“Let us prepare a thermometer,” said Barbicane.
We may imagine that an ordinary thermometer would afford no result under the circumstances in which this instrument was to be exposed. The mercury would have been frozen in its ball, as below 42° Fahrenheit below zero it is no longer liquid. But Barbicane had furnished himself with a spirit thermometer on Wafferdin’s system, which gives the minima of excessively low temperatures.
Before beginning the experiment, this instrument was compared with an ordinary one, and then Barbicane prepared to use it.
“How shall we set about it?” asked Nicholl.
“Nothing is easier,” replied Michel Ardan, who was never at a loss. “We open the scuttle rapidly; throw out the instrument; it follows the projectile with exemplary docility; and a quarter of an hour after, draw it in.”
“With the hand?” asked Barbicane.
“With the hand,” replied Michel.
“Well, then, my friend, do not expose yourself,” answered Barbicane, “for the hand that you draw in again will be nothing but a stump frozen and deformed by the frightful cold.”
“Really!”
“You will feel as if you had had a terrible burn, like that of iron at a white heat; for whether the heat leaves our bodies briskly or enters briskly, it is exactly the same thing. Besides, I am not at all certain that the objects we have thrown out are still following us.”