it, son!"

"Yes, I'm thinking of it," I answered; "but what difference will
it make when our air supply is exhausted whether the temperature
is 153 degrees or 153,000? We'll be just as dead, and no one
will know the difference, anyhow." But I must admit that for some
unaccountable reason the stationary temperature did renew my waning
hope. What I hoped for I could not have explained, nor did I try.
The very fact, as Perry took pains to explain, of the blasting of
several very exact and learned scientific hypotheses made it apparent
that we could not know what lay before us within the bowels of
the earth, and so we might continue to hope for the best, at least
until we were dead--when hope would no longer be essential to
our happiness. It was very good, and logical reasoning, and so I
embraced it.

At one hundred miles the temperature had DROPPED TO 152 1/2 DEGREES!
When I announced it Perry reached over and hugged me.

From then on until noon of the second day, it continued to drop
until it became as uncomfortably cold as it had been unbearably hot
before. At the depth of two hundred and forty miles our nostrils
were assailed by almost overpowering ammonia fumes, and the
temperature had dropped to TEN BELOW ZERO! We suffered nearly two
hours of this intense and bitter cold, until at about two hundred
and forty-five miles from the surface of the earth we entered a
stratum of solid ice, when the mercury quickly rose to 32 degrees.
During the next three hours we passed through ten miles of ice,
eventually emerging into another series of ammonia-impregnated
strata, where the mercury again fell to ten degrees below zero.