Knowing that no good could possibly
result from inaction or despair, they carefully kept their wits about
them, making their experiments and recording their observations as
calmly and as deliberately as if they were working at home in the quiet
retirement of their own cabinets.
Any other course of action, however, would have been perfectly absurd
on their part, and this no one knew better than themselves. Even if
desirous to act otherwise, what could they have done? As powerless over
the Projectile as a baby over a locomotive, they could neither clap
brakes to its movement nor switch off its direction. A sailor can turn
his ship's head at pleasure; an aeronaut has little trouble, by means of
his ballast and his throttle-valve, in giving a vertical movement to his
balloon. But nothing of this kind could our travellers attempt. No helm,
or ballast, or throttle-valve could avail them now. Nothing in the world
could be done to prevent things from following their own course to the
bitter end.
If these three men would permit themselves to hazard an expression at
all on the subject, which they didn't, each could have done it by his
own favorite motto, so admirably expressive of his individual nature.
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