But
others, on the contrary, and the greater number too, follow a track
through space far more distant from the Earth than the fifty miles
supposed to limit our atmosphere. In October, 1844, one of these meteors
had appeared in the sky at an altitude calculated to be at least 320
miles; and in August, 1841, another had vanished when it had reached the
height of 450 miles. A few even of those seen from the Earth must have
been several miles in diameter. The velocity with which some of them
have been calculated to move, from east to west, in a direction contrary
to that of the Earth, is astounding enough to exceed belief--about fifty
miles in a second. Our Earth does not move quite 20 miles in a second,
though it goes a thousand times quicker than the fastest locomotive.
[Illustration: THEY COULD UTTER NO WORD.]
Barbican calculated like lightning that the present object of their
alarm was only about 250 miles distant from them, and could not be
less than a mile and a quarter in diameter. It was coming on at the rate
of more than a mile a second or about 75 miles a minute. It lay right in
the path of the Projectile, and in a very few seconds indeed a terrible
collision was inevitable.
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