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Updated: May 9, 2025
"If you only listen, you will hear," replied M'Nicholl quietly. "By careful observations, extended through a series of many years, men have been able to discover the average loss of temperature endured by the Earth in a century. Taking this as the ground work of their calculations, they have ascertained that our Earth shall become an uninhabitable planet in about " "Don't cut her life too short!
"If Petit's calculation is right," continued Barbican, "I can even form a very good idea as to our distance from the Earth." "It seems to me Barbican can do what he pleases here or elsewhere," observed Ardan to the Captain. "Let us see, Barbican," asked M'Nicholl; "where has Petit's calculation placed us?"
In a few seconds his breath came back in full blast, but the idea of talking when only deaf men were listening was so disconcerting as to leave him actually unable to get off another syllable. I am rather inclined to believe myself that not one word of Ardan's rhapsody had been ever heard by Barbican or M'Nicholl.
Besides I am by no means certain that we are still followed by the objects that we flung out of the Projectile." "Why not?" asked M'Nicholl; "we saw them all outside not long ago." "But we can't see them outside now," answered Barbican; "that may be accounted for, I know, by the darkness, but it may be also by the fact of their not being there at all.
"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!"
Besides, it may have sunk into some weak point of the surface, at the early epoch when the crust of the Earth had not acquired sufficient solidity." "Captain," said Ardan, turning with a smile to M'Nicholl; "no use in trying to catch Barby; slippery as an eel, he has an answer for everything. Still I have a theory on the subject myself, which I think it no harm to ventilate.
"First," continued Barbican: "r, the Earth's radius is, in the latitude of Florida, about 3,921 miles. d, the distance from the centre of the Earth to the centre of the Moon is 56 terrestrial radii, which the Captain calculates to be...?" "To be," cried M'Nicholl working rapidly with his pencil, "219,572 miles, the moment the Moon is in her perigee, or nearest point to the Earth."
"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.
In their anxiety regarding their own and their friend's recovery, they had never thought of asking such a question. His words recalled them at once to a full sense of their situation. "Moving? Blessed if I can tell!" said Ardan, still speaking French. "We may be lying fifty feet deep in a Florida marsh, for all I know," observed M'Nicholl.
"It might, friend Michael, but an amputation by such means is not very likely." "No? Why not?" "Because because By Jove, I can't say, because I don't know," cried Barbican with a quiet smile on his countenance. "Oh what a lot of volumes," cried Ardan, "could be made out of what we don't know!" "At present, for instance," observed M'Nicholl, "I don't know what o'clock it is."
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