“But what can you expect? When people will stay in this world, they learn nothing and keep as ignorant as bears. But just come along to Jupiter and you’ll see. But they have to look out up there, for he’s got satellites that are not just the easiest things to pass.”
All the men laughed, but they more than half believed him. Then he went on to talk about Neptune, where seafaring men get a jovial reception, and Mars, where the military get the best of the sidewalk to such an extent that folks can hardly stand it. Finally, he drew them a heavenly picture of the delights of Venus.
“And when we get back from that expedition,” said the indefatigable narrator, “they’ll decorate us with the Southern Cross that shines up there in the Creator’s button-hole.”
“Ay, and you’d have well earned it!” said the sailors.
Thus passed the long evenings on the forecastle in merry chat, and during the same time the doctor went on with his instructive discourses.
One day the conversation turned upon the means of directing balloons, and the doctor was asked his opinion about it.
“I don’t think,” said he, “that we shall succeed in finding out a system of directing them. I am familiar with all the plans attempted and proposed, and not one has succeeded, not one is practicable. You may readily understand that I have occupied my mind with this subject, which was, necessarily, so interesting to me, but I have not been able to solve the problem with the appliances now known to mechanical science. We would have to discover a motive power of extraordinary force, and almost impossible lightness of machinery. And, even then, we could not resist atmospheric currents of any considerable strength. Until now, the effort has been rather to direct the car than the balloon, and that has been one great error.”
“Still there are many points of resemblance between a balloon and a ship which is directed at will.”
“Not at all,” retorted the doctor, “there is little or no similarity between the two cases. Air is infinitely less dense than water, in which the ship is only half submerged, while the whole bulk of a balloon is plunged in the atmosphere, and remains motionless with reference to the element that surrounds it.”
“You think, then, that aerostatic science has said its last word?”
“Not at all! not at all! But we must look for another point in the case, and if we cannot manage to guide our balloon, we must, at least, try to keep it in favorable aerial currents. In proportion as we ascend, the latter become much more uniform and flow more constantly in one direction. They are no longer disturbed by the mountains and valleys that traverse the surface of the globe, and these, you know, are the chief cause of the variations of the wind and the inequality of their force. Therefore, these zones having been once determined, the balloon will merely have to be placed in the currents best adapted to its destination.”
“But then,” continued Captain Bennet, “in order to reach them, you must keep constantly ascending or descending. That is the real difficulty, doctor.”
“And why, my dear captain?”
“Let us understand one another. It would be a difficulty and an obstacle only for long journeys, and not for short aerial excursions.”
“And why so, if you please?”
“Because you can ascend only by throwing out ballast; you can descend only after letting off gas, and by these processes your ballast and your gas are soon exhausted.”
“My dear sir, that’s the whole question. There is the only difficulty that science need now seek to overcome. The problem is not how to guide the balloon, but how to take it up and down without expending the gas which is its strength, its life-blood, its soul, if I may use the expression.”
“You are right, my dear doctor; but this problem is not yet solved; this means has not yet been discovered.”
“I beg your pardon, it HAS been discovered.”
“By whom?”
“By me!”
“By you?”
“You may readily believe that otherwise I should not have risked this expedition across Africa in a balloon. In twenty-four hours I should have been without gas!”