At a given signal the rifles were discharged simultaneously by Gazen and myself. There was little noise, but the car trembled with the shock, and the prostrate man opened his eyes.
Had it produced the desired effect? We could not tell without an appeal to the telescope.
"I'll be back in a moment," cried Gazen, springing upstairs to the observatory.
"Do you feel any better, father?" enquired Miss Carmichael, laying her cool hand on the invalid's fevered brow.
He winked, and tried to nod in the affirmative. "Were you asleep, father? Did the shock rouse you?"
"Do you know what we are doing?" Before he could answer the foot of Gazen sounded on the stair. He had left us with an eager, almost a confident eye. He came back looking grave in the extreme.
"We are not falling towards Mercury," he said gloomily. "_We are rushing to the sun!_"
I cannot depict our emotion at this awful announcement which changed our hopes into despair. Probably it affected each of us in a different manner. I cannot recollect my own feelings well enough to analyse them, and suppose I must have been astounded for a time. A vision of the car, plunging through an atmosphere of flame, into the fiery entrails of the sun, flashed across my excited brain, and then I seemed to lose the power of thought.
"Out of the frying-pan into the fire," said I at last, in frivolous reaction.
"His will be done!" murmured Miss Carmichael, instinctively drawing closer to her father, who seemed to realise our jeopardy.
"We must look the matter in the face," said Gazen, with a sigh.
"What a death!" I exclaimed, "to sit and watch the vast glowing furnace that is to swallow us up come nearer and nearer, second after second, minute after minute, hour after hour."
"The nearer we approach the sun the faster we shall go," said Gazen. "For one thing, we shall be dead long before we reach him. The heat will stifle us. It will be all over in a few hours."
What a death! To see, to feel ourselves roasting as in an oven. It was too horrible.
"Are you certain there is no mistake?" I asked at length.
"Quite," replied Gazen. "Come and see for yourself."
We had all but gained the door when Miss Carmichael followed us.
"Professor," she said, with a tremor in her voice, and a look of supplication in her eyes, "you will come back soon--you will not leave us long."