For instance, you say, the volume of _Uranus_ is 76 times greater than the Earth's; _Saturn's_ 900 times greater; _Jupiter's_ 1300 times greater; the Sun's 1300 thousand times greater--You may tell me all that till I'm tired hearing it, and I shall still be almost as ignorant as ever.

For my part I prefer to be told one of those simple comparisons that I find in the old almanacs: The Sun is a globe two feet in diameter; _Jupiter_, a good sized orange; _Saturn_, a smaller orange; _Neptune_, a plum; _Uranus_, a good sized cherry; the Earth, a pea; _Venus_, also a pea but somewhat smaller; _Mars_, a large pin's head; _Mercury_, a mustard seed; _Juno_, _Ceres_, _Vesta_, _Pallas_, and the other asteroids so many grains of sand.

Be told something like that, and you have got at least the tail of an idea!" This learned burst of Ardan's had the natural effect of making his hearers forget what they had been arguing about, and they therefore proceeded at once to dispose of Satellite's body.

It was a simple matter enough--no more than to fling it out of the Projectile into space, just as the sailors get rid of a dead body by throwing it into the sea.

Only in this operation they had to act, as Barbican recommended, with the utmost care and dispatch, so as to lose as little as possible of the internal air, which, by its great elasticity, would violently strive to escape.