scientist I'm going to turn out, if only left long enough at your feet, illustrious maestro!" cried Ardan, with effusion. "Only figure it to yourselves, boys; before the Captain's lucid explanations, I fully expected to hear something about the high curves and the low curves in the back of an Ancient Thomas! Oh, Michael, Michael, why didn't you know the Captain earlier?"
But the Captain was now too deeply interested in a hot discussion with Barbican to notice that the Frenchman was only funning him. Which of the two curves had been the one most probably taken by the Projectile? Barbican maintained it was the parabolic; M'Nicholl insisted that it was the hyperbolic. Their tempers were not improved by the severe cold, and both became rather excited in the dispute. They drew so many lines on the table, and crossed them so often with others, that nothing was left at last but a great blot. They covered bits of paper with x's and y's, which they read out like so many classic passages, shouting them, declaiming them, drawing attention to the strong points by gesticulation so forcible and voice so loud that neither of the disputants could hear a word that the other said. Possibly the very great difference in temperature between the external air in contact with their skin and the blood coursing through their veins, had given rise to magnetic currents as potential in their effects as a superabundant supply of oxygen. At all events, the language they soon began to employ in the enforcement of their arguments fairly made the Frenchman's hair stand on end.
"You probably forget the important difference between a directrix and an axis," hotly observed Barbican.
"I know what an abscissa is, any how!" cried the Captain. "Can you say as much?"
"Did you ever understand what is meant by a double ordinate?" asked Barbican, trying to keep cool.
"More than you ever did about a transverse and a conjugate!" replied the Captain, with much asperity.
"Any one not convinced at a glance that this eccentricity is equal to unity, must be blind as a bat!" exclaimed Barbican, fast losing his ordinary urbanity.
"Less than unity, you mean! If you want spectacles, here are mine!" shouted the Captain, angrily tearing them off and offering them to his adversary.
"Dear boys!" interposed Ardan—
—"The eccentricity is equal to unity!" cried Barbican.
—"The eccentricity is less than unity!" screamed M'Nicholl.
"Talking of eccentricity—" put in Ardan.
—"Therefore it's a parabola, and must be!" cried Barbican, triumphantly.
—"Therefore it's hyperbola and nothing shorter!" was the Captain's quite as confident reply.
"For gracious sake!—" resumed Ardan.
"Then produce your asymptote!" exclaimed Barbican, with an angry sneer.
"Let us see the symmetrical point!" roared the Captain, quite savagely.
"Dear boys! old fellows!—" cried Ardan, as loud as his lungs would let him.
"It's useless to argue with a Mississippi steamboat Captain," ejaculated Barbican; "he never gives in till he blows up!"
"Never try to convince a Yankee schoolmaster," replied M'Nicholl; "he has one book by heart and don't believe in any other!"
"Here, friend Michael, get me a cord, won't you? It's the only way to convince him!" cried Barbican, hastily turning to the Frenchman.
"Hand me over that ruler, Ardan!" yelled the Captain. "The heavy one! It's the only way now left to bring him to reason!"
"Look here, Barbican and M'Nicholl!" cried Ardan, at last making himself heard, and keeping a tight hold both on the cord and the ruler. "This thing has gone far enough! Come. Stop your talk, and answer me a few questions. What do you want of this cord, Barbican?"
"To describe a parabolic curve!"
"And what are you going to do with the ruler, M'Nicholl!"
"To help draw a true hyperbola!"
"Promise me, Barbican, that you're not going to lasso the Captain!"
"Lasso the Captain! Ha! ha! ha!"
"You promise, M'Nicholl, that you're not going to brain the President!"
"I brain the President! Ho! ho! ho!"
"I want merely to convince him that it is a parabola!"
"I only want to make it clear as day that it is hyperbola!"
"Does it make any real difference whether it is one or the other?" yelled Ardan.
"The greatest possible difference—in the Eye of Science."
"A radical and incontrovertible difference—in the Eye of Science!"
"Oh! Hang the Eye of Science—will either curve take us to the Moon?"
"No!"
"Will either take us back to the Earth?"
"No!"
"Will either take us anywhere that you know of?"
"No!"
"Why not?"
"Because they are both open curves, and therefore can never end!"
"Is it of the slightest possible importance which of the two curves controls the Projectile?"
"Not the slightest—except in the Eye of Science!"
"Then let the Eye of Science and her parabolas and hyperbolas, and conjugates, and asymptotes, and the rest of the confounded nonsensical farrago, all go to pot! What's the use of bothering your heads about them here! Have you not enough to trouble you otherwise? A nice pair of scientists you are? 'Stanislow' scientists, probably. Do real scientists lose their tempers for a trifle? Am I ever to see my ideal of a true scientific man in the flesh? Barbican came very near realizing my idea perfectly; but I see that Science just has as little effect as Culture in driving the Old Adam out of us! The idea of the only simpleton in the lot having to lecture the others on propriety of deportment! I thought they were going to tear each other's eyes out! Ha! Ha! Ha! It's impayable! Give me that cord, Michael! Hand me the heavy ruler, Ardan! It's the only way to bring him to reason! Ho! Ho! Ho! It's too good! I shall never get over it!" and he laughed till his sides ached and his cheeks streamed.
His laughter was so contagious, and his merriment so genuine, that there was really no resisting it, and the next few minutes witnessed nothing but laughing, and handshaking and rib-punching in the Projectile—though Heaven knows there was very little for the poor fellows to be merry about. As they could neither reach the Moon nor return to the Earth, what was to befall them? The immediate outlook was the very reverse of exhilarating. If they did not die of hunger, if they did not die of thirst, the reason would simply be that, in a few days, as soon as their gas was exhausted, they would die for want of air, unless indeed the icy cold had killed them beforehand!
By this time, in fact, the temperature had become so
