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