"Nor diminish its velocity?"
"No."
"Not even by lightening it, as a heavily laden ship is lightened, by throwing cargo overboard?"
"What can we throw overboard? We have no ballast like balloon-men."
"I should like to know," interrupted M'Nicholl, "what would be the good of throwing anything at all overboard. Any one with a particle of common sense in his head, can see that the lightened Projectile should only move the quicker!"
"Slower, you mean," said Ardan.
"Quicker, I mean," replied the Captain.
"Neither quicker nor slower, dear friends," interposed Barbican, desirous to stop a quarrel; "we are floating, you know, in an absolute void, where specific gravity never counts."
"Well then, my friends," said Ardan in a resigned tone that he evidently endeavored to render calm, "since the worst is come to the worst, there is but one thing left for us to do!"
"What's that?" said the Captain, getting ready to combat some new piece of nonsense.