A Night Of Fifteen Days
:
All Around The Moon
The Projectile being not quite 30 miles from the Moon's north pole when
the startling phenomenon, recorded in our last chapter, took place, a
few seconds were quite sufficient to launch it at once from the
brightest day into the unknown realms of night. The transition was so
abrupt, so unexpected, without the slightest shading off, from dazzling
effulgence to Cimmerian gloom, that the Moon seemed to have been
suddenly
xtinguished like a lamp when the gas is turned off.
"Where's the Moon?" cried Ardan in amazement.
"It appears as if she had been wiped out of creation!" cried M'Nicholl.
Barbican said nothing, but observed carefully. Not a particle, however,
could he see of the disc that had glittered so resplendently before his
eyes a few moments ago. Not a shadow, not a gleam, not the slightest
vestige could he trace of its existence. The darkness being profound,
the dazzling splendor of the stars only gave a deeper blackness to the
pitchy sky. No wonder. The travellers found themselves now in a night
that had plenty of time not only to become black itself, but to steep
everything connected with it in palpable blackness. This was the night
354-1/4 hours long, during which the invisible face of the Moon is
turned away from the Sun. In this black darkness the Projectile now
fully participated. Having plunged into the Moon's shadow, it was as
effectually cut off from the action of the solar rays as was every point
on the invisible lunar surface itself.
The travellers being no longer able to see each other, it was proposed
to light the gas, though such an unexpected demand on a commodity at
once so scarce and so valuable was certainly disquieting. The gas, it
will be remembered, had been intended for heating alone, not
illumination, of which both Sun and Moon had promised a never ending
supply. But here both Sun and Moon, in a single instant vanished from
before their eyes and left them in Stygian darkness.
"It's all the Sun's fault!" cried Ardan, angrily trying to throw the
blame on something, and, like every angry man in such circumstances,
bound to be rather nonsensical.
"Put the saddle on the right horse, Ardan," said M'Nicholl
patronizingly, always delighted at an opportunity of counting a point
off the Frenchman. "You mean it's all the Moon's fault, don't you, in
setting herself like a screen between us and the Sun?"
"No, I don't!" cried Ardan, not at all soothed by his friend's
patronizing tone, and sticking like a man to his first assertion right
or wrong. "I know what I say! It will be all the Sun's fault if we use
up our gas!"
"Nonsense!" said M'Nicholl. "It's the Moon, who by her interposition has
cut off the Sun's light."
"The Sun had no business to allow it to be cut off," said Ardan, still
angry and therefore decidedly loose in his assertions.
Before M'Nicholl could reply, Barbican interposed, and his even voice
was soon heard pouring balm on the troubled waters.
"Dear friends," he observed, "a little reflection on either side would
convince you that our present situation is neither the Moon's fault nor
the Sun's fault. If anything is to be blamed for it, it is our
Projectile which, instead of rigidly following its allotted course, has
awkwardly contrived to deviate from it. However, strict justice must
acquit even the Projectile. It only obeyed a great law of nature in
shifting its course as soon as it came within the sphere of that
inopportune bolide's influence."
"All right!" said Ardan, as usual in the best of humor after Barbican
had laid down the law. "I have no doubt it is exactly as you say; and,
now that all is settled, suppose we take breakfast. After such a hard
night spent in work, a little refreshment would not be out of place!"
Such a proposition being too reasonable even for M'Nicholl to oppose,
Ardan turned on the gas, and had everything ready for the meal in a few
minutes. But, this time, breakfast was consumed in absolute silence. No
toasts were offered, no hurrahs were uttered. A painful uneasiness had
seized the hearts of the daring travellers. The darkness into which
they were so suddenly plunged, told decidedly on their spirits. They
felt almost as if they had been suddenly deprived of their sight. That
thick, dismal savage blackness, which Victor Hugo's pen is so fond of
occasionally revelling in, surrounded them on all sides and crushed them
like an iron shroud.
It was felt worse than ever when, breakfast being over, Ardan carefully
turned off the gas, and everything within the Projectile was as dark as
without. However, though they could not see each other's faces, they
could hear each other's voices, and therefore they soon began to talk.
