Previous - next
perfectly motionless. Not the slightest sign of movement could be
detected. Change of locality, though ever so rapid, can never reveal
itself to our senses when it takes place in a vacuum, or when the
enveloping atmosphere travels at the same rate as the moving body.
Though we are incessantly whirled around the Sun at the rate of about
seventy thousand miles an hour, which of us is conscious of the
slightest motion? In such a case, as far as sensation is concerned,
motion and repose are absolutely identical. Neither has any effect one
way or another on a material body. Is such a body in motion? It remains
in motion until some obstacle stops it. Is it at rest? It remains at
rest until some superior force compels it to change its position. This
indifference of bodies to motion or rest is what physicists call
_inertia_.
Barbican and his companions, therefore, shut up in the Projectile, could
readily imagine themselves to be completely motionless. Had they been
outside, the effect would have been precisely the same. No rush of air,
no jarring sensation would betray the slightest movement. But for the
sight of the Moon gradually growing larger above them, and of the Earth
gradually growing smaller beneath them, they could safely swear that
they were fast anchored in an ocean of deathlike immobility.
Towards the morning of next day (December 3), they were awakened by a
joyful, but quite unexpected sound.
"Cock-a-doodle! doo!" accompanied by a decided flapping of wings.
The Frenchman, on his feet in one instant and on the top of the ladder
in another, attempted to shut the lid of a half open box, speaking in an
angry but suppressed voice:
"Stop this hullabaloo, won't you? Do you want me to fail in my great
combination!"
"Hello?" cried Barbican and M'Nicholl, starting up and rubbing their
eyes.
"What noise was that?" asked Barbican.
"Seems to me I heard the crowing of a cock," observed the Captain.
"I never thought your ears could be so easily deceived, Captain," cried
Ardan, quickly, "Let us try it again," and, flapping his ribs with his
arms, he gave vent to a crow so loud and natural that the lustiest
chanticleer that ever saluted the orb of day might be proud of it.
The Captain roared right out, and even Barbican snickered, but as they
saw that their companion evidently wanted to conceal something, they
immediately assumed straight faces and pretended to think no more about
the matter.
"Barbican," said Ardan, coming down the ladder and evidently anxious to
change the conversation, "have you any idea of what I was thinking about
all night?"
"Not the slightest."
"I was thinking of the promptness of the reply you received last year
from the authorities of Cambridge University, when you asked them about
the feasibility of sending a bullet to the Moon. You know very well by
this time what a perfect ignoramus I am in Mathematics. I own I have
been often puzzled when thinking on what grounds they could form such a
Previous - next
