In spite of all my attentions (I did not then understand the nature of Space Fever, of course), he was growing steadily worse, and I was becoming desperate. I could not afford to have him ill long. The currents would probably continue to work fairly well until it became necessary to reverse them, and that time was not far off. Unless they were reversed exactly at the right moment, we might fall into the neutral spot and be held there for ever. Even if I managed to stop the negative current, and succeeded in falling towards 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.