"Well, then, my friend, do not try it," said Barbicane, "for the hand you draw back will be only a stump, frozen and deformed by the frightful cold." "Really?" "You would feel the sensation of a terrible burn, like one made with a red-hot iron, for the same thing happens when heat is brutally abstracted from our body as when it is inserted. Besides, I am not sure that objects thrown out still follow us." "Why?" said Nicholl. "Because if we are passing through any atmosphere, however slightly dense, these objects will be delayed. Now the darkness prevents us verifying whether they still float around us. Therefore, in order not to risk our thermometer, we will tie something to it, and so easily pull it back into the interior." Barbicane's advice was followed. Nicholl threw the instrument out of the rapidly-opened port-light, holding it by a very short cord, so that it could be rapidly drawn in. The window was only open one second, and yet that one second was enough to allow the interior of the projectile to become frightfully cold. "_Mille diables!_" cried Michel Ardan, "it is cold enough here to freeze white bears!" Barbicane let half-an-hour go by, more than sufficient time to allow the instrument to descend to the level of the temperature of space. The thermometer was then rapidly drawn in. Barbicane calculated the quantity of mercury spilt into the little phial soldered to the lower part of the instrument, and said-- "One hundred and forty degrees centigrade below zero!" (218° Fahr.) M. Pouillet was right, not Fourier. Such was the frightful temperature of sidereal space! Such perhaps that of the lunar continents when the orb of night loses by radiation all the heat which she absorbs during the fifteen days of sunshine. CHAPTER XV. HYPERBOLA OR PARABOLA. Our readers will probably be astonished that Barbicane and his companions were so little occupied with the future in store for them in their metal prison, carried along in the infinitude of ether. Instead of asking themselves where they were going, they lost their time in making experiments, just as if they had been comfortably installed in their own studies. It might be answered that men so strong-minded were above such considerations, that such little things did not make them uneasy, and that they had something else to do than to think about their future. The truth is that they were not masters of their projectile--that they could neither stop it nor alter its direction. A seaman can direct the head of his ship as he pleases; an aëronaut can give his balloon vertical movement. They, on the contrary, had no authority over their vehicle. No manoeuvre was possible to them. Hence their not troubling themselves, or "let things go" state of mind.