Clement Fezandié

“ Here was our hero, in full possession of all his powers, suspended in mid-air, and seemingly absolutely powerless to budge a single inch in any direction; for it is one of the first laws in physics that a body cannot be set in motion without the action of some force, and no force is possible without some point of resistance against which to act. ”

“ At the start I floated around like a feather, while at the center, far from floating around, I shall be an inert, lead-like lump, so heavy I can hardly move myself about! Surely, wonders will never cease! ”

“ Curtis, triumphantly, "it seems to me that if the attraction comes from the center of the earth, the stone would only be pulled down to the center, and would stop there, because there would be nothing to pull it any farther."
"Your idea is to a certain extent correct," replied the doctor; "after the stone reached the center of the earth there would indeed be no attraction to cause it to fall any farther; but you forget that it would then be traveling at considerable speed, and so would not stop." ”

“ He was interrupted in his scientific meditations by a fly, which had, in some manner, found its way into the car, and now came and alighted upon his nose. William slapped it violently away with his hand; and as he did so he noticed that the motion had thrown his body somewhat out of the perpendicular. But if our hero was surprised at this, his astonishment may be imagined when he perceived that his body was slowly revolving, so that he soon found himself lying horizontally in the air; and a little later he was standing upright—if any one can be said to stand when resting on nothing but air. ”

“ Ah, thank Heaven, yesterday can never dawn again! I should go wild if it did!"
"Who knows?" said the doctor, smiling inwardly, though his eyes were moist. "Perhaps if yesterday did dawn again, it might be ten times happier than the happiest day you have ever known so far. Besides, how do you know that to-morrow may not be many times worse?"
"Ah, sir, if you would only let me go on this journey, I feel sure that we should never want again. The hundred pounds offered would enable us to pay all our debts, and would, with what I could earn, keep us alive for at least a year. ”

“ Of course, in going up, I shall have to work my way against the attraction of gravitation, and that will make it much harder for me to swim up than it was to swim down. I am really like a fish in a basket that is floating down a river. ”

“ THE MODERN SAMSON
"N casting his eyes around the interior of the car, the sight of the furniture had suggested to our hero the idea that, now that bodies no longer possessed weight, he ought to be able to lift up a very heavy weight with no appreciable exertion.
"It seems to me," said he, "that I ought to be able to lift thousands upon thousands of pounds with my little finger. As bodies have no weight, it ought to require no force to lift them. I have already noticed that the furniture is all arranged so that it can be easily unfastened, and I think I shall experiment on that." ”

“ Now, if it were not for this motion, anything dropped into my tunnel would fall straight through to New York; but this movement of the earth is going to spoil everything."
"How so?" inquired Flora.
"Why, in this way. As the earth is twenty-five thousand miles in circumference, and turns around on its axis once in every twenty-four hours, it follows that every person on the equator is continually traveling in a circle, at the rate of more than a thousand miles an hour." ”

“ On the earth it would have been the simplest matter in the world to climb up to the reservoir by means of the straps, and draw off and drink a glass of water. But here in the car, where bodies had no weight, it was by no means so simple a matter as it seemed, and our hero was destined to a fresh series of experiences, more wonderful than any he had yet met with. ”

“ Because you seem to forget that the earth, at the center, is one mass of liquid fire. So that, even if you succeeded in boring down through the solid portions of the external crust, you would be brought to a complete standstill as soon as you reached the red-hot fluid portions in the center. All your machinery, including your metal tube, would melt like wax, while your workmen could not live a single instant in the stifling, scorching heat! ”

“ Mother was so angry and excited that she caught the cat by the back of the neck and threw it out into the middle of the street. She was, of course, sorry the moment she had done it, for this was the fifth-story window, and there was a stone pavement below. She looked out in agony, expecting to see the poor beast crushed to death by his fall; but—would you believe it!—that cat coolly turned around in the air, fell right side up on his four paws, and disappeared like a streak of lightning, without being hurt in the least! ”

