"Well done! and such heat would be capable of--?"

"Of melting in an hour a stratum of ice 2400 feet thick, or, according
to another calculation, of raising a globe of ice-cold water, 3 times
the size of our Earth, to the boiling point in an hour."

"Why not calculate the exact fraction of a second it would take to cook
a couple of eggs?" laughed Ardan. "I should as soon believe in one
calculation as in the other.--But--by the by--why does not such extreme
heat cook us all up like so many beefsteaks?"

"For two very good and sufficient reasons," answered Barbican. "In the
first place, the terrestrial atmosphere absorbs the 4/10 of the solar
heat. In the second, the quantity of solar heat intercepted by the Earth
is only about the two billionth part of all that is radiated."

"How fortunate to have such a handy thing as an atmosphere around us,"
cried the Frenchman; "it not only enables us to breathe, but it actually
keeps us from sizzling up like griskins."

"Yes," said the Captain, "but unfortunately we can't say so much for the
Moon."

"Oh pshaw!" cried Ardan, always full of confidence. "It's all right
there too! The Moon is either inhabited or she is not. If she is, the
inhabitants must breathe. If she is not, there must be oxygen enough
left for we, us and co., even if we should have to go after it to the
bottom of the ravines, where, by its gravity, it must have accumulated!
So much the better! we shall not have to climb those thundering
mountains!"