Let us meet it with some interior recollection.
Give me your hands, my dear friends." "Certainly," said Ardan, with tears in his voice, and already at the other extreme of his apparent levity.
The three brave men united in one last, silent, but warm and impulsively affectionate pressure.
"And now, great God, our Creator, protect us! In Thee we trust!" prayed Barbican, the others joining him with folded hands and bowed heads.
"Ten, forty-six!" whispered the Captain, as he and Ardan quietly took their places on the mattresses.
Only forty seconds more! Barbican rapidly extinguishes the gas and lies down beside his companions.
The deathlike silence now reigning in the Projectile is interrupted only by the sharp ticking of the chronometer as it beats the seconds.
Suddenly, a dreadful shock is felt, and the Projectile, shot up by the instantaneous development of 200,000 millions of cubic feet of gas, is flying into space with inconceivable rapidity!.