The moon, being far the nearest of the heavenly bodies, would naturally seem to afford the most promising opportunity for trying the experiment; but, having learned in Thibet that she is quite destitute of air, I resolved to try some other region; for I thought it would be quite useless to arrive there, and straightway perish for want of breath. If I could only get as far as Hesperos my chances of life would be much better, inasmuch as I was assured, by the same philosophers, that there is good reason for believing that planet to be very abundantly supplied with air. Moreover, it fortunately happened that she was just then approaching the position called by astronomers her inferior conjunction, so her distance from the earth was not much over twenty-five millions of miles. The main risk I should run in attempting to make this passage would evidently be the possibility, perhaps I should say the probability, of extinction of the vital force during the period of disintegration, which I estimated at a little more than two minutes. It was known to the Thibetian Brotherhood that the disintegrated particles moved with exactly the same speed as light; and as light requires about eight minutes to traverse the distance between the sun and the earth, two would nearly suffice to move it as far as Hesperos in her lower conjunction. Whether after such an interval of suspension the vital force would maintain sufficient energy to accomplish the reintegration on which continuance of bodily life depends, an actual experiment alone could show. But I cared but little for the risk. Life had long become hateful to me; a chance was now given to escape the society of the Yahoos, and all their abominations. I resolved to try my luck—at the worst I should only perish. I made no communication of my intention to the chief, lest perchance he should raise some objection to my intended enterprise; and, on the very next night, at ten o’clock, I went out, taking with me, in various pockets of the eastern dress which, for convenience in Asiatic travel, I had adopted in Bombay, sundry small articles for the toilet, also my silver watch, and an ingenious instrument for measuring quantities of heat, which had been sent me as a gift just before I left home, by my good friend, Mr. Gabriel Fahrenheit, of Amsterdam, who had lately invented it. I sat down on a rock by the side of the mountain; Hesperos was distinctly visible, though only a thin crescent of her illuminated face was turned towards the earth. Carefully noting the time, which was exactly thirty-seven minutes past ten, and having also marked the temperature, which was fifty-seven degrees of my thermometer, as the instrument is called, I accomplished the disintegration, indicating Hesperos as the goal. CHAPTER II. HERE BEGINS THE HISTORY OF HESPEROS.