The most natural subject of conversation was this terrible night 354
hours long, which the laws of nature have imposed on the Lunar
inhabitants. Barbican undertook to give his friends some explanation
regarding the cause of the startling phenomenon, and the consequences
resulting from it.
"Yes, startling is the word for it," observed Barbican, replying to a
remark of Ardan's; "and still more so when we reflect that not only are
both lunar hemispheres deprived, by turns, of sun light for nearly 15
days, but that also the particular hemisphere over which we are at this
moment floating is all that long night completely deprived of
earth-light. In other words, it is only one side of the Moon's disc that
ever receives any light from the Earth. From nearly every portion of one
side of the Moon, the Earth is always as completely absent as the Sun is
from us at midnight. Suppose an analogous case existed on the Earth;
suppose, for instance, that neither in Europe, Asia or North America
was the Moon ever visible--that, in fact, it was to be seen only at our
antipodes. With what astonishment should we contemplate her for the
first time on our arrival in Australia or New Zealand!"
"Every man of us would pack off to Australia to see her!" cried Ardan.
"Yes," said M'Nicholl sententiously; "for a visit to the South Sea a
Turk would willingly forego Mecca; and a Bostonian would prefer Sidney
even to Paris."
"Well," resumed Barbican, "this interesting marvel is reserved for the
Selenite that inhabits the side of the Moon which is always turned away
from our globe."
"And which," added the Captain, "we should have had the unspeakable
satisfaction of contemplating if we had only arrived at the period when
the Sun and the Earth are not at the same side of the Moon--that is, 15
days sooner or later than now."
"For my part, however," continued Barbican, not heeding these
interruptions, "I must confess that, notwithstanding the magnificent
splendor of the spectacle when viewed for the first time by the Selenite
who inhabits the dark side of the Moon, I should prefer to be a resident
on the illuminated side. The former, when his long, blazing, roasting,
dazzling day is over, has a night 354 hours long, whose darkness, like
that, just now surrounding us, is ever unrelieved save by the cold
cheerless rays of the stars. But the latter has hardly seen his fiery
sun sinking on one horizon when he beholds rising on the opposite one an
orb, milder, paler, and colder indeed than the Sun, but fully as large
as thirteen of our full Moons, and therefore shedding thirteen times as
much light. This would be our Earth. It would pass through all its
phases too, exactly like our Satellite. The Selenites would have their
New Earth, Full Earth, and Last Quarter. At midnight, grandly
illuminated, it would shine with the greatest glory. But that is almost
as much as can be said for it. Its futile heat would but poorly
compensate for its superior radiance. All the calorie accumulated in the
lunar soil during the 354 hours day would have by this time radiated
completely into space. An intensity of cold would prevail, in comparison
to which a Greenland winter is tropical. The temperature of interstellar
space, 250 deg. below zero, would be reached. Our Selenite, heartily tired
of the cold pale Earth, would gladly see her sink towards the horizon,
waning as she sank, till at last she appeared no more than half full.
Then suddenly a faint rim of the solar orb reveals itself on the edge of
the opposite sky. Slowly, more than 14 times more slowly than with us,
does the Sun lift himself above the lunar horizon. In half an hour, only
half his disc is revealed, but that is more than enough to flood the
lunar landscape with a dazzling intensity of light, of which we have no
counterpart on Earth. No atmosphere refracts it, no hazy screen softens
it, no enveloping vapor absorbs it, no obstructing medium colors it. It
breaks on the eye, harsh, white, dazzling, blinding, like the electric
light seen a few yards off. As the hours wear away, the more blasting
becomes the glare; and the higher he rises in the black sky, but slowly,
slowly. It takes him seven of our days to reach the meridian. By that
time the heat has increased from an arctic temperature to double the
boiling water point, from 250 deg. below zero to 500 deg. above it, or the point
at which tin melts. Subjected to these extremes, the glassy rocks crack,
shiver and crumble away; enormous land slides occur; peaks topple over;
and tons of debris, crashing down the mountains, are swallowed up
forever in the yawing chasms of the bottomless craters."
"Bravo!" cried Ardan, clapping his hands softly: "our President is
sublime! He reminds me of the overture of Guillaume Tell!"
