"He"s welcome to any number of terms he pleases!" vociferated M"Nicholl.
"Hurrah for President Barbican of the Lunatic--I mean of the Lunar Republic!" screamed Ardan.
"Long may he wave, and may his shadow never grow less!" shouted Captain M"Nicholl, his eyes almost out of their sockets.
Then with voices reminding you of sand fiercely blown against the window panes, the _President_ and the _Senate_ chanted the immortal _Yankee Doodle_, whilst the _House_ delivered itself of the _Ma.r.s.eillaise_, in a style which even the wildest Jacobins in Robespierre"s day could hardly have surpa.s.sed.
But long before either song was ended, all three broke out into a dance, wild, insensate, furious, delirious, paroxysmatical. No Orphic festivals on Mount Cithaeron ever raged more wildly. No Bacchic revels on Mount Parna.s.sus were ever more corybantic. Diana, demented by the maddening example, joined in the orgie, howling and barking frantically in her turn, and wildly jumping as high as the ceiling of the Projectile. Then came new accessions to the infernal din. Wings suddenly began to flutter, c.o.c.ks to crow, hens to cluck; and five or six chickens, managing to escape out of their coop, flew backwards and forwards blindly, with frightened screams, dashing against each other and against the walls of the Projectile, and altogether getting up as demoniacal a hullabaloo as could be made by ten thousand bats that you suddenly disturbed in a cavern where they had slept through the winter.
Then the three companions, no longer able to withstand the overpowering influence of the mysterious force that mastered them, intoxicated, more than drunk, burned by the air that scorched their organs of respiration, dropped at last, and lay flat, motionless, senseless as dabs of clay, on the floor of the Projectile.
[Ill.u.s.tration: A DEMONIACAL HULLABALOO.]
CHAPTER VIII.
THE NEUTRAL POINT.
What had taken place? Whence proceeded this strange intoxication whose consequences might have proved so disastrous? A little forgetfulness on Ardan"s part had done the whole mischief, but fortunately M"Nicholl was able to remedy it in time.
After a regular fainting spell several minutes long, the Captain was the first man to return to consciousness and the full recovery of his intellectual faculties. His first feelings were far from pleasant. His stomach gnawed him as if he had not eaten for a week, though he had taken breakfast only a few hours before; his eyes were dim, his brain throbbing, and his limbs shaking. In short, he presented every symptom usually seen in a man dying of starvation. Picking himself up with much care and difficulty, he roared out to Ardan for something to eat. Seeing that the Frenchman was unable or unwilling to respond, he concluded to help himself, by beginning first of all to prepare a little tea. To do this, fire was necessary; so, to light his lamp, he struck a match.
But what was his surprise at seeing the sulphur tip of the match blazing with a light so bright and dazzling that his eyes could hardly bear it!
Touching it to the gas burner, a stream of light flashed forth equal in its intensity to the flame of an electric lamp. Then he understood it all in an instant. The dazzling glare, his maddened brain, his gnawing stomach--all were now clear as the noon-day Sun.
"The oxygen!" he cried, and, suddenly stooping down and examining the tap of the air apparatus, he saw that it had been only half turned off.
Consequently the air was gradually getting more and more impregnated with this powerful gas, colorless, odorless, tasteless, infinitely precious, but, unless when strongly diluted with nitrogen, capable of producing fatal disorders in the human system. Ardan, startled by M"Nicholl"s question about the means of returning from the Moon, had turned the c.o.c.k only half off.
The Captain instantly stopped the escape of the oxygen, but not one moment too soon. It had completely saturated the atmosphere. A few minutes more and it would have killed the travellers, not like carbonic acid, by smothering them, but by burning them up, as a strong draught burns up the coals in a stove.
[Ill.u.s.tration: "THE OXYGEN!" HE CRIED.]
It took nearly an hour for the air to become pure enough to allow the lungs their natural play. Slowly and by degrees, the travellers recovered from their intoxication; they had actually to sleep off the fumes of the oxygen as a drunkard has to sleep off the effects of his brandy. When Ardan learned that he was responsible for the whole trouble, do you think the information disconcerted him? Not a bit of it.
On the contrary, he was rather proud of having done something startling, to break the monotony of the journey; and to put a little life, as he said, into old Barbican and the grim Captain, so as to get a little fun out of such grave philosophers.
After laughing heartily at the comical figure cut by his two friends capering like crazy students at the _Closerie des Lilas_, he went on moralizing on the incident:
"For my part, I"m not a bit sorry for having partaken of this fuddling gas. It gives me an idea, dear boys. Would it not be worth some enterprising fellow"s while to establish a sanatorium provided with oxygen chambers, where people of a debilitated state of health could enjoy a few hours of intensely active existence! There"s money in it, as you Americans say. Just suppose b.a.l.l.s or parties given in halls where the air would be provided with an extra supply of this enrapturing gas!
Or, theatres where the atmosphere would be maintained in a highly oxygenated condition. What pa.s.sion, what fire in the actors! What enthusiasm in the spectators! And, carrying the idea a little further, if, instead of an a.s.sembly or an audience, we should oxygenize towns, cities, a whole country--what activity would be infused into the whole people! What new life would electrify a stagnant community! Out of an old used-up nation we could perhaps make a bran-new one, and, for my part, I know more than one state in old Europe where this oxygen experiment might be attended with a decided advantage, or where, at all events, it could do no harm!"
The Frenchman spoke so glibly and gesticulated so earnestly that M"Nicholl once more gravely examined the stop-c.o.c.k; but Barbican damped his enthusiasm by a single observation.
