rs exhumed from the extinct volcano be
their last poor resource?

"Keep up your spirits, my friends," said Servadac; "we have plenty of
time before us at present. Let us hope that as fresh difficulties arise,
fresh ways of escape will open. Never despair!"

"True," said the count; "it is an old saying that 'Necessity is the
mother of invention.' Besides, I should think it very unlikely that the
internal heat will fail us now before the summer."

The lieutenant declared that he entertained the same hope. As the reason
of his opinion he alleged that the combustion of the eruptive matter
was most probably of quite recent origin, because the comet before
its collision with the earth had possessed no atmosphere, and that
consequently no oxygen could have penetrated to its interior.

"Most likely you are right," replied the count; "and so far from
dreading a failure of the internal heat, I am not quite sure that we may
not be exposed to a more terrible calamity still?"

"What?" asked Servadac.

"The calamity of the eruption breaking out suddenly again, and taking us
by surprise."

"Heavens!" cried the captain, "we will not think of that."

"The outbreak may happen again," said the lieutenant, calmly; "but
it will be our fault, our own lack of vigilance, if we are taken by
surprise." And so the conversation dropped.

The 15th of January dawned; and the comet was 220,000,000 leagues from
the sun.

Gallia had reached its aphelion.

CHAPTER XIII. DREARY MONTHS

Henceforth, then, with a velocity ever increasing, Gallia would
re-approach the sun.

Except the thirteen Englishmen who had been left at Gibraltar, every
living creature had taken refuge in the dark abyss of the volcano's
crater.

And with those Englishmen, how had it fared?

"Far better than with ourselves," was the sentiment that would have
been universally accepted in Nina's Hive. And there was every reason
to conjecture that so it was. The party at Gibraltar, they all agreed,
would not, like themselves, have been compelled to have recourse to
a stream of lava for their supply of heat; they, no doubt, had had
abundance of fuel as well as food; and in their solid casemate, with its
substantial walls, they would find ample shelter from the rigor of the
cold. The time would have been passed at least in comfort, and perhaps
in contentment; and Colonel Murphy and Major Oliphant would have had
leisure more than sufficient for solving the most abstru