Jules Verne - All Around the Moon
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Jules Verne >> All Around the Moon
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"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!"
[Illustration: IT'S COLD ENOUGH TO FREEZE A WHITE BEAR.]
"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!"
CHAPTER XV.
GLIMPSES AT THE INVISIBLE.
In spite of the dreadful condition in which the three friends now found
themselves, and the still more dreadful future that awaited them, it
must be acknowledged that Ardan bravely kept up his spirits. And his
companions were just as cheerful. Their philosophy was quite simple and
perfectly intelligible. What they could bear, they bore without
murmuring. When it became unbearable, they only complained, if
complaining would do any good. Imprisoned in an iron shroud, flying
through profound darkness into the infinite abysses of space, nearly a
quarter million of miles distant from all human aid, freezing with the
icy cold, their little stock not only of gas but of _air_ rapidly
running lower and lower, a near future of the most impenetrable
obscurity looming up before them, they never once thought of wasting
time in asking such useless questions as where they were going, or what
fate was about to befall them. Knowing that no good could possibly
result from inaction or despair, they carefully kept their wits about
them, making their experiments and recording their observations as
calmly and as deliberately as if they were working at home in the quiet
retirement of their own cabinets.
Any other course of action, however, would have been perfectly absurd
on their part, and this no one knew better than themselves. Even if
desirous to act otherwise, what could they have done? As powerless over
the Projectile as a baby over a locomotive, they could neither clap
brakes to its movement nor switch off its direction. A sailor can turn
his ship's head at pleasure; an aeronaut has little trouble, by means of
his ballast and his throttle-valve, in giving a vertical movement to his
balloon. But nothing of this kind could our travellers attempt. No helm,
or ballast, or throttle-valve could avail them now. Nothing in the world
could be done to prevent things from following their own course to the
bitter end.
If these three men would permit themselves to hazard an expression at
all on the subject, which they didn't, each could have done it by his
own favorite motto, so admirably expressive of his individual nature.
"_Donnez tete baissee!_" (Go it baldheaded!) showed Ardan's
uncalculating impetuosity and his Celtic blood. "_Fata quocunque
vocant!_" (To its logical consequence!) revealed Barbican's
imperturbable stoicism, culture hardening rather than loosening the
original British phlegm. Whilst M'Nicholl's "Screw down the valve and
let her rip!" betrayed at once his unconquerable Yankee coolness and his
old experiences as a Western steamboat captain.
Where were they now, at eight o'clock in the morning of the day called
in America the sixth of December? Near the Moon, very certainly; near
enough, in fact, for them to perceive easily in the dark the great round
screen which she formed between themselves and the Projectile on one
side, and the Earth, Sun, and stars on the other. But as to the exact
distance at which she lay from them--they had no possible means of
calculating it. The Projectile, impelled and maintained by forces
inexplicable and even incomprehensible, had come within less than thirty
miles from the Moon's north pole. But during those two hours of
immersion in the dark shadow, had this distance been increased or
diminished? There was evidently no stand-point whereby to estimate
either the Projectile's direction or its velocity. Perhaps, moving
rapidly away from the Moon, it would be soon out of her shadow
altogether. Perhaps, on the contrary, gradually approaching her surface,
it might come into contact at any moment with some sharp invisible peak
of the Lunar mountains--a catastrophe sure to put a sudden end to the
trip, and the travellers too.
An excited discussion on this subject soon sprang up, in which all
naturally took part. Ardan's imagination as usual getting the better of
his reason, he maintained very warmly that the Projectile, caught and
retained by the Moon's attraction, could not help falling on her
surface, just as an aerolite cannot help falling on our Earth.
"Softly, dear boy, softly," replied Barbican; "aerolites _can_ help
falling on the Earth, and the proof is, that few of them _do_ fall--most
of them don't. Therefore, even granting that we had already assumed the
nature of an aerolite, it does not necessarily follow that we should
fall on the Moon."
"But," objected Ardan, "if we approach only near enough, I don't see how
we can help--"
"You don't see, it may be," said Barbican, "but you can see, if you only
reflect a moment. Have you not often seen the November meteors, for
instance, streaking the skies, thousands at a time?"
