During the year 186-, the whole world was greatly excited by a scientific experiment unprecedented in the annals of science. The members of the Gun Club, a circle of artillerymen formed at Baltimore after the American war, conceived the idea of putting themselves in communication with the moon!-- yes, with the moon-- by sending to her a projectile. Their president, Barbicane, the promoter of the enterprise, having consulted the astronomers of the Cambridge Observatory upon the subject, took all necessary means to ensure the success of this extraordinary enterprise, which had been declared practicable by the majority of competent judges. After setting on foot a public subscription, which realized nearly L1,200,000, they began the gigantic work.
According to the advice forwarded from the members of the Observatory, the gun destined to launch the projectile had to be fixed in a country situated between the 0 and 28th degrees of north or south latitude, in order to aim at the moon when at the zenith; and its initiatory velocity was fixed at twelve thousand yards to the second. Launched on the 1st of December, at 10hrs. 46m. 40s. P.M., it ought to reach the moon four days after its departure, that is on the 5th of December, at midnight precisely, at the moment of her attaining her perigee, that is her nearest distance from the earth, which is exactly 86,410 leagues (French), or 238,833 miles mean distance (English).
The principal members of the Gun Club, President Barbicane, Major Elphinstone, the secretary Joseph T. Maston, and other learned men, held several meetings, at which the shape and composition of the projectile were discussed, also the position and nature of the gun, and the quality and quantity of powder to be used. It was decided: First, that the projectile should be a shell made of aluminum with a diameter of 108 inches and a thickness of twelve inches to its walls; and should weigh 19,250 pounds. Second, that the gun should be a Columbiad cast in iron, 900 feet long, and run perpendicularly into the earth. Third, that the charge should contain 400,000 pounds of gun-cotton, which, giving out six billions of litres of gas in rear of the projectile, would easily carry it toward the orb of night.
These questions determined President Barbicane, assisted by Murchison the engineer, to choose a spot situated in Florida, in 27@ 7' North latitude, and 77@ 3' West (Greenwich) longitude. It was on this spot, after stupendous labor, that the Columbiad was cast with full success. Things stood thus, when an incident took place which increased the interest attached to this great enterprise a hundredfold.
A Frenchman, an enthusiastic Parisian, as witty as he was bold, asked to be enclosed in the projectile, in order that he might reach the moon, and reconnoiter this terrestrial satellite. The name of this intrepid adventurer was Michel Ardan. He landed in America, was received with enthusiasm, held meetings, saw himself carried in triumph, reconciled President Barbicane to his mortal enemy, Captain Nicholl, and, as a token of reconciliation, persuaded them both to start with him in the projectile. The proposition being accepted, the shape of the projectile was slightly altered. It was made of a cylindro-conical form. This species of aerial car was lined with strong springs and partitions to deaden the shock of departure. It was provided with food for a year, water for some months, and gas for some days. A self-acting apparatus supplied the three travelers with air to breathe. At the same time, on one of the highest points of the Rocky Mountains, the Gun Club had a gigantic telescope erected, in order that they might be able to follow the course of the projectile through space. All was then ready.
On the 30th of November, at the hour fixed upon, from the midst of an extraordinary crowd of spectators, the departure took place, and for the first time, three human beings quitted the terrestrial globe, and launched into inter-planetary space with almost a certainty of reaching their destination. These bold travelers, Michel Ardan, President Barbicane, and Captain Nicholl, ought to make the passage in ninety-seven hours, thirteen minutes, and twenty seconds. Consequently, their arrival on the lunar disc could not take place until the 5th of December at twelve at night, at the exact moment when the moon should be full, and not on the 4th, as some badly informed journalists had announced.
But an unforeseen circumstance, viz., the detonation produced by the Columbiad, had the immediate effect of troubling the terrestrial atmosphere, by accumulating a large quantity of vapor, a phenomenon which excited universal indignation, for the moon was hidden from the eyes of the watchers for several nights.
The worthy Joseph T. Maston, the staunchest friend of the three travelers, started for the Rocky Mountains, accompanied by the Hon. J. Belfast, director of the Cambridge Observatory, and reached the station of Long's Peak, where the telescope was erected which brought the moon within an apparent distance of two leagues. The honorable secretary of the Gun Club wished himself to observe the vehicle of his daring friends.
The accumulation of the clouds in the atmosphere prevented all observation on the 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, and 10th of December. Indeed it was thought that all observations would have to be put off to the 3d of January in the following year; for the moon entering its last quarter on the 11th, would then only present an ever-decreasing portion of her disc, insufficient to allow of their following the course of the projectile.
At length, to the general satisfaction, a heavy storm cleared the atmosphere on the night of the 11th and 12th of December, and the moon, with half-illuminated disc, was plainly to be seen upon the black sky.
That very night a telegram was sent from the station of Long's Peak by Joseph T. Maston and Belfast to the gentlemen of the Cambridge Observatory, announcing that on the 11th of December at 8h. 47m. P.M., the projectile launched by the Columbiad of Stones Hill had been detected by Messrs. Belfast and Maston-- that it had deviated from its course from some unknown cause, and had not reached its destination; but that it had passed near enough to be retained by the lunar attraction; that its rectilinear movement had been changed to a circular one, and that following an elliptical orbit round the star of night it had become its satellite. The telegram added that the elements of this new star had not yet been calculated; and indeed three observations made upon a star in three different positions are necessary to determine these elements. Then it showed that the distance separating the projectile from the lunar surface "might" be reckoned at about 2,833 miles.
It ended with the double hypothesis: either the attraction of the moon would draw it to herself, and the travelers thus attain their end; or that the projectile, held in one immutable orbit, would gravitate around the lunar disc to all eternity.
With such alternatives, what would be the fate of the travelers? Certainly they had food for some time. But supposing they did succeed in their rash enterprise, how would they return? Could they ever return? Should they hear from them? These questions, debated by the most learned pens of the day, strongly engrossed the public attention.
It is advisable here to make a remark which ought to be well considered by hasty observers. When a purely speculative discovery is announced to the public, it cannot be done with too much prudence. No one is obliged to discover either a planet, a comet, or a satellite; and whoever makes a mistake in such a case exposes himself justly to the derision of the mass. Far better is it to wait; and that is what the impatient Joseph T. Maston should have done before sending this telegram forth to the world, which, according to his idea, told the whole result of the enterprise. Indeed this telegram contained two sorts of errors, as was proved eventually. First, errors of observation, concerning the distance of the projectile from the surface of the moon, for on the 11th of December it was impossible to see it; and what Joseph T. Maston had seen, or thought he saw, could not have been the projectile of the Columbiad. Second, errors of theory on the fate in store for the said projectile; for in making it a satellite of the moon, it was putting it in direct contradiction of all mechanical laws.
One single hypothesis of the observers of Long's Peak could ever be realized, that which foresaw the case of the travelers (if still alive) uniting their efforts with the lunar attraction to attain the surface of the disc.
Now these men, as clever as they were daring, had survived the terrible shock consequent on their departure, and it is their journey in the projectile car which is here related in its most dramatic as well as in its most singular details. This recital will destroy many illusions and surmises; but it will give a true idea of the singular changes in store for such an enterprise; it will bring out the scientific instincts of Barbicane, the industrious resources of Nicholl, and the audacious humor of Michel Ardan. Besides this, it will prove that their worthy friend, Joseph T. Maston, was wasting his time, while leaning over the gigantic telescope he watched the course of the moon through the starry space.
As ten o'clock struck, Michel Ardan, Barbicane, and Nicholl, took leave of the numerous friends they were leaving on the earth. The two dogs, destined to propagate the canine race on the lunar continents, were already shut up in the projectile.
The three travelers approached the orifice of the enormous cast-iron tube, and a crane let them down to the conical top of the projectile. There, an opening made for the purpose gave them access to the aluminum car. The tackle belonging to the crane being hauled from outside, the mouth of the Columbiad was instantly disencumbered of its last supports.
Nicholl, once introduced with his companions inside the projectile, began to close the opening by means of a strong plate, held in position by powerful screws. Other plates, closely fitted, covered the lenticular glasses, and the travelers, hermetically enclosed in their metal prison, were plunged in profound darkness.
"And now, my dear companions," said Michel Ardan, "let us make ourselves at home; I am a domesticated man and strong in housekeeping. We are bound to make the best of our new lodgings, and make ourselves comfortable. And first let us try and see a little. Gas was not invented for moles."
So saying, the thoughtless fellow lit a match by striking it on the sole of his boot; and approached the burner fixed to the receptacle, in which the carbonized hydrogen, stored at high pressure, sufficed for the lighting and warming of the projectile for a hundred and forty-four hours, or six days and six nights. The gas caught fire, and thus lighted the projectile looked like a comfortable room with thickly padded walls, furnished with a circular divan, and a roof rounded in the shape of a dome.
Michel Ardan examined everything, and declared himself satisfied with his installation.
"It is a prison," said he, "but a traveling prison; and, with the right of putting my nose to the window, I could well stand a lease of a hundred years. You smile, Barbicane. Have you any arriere-pensee? Do you say to yourself, `This prison may be our tomb?' Tomb, perhaps; still I would not change it for Mahomet's, which floats in space but never advances an inch!"
While Michel Ardan was speaking, Barbicane and Nicholl were making their last preparations.
Nicholl's chronometer marked twenty minutes past ten P.M. when the three travelers were finally enclosed in their projectile. This chronometer was set within the tenth of a second by that of Murchison the engineer. Barbicane consulted it.
"My friends," said he, "it is twenty minutes past ten. At forty- seven minutes past ten Murchison will launch the electric spark on the wire which communicates with the charge of the Columbiad. At that precise moment we shall leave our spheroid. Thus we still have twenty-seven minutes to remain on the earth."
"Twenty-six minutes thirteen seconds," replied the methodical Nicholl.
"Well!" exclaimed Michel Ardan, in a good-humored tone, "much may be done in twenty-six minutes. The gravest questions of morals and politics may be discussed, and even solved. Twenty-six minutes well employed are worth more than twenty-six years in which nothing is done. Some seconds of a Pascal or a Newton are more precious than the whole existence of a crowd of raw simpletons----"
"And you conclude, then, you everlasting talker?" asked Barbicane.
"I conclude that we have twenty-six minutes left," replied Ardan.
"Twenty-four only," said Nicholl.
"Well, twenty-four, if you like, my noble captain," said Ardan; "twenty-four minutes in which to investigate----"
"Michel," said Barbicane, "during the passage we shall have plenty of time to investigate the most difficult questions. For the present we must occupy ourselves with our departure."
"Are we not ready?"
"Doubtless; but there are still some precautions to be taken, to deaden as much as possible the first shock."
"Have we not the water-cushions placed between the partition- breaks, whose elasticity will sufficiently protect us?"
"I hope so, Michel," replied Barbicane gently, "but I am not sure."
"Ah, the joker!" exclaimed Michel Ardan. "He hopes!--He is not sure!-- and he waits for the moment when we are encased to make this deplorable admission! I beg to be allowed to get out!"
"And how?" asked Barbicane.
"Humph!" said Michel Ardan, "it is not easy; we are in the train, and the guard's whistle will sound before twenty-four minutes are over."
"Twenty," said Nicholl.
For some moments the three travelers looked at each other. Then they began to examine the objects imprisoned with them.
"Everything is in its place," said Barbicane. "We have now to decide how we can best place ourselves to resist the shock. Position cannot be an indifferent matter; and we must, as much as possible, prevent the rush of blood to the head."
"Just so," said Nicholl.
"Then," replied Michel Ardan, ready to suit the action to the word, "let us put our heads down and our feet in the air, like the clowns in the grand circus."
"No," said Barbicane, "let us stretch ourselves on our sides; we shall resist the shock better that way. Remember that, when the projectile starts, it matters little whether we are in it or before it; it amounts to much the same thing."
"If it is only `much the same thing,' I may cheer up," said Michel Ardan.
"Do you approve of my idea, Nicholl?" asked Barbicane.
"Entirely," replied the captain. "We've still thirteen minutes and a half."
"That Nicholl is not a man," exclaimed Michel; "he is a chronometer with seconds, an escape, and eight holes."
But his companions were not listening; they were taking up their last positions with the most perfect coolness. They were like two methodical travelers in a car, seeking to place themselves as comfortably as possible.
We might well ask ourselves of what materials are the hearts of these Americans made, to whom the approach of the most frightful danger added no pulsation.
Three thick and solidly-made couches had been placed in the projectile. Nicholl and Barbicane placed them in the center of the disc forming the floor. There the three travelers were to stretch themselves some moments before their departure.
During this time, Ardan, not being able to keep still, turned in his narrow prison like a wild beast in a cage, chatting with his friends, speaking to the dogs Diana and Satellite, to whom, as may be seen, he had given significant names.
"Ah, Diana! Ah, Satellite!" he exclaimed, teasing them; "so you are going to show the moon-dogs the good habits of the dogs of the earth! That will do honor to the canine race! If ever we do come down again, I will bring a cross type of `moon-dogs,' which will make a stir!"
"If there are dogs in the moon," said Barbicane.
"There are," said Michel Ardan, "just as there are horses, cows, donkeys, and chickens. I bet that we shall find chickens."
"A hundred dollars we shall find none!" said Nicholl.
"Done, my captain!" replied Ardan, clasping Nicholl's hand. "But, by the bye, you have already lost three bets with our president, as the necessary funds for the enterprise have been found, as the operation of casting has been successful, and lastly, as the Columbiad has been loaded without accident, six thousand dollars."
"Yes," replied Nicholl. "Thirty-seven minutes six seconds past ten."
"It is understood, captain. Well, before another quarter of an hour you will have to count nine thousand dollars to the president; four thousand because the Columbiad will not burst, and five thousand because the projectile will rise more than six miles in the air."
"I have the dollars," replied Nicholl, slapping the pocket of this coat. "I only ask to be allowed to pay."
"Come, Nicholl. I see that you are a man of method, which I could never be; but indeed you have made a series of bets of very little advantage to yourself, allow me to tell you."
"And why?" asked Nicholl.
"Because, if you gain the first, the Columbiad will have burst, and the projectile with it; and Barbicane will no longer be there to reimburse your dollars."
"My stake is deposited at the bank in Baltimore," replied Barbicane simply; "and if Nicholl is not there, it will go to his heirs."
"Ah, you practical men!" exclaimed Michel Ardan; "I admire you the more for not being able to understand you."
"Forty-two minutes past ten!" said Nicholl.
"Only five minutes more!" answered Barbicane.
"Yes, five little minutes!" replied Michel Ardan; "and we are enclosed in a projectile, at the bottom of a gun 900 feet long! And under this projectile are rammed 400,000 pounds of gun-cotton, which is equal to 1,600,000 pounds of ordinary powder! And friend Murchison, with his chronometer in hand, his eye fixed on the needle, his finger on the electric apparatus, is counting the seconds preparatory to launching us into interplanetary space."
"Enough, Michel, enough!" said Barbicane, in a serious voice; "let us prepare. A few instants alone separate us from an eventful moment. One clasp of the hand, my friends."
"Yes," exclaimed Michel Ardan, more moved than he wished to appear; and the three bold companions were united in a last embrace.
"God preserve us!" said the religious Barbicane.
Michel Ardan and Nicholl stretched themselves on the couches placed in the center of the disc.
"Forty-seven minutes past ten!" murmured the captain.
"Twenty seconds more!" Barbicane quickly put out the gas and lay down by his companions, and the profound silence was only broken by the ticking of the chronometer marking the seconds.
Suddenly a dreadful shock was felt, and the projectile, under the force of six billions of litres of gas, developed by the combustion of pyroxyle, mounted into space.
What had happened? What effect had this frightful shock produced? Had the ingenuity of the constructors of the projectile obtained any happy result? Had the shock been deadened, thanks to the springs, the four plugs, the water-cushions, and the partition-breaks? Had they been able to subdue the frightful pressure of the initiatory speed of more than 11,000 yards, which was enough to traverse Paris or New York in a second? This was evidently the question suggested to the thousand spectators of this moving scene. They forgot the aim of the journey, and thought only of the travelers. And if one of them-- Joseph T. Maston for example-- could have cast one glimpse into the projectile, what would he have seen?
Nothing then. The darkness was profound. But its cylindro- conical partitions had resisted wonderfully. Not a rent or a dent anywhere! The wonderful projectile was not even heated under the intense deflagration of the powder, nor liquefied, as they seemed to fear, in a shower of aluminum.
The interior showed but little disorder; indeed, only a few objects had been violently thrown toward the roof; but the most important seemed not to have suffered from the shock at all; their fixtures were intact.
On the movable disc, sunk down to the bottom by the smashing of the partition-breaks and the escape of the water, three bodies lay apparently lifeless. Barbicane, Nicholl, and Michel Ardan-- did they still breathe? or was the projectile nothing now but a metal coffin, bearing three corpses into space?
Some minutes after the departure of the projectile, one of the bodies moved, shook its arms, lifted its head, and finally succeeded in getting on its knees. It was Michel Ardan. He felt himself all over, gave a sonorous "Hem!" and then said:
"Michel Ardan is whole. How about the others?"
The courageous Frenchman tried to rise, but could not stand. His head swam, from the rush of blood; he was blind; he was a drunken man.
"Bur-r!" said he. "It produces the same effect as two bottles of Corton, though perhaps less agreeable to swallow." Then, passing his hand several times across his forehead and rubbing his temples, he called in a firm voice:
"Nicholl! Barbicane!"
He waited anxiously. No answer; not even a sigh to show that the hearts of his companions were still beating. He called again. The same silence.
"The devil!" he exclaimed. "They look as if they had fallen from a fifth story on their heads. Bah!" he added, with that imperturbable confidence which nothing could check, "if a Frenchman can get on his knees, two Americans ought to be able to get on their feet. But first let us light up."
Ardan felt the tide of life return by degrees. His blood became calm, and returned to its accustomed circulation. Another effort restored his equilibrium. He succeeded in rising, drew a match from his pocket, and approaching the burner lighted it. The receiver had not suffered at all. The gas had not escaped. Besides, the smell would have betrayed it; and in that case Michel Ardan could not have carried a lighted match with impunity through the space filled with hydrogen. The gas mixing with the air would have produced a detonating mixture, and the explosion would have finished what the shock had perhaps begun. When the burner was lit, Ardan leaned over the bodies of his companions: they were lying one on the other, an inert mass, Nicholl above, Barbicane underneath.
Ardan lifted the captain, propped him up against the divan, and began to rub vigorously. This means, used with judgment, restored Nicholl, who opened his eyes, and instantly recovering his presence of mind, seized Ardan's hand and looked around him.
"And Barbicane?" said he.
"Each in turn," replied Michel Ardan. "I began with you, Nicholl, because you were on the top. Now let us look to Barbicane." Saying which, Ardan and Nicholl raised the president of the Gun Club and laid him on the divan. He seemed to have suffered more than either of his companions; he was bleeding, but Nicholl was reassured by finding that the hemorrhage came from a slight wound on the shoulder, a mere graze, which he bound up carefully.
Still, Barbicane was a long time coming to himself, which frightened his friends, who did not spare friction.
"He breathes though," said Nicholl, putting his ear to the chest of the wounded man.
"Yes," replied Ardan, "he breathes like a man who has some notion of that daily operation. Rub, Nicholl; let us rub harder." And the two improvised practitioners worked so hard and so well that Barbicane recovered his senses. He opened his eyes, sat up, took his two friends by the hands, and his first words were--
"Nicholl, are we moving?"
Nicholl and Ardan looked at each other; they had not yet troubled themselves about the projectile; their first thought had been for the traveler, not for the car.
"Well, are we really moving?" repeated Michel Ardan.
"Or quietly resting on the soil of Florida?" asked Nicholl.
"Or at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico?" added Michel Ardan.
"What an idea!" exclaimed the president.
And this double hypothesis suggested by his companions had the effect of recalling him to his senses. In any case they could not decide on the position of the projectile. Its apparent immovability, and the want of communication with the outside, prevented them from solving the question. Perhaps the projectile was unwinding its course through space. Perhaps after a short rise it had fallen upon the earth, or even in the Gulf of Mexico-- a fall which the narrowness of the peninsula of Florida would render not impossible.
The case was serious, the problem interesting, and one that must be solved as soon as possible. Thus, highly excited, Barbicane's moral energy triumphed over physical weakness, and he rose to his feet. He listened. Outside was perfect silence; but the thick padding was enough to intercept all sounds coming from the earth. But one circumstance struck Barbicane, viz., that the temperature inside the projectile was singularly high. The president drew a thermometer from its case and consulted it. The instrument showed 81@ Fahr.
"Yes," he exclaimed, "yes, we are moving! This stifling heat, penetrating through the partitions of the projectile, is produced by its friction on the atmospheric strata. It will soon diminish, because we are already floating in space, and after having nearly stifled, we shall have to suffer intense cold.
"What!" said Michel Ardan. "According to your showing, Barbicane, we are already beyond the limits of the terrestrial atmosphere?"
"Without a doubt, Michel. Listen to me. It is fifty-five minutes past ten; we have been gone about eight minutes; and if our initiatory speed has not been checked by the friction, six seconds would be enough for us to pass through the forty miles of atmosphere which surrounds the globe."
"Just so," replied Nicholl; "but in what proportion do you estimate the diminution of speed by friction?"
"In the proportion of one-third, Nicholl. This diminution is considerable, but according to my calculations it is nothing less. If, then, we had an initiatory speed of 12,000 yards, on leaving the atmosphere this speed would be reduced to 9,165 yards. In any case we have already passed through this interval, and----"
"And then," said Michel Ardan, "friend Nicholl has lost his two bets: four thousand dollars because the Columbiad did not burst; five thousand dollars because the projectile has risen more than six miles. Now, Nicholl, pay up."
"Let us prove it first," said the captain, "and we will pay afterward. It is quite possible that Barbicane's reasoning is correct, and that I have lost my nine thousand dollars. But a new hypothesis presents itself to my mind, and it annuls the wager."
"What is that?" asked Barbicane quickly.
"The hypothesis that, for some reason or other, fire was never set to the powder, and we have not started at all."
"My goodness, captain," exclaimed Michel Ardan, "that hypothesis is not worthy of my brain! It cannot be a serious one. For have we not been half annihilated by the shock? Did I not recall you to life? Is not the president's shoulder still bleeding from the blow it has received?"
"Granted," replied Nicholl; "but one question."
"Well, captain?"
"Did you hear the detonation, which certainly ought to be loud?"
"No," replied Ardan, much surprised; "certainly I did not hear the detonation."
"And you, Barbicane?"
"Nor I, either."
"Very well," said Nicholl.
"Well now," murmured the president "why did we not hear the detonation?"
The three friends looked at each other with a disconcerted air. It was quite an inexplicable phenomenon. The projectile had started, and consequently there must have been a detonation.
"Let us first find out where we are," said Barbicane, "and let down this panel."
This very simple operation was soon accomplished.
The nuts which held the bolts to the outer plates of the right-hand scuttle gave way under the pressure of the English wrench. These bolts were pushed outside, and the buffers covered with India-rubber stopped up the holes which let them through. Immediately the outer plate fell back upon its hinges like a porthole, and the lenticular glass which closed the scuttle appeared. A similar one was let into the thick partition on the opposite side of the projectile, another in the top of the dome, and finally a fourth in the middle of the base. They could, therefore, make observations in four different directions; the firmament by the side and most direct windows, the earth or the moon by the upper and under openings in the projectile.
Barbicane and his two companions immediately rushed to the uncovered window. But it was lit by no ray of light. Profound darkness surrounded them, which, however, did not prevent the president from exclaiming:
"No, my friends, we have not fallen back upon the earth; no, nor are we submerged in the Gulf of Mexico. Yes! we are mounting into space. See those stars shining in the night, and that impenetrable darkness heaped up between the earth and us!"
"Hurrah! hurrah!" exclaimed Michel Ardan and Nicholl in one voice.
Indeed, this thick darkness proved that the projectile had left the earth, for the soil, brilliantly lit by the moon-beams would have been visible to the travelers, if they had been lying on its surface. This darkness also showed that the projectile had passed the atmospheric strata, for the diffused light spread in the air would have been reflected on the metal walls, which reflection was wanting. This light would have lit the window, and the window was dark. Doubt was no longer possible; the travelers had left the earth.
"I have lost," said Nicholl.
"I congratulate you," replied Ardan.
"Here are the nine thousand dollars," said the captain, drawing a roll of paper dollars from his pocket.
"Will you have a receipt for it?" asked Barbicane, taking the sum.
"If you do not mind," answered Nicholl; "it is more business-like."
And coolly and seriously, as if he had been at his strong-box, the president drew forth his notebook, tore out a blank leaf, wrote a proper receipt in pencil, dated and signed it with the usual flourish, [1] and gave it to the captain, who carefully placed it in his pocketbook. Michel Ardan, taking off his hat, bowed to his two companions without speaking. So much formality under such circumstances left him speechless. He had never before seen anything so "American."
[1] This is a purely French habit.
This affair settled, Barbicane and Nicholl had returned to the window, and were watching the constellations. The stars looked like bright points on the black sky. But from that side they could not see the orb of night, which, traveling from east to west, would rise by degrees toward the zenith. Its absence drew the following remark from Ardan:
"And the moon; will she perchance fail at our rendezvous?"
"Do not alarm yourself," said Barbicane; "our future globe is at its post, but we cannot see her from this side; let us open the other."
"As Barbicane was about leaving the window to open the opposite scuttle, his attention was attracted by the approach of a brilliant object. It was an enormous disc, whose colossal dimension could not be estimated. Its face, which was turned to the earth, was very bright. One might have thought it a small moon reflecting the light of the large one. She advanced with great speed, and seemed to describe an orbit round the earth, which would intersect the passage of the projectile. This body revolved upon its axis, and exhibited the phenomena of all celestial bodies abandoned in space.
"Ah!" exclaimed Michel Ardan, "What is that? another projectile?"
Barbicane did not answer. The appearance of this enormous body surprised and troubled him. A collision was possible, and might be attended with deplorable results; either the projectile would deviate from its path, or a shock, breaking its impetus, might precipitate it to earth; or, lastly, it might be irresistibly drawn away by the powerful asteroid. The president caught at a glance the consequences of these three hypotheses, either of which would, one way or the other, bring their experiment to an unsuccessful and fatal termination. His companions stood silently looking into space. The object grew rapidly as it approached them, and by an optical illusion the projectile seemed to be throwing itself before it.
"By Jove!" exclaimed Michel Ardan, "we shall run into one another!"
Instinctively the travelers drew back. Their dread was great, but it did not last many seconds. The asteroid passed several hundred yards from the projectile and disappeared, not so much from the rapidity of its course, as that its face being opposite the moon, it was suddenly merged into the perfect darkness of space.
"A happy journey to you," exclaimed Michel Ardan, with a sigh of relief. "Surely infinity of space is large enough for a poor little projectile to walk through without fear. Now, what is this portentous globe which nearly struck us?"
"I know," replied Barbicane.
"Oh, indeed! you know everything."
"It is," said Barbicane, "a simple meteorite, but an enormous one, which the attraction of the earth has retained as a satellite."
"Is it possible!" exclaimed Michel Ardan; "the earth then has two moons like Neptune?"
"Yes, my friends, two moons, though it passes generally for having only one; but this second moon is so small, and its speed so great, that the inhabitants of the earth cannot see it. It was by noticing disturbances that a French astronomer, M. Petit, was able to determine the existence of this second satellite and calculate its elements. According to his observations, this meteorite will accomplish its revolution around the earth in three hours and twenty minutes, which implies a wonderful rate of speed."
"Do all astronomers admit the existence of this satellite?" asked Nicholl.
"No," replied Barbicane; "but if, like us, they had met it, they could no longer doubt it. Indeed, I think that this meteorite, which, had it struck the projectile, would have much embarrassed us, will give us the means of deciding what our position in space is."
"How?" said Ardan.
"Because its distance is known, and when we met it, we were exactly four thousand six hundred and fifty miles from the surface of the terrestrial globe."
"More than two thousand French leagues," exclaimed Michel Ardan. "That beats the express trains of the pitiful globe called the earth."
"I should think so," replied Nicholl, consulting his chronometer; "it is eleven o'clock, and it is only thirteen minutes since we left the American continent."
"Only thirteen minutes?" said Barbicane.
"Yes," said Nicholl; "and if our initiatory speed of twelve thousand yards has been kept up, we shall have made about twenty thousand miles in the hour."
"That is all very well, my friends," said the president, "but the insoluble question still remains. Why did we not hear the detonation of the Columbiad?"
For want of an answer the conversation dropped, and Barbicane began thoughtfully to let down the shutter of the second side. He succeeded; and through the uncovered glass the moon filled the projectile with a brilliant light. Nicholl, as an economical man, put out the gas, now useless, and whose brilliancy prevented any observation of the inter-planetary space.
