"Are you in a great hurry?" asked the professor coolly.

The Jew was about to speak again, when Captain Servadac interposed:
"Allow me to say that, in somewhat more scientific terms, I was about

to ask you the same question. Did I not understand you to say that,
as the consequence of the collision, the character of the comet's orbit

has been changed?"
"You did, sir."

"Did you imply that the orbit has ceased to be a parabola?"
"Just so."

"Is it then an hyperbola? and are we to be carried on far and away
into remote distance, and never, never to return?"

"I did not say an hyperbola."
"And is it not?"

"It is not."
"Then it must be an ellipse?"

"Yes."
"And does its plane coincide with the plane of the earth?"

"Yes."
"Then it must be a periodic comet?"

"It is."
Servadac involuntarily raised a ringing shout of joy that echoed

again along the gallery.
"Yes," continued the professor, "Gallia is a periodic comet,

and allowing for the perturbations to which it is liable from
the attraction of Mars and Jupiter and Saturn, it will return

to the earth again in two years precisely."
"You mean that in two years after the first shock, Gallia will meet the earth

at the same point as they met before?" said Lieutenant Procope.
"I am afraid so," said Rosette.

"Why afraid?"
"Because we are doing exceedingly well as we are." The professor stamped

his foot upon the ground, by way of emphasis, and added, "If I had my will,
Gallia should never return to the earth again!"

CHAPTER IV
A REVISED CALENDAR

All previous hypotheses, then, were now forgotten in the presence
of the one great fact that Gallia was a comet and gravitating through

remote solar regions. Captain Servadac became aware that the huge disc
that had been looming through the clouds after the shock was the form

of the retreating earth, to the proximity of which the one high tide
they had experienced was also to be attributed.

As to the fulfillment of the professor's prediction of an ultimate return
to the terrestrial sphere, that was a point on which it must be owned

that the captain, after the first flush of his excitement was over,
was not without many misgivings.

The next day or two were spent in providing for the accommodation
of the new comer. Fortunately his desires were very moderate;

he seemed to live among the stars, and as long as he was
well provided with coffee, he cared little for luxuries,

and paid little or no regard to the ingenuity with which all
the internal arrangements of Nina's Hive had been devised.

Anxious to show all proper respect to his former tutor,
Servadac proposed to leave the most comfortable apartment of

the place at his disposal; but the professor resolutely declined
to occupy it, saying that what he required was a small chamber,

no matter how small, provided that it was elevated and secluded,
which he could use as an observatory and where he might prosecute

his studies without disturbance. A general search was instituted,
and before long they were lucky enough to find, about a hundred

feet above the central grotto, a small recess or reduct hollowed,
as it were, in the mountain side, which would exactly

answer their purpose. It contained room enough for a bed,
a table, an arm-chair, a chest of drawers, and, what was

of still more consequence, for the indispensable telescope.
One small stream of lava, an off-shoot of the great torrent,

sufficed to warm the apartment enough.
In these retired quarters the astronomer took up his abode. It was on all

hands acknowledged to be advisable to let him go on entirely in his own way.
His meals were taken to him at stated intervals; he slept but little;

carried on his calculations by day, his observations by night, and very rarely
made his appearance amongst the rest of the little community.

The cold now became very intense, the thermometer registering
30 degrees F. below zero. The mercury, however, never exhibited

any of those fluctuations that are ever and again to be observed
in variable climates, but continued slowly and steadily to fall,

and in all probability would continue to do so until it reached
the normal temperature of the regions of outlying space.

This steady sinking of the mercury was accompanied by a complete
stillness of the atmosphere; the very air seemed to be congealed;

no particle of it stirred; from zenith to horizon there was never a cloud;
neither were there any of the damp mists or dry fogs which so often

extend over the polar regions of the earth; the sky was always clear;
the sun shone by day and the stars by night without causing any

perceptible difference in the temperature.
These peculiar conditions rendered the cold endurable even in the open air.

The cause of so many of the diseases that prove fatal to Arctic
explorers resides in the cutting winds, unwholesome fogs, or terrible

snow drifts, which, by drying up, relaxing, or otherwise affecting
the lungs, make them incapable of fulfilling their proper functions.

But during periods of calm weather, when the air has been absolutely still,
many polar navigators, well-clothed and properly fed, have been known

to withstand a temperature when the thermometer has fallen to 60 degrees
below zero. It was the experience of Parry upon Melville Island,

of Kane beyond latitude 81 degrees north, and of Hall and the crew
of the _Polaris_, that, however intense the cold, in the absence

of the wind they could always brave its rigor.
Notwithstanding, then, the extreme lowness of the temperature,

the little population found that they were able to move about
in the open air with perfect immunity. The governor general

made it his special care to see that his people were all well
fed and warmly clad. Food was both wholesome and abundant,

and besides the furs brought from the _Dobryna's_ stores, fresh skins
could very easily be procured and made up into wearing apparel.

A daily course of out-door exercise was enforced upon everyone;
not even Pablo and Nina were exempted from the general rule;

the two children, muffled up in furs, looking like little Esqui-meaux,
skated along together, Pablo ever at his companion's side,

ready to give her a helping hand whenever she was weary
with her exertions.

After his interview with the newly arrived astronomer,
Isaac Hakkabut slunk back again to his tartan. A change had come

over his ideas; he could no longer resist the conviction that
he was indeed millions and millions of miles away from the earth,

where he had carried on so varied and remunerative a traffic.
It might be imagined that this realization of his true position

would have led him to a better mind, and that, in some degree
at least, he would have been induced to regard the few

fellow-creatures with whom his lot had been so strangely cast,
otherwise than as mere instruments to be turned to his own personal

and pecuniary advantage; but no--the desire of gain was too
thoroughly ingrained into his hard nature ever to be eradicated,

and secure in his knowledge that he was under the protection
of a French officer, who, except under the most urgent necessity,

would not permit him to be molested in retaining his property,
he determined to wait for some emergency to arise which should

enable him to use his present situation for his own profit.
On the one hand, the Jew took it into account that although the chances

of returning to the earth might be remote, yet from what he had heard from
the professor he could not believe that they were improbable; on the other,

he knew that a considerable sum of money, in English and Russian coinage,
was in the possession of various members of the little colony, and this,

although valueless now, would be worth as much as ever if the proper condition
of things should be restored; accordingly, he set his heart on getting

all the monetarywealth of Gallia into his possession, and to do this