rder to obtain the velocity of the bullet
as it emerges from the atmosphere I have only to calculate."

The captain, like a man used to overcome all difficulties, began to
calculate with frightful rapidity. Divisions and multiplications grew
under his fingers. Figures dotted the page. Barbicane followed him with
his eyes, whilst Michel Ardan compressed a coming headache with his two
hands.

"Well, what do you make it?" asked Barbicane after several minutes'
silence.

"I make it 11,051 metres in the first second."

"What do you say?" said Barbicane, starting.

"Eleven thousand and fifty-one metres."

"Malediction!" cried the president with a gesture of despair.

"What's the matter with you?" asked Michel Ardan, much surprised.

"The matter! why if at this moment the velocity was already diminished
one-third by friction, the initial speed ought to have been--"

"Sixteen thousand five hundred and seventy-six metres!" answered
Nicholl.

"But the Cambridge Observatory declared that 11,000 metres were enough
at departure, and our bullet started with that velocity only!"

"Well?" asked Nicholl.

"Why it was not enough!"

"No."

"We shall not reach the neutral point."

"The devil!"

"We shall not even go half way!"

"_Nom d'un boulet_!" exclaimed Michel Ardan, jumping up as if the
projectile were on the point of striking against the terrestrial globe.

"And we shall fall back upon the earth!"

CHAPTER V.

THE TEMPERATURE OF SPACE.

This revelation acted like a thunderbolt. Who could have expected such
an error in calculation? Barbicane would not believe it. Nicholl went
over the figures again. They were correct. The formula which had
established them could not be mistrusted, and, when verified, the
initial velocity of 16,576 metres, necessary for attaining the neutral
point, was found quite right.

The three friends looked at one another in silence. No one thought about
breakfast after that. Barbicane, with set teeth, contracted brow, and
fists convulsively closed, looked through the port-light. Nicholl
folded his arms and examined his calculations. Michel Ardan murmured--

"That's just like _savants_! That's the way they always do! I would give
twenty pistoles to fall upon the Cambridge Observatory and crush it,
with all its stupid staff inside!"

All at once the captain made a reflection which struck Barbicane at
once.

"Why," said he, "it is seven o'clock in the morning, so we have b