"And these twelve at a cost of 85 leagues diagonally?"
"Exactly so."
"In twenty days?"
"Yes."
"Now, sixteen leagues are the hundredth part of the earth's radius. At this rate we shall be two thousand days, or nearly five years and a half, in getting to the centre."
No answer was vouchsafed to this rational conclusion. "Without reckoning, too, that if a vertical depth of sixteen leagues can be attained only by a diagonal descent of eighty-four, it follows that we must go eight thousand miles in a south-easterly direction; so that we shall emerge from some point in the earth's circumference instead of getting to the centre!"
"Confusion to all your figures, and all your hypotheses besides," shouted my uncle in a sudden rage. "What is the basis of them all? How do you know that this passage does not run straight to our destination? Besides, there is a precedent. What one man has done, another may do."
"I hope so; but, still, I may be permitted—"
"You shall have my leave to hold your tongue, Axel, but not to talk in that irrational way."
I could see the awful Professor bursting through my uncle's skin, and
I took timely warning.