"It is a prison," said he, "but a travelling prison, and if I had the right to put my nose to the window I would take it on a hundred years' lease! You are smiling, Barbicane. You are thinking of something you do not communicate. Do you say to yourself that this prison may be our coffin? Our coffin let it be; I would not change it for Mahomet's, which only hangs in space, and does not move!"
Whilst Michel Ardan was talking thus, Barbicane and Nicholl were making their last preparations.
It was 10.20 p.m. by Nicholl's chronometer when the three travellers were definitely walled up in their bullet. This chronometer was regulated to the tenth of a second by that of the engineer, Murchison. Barbicane looked at it.
"My friends," said he, "it is twenty minutes past ten; at thirteen minutes to eleven Murchison will set fire to the Columbiad; at that minute precisely we shall leave our spheroid. We have, therefore, still seven-and-twenty minutes to remain upon earth."
"Twenty-six minutes and thirteen seconds," answered the methodical
Nicholl.
"Very well!" cried Michel Ardan good-humouredly; "in twenty-six minutes lots of things can be done. We can discuss grave moral or political questions, and even solve them. Twenty-six minutes well employed are worth more than twenty-six years of doing nothing. A few seconds of a Pascal or a Newton are more precious than the whole existence of a crowd of imbeciles."
"And what do you conclude from that, talker eternal?" asked President
Barbicane.
"I conclude that we have twenty-six minutes," answered Ardan.
"Twenty-four only," said Nicholl.
"Twenty-four, then, if you like, brave captain," answered Ardan; "twenty-four minutes, during which we might investigate—"