“The more I see of him, and the more I listen to him,” replied Servadac, “the more I become convinced that his calculations are based on a solid foundation, and will prove correct to the minutest particular.” Ben Zoof here interrupted the conversation. “I have something on my mind,” he said. “Something on your mind? Out with it!” said the captain. “That telescope!” said the orderly; “it strikes me that that telescope which the old professor keeps pointed up at yonder big sun is bringing it down straight upon us.” The captain laughed heartily. “Laugh, captain, if you like; but I feel disposed to break the old telescope into atoms.” “Ben Zoof,” said Servadac, his laughter exchanged for a look of stern displeasure, “touch that telescope, and you shall swing for it!” The orderly looked astonished. “I am governor here,” said Servadac. Ben Zoof knew what his master meant, and to him his master’s wish was law. The interval between the comet and Jupiter was, by the 1st of October, reduced to 43,000,000 miles. The belts all parallel to Jupiter’s equator were very distinct in their markings. Those immediately north and south of the equator were of a dusky hue; those toward the poles were alternately dark and light; the intervening spaces of the planet’s superficies, between edge and edge, being intensely bright. The belts themselves were occasionally broken by spots, which the records of astronomy describe as varying both in form and in extent. The physiology of belts and spots alike was beyond the astronomer’s power to ascertain; and even if he should be destined once again to take his place in an astronomical congress on the earth, he would be just as incapable as ever of determining whether or no they owed their existence to the external accumulation of vapor, or to some internal agency. It would not be Professor Rosette’s lot to enlighten his brother _savants_ to any great degree as to the mysteries that are associated with this, which must ever rank as one of the most magnificent amongst the heavenly orbs. As the comet approached the critical point of its career it cannot be denied that there was an unacknowledged consciousness of alarm. Mutually reserved, though ever courteous, the count and the captain were secretly drawn together by the prospect of a common danger; and as their return to the earth appeared to them to become more and more dubious, they abandoned their views of narrow isolation, and tried to embrace the wider philosophy that acknowledges the credibility of a habitable universe. But no philosophy could be proof against the common instincts of their humanity; their hearts, their hopes, were set upon their natural home; no speculation, no science, no experience, could induce them to give up their fond and sanguine anticipation that once again they were to come in contact with the earth. “Only let us escape Jupiter,” said Lieutenant Procope, repeatedly, “and we are free from anxiety.”