"Not if we were blown far enough to get beyond the earth's attraction—or to get so far away from that body that the sun's attraction counterbalances that of the earth," replied the professor, calmly.
"And why do we not fall off?" asked Mark.
"We do come pretty near falling off," returned Professor Henderson, grimly. "I should think you could see that, Mark."
"Our lightness!" Jack cried. "Washington's jumping and the lightness of all objects! I see. This fragment of the earth—this island in the air, as you call it, Professor—is large enough to possess some powers of attraction of its own; but not as much as the earth. I wonder how large it really is?"
"That is a matter for future discovery," returned the scientist, with some eagerness.
"My goodness me!" groaned Mark. "He really enjoys the situation."
"No man has ever been in such a position before—I am convinced of that," declared the professor. "Were it not that you are all in as perilous a situation as myself, I would not worry about this condition. It is marvelous, and the situation affords me opportunity to learn many things that science has only guessed at before."
"Don't talk that way!" wailed the oil man, suddenly. "You'll make me believe in this island in the air business, and I know it's craziness!"
Nor could anything the professor say convince the oil man that there was any common sense in the plain statement of their situation. It was beyond Phineas Roebach's powers of imagination.
As for Washington White, he could not understand the affair anyway. But he always accepted the professor's words as Bible truth and he had no doubt of the surprising fact.