"Nicholl, are we moving?"
Nicholl and Ardan looked at each other; they had not yet troubled themselves about the projectile; their first thought had been for the traveler, not for the car.
"Well, are we really moving?" repeated Michel Ardan.
"Or quietly resting on the soil of Florida?" asked Nicholl.
"Or at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico?" added Michel Ardan.
"What an idea!" exclaimed the president.
And this double hypothesis suggested by his companions had the effect of recalling him to his senses. In any case they could not decide on the position of the projectile. Its apparent immovability,and the want of communication with the outside,prevented them from solving the question. Perhaps the projectile was unwinding its course through space.Perhaps after a short rise it had fallen upon the earth,or even in the Gulf of Mexico—a fall which the narrowness of the peninsula of Florida would render not impossible.