e sofa, took his friends by the hands, and, in a voice
showing complete consciousness, demanded eagerly:

"Ardan, M'Nicholl, are we moving?"

His friends looked at each other, a little amused, but more perplexed.
In their anxiety regarding their own and their friend's recovery, they
had never thought of asking such a question. His words recalled them at
once to a full sense of their situation.

"Moving? Blessed if I can tell!" said Ardan, still speaking French.

"We may be lying fifty feet deep in a Florida marsh, for all I know,"
observed M'Nicholl.

"Or, likely as not, in the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico," suggested
Ardan, still in French.

"Suppose we find out," observed Barbican, jumping up to try, his voice
as clear and his step as firm as ever.

But trying is one thing, and finding out another. Having no means of
comparing themselves with external objects, they could not possibly tell
whether they were moving, or at an absolute stand-still. Though our
Earth is whirling us continually around the Sun at the tremendous speed
of 500 miles a minute, its inhabitants are totally unconscious of the
slightest motion. It was the same with our travellers. Through their own
personal consciousness they could tell absolutely nothing. Were they
shooting through space like a meteor? They could not tell. Had they
fallen back and buried themselves deep in the sandy soil of Florida, or,
still more likely, hundreds of fathoms deep beneath the waters of the
Gulf of Mexico? They could not form the slightest idea.

Listening evidently could do no good. The profound silence proved
nothing. The padded walls of the Projectile were too thick to admit any
sound whether of wind, water, or human beings. Barbican, however, was
soon struck forcibly by one circumstance. He felt himself to be very
uncomfortably warm, and his friend's faces looked very hot and flushed.
Hastily removing the cover that protected the thermometer, he closely
inspected it, and in an instant uttered a joyous exclamation.

"Hurrah!" he cried. "We're moving! There's no mistake about it. The
thermometer marks 113 degrees Fahrenheit. Such a stifling heat could not
come from the gas. It comes from the exterior walls of our projectile,
which atmospheric friction must have made almost red hot. But this heat
must soon diminish, because we are already far beyond the regions of the
atmosphere, so that instead of smothering we shall be shortly in danger
of freezing."

"