"Yes; on several occasions I was so fortunate."
"Well, did you ever see any of them strike the Earth's surface?" asked
Barbican.
"I can't say I ever did," was the candid reply, "but--"
"Well, these shooting stars," continued Barbican, "or rather these
wandering particles of matter, shine only from being inflamed by the
friction of the atmosphere. Therefore they can never be at a greater
distance from the Earth than 30 or 40 miles at furthest, and yet they
seldom fall on it. So with our Projectile. It may go very close to the
Moon without falling into it."
"But our roving Projectile must pull up somewhere in the long run,"
replied Ardan, "and I should like to know where that somewhere can be,
if not in the Moon."
"Softly again, dear boy," said Barbican; "how do you know that our
Projectile must pull up somewhere?"
"It's self-evident," replied Ardan; "it can't keep moving for ever."
"Whether it can or it can't depends altogether on which one of two
mathematical curves it has followed in describing its course. According
to the velocity with which it was endowed at a certain moment, it must
follow either the one or the other; but this velocity I do not consider
myself just now able to calculate."
"Exactly so," chimed in M'Nicholl; "it must describe and keep on
describing either a parabola or a hyperbola."
"Precisely," said Barbican; "at a certain velocity it would take a
parabolic curve; with a velocity considerably greater it should describe
a hyperbolic curve."
"I always did like nice corpulent words," said Ardan, trying to laugh;
"bloated and unwieldy, they express in a neat handy way exactly what you
mean. Of course, I know all about the high--high--those high curves, and
those low curves. No matter. Explain them to me all the same. Consider
me most deplorably ignorant on the nature of these curves."
"Well," said the Captain, a little bumptiously, "a parabola is a curve
of the second order, formed by the intersection of a cone by a plane
parallel to one of its sides."
"You don't say so!" cried Ardan, with mouth agape. "Do tell!"
"It is pretty nearly the path taken by a shell shot from a mortar."
"Well now!" observed Ardan, apparently much surprised; "who'd have
thought it? Now for the high--high--bully old curve!"
"The hyperbola," continued the Captain, not minding Ardan's antics, "the
hyperbola is a curve of the second order, formed from the intersection
of a cone by a plane parallel to its axis, or rather parallel to its two
_generatrices_, constituting two separate branches, extending
indefinitely in both directions."
"Oh, what an accomplished 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 exceedingly cold
that a further encroachment on their little stock of gas could be put
off no longer. The light, of course, they could manage to do without;
but a little heat was absolutely necessary to prevent them from freezing
to death. Fortunately, however, the caloric developed by the Reiset and
Regnault process for purifying the air, raised the internal temperature
of the Projectile a little, so that, with an expenditure of gas much
less than they had expected, our travellers were able to maintain it at
a degree capable of sustaining human life.
By this time, also, all observations through the windows had become
exceedingly difficult. The internal moisture condensed so thick and
congealed so hard on the glass that nothing short of continued friction
could keep up its transparency. But this friction, however laborious
they might regard it at other times, they thought very little of just
now, when observation had become far more interesting and important than
ever.
If the Moon had any atmosphere, our travellers were near enough now to
strike any meteor that might be rushing through it. If the Projectile
itself were floating in it, as was possible, would not such a good
conductor of sound convey to their ears the reflexion of some lunar
echo, the roar of some storm raging among the mountains, the rattling of
some plunging avalanche, or the detonations of some eructating volcano?
And suppose some lunar Etna or Vesuvius was flashing out its fires, was
it not even possible that their eye could catch a glimpse of the lurid
gleam? One or two facts of this kind, well attested, would singularly
elucidate the vexatious question of a lunar atmosphere, which is still
so far from being decided. Full of such thoughts and intensely
interested in them, Barbican, M'Nicholl and Ardan, patient as
astronomers at a transit of Venus, watched steadily at their windows,
and allowed nothing worth noticing to escape their searching gaze.