“ Mass is the amount of matter a body contains, while weight is the force with which it is attracted to the earth. My mass here is just the same as it was on the earth, although my weight has entirely disappeared, and hence I can do as much damage with my hands and feet here as I could in my native land. The reason we can't throw a feather far on the earth, or smash a glass vase by throwing a feather at it, is not because the feather has little weight, but because it has almost no mass ”

“ He knew that no action could take place without a corresponding reaction, and that the force used in moving his hand to brush away the fly, working against the resistance offered by the rest of his body, had been sufficient, now that his movements were unimpeded by the attraction of gravitation, to set him turning around as if on a pivot, the resistance of the air being insufficient to stop him. ”

“ Giles, look at that ship!" she cried. Dr. Giles turned to the window and looked out. To his surprise, he saw a large vessel at anchor. During the events of the last half-hour he had been so engrossed with other matters that he had not noticed its approach; but now he looked at it with some anxiety; and his anxiety was but too well founded.
"Why, that's an Australian revenue cutter!" exclaimed Mr. Curtis. "What in the world can it want here? I suppose it's going to establish a custom-house on the islet to collect duties from the American passengers who come through the tunnel. ”

“ If I was like a fish in a basket before, I'm now more like a squirrel in a rotary cage, and could keep the car spinning around all day by climbing around the inside! At present, however, I'm not much in the humor for anything of the sort, especially as the car will present a slightly greater resistance to the air in the tube unless the point is kept perpendicularly downward. ”

“ We say that ice is cold because it has considerably less heat than the human body. But ice nevertheless does possess heat, and quite a goodly amount of it, too. The only bodies which possess no heat whatever are those which are at a temperature of about 459° F. below zero. This is, to the best of our knowledge, the point of absolute cold, that is to say, the point at which a body will retain absolutely no heat at all. ”

“ If I could only trust these machines with some one else, I should n't hesitate an instant to go myself! But so much depends upon the proper working of the electrical currents that I could not possibly delegate so difficult a task to even my most competent assistant. The mere work of regulating the charge of repellent electricity in the tube to counteract the centrifugal force of the earth will, in itself, demand the closest attention. ”

“ Like every other person who has had a smattering of physics, he was familiar with the fact that the attraction of bodies is proportional to their masses; but few persons stop to reflect how infinitesimal the attraction of a man really is in comparison to the attraction of the earth itself.
William, it must be confessed, was highly disappointed at this turn of affairs, for it would have been most amusing to swim around the car, with all the loose objects in it, solids as well as liquids, following around after him as a nail follows a magnet. ”

“ Well, I'm afraid that, for my part, I don't know enough about physics to understand your explanations; for none of the physical laws with which I am familiar explains how a man can lose his weight at the very surface of the earth. ”

“ The device used for excavating the first few hundred miles was somewhat in the style of an immense auger, which, by its rapid revolutions, loosened the earth and transported it automatically to the surface, where, after being carefully scrutinized by a geologist for its mineral wealth, it was dumped into the ocean to form a new island. To the great joy of the capitalists who had invested in the enterprise, it was found that the returns obtained from the sale of the mineral wealth brought up were considerable, while much valuable knowledge was gained as to the internal structure of the earth. ”

“ This voyage, being something out of the ordinary run, naturally frightens people more than a greater danger with which they are familiar. Novelty breeds fear, just as familiarity breeds contempt."
Flora beamed with delight as the doctor thus practically gave his consent, while William returned profuse thanks. Visions immediately floated through his mind of a speedy and successful trip, and he pictured his arrival in New York, where, of course, he would be received in triumph, and fêted like a hero. ”

“ The real explanation of the matter was probably that William's internal organs were under the same conditions in his body as he himself was in the car; in other words, they tended to remain stationary at whatever point they might be. Hence whether he stood upright or head downward made no difference; even his blood would have no tendency to run more in one direction than in another. No matter how he placed himself, the flow of blood to his head would be somewhat more than normal, because gravitation no longer pulled it down into his feet as it did on the earth. ”

