After a veritable swoon, which lasted a few minutes, the captain, who was the first to regain consciousness, soon collected his intellectual faculties.

Although he had breakfasted two hours before, he began to feel as hungry as if he had not tasted food for several days.  His whole being, his brain and stomach, were excited to the highest point.

He rose, therefore, and demanded a supplementary collation from Michel, who was still unconscious, and did not answer.  Nicholl, therefore, proceeded to prepare some cups of tea, in order to facilitate the absorption of a dozen sandwiches.  He busied himself first with lighting a fire, and so struck a match.

What was his surprise to see the sulphur burn with extraordinary and almost unbearable brilliancy!  From the jet of gas he lighted rose a flame equal to floods of electric light.

A revelation took place in Nicholl’s mind.  This intensity of light, the physiological disturbance in himself, the extra excitement of all his moral and sensitive faculties—­he understood it all.

“The oxygen!” he exclaimed.

And leaning over the air-apparatus, he saw that the tap was giving out a flood of colourless, savourless, and odourless gas, eminently vital, but which in a pure state produces the gravest disorders in the constitution.  Through carelessness Michel had left the tap full on.  Nicholl made haste to turn off this flow of oxygen with which the atmosphere was saturated, and which would have caused the death of the travellers, not by suffocation, but by combustion.

An hour afterwards the air was relieved, and gave their normal play to the lungs.  By degrees the three friends recovered from their intoxication; but they were obliged to recover from their oxygen like a drunkard from his wine.

When Michel knew his share of responsibility in this incident he did not appear in the least disconcerted.  This unexpected intoxication broke the monotony of the journey.  Many foolish things had been said under its influence, but they had been forgotten as soon as said.

“Then,” added the merry Frenchman, “I am not sorry for having experienced the effect of this captious gas.  Do you know, my friends, that there might be a curious establishment set up with oxygen-rooms, where people whose constitutions are weak might live a more active life during a few hours at least?  Suppose we had meetings where the air could be saturated with this heroic fluid, theatres where the managers would send it out in strong doses, what passion there would be in the souls of actors and spectators, what fire and what enthusiasm!  And if, instead of a simple assembly, a whole nation could be saturated with it, what activity, what a supplement of life it would receive!  Of an exhausted nation it perhaps would make a great and strong nation, and I know more than one state in old Europe that ought to put itself under the oxygen regime in the interest of its health.”