The circuit of the island had been now completed, and the explorers,
after a period of sixty hours, found themselves once more beside

the ruins of their gourbi. Five days, or what, according to the
established order of things, would have been two days and a half,

had been occupied in tracing the boundaries of their new domain;
and they had ascertained beyond a doubt that they were the sole

human inhabitants left upon the island.
"Well, sir, here you are, Governor General of Algeria!" exclaimed Ben Zoof,

as they reached the gourbi.
"With not a soul to govern," gloomily rejoined the captain.

"How so? Do you not reckon me?"
"Pshaw! Ben Zoof, what are you?"

"What am I? Why, I am the population."
The captain deigned no reply, but, muttering some expressions

of regret for the fruitless trouble he had taken about his rondo,
betook himself to rest.

CHAPTER VII
BEN ZOOF WATCHES IN VAIN

In a few minutes the governor general and his population were asleep.
The gourbi being in ruins, they were obliged to put up with

the best accommodation they could find in the adjacent erection.
It must be owned that the captain's slumbers were by no means sound;

he was agitated by the consciousness that he had hitherto been unable
to account for his strange experiences by any reasonable theory.

Though far from being advanced in the knowledge of natural
philosophy, he had been instructed, to a certain degree, in its

elementary principles; and, by an effort of memory, he managed
to recall some general laws which he had almost forgotten.

He could understand that an altered inclination of the earth's axis
with regard to the ecliptic would introduce a change of position

in the cardinal points, and bring about a displacement of the sea;
but the hypothesis entirely failed to account, either for the shortening

of the days, or for the diminution in the pressure of the atmosphere.
He felt that his judgment was utterly baffled; his only remaining

hope was that the chain of marvels was not yet complete, and that
something farther might throw some light upon the mystery.

Ben Zoof's first care on the following morning was to provide
a good breakfast. To use his own phrase, he was as hungry

as the whole population of three million Algerians, of whom
he was the representative, and he must have enough to eat.

The catastrophe which had overwhelmed the country had left
a dozen eggs uninjured, and upon these, with a good dish of his

famous couscous, he hoped that he and his master might have
a sufficientlysubstantial meal. The stove was ready for use,

the copper skillet was as bright as hands could make it,
and the beads of condensed steam upon the surface of a large

stone al-caraza gave evidence that it was supplied with water.
Ben Zoof at once lighted a fire, singing all the time,

according to his wont, a snatch of an old military refrain.
Ever on the lookout for fresh phenomena, Captain Servadac

watched the preparations with a curious eye. It struck him
that perhaps the air, in its strangely modified condition,

would fail to supply sufficient oxygen, and that.
the stove, in consequence, might not fulfill its function.

But no; the fire was lighted just as usual, and fanned into
vigor by Ben Zoof applying his mouth in lieu of bellows,

and a bright flame started up from the midst of the twigs and coal.
The skillet 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 become reduced from twenty-four hours

to twelve, Captain Servadac would not accept the new condition of things,
but resolved to adhere to the computations of the old calendar.

Notwithstanding, therefore, that the sun had risen and set twelve
times since the commencement of the new year, he persisted in calling

the following day the 6th of January. His watch enabled him to keep
an accurateaccount of the passing hours.

In the course of his life, Ben Zoof had read a few books.
After pondering one day, he said: "It seems to me, captain,