no means so rife with agony as might have been anticipated. Indeed,
there was much of incipient madness in the calm survey which I began
to take of my situation. I drew up to my eyes each of my hands, one
after the other, and wondered what occurrence could have given rise
to the swelling of the veins, and the horrible blackness of the
fingemails. I afterward carefully examined my head, shaking it
repeatedly, and feeling it with minute attention, until I succeeded
in satisfying myself that it was not, as I had more than half
suspected, larger than my balloon. Then, in a knowing manner, I felt
in both my breeches pockets, and, missing therefrom a set of tablets
and a toothpick case, endeavored to account for their disappearance,
and not being able to do so, felt inexpressibly chagrined. It now
occurred to me that I suffered great uneasiness in the joint of my
left ankle, and a dim consciousness of my situation began to glimmer
through my mind. But, strange to say! I was neither astonished nor
horror-stricken. If I felt any emotion at all, it was a kind of
chuckling satisfaction at the cleverness I was about to display in
extricating myself from this dilemma; and I never, for a moment,
looked upon my ultimate safety as a question susceptible of doubt.
For a few minutes I remained wrapped in the profoundest meditation. I
have a distinct recollection of frequently compressing my lips,
putting my forefinger to the side of my nose, and making use of other
gesticulations and grimaces common to men who, at ease in their
arm-chairs, meditate upon matters of intricacy or importance. Having,
as I thought, sufficiently collected my ideas, I now, with great
caution and deliberation, put my hands behind my back, and unfastened
the large iron buckle which belonged to the waistband of my
inexpressibles. This buckle had three teeth, which, being somewhat
rusty, turned with great difficulty on their axis. I brought them,
however, after some trouble, at right angles to the body of the
buckle, and was glad to find them remain firm in that position.
Holding the instrument thus obtained within my teeth, I now proceeded
to untie the knot of my cravat. I had to rest several times before I
could accomplish this manoeuvre, but it was at length accomplished.
To one end of the cravat I then made fast the buckle, and the other
end I tied, for greater security, tightly around my wrist. Drawing
now my body upwards, with a prodigious exertion of muscular force, I
succeeded, at the very first trial, in throwing the buckle over the
car, and entangling it, as I had anticipated, in the circular rim of
the wicker-work.
"My body was now inclined towards the side of the car, at an angle of
about forty-five degrees; but it must not be understood that I was
therefore only forty-five degrees below the perpendicular. So far
from it, I still lay nearly level with the plane of the horizon; for
the change of situation which I had acquired, had forced the bottom
of the car considerably outwards from my position, which was
accordingly one of the most imminent and deadly peril. It should be
remembered, however, that when I fell in the first instance, from the
car, if I had fallen with my face turned toward the balloon, instead
of turned outwardly from it, as it actually was; or if, in the second
place, the cord by which I was suspended had chanced to hang over the
upper edge, instead of through a crevice near the bottom of the car,
-- I say it may be readily conceived that, in either of these
supposed cases, I should have been unable to accomplish even as much
as I had now accomplished, and the wonderful adventures of Hans
Pfaall would have been utterly lost to posterity, I had therefore
every reason to be grateful; although, in point of fact, I was still
too stupid to be anything at all, and hung for, perhaps, a quarter of
an hour in that extraordinary manner, without making the slightest
farther exertion whatsoever, and in a singularly tranquil state of
idiotic enjoyment. But this feeling did not fail to die rapidly away,
and thereunto succeeded horror, and dismay, and a chilling sense of
utter helplessness and ruin. In fact, the blood so long accumulating
in the vessels of my head and throat, and which had hitherto buoyed
up my spirits with madness and delirium, had now begun to retire
within their proper channels, and the distinctness which was thus
added to my perception of the danger, merely served to deprive me of
the self-possession and courage to encounter it. But this weakness
was, luckily for me, of no very long duration. In good time came to
my rescue the spirit of despair, and, with frantic cries and
struggles, I jerked my way bodily upwards, till at length, clutching
with a vise-like grip the long-desired rim, I writhed my person over
it, and fell headlong and shuddering within the car.