"Souvenir de Marston!" growled M'Nicholl.
"These phenomena," continued Barbican, heedless of interruption and his
voice betraying a slight glow of excitement, "these phenomena going on
without interruption from month to month, from year to year, from age to
age, from eon to eon, have finally convinced me that--what?" he
asked his hearers, interrupting himself suddenly.
--"That the existence at the present time--" answered M'Nicholl.
--"Of either animal or vegetable life--" interrupted Ardan.
--"In the Moon is hardly possible!" cried both in one voice.
"Besides?" asked Barbican: "even if there is any life--?"
--"That to live on the dark side would be much more inconvenient than on
the light side!" cried M'Nicholl promptly.
--"That there is no choice between them!" cried Ardan just as ready.
"For my part, I should think a residence on Mt. Erebus or in Grinnell
Land a terrestrial paradise in comparison to either. The Earth shine
might illuminate the light side of the Moon a little during the long
night, but for any practical advantage towards heat or life, it would be
perfectly useless!"
"But there is another serious difference between the two sides," said
Barbican, "in addition to those enumerated. The dark side is actually
more troubled with excessive variations of temperature than the light
one."
"That assertion of our worthy President," interrupted Ardan, "with all
possible respect for his superior knowledge, I am disposed to question."
"It's as clear as day!" said Barbican.
"As clear as mud, you mean, Mr. President;" interrupted Ardan, "the
temperature of the light side is excited by two objects at the same
time, the Earth and the Sun, whereas--"
--"I beg your pardon, Ardan--" said Barbican.
--"Granted, dear boy--granted with the utmost pleasure!" interrupted the
Frenchman.
"I shall probably have to direct my observations altogether to you,
Captain," continued Barbican; "friend Michael interrupts me so often
that I'm afraid he can hardly understand my remarks."
"I always admired your candor, Barbican," said Ardan; "it's a noble
quality, a grand quality!"
"Don't mention it," replied Barbican, turning towards M'Nicholl, still
in the dark, and addressing him exclusively; "You see, my dear Captain,
the period at which the Moon's invisible side receives at once its light
and heat is exactly the period of her conjunction, that is to say,
when she is lying between the Earth and the Sun. In comparison therefore
with the place which she had occupied at her opposition, or when her
visible side was fully illuminated, she is nearer to the Sun by double
her distance from the Earth, or nearly 480 thousand miles. Therefore, my
dear Captain, you can see how when the invisible side of the Moon is
turned towards the Sun, she is nearly half a million of miles nearer to
him than she had been before. Therefore, her heat should be so much the
greater."
"I see it at a glance," said the Captain.
"Whereas--" continued Barbican.
"One moment!" cried Ardan.
"Another interruption!" exclaimed Barbican; "What is the meaning of it,
Sir?"
"I ask my honorable friend the privilege of the floor for one moment,"
cried Ardan.
"What for?"
"To continue the explanation."
"Why so?"
"To show that I can understand as well as interrupt!"
"You have the floor!" exclaimed Barbican, in a voice no longer showing
any traces of ill humor.
"I expected no less from the honorable gentleman's well known courtesy,"
replied Ardan. Then changing his manner and imitating to the life
Barbican's voice, articulation, and gestures, he continued: "Whereas,
you see, my dear Captain, the period at which the Moon's visible side
receives at once its light and heat, is exactly the period of her
opposition, that is to say, when she is lying on one side of the Earth
and the Sun at the other. In comparison therefore with the point which
she had occupied in conjunction, or when her invisible side was fully
illuminated, she is farther from the Sun by double her distance from the
Earth, or nearly 480,000 miles. Therefore, my dear Captain, you can
readily see how when the Moon's invisible side is turned from the Sun,
she is nearly half a million miles further from him than she had been
before. Therefore her heat should be so much the less."
"Well done, friend Ardan!" cried Barbican, clapping his hands with
pleasure. "Yes, Captain, he understood it as well as either of us the
whole time. Intelligence, not indifference, caused him to interrupt.
Wonderful fellow!"