The lunar disc shone with wonderful purity. Her rays, no longer filtered through the vapory atmosphere of the terrestrial globe, shone through the glass, filling the air in the interior of the projectile with silvery reflections. The black curtain of the firmament in reality heightened the moon's brilliancy, which in this void of ether unfavorable to diffusion did not eclipse the neighboring stars. The heavens, thus seen, presented quite a new aspect, and one which the human eye could never dream of. One may conceive the interest with which these bold men watched the orb of night, the great aim of their journey.
In its motion the earth's satellite was insensibly nearing the zenith, the mathematical point which it ought to attain ninety-six hours later. Her mountains, her plains, every projection was as clearly discernible to their eyes as if they were observing it from some spot upon the earth; but its light was developed through space with wonderful intensity. The disc shone like a platinum mirror. Of the earth flying from under their feet, the travelers had lost all recollection.
It was captain Nicholl who first recalled their attention to the vanishing globe.
"Yes," said Michel Ardan, "do not let us be ungrateful to it. Since we are leaving our country, let our last looks be directed to it. I wish to see the earth once more before it is quite hidden from my eyes."
To satisfy his companions, Barbicane began to uncover the window at the bottom of the projectile, which would allow them to observe the earth direct. The disc, which the force of the projection had beaten down to the base, was removed, not without difficulty. Its fragments, placed carefully against a wall, might serve again upon occasion. Then a circular gap appeared, nineteen inches in diameter, hollowed out of the lower part of the projectile. A glass cover, six inches thick and strengthened with upper fastenings, closed it tightly. Beneath was fixed an aluminum plate, held in place by bolts. The screws being undone, and the bolts let go, the plate fell down, and visible communication was established between the interior and the exterior.
Michel Ardan knelt by the glass. It was cloudy, seemingly opaque.
"Well!" he exclaimed, "and the earth?"
"The earth?" said Barbicane. "There it is."
"What! that little thread; that silver crescent?"
"Doubtless, Michel. In four days, when the moon will be full, at the very time we shall reach it, the earth will be new, and will only appear to us as a slender crescent which will soon disappear, and for some days will be enveloped in utter darkness."
"That the earth?" repeated Michel Ardan, looking with all his eyes at the thin slip of his native planet.
The explanation given by President Barbicane was correct. The earth, with respect to the projectile, was entering its last phase. It was in its octant, and showed a crescent finely traced on the dark background of the sky. Its light, rendered bluish by the thick strata of the atmosphere was less intense than that of the crescent moon, but it was of considerable dimensions, and looked like an enormous arch stretched across the firmament. Some parts brilliantly lighted, especially on its concave part, showed the presence of high mountains, often disappearing behind thick spots, which are never seen on the lunar disc. They were rings of clouds placed concentrically round the terrestrial globe.
While the travelers were trying to pierce the profound darkness, a brilliant cluster of shooting stars burst upon their eyes. Hundreds of meteorites, ignited by the friction of the atmosphere, irradiated the shadow of the luminous train, and lined the cloudy parts of the disc with their fire. At this period the earth was in its perihelion, and the month of December is so propitious to these shooting stars, that astronomers have counted as many as twenty-four thousand in an hour. But Michel Ardan, disdaining scientific reasonings, preferred thinking that the earth was thus saluting the departure of her three children with her most brilliant fireworks.
Indeed this was all they saw of the globe lost in the solar world, rising and setting to the great planets like a simple morning or evening star! This globe, where they had left all their affections, was nothing more than a fugitive crescent!
Long did the three friends look without speaking, though united in heart, while the projectile sped onward with an ever-decreasing speed. Then an irresistible drowsiness crept over their brain. Was it weariness of body and mind? No doubt; for after the over-excitement of those last hours passed upon earth, reaction was inevitable.
"Well," said Nicholl, "since we must sleep, let us sleep."
And stretching themselves on their couches, they were all three soon in a profound slumber.
But they had not forgotten themselves more than a quarter of an hour, when Barbicane sat up suddenly, and rousing his companions with a loud voice, exclaimed----
"I have found it!"
"What have you found?" asked Michel Ardan, jumping from his bed.
"The reason why we did not hear the detonation of the Columbiad."
"And it is----?" said Nicholl.
"Because our projectile traveled faster than the sound!"
This curious but certainly correct explanation once given, the three friends returned to their slumbers. Could they have found a calmer or more peaceful spot to sleep in? On the earth, houses, towns, cottages, and country feel every shock given to the exterior of the globe. On sea, the vessels rocked by the waves are still in motion; in the air, the balloon oscillates incessantly on the fluid strata of divers densities. This projectile alone, floating in perfect space, in the midst of perfect silence, offered perfect repose.
Thus the sleep of our adventurous travelers might have been indefinitely prolonged, if an unexpected noise had not awakened them at about seven o'clock in the morning of the 2nd of December, eight hours after their departure.
This noise was a very natural barking.
"The dogs! it is the dogs!" exclaimed Michel Ardan, rising at once.
"They are hungry," said Nicholl.
"By Jove!" replied Michel, "we have forgotten them."
"Where are they?" asked Barbicane.
They looked and found one of the animals crouched under the divan. Terrified and shaken by the initiatory shock, it had remained in the corner till its voice returned with the pangs of hunger. It was the amiable Diana, still very confused, who crept out of her retreat, though not without much persuasion, Michel Ardan encouraging her with most gracious words.
"Come, Diana," said he: "come, my girl! thou whose destiny will be marked in the cynegetic annals; thou whom the pagans would have given as companion to the god Anubis, and Christians as friend to St. Roch; thou who art rushing into interplanetary space, and wilt perhaps be the Eve of all Selenite dogs! come, Diana, come here."
Diana, flattered or not, advanced by degrees, uttering plaintive cries.
"Good," said Barbicane: "I see Eve, but where is Adam?"
"Adam?" replied Michel; "Adam cannot be far off; he is there somewhere; we must call him. Satellite! here, Satellite!"
But Satellite did not appear. Diana would not leave off howling. They found, however, that she was not bruised, and they gave her a pie, which silenced her complaints. As to Satellite, he seemed quite lost. They had to hunt a long time before finding him in one of the upper compartments of the projectile, whither some unaccountable shock must have violently hurled him. The poor beast, much hurt, was in a piteous state.
"The devil!" said Michel.
They brought the unfortunate dog down with great care. Its skull had been broken against the roof, and it seemed unlikely that he could recover from such a shock. Meanwhile, he was stretched comfortably on a cushion. Once there, he heaved a sigh.
"We will take care of you," said Michel; "we are responsible for your existence. I would rather lose an arm than a paw of my poor Satellite."
Saying which, he offered some water to the wounded dog, who swallowed it with avidity.
This attention paid, the travelers watched the earth and the moon attentively. The earth was now only discernible by a cloudy disc ending in a crescent, rather more contracted than that of the previous evening; but its expanse was still enormous, compared with that of the moon, which was approaching nearer and nearer to a perfect circle.
"By Jove!" said Michel Ardan, "I am really sorry that we did not start when the earth was full, that is to say, when our globe was in opposition to the sun."
"Why?" said Nicholl.
"Because we should have seen our continents and seas in a new light-- the first resplendent under the solar rays, the latter cloudy as represented on some maps of the world. I should like to have seen those poles of the earth on which the eye of man has never yet rested.
"I dare say," replied Barbicane; "but if the earth had been full, the moon would have been new; that is to say, invisible, because of the rays of the sun. It is better for us to see the destination we wish to reach, than the point of departure."
"You are right, Barbicane," replied Captain Nicholl; "and, besides, when we have reached the moon, we shall have time during the long lunar nights to consider at our leisure the globe on which our likenesses swarm."
"Our likenesses!" exclaimed Michel Ardan; "They are no more our likenesses than the Selenites are! We inhabit a new world, peopled by ourselves-- the projectile! I am Barbicane's likeness, and Barbicane is Nicholl's. Beyond us, around us, human nature is at an end, and we are the only population of this microcosm until we become pure Selenites."
"In about eighty-eight hours," replied the captain.
"Which means to say?" asked Michel Ardan.
"That it is half-past eight," replied Nicholl.
"Very well," retorted Michel; "then it is impossible for me to find even the shadow of a reason why we should not go to breakfast."
Indeed the inhabitants of the new star could not live without eating, and their stomachs were suffering from the imperious laws of hunger. Michel Ardan, as a Frenchman, was declared chief cook, an important function, which raised no rival. The gas gave sufficient heat for the culinary apparatus, and the provision box furnished the elements of this first feast.
The breakfast began with three bowls of excellent soup, thanks to the liquefaction in hot water of those precious cakes of Liebig, prepared from the best parts of the ruminants of the Pampas. To the soup succeeded some beefsteaks, compressed by an hydraulic press, as tender and succulent as if brought straight from the kitchen of an English eating-house. Michel, who was imaginative, maintained that they were even "red."
Preserved vegetables ("fresher than nature," said the amiable Michel) succeeded the dish of meat; and was followed by some cups of tea with bread and butter, after the American fashion.
The beverage was declared exquisite, and was due to the infusion of the choicest leaves, of which the emperor of Russia had given some chests for the benefit of the travelers.
And lastly, to crown the repast, Ardan had brought out a fine bottle of Nuits, which was found "by chance" in the provision-box. The three friends drank to the union of the earth and her satellite.
And, as if he had not already done enough for the generous wine which he had distilled on the slopes of Burgundy, the sun chose to be part of the party. At this moment the projectile emerged from the conical shadow cast by the terrestrial globe, and the rays of the radiant orb struck the lower disc of the projectile direct occasioned by the angle which the moon's orbit makes with that of the earth.
"The sun!" exclaimed Michel Ardan.
"No doubt," replied Barbicane; "I expected it."
"But," said Michel, "the conical shadow which the earth leaves in space extends beyond the moon?"
"Far beyond it, if the atmospheric refraction is not taken into consideration," said Barbicane. "But when the moon is enveloped in this shadow, it is because the centers of the three stars, the sun, the earth, and the moon, are all in one and the same straight line. Then the nodes coincide with the phases of the moon, and there is an eclipse. If we had started when there was an eclipse of the moon, all our passage would have been in the shadow, which would have been a pity."
"Why?"
"Because, though we are floating in space, our projectile, bathed in the solar rays, will receive light and heat. It economizes the gas, which is in every respect a good economy."
Indeed, under these rays which no atmosphere can temper, either in temperature or brilliancy, the projectile grew warm and bright, as if it had passed suddenly from winter to summer. The moon above, the sun beneath, were inundating it with their fire.
"It is pleasant here," said Nicholl.
"I should think so," said Michel Ardan. "With a little earth spread on our aluminum planet we should have green peas in twenty-four hours. I have but one fear, which is that the walls of the projectile might melt."
"Calm yourself, my worthy friend," replied Barbicane; "the projectile withstood a very much higher temperature than this as it slid through the strata of the atmosphere. I should not be surprised if it did not look like a meteor on fire to the eyes of the spectators in Florida."
"But then J. T. Maston will think we are roasted!"
"What astonishes me," said Barbicane, "is that we have not been. That was a danger we had not provided for."
"I feared it," said Nicholl simply.
"And you never mentioned it, my sublime captain," exclaimed Michel Ardan, clasping his friend's hand.
Barbicane now began to settle himself in the projectile as if he was never to leave it. One must remember that this aerial car had a base with a superficies of fifty-four square feet. Its height to the roof was twelve feet. Carefully laid out in the inside, and little encumbered by instruments and traveling utensils, which each had their particular place, it left the three travelers a certain freedom of movement. The thick window inserted in the bottom could bear any amount of weight, and Barbicane and his companions walked upon it as if it were solid plank; but the sun striking it directly with its rays lit the interior of the projectile from beneath, thus producing singular effects of light.
They began by investigating the state of their store of water and provisions, neither of which had suffered, thanks to the care taken to deaden the shock. Their provisions were abundant, and plentiful enough to last the three travelers for more than a year. Barbicane wished to be cautious, in case the projectile should land on a part of the moon which was utterly barren. As to water and the reserve of brandy, which consisted of fifty gallons, there was only enough for two months; but according to the last observations of astronomers, the moon had a low, dense, and thick atmosphere, at least in the deep valleys, and there springs and streams could not fail. Thus, during their passage, and for the first year of their settlement on the lunar continent, these adventurous explorers would suffer neither hunger nor thirst.
Now about the air in the projectile. There, too, they were secure. Reiset and Regnaut's apparatus, intended for the production of oxygen, was supplied with chlorate of potassium for two months. They necessarily consumed a certain quantity of gas, for they were obliged to keep the producing substance at a temperature of above 400@. But there again they were all safe. The apparatus only wanted a little care. But it was not enough to renew the oxygen; they must absorb the carbonic acid produced by expiration. During the last twelve hours the atmosphere of the projectile had become charged with this deleterious gas. Nicholl discovered the state of the air by observing Diana panting painfully. The carbonic acid, by a phenomenon similar to that produced in the famous Grotto del Cane, had collected at the bottom of the projectile owing to its weight. Poor Diana, with her head low, would suffer before her masters from the presence of this gas. But Captain Nicholl hastened to remedy this state of things, by placing on the floor several receivers containing caustic potash, which he shook about for a time, and this substance, greedy of carbonic acid, soon completely absorbed it, thus purifying the air.
An inventory of instruments was then begun. The thermometers and barometers had resisted, all but one minimum thermometer, the glass of which was broken. An excellent aneroid was drawn from the wadded box which contained it and hung on the wall. Of course it was only affected by and marked the pressure of the air inside the projectile, but it also showed the quantity of moisture which it contained. At that moment its needle oscillated between 25.24 and 25.08.
It was fine weather.
Barbicane had also brought several compasses, which he found intact. One must understand that under present conditions their needles were acting wildly, that is without any constant direction. Indeed, at the distance they were from the earth, the magnetic pole could have no perceptible action upon the apparatus; but the box placed on the lunar disc might perhaps exhibit some strange phenomena. In any case it would be interesting to see whether the earth's satellite submitted like herself to its magnetic influence.
A hypsometer to measure the height of the lunar mountains, a sextant to take the height of the sun, glasses which would be useful as they neared the moon, all these instruments were carefully looked over, and pronounced good in spite of the violent shock.
As to the pickaxes and different tools which were Nicholl's especial choice; as to the sacks of different kinds of grain and shrubs which Michel Ardan hoped to transplant into Selenite ground, they were stowed away in the upper part of the projectile. There was a sort of granary there, loaded with things which the extravagant Frenchman had heaped up. What they were no one knew, and the good-tempered fellow did not explain. Now and then he climbed up by cramp-irons riveted to the walls, but kept the inspection to himself. He arranged and rearranged, he plunged his hand rapidly into certain mysterious boxes, singing in one of the falsest of voices an old French refrain to enliven the situation.
Barbicane observed with some interest that his guns and other arms had not been damaged. These were important, because, heavily loaded, they were to help lessen the fall of the projectile, when drawn by the lunar attraction (after having passed the point of neutral attraction) on to the moon's surface; a fall which ought to be six times less rapid than it would have been on the earth's surface, thanks to the difference of bulk. The inspection ended with general satisfaction, when each returned to watch space through the side windows and the lower glass coverlid.
There was the same view. The whole extent of the celestial sphere swarmed with stars and constellations of wonderful purity, enough to drive an astronomer out of his mind! On one side the sun, like the mouth of a lighted oven, a dazzling disc without a halo, standing out on the dark background of the sky! On the other, the moon returning its fire by reflection, and apparently motionless in the midst of the starry world. Then, a large spot seemingly nailed to the firmament, bordered by a silvery cord; it was the earth! Here and there nebulous masses like large flakes of starry snow; and from the zenith to the nadir, an immense ring formed by an impalpable dust of stars, the "Milky Way," in the midst of which the sun ranks only as a star of the fourth magnitude. The observers could not take their eyes from this novel spectacle, of which no description could give an adequate idea. What reflections it suggested! What emotions hitherto unknown awoke in their souls! Barbicane wished to begin the relation of his journey while under its first impressions, and hour after hour took notes of all facts happening in the beginning of the enterprise. He wrote quietly, with his large square writing, in a business-like style.
During this time Nicholl, the calculator, looked over the minutes of their passage, and worked out figures with unparalleled dexterity. Michel Ardan chatted first with Barbicane, who did not answer him, and then with Nicholl, who did not hear him, with Diana, who understood none of his theories, and lastly with himself, questioning and answering, going and coming, busy with a thousand details; at one time bent over the lower glass, at another roosting in the heights of the projectile, and always singing. In this microcosm he represented French loquacity and excitability, and we beg you to believe that they were well represented. The day, or rather (for the expression is not correct) the lapse of twelve hours, which forms a day upon the earth, closed with a plentiful supper carefully prepared. No accident of any nature had yet happened to shake the travelers' confidence; so, full of hope, already sure of success, they slept peacefully, while the projectile under an uniformly decreasing speed was crossing the sky.
The night passed without incident. The word "night," however, is scarcely applicable.
The position of the projectile with regard to the sun did not change. Astronomically, it was daylight on the lower part, and night on the upper; so when during this narrative these words are used, they represent the lapse of time between rising and setting of the sun upon the earth.
The travelers' sleep was rendered more peaceful by the projectile's excessive speed, for it seemed absolutely motionless. Not a motion betrayed its onward course through space. The rate of progress, however rapid it might be, cannot produce any sensible effect on the human frame when it takes place in a vacuum, or when the mass of air circulates with the body which is carried with it. What inhabitant of the earth perceives its speed, which, however, is at the rate of 68,000 miles per hour? Motion under such conditions is "felt" no more than repose; and when a body is in repose it will remain so as long as no strange force displaces it; if moving, it will not stop unless an obstacle comes in its way. This indifference to motion or repose is called inertia.
Barbicane and his companions might have believed themselves perfectly stationary, being shut up in the projectile; indeed, the effect would have been the same if they had been on the outside of it. Had it not been for the moon, which was increasing above them, they might have sworn that they were floating in complete stagnation.
That morning, the 3rd of December, the travelers were awakened by a joyous but unexpected noise; it was the crowing of a cock which sounded through the car. Michel Ardan, who was the first on his feet, climbed to the top of the projectile, and shutting a box, the lid of which was partly open, said in a low voice, "Will you hold your tongue? That creature will spoil my design!"
But Nicholl and Barbicane were awake.
"A cock!" said Nicholl.
"Why no, my friends," Michel answered quickly; "it was I who wished to awake you by this rural sound." So saying, he gave vent to a splendid cock-a-doodledoo, which would have done honor to the proudest of poultry-yards.
The two Americans could not help laughing.
"Fine talent that," said Nicholl, looking suspiciously at his companion.
"Yes," said Michel; "a joke in my country. It is very Gallic; they play the cock so in the best society."
Then turning the conversation:
"Barbicane, do you know what I have been thinking of all night?"
"No," answered the president.
"Of our Cambridge friends. You have already remarked that I am an ignoramus in mathematical subjects; and it is impossible for me to find out how the savants of the observatory were able to calculate what initiatory speed the projectile ought to have on leaving the Columbiad in order to attain the moon."
"You mean to say," replied Barbicane, "to attain that neutral point where the terrestrial and lunar attractions are equal; for, starting from that point, situated about nine-tenths of the distance traveled over, the projectile would simply fall upon the moon, on account of its weight."
"So be it," said Michel; "but, once more; how could they calculate the initiatory speed?"
"Nothing can be easier," replied Barbicane.
"And you knew how to make that calculation?" asked Michel Ardan.
"Perfectly. Nicholl and I would have made it, if the observatory had not saved us the trouble."
"Very well, old Barbicane," replied Michel; "they might have cut off my head, beginning at my feet, before they could have made me solve that problem."
"Because you do not know algebra," answered Barbicane quietly.
"Ah, there you are, you eaters of x^1; you think you have said all when you have said `Algebra.'"
"Michel," said Barbicane, "can you use a forge without a hammer, or a plow without a plowshare?"
"Hardly."
"Well, algebra is a tool, like the plow or the hammer, and a good tool to those who know how to use it."
"Seriously?"
"Quite seriously."
"And can you use that tool in my presence?"
"If it will interest you."
"And show me how they calculated the initiatory speed of our car?"
"Yes, my worthy friend; taking into consideration all the elements of the problem, the distance from the center of the earth to the center of the moon, of the radius of the earth, of its bulk, and of the bulk of the moon, I can tell exactly what ought to be the initiatory speed of the projectile, and that by a simple formula."
"Let us see."
"You shall see it; only I shall not give you the real course drawn by the projectile between the moon and the earth in considering their motion round the sun. No, I shall consider these two orbs as perfectly motionless, which will answer all our purpose."
"And why?"
"Because it will be trying to solve the problem called `the problem of the three bodies,' for which the integral calculus is not yet far enough advanced."
"Then," said Michel Ardan, in his sly tone, "mathematics have not said their last word?"
"Certainly not," replied Barbicane.
"Well, perhaps the Selenites have carried the integral calculus farther than you have; and, by the bye, what is this `integral calculus?'"
"It is a calculation the converse of the differential," replied Barbicane seriously.
"Much obliged; it is all very clear, no doubt."
"And now," continued Barbicane, "a slip of paper and a bit of pencil, and before a half-hour is over I will have found the required formula."
Half an hour had not elapsed before Barbicane, raising his head, showed Michel Ardan a page covered with algebraical signs, in which the general formula for the solution was contained.
"Well, and does Nicholl understand what that means?"
"Of course, Michel," replied the captain. "All these signs, which seem cabalistic to you, form the plainest, the clearest, and the most logical language to those who know how to read it."
"And you pretend, Nicholl," asked Michel, "that by means of these hieroglyphics, more incomprehensible than the Egyptian Ibis, you can find what initiatory speed it was necessary to give the projectile?"
"Incontestably," replied Nicholl; "and even by this same formula I can always tell you its speed at any point of its transit."
"On your word?"
"On my word."
"Then you are as cunning as our president."
"No, Michel; the difficult part is what Barbicane has done; that is, to get an equation which shall satisfy all the conditions of the problem. The remainder is only a question of arithmetic, requiring merely the knowledge of the four rules."
"That is something!" replied Michel Ardan, who for his life could not do addition right, and who defined the rule as a Chinese puzzle, which allowed one to obtain all sorts of totals.
"The expression v zero, which you see in that equation, is the speed which the projectile will have on leaving the atmosphere."
"Just so," said Nicholl; "it is from that point that we must calculate the velocity, since we know already that the velocity at departure was exactly one and a half times more than on leaving the atmosphere."
"I understand no more," said Michel.
"It is a very simple calculation," said Barbicane.
"Not as simple as I am," retorted Michel.
"That means, that when our projectile reached the limits of the terrestrial atmosphere it had already lost one-third of its initiatory speed."
"As much as that?"
"Yes, my friend; merely by friction against the atmospheric strata. You understand that the faster it goes the more resistance it meets with from the air."
"That I admit," answered Michel; "and I understand it, although your x's and zero's, and algebraic formula, are rattling in my head like nails in a bag."
"First effects of algebra," replied Barbicane; "and now, to finish, we are going to prove the given number of these different expressions, that is, work out their value."
"Finish me!" replied Michel.
Barbicane took the paper, and began to make his calculations with great rapidity. Nicholl looked over and greedily read the work as it proceeded.
"That's it! that's it!" at last he cried.
"Is it clear?" asked Barbicane.
"It is written in letters of fire," said Nicholl.
"Wonderful fellows!" muttered Ardan.
"Do you understand it at last?" asked Barbicane.
"Do I understand it?" cried Ardan; "my head is splitting with it."
"And now," said Nicholl, "to find out the speed of the projectile when it leaves the atmosphere, we have only to calculate that."
The captain, as a practical man equal to all difficulties, began to write with frightful rapidity. Divisions and multiplications grew under his fingers; the figures were like hail on the white page. Barbicane watched him, while Michel Ardan nursed a growing headache with both hands.
"Very well?" asked Barbicane, after some minutes' silence.
"Well!" replied Nicholl; every calculation made, v zero, that is to say, the speed necessary for the projectile on leaving the atmosphere, to enable it to reach the equal point of attraction, ought to be----"
"Yes?" said Barbicane.
"Twelve thousand yards."
"What!" exclaimed Barbicane, starting; "you say----"
"Twelve thousand yards."
"The devil!" cried the president, making a gesture of despair.
"What is the matter?" asked Michel Ardan, much surprised.
"What is the matter! why, if at this moment our speed had already diminished one-third by friction, the initiatory speed ought to have been----"
"Seventeen thousand yards."
"And the Cambridge Observatory declared that twelve thousand yards was enough at starting; and our projectile, which only started with that speed----"
"Well?" asked Nicholl.
"Well, it will not be enough."
"Good."
"We shall not be able to reach the neutral point."
"The deuce!"
"We shall not even get halfway."
"In the name of the projectile!" exclaimed Michel Ardan, jumping as if it was already on the point of striking the terrestrial globe.
"And we shall fall back upon the earth!"
This revelation came like a thunderbolt. Who could have expected such an error in calculation? Barbicane would not believe it. Nicholl revised his figures: they were exact. As to the formula which had determined them, they could not suspect its truth; it was evident that an initiatory velocity of seventeen thousand yards in the first second was necessary to enable them to reach the neutral point.
The three friends looked at each other silently. There was no thought of breakfast. Barbicane, with clenched teeth, knitted brows, and hands clasped convulsively, was watching through the window. Nicholl had crossed his arms, and was examining his calculations. Michel Ardan was muttering:
"That is just like these scientific men: they never do anything else. I would give twenty pistoles if we could fall upon the Cambridge Observatory and crush it, together with the whole lot of dabblers in figures which it contains."
Suddenly a thought struck the captain, which he at once communicated to Barbicane.
"Ah!" said he; "it is seven o'clock in the morning; we have already been gone thirty-two hours; more than half our passage is over, and we are not falling that I am aware of."
Barbicane did not answer, but after a rapid glance at the captain, took a pair of compasses wherewith to measure the angular distance of the terrestrial globe; then from the lower window he took an exact observation, and noticed that the projectile was apparently stationary. Then rising and wiping his forehead, on which large drops of perspiration were standing, he put some figures on paper. Nicholl understood that the president was deducting from the terrestrial diameter the projectile's distance from the earth. He watched him anxiously.
"No," exclaimed Barbicane, after some moments, "no, we are not falling! no, we are already more than 50,000 leagues from the earth. We have passed the point at which the projectile would have stopped if its speed had only been 12,000 yards at starting. We are still going up."
"That is evident," replied Nicholl; "and we must conclude that our initial speed, under the power of the 400,000 pounds of gun-cotton, must have exceeded the required 12,000 yards. Now I can understand how, after thirteen minutes only, we met the second satellite, which gravitates round the earth at more than 2,000 leagues' distance."
"And this explanation is the more probable," added Barbicane, "Because, in throwing off the water enclosed between its partition-breaks, the projectile found itself lightened of a considerable weight."
"Just so," said Nicholl.
"Ah, my brave Nicholl, we are saved!"
"Very well then," said Michel Ardan quietly; "as we are safe, let us have breakfast."
Nicholl was not mistaken. The initial speed had been, very fortunately, much above that estimated by the Cambridge Observatory; but the Cambridge Observatory had nevertheless made a mistake.
The travelers, recovered from this false alarm, breakfasted merrily. If they ate a good deal, they talked more. Their confidence was greater after than before "the incident of the algebra."
"Why should we not succeed?" said Michel Ardan; "why should we not arrive safely? We are launched; we have no obstacle before us, no stones in the way; the road is open, more so than that of a ship battling with the sea; more open than that of a balloon battling with the wind; and if a ship can reach its destination, a balloon go where it pleases, why cannot our projectile attain its end and aim?"
"It will attain it," said Barbicane.
"If only to do honor to the Americans," added Michel Ardan, "the only people who could bring such an enterprise to a happy termination, and the only one which could produce a President Barbicane. Ah, now we are no longer uneasy, I begin to think, What will become of us? We shall get right royally weary."
Barbicane and Nicholl made a gesture of denial.
"But I have provided for the contingency, my friends," replied Michel; "you have only to speak, and I have chess, draughts, cards, and dominoes at your disposal; nothing is wanting but a billiard-table."
"What!" exclaimed Barbicane; "you brought away such trifles?"
"Certainly," replied Michel, "and not only to distract ourselves, but also with the laudable intention of endowing the Selenite smoking divans with them."
"My friend," said Barbicane, "if the moon is inhabited, its inhabitants must have appeared some thousands of years before those of the earth, for we cannot doubt that their star is much older than ours. If then these Selenites have existed their hundreds of thousands of years, and if their brain is of the same organization of the human brain, they have already invented all that we have invented, and even what we may invent in future ages. They have nothing to learn from us, and we have everything to learn from them."
"What!" said Michel; "you believe that they have artists like Phidias, Michael Angelo, or Raphael?"
"Yes."
"Poets like Homer, Virgil, Milton, Lamartine, and Hugo?"
"I am sure of it."
"Philosophers like Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Kant?"
"I have no doubt of it."
"Scientific men like Archimedes, Euclid, Pascal, Newton?"
