ards Mars, I could not
regulate the positive current so as to temper our fall and make a safe
landing. It was equally dangerous to remain fixed in space, or to fall
headlong upon a planet and be smashed, or be buried miles deep if the
projectile did not collapse.

I had no way of telling how much time passed, but it seemed to me a very
long period, and he grew steadily worse as we approached the neutral
point. I tried to rouse him from his delirium. I addressed him
jocularly, then commandingly, then beseechingly. And he answered me
always with reflections from that other side of his nature which one
rarely saw when he was well.

"Hast thou seen red ants crawling upon a cherry? Such are the mere
circumnavigators of a globe! What! Hath not the world forgotten a
Columbus? How long, then, will it remember---- Hast thou no cooler
water? This is tepid and bitter!"

Ever since the last quarter of the Moon, which must have been ten days
ago, there had not been the slightest perceptible evidence of movement.
The standards by which we judge motion on the Earth had failed ever
since we left the atmosphere. There was no rushing or whizzing; we
passed nothing; all the ordinary evidences of speed were absent. When
you lie in the state-room of a smoothly moving steamer, no forward
motion is perceptible. If you see another ship pass near by, you get a
sudden surprising idea of the speed. If you watch the receding water,
you appear to be going forward slowly; and if you watch the spray at the
bow or the wake astern, you appreciate the movement more fully. But if
the waves or the tide happen to be running with the ship, she has
apparently almost stopped, when really her speed has been somewhat
accelerated. If you watch the distant stars, you can scarcely perceive
any motion at all; and if the clouds should be moving in the same
direction as the ship, her motion appears reversed.

We had none of these things by which to judge, and we appeared to be
hanging perfectly still in space, though the doctor had assured me we
were travelling at least five hundred miles a minute. This was rational,
as it agreed with the diminishing size of the Earth; but it required an
effort of faith on my part to believe that we had been moving at all.

But suppose we should gradually lose our speed and stop in a neutral
point, how should I know it? The Earth now was, and had been for ten
days, a mere spot on the Sun. While Mars had been visible, he had neve