Part 26 (2/2)
Out of 1,600 leagues we have gone twelve!”
”So you say.”
”And these twelve at a cost of 85 leagues diagonally?”
”Exactly so.”
”In twenty days?”
”Yes.”
”Now, sixteen leagues are the hundredth part of the earth's radius.
At this rate we shall be two thousand days, or nearly five years and a half, in getting to the centre.”
No answer was vouchsafed to this rational conclusion. ”Without reckoning, too, that if a vertical depth of sixteen leagues can be attained only by a diagonal descent of eighty-four, it follows that we must go eight thousand miles in a south-easterly direction; so that we shall emerge from some point in the earth's circ.u.mference instead of getting to the centre!”
”Confusion to all your figures, and all your hypotheses besides,”
shouted my uncle in a sudden rage. ”What is the basis of them all?
How do you know that this pa.s.sage does not run straight to our destination? Besides, there is a precedent. What one man has done, another may do.”
”I hope so; but, still, I may be permitted--”
”You shall have my leave to hold your tongue, Axel, but not to talk in that irrational way.”
I could see the awful Professor bursting through my uncle's skin, and I took timely warning.
”Now look at your aneroid. What does that say?”
”It says we are under considerable pressure.”
”Very good; so you see that by going gradually down, and getting accustomed to the density of the atmosphere, we don't suffer at all.”
”Nothing, except a little pain in the ears.”
”That's nothing, and you may get rid of even that by quick breathing whenever you feel the pain.”
”Exactly so,” I said, determined not to say a word that might cross my uncle's prejudices. ”There is even positive pleasure in living in this dense atmosphere. Have you observed how intense sound is down here?”
”No doubt it is. A deaf man would soon learn to hear perfectly.”
”But won't this density augment?”
”Yes; according to a rather obscure law. It is well known that the weight of bodies diminishes as fast as we descend. You know that it is at the surface of the globe that weight is most sensibly felt, and that at the centre there is no weight at all.”
”I am aware of that; but, tell me, will not air at last acquire the density of water?”
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