"It was not until some time afterward that I recovered myself
sufficiently to attend to the ordinary cares of the balloon. I then,
however, examined it with attention, and found it, to my great
relief, uninjured. My implements were all safe, and, fortunately, I
had lost neither ballast nor provisions. Indeed, I had so well
secured them in their places, that such an accident was entirely out
of the question. Looking at my watch, I found it six o'clock. I was
still rapidly ascending, and my barometer gave a present altitude of
three and three-quarter miles. Immediately beneath me in the ocean,
lay a small black object, slightly oblong in shape, seemingly about
the size, and in every way bearing a great resemblance to one of
those childish toys called a domino. Bringing my telescope to bear
upon it, I plainly discerned it to be a British ninety four-gun ship,
close-hauled, and pitching heavily in the sea with her head to the
W.S.W. Besides this ship, I saw nothing but the ocean and the sky,
and the sun, which had long arisen.
"It is now high time that I should explain to your Excellencies the
object of my perilous voyage. Your Excellencies will bear in mind
that distressed circumstances in Rotterdam had at length driven me to
the resolution of committing suicide. It was not, however, that to
life itself I had any, positive disgust, but that I was harassed
beyond endurance by the adventitious miseries attending my situation.
In this state of mind, wishing to live, yet wearied with life, the
treatise at the stall of the bookseller opened a resource to my
imagination. I then finally made up my mind. I determined to depart,
yet live -- to leave the world, yet continue to exist -- in short, to
drop enigmas, I resolved, let what would ensue, to force a passage,
if I could, to the moon. Now, lest I should be supposed more of a
madman than I actually am, I will detail, as well as I am able, the
considerations which led me to believe that an achievement of this
nature, although without doubt difficult, and incontestably full of
danger, was not absolutely, to a bold spirit, beyond the confines of
the possible.
attended to. Now, the mean or average interval between the centres of
the two planets is 59.9643 of the earth's equatorial radii, or only
about 237,000 miles. I say the mean or average interval. But it must
be borne in mind that the form of the moon's orbit being an ellipse
of eccentricity amounting to no less than 0.05484 of the major
semi-axis of the ellipse itself, and the earth's centre being
situated in its focus, if I could, in any manner, contrive to meet
the moon, as it were, in its perigee, the above mentioned distance
would be materially diminished. But, to say nothing at present of
this possibility, it was very certain that, at all events, from the
237,000 miles I would have to deduct the radius of the earth, say
4,000, and the radius of the moon, say 1080, in all 5,080, leaving an
actual interval to be traversed, under average circumstances, of
231,920 miles. Now this, I reflected, was no very extraordinary
distance. Travelling on land has been repeatedly accomplished at the
rate of thirty miles per hour, and indeed a much greater speed may be
anticipated. But even at this velocity, it would take me no more than
322 days to reach the surface of the moon. There were, however, many
particulars inducing me to believe that my average rate of travelling
might possibly very much exceed that of thirty miles per hour, and,
as these considerations did not fail to make a deep impression upon
my mind, I will mention them more fully hereafter.
"The next point to be regarded was a matter of far greater
importance. From indications afforded by the barometer, we find that,
in ascensions from the surface of the earth we have, at the height of
1,000 feet, left below us about one-thirtieth of the entire mass of
atmospheric air, that at 10,600 we have ascended through nearly
one-third; and that at 18,000, which is not far from the elevation of
Cotopaxi, we have surmounted one-half the material, or, at all
events, one-half the ponderable, body of air incumbent upon our
globe. It is also calculated that at an altitude not exceeding the
hundredth part of the earth's diameter -- that is, not exceeding
eighty miles -- the rarefaction would be so excessive that animal
life could in no manner be sustained, and, moreover, that the most
delicate means we possess of ascertaining the presence of the
atmosphere would be inadequate to assure us of its existence. But I
did not fail to perceive that these latter calculations are founded
altogether on our experimental knowledge of the properties of air,
and the mechanical laws regulating its dilation and compression, in
what may be called, comparatively speaking, the immediate vicinity of
the earth itself; and, at the same time, it is taken for granted that
animal life is and must be essentially incapable of modification at
any given unattainable distance from the surface. Now, all such
reasoning and from such data must, of course, be simply analogical.
The greatest height ever reached by man was that of 25,000 feet,
attained in the aeronautic expedition of Messieurs Gay-Lussac and
Biot. This is a moderate altitude, even when compared with the eighty
miles in question; and I could not help thinking that the subject
admitted room for doubt and great latitude for speculation.
"But, in point of fact, an ascension being made to any given
altitude, the ponderable quantity of air surmounted in any farther
ascension is by no means in proportion to the additional height
ascended (as may be plainly seen from what has been stated before),
but in a ratio constantly decreasing. It is therefore evident that,
ascend as high as we may, we cannot, literally speaking, arrive at a
limit beyond which no atmosphere is to be found. It must exist, I
argued; although it may exist in a state of infinite rarefaction.
