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
66,0