"Jules Verne. Off on a Comet. WORKS" - читать интересную книгу автора

been as fidgety as a bird returning after its winter migration."

Servadac suddenly started from his seat, and as he paced the room
with all the frenzy of poetic inspiration, read out:
"Empty words cannot convey
All a lover's heart would say."

"Well, to be sure, he is at his everlasting verses again!"
said Ben Zoof to himself, as he roused himself in his corner.
"Impossible to sleep in such a noise;" and he gave vent
to a loud groan.

"How now, Ben Zoof?" said the captain sharply. "What ails you?"

"Nothing, sir, only the nightmare."

"Curse the fellow, he has quite interrupted me!" ejaculated the captain.
"Ben Zoof!" he called aloud.

"Here, sir!" was the prompt reply; and in an instant the orderly was upon
his feet, standing in a military attitude, one hand to his forehead,
the other closely pressed to his trouser-seam.

"Stay where you are! don't move an inch!" shouted Servadac; "I have
just thought of the end of my rondo." And in a voice of inspiration,
accompanying his words with dramatic gestures, Servadac began to declaim:


"Listen, lady, to my vows --
O, consent to be my spouse;
Constant ever I will be,
Constant . . . ."


No closing lines were uttered. All at once, with unutterable violence,
the captain and his orderly were dashed, face downwards, to the ground.



CHAPTER IV

A CONVULSION OF NATURE


Whence came it that at that very moment the horizon underwent so strange
and sudden a modification, that the eye of the most practiced mariner
could not distinguish between sea and sky?

Whence came it that the billows raged and rose to a height hitherto
unregistered in the records of science?