PUNCH,
OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

Vol. 100.

February 21, 1891.

MR. PUNCH'S PRIZE NOVELS.

No. XIII.—THROUGH SPACE ON A FORMULA.

(By RULES SPURN, Author of "Gowned and Curled in Eighty Stays," "Twenty Thousand Tweaks Sundered the Flea," "A Tea with Ice," "A Doctor on Rocks and Peppermint," "A Cab-Fare from 'The Sun,'" "The Confidence of the Continent," "Attorney to Dissenters up at Perth," "Lieutenant Scattercash," &c.)

["This," writes the Author, "is one of my best and freshest, although on a moderate computation it must be my thousand and first, or so. But I have really lost count. Still it's grand to talk in large numbers of leagues, miles, vastnesses, secrets, mysteries, and impossible sciences. Some pedants imagine that I write in French. That's absurd, for every schoolboy knows (and lots of them have told me) that I write only in English or in American. I have some highly dried samples of vivid adventure ready for immediate consumption. Twopence more and up goes the donkey, up, up, up to be a satellite to an undiscovered star. Brave Donkey! I follow."—R.S.]

CHAPTER I.

The iceberg was moving. There was no doubt of it. Moving with a terrible sinuous motion. Occasionally an incautious ironclad approached like a foolish hen, and pecked at the moving mass. Then there was a slight crash, followed by a mild convulsion of masts, and spars, and iron-plates, and 100-ton guns, then two or three gurgles and all was still. The iceberg passed on smiling in triumph, and British Admirals wrote to the Times to declare that they had known from the first that H.M.S. Thunderbomb had been so faultily constructed, as to make a contest with a hen-coop a certainty for the hen-coop.

And still the iceberg was moving. Within its central chamber sat a venerable man, lightly clad in nankeen breeches, a cap of liberty, and a Liberty silk shirt. He was writing cabalistically. He did not know why, nor did he know what "cabalistically" meant. This was his punishment. Why was he to be punished? Those who read shall hear. The walls of the chamber were fitted with tubes, and electric wires, and knobs and buttons. A bright fire burned on the hearth. The thick Brussels carpet was littered with pot-boilers, all fizzing, and sputtering, and steaming, like so many young Curates at a Penny Reading. Suddenly the Philosopher looked up. He spoke to himself. "Everything is ready," he said, and pressed a button by his side. There was a sound as of a Continent expectorating, a distant nose seemed to twang, the door opened, and a tall lantern-jawed gentleman, wearing a goat-beard and an expression of dauntless cunning, stepped into the room.

"I guess you were waiting round for me," said Colonel ZEDEKIAH D. GOBANG (for it was indeed he), and sat down in an empty armchair, as if nothing had happened.

The Philosopher appeared not to notice. "Next character, please," he said, pulling out a long stop, and placing his square leg on the wicket which gave admission to his laboratory, while he waited for the entrance of the Third Man. There came a murmur like the buzz of a ton of blasting powder, in a state of excitement. A choir of angels seemed to whisper "Beefsteak and Pale Ale," as Lord JOHN BULLPUP dashed, without a trace of emotion, into the room, and sneezed three times without stopping to wipe his boots on the mat.

"One more," said the Philosopher. He hurled himself, feet first, at the ceiling, knocked his head against the floor, and called down the tube. "J'y suis!" came the answer, and the typical, light-hearted Frenchman, M. le Docteur REVERSI, with his thousand thunders, and his blue lower chest, tripped jauntily up to the other three. "And now," remarked the Philosopher, "we have got the lot complete. The story can start. Hurry up! Hark forrard! En avant!"

CHAPTER II.

"Lend me your ears," said the Philosopher. They lent them, but without interest. Yet they were all keen business men. "Attention, my friends!" he continued, somewhat annoyed. "You know why I have summoned you. We have to make another journey together. The moon, the sea, the earth—we have voyaged and journeyed to them, and they are exhausted. It remains to visit the Sun, and to perform the journey in an iceberg. Do you see? Colonel GOBANG will supply the craft, Lord JOHN BULLPUP the stupid courage, and you, M. le Docteur," he added, admiringly, "will of course take the cake."

He paused, and waited for Lord JOHN's reply. It came prompt, and in the expected words.

"Is it a plum-pudding cake?" said Lord JOHN. The rest laughed heartily. They loved their jokes, small and old.

"Are we agreed?"

"We are."

"Have you anything to ask?"

"Nothing. When do we start?"

"We are on our way."

"Shall we not melt as we approach?"

"Certainly not."

"How so?"

"We shall have a constant frost."

"Are you sure?"

"Certain. I have taken in a supply of Matinées, and a stock of Five-act Tragedies."

"Good. But how to raise the wind?"

Scarcely, had the question been asked, when a frightful explosion shook the iceberg to its foundations. The Doctor rushed to the gasbag. It was empty. He frowned. Lord JOHN was smoking his pipe; the Colonel was turning over the pages of an old Algebra. He muttered to himself, "That ought to figure it out. If x = the amount of non-compressible fluid consumed by a given labourer in y days, find, by the substitution of poached eggs for kippered herrings, how many tea-cups it will take to make a transpontine hurricane. Yes," he went on, "that's it. Yes, Sirree." And at these words the vast mass of congealed water rose majestically out of the ocean, and floated off into the nebular hypothesis. But the Philosopher had vanished.

CHAPTER III.

When the explosion narrated in the last chapter took place, the Philosopher had been looking out of the window. The shock had hurled him with the speed of a pirate 'bus through the air. Soon he became a speck. Shortly afterwards he reached a point in his flight situated exactly 40,000 miles over a London publisher's office. There was a short contest. Centrifugal and centripetal fought for the mastery, and the latter was victorious. The publisher was at home. The novel was accepted, and the Philosopher started to rejoin his comrades lost in the boundless tracts of space.

CHAPTER IV.

"My faith," said Lord JOHN, "I am getting tired of this. Shall we never reach the Sun?"

"Courage, my friend," was the well-known reply of the brave little Doctor. "We deviated from our course one hair's-breadth on the twelfth day. This is the fortieth day, and by the formula for the precession of the equinoxes, squared by the parallelogram of an ellipsoidal bath-bun fresh from the glass cylinder of a refreshment bar, we find that we are now travelling in a perpetual circle at a distance of one billion marine gasmeters from the Sun. I have now accounted for the milk in the cocoa-nut."

"But not," said the Philosopher, as he popped up through a concealed trap-door, "for the hair outside. That remains for another volume." With that, he rang a gong. The iceberg splintered into a thousand pieces. The voyagers were each hurled violently down into their respective countries, where a savage public was waiting to devour them.

TOLSTOI ON TOBACCO.

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