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

"Ah! well," said Servadac, "I don't know that it matters much
where our new little planet comes from, or what it is made of,
if only it carries France along with it."

"And Russia," added the count.

"And Russia, of course," said Servadac, with a polite bow.

There was, however, not much room for this sanguine expectation,
for if a new asteroid had thus been brought into existence,
it must be a sphere of extremely limited dimensions, and there could
be little chance that it embraced more than the merest fraction
of either France or Russia. As to England, the total cessation
of all telegraphic communication between her shores and Gibraltar
was a virtual proof that England was beyond its compass.

And what was the true measurement of the new little world?
At Gourbi Island the days and nights were of equal length,
and this seemed to indicate that it was situated on the equator;
hence the distance by which the two poles stood apart would
be half what had been reckoned would be the distance completed
by the _Dobryna_ in her circuit. That distance had been already
estimated to be something under 1,400 miles, so that the Arctic Pole
of their recently fashioned world must be about 350 miles to the north,
and the Antarctic about 350 miles to the south of the island.
Compare these calculations with the map, and it is at once
apparent that the northernmost limit barely touched the coast
of Provence, while the southernmost reached to about lat.
20 degrees N., and fell in the heart of the desert.
The practical test of these conclusions would be made by
future investigation, but meanwhile the fact appeared very much
to strengthen the presumption that, if Lieutenant Procope
had not arrived at the whole truth, he had made a considerable
advance towards it.

The weather, ever since the storm that had driven the _Dobryna_
into the creek, had been magnificent. The wind continued favorable,
and now under both steam and canvas, she made a rapid progress towards
the north, a direction in which she was free to go in consequence
of the total disappearance of the Spanish coast, from Gibraltar right
away to Alicante. Malaga, Almeria, Cape Gata, Car-thagena. Cape Palos--
all were gone. The sea was rolling over the southern extent of the peninsula,
so that the yacht advanced to the latitude of Seville before it sighted
any land at all, and then, not shores such as the shores of Andalusia,
but a bluff and precipitous cliff, in its geological features resembling
exactly the stern and barren rock that she had coasted beyond the site
of Malta. Here the sea made a decided indentation on the coast;
it ran up in an acute-angled triangle till its apex coincided with
the very spot upon which Madrid had stood. But as hitherto the sea