ring was above his horizon. At Greenwich it would be
over his head exactly. At New Orleans, which is quarter
round the world from Greenwich, it would be just in his
horizon. A little west of New Orleans you would begin to
look for the other half of the ring on the west instead
of the east; and if you went a little west of the Feejee
Islands the ring would be over your head again. So if we
only had a ring like that, not round the equator of the
world,--as Saturn's ring is around Saturn,--but vertical
to the plane of the equator, as the brass ring of an
artificial globe goes, only far higher in proportion,--
"from that ring," said Q., pensively, "we could calculate
the longitude."

Failing that, after various propositions, he
suggested the Brick Moon. The plan was this: If from
the surface of the earth, by a gigantic peashooter, you
could shoot a pea upward from Greenwich, aimed northward
as well as upward; if you drove it so fast and far that
when its power of ascent was exhausted, and it began to
fall, it should clear the earth, and pass outside the
North Pole; if you had given it sufficient power to get
it half round the earth without touching, that pea would
clear the earth forever. It would continue to rotate
above the North Pole, above the Feejee Island place,
above the South Pole and Greenwich, forever, with the
impulse with which it had first cleared our atmosphere
and attraction. If only we could see that pea as it
revolved in that convenient orbit, then we could measure
the longitude from that, as soon as we knew how high the