"Oh! you rhinoceroses, you pachyderms, you granite men!" cried Ardan,
gasping with surprise; "you machines with iron heads, and iron hearts! I
may admire you, but I'm blessed if I understand you!"

"Ten, forty-two, ten!" repeated M'Nicholl, as mechanically as if it was
the chronometer itself that spoke.

"Four minutes and a half more," said Barbican.

"Oh! four and a half little minutes!" went on Ardan. "Only think of it!
We are shut up in a bullet that lies in the chamber of a cannon nine
hundred feet long. Underneath this bullet is piled a charge of 400
thousand pounds of gun-cotton, equivalent to 1600 thousand pounds of
ordinary gunpowder! And at this very instant our friend Murphy,
chronometer in hand, eye on dial, finger on discharger, is counting the
last seconds and getting ready to launch us into the limitless regions
of planetary--"

"Ardan, dear friend," interrupted Barbican, in a grave tone, "a serious
moment is now at hand. 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.