No helm, or ballast, or throttle-valve could avail them now.

Nothing in the world could be done to prevent things from following their own course to the bitter end.
If these three men would permit themselves to hazard an expression at all on the subject, which they didn't, each could have done it by his own favorite motto, so admirably expressive of his individual nature.
"_Donnez tete baissee!_" (Go it baldheaded!) showed Ardan's uncalculating impetuosity and his Celtic blood.

"_Fata quocunque vocant!_" (To its logical consequence!) revealed Barbican's imperturbable stoicism, culture hardening rather than loosening the original British phlegm.

Whilst M'Nicholl's "Screw down the valve and let her rip!" betrayed at once his unconquerable Yankee coolness and his old experiences as a Western steamboat captain.
Where were they now, at eight o'clock in the morning of the day called in America the sixth of December?
Near the Moon, very certainly; near enough, in fact, for them to perceive easily in the dark the great round screen which she formed between themselves and the Projectile on one side, and the Earth, Sun, and stars on the other.

But as to the exact distance at which she lay from them--they had no possible means of calculating it.