for the best part of half an hour, the astronomer heaved a
faint sigh, which ere long was followed by another and another.

He half opened his eyes, closed them again, then opened them completely,
but without exhibiting any consciousnesswhatever of his situation.

A few words seemed to escape his lips, but they were quite unintelligible.
Presently he raised his right hand to his forehead as though instinctively

feeling for something that was missing; then, all of a sudden,
his features became contracted, his face flushed with apparent irritation,

and he exclaimed fretfully, "My spectacles!--where are my spectacles?"
In order to facilitate his operations, Ben Zoof had removed the spectacles

in spite of the tenacity with which they seemed to adhere to the temples of
his patient; but he now rapidly brought them back and readjusted them as best

he could to what seemed to be their natural position on the aquiline nose.
The professor heaved a long sigh of relief, and once more closed his eyes.

Before long the astronomer roused himself a little more, and glanced
inquiringly about him, but soon relapsed into his comatose condition.

When next he opened his eyes, Captain Servadac happened to be bending
down closely over him, examining his features with curious scrutiny.

The old man darted an angry look at him through the spectacles,
and said sharply, "Servadac, five hundred lines to-morrow!"

It was an echo of days of old. The words were few, but they were enough
to recall the identity which Servadac was trying to make out.

"Is it possible?" he exclaimed. "Here is my old tutor, Mr. Rosette,
in very flesh and blood."

"Can't say much for the flesh," muttered Ben Zoof.
The old man had again fallen back into a torpid slumber.

Ben Zoof continued, "His sleep is getting more composed.
Let him alone; he will come round yet. Haven't I heard of men

more dried up than he is, being brought all the way from Egypt
in cases covered with pictures?"

"You idiot!--those were mummies; they had been dead for ages."
Ben Zoof did not answer a word. He went on preparing a warm bed,

into which he managed to remove his patient, who soon fell into a calm
and natural sleep.

Too impatient to await the awakening of the astronomer and to hear what
representations he had to make, Servadac, the count, and the lieutenant,

constituting themselves what might be designated "the Academy of Sciences"
of the colony, spent the whole of the remainder of the day in starting

and discussing the wildest conjectures about their situation.
The hypothesis, to which they had now accustomed themselves for so long,

that a new asteroid had been formed by a fracture of the earth's surface,
seemed to fall to the ground when they found that Professor Palmyrin Rosette

had associated the name of Gallia, not with their present home,
but with what he called "my comet"; and that theory being abandoned,

they were driven to make the most improbable speculations to replace it.
Alluding to Rosette, Servadac took care to inform his companions that,

although the professor was always eccentric, and at times very irascible,
yet he was really exceedingly good-hearted; his bark was worse than his bite;

and if suffered to take their course without observation, his outbreaks
of ill-temper seldom lasted long.

"We will certainly do our best to get on with him," said the count.
"He is no doubt the author of the papers, and we must hope that he will

be able to give us some valuable information."
"Beyond a question the documents have originated with him,"

assented the lieutenant. "Gallia was the word written at the top
of every one of them, and Gallia was the first word uttered

by him in our hearing."
The astronomer slept on. Meanwhile, the three together had no

hesitation in examining his papers, and scrutinizing the figures on his
extemporized blackboard. The handwriting corresponded with that of

the papers already received; the blackboard was covered with algebraical
symbols traced in chalk, which they were careful not to obliterate;

and the papers, which consisted for the most part of detached scraps,
presented a perfect wilderness of geometrical figures, conic sections

of every variety being repeated in countless profusion.
Lieutenant Procope pointed out that these curves evidently had reference to

the orbits of comets, which are variously parabolic, hyperbolic, or elliptic.
If either of the first two, the comet, after once appearing within the range

of terrestrial vision, would vanish forever in the outlying regions of space;
if the last, it would be sure, sooner or later, after some periodic interval,

to return.
From the _prima facie_ appearance of his papers, then, it seemed probable

that the astronomer, during his sojourn at Formentera, had been devoting
himself to the study of cometary orbits; and as calculations of this kind

are ordinarily based upon the assumption that the orbit is a parabola,
it was not unlikely that he had been endeavoring to trace the path

of some particular comet.
"I wonder whether these calculations were made before or after the 1st

of January; it makes all the difference," said Lieutenant Procope.
"We must bide our time and hear," replied the count.

Servadac paced restlessly up and down. "I would give a month of my life,"
he cried, impetuously, "for every hour that the old fellow goes sleeping on."

"You might be making a bad bargain," said Procope, smiling.
"Perhaps after all the comet has had nothing to do with the convulsion

that we have experienced."
"Nonsense!" exclaimed the captain; "I know better than that, and so do you.

Is it not as clear as daylight that the earth and this comet have been
in collision, and the result has been that our little world has been split

off and sent flying far into space?"
Count Timascheff and the lieutenant looked at each other in silence.

"I do not deny your theory," said Procope after a while.
"If it be correct, I suppose we must conclude that the enormous disc

we observed on the night of the catastrophe was the comet itself;
and the velocity with which it was traveling must have been

so great that it was hardly arrested at all by the attraction
of the earth."

"Plausible enough," answered Count Timascheff; "and it is to this comet
that our scientific friend here has given the name of Gallia."

It still remained a puzzle to them all why the astronomer should apparently
be interested in the comet so much more than in the new little world

in which their strange lot was cast.
"Can you explain this?" asked the count.

"There is no accounting for the freaks of philosophers, you know,"
said Servadac; "and have I not told you that this philosopher

in particular is one of the most eccentric beings in creation?"
"Besides," added the lieutenant, "it is exceedingly likely

that his observations had been going on for some considerable
period before the convulsion happened."

Thus, the general conclusion arrived at by the Gallian Academy
of Science was this: That on the night of the 31st of December,

a comet, crossing the ecliptic, had come into collision with
the earth, and that the violence of the shock had separated

a huge fragment from the globe, which fragment from that date
had been traversing the remote inter-planetary regions.

Palmyrin Rosette would doubtlessconfirm their solution
of the phenomenon.

CHAPTER II
A REVELATION

To the general population of the colony the arrival of the stranger was
a matter of small interest. The Spaniards were naturally too indolent to be

affected in any way by an incident that concerned themselves so remotely;
while the Russians felt themselves simply reliant on their master, and as long

as they were with him were careless as to where or how they spent their days.
Everything went on with them in an accustomed routine; and they lay down

night after night, and awoke to their avocations morning after morning,
just as if nothing extraordinary had occurred.

All night long Ben Zoof would not leave the professor's bedside.
He had constituted himself sick nurse, and considered his reputation

at stake if he failed to set his patient on his feet again.
He watched every movement, listened to every breath, and never failed

to administer the strongest cordials upon the slightest pretext.
Even in his sleep Rosette's irritable nature revealed itself.

Ever and again, sometimes in a tone of uneasiness, and sometimes
with the expression of positive anger, the name of Gallia