“ Our hero was very much puzzled at first for an explanation of this singular phenomenon; but at last it struck him that the reason his motions were so much more violent than on the earth was that, while his muscular force remained unchanged, this force produced greater effects, since his limbs now possessed no weight.
When he moved his limbs on the earth a great portion of his muscular force was consumed in overcoming the attraction of gravitation, while here no force whatever was wasted in this way; hence the same exertion would produce very much more rapid movements. ”

“ You must consequently admit that the scheme is not altogether so impossible as it would seem at first sight."
"Well, doctor, let me say just one last word. Do you realize the incalculable sum of money that will be required to carry out such an undertaking as you have in view?"
"It will not cost so much as you think, James," returned Dr. Giles. "I have estimated that the expense ought not to exceed one hundred million dollars."
"One hundred million dollars!" replied Mr. Curtis, contemptuously; "that's altogether too low an estimate for such a gigantic undertaking. ”

“ The novelty of the situation having passed away, our hero began to feel a trifle blue.
"It is curious," said he, "but although I am perfectly free in all my motions, and am not tied in any way, yet I am held here an absolute prisoner in the center of the car, held more securely than if my hands and feet were tied, and I were inclosed in a strong iron cage. I can spin around in all directions, but I cannot get an inch nearer the top or bottom of the car, or approach either side. ”

“ The things that you feel sure are going to occur are those that don't take place, while the ones you don't think about are precisely those that do happen. And as soon as something does happen, and you think everything else is going to occur in the same way, then it changes and takes place in a different manner. All the laws of nature seem turned topsy-turvy in this car!" Whatever the explanation, there was no doubt about the fact that bodies in the car now possessed a slight weight. ”

“ Besides, matters are not so bad as they seem. If the danger can only be warded off for half an hour more, William will be in safety on the other side. Every instant we gain now is so much toward his salvation. Come, dry your eyes; for I shall need you to help me watch the instruments, and on the promptness of our actions everything may now depend.
Thus admonished, Flora quickly brushed away her tears, for in the hope of being of use to our hero she would have risked anything and dared anything. But as she turned to the instruments, a cry of alarm from the doctor caused her to look up. ”

“ It was a natural illusion, and it was only dispelled when he noticed, in passing one of the instruments that denoted the position of the car in the tube, that the cylinder which represented the car was now placed obliquely in the glass tube, and was slowly turning. Then the truth of the matter flashed upon him.
"Well, here's something new," he remarked gleefully. "Not only can I spin myself around as I please, but I can also spin the car around, and make it revolve in any direction I wish." ”

“ As you are aware, in order to cool a body, it is necessary to make it impart some of its heat to other bodies, and this is precisely what I have succeeded in doing. I put in my machine a gallon of specially prepared non-freezable liquid, and then pass a current of water at 50° F. through the apparatus. Every gallon of water that passes through becomes heated to 51° F. in its passage; in other words, it absorbs one degree of heat from the original liquid, so that the temperature of this liquid after ten gallons of water have passed through will be ten degrees lower than it was at first. ”

“ It was the boy who first broke the silence, and it was easy to see, from his brisk, businesslike manner, that he thoroughly knew how to take care of himself.
"Do I understand, sir," he said, going at once to the subject in his mind,—"do I understand that a reward of one hundred pounds is offered to whoever will take passage in the car that is about to be dropped through the earth?"
"Yes, my boy, that is the offer; but you appear somewhat young to try an experiment which so many older heads are afraid to risk." ”

“ It seems a pity to think that man, although traveling a million and a half miles in space every day, cannot travel even two or three thousand miles on the earth itself in the same time. Why, our fastest locomotives travel only a couple of hundred miles an hour, while with my tunnel through the earth we shall be able to travel some ten thousand miles in the same time without noise or jolting. ”