If we can find out nothing else, we must at least discover where we are." "Meanwhile, sir, may we go to sleep ?" "Certainly, if you like, and if you can." Nothing loath to avail himself of his master's permission, Ben Zoof crouched down in an angle of the shore, threw his arms over his eyes, and very soon slept the sleep of the ignorant, which is often sounder than the sleep of the just.

Overwhelmed by the questions that crowded upon his brain, Captain Servadac could only wander up and down the shore.

Again and again he asked himself what the catastrophe could portend.

Had the towns of Algiers, Oran, and Mostaganem escaped the inundation?
Could he bring himself to believe that all the inhabitants, his friends, and comrades had perished; or was it not more probable that the Mediterranean had merely invaded the region of the mouth of the Shelif?
But this supposition did not in the least explain the other physical disturbances.

Another hypothesis that presented itself to his mind was that the African coast might have been suddenly transported to the equatorial zone.