I went at once to the cylinder we used for discharging things from the
projectile. With a pair of pliers I chipped off a small piece of the
edge of the closing lid in two places, one near each end. This made two
little irregular holes into the cylinder about eight inches apart. Then
I pushed it half way out, so that one hole was outside and the other
inside. Of course the air rushed through the inner hole into the
cylinder, and thence through the outer hole to the exterior.

"Shut that thing!" cried the doctor, when he saw what I had done. "Do
you wish to suffocate us? That will let the air out perfectly, but how
are you going to close it to admit the condensed air?"

"People unskilled in these matters are so hasty!" I said rather
sarcastically. "Wait until I have finished and you will see."

I found he had a screw-driver, and I loosened one of the long screws
and enlarged the half of its hole toward my compartment. Then I whittled
a block of soft wood, so that it would slide smoothly into this half of
the hole. Driving the screw home again, I just allowed its tip to enter
the end of the block. Then I fastened a piece of stout twine to the
cylinder and the other end to the block of wood, which was almost
opposite it. Pushing the cylinder half way out, I made the twine taut,
and hastening into the doctor's compartment, I thrust in the bulkhead.
The air was rapidly escaping. Waiting long enough for all of it to have
leaked out, I then unscrewed the long screw, which gradually drew in the
block of wood and the twine, and thus pulled the cylinder into the
projectile so that there was no connection with the exterior. Then the
doctor let in the condensed air to a barometric pressure of twenty-six,
and the whole operation was over in a few minutes. My compartment must
have been almost a complete vacuum. When it was over, I cried rather
triumphantly to the doctor,--

"There, you see, one doesn't need a steam pump to make the water run
over Niagara! At this distance from the surface, nature abhors a gas and
prefers a vacuum!" He was inclined to be rather sulky at first, but he
really did not like pumping any better than I did.

I should say it was about five hours later that we noticed it was
growing gradually lighter outside. Mars lost his ruddiness and grew
pale in a grey field. Our view of the Earth was also becoming more and
more misty.

"We are emerging from the black core of the shadow into the
semi-illuminated penu