merely that food is necessary to maintain our strength; were that
so, a five minutes' pause, or ten at the outside, would suffice, in
Captain Wopper's phraseology, to take in cargo, or coal the human
engine; but we "_rejoice_ in food," and we believe that none enjoy it so
much as those whose intellectual appetite is strong. If any doubters of
these truths had witnessed the Professor and his friends at breakfast
that morning on the Grand Plateau, they must have infallibly been
convinced.

"What a gourmand he is!" whispered Lewis to the Captain, in reference to
the man of science, "and such a genial outflow of wit to correspond with
his amazing indraught of wittles."

The Captain's teeth were at the moment fixed with almost tigerish
ferocity in a chicken drumstick, but the humour and the amazing
novelty--to say nothing of the truth--of Lewis's remark made him remove
the drumstick, and give vent to a roar of laughter that shook the very
summit of Mont Blanc--at all events the Professor said it did, and he
was a man who weighed his words and considered well his sentiments.

"Do not imagine that I exaggerate," he said, as distinctly as was
compatible with a very large mouthful of ham and bread, "sound is a
motion of vibration, not of translation. That delightfully sonorous
laugh emitted by Captain Wopper (pass the wine, Slingsby--thanks) was an
impulse or push delivered by his organs of respiration to the particles
of air in immediate contact with his magnificent beard. The impulse
thus given to the air was re-delivered or passed on, not as I pass the
mutton to Dr Lawrence (whose plate is almost empty), but by each
particle of air passing the impulse to its neighbour; thus creating an
aerial wave, or multitude of waves, which rolled away into space. Those
of the waves which rolled in the direction of Mont Blanc communicated
their vibrations to the more solid atoms of the mountain, these passed
the motion on to each other, of course with slight--inconceivably
slight--but actual force, and thus the tremor passed entirely through
the mountain, out on the other side, greatly diminished in power no
doubt, and right on throughout space.--Hand me the bread, Lewis, and
don't sit grinning there like a Cheshire cat with tic-douloureux in its
tail."

At this Slingsby laughed and shook the mountain again, besides
overturning a bottle of water, and upsetting the gravity of Antoine
Grennon, who chanced to be looking at him; for th