Ardan's patience first gave out. He showed it by an observation natural
enough, for that matter, to a mind unaccustomed to long stretches of
careful thought:
"This darkness is absolutely killing! If we ever take this trip again,
it must be about the time of the New Moon!"
"There I agree with you, Ardan," observed the Captain. "That would be
just the time to start. The Moon herself, I grant, would be lost in the
solar rays and therefore invisible all the time of our trip, but in
compensation, we should have the Full Earth in full view. Besides--and
this is your chief point, no doubt, Ardan--if we should happen to be
drawn round the Moon, just as we are at the present moment, we should
enjoy the inestimable advantage of beholding her invisible side
magnificently illuminated!"
"My idea exactly, Captain," said Ardan. "What is your opinion on this
point, Barbican?"
"My opinion is as follows:" answered Barbican, gravely. "If we ever
repeat this journey, we shall start precisely at the same time and under
precisely the same circumstances. You forget that our only object is to
reach the Moon. Now suppose we had really landed there, as we expected
to do yesterday, would it not have been much more agreeable to behold
the lunar continents enjoying the full light of day than to find them
plunged in the dismal obscurity of night? Would not our first
installation of discovery have been under circumstances decidedly
extremely favorable? Your silence shows that you agree with me. As to
the invisible side, once landed, we should have the power to visit it
when we pleased, and therefore we could always choose whatever time
would best suit our purpose. Therefore, if we wanted to land in the
Moon, the period of the Full Moon was the best period to select. The
period was well chosen, the time was well calculated, the force was well
applied, the Projectile was well aimed, but missing our way spoiled
everything."
"That's sound logic, no doubt," said Ardan; "still I can't help thinking
that all for want of a little light we are losing, probably forever, a
splendid opportunity of seeing the Moon's invisible side. How about the
other planets, Barbican? Do you think that their inhabitants are as
ignorant regarding their satellites as we are regarding ours?"
"On that subject," observed M'Nicholl, "I could venture an answer
myself, though, of course, without pretending to speak dogmatically on
any such open question. The satellites of the other planets, by their
comparative proximity, must be much easier to study than our Moon. The
Saturnians, the Uranians, the Jovians, cannot have had very serious
difficulty in effecting some communication with their satellites.
Jupiter's four moons, for instance, though on an average actually 2-1/2
times farther from their planet's centre than the Moon is from us, are
comparatively four times nearer to him on account of his radius being
eleven times greater than the Earth's. With Saturn's eight moons, the
case is almost precisely similar. Their average distance is nearly three
times greater than that of our Moon; but as Saturn's diameter is about 9
times greater than the Earth's, his bodyguards are really between 3 and
4 times nearer to their principal than ours is to us. As to Uranus, his
first satellite, _Ariel_, half as far from him as our Moon is from the
Earth, is comparatively, though not actually, eight times nearer."
"Therefore," said Barbican, now taking up the subject, "an experiment
analogous to ours, starting from either of these three planets, would
have encountered fewer difficulties. But the whole question resolves
itself into this. _If_ the Jovians and the rest have been able to quit
their planets, they have probably succeeded in discovering the invisible
sides of their satellites. But if they have _not_ been able to do so,
why, they're not a bit wiser than ourselves--But what's the matter with
the Projectile? It's certainly shifting!"
Shifting it certainly was. While the path it described as it swung
blindly through the darkness, could not be laid down by any chart for
want of a starting point, Barbican and his companions soon became aware
of a decided modification of its relative position with regard to the
Moon's surface. Instead of its side, as heretofore, it now presented its
base to the Moon's disc, and its axis had become rigidly vertical to the
lunar horizon. Of this new feature in their journey, Barbican had
assured himself by the most undoubted proof towards four o'clock in the
morning. What was the cause? Gravity, of course. The heavier portion of
the Projectile gravitated towards the Moon's centre exactly as if they
were falling towards her surface.
But _were_ they falling? Were they at last, contrary to all
expectations, about to reach the goal that they had been so ardently
wishing for? No! A sight-point, just discovered by M'Nicholl, very soon
convinced Barbican that the Projectile was as far as ever from
approaching the Moon, but was moving around it in a curve pretty near
concentric.
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