"I could swear it."
"Comic writers like Arnal, and photographers like-- like Nadar?"
"Certain."
"Then, friend Barbicane, if they are as strong as we are, and even stronger-- these Selenites-- why have they not tried to communicate with the earth? why have they not launched a lunar projectile to our terrestrial regions?"
"Who told you that they have never done so?" said Barbicane seriously.
"Indeed," added Nicholl, "it would be easier for them than for us, for two reasons; first, because the attraction on the moon's surface is six times less than on that of the earth, which would allow a projectile to rise more easily; secondly, because it would be enough to send such a projectile only at 8,000 leagues instead of 80,000, which would require the force of projection to be ten times less strong."
"Then," continued Michel, "I repeat it, why have they not done it?"
"And I repeat," said Barbicane; "who told you that they have not done it?"
"When?"
"Thousands of years before man appeared on earth."
"And the projectile-- where is the projectile? I demand to see the projectile."
"My friend," replied Barbicane, "the sea covers five-sixths of our globe. From that we may draw five good reasons for supposing that the lunar projectile, if ever launched, is now at the bottom of the Atlantic or the Pacific, unless it sped into some crevasse at that period when the crust of the earth was not yet hardened."
"Old Barbicane," said Michel, "you have an answer for everything, and I bow before your wisdom. But there is one hypothesis that would suit me better than all the others, which is, the Selenites, being older than we, are wiser, and have not invented gunpowder."
At this moment Diana joined in the conversation by a sonorous barking. She was asking for her breakfast.
"Ah!" said Michel Ardan, "in our discussion we have forgotten Diana and Satellite."
Immediately a good-sized pie was given to the dog, which devoured it hungrily.
"Do you see, Barbicane," said Michel, "we should have made a second Noah's ark of this projectile, and borne with us to the moon a couple of every kind of domestic animal."
"I dare say; but room would have failed us."
"Oh!" said Michel, "we might have squeezed a little."
"The fact is," replied Nicholl, "that cows, bulls, and horses, and all ruminants, would have been very useful on the lunar continent, but unfortunately the car could neither have been made a stable nor a shed."
"Well, we might have at least brought a donkey, only a little donkey; that courageous beast which old Silenus loved to mount. I love those old donkeys; they are the least favored animals in creation; they are not only beaten while alive, but even after they are dead."
"How do you make that out?" asked Barbicane. "Why," said Michel, "they make their skins into drums."
Barbicane and Nicholl could not help laughing at this ridiculous remark. But a cry from their merry companion stopped them. The latter was leaning over the spot where Satellite lay. He rose, saying:
"My good Satellite is no longer ill."
"Ah!" said Nicholl.
"No," answered Michel, "he is dead! There," added he, in a piteous tone, "that is embarrassing. I much fear, my poor Diana, that you will leave no progeny in the lunar regions!"
Indeed the unfortunate Satellite had not survived its wound. It was quite dead. Michel Ardan looked at his friends with a rueful countenance.
"One question presents itself," said Barbicane. "We cannot keep the dead body of this dog with us for the next forty-eight hours."
"No! certainly not," replied Nicholl; "but our scuttles are fixed on hinges; they can be let down. We will open one, and throw the body out into space."
The president thought for some moments, and then said:
"Yes, we must do so, but at the same time taking very great precautions."
"Why?" asked Michel.
"For two reasons which you will understand," answered Barbicane. "The first relates to the air shut up in the projectile, and of which we must lose as little as possible."
"But we manufacture the air?"
"Only in part. We make only the oxygen, my worthy Michel; and with regard to that, we must watch that the apparatus does not furnish the oxygen in too great a quantity; for an excess would bring us very serious physiological troubles. But if we make the oxygen, we do not make the azote, that medium which the lungs do not absorb, and which ought to remain intact; and that azote will escape rapidly through the open scuttles."
"Oh! the time for throwing out poor Satellite?" said Michel.
"Agreed; but we must act quickly."
"And the second reason?" asked Michel.
"The second reason is that we must not let the outer cold, which is excessive, penetrate the projectile or we shall be frozen to death."
"But the sun?"
"The sun warms our projectile, which absorbs its rays; but it does not warm the vacuum in which we are floating at this moment. Where there is no air, there is no more heat than diffused light; and the same with darkness; it is cold where the sun's rays do not strike direct. This temperature is only the temperature produced by the radiation of the stars; that is to say, what the terrestrial globe would undergo if the sun disappeared one day."
"Which is not to be feared," replied Nicholl.
"Who knows?" said Michel Ardan. "But, in admitting that the sun does not go out, might it not happen that the earth might move away from it?"
"There!" said Barbicane, "there is Michel with his ideas."
"And," continued Michel, "do we not know that in 1861 the earth passed through the tail of a comet? Or let us suppose a comet whose power of attraction is greater than that of the sun. The terrestrial orbit will bend toward the wandering star, and the earth, becoming its satellite, will be drawn such a distance that the rays of the sun will have no action on its surface."
"That might happen, indeed," replied Barbicane, "but the consequences of such a displacement need not be so formidable as you suppose."
"And why not?"
"Because the heat and cold would be equalized on our globe. It has been calculated that, had our earth been carried along in its course by the comet of 1861, at its perihelion, that is, its nearest approach to the sun, it would have undergone a heat 28,000 times greater than that of summer. But this heat, which is sufficient to evaporate the waters, would have formed a thick ring of cloud, which would have modified that excessive temperature; hence the compensation between the cold of the aphelion and the heat of the perihelion."
"At how many degrees," asked Nicholl, "is the temperature of the planetary spaces estimated?"
"Formerly," replied Barbicane, "it was greatly exagerated; but now, after the calculations of Fourier, of the French Academy of Science, it is not supposed to exceed 60@ Centigrade below zero."
"Pooh!" said Michel, "that's nothing!"
"It is very much," replied Barbicane; "the temperature which was observed in the polar regions, at Melville Island and Fort Reliance, that is 76@ Fahrenheit below zero."
"If I mistake not," said Nicholl, "M. Pouillet, another savant, estimates the temperature of space at 250@ Fahrenheit below zero. We shall, however, be able to verify these calculations for ourselves."
"Not at present; because the solar rays, beating directly upon our thermometer, would give, on the contrary, a very high temperature. But, when we arrive in the moon, during its fifteen days of night at either face, we shall have leisure to make the experiment, for our satellite lies in a vacuum."
"What do you mean by a vacuum?" asked Michel. "Is it perfectly such?"
"It is absolutely void of air."
"And is the air replaced by nothing whatever?"
"By the ether only," replied Barbicane.
"And pray what is the ether?"
"The ether, my friend, is an agglomeration of imponderable atoms, which, relatively to their dimensions, are as far removed from each other as the celestial bodies are in space. It is these atoms which, by their vibratory motion, produce both light and heat in the universe."
They now proceeded to the burial of Satellite. They had merely to drop him into space, in the same way that sailors drop a body into the sea; but, as President Barbicane suggested, they must act quickly, so as to lose as little as possible of that air whose elasticity would rapidly have spread it into space. The bolts of the right scuttle, the opening of which measured about twelve inches across, were carefully drawn, while Michel, quite grieved, prepared to launch his dog into space. The glass, raised by a powerful lever, which enabled it to overcome the pressure of the inside air on the walls of the projectile, turned rapidly on its hinges, and Satellite was thrown out. Scarcely a particle of air could have escaped, and the operation was so successful that later on Barbicane did not fear to dispose of the rubbish which encumbered the car.
On the 4th of December, when the travelers awoke after fifty-four hours' journey, the chronometer marked five o'clock of the terrestrial morning. In time it was just over five hours and forty minutes, half of that assigned to their sojourn in the projectile; but they had already accomplished nearly seven-tenths of the way. This peculiarity was due to their regularly decreasing speed.
Now when they observed the earth through the lower window, it looked like nothing more than a dark spot, drowned in the solar rays. No more crescent, no more cloudy light! The next day, at midnight, the earth would be new, at the very moment when the moon would be full. Above, the orb of night was nearing the line followed by the projectile, so as to meet it at the given hour. All around the black vault was studded with brilliant points, which seemed to move slowly; but, at the great distance they were from them, their relative size did not seem to change. The sun and stars appeared exactly as they do to us upon earth. As to the moon, she was considerably larger; but the travelers' glasses, not very powerful, did not allow them as yet to make any useful observations upon her surface, or reconnoiter her topographically or geologically.
Thus the time passed in never-ending conversations all about the moon. Each one brought forward his own contingent of particular facts; Barbicane and Nicholl always serious, Michel Ardan always enthusiastic. The projectile, its situation, its direction, incidents which might happen, the precautions necessitated by their fall on to the moon, were inexhaustible matters of conjecture.
As they were breakfasting, a question of Michel's, relating to the projectile, provoked rather a curious answer from Barbicane, which is worth repeating. Michel, supposing it to be roughly stopped, while still under its formidable initial speed, wished to know what the consequences of the stoppage would have been.
"But," said Barbicane, "I do not see how it could have been stopped."
"But let us suppose so," said Michel.
"It is an impossible supposition," said the practical Barbicane; "unless that impulsive force had failed; but even then its speed would diminish by degrees, and it would not have stopped suddenly."
"Admit that it had struck a body in space."
"What body?"
"Why that enormous meteor which we met."
"Then," said Nicholl, "the projectile would have been broken into a thousand pieces, and we with it."
"More than that," replied Barbicane; "we should have been burned to death."
"Burned?" exclaimed Michel, "by Jove! I am sorry it did not happen, `just to see.'"
"And you would have seen," replied Barbicane. "It is known now that heat is only a modification of motion. When water is warmed-- that is to say, when heat is added to it--its particles are set in motion."
"Well," said michel, "that is an ingenious theory!"
"And a true one, my worthy friend; for it explains every phenomenon of caloric. Heat is but the motion of atoms, a simple oscillation of the particles of a body. When they apply the brake to a train, the train comes to a stop; but what becomes of the motion which it had previously possessed? It is transformed into heat, and the brake becomes hot. Why do they grease the axles of the wheels? To prevent their heating, because this heat would be generated by the motion which is thus lost by transformation."
"Yes, I understand," replied Michel, "perfectly. For example, when I have run a long time, when I am swimming, when I am perspiring in large drops, why am I obliged to stop? Simply because my motion is changed into heat."
Barbicane could not help smiling at Michel's reply; then, returning to his theory, said:
"Thus, in case of a shock, it would have been with our projectile as with a ball which falls in a burning state after having struck the metal plate; it is its motion which is turned into heat. Consequently I affirm that, if our projectile had struck the meteor, its speed thus suddenly checked would have raised a heat great enough to turn it into vapor instantaneously."
"Then," asked Nicholl, "what would happen if the earth's motion were to stop suddenly?"
"Her temperature would be raised to such a pitch," said Barbicane, "that she would be at once reduced to vapor."
"Well," said Michel, "that is a way of ending the earth which will greatly simplify things."
"And if the earth fell upon the sun?" asked Nicholl.
"According to calculation," replied Barbicane, "the fall would develop a heat equal to that produced by 16,000 globes of coal, each equal in bulk to our terrestrial globe."
"Good additional heat for the sun," replied Michel Ardan, "of which the inhabitants of Uranus or Neptune would doubtless not complain; they must be perished with cold on their planets."
"Thus, my friends," said Barbicane, "all motion suddenly stopped produces heat. And this theory allows us to infer that the heat of the solar disc is fed by a hail of meteors falling incessantly on its surface. They have even calculated----"
"Oh, dear!" murmured Michel, "the figures are coming."
"They have even calculated," continued the imperturbable Barbicane, "that the shock of each meteor on the sun ought to produce a heat equal to that of 4,000 masses of coal of an equal bulk."
"And what is the solar heat?" asked Michel.
"It is equal to that produced by the combustion of a stratum of coal surrounding the sun to a depth of forty-seven miles."
"And that heat----"
"Would be able to boil two billions nine hundred millions of cubic myriameters [2] of water."
[2] The myriameter is equal to rather more than 10,936 cubic yards English.
"And it does not roast us!" exclaimed Michel.
"No," replied Barbicane, "because the terrestrial atmosphere absorbs four-tenths of the solar heat; besides, the quantity of heat intercepted by the earth is but a billionth part of the entire radiation."
"I see that all is for the best," said Michel, "and that this atmosphere is a useful invention; for it not only allows us to breathe, but it prevents us from roasting."
"Yes!" said Nicholl, "unfortunately, it will not be the same in the moon."
"Bah!" said Michel, always hopeful. "If there are inhabitants, they must breathe. If there are no longer any, they must have left enough oxygen for three people, if only at the bottom of ravines, where its own weight will cause it to accumulate, and we will not climb the mountains; that is all." And Michel, rising, went to look at the lunar disc, which shone with intolerable brilliancy.
"By Jove!" said he, "it must be hot up there!"
"Without considering," replied Nicholl, "that the day lasts 360 hours!"
"And to compensate that," said Barbicane, "the nights have the same length; and as heat is restored by radiation, their temperature can only be that of the planetary space."
"A pretty country, that!" exclaimed Michel. "Never mind! I wish I was there! Ah! my dear comrades, it will be rather curious to have the earth for our moon, to see it rise on the horizon, to recognize the shape of its continents, and to say to oneself, `There is America, there is Europe;' then to follow it when it is about to lose itself in the sun's rays! By the bye, Barbicane, have the Selenites eclipses?"
"Yes, eclipses of the sun," replied Barbicane, "when the centers of the three orbs are on a line, the earth being in the middle. But they are only partial, during which the earth, cast like a screen upon the solar disc, allows the greater portion to be seen."
"And why," asked Nicholl, "is there no total eclipse? Does not the cone of the shadow cast by the earth extend beyond the moon?"
"Yes, if we do not take into consideration the refraction
produced by the terrestrial atmosphere. No, if we take that
refraction into consideration. Thus let
"Oh!" said Michel. "Do speak plainly, you man of algebra!"
"Very well, replied Barbicane; "in popular language the mean
distance from the moon to the earth being sixty terrestrial
radii, the length of the cone of the shadow, on account of
refraction, is reduced to less than forty-two radii.
The result is that when there are eclipses, the moon finds
itself beyond the cone of pure shadow, and that the sun sends
her its rays, not only from its edges, but also from its center."
"Then," said Michel, in a merry tone, "why are there eclipses,
when there ought not to be any?"
"Simply because the solar rays are weakened by this refraction,
and the atmosphere through which they pass extinguished the
greater part of them!"
"That reason satisfies me," replied Michel. "Besides we shall
see when we get there. Now, tell me, Barbicane, do you believe
that the moon is an old comet?"
"There's an idea!"
"Yes," replied Michel, with an amiable swagger, "I have a few
ideas of that sort."
"But that idea does not spring from Michel," answered Nicholl.
"Well, then, I am a plagiarist."
"No doubt about it. According to the ancients, the Arcadians
pretend that their ancestors inhabited the earth before the moon
became her satellite. Starting from this fact, some scientific
men have seen in the moon a comet whose orbit will one day bring
it so near to the earth that it will be held there by its attraction."
"Is there any truth in this hypothesis?" asked Michel.
"None whatever," said Barbicane, "and the proof is, that the
moon has preserved no trace of the gaseous envelope which always
accompanies comets."
"But," continued Nicholl, "Before becoming the earth's satellite,
could not the moon, when in her perihelion, pass so near the sun
as by evaporation to get rid of all those gaseous substances?"
"It is possible, friend Nicholl, but not probable."
"Why not?"
"Because-- Faith I do not know."
"Ah!" exclaimed Michel, "what hundred of volumes we might make
of all that we do not know!"
"Ah! indeed. What time is it?" asked Barbicane.
"Three o'clock," answered Nicholl.
"How time goes," said Michel, "in the conversation of scientific
men such as we are! Certainly, I feel I know too much! I feel
that I am becoming a well!"
Saying which, Michel hoisted himself to the roof of the projectile,
"to observe the moon better," he pretended. During this time his
companions were watching through the lower glass. Nothing new to note!
When Michel Ardan came down, he went to the side scuttle; and
suddenly they heard an exclamation of surprise!
"What is it?" asked Barbicane.
The president approached the window, and saw a sort of flattened
sack floating some yards from the projectile. This object
seemed as motionless as the projectile, and was consequently
animated with the same ascending movement.
"What is that machine?" continued Michel Ardan. "Is it one of
the bodies which our projectile keeps within its attraction, and
which will accompany it to the moon?"
"What astonishes me," said Nicholl, "is that the specific weight
of the body, which is certainly less than that of the
projectile, allows it to keep so perfectly on a level with it."
"Nicholl," replied Barbicane, after a moment's reflection, "I do
not know what the object it, but I do know why it maintains our level."
"And why?"
"Because we are floating in space, my dear captain, and in space
bodies fall or move (which is the same thing) with equal speed
whatever be their weight or form; it is the air, which by its
resistance creates these differences in weight. When you create
a vacuum in a tube, the objects you send through it, grains of
dust or grains of lead, fall with the same rapidity. Here in
space is the same cause and the same effect."
"Just so," said Nicholl, "and everything we throw out of the
projectile will accompany it until it reaches the moon."
"Ah! fools that we are!" exclaimed Michel.
"Why that expletive?" asked Barbicane.
"Because we might have filled the projectile with useful objects,
books, instruments, tools, etc. We could have thrown them all
out, and all would have followed in our train. But happy thought!
Why cannot we walk outside like the meteor? Why cannot we launch
into space through the scuttle? What enjoyment it would be to
feel oneself thus suspended in ether, more favored than the birds
who must use their wings to keep themselves up!"
"Granted," said Barbicane, "but how to breathe?"
"Hang the air, to fail so inopportunely!"
"But if it did not fail, Michel, your density being less than
that of the projectile, you would soon be left behind."
"Then we must remain in our car?"
"We must!"
"Ah!" exclaimed Michel, in a load voice.
"What is the matter," asked Nicholl.
"I know, I guess, what this pretended meteor is! It is no
asteroid which is accompanying us! It is not a piece of a planet."
"What is it then?" asked Barbicane.
"It is our unfortunate dog! It is Diana's husband!"
Indeed, this deformed, unrecognizable object, reduced to
nothing, was the body of Satellite, flattened like a bagpipe
without wind, and ever mounting, mounting!
Thus a phenomenon, curious but explicable, was happening under
these strange conditions.
Every object thrown from the projectile would follow the same
course and never stop until it did. There was a subject for
conversation which the whole evening could not exhaust.
Besides, the excitement of the three travelers increased as they
drew near the end of their journey. They expected unforseen
incidents, and new phenomena; and nothing would have astonished
them in the frame of mind they then were in. Their overexcited
imagination went faster than the projectile, whose speed was
evidently diminishing, though insensibly to themselves. But the
moon grew larger to their eyes, and they fancied if they
stretched out their hands they could seize it.
The next day, the 5th of November, at five in the morning,
all three were on foot. That day was to be the last of their
journey, if all calculations were true. That very night, at
twelve o'clock, in eighteen hours, exactly at the full moon,
they would reach its brilliant disc. The next midnight would
see that journey ended, the most extraordinary of ancient or
modern times. Thus from the first of the morning, through the
scuttles silvered by its rays, they saluted the orb of night
with a confident and joyous hurrah.
The moon was advancing majestically along the starry firmament.
A few more degrees, and she would reach the exact point where
her meeting with the projectile was to take place.
According to his own observations, Barbicane reckoned that they
would land on her northern hemisphere, where stretch immense plains,
and where mountains are rare. A favorable circumstance if, as
they thought, the lunar atmosphere was stored only in its depths.
"Besides," observed Michel Ardan, "a plain is easier to
disembark upon than a mountain. A Selenite, deposited in Europe
on the summit of Mont Blanc, or in Asia on the top of the
Himalayas, would not be quite in the right place."
"And," added Captain Nicholl, "on a flat ground, the projectile
will remain motionless when it has once touched; whereas on a
declivity it would roll like an avalanche, and not being
squirrels we should not come out safe and sound. So it is all
for the best."
Indeed, the success of the audacious attempt no longer
appeared doubtful. But Barbicane was preoccupied with one
thought; but not wishing to make his companions uneasy, he
kept silence on this subject.
The direction the projectile was taking toward the moon's
northern hemisphere, showed that her course had been
slightly altered. The discharge, mathematically calculated,
would carry the projectile to the very center of the lunar disc.
If it did not land there, there must have been some deviation.
What had caused it? Barbicane could neither imagine nor
determine the importance of the deviation, for there were no
points to go by.
He hoped, however, that it would have no other result than that
of bringing them nearer the upper border of the moon, a region
more suitable for landing.
Without imparting his uneasiness to his companions, Barbicane
contented himself with constantly observing the moon, in order
to see whether the course of the projectile would not be
altered; for the situation would have been terrible if it failed
in its aim, and being carried beyond the disc should be launched
into interplanetary space. At that moment, the moon, instead of
appearing flat like a disc, showed its convexity. If the sun's
rays had struck it obliquely, the shadow thrown would have brought
out the high mountains, which would have been clearly detached.
The eye might have gazed into the crater's gaping abysses,
and followed the capricious fissures which wound through the
immense plains. But all relief was as yet leveled in
intense brilliancy. They could scarcely distinguish those
large spots which give the moon the appearance of a human face.
"Face, indeed!" said Michel Ardan; "but I am sorry for the
amiable sister of Apollo. A very pitted face!"
But the travelers, now so near the end, were incessantly
observing this new world. They imagined themselves walking
through its unknown countries, climbing its highest peaks,
descending into its lowest depths. Here and there they fancied
they saw vast seas, scarcely kept together under so rarefied an
atmosphere, and water-courses emptying the mountain tributaries.
Leaning over the abyss, they hoped to catch some sounds from
that orb forever mute in the solitude of space. That last day
left them.
They took down the most trifling details. A vague uneasiness
took possession of them as they neared the end. This uneasiness
would have been doubled had they felt how their speed had decreased.
It would have seemed to them quite insufficient to carry them to
the end. It was because the projectile then "weighed" almost nothing.
Its weight was ever decreasing, and would be entirely annihilated on
that line where the lunar and terrestrial attractions would
neutralize each other.
But in spite of his preoccupation, Michel Ardan did not forget
to prepare the morning repast with his accustomed punctuality.
They ate with a good appetite. Nothing was so excellent as the
soup liquefied by the heat of the gas; nothing better than the
preserved meat. Some glasses of good French wine crowned the
repast, causing Michel Ardan to remark that the lunar vines,
warmed by that ardent sun, ought to distill even more generous
wines; that is, if they existed. In any case, the far-seeing
Frenchman had taken care not to forget in his collection some
precious cuttings of the Medoc and Cote d'Or, upon which he
founded his hopes.
Reiset and Regnaut's apparatus worked with great regularity.
Not an atom of carbonic acid resisted the potash; and as to
the oxygen, Captain Nicholl said "it was of the first quality."
The little watery vapor enclosed in the projectile mixing with
the air tempered the dryness; and many apartments in London,
Paris, or New York, and many theaters, were certainly not in
such a healthy condition.
But that it might act with regularity, the apparatus must be
kept in perfect order; so each morning Michel visited the escape
regulators, tried the taps, and regulated the heat of the gas by
the pyrometer. Everything had gone well up to that time, and
the travelers, imitating the worthy Joseph T. Maston, began to
acquire a degree of embonpoint which would have rendered them
unrecognizable if their imprisonment had been prolonged to
some months. In a word, they behaved like chickens in a coop;
they were getting fat.
In looking through the scuttle Barbicane saw the specter of the
dog, and other divers objects which had been thrown from the
projectile, obstinately following them. Diana howled
lugubriously on seeing the remains of Satellite, which seemed as
motionless as if they reposed on solid earth.
"Do you know, my friends," said Michel Ardan, "that if one of us
had succumbed to the shock consequent on departure, we should
have had a great deal of trouble to bury him? What am I saying?
to etherize him, as here ether takes the place of earth.
You see the accusing body would have followed us into space like
a remorse."
"That would have been sad," said Nicholl.
"Ah!" continued Michel, "what I regret is not being able to take a
walk outside. What voluptuousness to float amid this radiant ether,
to bathe oneself in it, to wrap oneself in the sun's pure rays.
If Barbicane had only thought of furnishing us with a diving
apparatus and an air-pump, I could have ventured out and assumed
fanciful attitudes of feigned monsters on the top of the projectile."
"Well, old Michel," replied Barbicane, "you would not have made
a feigned monster long, for in spite of your diver's dress, swollen
by the expansion of air within you, you would have burst like a
shell, or rather like a balloon which has risen too high. So do
not regret it, and do not forget this-- as long as we float in
space, all sentimental walks beyond the projectile are forbidden."
Michel Ardan allowed himself to be convinced to a certain extent.
He admitted that the thing was difficult but not impossible,
a word which he never uttered.
The conversation passed from this subject to another, not failing
him for an instant. It seemed to the three friends as though,
under present conditions, ideas shot up in their brains as leaves
shoot at the first warmth of spring. They felt bewildered. In the
middle of the questions and answers which crossed each other,
Nicholl put one question which did not find an immediate solution.
"Ah, indeed!" said he; "it is all very well to go to the moon,
but how to get back again?"
His two interlocutors looked surprised. One would have thought
that this possibility now occurred to them for the first time.
"What do you mean by that, Nicholl?" asked Barbicane gravely.
"To ask for means to leave a country," added Michel, "When we
have not yet arrived there, seems to me rather inopportune."
"I do not say that, wishing to draw back," replied Nicholl;
"but I repeat my question, and I ask, `How shall we return?'"
"I know nothing about it," answered Barbicane.
"And I," said Michel, "if I had known how to return, I would
never have started."
"There's an answer!" cried Nicholl.
"I quite approve of Michel's words," said Barbicane; "and add,
that the question has no real interest. Later, when we think it
is advisable to return, we will take counsel together. If the
Columbiad is not there, the projectile will be."
"That is a step certainly. A ball without a gun!"
"The gun," replied Barbicane, "can be manufactured. The powder
can be made. Neither metals, saltpeter, nor coal can fail in
the depths of the moon, and we need only go 8,000 leagues in
order to fall upon the terrestrial globe by virtue of the mere
laws of weight."
"Enough," said Michel with animation. "Let it be no longer a
question of returning: we have already entertained it too long.
As to communicating with our former earthly colleagues, that
will not be difficult."
"And how?"
"By means of meteors launched by lunar volcanoes."
"Well thought of, Michel," said Barbicane in a convinced tone
of voice. "Laplace has calculated that a force five times greater
than that of our gun would suffice to send a meteor from the
moon to the earth, and there is not one volcano which has not a
greater power of propulsion than that."
"Hurrah!" exclaimed Michel; "these meteors are handy postmen,
and cost nothing. And how we shall be able to laugh at the
post-office administration! But now I think of it----"
"What do you think of?"
"A capital idea. Why did we not fasten a thread to our
projectile, and we could have exchanged telegrams with the earth?"
"The deuce!" answered Nicholl. "Do you consider the weight of
a thread 250,000 miles long nothing?"
"As nothing. They could have trebled the Columbiad's charge;
they could have quadrupled or quintupled it!" exclaimed Michel,
with whom the verb took a higher intonation each time.
"There is but one little objection to make to your proposition,"
replied Barbicane, "which is that, during the rotary motion of
the globe, our thread would have wound itself round it like a
chain on a capstan, and that it would inevitably have brought us
to the ground."
"By the thirty-nine stars of the Union!" said Michel, "I have
nothing but impracticable ideas to-day; ideas worthy of J.
T. Maston. But I have a notion that, if we do not return to
earth, J. T. Maston will be able to come to us."
"Yes, he'll come," replied Barbicane; "he is a worthy and a
courageous comrade. Besides, what is easier? Is not the
Columbiad still buried in the soil of Florida? Is cotton and
nitric acid wanted wherewith to manufacture the pyroxyle?
Will not the moon pass the zenith of Florida? In eighteen
years' time will she not occupy exactly the same place as to-day?"
"Yes," continued Michel, "yes, Maston will come, and with him
our friends Elphinstone, Blomsberry, all the members of the Gun
Club, and they will be well received. And by and by they will
run trains of projectiles between the earth and the moon!
Hurrah for J. T. Maston!"
It is probable that, if the Hon. J. T. Maston did not hear the
hurrahs uttered in his honor, his ears at least tingled. What was
he doing then? Doubtless, posted in the Rocky Mountains, at the
station of Long's Peak, he was trying to find the invisible
projectile gravitating in space. If he was thinking of his dear
companions, we must allow that they were not far behind him; and
that, under the influence of a strange excitement, they were
devoting to him their best thoughts.
But whence this excitement, which was evidently growing upon the
tenants of the projectile? Their sobriety could not be doubted.
This strange irritation of the brain, must it be attributed to
the peculiar circumstances under which they found themselves, to
their proximity to the orb of night, from which only a few hours
separated them, to some secret influence of the moon acting upon
their nervous system? Their faces were as rosy as if they had
been exposed to the roaring flames of an oven; their voices
resounded in loud accents; their words escaped like a champagne
cork driven out by carbonic acid; their gestures became annoying,
they wanted so much room to perform them; and, strange to say,
they none of them noticed this great tension of the mind.
