Off on a Comet
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Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 Next page "I have neither of them," answered Isaac. "I have neither. I am sorry; I am very sorry." And this time the old Jew spoke the truth. He would have been really glad to do another stroke or two of business upon terms as advantageous as the transaction he had just concluded. Palmyrin Rosette scratched his head in perplexity, glaring round upon his companions as if they were personally responsible for his annoyance. He muttered something about finding a way out of his difficulty, and hastily mounted the cabin-ladder. The rest followed, but they had hardly reached the deck when the chink of money was heard in the room below. Hakkabut was locking away the gold in one of the drawers. Back again, down the ladder, scrambled the little professor, and before the Jew was aware of his presence he had seized him by the tail of his slouchy overcoat. "Some of your money! I must have money!" he said. "Money!" gasped Hakkabut; "I have no money." He was pale with fright, and hardly knew what he was saying. "Falsehood!" roared Rosette. "Do you think I cannot see?" And peering down into the drawer which the Jew was vainly trying to close, he cried, "Heaps of money! French money! Five-franc pieces! the very thing I want! I must have them!" The captain and his friends, who had returned to the cabin looked on with mingled amusement and bewilderment. "They are mine!" shrieked Hakkabut. "I will have them!" shouted the professor. "You shall kill me first!" bellowed the Jew. "No, but I must!" persisted the professor again. It was manifestly time for Servadac to interfere. "My dear professor," he said, smiling, "allow me to settle this little matter for you." "Ah! your Excellency," moaned the agitated Jew, "protect me! I am but a poor man--" "None of that, Hakkabut. Hold your tongue." And, turning to Rosette, the captain said, "If, sir, I understand right, you require some silver five-franc pieces for your operation?" "Forty," said Rosette, surlily. "Two hundred francs!" whined Hakkabut. "Silence!" cried the captain. "I must have more than that," the professor continued. "I want ten two-franc pieces, and twenty half-francs." "Let me see," said Servadac, "how much is that in all? Two hundred and thirty francs, is it not?" "I dare say it is," answered the professor. "Count, may I ask you," continued Servadac, "to be security to the Jew for this loan to the professor?" "Loan!" cried the Jew, "do you mean only a loan?" "Silence!" again shouted the captain. Count Timascheff, expressing his regret that his purse contained only paper money, begged to place it at Captain Servadac's disposal. "No paper, no paper!" exclaimed Isaac. "Paper has no currency in Gallia." "About as much as silver," coolly retorted the count. "I am a poor man," began the Jew. "Now, Hakkabut, stop these miserable lamentations of yours, once for all. Hand us over two hundred and thirty francs in silver money, or we will proceed to help ourselves." Isaac began to yell with all his might: "Thieves! thieves!" In a moment Ben Zoof's hand was clasped tightly over his mouth. "Stop that howling, Belshazzar!" "Let him alone, Ben Zoof. He will soon come to his senses," said Servadac, quietly. When the old Jew had again recovered himself, the captain addressed him. "Now, tell us, what interest do you expect?" Nothing could overcome the Jew's anxiety to make another good bargain. He began: "Money is scarce, very scarce, you know--" "No more of this!" shouted Servadac. "What interest, I say, what interest do you ask?" Faltering and undecided still, the Jew went on. "Very scarce, you know. Ten francs a day, I think, would not be unreasonable, considering--" The count had no patience to allow him to finish what he was about to say. He flung down notes to the value of several rubles. With a greediness that could not be concealed, Hakkabut grasped them all. Paper, indeed, they were; but the cunning Israelite knew that they would in any case be security far beyond the value of his cash. He was making some eighteen hundred per cent. interest, and accordingly chuckled within himself at his unexpected stroke of business. The professor pocketed his French coins with a satisfaction far more demonstrative. "Gentlemen," he said, "with these franc pieces I obtain the means of determining accurately both a meter and a kilogramme." CHAPTER VII GALLIA WEIGHED A quarter of an hour later, the visitors to the _Hansa_ had reassembled in the common hall of Nina's Hive. "Now, gentlemen, we can proceed," said the professor. "May I request that this table may be cleared?" Ben Zoof removed the various articles that were lying on the table, and the coins which had just been borrowed from the Jew were placed upon it in three piles, according to their value. The professor commenced. "Since none of you gentlemen, at the time of the shock, took the precaution to save either a meter measure or a kilogramme weight from the earth, and since both these articles are necessary for the calculation on which we are engaged, I have been obliged to devise means of my own to replace them." This exordium delivered, he paused and seemed to watch its effect upon his audience, who, however, were too well acquainted with the professor's temper to make any attempt to exonerate themselves from the rebuke of carelessness, and submitted silently to the implied reproach. "I have taken pains," he continued, "to satisfy myself that these coins are in proper condition for my purpose. I find them unworn and unchipped; indeed, they are almost new. They have been hoarded instead of circulated; accordingly, they are fit to be utilized for my purpose of obtaining the precise length of a terrestrial meter." Ben Zoof looked on in perplexity, regarding the lecturer with much the same curiosity as he would have watched the performances of a traveling mountebank at a fair in Montmartre; but Servadac and his two friends had already divined the professor's meaning. They knew that French coinage is all decimal, the franc being the standard of which the other coins, whether gold, silver, or copper, are multiples or measures; they knew, too, that the caliber or diameter of each piece of money is rigorously determined by law, and that the diameters of the silver coins representing five francs, two francs, and fifty centimes measure thirty-seven, twenty-seven, and eighteen millimeters respectively; and they accordingly guessed that Professor Rosette had conceived the plan of placing such a number of these coins in juxtaposition that the length of their united diameters should measure exactly the thousand millimeters that make up the terrestrial meter. The measurement thus obtained was by means of a pair of compasses divided accurately into ten equal portions, or decimeters, each of course 3.93 inches long. A lath was then cut of this exact length and given to the engineer of the _Dobryna_, who was directed to cut out of the solid rock the cubic decimeter required by the professor. The next business was to obtain the precise weight of a kilogramme. This was by no means a difficult matter. Not only the diameters, but also the weights, of the French coins are rigidly determined by law, and as the silver five-franc pieces always weigh exactly twenty-five grammes, the united weight of forty of these coins is known to amount to one kilogramme. "Oh!" cried Ben Zoof; "to be able to do all this I see you must be rich as well as learned." With a good-natured laugh at the orderly's remark, the meeting adjourned for a few hours. By the appointed time the engineer had finished his task, and with all due care had prepared a cubic decimeter of the material of the comet. "Now, gentlemen," said Professor Rosette, "we are in a position to complete our calculation; we can now arrive at Gallia's attraction, density, and mass." Everyone gave him his complete attention. "Before I proceed," he resumed, "I must recall to your minds Newton's general law, 'that the attraction of two bodies is directly proportional to the product of their masses, and inversely proportional to the square of their distances.'" "Yes," said Servadac; "we remember that." |
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