The travellers' faces in particular,
gleamed with that peculiar livid and cadaverous tinge, blue and yellow,
which magicians so readily produce by burning table salt in alcohol.
"_Sacre!_" cried Ardan who always spoke his own language when much
excited. "What a pair of beauties you are! Say, Barbican! What
thundering thing is coming at us now?"
"Another bolide," answered Barbican, his eye as calm as ever, though a
faint tremor was quite perceptible in his voice.
"A bolide? Burning _in vacuo_? You are joking!"
"I was never more in earnest," was the President's quiet reply, as he
looked through his closed fingers.
He knew exactly what he was saying. The dazzling glitter did not deceive
_him_. Such a meteor seen from the Earth could not appear much brighter
than the Full Moon, but here in the midst of the black ether and
unsoftened by the veil of the atmosphere, it was absolutely blinding.
These wandering bodies carry in themselves the principle of their
incandescence. Oxygen is by no means necessary for their combustion.
Some of them indeed often take fire as they rush through the layers of
our atmosphere, and generally burn out before they strike the Earth.
Pages:
268
269
270
271
272
273
274
275
276
277
278
279
280
281
282
283
284
285
286
287
288
289
290
291
292