"Now," said Nicholl, in a short tone, "now that I do not know
whether we shall ever return from the moon, I want to know what
we are going to do there?"
"What we are going to do there?" replied Barbicane, stamping
with his foot as if he was in a fencing saloon; "I do not know."
"You do not know!" exclaimed Michel, with a bellow which
provoked a sonorous echo in the projectile.
"No, I have not even thought about it," retorted Barbicane, in
the same loud tone.
"Well, I know," replied Michel.
"Speak, then," cried Nicholl, who could no longer contain the
growling of his voice.
"I shall speak if it suits me," exclaimed Michel, seizing his
companions' arms with violence.
"It must suit you," said Barbicane, with an eye on fire and a
threatening hand. "It was you who drew us into this frightful
journey, and we want to know what for."
"Yes," said the captain, "now that I do not know where I am
going, I want to know why I am going."
"Why?" exclaimed Michel, jumping a yard high, "why? To take
possession of the moon in the name of the United States; to add
a fortieth State to the Union; to colonize the lunar regions;
to cultivate them, to people them, to transport thither all the
prodigies of art, of science, and industry; to civilize the
Selenites, unless they are more civilized than we are; and to
constitute them a republic, if they are not already one!"
"And if there are no Selenites?" retorted Nicholl, who, under the
influence of this unaccountable intoxication, was very contradictory.
"Who said that there were no Selenites?" exclaimed Michel in a
threatening tone.
"I do," howled Nicholl.
"Captain," said Michel, "do not repreat that insolence, or I
will knock your teeth down your throat!"
The two adversaries were going to fall upon each other, and the
incoherent discussion threatened to merge into a fight, when
Barbicane intervened with one bound.
"Stop, miserable men," said he, separating his two companions;
"if there are no Selenites, we will do without them."
"Yes," exclaimed Michel, who was not particular; "yes, we will
do without them. We have only to make Selenites. Down with
the Selenites!"
"The empire of the moon belongs to us," said Nicholl.
"Let us three constitute the republic."
"I will be the congress," cried Michel.
"And I the senate," retorted Nicholl.
"And Barbicane, the president," howled Michel.
"Not a president elected by the nation," replied Barbicane.
"Very well, a president elected by the congress," cried Michel;
"and as I am the congress, you are unanimously elected!"
"Hurrah! hurrah! hurrah! for President Barbicane," exclaimed Nicholl.
"Hip! hip! hip!" vociferated Michel Ardan.
Then the president and the senate struck up in a tremendous
voice the popular song "Yankee Doodle," while from the congress
resounded the masculine tones of the "Marseillaise."
Then they struck up a frantic dance, with maniacal gestures,
idiotic stampings, and somersaults like those of the boneless
clowns in the circus. Diana, joining in the dance, and howling
in her turn, jumped to the top of the projectile. An unaccountable
flapping of wings was then heard amid most fantastic cock-crows,
while five or six hens fluttered like bats against the walls.
Then the three traveling companions, acted upon by some
unaccountable influence above that of intoxication, inflamed by
the air which had set their respiratory apparatus on fire, fell
motionless to the bottom of the projectile.
What had happened? Whence the cause of this singular
intoxication, the consequences of which might have been
very disastrous? A simple blunder of Michel's, which,
fortunately, Nicholl was able to correct in time.
After a perfect swoon, which lasted some minutes, the captain,
recovering first, soon collected his scattered senses.
Although he had breakfasted only two hours before, he felt a
gnawing hunger, as if he had not eaten anything for several days.
Everything about him, stomach and brain, were overexcited to the
highest degree. He got up and demanded from Michel a
supplementary repast. Michel, utterly done up, did not answer.
Nicholl then tried to prepare some tea destined to help the
absorption of a dozen sandwiches. He first tried to get some
fire, and struck a match sharply. What was his surprise to see
the sulphur shine with so extraordinary a brilliancy as to be
almost unbearable to the eye. From the gas-burner which he lit
rose a flame equal to a jet of electric light.
A revelation dawned on Nicholl's mind. That intensity of light,
the physiological troubles which had arisen in him, the
overexcitement of all his moral and quarrelsome faculties-- he
understood all.
"The oxygen!" he exclaimed.
And leaning over the air apparatus, he saw that the tap was
allowing the colorless gas to escape freely, life-giving, but in
its pure state producing the gravest disorders in the system.
Michel had blunderingly opened the tap of the apparatus to the full.
Nicholl hastened to stop the escape of oxygen with which the
atmosphere was saturated, which would have been the death of the
travelers, not by suffocation, but by combustion. An hour
later, the air less charged with it restored the lungs to their
normal condition. By degrees the three friends recovered from
their intoxication; but they were obliged to sleep themselves
sober over their oxygen as a drunkard does over his wine.
When Michel learned his share of the responsibility of this
incident, he was not much disconcerted. This unexpected
drunkenness broke the monotony of the journey. Many foolish
things had been said while under its influence, but also
quickly forgotten.
"And then," added the merry Frenchman, "I am not sorry to have
tasted a little of this heady gas. Do you know, my friends,
that a curious establishment might be founded with rooms of
oxygen, where people whose system is weakened could for a few
hours live a more active life. Fancy parties where the room was
saturated with this heroic fluid, theaters where it should be
kept at high pressure; what passion in the souls of the actors
and spectators! what fire, what enthusiasm! And if, instead of
an assembly only a whole people could be saturated, what activity
in its functions, what a supplement to life it would derive.
From an exhausted nation they might make a great and strong one,
and I know more than one state in old Europe which ought to put
itself under the regime of oxygen for the sake of its health!"
Michel spoke with so much animation that one might have fancied
that the tap was still too open. But a few words from Barbicane
soon shattered his enthusiasm.
"That is all very well, friend Michel," said he, "but will you
inform us where these chickens came from which have mixed
themselves up in our concert?"
"Those chickens?"
"Yes."
Indeed, half a dozen chickens and a fine cock were walking
about, flapping their wings and chattering.
"Ah, the awkward things!" exclaimed Michel. "The oxygen has
made them revolt."
"But what do you want to do with these chickens?" asked Barbicane.
"To acclimatize them in the moon, by Jove!"
"Then why did you hide them?"
"A joke, my worthy president, a simple joke, which has proved a
miserable failure. I wanted to set them free on the lunar
continent, without saying anything. Oh, what would have been
your amazement on seeing these earthly-winged animals pecking in
your lunar fields!"
"You rascal, you unmitigated rascal," replied Barbicane, "you do
not want oxygen to mount to the head. You are always what we
were under the influence of the gas; you are always foolish!"
"Ah, who says that we were not wise then?" replied Michel Ardan.
After this philosophical reflection, the three friends set about
restoring the order of the projectile. Chickens and cock were
reinstated in their coop. But while proceeding with this
operation, Barbicane and his two companions had a most desired
perception of a new phenomenon. From the moment of leaving the
earth, their own weight, that of the projectile, and the objects
it enclosed, had been subject to an increasing diminution. If they
could not prove this loss of the projectile, a moment would arrive
when it would be sensibly felt upon themselves and the utensils
and instruments they used.
It is needless to say that a scale would not show this loss; for
the weight destined to weight the object would have lost exactly
as much as the object itself; but a spring steelyard for
example, the tension of which was independent of the attraction,
would have given a just estimate of this loss.
We know that the attraction, otherwise called the weight, is in
proportion to the densities of the bodies, and inversely as the
squares of the distances. Hence this effect: If the earth had
been alone in space, if the other celestial bodies had been
suddenly annihilated, the projectile, according to Newton's
laws, would weigh less as it got farther from the earth, but
without ever losing its weight entirely, for the terrestrial
attraction would always have made itself felt, at whatever distance.
But, in reality, a time must come when the projectile would no
longer be subject to the law of weight, after allowing for the
other celestial bodies whose effect could not be set down as zero.
Indeed, the projectile's course was being traced between
the earth and the moon. As it distanced the earth, the
terrestrial attraction diminished: but the lunar attraction
rose in proportion. There must come a point where these two
attractions would neutralize each other: the projectile would
possess weight no longer. If the moon's and the earth's
densities had been equal, this point would have been at an equal
distance between the two orbs. But taking the different
densities into consideration, it was easy to reckon that this
point would be situated at 47/60ths of the whole journey,
i.e., at 78,514 leagues from the earth. At this point, a body
having no principle of speed or displacement in itself, would
remain immovable forever, being attracted equally by both orbs,
and not being drawn more toward one than toward the other.
Now if the projectile's impulsive force had been correctly
calculated, it would attain this point without speed, having
lost all trace of weight, as well as all the objects within it.
What would happen then? Three hypotheses presented themselves.
1. Either it would retain a certain amount of motion, and pass
the point of equal attraction, and fall upon the moon by virtue
of the excess of the lunar attraction over the terrestrial.
2. Or, its speed failing, and unable to reach the point of equal
attraction, it would fall upon the moon by virtue of the excess
of the lunar attraction over the terrestrial.
3. Or, lastly, animated with sufficient speed to enable it to
reach the neutral point, but not sufficient to pass it, it would
remain forever suspended in that spot like the pretended tomb of
Mahomet, between the zenith and the nadir.
Such was their situation; and Barbicane clearly explained the
consequences to his traveling companions, which greatly
interested them. But how should they know when the projectile
had reached this neutral point situated at that distance,
especially when neither themselves, nor the objects enclosed in
the projectile, would be any longer subject to the laws of weight?
Up to this time, the travelers, while admitting that this action
was constantly decreasing, had not yet become sensible to its
total absence.
But that day, about eleven o'clock in the morning, Nicholl
having accidentally let a glass slip from his hand, the glass,
instead of falling, remained suspended in the air.
"Ah!" exclaimed Michel Ardan, "that is rather an amusing piece
of natural philosophy."
And immediately divers other objects, firearms and bottles,
abandoned to themselves, held themselves up as by enchantment.
Diana too, placed in space by Michel, reproduced, but without
any trick, the wonderful suspension practiced by Caston and
Robert Houdin. Indeed the dog did not seem to know that she was
floating in air.
The three adventurous companions were surprised and stupefied,
despite their scientific reasonings. They felt themselves being
carried into the domain of wonders! they felt that weight was
really wanting to their bodies. If they stretched out their
arms, they did not attempt to fall. Their heads shook on
their shoulders. Their feet no longer clung to the floor of
the projectile. They were like drunken men having no stability
in themselves.
Fancy has depicted men without reflection, others without shadow.
But here reality, by the neutralizations of attractive forces,
produced men in whom nothing had any weight, and who weighed
nothing themselves.
Suddenly Michel, taking a spring, left the floor and remained
suspended in the air, like Murillo's monk of the Cusine des Anges.
The two friends joined him instantly, and all three formed a
miraculous "Ascension" in the center of the projectile.
"Is it to be believed? is it probable? is it possible?"
exclaimed Michel; "and yet it is so. Ah! if Raphael had seen us
thus, what an `Assumption' he would have thrown upon canvas!"
"The `Assumption' cannot last," replied Barbicane. "If the
projectile passes the neutral point, the lunar attraction will
draw us to the moon."
"Then our feet will be upon the roof," replied Michel.
"No," said Barbicane, "because the projectile's center of
gravity is very low; it will only turn by degrees."
"Then all our portables will be upset from top to bottom, that
is a fact."
"Calm yourself, Michel," replied Nicholl; "no upset is to be
feared; not a thing will move, for the projectile's evolution
will be imperceptible."
"Just so," continued Barbicane; "and when it has passed the
point of equal attraction, its base, being the heavier, will
draw it perpendicularly to the moon; but, in order that this
phenomenon should take place, we must have passed the neutral line."
"Pass the neutral line," cried Michel; "then let us do as the
sailors do when they cross the equator."
A slight side movement brought Michel back toward the padded
side; thence he took a bottle and glasses, placed them "in
space" before his companions, and, drinking merrily, they
saluted the line with a triple hurrah. The influence of these
attractions scarcely lasted an hour; the travelers felt
themselves insensibly drawn toward the floor, and Barbicane
fancied that the conical end of the projectile was varying a
little from its normal direction toward the moon. By an inverse
motion the base was approaching first; the lunar attraction was
prevailing over the terrestrial; the fall toward the moon was
beginning, almost imperceptibly as yet, but by degrees the
attractive force would become stronger, the fall would be more
decided, the projectile, drawn by its base, would turn its cone
to the earth, and fall with ever-increasing speed on to the
surface of the Selenite continent; their destination would then
be attained. Now nothing could prevent the success of their
enterprise, and Nicholl and Michel Ardan shared Barbicane's joy.
Then they chatted of all the phenomena which had astonished them
one after the other, particularly the neutralization of the laws
of weight. Michel Ardan, always enthusiastic, drew conclusions
which were purely fanciful.
"Ah, my worthy friends," he exclaimed, "what progress we should
make if on earth we could throw off some of that weight, some of
that chain which binds us to her; it would be the prisoner set
at liberty; no more fatigue of either arms or legs. Or, if it
is true that in order to fly on the earth's surface, to keep
oneself suspended in the air merely by the play of the muscles,
there requires a strength a hundred and fifty times greater than
that which we possess, a simple act of volition, a caprice,
would bear us into space, if attraction did not exist."
"Just so," said Nicholl, smiling; "if we could succeed in
suppressing weight as they suppress pain by anaesthesia,
that would change the face of modern society!"
"Yes," cried Michel, full of his subject, "destroy weight, and
no more burdens!"
"Well said," replied Barbicane; "but if nothing had any weight,
nothing would keep in its place, not even your hat on your head,
worthy Michel; nor your house, whose stones only adhere by
weight; nor a boat, whose stability on the waves is only caused
by weight; not even the ocean, whose waves would no longer be
equalized by terrestrial attraction; and lastly, not even the
atmosphere, whose atoms, being no longer held in their places,
would disperse in space!"
"That is tiresome," retorted Michel; "nothing like these
matter-of-fact people for bringing one back to the bare reality."
"But console yourself, Michel," continued Barbicane, "for if no
orb exists from whence all laws of weight are banished, you are
at least going to visit one where it is much less than on the earth."
"The moon?"
"Yes, the moon, on whose surface objects weigh six times less
than on the earth, a phenomenon easy to prove."
"And we shall feel it?" asked Michel.
"Evidently, as two hundred pounds will only weigh thirty pounds
on the surface of the moon."
"And our muscular strength will not diminish?"
"Not at all; instead of jumping one yard high, you will rise
eighteen feet high."
"But we shall be regular Herculeses in the moon!" exclaimed Michel.
"Yes," replied Nicholl; "for if the height of the Selenites is
in proportion to the density of their globe, they will be
scarcely a foot high."
"Lilliputians!" ejaculated Michel; "I shall play the part
of Gulliver. We are going to realize the fable of the giants.
This is the advantage of leaving one's own planet and
over-running the solar world."
"One moment, Michel," answered Barbicane; "if you wish to play
the part of Gulliver, only visit the inferior planets, such as
Mercury, Venus, or Mars, whose density is a little less than
that of the earth; but do not venture into the great planets,
Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune; for there the order will be
changed, and you will become Lilliputian."
"And in the sun?"
"In the sun, if its density is thirteen hundred and twenty-four
thousand times greater, and the attraction is twenty-seven times
greater than on the surface of our globe, keeping everything in
proportion, the inhabitants ought to be at least two hundred
feet high."
"By Jove!" exclaimed Michel; "I should be nothing more than a
pigmy, a shrimp!"
"Gulliver with the giants," said Nicholl.
"Just so," replied Barbicane.
"And it would not be quite useless to carry some pieces of
artillery to defend oneself."
"Good," replied Nicholl; "your projectiles would have no effect
on the sun; they would fall back upon the earth after some minutes."
"That is a strong remark."
"It is certain," replied Barbicane; "the attraction is so great
on this enormous orb, that an object weighing 70,000 pounds on
the earth would weigh but 1,920 pounds on the surface of the sun.
If you were to fall upon it you would weigh-- let me see-- about
5,000 pounds, a weight which you would never be able to raise again."
"The devil!" said Michel; "one would want a portable crane.
However, we will be satisfied with the moon for the present;
there at least we shall cut a great figure. We will see about
the sun by and by."
Barbicane had now no fear of the issue of the journey, at least
as far as the projectile's impulsive force was concerned; its
own speed would carry it beyond the neutral line; it would
certainly not return to earth; it would certainly not remain
motionless on the line of attraction. One single hypothesis
remained to be realized, the arrival of the projectile at its
destination by the action of the lunar attraction.
It was in reality a fall of 8,296 leagues on an orb, it is true,
where weight could only be reckoned at one sixth of terrestrial
weight; a formidable fall, nevertheless, and one against which
every precaution must be taken without delay.
These precautions were of two sorts, some to deaden the shock
when the projectile should touch the lunar soil, others to delay
the fall, and consequently make it less violent.
To deaden the shock, it was a pity that Barbicane was no longer
able to employ the means which had so ably weakened the shock at
departure, that is to say, by water used as springs and the
partition breaks.
The partitions still existed, but water failed, for they could
not use their reserve, which was precious, in case during the
first days the liquid element should be found wanting on lunar soil.
And indeed this reserve would have been quite insufficient for
a spring. The layer of water stored in the projectile at
the time of starting upon their journey occupied no less than
three feet in depth, and spread over a surface of not less than
fifty-four square feet. Besides, the cistern did not contain
one-fifth part of it; they must therefore give up this efficient
means of deadening the shock of arrival. Happily, Barbicane,
not content with employing water, had furnished the movable disc
with strong spring plugs, destined to lessen the shock against
the base after the breaking of the horizontal partitions.
These plugs still existed; they had only to readjust them and
replace the movable disc; every piece, easy to handle, as their
weight was now scarcely felt, was quickly mounted.
The different pieces were fitted without trouble, it being only
a matter of bolts and screws; tools were not wanting, and soon
the reinstated disc lay on steel plugs, like a table on its legs.
One inconvenience resulted from the replacing of the disc,
the lower window was blocked up; thus it was impossible for
the travelers to observe the moon from that opening while
they were being precipitated perpendicularly upon her; but they
were obliged to give it up; even by the side openings they could
still see vast lunar regions, as an aeronaut sees the earth from
his car.
This replacing of the disc was at least an hour's work. It was
past twelve when all preparations were finished. Barbicane took
fresh observations on the inclination of the projectile, but to
his annoyance it had not turned over sufficiently for its fall;
it seemed to take a curve parallel to the lunar disc. The orb
of night shone splendidly into space, while opposite, the orb of
day blazed with fire.
Their situation began to make them uneasy.
"Are we reaching our destination?" said Nicholl.
"Let us act as if we were about reaching it," replied Barbicane.
"You are sceptical," retorted Michel Ardan. "We shall arrive,
and that, too, quicker than we like."
This answer brought Barbicane back to his preparations, and he
occupied himself with placing the contrivances intended to break
their descent. We may remember the scene of the meeting held at
Tampa Town, in Florida, when Captain Nicholl came forward as
Barbicane's enemy and Michel Ardan's adversary. To Captain
Nicholl's maintaining that the projectile would smash like glass,
Michel replied that he would break their fall by means of rockets
properly placed.
Thus, powerful fireworks, taking their starting-point from the
base and bursting outside, could, by producing a recoil, check
to a certain degree the projectile's speed. These rockets were
to burn in space, it is true; but oxygen would not fail them,
for they could supply themselves with it, like the lunar
volcanoes, the burning of which has never yet been stopped by
the want of atmosphere round the moon.
Barbicane had accordingly supplied himself with these fireworks,
enclosed in little steel guns, which could be screwed on to the
base of the projectile. Inside, these guns were flush with the
bottom; outside, they protruded about eighteen inches. There were
twenty of them. An opening left in the disc allowed them to light
the match with which each was provided. All the effect was
felt outside. The burning mixture had already been rammed
into each gun. They had, then, nothing to do but raise the
metallic buffers fixed in the base, and replace them by the
guns, which fitted closely in their places.
This new work was finished about three o'clock, and after taking
all these precautions there remained but to wait. But the
projectile was perceptibly nearing the moon, and evidently
succumbed to her influence to a certain degree; though its
own velocity also drew it in an oblique direction. From these
conflicting influences resulted a line which might become
a tangent. But it was certain that the projectile would not
fall directly on the moon; for its lower part, by reason of
its weight, ought to be turned toward her.
Barbicane's uneasiness increased as he saw his projectile resist
the influence of gravitation. The Unknown was opening before
him, the Unknown in interplanetary space. The man of science
thought he had foreseen the only three hypotheses possible-- the
return to the earth, the return to the moon, or stagnation on
the neutral line; and here a fourth hypothesis, big with all the
terrors of the Infinite, surged up inopportunely. To face it
without flinching, one must be a resolute savant like Barbicane,
a phlegmatic being like Nicholl, or an audacious adventurer like
Michel Ardan.
Conversation was started upon this subject. Other men would
have considered the question from a practical point of view;
they would have asked themselves whither their projectile
carriage was carrying them. Not so with these; they sought for
the cause which produced this effect.
"So we have become diverted from our route," said Michel; "but why?"
"I very much fear," answered Nicholl, "that, in spite of
all precautions taken, the Columbiad was not fairly pointed.
An error, however small, would be enough to throw us out of
the moon's attraction."
"Then they must have aimed badly?" asked Michel.
"I do not think so," replied Barbicane. "The perpendicularity
of the gun was exact, its direction to the zenith of the spot
incontestible; and the moon passing to the zenith of the spot,
we ought to reach it at the full. There is another reason,
but it escapes me."
"Are we not arriving too late?" asked Nicholl.
"Too late?" said Barbicane.
"Yes," continued Nicholl. "The Cambridge Observatory's note
says that the transit ought to be accomplished in ninety-seven
hours thirteen minutes and twenty seconds; which means to say,
that sooner the moon will not be at the point indicated, and
later it will have passed it."
"True," replied Barbicane. "But we started the 1st of December,
at thirteen minutes and twenty-five seconds to eleven at night;
and we ought to arrive on the 5th at midnight, at the exact
moment when the moon would be full; and we are now at the
5th of December. It is now half-past three in the evening;
half-past eight ought to see us at the end of our journey.
Why do we not arrive?"
"Might it not be an excess of speed?" answered Nicholl; "for we
know now that its initial velocity was greater than they supposed."
"No! a hundred times, no!" replied Barbicane. "An excess of
speed, if the direction of the projectile had been right, would
not have prevented us reaching the moon. No, there has been
a deviation. We have been turned out of our course."
"By whom? by what?" asked Nicholl.
"I cannot say," replied Barbicane.
"Very well, then, Barbicane," said Michel, "do you wish to know
my opinion on the subject of finding out this deviation?"
"Speak."
"I would not give half a dollar to know it. That we have
deviated is a fact. Where we are going matters little; we shall
soon see. Since we are being borne along in space we shall end
by falling into some center of attraction or other."
Michel Ardan's indifference did not content Barbicane. Not that
he was uneasy about the future, but he wanted to know at any
cost why his projectile had deviated.
But the projectile continued its course sideways to the moon,
and with it the mass of things thrown out. Barbicane could even
prove, by the elevations which served as landmarks upon the
moon, which was only two thousand leagues distant, that its
speed was becoming uniform-- fresh proof that there was no fall.
Its impulsive force still prevailed over the lunar attraction,
but the projectile's course was certainly bringing it nearer to
the moon, and they might hope that at a nearer point the weight,
predominating, would cause a decided fall.
The three friends, having nothing better to do, continued their
observations; but they could not yet determine the topographical
position of the satellite; every relief was leveled under the
reflection of the solar rays.
They watched thus through the side windows until eight o'clock
at night. The moon had grown so large in their eyes that it
filled half of the firmament. The sun on one side, and the orb
of night on the other, flooded the projectile with light.
At that moment Barbicane thought he could estimate the distance
which separated them from their aim at no more than 700 leagues.
The speed of the projectile seemed to him to be more than 200
yards, or about 170 leagues a second. Under the centripetal
force, the base of the projectile tended toward the moon; but
the centrifugal still prevailed; and it was probable that its
rectilineal course would be changed to a curve of some sort,
the nature of which they could not at present determine.
Barbicane was still seeking the solution of his insoluble problem.
Hours passed without any result. The projectile was evidently
nearing the moon, but it was also evident that it would never
reach her. As to the nearest distance at which it would pass her,
that must be the result of two forces, attraction and repulsion,
affecting its motion.
"I ask but one thing," said Michel; "that we may pass near
enough to penetrate her secrets."
"Cursed be the thing that has caused our projectile to deviate
from its course," cried Nicholl.
And, as if a light had suddenly broken in upon his mind, Barbicane
answered, "Then cursed be the meteor which crossed our path."
"What?" said Michel Ardan.
"What do you mean?" exclaimed Nicholl.
"I mean," said Barbicane in a decided tone, "I mean that our
deviation is owing solely to our meeting with this erring body."
"But it did not even brush us as it passed," said Michel.
"What does that matter? Its mass, compared to that of our
projectile, was enormous, and its attraction was enough to
influence our course."
"So little?" cried Nicholl.
"Yes, Nicholl; but however little it might be," replied
Barbicane, "in a distance of 84,000 leagues, it wanted no more
to make us miss the moon."
Barbicane had evidently hit upon the only plausible reason
of this deviation. However slight it might have been, it
had sufficed to modify the course of the projectile. It was
a fatality. The bold attempt had miscarried by a fortuitous
circumstance; and unless by some exceptional event, they could
now never reach the moon's disc.
Would they pass near enough to be able to solve certain physical
and geological questions until then insoluble? This was the
question, and the only one, which occupied the minds of these
bold travelers. As to the fate in store for themselves, they
did not even dream of it.
But what would become of them amid these infinite solitudes,
these who would soon want air? A few more days, and they would
fall stifled in this wandering projectile. But some days to
these intrepid fellows was a century; and they devoted all their
time to observe that moon which they no longer hoped to reach.
The distance which had then separated the projectile from the
satellite was estimated at about two hundred leagues. Under these
conditions, as regards the visibility of the details of the disc,
the travelers were farther from the moon than are the inhabitants
of earth with their powerful telescopes.
Indeed, we know that the instrument mounted by Lord Rosse at
Parsonstown, which magnifies 6,500 times, brings the moon to
within an apparent distance of sixteen leagues. And more than
that, with the powerful one set up at Long's Peak, the orb of
night, magnified 48,000 times, is brought to within less than
two leagues, and objects having a diameter of thirty feet are
seen very distinctly. So that, at this distance, the
topographical details of the moon, observed without glasses,
could not be determined with precision. The eye caught the vast
outline of those immense depressions inappropriately called
"seas," but they could not recognize their nature. The prominence
of the mountains disappeared under the splendid irradiation
produced by the reflection of the solar rays. The eye, dazzled
as if it was leaning over a bath of molten silver, turned from
it involuntarily; but the oblong form of the orb was quite clear.
It appeared like a gigantic egg, with the small end turned toward
the earth. Indeed the moon, liquid and pliable in the first days
of its formation, was originally a perfect sphere; but being soon
drawn within the attraction of the earth, it became elongated
under the influence of gravitation. In becoming a satellite,
she lost her native purity of form; her center of gravity was in
advance of the center of her figure; and from this fact some
savants draw the conclusion that the air and water had taken
refuge on the opposite surface of the moon, which is never seen
from the earth. This alteration in the primitive form of the
satellite was only perceptible for a few moments. The distance
of the projectile from the moon diminished very rapidly under
its speed, though that was much less than its initial velocity--
but eight or nine times greater than that which propels our
express trains. The oblique course of the projectile, from its
very obliquity, gave Michel Ardan some hopes of striking the
lunar disc at some point or other. He could not think that they
would never reach it. No! he could not believe it; and this
opinion he often repeated. But Barbicane, who was a better
judge, always answered him with merciless logic.
"No, Michel, no! We can only reach the moon by a fall, and we
are not falling. The centripetal force keeps us under the
moon's influence, but the centrifugal force draws us
irresistibly away from it."
This was said in a tone which quenched Michel Ardan's last hope.
The portion of the moon which the projectile was nearing was the
northern hemisphere, that which the selenographic maps place
below; for these maps are generally drawn after the outline
given by the glasses, and we know that they reverse the objects.
Such was the Mappa Selenographica of Boeer and Moedler which
Barbicane consulted. This northern hemisphere presented vast
plains, dotted with isolated mountains.
