Chapter 8: Extraordinary Loss of Weight

The first thought that occurred to us after the excitement of discovery had somewhat subsided was that the interior of the earth was in all probability a habitable planet, possessing as it did a life-giving luminary of its own, and our one object was to get into the planet as quickly as possible. A continual breeze from the interior ocean of air passed out of the gulf. Its temperature was much higher than that of the sea on which we sailed, and it was only now that we began to think of laying off our Arctic furs.

A closer observation of the interior sun revealed the knowledge that it was a very luminous orb, producing a climate similar to that of the tropics or nearly so. As we entered the interior sphere the sun rose higher and higher above us, until at last he stood vertically above our heads at a height of about 3,500 miles. We saw at once what novel conditions of life might exist under an earth-surrounded sun, casting everywhere perpendicular shadow, and neither rising nor setting, but standing high in heaven, the lord of eternal day. We seemed to sail the bottom of a huge bowl or spherical gulf, surrounded by oceans, continents, islands, and seas.

A peculiar circumstance, first noticed immediately after arriving at the centre of the gulf, was that each of us possessed a sense of physical buoyancy, hitherto unfelt.

Flathootly told me he felt like jumping over the mast in his newly-found vigor of action, and the sailors began a series of antics quite foreign to their late stolid behavior. I felt myself possessed of a very elastic step and a similar desire to jump overboard and leap miles out to sea. I felt that I could easily jump a distance of several miles.

Professor Starbottle explained this phenomenal activity by stating that on the outer surface of the earth a man who weighs one hundred and fifty pounds, would weigh practically nothing on the interior surface of an earth shell of any equal thickness throughout. But the fact that we did weigh something, and that the ship and ocean itself remained on the under surface of the world, proved that the shell of the earth, naturally made thicker at the equator by reason of centrifugal gravity than at the poles, has sufficient equatorial attraction to keep open the polar gulf. Besides this centrifugal gravity confers a certain degree of weight on all objects in the interior sphere.

“I’ll get a pair of scales,” said Flathootly, “an’ see how light I am in weight.”

“Don’t mind scales,” said the professor, “for the weights themselves have lost weight.”

“Well, I’m one hundred and seventy-five pounds to a feather,” said Flathootly, “an’ I’ll soon see if the weights are right or not.”

“The weights are right enough,” said the professor, “and yet they are wrong.”

“An’ how can a thing be roight and wrang at the same time, I’d loike to know? We’ll thry the weights anyway,” said the Irishman.

So saying, Flathootly got a little weighing machine on deck, and, standing thereon, a sailor piled on the weights on the opposite side.

He shouted out: “There now, do you see that? I’m wan hundred and siventy-siven pounds, jist what I always was.”

“My dear sir,” said the professor, “you don’t seem to understand this matter; the weights have lost weight equally with yourself, hence they still appear to you as weighing one hundred and seventy-seven pounds.”

“Excuse me, sorr,” said Flathootly. “If the weights have lost weight, the chap that stole it was cute enough to put it back again before I weighed meself. Don’t you see wid yer two eyes I’m still as heavy as iver I was?”

“You will require ocular demonstration that what I say is correct. Here, sir, let me weigh you with this instrument,” said the professor.

The instrument referred to was a huge spring-balance with which it was proposed to weigh Flathootly. One end of it was fastened to the mast, and to the hook hanging from the other end the master-at-arms secured himself. The hand on the dial plate moved a certain distance and stopped at seventeen pounds. The expression on the Irishman’s face was something awful to behold.

“Does this machine tell the thruth?” he inquired in a tearful voice.

We assured him it was absolutely correct. He only weighed seventeen pounds.

“Oh, howly Mother of Mercy!” yelled Flathootly. “Consumption has me by the back of the neck. I’ve lost a hundred and sixty pounds in three days. Oh, sir, for the love of heaven, take me back to me mother. I’m kilt entoirely.”

It was some time before Flathootly could understand that his lightness of weight was due to the lesser-sized world he was continually arriving upon, together with centrifugal gravity, and that we all suffered from his affliction of being each “less than half a man” as he termed it. The weighing of the weights wherewith he had weighed himself proved conclusively that the depreciation in gravity applied equally to everything around us.

The extreme lightness of our bodies, and the fact that our muscles had been used to move about ten times our then weight, was the cause of our wonderful buoyancy.