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Updated: May 11, 2025
The temperature by night as well as by day was quite endurable, and on the fourth afternoon after starting, thanks to the straight course which their compass enabled them to maintain, the adventurers found themselves within a few miles of Ceuta. As soon as Ben Zoof caught sight of the rock on the western horizon, he was all excitement.
The cold, you know, the cold may do injury to the spring; and perhaps you are going to use it to weigh something very heavy." "Why, old Ephraim, do you suppose we are going to weigh a mountain with it?" said Ben Zoof. "Better than that!" cried out the professor, triumphantly; "we are going to weigh Gallia with it; my comet."
"What! you don't mean," exclaimed the professor, again going off into a passion, "that you haven't a proper measure of length?" Ben Zoof was sent off to ransack the stores for the article in question, but no measure was forthcoming. "Most likely we shall find one on the tartan," said the orderly.
As the result of Servadac's computations, he formed the opinion that Venus could hardly be at a greater distance than 6,000,000 miles from the earth. "And a very safe distance, too," said Ben Zoof, when his master told him the conclusion at which he had arrived. "All very well for two armies, but for a couple of planets not quite so safe, perhaps, as you may imagine.
A quarter of an hour later, the visitors to the Hansa had reassembled in the common hall of Nina's Hive. "Now, gentlemen, we can proceed," said the professor. "May I request that this table may be cleared?" Ben Zoof removed the various articles that were lying on the table, and the coins which had just been borrowed from the Jew were placed upon it in three piles, according to their value.
"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."
"Your Excellency jests," he said in French; and turning to Count Timascheff, he added in Russian: "The governor has made up a wonderful tale." The count turned his back in disgust, while the Jew sidled up to little Nina and muttered in Italian. "A lot of lies, pretty one; a lot of lies!" "Confound the knave!" exclaimed Ben Zoof; "he gabbles every tongue under the sun!"
"If, as I hope," rejoined the captain, "we are on a peninsula, we are more likely to get to Tenes; there we shall hear the news." "Far more likely to carry the news ourselves," answered Ben Zoof, as he threw himself down for his night's rest. Six hours later, only waiting for sunrise, Captain Servadac set himself in movement again to renew his investigations.
They did not exchange a word, but each was conscious of an unusual buoyancy, which appeared to lift up their bodies and give as it were, wings to their feet. If Ben Zoof had expressed his sensations in words, he would have said that he felt "up to anything," and he had even forgotten to taste so much as a crust of bread, a lapse of memory of which the worthy soldier was rarely guilty.
Gold coinage to the worth of one hundred and twenty francs was handed over to the Jew, who clutched at the money with unmistakable eagerness. The steelyard was committed to the keeping of Ben Zoof, and the visitors prepared to quit the Hansa.
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