"Nothing whatever," replied M'Nicholl, giving point to his words by a despairing shake of his head.
"You don't mean surely that we're going to sit here, like bumps on a log, doing nothing until it will be too late to attempt anything?"
"Nothing whatever can be done," said Barbican gloomily. "It is vain to struggle against the impossible."
"Impossible! Where did you get that word? I thought the American schoolboys had cut it out of their dictionaries!"
"That must have been since my time," said Barbican smiling grimly.
"It still sticks in a few old copies anyhow," drawled M'Nicholl drily, as he carefully wiped his glasses.
"Well! it has no business here!" said Ardan. "What! A pair of live Yankees and a Frenchman, of the nineteenth century too, recoil before an old fashioned word that hardly scared our grandfathers!"
"What can we do?"
"Correct the movement that's now running away with us!"
"Correct it?"