"That's the kind of a man I am!" replied Ardan, not without some degree
of complacency. Then he added simply: "Barbican, my friend, if I
understand your explanations so readily, attribute it all to their
astonishing lucidity. If I have any faculity, it is that of being able
to scent common sense at the first glimmer. Your sentences are so
steeped in it that I catch their full meaning long before you end
them--hence my apparent inattention. But we're not yet done with the
visible face of the Moon: it seems to me you have not yet enumerated all
the advantages in which it surpasses the other side."
"Another of these advantages," continued Barbican, "is that it is from
the visible side alone that eclipses of the Sun can be seen. This is
self-evident, the interposition of the Earth being possible only between
this visible face and the Sun. Furthermore, such eclipses of the Sun
would be of a far more imposing character than anything of the kind to
be witnessed from our Earth. This is chiefly for two reasons: first,
when we, terrestrians, see the Sun eclipsed, we notice that, the discs
of the two orbs being of about the same apparent size, one cannot hide
the other except for a short time; second, as the two bodies are moving
in opposite directions, the total duration of the eclipse, even under
the most favorable circumstances, can't last longer than 7 minutes.
Whereas to a Selenite who sees the Earth eclipse the Sun, not only does
the Earth's disc appear four times larger than the Sun's, but also, as
his day is 14 times longer than ours, the two heavenly bodies must
remain several hours in contact. Besides, notwithstanding the apparent
superiority of the Earth's disc, the refracting power of the atmosphere
will never allow the Sun to be eclipsed altogether. Even when completely
screened by the Earth, he would form a beautiful circle around her of
yellow, red, and crimson light, in which she would appear to float like
a vast sphere of jet in a glowing sea of gold, rubies, sparkling
carbuncles and garnets."
"It seems to me," said M'Nicholl, "that, taking everything into
consideration, the invisible side has been rather shabbily treated."
"I know I should not stay there very long," said Ardan; "the desire of
seeing such a splendid sight as that eclipse would be enough to bring me
to the visible side as soon as possible."
"Yes, I have no doubt of that, friend Michael," pursued Barbican; "but
to see the eclipse it would not be necessary to quit the dark hemisphere
altogether. You are, of course, aware that in consequence of her
librations, or noddings, or wobblings, the Moon presents to the eyes of
the Earth a little more than the exact half of her disc. She has two
motions, one on her path around the Earth, and the other a shifting
around on her own axis by which she endeavors to keep the same side
always turned towards our sphere. This she cannot always do, as while
one motion, the latter, is strictly uniform, the other being eccentric,
sometimes accelerating her and sometimes retarding, she has not time to
shift herself around completely and with perfect correspondence of
movement. At her perigee, for instance, she moves forward quicker than
she can shift, so that we detect a portion of her western border before
she has time to conceal it. Similarly, at her apogee, when her rate of
motion is comparatively slow, she shifts a little too quickly for her
velocity, and therefore cannot help revealing a certain portion of her
eastern border. She shows altogether about 8 degrees of the dark side,
about 4 at the east and 4 at the west, so that, out of her 360 degrees,
about 188, in other words, a little more than 57 per cent., about 4/7 of
the entire surface, becomes visible to human eyes. Consequently a
Selenite could catch an occasional glimpse of our Earth, without
altogether quitting the dark side."
"No matter for that!" cried Ardan; "if we ever become Selenites we must
inhabit the visible side. My weak point is light, and that I must have
when it can be got."
"Unless, as perhaps in this case, you might be paying too dear for it,"
observed M'Nicholl. "How would you like to pay for your light by the
loss of the atmosphere, which, according to some philosophers, is piled
away on the dark side?"
"Ah! In that case I should consider a little before committing myself,"
replied Ardan, "I should like to hear your opinion regarding such a
notion, Barbican. Hey! Do your hear? Have astronomers any valid reasons
for supposing the atmosphere to have fled to the dark side of the Moon?"
"Defer that question till some other time, Ardan," whispered M'Nicholl;
"Barbican is just now thinking out something that interests him far more
deeply than any empty speculation of astronomers. If you are near the
window, look out through it towards the Moon. Can you see anything?"
"I can feel the window with my hand; but for all I can see, I might as
well be over head and ears in a hogshead of ink."