"On the other hand, I was aware that arguments have not been wanting
to prove the existence of a real and definite limit to the
atmosphere, beyond which there is absolutely no air whatsoever. But a
circumstance which has been left out of view by those who contend for
such a limit seemed to me, although no positive refutation of their
creed, still a point worthy very serious investigation. On comparing
the intervals between the successive arrivals of Encke's comet at its
perihelion, after giving credit, in the most exact manner, for all
the disturbances due to the attractions of the planets, it appears
that the periods are gradually diminishing; that is to say, the major
axis of the comet's ellipse is growing shorter, in a slow but
perfectly regular decrease. Now, this is precisely what ought to be
the case, if we suppose a resistance experienced from the comet from
an extremely rare ethereal medium pervading the regions of its orbit.
For it is evident that such a medium must, in retarding the comet's
velocity, increase its centripetal, by weakening its centrifugal
force. In other words, the sun's attraction would be constantly
attaining greater power, and the comet would be drawn nearer at every
revolution. Indeed, there is no other way of accounting for the
variation in question. But again. The real diameter of the same
comet's nebulosity is observed to contract rapidly as it approaches
the sun, and dilate with equal rapidity in its departure towards its
aphelion. Was I not justifiable in supposing with M. Valz, that this
apparent condensation of volume has its origin in the compression of
the same ethereal medium I have spoken of before, and which is only
denser in proportion to its solar vicinity? The lenticular-shaped
phenomenon, also called the zodiacal light, was a matter worthy of
attention. This radiance, so apparent in the tropics, and which
cannot be mistaken for any meteoric lustre, extends from the horizon
obliquely upward, and follows generally the direction of the sun's
equator. It appeared to me evidently in the nature of a rare
atmosphere extending from the sun outward, beyond the orbit of Venus
at least, and I believed indefinitely farther.{*2} Indeed, this
medium I could not suppose confined to the path of the comet's
ellipse, or to the immediate neighborhood of the sun. It was easy, on
the contrary, to imagine it pervading the entire regions of our
planetary system, condensed into what we call atmosphere at the
planets themselves, and perhaps at some of them modified by
considerations, so to speak, purely geological.
Having adopted this view of the subject, I had little further
hesitation. Granting that on my passage I should meet with atmosphere
essentially the same as at the surface of the earth, I conceived
that, by means of the very ingenious apparatus of M. Grimm, I should
readily be enabled to condense it in sufficient quantity for the
purposes of respiration. This would remove the chief obstacle in a
journey to the moon. I had indeed spent some money and great labor in
adapting the apparatus to the object intended, and confidently looked
forward to its
successful application, if I could manage to complete
the voyage within any reasonable period. This brings me back to the
rate at which it might be possible to travel.
"It is true that balloons, in the first stage of their ascensions
from the earth, are known to rise with a velocity comparatively
moderate. Now, the power of elevation lies altogether in the superior
lightness of the gas in the balloon compared with the atmospheric
air; and, at first sight, it does not appear probable that, as the
balloon acquires altitude, and consequently arrives successively in
atmospheric strata of densities rapidly diminishing -- I say, it does
not appear at all reasonable that, in this its progress upwards, the
original velocity should be accelerated. On the other hand, I was not
aware that, in any recorded ascension, a diminution was apparent in
the absolute rate of ascent; although such should have been the case,
if on account of nothing else, on account of the escape of gas
through balloons ill-constructed, and varnished with no better
material than the ordinary varnish. It seemed, therefore, that the
effect of such escape was only sufficient to counterbalance the
effect of some accelerating power. I now considered that, provided in
my passage I found the medium I had imagined, and provided that it
should prove to be actually and essentially what we denominate
atmospheric air, it could make comparatively little difference at
what extreme state of rarefaction I should discover it -- that is to
say, in regard to my power of ascending -- for the gas in the balloon
would not only be itself subject to rarefaction partially similar (in
proportion to the occurrence of which, I could suffer an escape of so
much as would be requisite to prevent explosion), but, being what it
was, would, at all events, continue specifically lighter than any
compound whatever of mere nitrogen and oxygen. In the meantime, the
force of gravitation would be constantly diminishing, in proportion
to the squares of the distances, and thus, with a velocity
prodigiously accelerating, I should at length arrive in those distant
regions where the force of the earth's attraction would be superseded
Poe, Edgar Allen - The Complete Works of Edgar Allen Poe Page 6