Chapter 4

A CHAPTER FOR THE CORNELL GIRLS.

No incident worth recording occurred during the night, if night indeed
it could be called. In reality there was now no night or even day in the
Projectile, or rather, strictly speaking, it was always _night_ on the
upper end of the bullet, and always _day_ on the lower. Whenever,
therefore, the words _night_ and _day_ occur in our story, the reader
will readily understand them as referring to those spaces of time that
are so called in our Earthly almanacs, and were so measured by the
travellers' chronometers.

The repose of our friends must indeed have been undisturbed, if absolute
freedom from sound or jar of any kind could secure tranquillity. In
spite of its immense velocity, the Projectile still seemed to be
perfectly motionless. Not the slightest sign of movement could be
detected. Change of locality, though ever so rapid, can never reveal
itself to our senses when it takes place in a vacuum, or when the
enveloping atmosphere travels at the same rate as the moving body.
Though we are incessantly whirled around the Sun at the rate of about
seventy thousand miles an hour, which of us is conscious of the
slightest motion? In such a case, as far as sensation is concerned,
motion and repose are absolutely identical. Neither has any effect one
way or another on a material body. Is such a body in motion? It remains
in motion until some obstacle stops it. Is it at rest? It remains at
rest until some superior force compels it to change its position. This
indifference of bodies to motion or rest is what physicists call
_inertia_.

Barbican and his companions, therefore, shut up in the Projectile, could
readily imagine themselves to be completely motionless. Had they been
outside, the effect would have been precisely the same. No rush of air,
no jarring sensation would betray the slightest movement. But for the
sight of the Moon gradually growing larger above them, and of the Earth
gradually growing smaller beneath them, they could safely swear that
they were fast anchored in an ocean of deathlike immobility.

Towards the morning of next day (December 3), they were awakened by a
joyful, but quite unexpected sound.

"Cock-a-doodle! doo!" accompanied by a decided flapping of wings.

The Frenchman, on his feet in one instant and on the top of the ladder
in another, attempted to shut the lid of a half open box, speaking in an
angry but suppressed voice:

"Stop this hullabaloo, won't you? Do you want me to fail in my great
combination!"

"Hello?" cried Barbican and M'Nicholl, starting up and rubbing their
eyes.

"What noise was that?" asked Barbican.

"Seems to me I heard the crowing of