It was all clear now.

The same velocity that had carried the Projectile beyond the neutral point on its way to the Moon, was still swaying it on its return to the Earth.
A well known law of motion required that, in the path which it was now about to describe, _it should repass, on its return through all the points through which it had already passed during its departure_.
No wonder that our friends were struck almost senseless when the fearful fall they were now about to encounter, flashed upon them in all its horror.

They were to fall a clear distance of nearly 200 thousand miles! To lighten or counteract such a descent, the most powerful springs, checks, rockets, screens, deadeners, even if the whole Earth were engaged in their construction--would produce no more effect than so many spiderwebs.

According to a simple law in Ballistics, _the Projectile was to strike the Earth with a velocity equal to that by which it had been animated when issuing from the mouth of the Columbiad_--a velocity of at least seven miles a second! To have even a faint idea of this enormous velocity, let us make a little comparison.

A body falling from the summit of a steeple a hundred and fifty feet high, dashes against the pavement with a velocity of fifty five miles an hour.