“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 been thirty-two hours on the road.  We have come more than half way, and we are not falling yet that I know of!”

Barbicane did not answer, but after a rapid glance at the captain he took a compass, which he used to measure the angular distance of the terrestrial globe.  Then through the lower port-light he made a very exact observation from the apparent immobility of the projectile.  Then rising and wiping the perspiration from his brow, he put down some figures upon paper.  Nicholl saw that the president wished to find out from the length of the terrestrial diameter the distance of the bullet from the earth.  He looked at him anxiously.

“No!” cried Barbicane in a few minutes’ time, “we are not falling!  We are already more than 50,000 leagues from the earth!  We have passed the point the projectile ought to have stopped at if its speed had been only 11,000 metres at our departure!  We are still ascending!”

“That is evident,” answered Nicholl; “so we must conclude that our initial velocity, under the propulsion of the 400,000 lbs. of gun-cotton, was greater than the 11,000 metres.  I can now explain to myself why we met with the second satellite, that gravitates at more than 2,000 leagues from the earth, in less than thirteen minutes.”

“That explanation is so much the more probable,” added Barbicane, “because by throwing out the water in our movable partitions the projectile was made considerably lighter all at once.”