Off on a Comet Book 1 Chapter 18

In which Captain Servadac returns to Gourbi Island to find it besieged by a vast and unruly flock of birds threatening the crops, and soon discovers an unexpected human population comprised of a diverse, motley group including Andalusian Spaniards and a shrewd German merchant. Amidst concerns for their survival against nature’s depredations and the coming cold, the captain endeavours to understand the shifting society on this fragment of their altered world.