The two friends kept up a desultory conversation, but Barbican did not
hear them. One fact, in particular, troubled him, and he sought in vain
to account for it. Having come so near the Moon--about 30 miles--why had
not the Projectile gone all the way? Had its velocity been very great,
the tendency to fall could certainly be counteracted. But the velocity
being undeniably very moderate, how explain such a decided resistance to
Lunar attraction? Had the Projectile come within the sphere of some
strange unknown influence? Did the neighborhood of some mysterious body
retain it firmly imbedded in ether? That it would never reach the Moon,
was now beyond all doubt; but where was it going? Nearer to her or
further off? Or was it rushing resistlessly into infinity on the wings
of that pitchy night? Who could tell, know, calculate--who could even
guess, amid the horror of this gloomy blackness? Questions, like these,
left Barbican no rest; in vain he tried to grapple with them; he felt
like a child before them, baffled and almost despairing.
In fact, what could be more tantalizing? Just outside their windows,
only a few leagues off, perhaps only a few miles, lay the radiant planet
of the night, but in every respect as far off from the eyes of himself
and his companions as if she was hiding at the other side of Jupiter!
And to their ears she was no nearer. Earthquakes of the old Titanic type
might at that very moment be upheaving her surface with resistless
force, crashing mountain against mountain as fiercely as wave meets wave
around the storm-lashed cliffs of Cape Horn. But not the faintest far
off murmur even of such a mighty tumult could break the dead brooding
silence that surrounded the travellers. Nay, the Moon, realizing the
weird fancy of the Arabian poet, who calls her a "giant stiffening into
granite, but struggling madly against his doom," might shriek, in a
spasm of agony, loudly enough to be heard in Sirius. But our travellers
could not hear it. Their ears no sound could now reach. They could no
more detect the rending of a continent than the falling of a feather.
Air, the propagator and transmitter of sound, was absent from her
surface. Her cries, her struggles, her groans, were all smothered
beneath the impenetrable tomb of eternal silence!
These were some of the fanciful ideas by which Ardan tried to amuse his
companions in the present unsatisfactory state of affairs. His efforts,
however well meant, were not successful. M'Nicholl's growls were more
savage than usual, and even Barbican's patience was decidedly giving
way. The loss of the other face they could have easily borne--with most
of its details they had been already familiar. But, no, it must be the
dark face that now escaped their observation! The very one that for
numberless reasons they were actually dying to see! They looked out of
the windows once more at the black Moon beneath them.
There it lay below them, a round black spot, hiding the sweet faces of
the stars, but otherwise no more distinguishable by the travellers than
if they were lying in the depths of the Mammoth Cave of Kentucky. And
just think. Only fifteen days before, that dark face had been splendidly
illuminated by the solar beams, every crater lustrous, every peak
sparkling, every streak glistening under the vertical ray. In fifteen
days later, a day light the most brilliant would have replaced a
midnight the most Cimmerian. But in fifteen days later, where would the
Projectile be? In what direction would it have been drawn by the forces
innumerable of attractions incalculable? To such a question as this,
even Ardan would reply only by an ominous shake of the head.
We know already that our travellers, as well as astronomers generally,
judging from that portion of the dark side occasionally revealed by the
Moon's librations, were pretty certain that there is no great
difference between her two sides, as far as regards their physical
constitutions. This portion, about the seventh part, shows plains and
mountains, circles and craters, all of precisely the same nature as
those already laid down on the chart. Judging therefore from analogy,
the other three-sevenths are, in all probability a world in every
respect exactly like the visible face--that is, arid, desert, dead. But
our travellers also knew that pretty certain is far from quite
certain, and that arguing merely from analogy may enable you to give a
good guess, but can never lead you to an undoubted conclusion. What if
the atmosphere had really withdrawn to this dark face? And if air, why
not water? Would not this be enough to infuse life into the whole
continent? Why should not vegetation flourish on its plains, fish in its
seas, animals in its forests, and man in every one of its zones that
were capable of sustaining life? To these interesting questions, what a
satisfaction it would be to be able to answer positively one way or
another! For thousands of difficult problems a mere glimpse at this
hemisphere would be enough to furnish a satisfactory reply. How glorious
it would be to contemplate a realm on which the eye of man has never yet
rested!
