"Mac pretends he understands all that!"
"You need not be a Solomon to do it," said the Captain. "All these signs that you appear to consider so cabalistic form a language the clearest, the shortest, and the most logical, for all those who can read it."
"You pretend, Captain, that, by means of these hieroglyphics, far more incomprehensible than the sacred Ibis of the Egyptians, you can discover the velocity at which the Projectile should start?"
"Most undoubtedly," replied the Captain, "and, by the same formula I can even tell you the rate of our velocity at any particular point of our journey."
"You can?"
"I can."
"Then you're just as deep a one as our President."
"No, Ardan; not at all. The really difficult part of the question Barbican has done. That is, to make out such an equation as takes into account all the conditions of the problem. After that, it's a simple affair of Arithmetic, requiring only a knowledge of the four rules to work it out."
"Very simple," observed Ardan, who always got muddled at any kind of a difficult sum in addition.
"Captain," said Barbican, "you could have found the formulas too, if you tried."