"Friend Michael," said he, "your new and interesting idea we shall discuss at a more favorable opportunity. At present we want to know where all these c.o.c.ks and hens have come from."
"These c.o.c.ks and hens?"
"Yes."
Ardan threw a glance of comical bewilderment on half a dozen or so of splendid barn-yard fowls that were now beginning to recover from the effects of the oxygen. For an instant he could not utter a word; then, shrugging his shoulders, he muttered in a low voice:
"Catastrophe prematurely exploded!"
"What are you going to do with these chickens?" persisted Barbican.
"Acclimatize them in the Moon, by Jove! what else?" was the ready reply.
"Why conceal them then?"
"A hoax, a poor hoax, dear President, which proves a miserable failure!
I intended to let them loose on the Lunar Continent at the first favorable opportunity. I often had a good laugh to myself, thinking of your astonishment and the Captain"s at seeing a lot of American poultry scratching for worms on a Lunar dunghill!"
"Ah! wag, jester, incorrigible _farceur_!" cried Barbican with a smile; "you want no nitrous oxide to put a bee in your bonnet! He is always as bad as you and I were for a short time, M"Nicholl, under the laughing gas! He"s never had a sensible moment in his life!"
"I can"t say the same of you," replied Ardan; "you had at least one sensible moment in all your lives, and that was about an hour ago!"
Their incessant chattering did not prevent the friends from at once repairing the disorder of the interior of the Projectile. c.o.c.ks and hens were put back in their cages. But while doing so, the friends were astonished to find that the birds, though good sized creatures, and now pretty fat and plump, hardly felt heavier in their hands than if they had been so many sparrows. This drew their interested attention to a new phenomenon.
From the moment they had left the Earth, their own weight, and that of the Projectile and the objects therein contained, had been undergoing a progressive diminution. They might never be able to ascertain this fact with regard to the Projectile, but the moment was now rapidly approaching when the loss of weight would become perfectly sensible, both regarding themselves and the tools and instruments surrounding them. Of course, it is quite clear, that this decrease could not be indicated by an ordinary scales, as the weight to balance the object would have lost precisely as much as the object itself. But a spring balance, for instance, in which the tension of the coil is independent of attraction, would have readily given the exact equivalent of the loss.
Attraction or weight, according to Newton"s well known law, acting in direct proportion to the ma.s.s of the attracting body and in inverse proportion to the square of the distance, this consequence clearly follows: Had the Earth been alone in s.p.a.ce, or had the other heavenly bodies been suddenly annihilated, the further from the Earth the Projectile would be, the less weight it would have. However, it would never _entirely_ lose its weight, as the terrestrial attraction would have always made itself felt at no matter what distance. But as the Earth is not the only celestial body possessing attraction, it is evident that there may be a point in s.p.a.ce where the respective attractions may be entirely annihilated by mutual counteraction. Of this phenomenon the present instance was a case in point. In a short time, the Projectile and its contents would for a few moments be absolutely and completely deprived of all weight whatsoever.
The path described by the Projectile was evidently a line from the Earth to the Moon averaging somewhat less than 240,000 miles in length.
According as the distance between the Projectile and the Earth was increasing, the terrestrial attraction was diminishing in the ratio of the square of the distance, and the lunar attraction was augmenting in the same proportion.
As before observed, the point was not now far off where, the two attractions counteracting each other, the bullet would actually weigh nothing at all. If the ma.s.ses of the Earth and the Moon had been equal, this should evidently be found half way between the two bodies. But by making allowance for the difference of the respective ma.s.ses, it was easy to calculate that this point would be situated at the 9/10 of the total distance, or, in round numbers, at something less than 216,000 miles from the Earth.
At this point, a body that possessed no energy or principle of movement within itself, would remain forever, relatively motionless, suspended like Mahomet"s coffin, being equally attracted by the two orbs and nothing impelling it in one direction rather than in the other.
Now the Projectile at this moment was nearing this point; if it reached it, what would be the consequence?
To this question three answers presented themselves, all possible under the circ.u.mstances, but very different in their results.
1. Suppose the Projectile to possess velocity enough to pa.s.s the neutral point. In such case, it would undoubtedly proceed onward to the Moon, being drawn thither by Lunar attraction.
2. Suppose it lacked the requisite velocity for reaching the neutral point. In such a case it would just as certainly fall back to the Earth, in obedience to the law of Terrestrial attraction.
3. Suppose it to be animated by just sufficient velocity to reach the neutral point, but not to pa.s.s it. In that case, the Projectile would remain forever in the same spot, perfectly motionless as far as regards the Earth and the Moon, though of course following them both in their annual orbits round the Sun.
Such was now the state of things, which Barbican tried to explain to his friends, who, it need hardly be said, listened to his remarks with the most intense interest. How were they to know, they asked him, the precise instant at which the Projectile would reach the neutral point?
That would be an easy matter, he a.s.sured them. It would be at the very moment when both themselves and all the other objects contained in the Projectile would be completely free from every operation of the law of gravity; in other words, when everything would cease to have weight.
This gradual diminution of the action of gravity, the travellers had been for some time noticing, but they had not yet witnessed its total cessation. But that very morning, about an hour before noon, as the Captain was making some little experiment in Chemistry, he happened by accident to overturn a gla.s.s full of water. What was his surprise at seeing that neither the gla.s.s nor the water fell to the floor! Both remained suspended in the air almost completely motionless.
"The prettiest experiment I ever saw!" cried Ardan; "let us have more of it!"