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

he would perhaps have been able to bring to bear his knowledge
that if the axis of the earth, as everything seemed to indicate,
now formed a right angle with the plane of the ecliptic,
her various seasons, like those of the planet Jupiter, would become
limited to certain zones, in which they would remain invariable.
But even if he had understood the _rationale_ of the change,
the convulsion that had brought it about would have been as much
a mystery as ever.

The precocity of vegetation caused some embarrassment.
The time for the corn and fruit harvest had fallen simultaneously
with that of the haymaking; and as the extreme heat precluded
any prolonged exertions, it was evident "the population"
of the island would find it difficult to provide the necessary
amount of labor. Not that the prospect gave them much concern:
the provisions of the gourbi were still far from exhausted,
and now that the roughness of the weather had so happily subsided,
they had every encouragement to hope that a ship of some sort
would soon appear. Not only was that part of the Mediterranean
systematically frequented by the government steamers that watched
the coast, but vessels of all nations were constantly cruising
off the shore.

In spite, however, of all their sanguine speculations, no ship appeared.
Ben Zoof admitted the necessity of extemporizing a kind of parasol
for himself, otherwise he must literally have been roasted to death
upon the exposed summit of the cliff.

Meanwhile, Servadac was doing his utmost--it must be acknowledged,
with indifferent success--to recall the lessons of his school-days. He
would plunge into the wildest speculations in his endeavors to unravel
the difficulties of the new situation, and struggled into a kind of conviction
that if there had been a change of manner in the earth's rotation on her axis,
there would be a corresponding change in her revolution round the sun,
which would involve the consequence of the length of the year being either
diminished or increased.

Independently of the increased and increasing heat, there was another
very conclusive demonstration that the earth had thus suddenly
approximated towards the sun. The diameter of the solar disc
was now exactly twice what it ordinarily looks to the naked eye;
in fact, it was precisely such as it would appear to an observer
on the surface of the planet Venus. The most obvious inference
would therefore be that the earth's distance from the sun
had been diminished from 91,000,000 to 66,000,000 miles.
If the just equilibrium of the earth had thus been destroyed,
and should this diminution of distance still continue,
would there not be reason to fear that the terrestrial world
would be carried onwards to actual contact with the sun,
which must result in its total annihilation?