"
"Can't we modify the Projectile's movement?"
"No."
"Nor diminish its velocity?"
"No."
"Not even by lightening it, as a heavily laden ship is lightened, by
throwing cargo overboard?"
"What can we throw overboard? We have no ballast like balloon-men."
"I should like to know," interrupted M'Nicholl, "what would be the good
of throwing anything at all overboard. Any one with a particle of common
sense in his head, can see that the lightened Projectile should only
move the quicker!"
"Slower, you mean," said Ardan.
"Quicker, I mean," replied the Captain.
"Neither quicker nor slower, dear friends," interposed Barbican,
desirous to stop a quarrel; "we are floating, you know, in an absolute
void, where specific gravity never counts."
"Well then, my friends," said Ardan in a resigned tone that he evidently
endeavored to render calm, "since the worst is come to the worst, there
is but one thing left for us to do!"
"What's that?" said the Captain, getting ready to combat some new piece
of nonsense.
"To take our breakfast!" said the Frenchman curtly.
It was a resource he had often fallen back on in difficult
conjunctures. Nor did it fail him now.
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