Great, therefore, as you may readily conceive, was the depression of our
travellers' spirits, as they pursued their way, enveloped in a veil of
darkness the most profound. Still even then Ardan, as usual, formed
somewhat of an exception. Finding it impossible to see a particle of the
Lunar surface, he gave it up for good, and tried to console himself by
gazing at the stars, which now fairly blazed in the spangled heavens.
And certainly never before had astronomer enjoyed an opportunity for
gazing at the heavenly bodies under such peculiar advantages. How Fraye
of Paris, Chacornac of Lyons, and Father Secchi of Rome would have
envied him!
For, candidly and truly speaking, never before had mortal eye revelled
on such a scene of starry splendor. The black sky sparkled with lustrous
fires, like the ceiling of a vast hall of ebony encrusted with flashing
diamonds. Ardan's eye could take in the whole extent in an easy sweep
from the Southern Cross to the Little Bear, thus embracing within
one glance not only the two polar stars of the present day, but also
Campus and Vega, which, by reason of the precession of the
Equinoxes, are to be our polar stars 12,000 years hence. His
imagination, as if intoxicated, reeled wildly through these sublime
infinitudes and got lost in them. He forgot all about himself and all
about his companions. He forgot even the strangeness of the fate that
had sent them wandering through these forbidden regions, like a
bewildered comet that had lost its way. With what a soft sweet light
every star glowed! No matter what its magnitude, the stream that flowed
from it looked calm and holy. No twinkling, no scintillation, no
nictitation, disturbed their pure and lambent gleam. No atmosphere here
interposed its layers of humidity or of unequal density to interrupt the
stately majesty of their effulgence. The longer he gazed upon them, the
more absorbing became their attraction. He felt that they were great
kindly eyes looking down even yet with benevolence and protection on
himself and his companions now driving wildly through space, and lost
in the pathless depths of the black ocean of infinity!
He soon became aware that his friends, following his example, had
interested themselves in gazing at the stars, and were now just as
absorbed as himself in the contemplation of the transcendent spectacle.
For a long time all three continued to feast their eyes on all the
glories of the starry firmament; but, strange to say, the part that
seemed to possess the strangest and weirdest fascination for their
wandering glances was the spot where the vast disc of the Moon showed
like an enormous round hole, black and soundless, and apparently deep
enough to permit a glance into the darkest mysteries of the infinite.
A disagreeable sensation, however, against which they had been for some
time struggling, at last put an end to their contemplations, and
compelled them to think of themselves. This was nothing less than a
pretty sharp cold, at first somewhat endurable, but which soon covered
the inside surface of the window panes with a thick coating of ice. The
fact was that, the Sun's direct rays having no longer an opportunity of
warming up the Projectile, the latter began to lose rapidly by radiation
whatever heat it had stored away within its walls. The consequence was a
very decided falling of the thermometer, and so thick a condensation of
the internal moisture on the window glasses as to soon render all
external observations extremely difficult, if not actually impossible.
The Captain, as the oldest man in the party, claimed the privilege of
saying he could stand it no longer. Striking a light, he consulted the
thermometer and cried out:
"Seventeen degrees below zero, centigrade! that is certainly low enough
to make an old fellow like me feel rather chilly!"
"Just one degree and a half above zero, Fahrenheit!" observed Barbican;
"I really had no idea that it was so cold."
His teeth actually chattered so much that he could hardly articulate;
still he, as well as the others, disliked to entrench on their short
supply of gas.
"One feature of our journey that I particularly admire," said Ardan,
trying to laugh with freezing lips, "is that we can't complain of
monotony. At one time we are frying with the heat and blinded with the
light, like Indians caught on a burning prairie; at another, we are
freezing in the pitchy darkness of a hyperborean winter, like Sir John
Franklin's merry men in the Bay of Boothia. Madame La Nature, you
don't forget your devotees; on the contrary, you overwhelm us with your
attentions!"
"Our external temperature may be reckoned at how much?" asked the
Captain, making a desperate effort to keep up the conversation.
