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Ben Zoof's most ambitious desire was to induce the captain to go with him and end his days in his much-loved home, and so incessantly were Servadac's ears besieged with descriptions of the unparalleled beauties and advantages of this eighteenth arrondissement of Paris, that he could scarcely hear the name of Montmartre without a conscious thrill of aversion.
This was too much for Ben Zoof's forbearance, and stooping down he caught up a huge stone, when to his surprise, he found that it was no heavier than a piece of petrified sponge. "Confound the brute!" he exclaimed, "I might as well throw a piece of bread at him. What accounts for its being as light as this?" Nothing daunted, however, he hurled the stone into the air.
"Good-morning, old Eleazar; we have come to do our little bit of friendly business with you, you know," was Ben Zoof's greeting. "What do you want to-day?" asked the Jew. "To-day we want coffee, and we want sugar, and we want tobacco. We must have ten kilogrammes of each. Take care they are all good; all first rate. I am commissariat officer, and I am responsible."
Ben Zoof's heart was too full for words; Count Timascheff could not forbear pressing his two brave friends to his bosom; the Spaniards and the Russian sailors crowded round for a farewell shake of the hand, and little Nina, her great eyes flooded with tears, held up her face for a parting kiss. The sad scene was not permitted to be long.
"Yes, the sooner the better, with our tails between our legs," rejoined the orderly, who this time felt no inclination to start off to the march of the Algerian zephyrs. And so the French tricolor returned as it had set out in Ben Zoof's knapsack. On the eighth evening after starting, the travelers again set foot on the volcanic promontory just in time to witness a great commotion.
Ben Zoof's eyes glistened with delight; and from that moment Hector Servadac and Montmartre held equal places in his affection. Composed of mud and loose stones, and covered with a thatch of turf and straw, known to the natives by the name of "driss," the gourbi, though a grade better than the tents of the nomad Arabs, was yet far inferior to any habitation built of brick or stone.
"Hush, hush! listen!" was all Ben Zoof's reply; and he raised his finger as if in warning. Listening attentively, Servadac and his associates could distinctly recognize a human voice, accompanied by the notes of a guitar and by the measured click of castanets. "Spaniards!" said Servadac. "No mistake about that, sir," replied Ben Zoof; "a Spaniard would rattle his castanets at the cannon's mouth."
Thus it fell out that one morning Ben Zoof, from his lookout on Gourbi Island, saw a ship, not the Dobryna, appear upon the horizon, and make quietly down towards what had formerly been the right bank of the Shelif. Such was Ben Zoof's version of what had occurred, as he had gathered it from the new-comers.
In this case, however, it was technical ignorance, rather than any lack of intelligence, that justified the selection of the orderly for this special attention. Satisfied with his scrutiny of Ben Zoof's face, the professor went on. "And now, gentlemen, we have to see what these coins weigh here upon Gallia." He suspended the money bag to the hook; the needle oscillated, and stopped.
On entering the cabin, Ben Zoof's first proceeding was to throw on the fire a liberal supply of coals, utterly regardless of the groans of poor Isaac, who would almost as soon have parted with his own bones as submit to such reckless expenditure of his fuel.
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