"Ben Zoof, you idiot! What are you about?
You will break your back!" And well might he be alarmed, for Ben Zoof had sprung to a height of forty feet into the air.

Fearful of the consequences that would attend the descent of his servant to _terra firma_, Servadac bounded forwards, to be on the other side of the ditch in time to break his fall.

But the muscular effort that he made carried him in his turn to an altitude of thirty feet; in his ascent he passed Ben Zoof, who had already commenced his downward course; and then, obedient to the laws of gravitation, he descended with increasing rapidity, and alighted upon the earth without experiencing a shock greater than if he had merely made a bound of four or five feet high.
Ben Zoof burst into a roar of laughter.

"Bravo!" he said, "we should make a good pair of clowns." But the captain was inclined to take a more serious view of the matter.
For a few seconds he stood lost in thought, then said solemnly, "Ben Zoof, I must be dreaming.

Pinch me hard; I must be either asleep or mad." "It is very certain that something has happened to us," said Ben Zoof.
"I have occasionally dreamed that I was a swallow flying over the Montmartre, but I never experienced anything of this kind before; it must be peculiar to the coast of Algeria." Servadac was stupefied; he felt instinctively that he was not dreaming, and yet was powerless to solve the mystery.