At midnight the moon was full. At that precise moment the
travelers should have alighted upon it, if the mischievous
meteor had not diverted their course. The orb was exactly in
the condition determined by the Cambridge Observatory. It was
mathematically at its perigee, and at the zenith of the
twenty-eighth parallel. An observer placed at the bottom of the
enormous Columbiad, pointed perpendicularly to the horizon,
would have framed the moon in the mouth of the gun. A straight
line drawn through the axis of the piece would have passed
through the center of the orb of night. It is needless to say,
that during the night of the 5th-6th of December, the travelers
took not an instant's rest. Could they close their eyes when so
near this new world? No! All their feelings were concentrated
in one single thought:-- See! Representatives of the earth, of
humanity, past and present, all centered in them! It is through
their eyes that the human race look at these lunar regions, and
penetrate the secrets of their satellite! A strange emotion
filled their hearts as they went from one window to the other.
Their observations, reproduced by Barbicane, were rigidly determined.
To take them, they had glasses; to correct them, maps.
As regards the optical instruments at their disposal, they had
excellent marine glasses specially constructed for this journey.
They possessed magnifying powers of 100. They would thus have
brought the moon to within a distance (apparent) of less than
2,000 leagues from the earth. But then, at a distance which for
three hours in the morning did not exceed sixty-five miles, and
in a medium free from all atmospheric disturbances, these
instruments could reduce the lunar surface to within less than
1,500 yards!
"Have you ever seen the moon?" asked a professor, ironically,
of one of his pupils.
"No, sir!" replied the pupil, still more ironically, "but I must
say I have heard it spoken of."
In one sense, the pupil's witty answer might be given by a large
majority of sublunary beings. How many people have heard speak
of the moon who have never seen it-- at least through a glass or
a telescope! How many have never examined the map of their satellite!
In looking at a selenographic map, one peculiarity strikes us.
Contrary to the arrangement followed for that of the Earth and
Mars, the continents occupy more particularly the southern
hemisphere of the lunar globe. These continents do not show
such decided, clear, and regular boundary lines as South
America, Africa, and the Indian peninsula. Their angular,
capricious, and deeply indented coasts are rich in gulfs
and peninsulas. They remind one of the confusion in the
islands of the Sound, where the land is excessively indented.
If navigation ever existed on the surface of the moon, it must
have been wonderfully difficult and dangerous; and we may well
pity the Selenite sailors and hydrographers; the former, when
they came upon these perilous coasts, the latter when they
took the soundings of its stormy banks.
We may also notice that, on the lunar sphere, the south pole is
much more continental than the north pole. On the latter, there
is but one slight strip of land separated from other continents
by vast seas. Toward the south, continents clothe almost the
whole of the hemisphere. It is even possible that the Selenites
have already planted the flag on one of their poles, while
Franklin, Ross, Kane, Dumont, d'Urville, and Lambert have never
yet been able to attain that unknown point of the terrestrial globe.
As to islands, they are numerous on the surface of the moon.
Nearly all oblong or circular, and as if traced with the
compass, they seem to form one vast archipelago, equal to that
charming group lying between Greece and Asia Minor, and which
mythology in ancient times adorned with most graceful legends.
Involuntarily the names of Naxos, Tenedos, and Carpathos, rise
before the mind, and we seek vainly for Ulysses' vessel or the
"clipper" of the Argonauts. So at least it was in Michel
Ardan's eyes. To him it was a Grecian archipelago that he saw
on the map. To the eyes of his matter-of-fact companions, the
aspect of these coasts recalled rather the parceled-out land of
New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, and where the Frenchman
discovered traces of the heroes of fable, these Americans
were marking the most favorable points for the establishment
of stores in the interests of lunar commerce and industry.
After wandering over these vast continents, the eye is attracted
by the still greater seas. Not only their formation, but their
situation and aspect remind one of the terrestrial oceans; but
again, as on earth, these seas occupy the greater portion of
the globe. But in point of fact, these are not liquid spaces,
but plains, the nature of which the travelers hoped soon
to determine. Astronomers, we must allow, have graced these
pretended seas with at least odd names, which science has
respected up to the present time. Michel Ardan was right when
he compared this map to a "Tendre card," got up by a Scudary or
a Cyrano de Bergerac. "Only," said he, "it is no longer the
sentimental card of the seventeenth century, it is the card of
life, very neatly divided into two parts, one feminine, the
other masculine; the right hemisphere for woman, the left for man."
In speaking thus, Michel made his prosaic companions shrug
their shoulders. Barbicane and Nicholl looked upon the lunar
map from a very different point of view to that of their
fantastic friend. Nevertheless, their fantastic friend was a
little in the right. Judge for yourselves.
In the left hemisphere stretches the "Sea of Clouds," where
human reason is so often shipwrecked. Not far off lies the "Sea
of Rains," fed by all the fever of existence. Near this is the
"Sea of Storms," where man is ever fighting against his
passions, which too often gain the victory. Then, worn out by
deceit, treasons, infidelity, and the whole body of terrestrial
misery, what does he find at the end of his career? that vast
"Sea of Humors," barely softened by some drops of the waters
from the "Gulf of Dew!" Clouds, rain, storms, and humors-- does
the life of man contain aught but these? and is it not summed up
in these four words?
The right hemisphere, "dedicated to the ladies," encloses
smaller seas, whose significant names contain every incident of
a feminine existence. There is the "Sea of Serenity," over
which the young girl bends; "The Lake of Dreams," reflecting a
joyous future; "The Sea of Nectar," with its waves of tenderness
and breezes of love; "The Sea of Fruitfulness;" "The Sea of
Crises;" then the "Sea of Vapors," whose dimensions are perhaps
a little too confined; and lastly, that vast "Sea of
Tranquillity," in which every false passion, every useless
dream, every unsatisfied desire is at length absorbed, and whose
waves emerge peacefully into the "Lake of Death!"
What a strange succession of names! What a singular division of
the moon's two hemispheres, joined to one another like man and
woman, and forming that sphere of life carried into space!
And was not the fantastic Michel right in thus interpreting the
fancies of the ancient astronomers? But while his imagination
thus roved over "the seas," his grave companions were considering
things more geographically. They were learning this new world
by heart. They were measuring angles and diameters.
The course taken by the projectile, as we have before remarked, was
bearing it toward the moon's northern hemisphere. The travelers
were far from the central point which they would have struck,
had their course not been subject to an irremediable deviation.
It was past midnight; and Barbicane then estimated the distance
at seven hundred and fifty miles, which was a little greater than
the length of the lunar radius, and which would diminish as it
advanced nearer to the North Pole. The projectile was then not
at the altitude of the equator; but across the tenth parallel,
and from that latitude, carefully taken on the map to the pole,
Barbicane and his two companions were able to observe the moon
under the most favorable conditions. Indeed, by means of glasses,
the above-named distance was reduced to little more than
fourteen miles. The telescope of the Rocky Mountains brought
the moon much nearer; but the terrestrial atmosphere singularly
lessened its power. Thus Barbicane, posted in his projectile,
with the glasses to his eyes, could seize upon details which were
almost imperceptible to earthly observers.
"My friends," said the president, in a serious voice, "I do not
know whither we are going; I do not know if we shall ever see
the terrestrial globe again. Nevertheless, let us proceed as if
our work would one day by useful to our fellow-men. Let us keep
our minds free from every other consideration. We are
astronomers; and this projectile is a room in the Cambridge
University, carried into space. Let us make our observations!"
This said, work was begun with great exactness; and they
faithfully reproduced the different aspects of the moon,
at the different distances which the projectile reached.
At the time that the projectile was as high as the tenth
parallel, north latitude, it seemed rigidly to follow the
twentieth degree, east longitude. We must here make one
important remark with regard to the map by which they were
taking observations. In the selenographical maps where, on
account of the reversing of the objects by the glasses, the
south is above and the north below, it would seem natural that,
on account of that inversion, the east should be to the left
hand, and the west to the right. But it is not so. If the map
were turned upside down, showing the moon as we see her, the
east would be to the left, and the west to the right, contrary
to that which exists on terrestrial maps. The following is the
reason of this anomaly. Observers in the northern hemisphere
(say in Europe) see the moon in the south-- according to them.
When they take observations, they turn their backs to the north,
the reverse position to that which they occupy when they study
a terrestrial map. As they turn their backs to the north, the
east is on their left, and the west to their right. To observers
in the southern hemisphere (Patagonia for example), the moon's
west would be quite to their left, and the east to their right,
as the south is behind them. Such is the reason of the apparent
reversing of these two cardinal points, and we must bear it in mind
in order to be able to follow President Barbicane's observations.
With the help of Boeer and Moedler's Mappa Selenographica,
the travelers were able at once to recognize that portion
of the disc enclosed within the field of their glasses.
"What are we looking at, at this moment?" asked Michel.
"At the northern part of the `Sea of Clouds,'" answered Barbicane.
"We are too far off to recognize its nature. Are these plains
composed of arid sand, as the first astronomer maintained?
Or are they nothing but immense forests, according to M. Warren
de la Rue's opinion, who gives the moon an atmosphere, though
a very low and a very dense one? That we shall know by and by.
We must affirm nothing until we are in a position to do so."
This "Sea of Clouds" is rather doubtfully marked out upon the maps.
It is supposed that these vast plains are strewn with blocks of
lava from the neighboring volcanoes on its right, Ptolemy,
Purbach, Arzachel. But the projectile was advancing, and sensibly
nearing it. Soon there appeared the heights which bound this sea
at this northern limit. Before them rose a mountain radiant with
beauty, the top of which seemed lost in an eruption of solar rays.
"That is--?" asked Michel.
"Copernicus," replied Barbicane.
"Let us see Copernicus."
This mount, situated in 9@ north latitude and 20@ east
longitude, rose to a height of 10,600 feet above the surface of
the moon. It is quite visible from the earth; and astronomers
can study it with ease, particularly during the phase between
the last quarter and the new moon, because then the shadows are
thrown lengthways from east to west, allowing them to measure
the heights.
This Copernicus forms the most important of the radiating
system, situated in the southern hemisphere, according to Tycho
Brahe. It rises isolated like a gigantic lighthouse on that
portion of the "Sea of Clouds," which is bounded by the "Sea of
Tempests," thus lighting by its splendid rays two oceans at
a time. It was a sight without an equal, those long luminous
trains, so dazzling in the full moon, and which, passing the
boundary chain on the north, extends to the "Sea of Rains."
At one o'clock of the terrestrial morning, the projectile,
like a balloon borne into space, overlooked the top of this
superb mount. Barbicane could recognize perfectly its
chief features. Copernicus is comprised in the series of
ringed mountains of the first order, in the division of
great circles. Like Kepler and Aristarchus, which overlook
the "Ocean of Tempests," sometimes it appeared like a brilliant
point through the cloudy light, and was taken for a volcano
in activity. But it is only an extinct one-- like all on that
side of the moon. Its circumference showed a diameter of about
twenty-two leagues. The glasses discovered traces of
stratification produced by successive eruptions, and the
neighborhood was strewn with volcanic remains which still choked
some of the craters.
"There exist," said Barbicane, "several kinds of circles on the
surface of the moon, and it is easy to see that Copernicus
belongs to the radiating class. If we were nearer, we should
see the cones bristling on the inside, which in former times
were so many fiery mouths. A curious arrangement, and one
without an exception on the lunar disc, is that the interior
surface of these circles is the reverse of the exterior, and
contrary to the form taken by terrestrial craters. It follows,
then, that the general curve of the bottom of these circles
gives a sphere of a smaller diameter than that of the moon."
"And why this peculiar disposition?" asked Nicholl.
"We do not know," replied Barbicane.
"What splendid radiation!" said Michel. "One could hardly see
a finer spectacle, I think."
"What would you say, then," replied Barbicane, "if chance should
bear us toward the southern hemisphere?"
"Well, I should say that it was still more beautiful," retorted
Michel Ardan.
At this moment the projectile hung perpendicularly over the circle.
The circumference of Copernicus formed almost a perfect circle,
and its steep escarpments were clearly defined. They could even
distinguish a second ringed enclosure. Around spread a grayish
plain, of a wild aspect, on which every relief was marked in yellow.
At the bottom of the circle, as if enclosed in a jewel case,
sparkled for one instant two or three eruptive cones, like enormous
dazzling gems. Toward the north the escarpments were lowered by a
depression which would probably have given access to the interior
of the crater.
In passing over the surrounding plains, Barbicane noticed a
great number of less important mountains; and among others a
little ringed one called Guy Lussac, the breadth of which
measured twelve miles.
Toward the south, the plain was very flat, without one
elevation, without one projection. Toward the north, on the
contrary, till where it was bounded by the "Sea of Storms," it
resembled a liquid surface agitated by a storm, of which the
hills and hollows formed a succession of waves suddenly congealed.
Over the whole of this, and in all directions, lay the luminous
lines, all converging to the summit of Copernicus.
The travelers discussed the origin of these strange rays; but they
could not determine their nature any more than terrestrial observers.
"But why," said Nicholl, "should not these rays be simply spurs
of mountains which reflect more vividly the light of the sun?"
"No," replied Barbicane; "if it was so, under certain conditions
of the moon, these ridges would cast shadows, and they do not
cast any."
And indeed, these rays only appeared when the orb of day was in
opposition to the moon, and disappeared as soon as its rays
became oblique.
"But how have they endeavored to explain these lines of light?"
asked Michel; "for I cannot believe that savants would ever be
stranded for want of an explanation."
"Yes," replied Barbicane; "Herschel has put forward an opinion,
but he did not venture to affirm it."
"Never mind. What was the opinion?"
"He thought that these rays might be streams of cooled lava
which shone when the sun beat straight upon them. It may be so;
but nothing can be less certain. Besides, if we pass nearer to
Tycho, we shall be in a better position to find out the cause of
this radiation."
"Do you know, my friends, what that plain, seen from the height
we are at, resembles?" said Michel.
"No," replied Nicholl.
"Very well; with all those pieces of lava lengthened like rockets,
it resembles an immense game of spelikans thrown pellmell.
There wants but the hook to pull them out one by one."
"Do be serious," said Barbicane.
"Well, let us be serious," replied Michel quietly; "and instead
of spelikans, let us put bones. This plain, would then be
nothing but an immense cemetery, on which would repose the
mortal remains of thousands of extinct generations. Do you
prefer that high-flown comparison?"
"One is as good as the other," retorted Barbicane.
"My word, you are difficult to please," answered Michel.
"My worthy friend," continued the matter-of-fact Barbicane, "it
matters but little what it resembles, when we do not know what
it is."
"Well answered," exclaimed Michel. "That will teach me to
reason with savants."
But the projectile continued to advance with almost uniform
speed around the lunar disc. The travelers, we may easily
imagine, did not dream of taking a moment's rest. Every minute
changed the landscape which fled from beneath their gaze.
About half past one o'clock in the morning, they caught a glimpse
of the tops of another mountain. Barbicane, consulting his map,
recognized Eratosthenes.
It was a ringed mountain nine thousand feet high, and one of
those circles so numerous on this satellite. With regard to
this, Barbicane related Kepler's singular opinion on the
formation of circles. According to that celebrated
mathematician, these crater-like cavities had been dug by the
hand of man.
"For what purpose?" asked Nicholl.
"For a very natural one," replied Barbicane. "The Selenites
might have undertaken these immense works and dug these enormous
holes for a refuge and shield from the solar rays which beat
upon them during fifteen consecutive days."
"The Selenites are not fools," said Michel.
"A singular idea," replied Nicholl; "but it is probable that
Kepler did not know the true dimensions of these circles, for
the digging of them would have been the work of giants quite
impossible for the Selenites."
"Why? if weight on the moon's surface is six times less than on
the earth?" said Michel.
"But if the Selenites are six times smaller?" retorted Nicholl.
"And if there are no Selenites?" added Barbicane.
This put an end to the discussion.
Soon Eratosthenes disappeared under the horizon without the
projectile being sufficiently near to allow close observation.
This mountain separated the Apennines from the Carpathians. In the
lunar orography they have discerned some chains of mountains, which
are chiefly distributed over the northern hemisphere. Some, however,
occupy certain portions of the southern hemisphere also.
About two o'clock in the morning Barbicane found that they were
above the twentieth lunar parallel. The distance of the
projectile from the moon was not more than six hundred miles.
Barbicane, now perceiving that the projectile was steadily
approaching the lunar disc, did not despair; if not of reaching
her, at least of discovering the secrets of her configuration.
At half-past two in the morning, the projectile was over the
thirteenth lunar parallel and at the effective distance of five
hundred miles, reduced by the glasses to five. It still seemed
impossible, however, that it could ever touch any part of the disc.
Its motive speed, comparatively so moderate, was inexplicable to
President Barbicane. At that distance from the moon it must have
been considerable, to enable it to bear up against her attraction.
Here was a phenomenon the cause of which escaped them again.
Besides, time failed them to investigate the cause. All lunar
relief was defiling under the eyes of the travelers, and they
would not lose a single detail.
Under the glasses the disc appeared at the distance of five
miles. What would an aeronaut, borne to this distance from the
earth, distinguish on its surface? We cannot say, since the
greatest ascension has not been more than 25,000 feet.
This, however, is an exact description of what Barbicane and his
companions saw at this height. Large patches of different
colors appeared on the disc. Selenographers are not agreed upon
the nature of these colors. There are several, and rather
vividly marked. Julius Schmidt pretends that, if the
terrestrial oceans were dried up, a Selenite observer could not
distinguish on the globe a greater diversity of shades between
the oceans and the continental plains than those on the moon
present to a terrestrial observer. According to him, the color
common to the vast plains known by the name of "seas" is a dark
gray mixed with green and brown. Some of the large craters
present the same appearance. Barbicane knew this opinion of the
German selenographer, an opinion shared by Boeer and Moedler.
Observation has proved that right was on their side, and not on
that of some astronomers who admit the existence of only gray on
the moon's surface. In some parts green was very distinct, such
as springs, according to Julius Schmidt, from the seas of
"Serenity and Humors." Barbicane also noticed large craters,
without any interior cones, which shed a bluish tint similar to
the reflection of a sheet of steel freshly polished. These colors
belonged really to the lunar disc, and did not result, as some
astronomers say, either from the imperfection in the objective
of the glasses or from the interposition of the terrestrial atmosphere.
Not a doubt existed in Barbicane's mind with regard to it, as he
observed it through space, and so could not commit any optical error.
He considered the establishment of this fact as an acquisition
to science. Now, were these shades of green, belonging to
tropical vegetation, kept up by a low dense atmosphere? He could
not yet say.
Farther on, he noticed a reddish tint, quite defined. The same
shade had before been observed at the bottom of an isolated
enclosure, known by the name of Lichtenburg's circle, which is
situated near the Hercynian mountains, on the borders of the
moon; but they could not tell the nature of it.
They were not more fortunate with regard to another peculiarity
of the disc, for they could not decide upon the cause of it.
Michel Ardan was watching near the president, when he noticed
long white lines, vividly lighted up by the direct rays of the sun.
It was a succession of luminous furrows, very different from the
radiation of Copernicus not long before; they ran parallel with
each other.
Michel, with his usual readiness, hastened to exclaim:
"Look there! cultivated fields!"
"Cultivated fields!" replied Nicholl, shrugging his shoulders.
"Plowed, at all events," retorted Michel Ardan; "but what
laborers those Selenites must be, and what giant oxen they must
harness to their plow to cut such furrows!"
"They are not furrows," said Barbicane; "they are rifts."
"Rifts? stuff!" replied Michel mildly; "but what do you mean by
`rifts' in the scientific world?"
Barbicane immediately enlightened his companion as to what he
knew about lunar rifts. He knew that they were a kind of furrow
found on every part of the disc which was not mountainous; that
these furrows, generally isolated, measured from 400 to 500
leagues in length; that their breadth varied from 1,000 to 1,500
yards, and that their borders were strictly parallel; but he
knew nothing more either of their formation or their nature.
Barbicane, through his glasses, observed these rifts with
great attention. He noticed that their borders were formed of
steep declivities; they were long parallel ramparts, and with some
small amount of imagination he might have admitted the existence
of long lines of fortifications, raised by Selenite engineers.
Of these different rifts some were perfectly straight, as if cut
by a line; others were slightly curved, though still keeping
their borders parallel; some crossed each other, some cut through
craters; here they wound through ordinary cavities, such as
Posidonius or Petavius; there they wound through the seas, such
as the "Sea of Serenity."
These natural accidents naturally excited the imaginations of
these terrestrial astronomers. The first observations had not
discovered these rifts. Neither Hevelius, Cassin, La Hire, nor
Herschel seemed to have known them. It was Schroeter who in
1789 first drew attention to them. Others followed who studied
them, as Pastorff, Gruithuysen, Boeer, and Moedler. At this
time their number amounts to seventy; but, if they have been
counted, their nature has not yet been determined; they are
certainly not fortifications, any more than they are the
ancient beds of dried-up rivers; for, on one side, the waters,
so slight on the moon's surface, could never have worn such
drains for themselves; and, on the other, they often cross
craters of great elevation.
We must, however, allow that Michel Ardan had "an idea," and
that, without knowing it, he coincided in that respect with
Julius Schmidt.
"Why," said he, "should not these unaccountable appearances be
simply phenomena of vegetation?"
"What do you mean?" asked Barbicane quickly.
"Do not excite yourself, my worthy president," replied Michel;
"might it not be possible that the dark lines forming that
bastion were rows of trees regularly placed?"
"You stick to your vegetation, then?" said Barbicane.
"I like," retorted Michel Ardan, "to explain what you savants
cannot explain; at least my hypotheses has the advantage of
indicating why these rifts disappear, or seem to disappear, at
certain seasons."
"And for what reason?"
"For the reason that the trees become invisible when they lose
their leaves, and visible again when they regain them."
"Your explanation is ingenious, my dear companion," replied
Barbicane, "but inadmissible."
"Why?"
"Because, so to speak, there are no seasons on the moon's surface,
and that, consequently, the phenomena of vegetation of which you
speak cannot occur."
Indeed, the slight obliquity of the lunar axis keeps the sun at
an almost equal height in every latitude. Above the equatorial
regions the radiant orb almost invariably occupies the zenith,
and does not pass the limits of the horizon in the polar
regions; thus, according to each region, there reigns a
perpetual winter, spring, summer, or autumn, as in the planet
Jupiter, whose axis is but little inclined upon its orbit.
What origin do they attribute to these rifts? That is a
question difficult to solve. They are certainly anterior to the
formation of craters and circles, for several have introduced
themselves by breaking through their circular ramparts. Thus it
may be that, contemporary with the later geological epochs, they
are due to the expansion of natural forces.
But the projectile had now attained the fortieth degree of lunar
latitude, at a distance not exceeding 40 miles. Through the
glasses objects appeared to be only four miles distant.
At this point, under their feet, rose Mount Helicon, 1,520 feet
high, and round about the left rose moderate elevations,
enclosing a small portion of the "Sea of Rains," under the name
of the Gulf of Iris. The terrestrial atmosphere would have to
be one hundred and seventy times more transparent than it is,
to allow astronomers to make perfect observations on the moon's
surface; but in the void in which the projectile floated no
fluid interposed itself between the eye of the observer and
the object observed. And more, Barbicane found himself carried
to a greater distance than the most powerful telescopes had
ever done before, either that of Lord Rosse or that of the
Rocky Mountains. He was, therefore, under extremely favorable
conditions for solving that great question of the habitability
of the moon; but the solution still escaped him; he could
distinguish nothing but desert beds, immense plains, and toward
the north, arid mountains. Not a work betrayed the hand of man;
not a ruin marked his course; not a group of animals was to be
seen indicating life, even in an inferior degree. In no part
was there life, in no part was there an appearance of vegetation.
Of the three kingdoms which share the terrestrial globe between
them, one alone was represented on the lunar and that the mineral.
"Ah, indeed!" said Michel Ardan, a little out of countenance;
"then you see no one?"
"No," answered Nicholl; "up to this time, not a man, not an
animal, not a tree! After all, whether the atmosphere has taken
refuge at the bottom of cavities, in the midst of the circles,
or even on the opposite face of the moon, we cannot decide."
"Besides," added Barbicane, "even to the most piercing eye a man
cannot be distinguished farther than three and a half miles off;
so that, if there are any Selenites, they can see our projectile,
but we cannot see them."
Toward four in the morning, at the height of the fiftieth
parallel, the distance was reduced to 300 miles. To the left
ran a line of mountains capriciously shaped, lying in the
full light. To the right, on the contrary, lay a black hollow
resembling a vast well, unfathomable and gloomy, drilled into
the lunar soil.
This hole was the "Black Lake"; it was Pluto, a deep circle
which can be conveniently studied from the earth, between the
last quarter and the new moon, when the shadows fall from west
to east.
This black color is rarely met with on the surface of
the satellite. As yet it has only been recognized in the depths
of the circle of Endymion, to the east of the "Cold Sea," in the
northern hemisphere, and at the bottom of Grimaldi's circle, on
the equator, toward the eastern border of the orb.
Pluto is an annular mountain, situated in 51@ north latitude,
and 9@ east longitude. Its circuit is forty-seven miles long
and thirty-two broad.
Barbicane regretted that they were not passing directly above
this vast opening. There was an abyss to fathom, perhaps some
mysterious phenomenon to surprise; but the projectile's course
could not be altered. They must rigidly submit. They could not
guide a balloon, still less a projectile, when once enclosed
within its walls. Toward five in the morning the northern
limits of the "Sea of Rains" was at length passed. The mounts
of Condamine and Fontenelle remained-- one on the right, the
other on the left. That part of the disc beginning with 60@ was
becoming quite mountainous. The glasses brought them to within
two miles, less than that separating the summit of Mont Blanc
from the level of the sea. The whole region was bristling with
spikes and circles. Toward the 60@ Philolaus stood predominant
at a height of 5,550 feet with its elliptical crater, and seen
from this distance, the disc showed a very fantastical appearance.
Landscapes were presented to the eye under very different
conditions from those on the earth, and also very inferior to them.
The moon having no atmosphere, the consequences arising from
the absence of this gaseous envelope have already been shown.
No twilight on her surface; night following day and day following
night with the suddenness of a lamp which is extinguished or
lighted amid profound darkness-- no transition from cold to
heat, the temperature falling in an instant from boiling point
to the cold of space.
Another consequence of this want of air is that absolute
darkness reigns where the sun's rays do not penetrate.
That which on earth is called diffusion of light, that luminous
matter which the air holds in suspension, which creates the
twilight and the daybreak, which produces the umbrae and
penumbrae, and all the magic of chiaro-oscuro, does not
exist on the moon. Hence the harshness of contrasts, which
only admit of two colors, black and white. If a Selenite
were to shade his eyes from the sun's rays, the sky would seem
absolutely black, and the stars would shine to him as on the
darkest night. Judge of the impression produced on Barbicane
and his three friends by this strange scene! Their eyes
were confused. They could no longer grasp the respective
distances of the different plains. A lunar landscape without
the softening of the phenomena of chiaro-oscuro could not be
rendered by an earthly landscape painter; it would be spots of
ink on a white page-- nothing more.
This aspect was not altered even when the projectile, at the
height of 80@, was only separated from the moon by a distance
of fifty miles; nor even when, at five in the morning, it
passed at less than twenty-five miles from the mountain of
Gioja, a distance reduced by the glasses to a quarter of a mile.
It seemed as if the moon might be touched by the hand!
It seemed impossible that, before long, the projectile would
not strike her, if only at the north pole, the brilliant arch
of which was so distinctly visible on the black sky.
Michel Ardan wanted to open one of the scuttles and throw
himself on to the moon's surface! A very useless attempt; for
if the projectile could not attain any point whatever of the
satellite, Michel, carried along by its motion, could not attain
it either.
At that moment, at six o'clock, the lunar pole appeared. The disc
only presented to the travelers' gaze one half brilliantly lit up,
while the other disappeared in the darkness. Suddenly the
projectile passed the line of demarcation between intense light
and absolute darkness, and was plunged in profound night!
At the moment when this phenomenon took place so rapidly, the
projectile was skirting the moon's north pole at less than
twenty-five miles distance. Some seconds had sufficed to plunge
it into the absolute darkness of space. The transition was so
sudden, without shade, without gradation of light, without
attenuation of the luminous waves, that the orb seemed to have
been extinguished by a powerful blow.
"Melted, disappeared!" Michel Ardan exclaimed, aghast.
Indeed, there was neither reflection nor shadow. Nothing more
was to be seen of that disc, formerly so dazzling. The darkness
was complete. and rendered even more so by the rays from the stars.
It was "that blackness" in which the lunar nights are insteeped,
which last three hundred and fifty-four hours and a half at each
point of the disc, a long night resulting from the equality of
the translatory and rotary movements of the moon. The projectile,
immerged in the conical shadow of the satellite, experienced the
action of the solar rays no more than any of its invisible points.
In the interior, the obscurity was complete. They could not see
each other. Hence the necessity of dispelling the darkness.
However desirous Barbicane might be to husband the gas, the
reserve of which was small, he was obliged to ask from it a
fictitious light, an expensive brilliancy which the sun then refused.
"Devil take the radiant orb!" exclaimed Michel Ardan, "which
forces us to expend gas, instead of giving us his rays gratuitously."
"Do not let us accuse the sun," said Nicholl, "it is not his
fault, but that of the moon, which has come and placed herself
like a screen between us and it."
