But certainly they were all soon talking over the matter as calmly as you or I would discuss the advisability of taking a sail on the lake some beautiful evening in July.
Their first remarks were decidedly peculiar and quite characteristic.
Other men would have asked themselves where the Projectile was taking them to.

Do you think such a question ever occurred to them?
Not a bit of it.

They simply began asking each other what could have been the cause of this new and strange state of things.
"Off the track, it appears," observed Ardan.

"How's that ?" "My opinion is," answered the Captain, "that the Projectile was not aimed true.

Every possible precaution had been taken, I am well aware, but we all know that an inch, a line, even the tenth part of a hair's breadth wrong at the start would have sent us thousands of miles off our course by this time." "What have you to say to that, Barbican ?" asked Ardan.
"I don't think there was any error at the start," was the confident reply; "not even so much as a line! We took too many tests proving the absolute perpendicularity of the Columbiad, to entertain the slightest doubt on that subject.