The lesser of the two circumstances was this: the car had not dropped to the plain, but had had its downward rush intercepted by an elevation, so that the force of our fall was just about half what might have been expected. As to the other and more vital circumstance, the fall itself was not what it would have been on our own sphere. The "pull" of gravity on Mercury, as we afterward discovered, has only one-third the power it has on Terra. To this phenomenon were due many wonderful things, as the reader will discover before we have gone very far. I was not the first of our party to open his eyes after the landing, for when I sat up and stared about me I saw the professor moving around the steel chamber and ministering to the others. Gilhooly was creeping toward the divan on all fours, muttering something about "a great slump in the market" and chuckling over the way in which he had "got out from under." J. Archibald Meigs was groaning and trying to lift himself on his elbow; Augustus Popham was on his knees, wobbling erratically and apparently undecided whether to say his prayers or to try and get up; Hannibal Markham was flattened out along the floor, the professor kneeling over him and chafing his temples. "What sort of a navigator are you, Quinn?" asked Meigs crossly. "By gad, it is more dangerous to make port with you than it is to sail through space." "Don’t blame the professor for a fault of mine, Meigs," I spoke up warmly. The broker looked at me with something like contempt. "I blame him for placing an incompetent and irresponsible person at such an important post as the switch board," said Meigs. "He should have known that a man who holds your distorted views on the subject of personal property is not to be trusted." "That’s right," added Popham, lifting himself to the divan. "Gilhooly made an attack on me," said I. "He bore me down and came within one of strangling me." "Quinn is the cause of Gilhooly’s abnormal condition," persisted Meigs, who was bound to have Quinn at fault for every evil that overtook us. I got up, rather more wrathful than the situation demanded. The fall had jarred my temper no less than my body, and I was in a mood to have the business out with Meigs at close quarters. "Softly, Mr. Munn!" cautioned the professor. "It is well to have a deaf ear for these gentlemen at times. Help me lift Mr. Markham to the divan." The professor’s words dispelled my anger. Without another word to Meigs I went over and assisted in getting the food trust magnate into a more comfortable position. Markham was not long in recovering, and when we took stock of ourselves we found that we were not much the worse for our shaking up. Quinn called to me to go upstairs with him and see if any havoc had been wrought there.