"
His teeth actually chattered so much that he could hardly articulate;
still he, as well as the others, disliked to entrench on their short
supply of gas.
"One feature of our journey that I particularly admire," said Ardan,
trying to laugh with freezing lips, "is that we can't complain of
monotony. At one time we are frying with the heat and blinded with the
light, like Indians caught on a burning prairie; at another, we are
freezing in the pitchy darkness of a hyperborean winter, like Sir John
Franklin's merry men in the Bay of Boothia. _Madame La Nature_, you
don't forget your devotees; on the contrary, you overwhelm us with your
attentions!"
"Our external temperature may be reckoned at how much?" asked the
Captain, making a desperate effort to keep up the conversation.
"The temperature outside our Projectile must be precisely the same as
that of interstellar space in general," answered Barbican.
"Is not this precisely the moment then," interposed Ardan, quickly,
"for making an experiment which we could never have made as long as we
were in the sunshine?"
"That's so!" exclaimed Barbican; "now or never! I'm glad you thought of
it, Ardan. We are just now in the position to find out the temperature
of space by actual experiment, and so see whose calculations are right,
Fourier's or Pouillet's.
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