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

was to be lost if the two men were to reach the town before nightfall.
Though still hidden by heavy clouds, the sun was evidently declining fast;
and what was equally inexplicable, it was not following the oblique curve
that in these latitudes and at this time of year might be expected,
but was sinking perpendicularly on to the horizon.

As he went along, Captain Servadac pondered deeply.
Perchance some unheard-of phenomenon had modified the rotary
motion of the globe; or perhaps the Algerian coast had been
transported beyond the equator into the southern hemisphere.
Yet the earth, with the exception of the alteration in its convexity,
in this part of Africa at least, seemed to have undergone no change
of any very great importance. As far as the eye could reach,
the shore was, as it had ever been, a succession of cliffs,
beach, and arid rocks, tinged with a red ferruginous hue.
To the south--if south, in this inverted order of things, it might
still be called--the face of the country also appeared unaltered,
and some leagues away, the peaks of the Merdeyah mountains
still retained their accustomed outline.

Presently a rift in the clouds gave passage to an oblique ray of light
that clearly proved that the sun was setting in the east.

"Well, I am curious to know what they think of all this at Mostaganem,"
said the captain. "I wonder, too, what the Minister of War will
say when he receives a telegram informing him that his African
colony has become, not morally, but physically disorganized;
that the cardinal points are at variance with ordinary rules,
and that the sun in the month of January is shining down vertically
upon our heads."

Ben Zoof, whose ideas of discipline were extremely rigid, at once suggested
that the colony should be put under the surveillance of the police,
that the cardinal points should be placed under restraint, and that the sun
should be shot for breach of discipline.

Meantime, they were both advancing with the utmost speed.
The decompression of the atmosphere made the specific gravity of their
bodies extraordinarily light, and they ran like hares and leaped
like chamois. Leaving the devious windings of the footpath, they went
as a crow would fly across the country. Hedges, trees, and streams
were cleared at a bound, and under these conditions Ben Zoof felt
that he could have overstepped Montmartre at a single stride.
The earth seemed as elastic as the springboard of an acrobat;
they scarcely touched it with their feet, and their only fear was
lest the height to which they were propelled would consume the time
which they were saving by their short cut across the fields.

It was not long before their wild career brought them to the right bank
of the Shelif. Here they were compelled to stop, for not only had