"It is the sun!" continued Michel.
"It is the moon!" retorted Nicholl.
An idle dispute, which Barbicane put an end to by saying:
"My friends, it is neither the fault of the sun nor of the moon;
it is the fault of the projectile, which, instead of rigidly
following its course, has awkwardly missed it. To be more just,
it is the fault of that unfortunate meteor which has so
deplorably altered our first direction."
"Well," replied Michel Ardan, "as the matter is settled, let us
have breakfast. After a whole night of watching it is fair to
build ourselves up a little."
This proposal meeting with no contradiction, Michel prepared the
repast in a few minutes. But they ate for eating's sake, they
drank without toasts, without hurrahs. The bold travelers being
borne away into gloomy space, without their accustomed
cortege of rays, felt a vague uneasiness in their hearts.
The "strange" shadow so dear to Victor Hugo's pen bound them on
all sides. But they talked over the interminable night of three
hundred and fifty-four hours and a half, nearly fifteen days,
which the law of physics has imposed on the inhabitants of the moon.
Barbicane gave his friends some explanation of the causes and
the consequences of this curious phenomenon.
"Curious indeed," said they; "for, if each hemisphere of the
moon is deprived of solar light for fifteen days, that above
which we now float does not even enjoy during its long night any
view of the earth so beautifully lit up. In a word she has no
moon (applying this designation to our globe) but on one side of
her disc. Now if this were the case with the earth-- if, for
example, Europe never saw the moon, and she was only visible at
the antipodes, imagine to yourself the astonishment of a
European on arriving in Australia."
"They would make the voyage for nothing but to see the moon!"
replied Michel.
"Very well!" continued Barbicane, "that astonishment is reserved
for the Selenites who inhabit the face of the moon opposite to
the earth, a face which is ever invisible to our countrymen of
the terrestrial globe."
"And which we should have seen," added Nicholl, "if we had arrived
here when the moon was new, that is to say fifteen days later."
"I will add, to make amends," continued Barbicane, "that the
inhabitants of the visible face are singularly favored by nature,
to the detriment of their brethren on the invisible face.
The latter, as you see, have dark nights of 354 hours, without
one single ray to break the darkness. The other, on the contrary,
when the sun which has given its light for fifteen days sinks
below the horizon, see a splendid orb rise on the opposite horizon.
It is the earth, which is thirteen times greater than the
diminutive moon that we know-- the earth which developes itself
at a diameter of two degrees, and which sheds a light thirteen
times greater than that qualified by atmospheric strata-- the
earth which only disappears at the moment when the sun reappears
in its turn!"
"Nicely worded!" said Michel, "slightly academical perhaps."
"It follows, then," continued Barbicane, without knitting his
brows, "that the visible face of the disc must be very agreeable
to inhabit, since it always looks on either the sun when the
moon is full, or on the earth when the moon is new."
"But," said Nicholl, "that advantage must be well compensated by
the insupportable heat which the light brings with it."
"The inconvenience, in that respect, is the same for the two
faces, for the earth's light is evidently deprived of heat.
But the invisible face is still more searched by the heat than
the visible face. I say that for you, Nicholl, because Michel
will probably not understand."
"Thank you," said Michel.
"Indeed," continued Barbicane, "when the invisible face receives
at the same time light and heat from the sun, it is because the
moon is new; that is to say, she is situated between the sun and
the earth. It follows, then, considering the position which she
occupies in opposition when full, that she is nearer to the sun
by twice her distance from the earth; and that distance may be
estimated at the two-hundredth part of that which separates the
sun from the earth, or in round numbers 400,000 miles. So that
invisible face is so much nearer to the sun when she receives
its rays."
"Quite right," replied Nicholl.
"On the contrary," continued Barbicane.
"One moment," said Michel, interrupting his grave companion.
"What do you want?"
"I ask to be allowed to continue the explanation."
"And why?"
"To prove that I understand."
"Get along with you," said Barbicane, smiling.
"On the contrary," said Michel, imitating the tone and gestures
of the president, "on the contrary, when the visible face of the
moon is lit by the sun, it is because the moon is full, that is
to say, opposite the sun with regard to the earth. The distance
separating it from the radiant orb is then increased in round
numbers to 400,000 miles, and the heat which she receives must
be a little less."
"Very well said!" exclaimed Barbicane. "Do you know, Michel,
that, for an amateur, you are intelligent."
"Yes," replied Michel coolly, "we are all so on the Boulevard
des Italiens."
Barbicane gravely grasped the hand of his amiable companion, and
continued to enumerate the advantages reserved for the inhabitants
of the visible face.
Among others, he mentioned eclipses of the sun, which only take
place on this side of the lunar disc; since, in order that they
may take place, it is necessary for the moon to be in
opposition. These eclipses, caused by the interposition of the
earth between the moon and the sun, can last two hours; during
which time, by reason of the rays refracted by its atmosphere,
the terrestrial globe can appear as nothing but a black point
upon the sun.
"So," said Nicholl, "there is a hemisphere, that invisible
hemisphere which is very ill supplied, very ill treated,
by nature."
"Never mind," replied Michel; "if we ever become Selenites, we
will inhabit the visible face. I like the light."
"Unless, by any chance," answered Nicholl, "the atmosphere should
be condensed on the other side, as certain astronomers pretend."
"That would be a consideration," said Michel.
Breakfast over, the observers returned to their post. They tried
to see through the darkened scuttles by extinguishing all light
in the projectile; but not a luminous spark made its way through
the darkness.
One inexplicable fact preoccupied Barbicane. Why, having passed
within such a short distance of the moon--about twenty-five
miles only-- why the projectile had not fallen? If its speed
had been enormous, he could have understood that the fall would
not have taken place; but, with a relatively moderate speed,
that resistance to the moon's attraction could not be explained.
Was the projectile under some foreign influence? Did some kind
of body retain it in the ether? It was quite evident that it
could never reach any point of the moon. Whither was it going?
Was it going farther from, or nearing, the disc? Was it being
borne in that profound darkness through the infinity of space?
How could they learn, how calculate, in the midst of this night?
All these questions made Barbicane uneasy, but he could not
solve them.
Certainly, the invisible orb was there, perhaps only some few
miles off; but neither he nor his companions could see it.
If there was any noise on its surface, they could not hear it.
Air, that medium of sound, was wanting to transmit the groanings
of that moon which the Arabic legends call "a man already half
granite, and still breathing."
One must allow that that was enough to aggravate the most
patient observers. It was just that unknown hemisphere which
was stealing from their sight. That face which fifteen days
sooner, or fifteen days later, had been, or would be, splendidly
illuminated by the solar rays, was then being lost in utter darkness.
In fifteen days where would the projectile be? Who could say?
Where would the chances of conflicting attractions have drawn
it to? The disappointment of the travelers in the midst of this
utter darkness may be imagined. All observation of the lunar
disc was impossible. The constellations alone claimed all their
attention; and we must allow that the astronomers Faye, Charconac,
and Secchi, never found themselves in circumstances so favorable
for their observation.
Indeed, nothing could equal the splendor of this starry world,
bathed in limpid ether. Its diamonds set in the heavenly vault
sparkled magnificently. The eye took in the firmament from the
Southern Cross to the North Star, those two constellations which
in 12,000 years, by reason of the succession of equinoxes, will
resign their part of the polar stars, the one to Canopus in the
southern hemisphere, the other to Wega in the northern.
Imagination loses itself in this sublime Infinity, amid which
the projectile was gravitating, like a new star created by the
hand of man. From a natural cause, these constellations shone
with a soft luster; they did not twinkle, for there was no
atmosphere which, by the intervention of its layers unequally
dense and of different degrees of humidity, produces
this scintillation. These stars were soft eyes, looking out
into the dark night, amid the silence of absolute space.
Long did the travelers stand mute, watching the constellated
firmament, upon which the moon, like a vast screen, made an
enormous black hole. But at length a painful sensation drew
them from their watchings. This was an intense cold, which soon
covered the inside of the glass of the scuttles with a thick
coating of ice. The sun was no longer warming the projectile
with its direct rays, and thus it was losing the heat stored up
in its walls by degrees. This heat was rapidly evaporating into
space by radiation, and a considerably lower temperature was
the result. The humidity of the interior was changed into ice
upon contact with the glass, preventing all observation.
Nicholl consulted the thermometer, and saw that it had fallen to
seventeen degrees (Centigrade) below zero. [3] So that, in spite
of the many reasons for economizing, Barbicane, after having
begged light from the gas, was also obliged to beg for heat.
The projectile's low temperature was no longer endurable.
Its tenants would have been frozen to death.
[3] 1@ Fahrenheit.
"Well!" observed Michel, "we cannot reasonably complain of the
monotony of our journey! What variety we have had, at least
in temperature. Now we are blinded with light and saturated with
heat, like the Indians of the Pampas! now plunged into profound
darkness, amid the cold, like the Esquimaux of the north pole.
No, indeed! we have no right to complain; nature does wonders in
our honor."
"But," asked Nicholl, "what is the temperature outside?"
"Exactly that of the planetary space," replied Barbicane.
"Then," continued Michel Ardan, "would not this be the time to
make the experiment which we dared not attempt when we were
drowned in the sun's rays?
"It is now or never," replied Barbicane, "for we are in a good
position to verify the temperature of space, and see if Fourier
or Pouillet's calculations are exact."
"In any case it is cold," said Michel. "See! the steam of the
interior is condensing on the glasses of the scuttles. If the fall
continues, the vapor of our breath will fall in snow around us."
"Let us prepare a thermometer," said Barbicane.
We may imagine that an ordinary thermometer would afford no
result under the circumstances in which this instrument was to
be exposed. The mercury would have been frozen in its ball,
as below 42@ Fahrenheit below zero it is no longer liquid.
But Barbicane had furnished himself with a spirit thermometer
on Wafferdin's system, which gives the minima of excessively
low temperatures.
Before beginning the experiment, this instrument was compared
with an ordinary one, and then Barbicane prepared to use it.
"How shall we set about it?" asked Nicholl.
"Nothing is easier," replied Michel Ardan, who was never at a loss.
"We open the scuttle rapidly; throw out the instrument; it follows
the projectile with exemplary docility; and a quarter of an hour
after, draw it in."
"With the hand?" asked Barbicane.
"With the hand," replied Michel.
"Well, then, my friend, do not expose yourself," answered
Barbicane, "for the hand that you draw in again will be nothing
but a stump frozen and deformed by the frightful cold."
"Really!"
"You will feel as if you had had a terrible burn, like that of
iron at a white heat; for whether the heat leaves our bodies
briskly or enters briskly, it is exactly the same thing.
Besides, I am not at all certain that the objects we have thrown
out are still following us."
"Why not?" asked Nicholl.
"Because, if we are passing through an atmosphere of the
slightest density, these objects will be retarded. Again, the
darkness prevents our seeing if they still float around us.
But in order not to expose ourselves to the loss of our
thermometer, we will fasten it, and we can then more easily
pull it back again."
Barbicane's advice was followed. Through the scuttle rapidly
opened, Nicholl threw out the instrument, which was held by a
short cord, so that it might be more easily drawn up. The scuttle
had not been opened more than a second, but that second had sufficed
to let in a most intense cold.
"The devil!" exclaimed Michel Ardan, "it is cold enough to
freeze a white bear."
Barbicane waited until half an hour had elapsed, which was more
than time enough to allow the instrument to fall to the level of
the surrounding temperature. Then it was rapidly pulled in.
Barbicane calculated the quantity of spirits of wine overflowed
into the little vial soldered to the lower part of the
instrument, and said:
"A hundred and forty degrees Centigrade [4] below zero!"
[4] 218 degrees Fahrenheit below zero.
M. Pouillet was right and Fourier wrong. That was the undoubted
temperature of the starry space. Such is, perhaps, that of the
lunar continents, when the orb of night has lost by radiation
all the heat which fifteen days of sun have poured into her.
We may, perhaps, be astonished to find Barbicane and his
companions so little occupied with the future reserved for them
in their metal prison which was bearing them through the
infinity of space. Instead of asking where they were going,
they passed their time making experiments, as if they had been
quietly installed in their own study.
We might answer that men so strong-minded were above such
anxieties-- that they did not trouble themselves about such
trifles-- and that they had something else to do than to
occupy their minds with the future.
The truth was that they were not masters of their projectile;
they could neither check its course, nor alter its direction.
A sailor can change the head of his ship as he pleases; an
aeronaut can give a vertical motion to his balloon. They, on
the contrary, had no power over their vehicle. Every maneuver
was forbidden. Hence the inclination to let things alone, or as
the sailors say, "let her run."
Where did they find themselves at this moment, at eight o'clock in
the morning of the day called upon the earth the 6th of December?
Very certainly in the neighborhood of the moon, and even near
enough for her to look to them like an enormous black screen upon
the firmament. As to the distance which separated them, it was
impossible to estimate it. The projectile, held by some
unaccountable force, had been within four miles of grazing the
satellite's north pole.
But since entering the cone of shadow these last two hours, had
the distance increased or diminished? Every point of mark was
wanting by which to estimate both the direction and the speed of
the projectile.
Perhaps it was rapidly leaving the disc, so that it would soon
quit the pure shadow. Perhaps, again, on the other hand, it
might be nearing it so much that in a short time it might strike
some high point on the invisible hemisphere, which would doubtlessly
have ended the journey much to the detriment of the travelers.
A discussion arose on this subject, and Michel Ardan, always
ready with an explanation, gave it as his opinion that the
projectile, held by the lunar attraction, would end by falling
on the surface of the terrestrial globe like an aerolite.
"First of all, my friend," answered Barbicane, "every aerolite
does not fall to the earth; it is only a small proportion which
do so; and if we had passed into an aerolite, it does not necessarily
follow that we should ever reach the surface of the moon."
"But how if we get near enough?" replied Michel.
"Pure mistake," replied Barbicane. "Have you not seen shooting
stars rush through the sky by thousands at certain seasons?"
"Yes."
"Well, these stars, or rather corpuscles, only shine when they
are heated by gliding over the atmospheric layers. Now, if
they enter the atmosphere, they pass at least within forty
miles of the earth, but they seldom fall upon it. The same with
our projectile. It may approach very near to the moon, and not
yet fall upon it."
"But then," asked Michel, "I shall be curious to know how our
erring vehicle will act in space?"
"I see but two hypotheses," replied Barbicane, after some
moments' reflection.
"What are they?"
"The projectile has the choice between two mathematical curves,
and it will follow one or the other according to the speed with
which it is animated, and which at this moment I cannot estimate."
"Yes," said Nicholl, "it will follow either a parabola or
a hyperbola."
"Just so," replied Barbicane. "With a certain speed it will
assume the parabola, and with a greater the hyperbola."
"I like those grand words," exclaimed Michel Ardan; "one knows
directly what they mean. And pray what is your parabola, if
you please?"
"My friend," answered the captain, "the parabola is a curve of
the second order, the result of the section of a cone
intersected by a plane parallel to one of the sides."
"Ah! ah!" said Michel, in a satisfied tone.
"It is very nearly," continued Nicholl, "the course described by
a bomb launched from a mortar."
"Perfect! And the hyperbola?"
"The hyperbola, Michel, is a curve of the second order, produced
by the intersection of a conic surface and a plane parallel to
its axis, and constitutes two branches separated one from the other,
both tending indefinitely in the two directions."
"Is it possible!" exclaimed Michel Ardan in a serious tone, as
if they had told him of some serious event. "What I particularly
like in your definition of the hyperbola (I was going to say
hyperblague) is that it is still more obscure than the word you
pretend to define."
Nicholl and Barbicane cared little for Michel Ardan's fun.
They were deep in a scientific discussion. What curve would
the projectile follow? was their hobby. One maintained the
hyperbola, the other the parabola. They gave each other reasons
bristling with x. Their arguments were couched in language
which made Michel jump. The discussion was hot, and neither
would give up his chosen curve to his adversary.
This scientific dispute lasted so long that it made Michel
very impatient.
"Now, gentlemen cosines, will you cease to throw parabolas and
hyperbolas at each other's heads? I want to understand the only
interesting question in the whole affair. We shall follow one
or the other of these curves? Good. But where will they lead
us to?"
"Nowhere," replied Nicholl.
"How, nowhere?"
"Evidently," said Barbicane, "they are open curves, which may be
prolonged indefinitely."
"Ah, savants!" cried Michel; "and what are either the one or the
other to us from the moment we know that they equally lead us
into infinite space?"
Barbicane and Nicholl could not forbear smiling. They had just
been creating "art for art's sake." Never had so idle a question
been raised at such an inopportune moment. The sinister truth
remained that, whether hyperbolically or parabolically borne away,
the projectile would never again meet either the earth or the moon.
What would become of these bold travelers in the immediate future?
If they did not die of hunger, if they did not die of thirst,
in some days, when the gas failed, they would die from want of air,
unless the cold had killed them first. Still, important as it was
to economize the gas, the excessive lowness of the surrounding
temperature obliged them to consume a certain quantity.
Strictly speaking, they could do without its light, but not
without its heat. Fortunately the caloric generated by Reiset's
and Regnaut's apparatus raised the temperature of the interior
of the projectile a little, and without much expenditure they
were able to keep it bearable.
But observations had now become very difficult. the dampness of
the projectile was condensed on the windows and congealed immediately.
This cloudiness had to be dispersed continually. In any case
they might hope to be able to discover some phenomena of the
highest interest.
But up to this time the disc remained dumb and dark. It did not
answer the multiplicity of questions put by these ardent minds;
a matter which drew this reflection from Michel, apparently a
just one:
"If ever we begin this journey over again, we shall do well to
choose the time when the moon is at the full."
"Certainly," said Nicholl, "that circumstance will be more favorable.
I allow that the moon, immersed in the sun's rays, will not be
visible during the transit, but instead we should see the earth,
which would be full. And what is more, if we were drawn round the
moon, as at this moment, we should at least have the advantage of
seeing the invisible part of her disc magnificently lit."
"Well said, Nicholl," replied Michel Ardan. "What do you
think, Barbicane?"
"I think this," answered the grave president: "If ever we begin
this journey again, we shall start at the same time and under
the same conditions. Suppose we had attained our end, would it
not have been better to have found continents in broad daylight
than a country plunged in utter darkness? Would not our first
installation have been made under better circumstances?
Yes, evidently. As to the invisible side, we could have visited
it in our exploring expeditions on the lunar globe. So that the
time of the full moon was well chosen. But we ought to have
arrived at the end; and in order to have so arrived, we ought
to have suffered no deviation on the road."
"I have nothing to say to that," answered Michel Ardan.
"Here is, however, a good opportunity lost of observing the
other side of the moon."
But the projectile was now describing in the shadow that
incalculable course which no sight-mark would allow them
to ascertain. Had its direction been altered, either by the
influence of the lunar attraction, or by the action of some
unknown star? Barbicane could not say. But a change had taken
place in the relative position of the vehicle; and Barbicane
verified it about four in the morning.
The change consisted in this, that the base of the projectile
had turned toward the moon's surface, and was so held by a
perpendicular passing through its axis. The attraction, that is
to say the weight, had brought about this alteration. The heaviest
part of the projectile inclined toward the invisible disc as if it
would fall upon it.
Was it falling? Were the travelers attaining that much desired end?
No. And the observation of a sign-point, quite inexplicable in
itself, showed Barbicane that his projectile was not nearing the
moon, and that it had shifted by following an almost concentric curve.
This point of mark was a luminous brightness, which Nicholl
sighted suddenly, on the limit of the horizon formed by the
black disc. This point could not be confounded with a star.
It was a reddish incandescence which increased by degrees, a
decided proof that the projectile was shifting toward it and
not falling normally on the surface of the moon.
"A volcano! it is a volcano in action!" cried Nicholl; "a
disemboweling of the interior fires of the moon! That world is
not quite extinguished."
"Yes, an eruption," replied Barbicane, who was carefully
studying the phenomenon through his night glass. "What should
it be, if not a volcano?"
"But, then," said Michel Ardan, "in order to maintain that
combustion, there must be air. So the atmosphere does surround
that part of the moon."
"Perhaps so," replied Barbicane, "but not necessarily.
The volcano, by the decomposition of certain substances, can
provide its own oxygen, and thus throw flames into space. It seems
to me that the deflagration, by the intense brilliancy of the
substances in combustion, is produced in pure oxygen. We must
not be in a hurry to proclaim the existence of a lunar atmosphere."
The fiery mountain must have been situated about the 45@ south
latitude on the invisible part of the disc; but, to Barbicane's
great displeasure, the curve which the projectile was describing
was taking it far from the point indicated by the eruption.
Thus he could not determine its nature exactly. Half an hour
after being sighted, this luminous point had disappeared behind
the dark horizon; but the verification of this phenomenon was
of considerable consequence in their selenographic studies.
It proved that all heat had not yet disappeared from the bowels
of this globe; and where heat exists, who can affirm that the
vegetable kingdom, nay, even the animal kingdom itself, has not
up to this time resisted all destructive influences? The existence
of this volcano in eruption, unmistakably seen by these earthly
savants, would doubtless give rise to many theories favorable
to the grave question of the habitability of the moon.
Barbicane allowed himself to be carried away by these reflections.
He forgot himself in a deep reverie in which the mysterious
destiny of the lunar world was uppermost. He was seeking to
combine together the facts observed up to that time, when a new
incident recalled him briskly to reality. This incident was more
than a cosmical phenomenon; it was a threatened danger, the
consequence of which might be disastrous in the extreme.
Suddenly, in the midst of the ether, in the profound darkness, an
enormous mass appeared. It was like a moon, but an incandescent
moon whose brilliancy was all the more intolerable as it cut
sharply on the frightful darkness of space. This mass, of a
circular form, threw a light which filled the projectile.
The forms of Barbicane, Nicholl, and Michel Ardan, bathed in
its white sheets, assumed that livid spectral appearance which
physicians produce with the fictitious light of alcohol
impregnated with salt.
"By Jove!" cried Michel Ardan, "we are hideous. What is that
ill-conditioned moon?"
"A meteor," replied Barbicane.
"A meteor burning in space?"
"Yes."
This shooting globe suddenly appearing in shadow at a distance
of at most 200 miles, ought, according to Barbicane, to have a
diameter of 2,000 yards. It advanced at a speed of about one
mile and a half per second. It cut the projectile's path and
must reach it in some minutes. As it approached it grew to
enormous proportions.
Imagine, if possible, the situation of the travelers! It is
impossible to describe it. In spite of their courage, their
sang-froid, their carelessness of danger, they were mute,
motionless with stiffened limbs, a prey to frightful terror.
Their projectile, the course of which they could not alter, was
rushing straight on this ignited mass, more intense than the
open mouth of an oven. It seemed as though they were being
precipitated toward an abyss of fire.
Barbicane had seized the hands of his two companions, and all
three looked through their half-open eyelids upon that asteroid
heated to a white heat. If thought was not destroyed within
them, if their brains still worked amid all this awe, they must
have given themselves up for lost.
Two minutes after the sudden appearance of the meteor (to them
two centuries of anguish) the projectile seemed almost about to
strike it, when the globe of fire burst like a bomb, but without
making any noise in that void where sound, which is but the
agitation of the layers of air, could not be generated.
Nicholl uttered a cry, and he and his companions rushed to
the scuttle. What a sight! What pen can describe it?
What palette is rich enough in colors to reproduce so magnificent
a spectacle?
It was like the opening of a crater, like the scattering of an
immense conflagration. Thousands of luminous fragments lit up
and irradiated space with their fires. Every size, every color,
was there intermingled. There were rays of yellow and pale
yellow, red, green, gray-- a crown of fireworks of all colors.
Of the enormous and much-dreaded globe there remained nothing
but these fragments carried in all directions, now become
asteroids in their turn, some flaming like a sword, some
surrounded by a whitish cloud, and others leaving behind them
trains of brilliant cosmical dust.
These incandescent blocks crossed and struck each other,
scattering still smaller fragments, some of which struck
the projectile. Its left scuttle was even cracked by a
violent shock. It seemed to be floating amid a hail of
howitzer shells, the smallest of which might destroy
it instantly.
The light which saturated the ether was so wonderfully intense,
that Michel, drawing Barbicane and Nicholl to his window,
exclaimed, "The invisible moon, visible at last!"
And through a luminous emanation, which lasted some seconds, the
whole three caught a glimpse of that mysterious disc which the eye
of man now saw for the first time. What could they distinguish
at a distance which they could not estimate? Some lengthened
bands along the disc, real clouds formed in the midst of a very
confined atmosphere, from which emerged not only all the mountains,
but also projections of less importance; its circles, its yawning
craters, as capriciously placed as on the visible surface.
Then immense spaces, no longer arid plains, but real seas, oceans,
widely distributed, reflecting on their liquid surface all the
dazzling magic of the fires of space; and, lastly, on the surface
of the continents, large dark masses, looking like immense forests
under the rapid illumination of a brilliance.
Was it an illusion, a mistake, an optical illusion? Could they
give a scientific assent to an observation so superficially obtained?
Dared they pronounce upon the question of its habitability after
so slight a glimpse of the invisible disc?
But the lightnings in space subsided by degrees; its accidental
brilliancy died away; the asteroids dispersed in different
directions and were extinguished in the distance.
The ether returned to its accustomed darkness; the stars, eclipsed
for a moment, again twinkled in the firmament, and the disc, so
hastily discerned, was again buried in impenetrable night.
The projectile had just escaped a terrible danger, and a very
unforseen one. Who would have thought of such an encounter
with meteors? These erring bodies might create serious perils
for the travelers. They were to them so many sandbanks upon
that sea of ether which, less fortunate than sailors, they could
not escape. But did these adventurers complain of space? No, not
since nature had given them the splendid sight of a cosmical
meteor bursting from expansion, since this inimitable firework,
which no Ruggieri could imitate, had lit up for some seconds the
invisible glory of the moon. In that flash, continents, seas,
and forests had become visible to them. Did an atmosphere,
then, bring to this unknown face its life-giving atoms?
Questions still insoluble, and forever closed against
human curiousity!
It was then half-past three in the afternoon. The projectile
was following its curvilinear direction round the moon. Had its
course again been altered by the meteor? It was to be feared so.
But the projectile must describe a curve unalterably determined
by the laws of mechanical reasoning. Barbicane was inclined to
believe that this curve would be rather a parabola than a hyperbola.
But admitting the parabola, the projectile must quickly have
passed through the cone of shadow projected into space opposite
the sun. This cone, indeed, is very narrow, the angular diameter
of the moon being so little when compared with the diameter of
the orb of day; and up to this time the projectile had been
floating in this deep shadow. Whatever had been its speed
(and it could not have been insignificant), its period of
occultation continued. That was evident, but perhaps that would
not have been the case in a supposedly rigidly parabolical
trajectory-- a new problem which tormented Barbicane's brain,
imprisoned as he was in a circle of unknowns which he could
not unravel.
Neither of the travelers thought of taking an instant's repose.
Each one watched for an unexpected fact, which might throw some
new light on their uranographic studies. About five o'clock,
Michel Ardan distributed, under the name of dinner, some pieces
of bread and cold meat, which were quickly swallowed without
either of them abandoning their scuttle, the glass of which was
incessantly encrusted by the condensation of vapor.
About forty-five minutes past five in the evening, Nicholl,
armed with his glass, sighted toward the southern border of the
moon, and in the direction followed by the projectile, some
bright points cut upon the dark shield of the sky. They looked
like a succession of sharp points lengthened into a tremulous line.
They were very bright. Such appeared the terminal line of the
moon when in one of her octants.
They could not be mistaken. It was no longer a simple meteor.
This luminous ridge had neither color nor motion. Nor was it a
volcano in eruption. And Barbicane did not hesitate to
pronounce upon it.
"The sun!" he exclaimed.
"What! the sun?" answered Nicholl and Michel Ardan.
"Yes, my friends, it is the radiant orb itself lighting up the
summit of the mountains situated on the southern borders of
the moon. We are evidently nearing the south pole."
"After having passed the north pole," replied Michel. "We have
made the circuit of our satellite, then?"
"Yes, my good Michel."
"Then, no more hyperbolas, no more parabolas, no more open
curves to fear?"
"No, but a closed curve."
"Which is called----"
"An ellipse. Instead of losing itself in interplanetary space,
it is probable that the projectile will describe an elliptical
orbit around the moon."
"Indeed!"
"And that it will become her satellite."
"Moon of the moon!" cried Michel Ardan.
"Only, I would have you observe, my worthy friend," replied
Barbicane, "that we are none the less lost for that."
"Yes, in another manner, and much more pleasantly," answered the
careless Frenchman with his most amiable smile.
At six in the evening the projectile passed the south pole at
less than forty miles off, a distance equal to that already
reached at the north pole. The elliptical curve was being
rigidly carried out.
At this moment the travelers once more entered the blessed rays
of the sun. They saw once more those stars which move slowly
from east to west. The radiant orb was saluted by a triple hurrah.