"The temperature outside our Projectile must be precisely the same as
that of interstellar space in general," answered Barbican.
"Is not this precisely the moment then," interposed Ardan, quickly,
"for making an experiment which we could never have made as long as we
were in the sunshine?"
"That's so!" exclaimed Barbican; "now or never! I'm glad you thought of
it, Ardan. We are just now in the position to find out the temperature
of space by actual experiment, and so see whose calculations are right,
Fourier's or Pouillet's."
"Let's see," asked Ardan, "who was Fourier, and who was Pouillet?"
"Baron Fourier, of the French Academy, wrote a famous treatise on
Heat, which I remember reading twenty years ago in Penington's book
store," promptly responded the Captain; "Pouillet was an eminent
professor of Physics at the Sorbonne, where he died, last year, I
think."
"Thank you, Captain," said Ardan; "the cold does not injure your memory,
though it is decidedly on the advance. See how thick the ice is already
on the window panes! Let it only keep on and we shall soon have our
breaths falling around us in flakes of snow."
"Let us prepare a thermometer," said Barbican, who had already set
himself to work in a business-like manner.
A thermometer of the usual kind, as may be readily supposed, would be of
no use whatever in the experiment that was now about to be made. In an
ordinary thermometer Mercury freezes hard when exposed to a temperature
of 40 deg. below zero. But Barbican had provided himself with a Minimum,
self-recording thermometer, of a peculiar nature, invented by
Wolferdin, a friend of Arago's, which could correctly register
exceedingly low degrees of temperature. Before beginning the experiment,
this instrument was tested by comparison with one of the usual kind, and
then Barbican hesitated a few moments regarding the best means of
employing it.
"How shall we start this experiment?" asked the Captain.
"Nothing simpler," answered Ardan, always ready to reply; "you just open
your windows, and fling out your thermometer. It follows your
Projectile, as a calf follows her mother. In a quarter of an hour you
put out your hand--"
"Put out your hand!" interrupted Barbican.
"Put out your hand--" continued Ardan, quietly.
"You do nothing of the kind," again interrupted Barbican; "that is,
unless you prefer, instead of a hand, to pull back a frozen stump,
shapeless, colorless and lifeless!"
"I prefer a hand," said Ardan, surprised and interested.
"Yes," continued Barbican, "the instant your hand left the Projectile,
it would experience the same terrible sensations as is produced by
cauterizing it with an iron bar white hot. For heat, whether rushing
rapidly out of our bodies or rapidly entering them, is identically the
same force and does the same amount of damage. 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. In a case like this, we can't rely on
uncertainties. Therefore, to make sure of not losing our thermometer, we
shall fasten it with a string and easily pull it in whenever we like."
This advice being adopted, the window was opened quickly, and the
instrument was thrown out at once by M'Nicholl, who held it fastened by
a short stout cord so that it could be pulled in immediately. The window
had hardly been open for longer than a second, yet that second had been
enough to admit a terrible icy chill into the interior of the
Projectile.
"Ten thousand ice-bergs!" cried Ardan, shivering all over; "it's cold
enough to freeze a white bear!"
Barbican waited quietly for half an hour; that time he considered quite
long enough to enable the instrument to acquire the temperature of the
interstellar space. Then he gave the signal, and it was instantly pulled
in.
It took him a few moments to calculate the quantity of mercury that had
escaped into the little diaphragm attached to the lower part of the
instrument; then he said:
"A hundred and forty degrees, centigrade, below zero!"
"Two hundred and twenty degrees, Fahrenheit, below zero!" cried
M'Nicholl; "no wonder that we should feel a little chilly!"
"Pouillet is right, then," said Barbican, "and Fourier wrong."
"Another victory for Sorbonne over the Academy!" cried Ardan. "Vive la
Sorbonne! Not that I'm a bit proud of finding myself in the midst of a
temperature so very distingue--though it is more than three times
colder than Hayes ever felt it at Humboldt Glacier or Nevenoff at
Yakoutsk. If Madame the Moon becomes as cold as this every time that her
surface is withdrawn from the sunlight for fourteen days, I don't think,
boys, that her hospitality is much to hanker after!"