Beginning to feel hungry, they had no hesitation in gathering figs, dates, and oranges from the plantations that formed a continuous rich and luxuriant orchard along their path.
The district was quite deserted, and they had no reason to fear any legal penalty.
In an hour and a half they reached the gourbi.
Everything was just as they had left it, and it was evident that no one had visited the place during their absence.
All was desolate as the shore they had quitted.
The preparations for the expedition were brief and simple.
Ben Zoof saddled the horses and filled his pouch with biscuits and game; water, he felt certain, could be obtained in abundance from the numerous affluents of the Shelif, which, although they had now become tributaries of the Mediterranean, still meandered through the plain. Captain Servadac mounted his horse Zephyr, and Ben Zoof simultaneously got astride his mare Galette, named after the mill of Montmartre. They galloped off in the direction of the Shelif, and were not long in discovering that the diminution in the pressure of the atmosphere had precisely the same effect upon their horses as it had had upon themselves.
Their muscular strength seemed five times as great as hitherto;their hoofs scarcely touched the ground, and they seemed transformed from ordinary quadrupeds into veritable hippogriffs.
Happily, Servadac and his orderly were fearless riders;they made no attempt to curb their steeds, but even urged them to still greater exertions. Twenty minutes sufficed to carry them over the four or five miles that intervened between the gourbi and the mouth of the Shelif; then, slackening their speed, they proceeded at a more leisurely pace to the southeast, along what had once been the right bank of the river, but which, although it still retained its former characteristics, was now the boundary of a sea, which extending farther than the limits of the horizon, must have swallowed up at least a large portion of the province of Oran. Captain Servadac knew the country well; he had at one time been engaged upon a trigo-nometrical survey of the district, and consequently had an accurate knowledge of its topography.
His idea now was to draw up a report of his investigations:
to whom that report should be delivered was a problem he had yet to solve.
During the four hours of daylight that still remained, the travelers rode about twenty-one miles from the river mouth.
To their vast surprise, they did not meet a single human being.
At nightfall they again encamped in a slight bend of the shore, at a point which on the previous evening had faced the mouth of the Mina, one of the left-hand affluents of the Shelif, but now absorbed into the newly revealed ocean. Ben Zoof made the sleeping accommodation as comfortable as the circumstances would allow; the horses were clogged and turned out to feed upon the rich pasture that clothed the shore, and the night passed without special incident.
At sunrise on the following morning, the 2nd of January, or what, according to the ordinary calendar, would have been the night of the 1st, the captain and his orderly remounted their horses, and during the six-hours' day accomplished a distance of forty-two miles.
The right bank of the river still continued to be the margin of the land, and only in one spot had its integrity been impaired.
This was about twelve miles from the Mina, and on the site of the annex or suburb of Surkelmittoo. Here a large portion of the bank had been swept away, and the hamlet, with its eight hundred inhabitants, had no doubt been swallowed up by the encroaching waters.
It seemed, therefore, more than probable that a similar fate had overtaken the larger towns beyond the Shelif.
In the evening the explorers encamped, as previously, in a nook of the shore which here abruptly terminated their new domain, not far from where they might have expected to find the important village of Memounturroy; but of this, too, there was now no trace.
"I had quite reckoned upon a supper and a bed at Orleansville to-night,"said Servadac, as, full of despondency, he surveyed the waste of water.
"Quite impossible," replied Ben Zoof, "except you had gone by a boat.
But cheer up, sir, cheer up; we will soon devise some means for getting across to Mostaganem.""If, as I hope," rejoined the captain, "we are on a peninsula, we are more likely to get to Tenes; there we shall hear the news.""Far more likely to carry the news ourselves," answered Ben Zoof, as he threw himself down for his night's rest.