With its light it also sent heat, which soon pierced the metal walls.
The glass resumed its accustomed appearance. The layers of ice
melted as if by enchantment; and immediately, for economy's sake,
the gas was put out, the air apparatus alone consuming its
usual quantity.
"Ah!" said Nicholl, "these rays of heat are good. With what
impatience must the Selenites wait the reappearance of the orb
of day."
"Yes," replied Michel Ardan, "imbibing as it were the brilliant
ether, light and heat, all life is contained in them."
At this moment the bottom of the projectile deviated somewhat
from the lunar surface, in order to follow the slightly
lengthened elliptical orbit. From this point, had the earth
been at the full, Barbicane and his companions could have
seen it, but immersed in the sun's irradiation she was
quite invisible. Another spectacle attracted their attention,
that of the southern part of the moon, brought by the glasses
to within 450 yards. They did not again leave the scuttles,
and noted every detail of this fantastical continent.
Mounts Doerful and Leibnitz formed two separate groups very near
the south pole. The first group extended from the pole to the
eighty-fourth parallel, on the eastern part of the orb; the
second occupied the eastern border, extending from the 65@ of
latitude to the pole.
On their capriciously formed ridge appeared dazzling sheets, as
mentioned by Pere Secchi. With more certainty than the
illustrious Roman astronomer, Barbicane was enabled to recognize
their nature.
"They are snow," he exclaimed.
"Snow?" repeated Nicholl.
"Yes, Nicholl, snow; the surface of which is deeply frozen.
See how they reflect the luminous rays. Cooled lava would never
give out such intense reflection. There must then be water,
there must be air on the moon. As little as you please, but the
fact can no longer be contested." No, it could not be. And if
ever Barbicane should see the earth again, his notes will bear
witness to this great fact in his selenographic observations.
These mountains of Doerful and Leibnitz rose in the midst of
plains of a medium extent, which were bounded by an indefinite
succession of circles and annular ramparts. These two chains
are the only ones met with in this region of circles.
Comparatively but slightly marked, they throw up here and there
some sharp points, the highest summit of which attains an
altitude of 24,600 feet.
But the projectile was high above all this landscape, and the
projections disappeared in the intense brilliancy of the disc.
And to the eyes of the travelers there reappeared that original
aspect of the lunar landscapes, raw in tone, without gradation
of colors, and without degrees of shadow, roughly black and
white, from the want of diffusion of light.
But the sight of this desolate world did not fail to captivate
them by its very strangeness. They were moving over this region
as if they had been borne on the breath of some storm, watching
heights defile under their feet, piercing the cavities with their
eyes, going down into the rifts, climbing the ramparts, sounding
these mysterious holes, and leveling all cracks. But no trace
of vegetation, no appearance of cities; nothing but stratification,
beds of lava, overflowings polished like immense mirrors,
reflecting the sun's rays with overpowering brilliancy.
Nothing belonging to a living world-- everything to a dead
world, where avalanches, rolling from the summits of the mountains,
would disperse noiselessly at the bottom of the abyss, retaining
the motion, but wanting the sound. In any case it was the image
of death, without its being possible even to say that life had ever
existed there.
Michel Ardan, however, thought he recognized a heap of ruins,
to which he drew Barbicane's attention. It was about the 80th
parallel, in 30@ longitude. This heap of stones, rather
regularly placed, represented a vast fortress, overlooking a
long rift, which in former days had served as a bed to the
rivers of prehistorical times. Not far from that, rose to a
height of 17,400 feet the annular mountain of Short, equal to
the Asiatic Caucasus. Michel Ardan, with his accustomed ardor,
maintained "the evidences" of his fortress. Beneath it he
discerned the dismantled ramparts of a town; here the still
intact arch of a portico, there two or three columns lying under
their base; farther on, a succession of arches which must have
supported the conduit of an aqueduct; in another part the sunken
pillars of a gigantic bridge, run into the thickest parts of
the rift. He distinguished all this, but with so much imagination
in his glance, and through glasses so fantastical, that we must
mistrust his observation. But who could affirm, who would dare
to say, that the amiable fellow did not really see that which
his two companions would not see?
Moments were too precious to be sacrificed in idle discussion.
The selenite city, whether imaginary or not, had already
disappeared afar off. The distance of the projectile from the
lunar disc was on the increase, and the details of the soil were
being lost in a confused jumble. The reliefs, the circles,
the craters, and the plains alone remained, and still showed
their boundary lines distinctly. At this moment, to the left,
lay extended one of the finest circles of lunar orography,
one of the curiosities of this continent. It was Newton,
which Barbicane recognized without trouble, by referring to
the Mappa Selenographica.
Newton is situated in exactly 77@ south latitude, and 16@
east longitude. It forms an annular crater, the ramparts of
which, rising to a height of 21,300 feet, seemed to be impassable.
Barbicane made his companions observe that the height of this
mountain above the surrounding plain was far from equaling the
depth of its crater. This enormous hole was beyond all
measurement, and formed a gloomy abyss, the bottom of which the
sun's rays could never reach. There, according to Humboldt,
reigns utter darkness, which the light of the sun and the earth
cannot break. Mythologists could well have made it the mouth of hell.
"Newton," said Barbicane, "is the most perfect type of these
annular mountains, of which the earth possesses no sample.
They prove that the moon's formation, by means of cooling, is
due to violent causes; for while, under the pressure of internal
fires the reliefs rise to considerable height, the depths withdraw
far below the lunar level."
"I do not dispute the fact," replied Michel Ardan.
Some minutes after passing Newton, the projectile directly
overlooked the annular mountains of Moret. It skirted at some
distance the summits of Blancanus, and at about half-past seven
in the evening reached the circle of Clavius.
This circle, one of the most remarkable of the disc, is situated
in 58@ south latitude, and 15@ east longitude. Its height is
estimated at 22,950 feet. The travelers, at a distance of
twenty-four miles (reduced to four by their glasses) could
admire this vast crater in its entirety.
"Terrestrial volcanoes," said Barbicane, "are but mole-hills
compared with those of the moon. Measuring the old craters
formed by the first eruptions of Vesuvius and Etna, we find them
little more than three miles in breadth. In France the circle
of Cantal measures six miles across; at Ceyland the circle of
the island is forty miles, which is considered the largest on
the globe. What are these diameters against that of Clavius,
which we overlook at this moment?"
"What is its breadth?" asked Nicholl.
"It is 150 miles," replied Barbicane. "This circle is certainly
the most important on the moon, but many others measure 150,
100, or 75 miles."
"Ah! my friends," exclaimed Michel, "can you picture to
yourselves what this now peaceful orb of night must have been
when its craters, filled with thunderings, vomited at the same
time smoke and tongues of flame. What a wonderful spectacle
then, and now what decay! This moon is nothing more than a thin
carcase of fireworks, whose squibs, rockets, serpents, and suns,
after a superb brilliancy, have left but sadly broken cases.
Who can say the cause, the reason, the motive force of
these cataclysms?"
Barbicane was not listening to Michel Ardan; he was
contemplating these ramparts of Clavius, formed by large
mountains spread over several miles. At the bottom of the
immense cavity burrowed hundreds of small extinguished craters,
riddling the soil like a colander, and overlooked by a peak
15,000 feet high.
Around the plain appeared desolate. Nothing so arid as these
reliefs, nothing so sad as these ruins of mountains, and (if we
may so express ourselves) these fragments of peaks and mountains
which strewed the soil. The satellite seemed to have burst at
this spot.
The projectile was still advancing, and this movement did
not subside. Circles, craters, and uprooted mountains succeeded
each other incessantly. No more plains; no more seas. A never
ending Switzerland and Norway. And lastly, in the canter of
this region of crevasses, the most splendid mountain on the
lunar disc, the dazzling Tycho, in which posterity will ever
preserve the name of the illustrious Danish astronomer.
In observing the full moon in a cloudless sky no one has failed
to remark this brilliant point of the southern hemisphere.
Michel Ardan used every metaphor that his imagination could
supply to designate it by. To him this Tycho was a focus of
light, a center of irradiation, a crater vomiting rays. It was
the tire of a brilliant wheel, an asteria enclosing the disc
with its silver tentacles, an enormous eye filled with flames,
a glory carved for Pluto's head, a star launched by the
Creator's hand, and crushed against the face of the moon!
Tycho forms such a concentration of light that the inhabitants
of the earth can see it without glasses, though at a distance
of 240,000 miles! Imagine, then, its intensity to the eye of
observers placed at a distance of only fifty miles! Seen through
this pure ether, its brilliancy was so intolerable that Barbicane
and his friends were obliged to blacken their glasses with the gas
smoke before they could bear the splendor. Then silent, scarcely
uttering an interjection of admiration, they gazed, they contemplated.
All their feelings, all their impressions, were concentrated in that
look, as under any violent emotion all life is concentrated at the heart.
Tycho belongs to the system of radiating mountains, like
Aristarchus and Copernicus; but it is of all the most complete
and decided, showing unquestionably the frightful volcanic
action to which the formation of the moon is due. Tycho is
situated in 43@ south latitude, and 12@ east longitude. Its center
is occupied by a crater fifty miles broad. It assumes a slightly
elliptical form, and is surrounded by an enclosure of annular
ramparts, which on the east and west overlook the outer plain from
a height of 15,000 feet. It is a group of Mont Blancs, placed
round one common center and crowned by radiating beams.
What this incomparable mountain really is, with all the
projections converging toward it, and the interior excrescences
of its crater, photography itself could never represent.
Indeed, it is during the full moon that Tycho is seen in all
its splendor. Then all shadows disappear, the foreshortening
of perspective disappears, and all proofs become white-- a
disagreeable fact: for this strange region would have been
marvelous if reproduced with photographic exactness. It is
but a group of hollows, craters, circles, a network of crests;
then, as far as the eye could see, a whole volcanic network
cast upon this encrusted soil. One can then understand that
the bubbles of this central eruption have kept their first form.
Crystallized by cooling, they have stereotyped that aspect
which the moon formerly presented when under the Plutonian forces.
The distance which separated the travelers from the annular
summits of Tycho was not so great but that they could catch
the principal details. Even on the causeway forming the
fortifications of Tycho, the mountains hanging on to the
interior and exterior sloping flanks rose in stories like
gigantic terraces. They appeared to be higher by 300 or 400
feet to the west than to the east. No system of terrestrial
encampment could equal these natural fortifications. A town
built at the bottom of this circular cavity would have been
utterly inaccessible.
Inaccessible and wonderfully extended over this soil covered
with picturesque projections! Indeed, nature had not left the
bottom of this crater flat and empty. It possessed its own
peculiar orography, a mountainous system, making it a world
in itself. The travelers could distinguish clearly cones,
central hills, remarkable positions of the soil, naturally
placed to receive the chefs-d'oeuvre of Selenite architecture.
There was marked out the place for a temple, here the ground of a
forum, on this spot the plan of a palace, in another the plateau
for a citadel; the whole overlooked by a central mountain of
1,500 feet. A vast circle, in which ancient Rome could have
been held in its entirety ten times over.
"Ah!" exclaimed Michel Ardan, enthusiastic at the sight; "what
a grand town might be constructed within that ring of mountains!
A quiet city, a peaceful refuge, beyond all human misery. How calm
and isolated those misanthropes, those haters of humanity might
live there, and all who have a distaste for social life!"
"All! It would be too small for them," replied Barbicane simply.
But the projectile had passed the enceinte of Tycho, and
Barbicane and his two companions watched with scrupulous
attention the brilliant rays which the celebrated mountain shed
so curiously over the horizon.
What was this radiant glory? What geological phenomenon had
designed these ardent beams? This question occupied Barbicane's mind.
Under his eyes ran in all directions luminous furrows, raised at
the edges and concave in the center, some twelve miles, others
thirty miles broad. These brilliant trains extended in some
places to within 600 miles of Tycho, and seemed to cover,
particularly toward the east, the northeast and the north, the
half of the southern hemisphere. One of these jets extended as
far as the circle of Neander, situated on the 40th meridian.
Another, by a slight curve, furrowed the "Sea of Nectar," breaking
against the chain of Pyrenees, after a circuit of 800 miles.
Others, toward the west, covered the "Sea of Clouds" and
the "Sea of Humors" with a luminous network. What was the
origin of these sparkling rays, which shone on the plains as
well as on the reliefs, at whatever height they might be?
All started from a common center, the crater of Tycho.
They sprang from him. Herschel attributed their brilliancy to
currents of lava congealed by the cold; an opinion, however,
which has not been generally adopted. Other astronomers have
seen in these inexplicable rays a kind of moraines, rows of
erratic blocks, which had been thrown up at the period of
Tycho's formation.
"And why not?" asked Nicholl of Barbicane, who was relating and
rejecting these different opinions.
"Because the regularity of these luminous lines, and the
violence necessary to carry volcanic matter to such distances,
is inexplicable."
"Eh! by Jove!" replied Michel Ardan, "it seems easy enough to me
to explain the origin of these rays."
"Indeed?" said Barbicane.
"Indeed," continued Michel. "It is enough to say that it is a
vast star, similar to that produced by a ball or a stone thrown
at a square of glass!"
"Well!" replied Barbicane, smiling. "And what hand would be
powerful enough to throw a ball to give such a shock as that?"
"The hand is not necessary," answered Nicholl, not at all
confounded; "and as to the stone, let us suppose it to be a comet."
"Ah! those much-abused comets!" exclaimed Barbicane. "My brave
Michel, your explanation is not bad; but your comet is useless.
The shock which produced that rent must have some from the
inside of the star. A violent contraction of the lunar crust,
while cooling, might suffice to imprint this gigantic star."
"A contraction! something like a lunar stomach-ache." said
Michel Ardan.
"Besides," added Barbicane, "this opinion is that of an English
savant, Nasmyth, and it seems to me to sufficiently explain the
radiation of these mountains."
"That Nasmyth was no fool!" replied Michel.
Long did the travelers, whom such a sight could never weary,
admire the splendors of Tycho. Their projectile, saturated with
luminous gleams in the double irradiation of sun and moon, must
have appeared like an incandescent globe. They had passed
suddenly from excessive cold to intense heat. Nature was thus
preparing them to become Selenites. Become Selenites! That idea
brought up once more the question of the habitability of the moon.
After what they had seen, could the travelers solve it? Would they
decide for or against it? Michel Ardan persuaded his two friends
to form an opinion, and asked them directly if they thought that
men and animals were represented in the lunar world.
"I think that we can answer," said Barbicane; "but according to
my idea the question ought not to be put in that form. I ask it
to be put differently."
"Put it your own way," replied Michel.
"Here it is," continued Barbicane. "The problem is a double one,
and requires a double solution. Is the moon habitable? Has the
moon ever been inhabitable?"
"Good!" replied Nicholl. "First let us see whether the moon
is habitable."
"To tell the truth, I know nothing about it," answered Michel.
"And I answer in the negative," continued Barbicane. "In her
actual state, with her surrounding atmosphere certainly very
much reduced, her seas for the most part dried up, her
insufficient supply of water restricted, vegetation, sudden
alternations of cold and heat, her days and nights of 354
hours-- the moon does not seem habitable to me, nor does she
seem propitious to animal development, nor sufficient for the
wants of existence as we understand it."
"Agreed," replied Nicholl. "But is not the moon habitable for
creatures differently organized from ourselves?"
"That question is more difficult to answer, but I will try; and
I ask Nicholl if motion appears to him to be a necessary
result of life, whatever be its organization?"
"Without a doubt!" answered Nicholl.
"Then, my worthy companion, I would answer that we have observed
the lunar continent at a distance of 500 yards at most, and that
nothing seemed to us to move on the moon's surface. The presence
of any kind of life would have been betrayed by its attendant marks,
such as divers buildings, and even by ruins. And what have
we seen? Everywhere and always the geological works of nature,
never the work of man. If, then, there exist representatives
of the animal kingdom on the moon, they must have fled to those
unfathomable cavities which the eye cannot reach; which I cannot
admit, for they must have left traces of their passage on those
plains which the atmosphere must cover, however slightly raised
it may be. These traces are nowhere visible. There remains but
one hypothesis, that of a living race to which motion, which is
life, is foreign."
"One might as well say, living creatures which do not live,"
replied Michel.
"Just so," said Barbicane, "which for us has no meaning."
"Then we may form our opinion?" said Michel.
"Yes," replied Nicholl.
"Very well," continued Michel Ardan, "the Scientific Commission
assembled in the projectile of the Gun Club, after having
founded their argument on facts recently observed, decide
unanimously upon the question of the habitability of the moon--
`No! the moon is not habitable.'"
This decision was consigned by President Barbicane to his
notebook, where the process of the sitting of the 6th of
December may be seen.
"Now," said Nicholl, "let us attack the second question, an
indispensable complement of the first. I ask the honorable
commission, if the moon is not habitable, has she ever been
inhabited, Citizen Barbicane?"
"My friends," replied Barbicane, "I did not undertake this
journey in order to form an opinion on the past habitability of
our satellite; but I will add that our personal observations
only confirm me in this opinion. I believe, indeed I affirm,
that the moon has been inhabited by a human race organized like
our own; that she has produced animals anatomically formed like
the terrestrial animals: but I add that these races, human and
animal, have had their day, and are now forever extinct!"
"Then," asked Michel, "the moon must be older than the earth?"
"No!" said Barbicane decidedly, "but a world which has grown old
quicker, and whose formation and deformation have been more rapid.
Relatively, the organizing force of matter has been much more
violent in the interior of the moon than in the interior of the
terrestrial globe. The actual state of this cracked, twisted,
and burst disc abundantly proves this. The moon and the earth
were nothing but gaseous masses originally. These gases have
passed into a liquid state under different influences, and the
solid masses have been formed later. But most certainly our
sphere was still gaseous or liquid, when the moon was solidified
by cooling, and had become habitable."
"I believe it," said Nicholl.
"Then," continued Barbicane, "an atmosphere surrounded it, the
waters contained within this gaseous envelope could not evaporate.
Under the influence of air, water, light, solar heat, and central
heat, vegetation took possession of the continents prepared to
receive it, and certainly life showed itself about this period,
for nature does not expend herself in vain; and a world so
wonderfully formed for habitation must necessarily be inhabited."
"But," said Nicholl, "many phenomena inherent in our satellite
might cramp the expansion of the animal and vegetable kingdom.
For example, its days and nights of 354 hours?"
"At the terrestrial poles they last six months," said Michel.
"An argument of little value, since the poles are not inhabited."
"Let us observe, my friends," continued Barbicane, "that if in
the actual state of the moon its long nights and long days
created differences of temperature insupportable to
organization, it was not so at the historical period of time.
The atmosphere enveloped the disc with a fluid mantle; vapor
deposited itself in the shape of clouds; this natural screen
tempered the ardor of the solar rays, and retained the
nocturnal radiation. Light, like heat, can diffuse itself in
the air; hence an equality between the influences which no longer
exists, now that atmosphere has almost entirely disappeared.
And now I am going to astonish you."
"Astonish us?" said Michel Ardan.
"I firmly believe that at the period when the moon was inhabited,
the nights and days did not last 354 hours!"
"And why?" asked Nicholl quickly.
"Because most probably then the rotary motion of the moon upon
her axis was not equal to her revolution, an equality which
presents each part of her disc during fifteen days to the action
of the solar rays."
"Granted," replied Nicholl, "but why should not these two
motions have been equal, as they are really so?"
"Because that equality has only been determined by
terrestrial attraction. And who can say that this attraction
was powerful enough to alter the motion of the moon at that
period when the earth was still fluid?"
"Just so," replied Nicholl; "and who can say that the moon has
always been a satellite of the earth?"
"And who can say," exclaimed Michel Ardan, "that the moon did
not exist before the earth?"
Their imaginations carried them away into an indefinite field
of hypothesis. Barbicane sought to restrain them.
"Those speculations are too high," said he; "problems
utterly insoluble. Do not let us enter upon them. Let us only
admit the insufficiency of the primordial attraction; and then
by the inequality of the two motions of rotation and revolution,
the days and nights could have succeeded each other on the moon
as they succeed each other on the earth. Besides, even without
these conditions, life was possible."
"And so," asked Michel Ardan, "humanity has disappeared from
the moon?"
"Yes," replied Barbicane, "after having doubtless remained
persistently for millions of centuries; by degrees the
atmosphere becoming rarefied, the disc became uninhabitable, as
the terrestrial globe will one day become by cooling."
"By cooling?"
"Certainly," replied Barbicane; "as the internal fires became
extinguished, and the incandescent matter concentrated itself,
the lunar crust cooled. By degrees the consequences of these
phenomena showed themselves in the disappearance of organized
beings, and by the disappearance of vegetation. Soon the
atmosphere was rarefied, probably withdrawn by terrestrial
attraction; then aerial departure of respirable air, and
disappearance of water by means of evaporation. At this period
the moon becoming uninhabitable, was no longer inhabited.
It was a dead world, such as we see it to-day."
"And you say that the same fate is in store for the earth?"
"Most probably."
"But when?"
"When the cooling of its crust shall have made it uninhabitable."
"And have they calculated the time which our unfortunate sphere
will take to cool?"
"Certainly."
"And you know these calculations?"
"Perfectly."
"But speak, then, my clumsy savant," exclaimed Michel Ardan,
"for you make me boil with impatience!"
"Very well, my good Michel," replied Barbicane quietly; "we know
what diminution of temperature the earth undergoes in the lapse
of a century. And according to certain calculations, this mean
temperature will after a period of 400,000 years, be brought
down to zero!"
"Four hundred thousand years!" exclaimed Michel. "Ah! I
breathe again. Really I was frightened to hear you; I imagined
that we had not more than 50,000 years to live."
Barbicane and Nicholl could not help laughing at their
companion's uneasiness. Then Nicholl, who wished to end the
discussion, put the second question, which had just been
considered again.
"Has the moon been inhabited?" he asked.
The answer was unanimously in the affirmative. But during this
discussion, fruitful in somewhat hazardous theories, the
projectile was rapidly leaving the moon: the lineaments faded
away from the travelers' eyes, mountains were confused in the
distance; and of all the wonderful, strange, and fantastical
form of the earth's satellite, there soon remained nothing but
the imperishable remembrance.
For a long time Barbicane and his companions looked silently and
sadly upon that world which they had only seen from a distance,
as Moses saw the land of Canaan, and which they were leaving
without a possibility of ever returning to it. The projectile's
position with regard to the moon had altered, and the base was
now turned to the earth.
This change, which Barbicane verified, did not fail to surprise them.
If the projectile was to gravitate round the satellite in an
elliptical orbit, why was not its heaviest part turned toward it,
as the moon turns hers to the earth? That was a difficult point.
In watching the course of the projectile they could see that on
leaving the moon it followed a course analogous to that traced
in approaching her. It was describing a very long ellipse,
which would most likely extend to the point of equal attraction,
where the influences of the earth and its satellite are neutralized.
Such was the conclusion which Barbicane very justly drew from
facts already observed, a conviction which his two friends
shared with him.
"And when arrived at this dead point, what will become of us?"
asked Michel Ardan.
"We don't know," replied Barbicane.
"But one can draw some hypotheses, I suppose?"
"Two," answered Barbicane; "either the projectile's speed will
be insufficient, and it will remain forever immovable on this
line of double attraction----"
"I prefer the other hypothesis, whatever it may be," interrupted Michel.
"Or," continued Barbicane, "its speed will be sufficient, and it
will continue its elliptical course, to gravitate forever around
the orb of night."
"A revolution not at all consoling," said Michel, "to pass to
the state of humble servants to a moon whom we are accustomed to
look upon as our own handmaid. So that is the fate in store for us?"
Neither Barbicane nor Nicholl answered.
"You do not answer," continued Michel impatiently.
"There is nothing to answer," said Nicholl.
"Is there nothing to try?"
"No," answered Barbicane. "Do you pretend to fight against
the impossible?"
"Why not? Do one Frenchman and two Americans shrink from such
a word?"
"But what would you do?"
"Subdue this motion which is bearing us away."
"Subdue it?"
"Yes," continued Michel, getting animated, "or else alter it,
and employ it to the accomplishment of our own ends."
"And how?"
"That is your affair. If artillerymen are not masters of their
projectile they are not artillerymen. If the projectile is to
command the gunner, we had better ram the gunner into the gun.
My faith! fine savants! who do not know what is to become of us
after inducing me----"
"Inducing you!" cried Barbicane and Nicholl. "Inducing you!
What do you mean by that?"
"No recrimination," said Michel. "I do not complain, the trip
has pleased me, and the projectile agrees with me; but let us do
all that is humanly possible to do the fall somewhere, even if
only on the moon."
"We ask no better, my worthy Michel," replied Barbicane, "but
means fail us."
"We cannot alter the motion of the projectile?"
"No."
"Nor diminish its speed?"
"No."
"Not even by lightening it, as they lighten an overloaded vessel?"
"What would you throw out?" said Nicholl. "We have no ballast
on board; and indeed it seems to me that if lightened it would
go much quicker."
"Slower."
"Quicker."
"Neither slower nor quicker," said Barbicane, wishing to make
his two friends agree; "for we float is space, and must no
longer consider specific weight."
"Very well," cried Michel Ardan in a decided voice; "then their
remains but one thing to do."
"What is it?" asked Nicholl.
"Breakfast," answered the cool, audacious Frenchman, who always
brought up this solution at the most difficult juncture.
In any case, if this operation had no influence on the
projectile's course, it could at least be tried without
inconvenience, and even with success from a stomachic point
of view. Certainly Michel had none but good ideas.
They breakfasted then at two in the morning; the hour mattered little.
Michel served his usual repast, crowned by a glorious bottle drawn
from his private cellar. If ideas did not crowd on their brains,
we must despair of the Chambertin of 1853. The repast finished,
observation began again. Around the projectile, at an invariable
distance, were the objects which had been thrown out. Evidently, in
its translatory motion round the moon, it had not passed through
any atmosphere, for the specific weight of these different objects
would have checked their relative speed.
On the side of the terrestrial sphere nothing was to be seen.
The earth was but a day old, having been new the night before at
twelve; and two days must elapse before its crescent, freed from
the solar rays, would serve as a clock to the Selenites, as in
its rotary movement each of its points after twenty-four hours
repasses the same lunar meridian.
On the moon's side the sight was different; the orb shone in all
her splendor amid innumerable constellations, whose purity could
not be troubled by her rays. On the disc, the plains were
already returning to the dark tint which is seen from the earth.
The other part of the nimbus remained brilliant, and in the midst
of this general brilliancy Tycho shone prominently like a sun.
Barbicane had no means of estimating the projectile's speed, but
reasoning showed that it must uniformly decrease, according to
the laws of mechanical reasoning. Having admitted that the
projectile was describing an orbit around the moon, this orbit
must necessarily be elliptical; science proves that it must be so.
No motive body circulating round an attracting body fails in
this law. Every orbit described in space is elliptical. And why
should the projectile of the Gun Club escape this natural arrangement?
In elliptical orbits, the attracting body always occupies one of
the foci; so that at one moment the satellite is nearer, and at
another farther from the orb around which it gravitates. When the
earth is nearest the sun she is in her perihelion; and in her
aphelion at the farthest point. Speaking of the moon, she is
nearest to the earth in her perigee, and farthest from it in
her apogee. To use analogous expressions, with which the
astronomers' language is enriched, if the projectile remains
as a satellite of the moon, we must say that it is in its
"aposelene" at its farthest point, and in its "periselene" at
its nearest. In the latter case, the projectile would attain
its maximum of speed; and in the former its minimum. It was
evidently moving toward its aposelenitical point; and Barbicane
had reason to think that its speed would decrease up to this
point, and then increase by degrees as it neared the moon.
This speed would even become nil, if this point joined that of
equal attraction. Barbicane studied the consequences of these
different situations, and thinking what inference he could draw
from them, when he was roughly disturbed by a cry from Michel Ardan.
"By Jove!" he exclaimed, "I must admit we are down-right simpletons!"
"I do not say we are not," replied Barbicane; "but why?"
"Because we have a very simple means of checking this speed
which is bearing us from the moon, and we do not use it!"
"And what is the means?"
"To use the recoil contained in our rockets."
"Done!" said Nicholl.
"We have not used this force yet," said Barbicane, "it is true,
but we will do so."
"When?" asked Michel.
"When the time comes. Observe, my friends, that in the position
occupied by the projectile, an oblique position with regard to
the lunar disc, our rockets, in slightly altering its direction,
might turn it from the moon instead of drawing it nearer?"
"Just so," replied Michel.
"Let us wait, then. By some inexplicable influence, the
projectile is turning its base toward the earth. It is probable
that at the point of equal attraction, its conical cap will be
directed rigidly toward the moon; at that moment we may hope
that its speed will be nil; then will be the moment to act,
and with the influence of our rockets we may perhaps
provoke a fall directly on the surface of the lunar disc."
"Bravo!" said Michel. "What we did not do, what we could not do
on our first passage at the dead point, because the projectile
was then endowed with too great a speed."
