mer.

Strange to say, little Nina bore her hardships more bravely than any
of them. Flitting about, coaxing one to eat, another to drink, rousing
Pablo as often as he seemed yielding to the common languor, the child
became the life of the party. Her merry prattle enlivened the gloom of
the grim cavern like the sweet notes of a bird; her gay Italian songs
broke the monotony of the depressing silence; and almost unconscious as
the half-dormant population of Gallia were of her influence, they still
would have missed her bright presence sorely. The months still glided
on; how, it seemed impossible for the inhabitants of the living tomb to
say. There was a dead level of dullness.

At the beginning of June the general torpor appeared slightly to relax
its hold upon its victims. This partial revival was probably due to the
somewhat increased influence of the sun, still far, far away. During
the first half of the Gallian year, Lieutenant Procope had taken careful
note of Rosette's monthly announcements of the comet's progress, and he
was able now, without reference to the professor, to calculate the rate
of advance on its way back towards the sun. He found that Gallia had
re-crossed the orbit of Jupiter, but was still at the enormous distance
of 197,000,000 leagues from the sun, and he reckoned that in about four
months it would have entered the zone of the telescopic planets.

Gradually, but uninterruptedly, life and spirits continued to revive,
and by the end of the month Servadac and his little colony had regained
most of their ordinary physical and mental energies. Ben Zoof, in
particular, roused himself with redoubled vigor, like a giant refreshed
from his slumbers. The visits, consequently, to the long-neglected
galleries of Nina's Hive became more and more frequent.

One day an excursion was made to the shore. It was still bitterly cold,
but the atmosphere had lost nothing of its former stillness, and not a
cloud was visible from horizon to zenith. The old footmarks were all as
distinct as on the day in which they had been imprinted, and the only
portion of the shore where any change was apparent was in the little
creek. Here the elevation of the ice had gone on increasing, until the
schooner and the tartan had been uplifted to a height of 150 feet, not
only rendering them quite inaccessible, but exposing them to all but
certain destruction in the event of a thaw.

Isaac Hakkabut, immovable from the personal oversigh