It's hell, that's what I say; it's hell
down there! Moreover, there ain't any heaven stretched
over it."
"What does it mean by that?" asked the second.
"It means, Fernando, that there wouldn't be any sky,
blue nor gray nor black, nor clouds, nor air to breathe!
There wouldn't be any thunder and lightning nor rain nor
wind, and at night there wouldn't be stars, no north star,
nor any! It would just be--I don't know what! Fray
Ignatio told me, and he said the name was `chaos'."
"That was south. That wasn't west."
"West is just as bad!"
Fernando also addressed the young man, the third, calling
him Sancho. "If there were anything west for Christian
men, wouldn't the Holy Father at Rome have sent long
ago? We are all going to die!"
"But they didn't know it was round," said Sancho. "Now
we do, and that's the difference! If you started a little
manikin just here on an orange and told him to go straight
ahead, he'd come around home, wouldn't he?"
"You weary me, Sancho!" cried the first. "And what
if you did that and it took so long that you come back to
Fishertown old and bald and driveling, and your wife is
dead and all the neighbors! Much good you'd have from
knowing it was round!"
"When you got right underfoot wouldn't you fall; that's
what I want to know?"
"Fall! Fall where?"
"Into the sky! My God, it's deep! And there wouldn't
be any boat to pick you up nor any floating oar to catch
by--"
The vision seemed to appall them.
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