to make a slight calculation."

The Captain, who before clerking on a Mississippi steamboat had been
professor of Mathematics in an Indiana university, felt quite at home at
the work. He rained figures from his pencil with a velocity that would
have made Marston stare. Page after page was filled with his
multiplications and divisions, while Barbican looked quietly on, and
Ardan impatiently stroked his head and ears to keep down a rising
head-ache.

"Well?" at last asked Barbican, seeing the Captain stop and throw a
somewhat hasty glance over his work.

"Well," answered M'Nicholl slowly but confidently, "the calculation is
made, I think correctly; and _v_, that is, the velocity of the
Projectile when quitting the atmosphere, sufficient to carry it to the
neutral point, should be at least ..."

"How much?" asked Barbican, eagerly.

"Should be at least 11,972 yards the first second."

"What!" cried Barbican, jumping off his seat. "How much did you say?"

"11,972 yards the first second it quits the atmosphere."

"Oh, malediction!" cried Barbican, with a gesture of terrible despair.

"What's the matter?" asked Ardan, very much surprised.

"Enough is the matter!" answered Barbican excitedly. "This velocity
having been diminished by a third, our initial velocity should have been
at least ..."

"17,958 yards the first second!" cried M'Nicholl, rapidly flourishing
his pencil.

"But the Cambridge Observatory having declared that 12,000 yards the
first second were sufficient, our Projectile started with no greater
velocity!"

"Well?" asked M'Nicholl.

"Well, such a velocity will never do!"

"How??" }
"How!!" } cried the Captain and Ardan in one voice.

"We can never reach the neutral point!"

"Thunder and lightning"

"Fire and Fury!"

"We can't get even halfway!"

"Heaven and Earth!"

"_Mille noms d'un boulet!_" cried Ardan, wildly gesticulating.

"And we shall fall back to the Earth!"

"Oh!"

"Ah!"

They could say no more. This fearful revelation took them like a stroke
of apoplexy.

CHAPTER V.

THE COLDS OF SPACE.

How could they imagine that the Observatory men had committed such a
blunder? Barbican would not believe it possible. He made the Captain go
over his calculation again and again; but no flaw was to be found in it.
He himself carefully examined it, figure after figure, but he could find
nothing wrong. They both took up the formula and subjected it to the
strongest tests