"Ready?" asked Barbican of Ardan.
"Ay, ay, sir!" was Ardan"s reply, as he made sure that the electric apparatus to discharge the rockets was in perfect working order.
"Wait till I give the word," said Barbican, pulling out his chronometer.
The moment was now evidently close at hand. The objects lying around had no weight. The travellers felt their bodies to be as buoyant as a hydrogen balloon. Barbican let go his chronometer, but it kept its place as firmly in empty s.p.a.ce before his eyes as if it had been nailed to the wall!
"One o"clock!" cried Barbican in a solemn tone.
Ardan instantly touched the discharging key of the little electric battery. A dull, dead, distant report was immediately heard, communicated probably by the vibration of the Projectile to the internal air. But Ardan saw through the window a long thin flash, which vanished in a second. At the same moment, the three friends became instantaneously conscious of a slight shock experienced by the Projectile.
They looked at each other, speechless, breathless, for about as long as it would take you to count five: the silence so intense that they could easily hear the pulsation of their hearts. Ardan was the first to break it.
"Are we falling or are we not?" he asked in a loud whisper.
"We"re not!" answered M"Nicholl, also hardly speaking above his breath.
"The base of the Projectile is still turned away as far as ever from the Moon!"
Barbican, who had been looking out of the window, now turned hastily towards his companions. His face frightened them. He was deadly pale; his eyes stared, and his lips were painfully contracted.
"We _are_ falling!" he shrieked huskily.
"Towards the Moon?" exclaimed his companions.
"No!" was the terrible reply. "Towards the Earth!"
"_Sacre!_" cried Ardan, as usually letting off his excitement in French.
"Fire and fury!" cried M"Nicholl, completely startled out of his habitual _sang froid_.
"Thunder and lightning!" swore the usually serene Barbican, now completely stunned by the blow. "I had never expected this!"
Ardan was the first to recover from the deadening shock: his levity came to his relief.
"First impressions are always right," he muttered philosophically. "The moment I set eyes on the confounded thing, it reminded me of the Bastille; it is now proving its likeness to a worse place: easy enough to get into, but no redemption out of it!"
There was no longer any doubt possible on the subject. The terrible fall had begun. The Projectile had retained velocity enough not only to carry it beyond the dead point, but it was even able to completely overcome the feeble resistance offered by the rockets. It was all clear now. The same velocity that had carried the Projectile beyond the neutral point on its way to the Moon, was still swaying it on its return to the Earth.
A well known law of motion required that, in the path which it was now about to describe, _it should repa.s.s, on its return through all the points through which it had already pa.s.sed during its departure_.
No wonder that our friends were struck almost senseless when the fearful fall they were now about to encounter, flashed upon them in all its horror. They were to fall a clear distance of nearly 200 thousand miles!
To lighten or counteract such a descent, the most powerful springs, checks, rockets, screens, deadeners, even if the whole Earth were engaged in their construction--would produce no more effect than so many spiderwebs. According to a simple law in Ballistics, _the Projectile was to strike the Earth with a velocity equal to that by which it had been animated when issuing from the mouth of the Columbiad_--a velocity of at least seven miles a second!
To have even a faint idea of this enormous velocity, let us make a little comparison. A body falling from the summit of a steeple a hundred and fifty feet high, dashes against the pavement with a velocity of fifty five miles an hour. Falling from the summit of St. Peter"s, it strikes the earth at the rate of 300 miles an hour, or five times quicker than the rapidest express train. Falling from the neutral point, the Projectile should strike the Earth with a velocity of more than 25,000 miles an hour!
"We are lost!" said M"Nicholl gloomily, his philosophy yielding to despair.
"One consolation, boys!" cried Ardan, genial to the last. "We shall die together!"
"If we die," said Barbican calmly, but with a kind of suppressed enthusiasm, "it will be only to remove to a more extended sphere of our investigations. In the other world, we can pursue our inquiries under far more favorable auspices. There the wonders of our great Creator, clothed in brighter light, shall be brought within a shorter range. We shall require no machine, nor projectile, nor material contrivance of any kind to be enabled to contemplate them in all their grandeur and to appreciate them fully and intelligently. Our souls, enlightened by the emanations of the Eternal Wisdom, shall revel forever in the blessed rays of Eternal Knowledge!"
"A grand view to take of it, dear friend Barbican;" replied Ardan, "and a consoling one too. The privilege of roaming at will through G.o.d"s great universe should make ample amends for missing the Moon!"
M"Nicholl fixed his eyes on Barbican admiringly, feebly muttering with hardly moving lips:
"Grit to the marrow! Grit to the marrow!"
Barbican, head bowed in reverence, arms folded across his breast, meekly and uncomplainingly uttered with sublime resignation:
"Thy will be done!"
"Amen!" answered his companions, in a loud and fervent whisper.
They were soon falling through the boundless regions of s.p.a.ce with inconceivable rapidity!
CHAPTER XX.
OFF THE PACIFIC COAST.
"Well, Lieutenant, how goes the sounding?"
"Pretty lively, Captain; we"re nearly through;" replied the Lieutenant.
"But it"s a tremendous depth so near land. We can"t be more than 250 miles from the California coast."
"The depression certainly is far deeper than I had expected," observed Captain Bloomsbury. "We have probably lit on a submarine valley channelled out by the j.a.panese Current."
"The j.a.panese Current, Captain?"
"Certainly; that branch of it which breaks on the western sh.o.r.es of North America and then flows southeast towards the Isthmus of Panama."
"That may account for it, Captain," replied young Brownson; "at least, I hope it does, for then we may expect the valley to get shallower as we leave the land. So far, there"s no sign of a Telegraphic Plateau in this quarter of the globe."
"Probably not, Brownson. How is the line now?"
"We have paid out 3500 fathoms already, Captain, but, judging from the rate the reel goes at, we are still some distance from bottom."
As he spoke, he pointed to a tall derrick temporarily rigged up at the stern of the vessel for the purpose of working the sounding apparatus, and surrounded by a group of busy men. Through a block pulley strongly lashed to the derrick, a stout cord of the best Italian hemp, wound off a large reel placed amidships, was now running rapidly and with a slight whirring noise.
"I hope it"s not the "cup-lead" you are using, Brownson?" said the Captain, after a few minutes observation.
"Oh no, Captain, certainly not," replied the Lieutenant. "It"s only Brooke"s apparatus that is of any use in such depths."
"Clever fellow that Brooke," observed the Captain; "served with him under Maury. His detachment of the weight is really the starting point for every new improvement in sounding gear. The English, the French, and even our own, are nothing but modifications of that fundamental principle. Exceedingly clever fellow!"