“News? What do you mean?”
“From my little tartan yonder, I saw the yawl go out from the rock here on a journey, and I saw it come back, and it brought a stranger; and I thought—I thought—I thought—”
“Well, you thought—what did you think?”
“Why, that perhaps the stranger had come from the northern shores of the Mediterranean, and that I might ask him—”
He paused again, and gave a glance at the captain.
“Ask him what? Speak out, man?”
“Ask him if he brings any tidings of Europe,” Hakkabut blurted out at last.
Servadac shrugged his shoulders in contempt and turned away. Here was a man who had been resident three months in Gallia, a living witness of all the abnormal phenomena that had occurred, and yet refusing to believe that his hope of making good bargains with European traders was at an end. Surely nothing, thought the captain, will convince the old rascal now; and he moved off in disgust. The orderly, however, who had listened with much amusement, was by no means disinclined for the conversation to be continued. “Are you satisfied, old Ezekiel?” he asked.
“Isn’t it so? Am I not right? Didn’t a stranger arrive here last night?” inquired the Jew.
“Yes, quite true.”