"And now," exclaimed M'Nicholl, sharpening his pencil; "in order to obtain the velocity of the Projectile when leaving the atmosphere, we have only to make a slight calculation."
The Captain, who before clerking on a Mississippi steamboat had been professor of Mathematics in an Indiana university, felt quite at home at the work. He rained figures from his pencil with a velocity that would have made Marston stare. Page after page was filled with his multiplications and divisions, while Barbican looked quietly on, and Ardan impatiently stroked his head and ears to keep down a rising head-ache.
"Well?" at last asked Barbican, seeing the Captain stop and throw a somewhat hasty glance over his work.
"Well," answered M'Nicholl slowly but confidently, "the calculation is made, I think correctly; and v, that is, the velocity of the Projectile when quitting the atmosphere, sufficient to carry it to the neutral point, should be at least ..."
"How much?" asked Barbican, eagerly.
"Should be at least 11,972 yards the first second."
"What!" cried Barbican, jumping off his seat. "How much did you say?"
"11,972 yards the first second it quits the atmosphere."
"Oh, malediction!" cried Barbican, with a gesture of terrible despair.
"What's the matter?" asked Ardan, very much surprised.
"Enough is the matter!" answered Barbican excitedly. "This velocity having been diminished by a third, our initial velocity should have been at least ..."
"17,958 yards the first second!" cried M'Nicholl, rapidly flourishing his pencil.
"But the Cambridge Observatory having declared that 12,000 yards the first second were sufficient, our Projectile started with no greater velocity!"
"Well?" asked M'Nicholl.
"Well, such a velocity will never do!"
| "How??" "How!!" |
 |
cried the Captain and Ardan in one voice. |
"We can never reach the neutral point!"
"Thunder and lightning"
"Fire and Fury!"
"We can't get even halfway!"
"Heaven and Earth!"
"Mille noms d'un boulet!" cried Ardan, wildly gesticulating.
"And we shall fall back to the Earth!"
"Oh!"
"Ah!"
They could say no more. This fearful revelation took them like a stroke of apoplexy.
Chapter V.
The Colds of Space.
How could they imagine that the Observatory men had committed such a blunder? Barbican would not believe it possible. He made the Captain go over his calculation again and again; but no flaw was to be found in it. He himself carefully examined it, figure after figure, but he could find nothing wrong. They both took up the formula and subjected it to the strongest tests; but it was invulnerable. There was no denying the fact. The Cambridge professors had undoubtedly blundered in saying that an initial velocity of 12,000 yards a second would be enough to carry them to the neutral point. A velocity of nearly 18,000 yards would be the very lowest required for such a purpose. They had simply forgotten to allow a third for friction.
The three friends kept profound silence for some time. Breakfast now was the last thing thought of. Barbican, with teeth grating, fingers clutching, and eye-brows closely contracting, gazed grimly through the window. The Captain, as a last resource, once more examined his calculations, earnestly hoping to find a figure wrong. Ardan could neither sit, stand nor lie still for a second, though he tried all three. His silence, of course, did not last long.
"Ha! ha! ha!" he laughed bitterly. "Precious scientific men! Villainous old hombogues! The whole set not worth a straw! I hope to gracious, since we must fall, that we shall drop down plumb on Cambridge Observatory, and not leave a single one of the miserable old women, called professors, alive in the premises!"
A certain expression in Ardan's angry exclamation had struck the Captain like a shot, and set his temples throbbing violently.
"Must fall!" he exclaimed, starting up suddenly. "Let us see about that! It is now seven o'clock in the morning. We must have, therefore, been at least thirty-two hours on the road, and more than half of our passage is already made. If we are going to fall at all, we must be falling now! I'm certain we're not, but, Barbican, you have to find it out!"
Barbican caught the idea like lightning, and, seizing a compass, he began through the floor window to measure the visual angle of the distant Earth. The apparent immobility of the Projectile allowed him to do this with great exactness. Then laying aside the instrument, and wiping off the thick drops of sweat that bedewed his forehead, he began jotting down some figures on a piece of paper. The Captain looked on with keen interest; he knew very well that Barbican was calculating their distance from the Earth by the apparent measure of the terrestrial diameter, and he eyed him anxiously.
Pretty soon his friends saw a color stealing into Barbican's pale face, and a triumphant light glittering in his eye.
"No, my brave boys!" he exclaimed at last throwing down his pencil, "we're not falling! Far from it, we are at present more than 150 thousand miles from the Earth!"
| "Hurrah!" "Bravo!" |
|
cried M'Nicholl and Ardan, in a breath. |
"We have passed the point where we should have stopped if we had had no more initial velocity than the Cambridge men allowed us!"
"Hurrah! hurrah!"
"Bravo, Bravissimo!"
"And we're still going up!"
"Glory, glory, hallelujah!" sang M'Nicholl, in the highest excitement.
"Vive ce cher Barbican!" cried Ardan, bursting into French as usual whenever his feelings had the better of him.
"Of course we're marching on!" continued M'Nicholl, "and I know the reason why, too. Those 400,000 pounds of gun-cotton gave us greater initial velocity than we had expected!"
"You're right, Captain!" added Barbican; "besides, you must not forget that, by getting rid of the water, the Projectile was relieved of considerable weight!"
