Now, he thought, there might be a chance of solving his perplexity;perhaps now the huge disc, of which he had had an imperfect glimpse on the night of the 31st of December, might again reveal itself;at any rate, he hoped for an opportunity of observing the constellations in a clear firmament above.
The night was magnificent. Not a cloud dimmed the luster of the stars, which spangled the heavens in surpassing brilliancy, and several nebulae which hitherto no astronomer had been able to discern without the aid of a telescope were clearly visible to the naked eye.
By a natural impulse, Servadac's first thought was to observe the position of the pole-star. It was in sight, but so near to the horizon as to suggest the utter impossibility of its being any longer the central pivot of the sidereal system;it occupied a position through which it was out of the question that the axis of the earth indefinitely prolonged could ever pass.
In his impression he was more thoroughly confirmed when, an hour later, he noticed that the star had approached still nearer the horizon, as though it had belonged to one of the zodiacal constellations.
The pole-star being manifestly thus displaced, it remained to be discovered whether any other of the celestial bodies had become a fixed center around which the constellations made their apparent daily revolutions. To the solution of this problem Servadac applied himself with the most thoughtful diligence.
After patient observation, he satisfied himself that the required conditions were answered by a certain star that was stationary not far from the horizon. This was Vega, in the constellation Lyra, a star which, according to the precession of the equinoxes, will take the place of our pole-star 12,000 years hence.
The most daring imagination could not suppose that a period of 12,000 years had been crowded into the space of a fortnight;and therefore the captain came, as to an easier conclusion, to the opinion that the earth's axis had been suddenly and immensely shifted; and from the fact that the axis, if produced, would pass through a point so little removed above the horizon, he deduced the inference that the Mediterranean must have been transported to the equator.
Lost in bewildering maze of thought, he gazed long and intently upon the heavens. His eyes wandered from where the tail of the Great Bear, now a zodiacal constellation, was scarcely visible above the waters, to where the stars of the southern hemisphere were just breaking on his view.
A cry from Ben Zoof recalled him to himself.
"The moon!" shouted the orderly, as though overjoyed at once again beholding what the poet has called:
"The kind companion of terrestrial night;"and he pointed to a disc that was rising at a spot precisely opposite the place where they would have expected to see the sun.
"The moon!" again he cried.
But Captain Servadac could not altogether enter into his servant's enthusiasm. If this were actually the moon, her distance from the earth must have been increased by some millions of miles.
He was rather disposed to suspect that it was not the earth's satellite at all, but some planet with its apparent magnitude greatly enlarged by its approximation to the earth. Taking up the powerful field-glass which he was accustomed to use in his surveying operations, he proceeded to investigate more carefully the luminous orb. But he failed to trace any of the lineaments, supposed to resemble a human face, that mark the lunar surface;he failed to decipher any indications of hill and plain;nor could he make out the aureole of light which emanates from what astronomers have designated Mount Tycho. "It is not the moon,"he said slowly.
"Not the moon?" cried Ben Zoof. "Why not?""It is not the moon," again affirmed the captain.
"Why not?" repeated Ben Zoof, unwilling to renounce his first impression.
"Because there is a small satellite in attendance."And the captain drew his servant's attention to a bright speck, apparently about the size of one of Jupiter's satellites seen through a moderate telescope, that was clearly visible just within the focus of his glass.
Here, then, was a fresh mystery. The orbit of this planet was assuredly interior to the orbit of the earth, because it accompanied the sun in its apparent motion; yet it was neither Mercury nor Venus, because neither one nor the other of these has any satellite at all.
The captain stamped and stamped again with mingled vexation, agitation, and bewilderment. "Confound it!" he cried, "if this is neither Venus nor Mercury, it must be the moon;but if it is the moon, whence, in the name of all the gods, has she picked up another moon for herself?"The captain was in dire perplexity.