Jules Verne

“ Hakkabut knew well enough that the orderly was not a man to be trifled with, and said, in a tremulous voice:
“Yes, I will buy.”
The professor, who had been looking on with much interest, betrayed manifest symptoms of satisfaction,
“How much do you want? What will you charge for it?” asked Isaac, mournfully, putting his hand into his pocket and chinking his money.
“Oh, we will deal gently with you. We will not make any profit. You shall have it for the same price that we paid for it. Ten francs a pound, you know.” ”

“ I will be even with him! Cheat! Thrown me out!” But he did not vouchsafe any reply to Servadac's inquiries, and withdrew to his study.
But from that day forward Rosette, for some reason at present incomprehensible, quite altered his behaviour to Isaac Hakkabut, a man for whom he had always hitherto evinced the greatest repugnance and contempt. All at once he began to show a remarkable interest in the Jew and his affairs, paying several visits to the dark little storehouse, making inquiries as to the state of business and expressing some solicitude about the state of the exchequer. ”

“ It was on that day we crossed the orbit of Mars.”
“Yes, true,” assented the others.
“And the next line,” said the lieutenant, after reading it aloud, “apparently registers the distance traversed by Gallia, the new little planet, in her own orbit. Her speed, of course, we know by Kepler's laws, would vary according to her distance from the sun, and if she were—as I conjecture from the temperature at that date—on the 15th of January at her perihelion, she would be travelling twice as fast as the earth, which moves at the rate of between 50,000 and 60,000 miles an hour.” ”

“ If our world has become so insignificant a spheroid, not only has its gravity diminished, but its rotatory speed has been accelerated; and this affords an adequate explanation of our days and nights being thus curtailed. But how about the new orbit in which we are moving? ”

“ Let us see that we understand each other right. Unless I mistake you, your hypothesis is that a fragment of the earth, comprising the Mediterranean and its shores from Gibraltar to Malta, has been developed into a new asteroid, which is started on an independent orbit in the solar regions. ”

“ Is Newton a fool? The laws of gravity seem topsy-turvy! Observations! Calculations! Not agree? Plague! Confound it! Curses!”
And the little man would seize his head in both his hands, and tear away at the scanty locks which he could ill afford to lose. ”

“ A telescope-case would probably be the property of some one on board a ship; and the figures obviously referred to the astronomical wonders that had been experienced.
To these general observations Captain Servadac objected that he thought it unlikely that any one on board a ship would use a telescope-case for this purpose, but would be sure to use a bottle as being more secure; and, accordingly, he should rather be inclined to believe that the message had been set afloat by some savant left alone, perchance, upon some isolated coast. ”

“ There was no visitor to the Hive more regular than Rosette. He had already directed his telescope to be moved back to his former observatory, where, as much as the cold would permit him, he persisted in making his all-absorbing studies of the heavens.
The result of these studies no one ventured to inquire; but it became generally noticed that something was very seriously disturbing the professor's equanimity. ”

“ Indubitably, to less than 1400 miles. So brief a voyage would bring the Dobryna once again to her starting-point, or, in other words, would enable her to complete the circumnavigation of the globe. How changed the condition of things!
Previously, to sail from Malta to Gibraltar by an eastward course would have involved the passage of the Suez Canal, the Red Sea, the Indian Ocean, the Pacific, the Atlantic; but what had happened now? Why, Gibraltar had been reached as if it had been just at Corfu, and some three hundred and thirty degrees of the earth's circuit had vanished utterly. ”

“ Rosette meanwhile had been listening to the conversation, and was secretly rejoicing that an opportunity for which he had been watching had now arrived.
“What's the matter. Master Isaac? Have you parted with all your coffee?” he asked, in a sympathizing voice, when Ben Zoof was gone.
“Ah! yes, indeed,” groaned Hakkabut; “and now I require some for my own use. In my little black hole I cannot live without my coffee.”
“Of course you cannot,” agreed the professor. ”

“ At Gourbi Island the days and nights were of equal length, and this seemed to indicate that it was situated on the equator; hence the distance by which the two poles stood apart would be half what had been reckoned would be the distance completed by the Dobryna in her circuit. That distance had been already estimated to be something under 1400 miles, so that the Arctic Pole of their recently fashioned world must be about 350 miles to the north, and the Antarctic about 350 miles to the south of the island. ”