pe.

Rosette made no immediate reply. After a moment or two's reflection, he
turned to Servadac and asked him whether it was not the middle of April.

"It is the twentieth," answered the captain.

"Then to-day," said the astronomer, speaking with the greatest
deliberation--"to-day we are just three millions of leagues away from
Europe."

The Jew was utterly crestfallen.

"You seem here," continued the professor, "to be very ignorant of the
state of things."

"How far we are ignorant," rejoined Servadac, "I cannot tell. But I will
tell you all that we do know, and all that we have surmised." And
as briefly as he could, he related all that had happened since
the memorable night of the thirty-first of December; how they had
experienced the shock; how the _Dobryna_ had made her voyage; how they
had discovered nothing except the fragments of the old continent at
Tunis, Sardinia, Gibraltar, and now at Formentera; how at intervals
the three anonymous documents had been received; and, finally, how
the settlement at Gourbi Island had been abandoned for their present
quarters at Nina's Hive.

The astronomer had hardly patience to hear him to the end. "And what do
you say is your surmise as to your present position?" he asked.

"Our supposition," the captain replied, "is this. We imagine that we
are on a considerable fragment of the terrestrial globe that has been
detached by collision with a planet to which you appear to have given
the name of Gallia."

"Better than that!" cried Rosette, starting to his feet with excitement.

"How? Why? What do you mean?" cried the voices of the listeners.

"You are correct to a certain degree," continued the professor. "It is
quite true that at 47' 35.6" after two o'clock on the morning of the
first of January there was a collision; my comet grazed the earth; and
the bits of the earth which you have named were carried clean away."

They were all fairly bewildered.

"Where, then," cried Servadac eagerly, "where are we?"

"You are on my comet, on Gallia itself!"

And the professor gazed around him with a perfect air of triumph.

CHAPTER III. THE PROFESSOR'S EXPERIENCES

"Yes, my comet!" repeated the professor, and from time to time he
knitted his brows, and looked around him with a defiant air, as though
he could not get rid of the impression that someone was laying an
unwarranted claim to its proprietorship, or that the individuals before
him were intruders upon his own