estions on the subject to the too reticent astronomer.

Meanwhile, the earth's disc was daily increasing in magnitude; the comet
traveled 50,000,000 leagues during the month, at the close of which it
was not more than 78,000,000 leagues from the sun.

A thaw had now fairly set in. The breaking up of the frozen ocean was a
magnificent spectacle, and "the great voice of the sea," as the whalers
graphically describe it, was heard in all its solemnity. Little streams
of water began to trickle down the declivities of the mountain and along
the shelving shore, only to be transformed, as the melting of the snow
continued, into torrents or cascades. Light vapors gathered on the
horizon, and clouds were formed and carried rapidly along by breezes to
which the Gallian atmosphere had long been unaccustomed. All these
were doubtless but the prelude to atmospheric disturbances of a more
startling character; but as indications of returning spring, they were
greeted with a welcome which no apprehensions for the future could
prevent being glad and hearty.

A double disaster was the inevitable consequence of the thaw. Both the
schooner and the tartan were entirely destroyed. The basement of the icy
pedestal on which the ships had been upheaved was gradually undermined,
like the icebergs of the Arctic Ocean, by warm currents of water, and
on the night of the 12th the huge block collapsed _en masse_, so that on
the following morning nothing remained of the _Dobryna_ and the _Hansa_
except the fragments scattered on the shore.

Although certainly expected, the catastrophe could not fail to cause a
sense of general depression. Well-nigh one of their last ties to Mother
Earth had been broken; the ships were gone, and they had only a balloon
to replace them!

To describe Isaac Hakkabut's rage at the destruction of the tartan would
be impossible. His oaths were simply dreadful; his imprecations on the
accursed race were full of wrath. He swore that Servadac and his people
were responsible for his loss; he vowed that they should be sued and
made to pay him damages; he asserted that he had been brought from
Gourbi Island only to be plundered; in fact, he became so intolerably
abusive, that Servadac threatened to put him into irons unless he
conducted himself properly; whereupon the Jew, finding that the captain
was in earnest, and would not hesitate to carry the threat into effect,
was fain to hold his tongue, and slunk back into his dim hol