"
"Mac pretends he understands all that!"
"You need not be a _Solomon_ to do it," said the Captain. "All these
signs that you appear to consider so cabalistic form a language the
clearest, the shortest, and the most logical, for all those who can read
it."
"You pretend, Captain, that, by means of these hieroglyphics, far more
incomprehensible than the sacred Ibis of the Egyptians, you can
discover the velocity at which the Projectile should start?"
"Most undoubtedly," replied the Captain, "and, by the same formula I can
even tell you the rate of our velocity at any particular point of our
journey."
"You can?"
"I can."
"Then you're just as deep a one as our President."
"No, Ardan; not at all. The really difficult part of the question
Barbican has done. That is, to make out such an equation as takes into
account all the conditions of the problem. After that, it's a simple
affair of Arithmetic, requiring only a knowledge of the four rules to
work it out."
"Very simple," observed Ardan, who always got muddled at any kind of a
difficult sum in addition.
"Captain," said Barbican, "_you_ could have found the formulas too, if
you tried."
"I don't know about that," was the Captain's reply, "but I do know that
this formula is wonderfully come at.
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