Chapter 15

GLIMPSES AT THE INVISIBLE.

In spite of the dreadful condition in which the three friends now found
themselves, and the still more dreadful future that awaited them, it
must be acknowledged that Ardan bravely kept up his spirits. And his
companions were just as cheerful. Their philosophy was quite simple and
perfectly intelligible. What they could bear, they bore without
murmuring. When it became unbearable, they only complained, if
complaining would do any good. Imprisoned in an iron shroud, flying
through profound darkness into the infinite abysses of space, nearly a
quarter million of miles distant from all human aid, freezing with the
icy cold, their little stock not only of gas but of _air_ rapidly
running lower and lower, a near future of the most impenetrable
obscurity looming up before them, they never once thought of wasting
time in asking such useless questions as where they were going, or what
fate was about to befall them. 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.
"_Donnez tête baissée!_" (Go it baldheaded!) showed Ardan's
uncalculating impetuosity and his Celtic blood. "_Fata quocunque
vocant!_" (To its logical consequence!) revealed Barbican's
imperturbable stoicism, culture hardening rather than loosening the
original British phlegm. Whilst M'Nicholl's "Screw down the valve and
let her rip!" betrayed at once his unconquerable Yankee coolness and his
old experiences as a Western steamboat captain.

Where were they now, at eight o'clock in the morning of the day called
in America the