people had established
a sort of camp. Some were poking about the hull. Others were entering
by the battered funnel, or demolishing the woodwork with hammers, or
breaking open cases of more or less intact provisions. Women of the
people, women in rags and tatters, wearing the look of hunted animals,
sat on pieces of timber, waiting. Children ran about, playing; and
already, marking a first attempt at communal life, a pedlar was moving
through the crowd with a keg of beer on his back, while two girls,
installed behind a tottering bar, were selling tea and whisky.

Farther on, they saw a second camp and, in all directions, men
prowling about, solitary individuals, who, like themselves, were
reconnoitring.

"Capital!" cried Simon. "The prairie lies stretched before us, with
all its mysteries and all its lurking dangers. Here we are on the
war-path; and the man who leads us is a Red Indian chief."

After they had trotted for two hours at a brisk pace, the prairie was
represented by undulating plains, in which sand and mud alternated in
equal proportions and in which hesitating streams of no great depth
were seeking a favourable bed. Over it hung a low, thick, stationary
fog, apparently as solid as a ceiling.

"What a miracle, my dear Old Sandstone!" cried Simon, while they were
following a long ribbon of fine gravel which stretched before them,
like a sunken path winding through the greensward of a park. "What a
miracle, an adventure of this sort! A horrible adventure, certainly; a
disaster causing superhuman suffering, death and mourning; but
extraordinary adventure, the finest that a man of my age could dream
of. It's all so prodigious!"

"Prodigious, indeed!" said Old Sandstone, who, faithful to his
mission, was pursuing his scientific investigations. "Prodigious!
Thus, the presence of this gravel in this place constitutes one of the
unprecedented events of which you are speaking. And then look at that
bank of great golden fish lying over there, with their upturned
bellies. . . ."

"Yes, yes, professor," replied Simon. "It's impossible that such an
upheaval should not usher in a new age! If I look at the future as
people sometimes look at a landscape, with my eyes half-closed, I can
see . . . heavens, what don't I see! . . . What don't I imagine! . . .
What a tragedy of folly, passion, hatred, love, violence, and noble
efforts! We are entering upon one of those periods in which men are
full to overflowing of ene