100
immediately began a thorough overhauling of all the arms and ammunition, while the doctor prepared to test the air. There was a tone of confident exultation in his voice when he spoke again.
"This redness of the air will not trouble us a whit. Look! you can see no tinge of red between here and that huge wall yonder, nor anywhere along the ground as far as you can see. It is so slight a colouring that it is only noticeable in vast reaches of atmosphere, like the blue colour in our own air. See here, where a small cloud obscures the sky there is no ruddy tinge. There is no more colouring-matter in this than there is indigo in our own air. The amount of it is so infinitely small that it will never trouble us. Now, if it only contains oxygen enough, we are sure of life in it."
"Yes, if they will leave us alive to breathe it," I added, counting out seventeen cartridges for each rifle.
"The air outside shows a pressure of only eleven, while we have eighteen inside," he said. "I will bring in the discharging cylinder full of the outer air, and by keeping it upside down the lighter air will remain in it. Then, if a candle flame will burn steadily in it, the oxygen we need is there."
Suiting the action to the word, he carefully drew in the inverted cylinder, and cautiously brought a lighted candle into it. To our great delight the flame burned for a moment with a brighter, stronger light than it did in the air of the compartment.
"Hurrah!" cried the doctor, as happily as if he had just earned the right to live. "It seems to have more oxygen than our own air, which will make up for the lesser density."
Then he put the lighted candle in the cylinder, and quickly discharged it outside upon the ground where we could see it. The flame had almost twice the brilliancy that it had had inside.
"Our scientists who have sneered at the possibility of life on Mars, because of its rare atmosphere, have overlooked the simplicity of the problem. They delight in propounding posers for Omnip