto of the old Hope family?"
He shook his head mournfully.
"_Orbe fracto, spes illoesa_," continued the count--"Though the world
be shattered, hope is unimpaired."
Servadac smiled faintly, and replied that he felt rather compelled
to take up the despairing cry of Dante, "All hope abandon,
ye who enter here."
"Nay, not so," answered the count; "for the present at least,
let our maxim be _Nil desperandum!_"