"Very well reasoned," said Nicholl.
"Let us wait patiently," continued Barbicane. "Putting every
chance on our side, and after having so much despaired, I may
say I think we shall gain our end."
This conclusion was a signal for Michel Ardan's hips and hurrahs.
And none of the audacious boobies remembered the question that
they themselves had solved in the negative. No! the moon is not
inhabited; no! the moon is probably not habitable. And yet they
were going to try everything to reach her.
One single question remained to be solved. At what precise
moment the projectile would reach the point of equal attraction,
on which the travelers must play their last card. In order to
calculate this to within a few seconds, Barbicane had only to
refer to his notes, and to reckon the different heights taken on
the lunar parallels. Thus the time necessary to travel over the
distance between the dead point and the south pole would be equal
to the distance separating the north pole from the dead point.
The hours representing the time traveled over were carefully
noted, and the calculation was easy. Barbicane found that this
point would be reached at one in the morning on the night of the
7th-8th of December. So that, if nothing interfered with its
course, it would reach the given point in twenty-two hours.
The rockets had primarily been placed to check the fall of the
projectile upon the moon, and now they were going to employ them
for a directly contrary purpose. In any case they were ready,
and they had only to wait for the moment to set fire to them.
"Since there is nothing else to be done," said Nicholl, "I make
a proposition."
"What is it?" asked Barbicane.
"I propose to go to sleep."
"What a motion!" exclaimed Michel Ardan.
"It is forty hours since we closed our eyes," said Nicholl.
"Some hours of sleep will restore our strength."
"Never," interrupted Michel.
"Well," continued Nicholl, "every one to his taste; I shall go
to sleep." And stretching himself on the divan, he soon snored
like a forty-eight pounder.
"That Nicholl has a good deal of sense," said Barbicane;
"presently I shall follow his example." Some moments after his
continued bass supported the captain's baritone.
"Certainly," said Michel Ardan, finding himself alone, "these
practical people have sometimes most opportune ideas."
And with his long legs stretched out, and his great arms folded
under his head, Michel slept in his turn.
But this sleep could be neither peaceful nor lasting, the minds
of these three men were too much occupied, and some hours after,
about seven in the morning, all three were on foot at the same instant.
The projectile was still leaving the moon, and turning its
conical part more and more toward her.
An explicable phenomenon, but one which happily served
Barbicane's ends.
Seventeen hours more, and the moment for action would have arrived.
The day seemed long. However bold the travelers might be, they
were greatly impressed by the approach of that moment which
would decide all-- either precipitate their fall on to the moon,
or forever chain them in an immutable orbit. They counted the
hours as they passed too slow for their wish; Barbicane and
Nicholl were obstinately plunged in their calculations, Michel
going and coming between the narrow walls, and watching that
impassive moon with a longing eye.
At times recollections of the earth crossed their minds. They saw
once more their friends of the Gun Club, and the dearest of all,
J. T. Maston. At that moment, the honorable secretary must be
filling his post on the Rocky Mountains. If he could see the
projectile through the glass of his gigantic telescope, what
would he think? After seeing it disappear behind the moon's
south pole, he would see them reappear by the north pole!
They must therefore be a satellite of a satellite! Had J. T.
Maston given this unexpected news to the world? Was this the
denouement of this great enterprise?
But the day passed without incident. The terrestrial
midnight arrived. The 8th of December was beginning.
One hour more, and the point of equal attraction would
be reached. What speed would then animate the projectile?
They could not estimate it. But no error could vitiate
Barbicane's calculations. At one in the morning this speed
ought to be and would be nil.
Besides, another phenomenon would mark the projectile's
stopping-point on the neutral line. At that spot the two
attractions, lunar and terrestrial, would be annulled.
Objects would "weigh" no more. This singular fact, which had
surprised Barbicane and his companions so much in going, would
be repeated on their return under the very same conditions.
At this precise moment they must act.
Already the projectile's conical top was sensibly turned toward
the lunar disc, presented in such a way as to utilize the whole
of the recoil produced by the pressure of the rocket apparatus.
The chances were in favor of the travelers. If its speed was
utterly annulled on this dead point, a decided movement toward
the moon would suffice, however slight, to determine its fall.
"Five minutes to one," said Nicholl.
"All is ready," replied Michel Ardan, directing a lighted match
to the flame of the gas.
"Wait!" said Barbicane, holding his chronometer in his hand.
At that moment weight had no effect. The travelers felt in
themselves the entire disappearance of it. They were very near
the neutral point, if they did not touch it.
"One o'clock," said Barbicane.
Michel Ardan applied the lighted match to a train in
communication with the rockets. No detonation was heard in
the inside, for there was no air. But, through the scuttles,
Barbicane saw a prolonged smoke, the flames of which were
immediately extinguished.
The projectile sustained a certain shock, which was sensibly
felt in the interior.
The three friends looked and listened without speaking, and
scarcely breathing. One might have heard the beating of their
hearts amid this perfect silence.
"Are we falling?" asked Michel Ardan, at length.
"No," said Nicholl, "since the bottom of the projectile is not
turning to the lunar disc!"
At this moment, Barbicane, quitting his scuttle, turned to his
two companions. He was frightfully pale, his forehead wrinkled,
and his lips contracted.
"We are falling!" said he.
"Ah!" cried Michel Ardan, "on to the moon?"
"On to the earth!"
"The devil!" exclaimed Michel Ardan, adding philosophically,
"well, when we came into this projectile we were very doubtful
as to the ease with which we should get out of it!"
And now this fearful fall had begun. The speed retained had
borne the projectile beyond the dead point. The explosion of
the rockets could not divert its course. This speed in going
had carried it over the neutral line, and in returning had done
the same thing. The laws of physics condemned it to pass
through every point which it had already gone through. It was
a terrible fall, from a height of 160,000 miles, and no springs
to break it. According to the laws of gunnery, the projectile
must strike the earth with a speed equal to that with which it
left the mouth of the Columbiad, a speed of 16,000 yards in the
last second.
But to give some figures of comparison, it has been reckoned
that an object thrown from the top of the towers of Notre Dame,
the height of which is only 200 feet, will arrive on the
pavement at a speed of 240 miles per hour. Here the projectile
must strike the earth with a speed of 115,200 miles per hour.
"We are lost!" said Michel coolly.
"Very well! if we die," answered Barbicane, with a sort of
religious enthusiasm, "the results of our travels will be
magnificently spread. It is His own secret that God will
tell us! In the other life the soul will want to know nothing,
either of machines or engines! It will be identified with
eternal wisdom!"
"In fact," interrupted Michel Ardan, "the whole of the other
world may well console us for the loss of that inferior orb
called the moon!"
Barbicane crossed his arms on his breast, with a motion of
sublime resignation, saying at the same time:
"The will of heaven be done!"
Well, lieutenant, and our soundings?"
"I think, sir, that the operation is nearing its completion,"
replied Lieutenant Bronsfield. "But who would have thought of
finding such a depth so near in shore, and only 200 miles from
the American coast?"
"Certainly, Bronsfield, there is a great depression," said
Captain Blomsberry. "In this spot there is a submarine valley
worn by Humboldt's current, which skirts the coast of America as
far as the Straits of Magellan."
"These great depths," continued the lieutenant, "are not
favorable for laying telegraphic cables. A level bottom, like
that supporting the American cable between Valentia and
Newfoundland, is much better."
"I agree with you, Bronsfield. With your permission,
lieutenant, where are we now?"
"Sir, at this moment we have 3,508 fathoms of line out, and the
ball which draws the sounding lead has not yet touched the
bottom; for if so, it would have come up of itself."
"Brook's apparatus is very ingenious," said Captain Blomsberry;
"it gives us very exact soundings."
"Touch!" cried at this moment one of the men at the forewheel,
who was superintending the operation.
The captain and the lieutenant mounted the quarterdeck.
"What depth have we?" asked the captain.
"Three thousand six hundred and twenty-seven fathoms," replied
the lieutenant, entering it in his notebook.
"Well, Bronsfield," said the captain, "I will take down
the result. Now haul in the sounding line. It will be the
work of some hours. In that time the engineer can light the
furnaces, and we shall be ready to start as soon as you
have finished. It is ten o'clock, and with your permission,
lieutenant, I will turn in."
"Do so, sir; do so!" replied the lieutenant obligingly.
The captain of the Susquehanna, as brave a man as need be, and
the humble servant of his officers, returned to his cabin, took
a brandy-grog, which earned for the steward no end of praise,
and turned in, not without having complimented his servant upon
his making beds, and slept a peaceful sleep.
It was then ten at night. The eleventh day of the month of
December was drawing to a close in a magnificent night.
The Susquehanna, a corvette of 500 horse-power, of the United
States navy, was occupied in taking soundings in the Pacific
Ocean about 200 miles off the American coast, following that
long peninsula which stretches down the coast of Mexico.
The wind had dropped by degrees. There was no disturbance in
the air. The pennant hung motionless from the maintop-gallant-
mast truck.
Captain Jonathan Blomsberry (cousin-german of Colonel
Blomsberry, one of the most ardent supporters of the Gun Club,
who had married an aunt of the captain and daughter of an
honorable Kentucky merchant)-- Captain Blomsberry could not have
wished for finer weather in which to bring to a close his
delicate operations of sounding. His corvette had not even felt
the great tempest, which by sweeping away the groups of clouds
on the Rocky Mountains, had allowed them to observe the course
of the famous projectile.
Everything went well, and with all the fervor of a Presbyterian,
he did not forget to thank heaven for it. The series of
soundings taken by the Susquehanna, had for its aim the finding
of a favorable spot for the laying of a submarine cable to
connect the Hawaiian Islands with the coast of America.
It was a great undertaking, due to the instigation of a
powerful company. Its managing director, the intelligent Cyrus
Field, purposed even covering all the islands of Oceanica with
a vast electrical network, an immense enterprise, and one worthy
of American genius.
To the corvette Susquehanna had been confided the first
operations of sounding. It was on the night of the 11th-12th of
December, she was in exactly 27@ 7' north latitude, and 41@ 37'
west longitude, on the meridian of Washington.
The moon, then in her last quarter, was beginning to rise above
the horizon.
After the departure of Captain Blomsberry, the lieutenant and
some officers were standing together on the poop. On the
appearance of the moon, their thoughts turned to that orb which
the eyes of a whole hemisphere were contemplating. The best
naval glasses could not have discovered the projectile wandering
around its hemisphere, and yet all were pointed toward that
brilliant disc which millions of eyes were looking at at the
same moment.
"They have been gone ten days," said Lieutenant Bronsfield
at last. "What has become of them?"
"They have arrived, lieutenant," exclaimed a young midshipman,
"and they are doing what all travelers do when they arrive in a
new country, taking a walk!"
"Oh! I am sure of that, if you tell me so, my young friend,"
said Lieutenant Bronsfield, smiling.
"But," continued another officer, "their arrival cannot
be doubted. The projectile was to reach the moon when full
on the 5th at midnight. We are now at the 11th of December, which
makes six days. And in six times twenty-four hours, without
darkness, one would have time to settle comfortably. I fancy I
see my brave countrymen encamped at the bottom of some valley,
on the borders of a Selenite stream, near a projectile half-buried
by its fall amid volcanic rubbish, Captain Nicholl beginning his
leveling operations, President Barbicane writing out his notes,
and Michel Ardan embalming the lunar solitudes with the perfume
of his----"
"Yes! it must be so, it is so!" exclaimed the young midshipman,
worked up to a pitch of enthusiasm by this ideal description of
his superior officer.
"I should like to believe it," replied the lieutenant, who was
quite unmoved. "Unfortunately direct news from the lunar world
is still wanting."
"Beg pardon, lieutenant," said the midshipman, "but cannot
President Barbicane write?"
A burst of laughter greeted this answer.
"No letters!" continued the young man quickly. "The postal
administration has something to see to there."
"Might it not be the telegraphic service that is at fault?"
asked one of the officers ironically.
"Not necessarily," replied the midshipman, not at all confused.
"But it is very easy to set up a graphic communication with
the earth."
"And how?"
"By means of the telescope at Long's Peak. You know it brings
the moon to within four miles of the Rocky Mountains, and that
it shows objects on its surface of only nine feet in diameter.
Very well; let our industrious friends construct a giant
alphabet; let them write words three fathoms long, and sentences
three miles long, and then they can send us news of themselves."
The young midshipman, who had a certain amount of imagination,
was loudly applauded; Lieutenant Bronsfield allowing that the
idea was possible, but observing that if by these means they
could receive news from the lunar world they could not send any
from the terrestrial, unless the Selenites had instruments fit
for taking distant observations at their disposal.
"Evidently," said one of the officers; "but what has become of
the travelers? what they have done, what they have seen, that
above all must interest us. Besides, if the experiment has
succeeded (which I do not doubt), they will try it again.
The Columbiad is still sunk in the soil of Florida. It is now
only a question of powder and shot; and every time the moon is
at her zenith a cargo of visitors may be sent to her."
"It is clear," replied Lieutenant Bronsfield, "that J. T. Maston
will one day join his friends."
"If he will have me," cried the midshipman, "I am ready!"
"Oh! volunteers will not be wanting," answered Bronsfield; "and
if it were allowed, half of the earth's inhabitants would
emigrate to the moon!"
This conversation between the officers of the Susquehanna was
kept up until nearly one in the morning. We cannot say what
blundering systems were broached, what inconsistent theories
advanced by these bold spirits. Since Barbicane's attempt,
nothing seemed impossible to the Americans. They had already
designed an expedition, not only of savants, but of a whole
colony toward the Selenite borders, and a complete army,
consisting of infantry, artillery, and cavalry, to conquer the
lunar world.
At one in the morning, the hauling in of the sounding-line was
not yet completed; 1,670 fathoms were still out, which would
entail some hours' work. According to the commander's orders,
the fires had been lighted, and steam was being got up.
The Susquehanna could have started that very instant.
At that moment (it was seventeen minutes past one in the
morning) Lieutenant Bronsfield was preparing to leave the watch
and return to his cabin, when his attention was attracted by a
distant hissing noise. His comrades and himself first thought
that this hissing was caused by the letting off of steam; but
lifting their heads, they found that the noise was produced in
the highest regions of the air. They had not time to question
each other before the hissing became frightfully intense, and
suddenly there appeared to their dazzled eyes an enormous
meteor, ignited by the rapidity of its course and its friction
through the atmospheric strata.
This fiery mass grew larger to their eyes, and fell, with
the noise of thunder, upon the bowsprit, which it smashed close
to the stem, and buried itself in the waves with a deafening roar!
A few feet nearer, and the Susquehanna would have foundered with
all on board!
At this instant Captain Blomsberry appeared, half-dressed, and
rushing on to the forecastle-deck, whither all the officers had
hurried, exclaimed, "With your permission, gentlemen, what
has happened?"
And the midshipman, making himself as it were the echo of the
body, cried, "Commander, it is `they' come back again!"
"It is `they' come back again!" the young midshipman had said,
and every one had understood him. No one doubted but that the
meteor was the projectile of the Gun Club. As to the travelers
which it enclosed, opinions were divided regarding their fate.
"They are dead!" said one.
"They are alive!" said another; "the crater is deep, and the
shock was deadened."
"But they must have wanted air," continued a third speaker;
"they must have died of suffocation."
"Burned!" replied a fourth; "the projectile was nothing but an
incandescent mass as it crossed the atmosphere."
"What does it matter!" they exclaimed unanimously; "living or
dead, we must pull them out!"
But Captain Blomsberry had assembled his officers, and "with
their permission," was holding a council. They must decide upon
something to be done immediately. The more hasty ones were for
fishing up the projectile. A difficult operation, though not an
impossible one. But the corvette had no proper machinery, which
must be both fixed and powerful; so it was resolved that they
should put in at the nearest port, and give information to the
Gun Club of the projectile's fall.
This determination was unanimous. The choice of the port had
to be discussed. The neighboring coast had no anchorage on
27@ latitude. Higher up, above the peninsula of Monterey, stands
the important town from which it takes its name; but, seated on
the borders of a perfect desert, it was not connected with the
interior by a network of telegraphic wires, and electricity
alone could spread these important news fast enough.
Some degrees above opened the bay of San Francisco. Through the
capital of the gold country communication would be easy with the
heart of the Union. And in less than two days the Susquehanna,
by putting on high pressure, could arrive in that port. She must
therefore start at once.
The fires were made up; they could set off immediately.
Two thousand fathoms of line were still out, which Captain
Blomsberry, not wishing to lose precious time in hauling in,
resolved to cut.
"we will fasten the end to a buoy," said he, "and that buoy will
show us the exact spot where the projectile fell."
"Besides," replied Lieutenant Bronsfield, "we have our situation
exact-- 27@ 7' north latitude and 41@ 37' west longitude."
"Well, Mr. Bronsfield," replied the captain, "now, with your
permission, we will have the line cut."
A strong buoy, strengthened by a couple of spars, was thrown
into the ocean. The end of the rope was carefully lashed to it;
and, left solely to the rise and fall of the billows, the buoy
would not sensibly deviate from the spot.
At this moment the engineer sent to inform the captain that
steam was up and they could start, for which agreeable
communication the captain thanked him. The course was then
given north-northeast, and the corvette, wearing, steered at
full steam direct for San Francisco. It was three in the morning.
Four hundred and fifty miles to cross; it was nothing for a good
vessel like the Susquehanna. In thirty-six hours she had covered
that distance; and on the 14th of December, at twenty-seven
minutes past one at night, she entered the bay of San Francisco.
At the sight of a ship of the national navy arriving at full speed,
with her bowsprit broken, public curiosity was greatly roused.
A dense crowd soon assembled on the quay, waiting for them
to disembark.
After casting anchor, Captain Blomsberry and Lieutenant
Bronsfield entered an eight-pared cutter, which soon brought
them to land.
They jumped on to the quay.
"The telegraph?" they asked, without answering one of the
thousand questions addressed to them.
The officer of the port conducted them to the telegraph office
through a concourse of spectators. Blomsberry and Bronsfield
entered, while the crowd crushed each other at the door.
Some minutes later a fourfold telegram was sent out--the first
to the Naval Secretary at Washington; the second to the
vice-president of the Gun Club, Baltimore; the third to the Hon.
J. T. Maston, Long's Peak, Rocky Mountains; and the fourth to
the sub-director of the Cambridge Observatory, Massachusetts.
It was worded as follows:
In 20@ 7' north latitude, and 41@ 37' west longitude, on the
12th of December, at seventeen minutes past one in the morning,
the projectile of the Columbiad fell into the Pacific.
Send instructions.-- BLOMSBERRY, Commander Susquehanna.
Five minutes afterward the whole town of San Francisco learned
the news. Before six in the evening the different States of the
Union had heard the great catastrophe; and after midnight, by
the cable, the whole of Europe knew the result of the great
American experiment. We will not attempt to picture the effect
produced on the entire world by that unexpected denouement.
On receipt of the telegram the Naval Secretary telegraphed to
the Susquehanna to wait in the bay of San Francisco without
extinguishing her fires. Day and night she must be ready
to put to sea.
The Cambridge observatory called a special meeting; and, with
that composure which distinguishes learned bodies in general,
peacefully discussed the scientific bearings of the question.
At the Gun Club there was an explosion. All the gunners
were assembled. Vice-President the Hon. Wilcome was in the
act of reading the premature dispatch, in which J. T. Maston
and Belfast announced that the projectile had just been seen in
the gigantic reflector of Long's Peak, and also that it was held
by lunar attraction, and was playing the part of under satellite
to the lunar world.
We know the truth on that point.
But on the arrival of Blomsberry's dispatch, so decidely
contradicting J. T. Maston's telegram, two parties were formed
in the bosom of the Gun Club. On one side were those who
admitted the fall of the projectile, and consequently the return
of the travelers; on the other, those who believed in the
observations of Long's Peak, concluded that the commander of the
Susquehanna had made a mistake. To the latter the pretended
projectile was nothing but a meteor! nothing but a meteor, a
shooting globe, which in its fall had smashed the bows of
the corvette. It was difficult to answer this argument, for
the speed with which it was animated must have made observation
very difficult. The commander of the Susquehanna and her
officers might have made a mistake in all good faith; one argument
however, was in their favor, namely, that if the projectile had
fallen on the earth, its place of meeting with the terrestrial
globe could only take place on this 27@ north latitude, and
(taking into consideration the time that had elapsed, and the
rotary motion of the earth) between the 41@ and the 42@ of
west longitude. In any case, it was decided in the Gun Club
that Blomsberry brothers, Bilsby, and Major Elphinstone should
go straight to San Francisco, and consult as to the means of
raising the projectile from the depths of the ocean.
These devoted men set off at once; and the railroad, which will
soon cross the whole of Central America, took them as far as St.
Louis, where the swift mail-coaches awaited them. Almost at the
same moment in which the Secretary of Marine, the vice-president
of the Gun Club, and the sub-director of the Observatory received
the dispatch from San Francisco, the Honorable J. T. Maston was
undergoing the greatest excitement he had ever experienced in his
life, an excitement which even the bursting of his pet gun, which
had more than once nearly cost him his life, had not caused him.
We may remember that the secretary of the Gun Club had started
soon after the projectile (and almost as quickly) for the station
on Long's Peak, in the Rocky Mountains, J. Belfast, director of the
Cambridge Observatory, accompanying him. Arrived there, the two
friends had installed themselves at once, never quitting the
summit of their enormous telescope. We know that this gigantic
instrument had been set up according to the reflecting system,
called by the English "front view." This arrangement subjected
all objects to but one reflection, making the view consequently
much clearer; the result was that, when they were taking
observation, J. T. Maston and Belfast were placed in the upper
part of the instrument and not in the lower, which they reached
by a circular staircase, a masterpiece of lightness, while below
them opened a metal well terminated by the metallic mirror,
which measured two hundred and eighty feet in depth.
It was on a narrow platform placed above the telescope that the
two savants passed their existence, execrating the day which hid
the moon from their eyes, and the clouds which obstinately
veiled her during the night.
What, then, was their delight when, after some days of waiting,
on the night of the 5th of December, they saw the vehicle which
was bearing their friends into space! To this delight succeeded
a great deception, when, trusting to a cursory observation, they
launched their first telegram to the world, erroneously
affirming that the projectile had become a satellite of the
moon, gravitating in an immutable orbit.
From that moment it had never shown itself to their eyes-- a
disappearance all the more easily explained, as it was then
passing behind the moon's invisible disc; but when it was time
for it to reappear on the visible disc, one may imagine the
impatience of the fuming J. T. Maston and his not less
impatient companion. Each minute of the night they thought
they saw the projectile once more, and they did not see it.
Hence constant discussions and violent disputes between them,
Belfast affirming that the projectile could not be seen, J. T.
Maston maintaining that "it had put his eyes out."
"It is the projectile!" repeated J. T. Maston.
"No," answered Belfast; "it is an avalanche detached from a
lunar mountain."
"Well, we shall see it to-morrow."
"No, we shall not see it any more. It is carried into space."
"Yes!"
"No!"
And at these moments, when contradictions rained like hail, the
well-known irritability of the secretary of the Gun Club
constituted a permanent danger for the Honorable Belfast.
The existence of these two together would soon have become
impossible; but an unforseen event cut short their
everlasting discussions.
During the night, from the 14th to the 15th of December, the two
irreconcilable friends were busy observing the lunar disc, J. T.
Maston abusing the learned Belfast as usual, who was by his
side; the secretary of the Gun Club maintaining for the
thousandth time that he had just seen the projectile, and adding
that he could see Michel Ardan's face looking through one of the
scuttles, at the same time enforcing his argument by a series of
gestures which his formidable hook rendered very unpleasant.
At this moment Belfast's servant appeared on the platform (it
was ten at night) and gave him a dispatch. It was the commander
of the Susquehanna's telegram.
Belfast tore the envelope and read, and uttered a cry.
"What!" said J. T. Maston.
"The projectile!"
"Well!"
"Has fallen to the earth!"
Another cry, this time a perfect howl, answered him. He turned
toward J. T. Maston. The unfortunate man, imprudently leaning
over the metal tube, had disappeared in the immense telescope.
A fall of two hundred and eighty feet! Belfast, dismayed,
rushed to the orifice of the reflector.
He breathed. J. T. Maston, caught by his metal hook, was
holding on by one of the rings which bound the telescope
together, uttering fearful cries.
Belfast called. Help was brought, tackle was let down, and they
hoisted up, not without some trouble, the imprudent secretary of
the Gun Club.
He reappeared at the upper orifice without hurt.
"Ah!" said he, "if I had broken the mirror?"
"You would have paid for it," replied Belfast severely.
"And that cursed projectile has fallen?" asked J. T. Maston.
"Into the Pacific!"
"Let us go!"
A quarter of an hour after the two savants were descending the
declivity of the Rocky Mountains; and two days after, at the
same time as their friends of the Gun Club, they arrived at San
Francisco, having killed five horses on the road.
Elphinstone, the brothers Blomsberry, and Bilsby rushed toward
them on their arrival.
"What shall we do?" they exclaimed.
"Fish up the projectile," replied J. T. Maston, "and the sooner
the better."
The spot where the projectile sank under the waves was exactly
known; but the machinery to grasp it and bring it to the surface
of the ocean was still wanting. It must first be invented,
then made. American engineers could not be troubled with
such trifles. The grappling-irons once fixed, by their help
they were sure to raise it in spite of its weight, which was
lessened by the density of the liquid in which it was plunged.
But fishing-up the projectile was not the only thing to be thought of.
They must act promptly in the interest of the travelers. No one
doubted that they were still living.
"Yes," repeated J. T. Maston incessantly, whose confidence
gained over everybody, "our friends are clever people, and they
cannot have fallen like simpletons. They are alive, quite alive;
but we must make haste if we wish to find them so. Food and
water do not trouble me; they have enough for a long while.
But air, air, that is what they will soon want; so quick, quick!"
And they did go quick. They fitted up the Susquehanna for her
new destination. Her powerful machinery was brought to bear
upon the hauling-chains. The aluminum projectile only weighed
19,250 pounds, a weight very inferior to that of the transatlantic
cable which had been drawn up under similar conditions. The only
difficulty was in fishing up a cylindro-conical projectile, the
walls of which were so smooth as to offer no hold for the hooks.
On that account Engineer Murchison hastened to San Francisco,
and had some enormous grappling-irons fixed on an automatic
system, which would never let the projectile go if it once
succeeded in seizing it in its powerful claws. Diving-dresses
were also prepared, which through this impervious covering allowed
the divers to observe the bottom of the sea. He also had put on
board an apparatus of compressed air very cleverly designed.
There were perfect chambers pierced with scuttles, which, with
water let into certain compartments, could draw it down into
great depths. These apparatuses were at San Francisco, where
they had been used in the construction of a submarine breakwater;
and very fortunately it was so, for there was no time to
construct any. But in spite of the perfection of the machinery,
in spite of the ingenuity of the savants entrusted with the use
of them, the success of the operation was far from being certain.
How great were the chances against them, the projectile being
20,000 feet under the water! And if even it was brought to the
surface, how would the travelers have borne the terrible shock
which 20,000 feet of water had perhaps not sufficiently broken?
At any rate they must act quickly. J. T. Maston hurried the
workmen day and night. He was ready to don the diving-dress
himself, or try the air apparatus, in order to reconnoiter the
situation of his courageous friends.
But in spite of all the diligence displayed in preparing the
different engines, in spite of the considerable sum placed at
the disposal of the Gun Club by the Government of the Union,
five long days (five centuries!) elapsed before the preparations
were complete. During this time public opinion was excited to
the highest pitch. Telegrams were exchanged incessantly
throughout the entire world by means of wires and electric cables.
The saving of Barbicane, Nicholl, and Michel Ardan was an
international affair. Every one who had subscribed to the Gun
Club was directly interested in the welfare of the travelers.
At length the hauling-chains, the air-chambers, and the
automatic grappling-irons were put on board. J. T. Maston,
Engineer Murchison, and the delegates of the Gun Club, were
already in their cabins. They had but to start, which they did
on the 21st of December, at eight o'clock at night, the corvette
meeting with a beautiful sea, a northeasterly wind, and rather
sharp cold. The whole population of San Francisco was gathered
on the quay, greatly excited but silent, reserving their hurrahs
for the return. Steam was fully up, and the screw of the
Susquehanna carried them briskly out of the bay.
It is needless to relate the conversations on board between
the officers, sailors, and passengers. All these men had but
one thought. All these hearts beat under the same emotion.
While they were hastening to help them, what were Barbicane and
his companions doing? What had become of them? Were they able to
attempt any bold maneuver to regain their liberty? None could say.
The truth is that every attempt must have failed! Immersed nearly
four miles under the ocean, this metal prison defied every effort
of its prisoners.
On the 23rd inst., at eight in the morning, after a rapid
passage, the Susquehanna was due at the fatal spot. They must
wait till twelve to take the reckoning exactly. The buoy
to which the sounding line had been lashed had not yet
been recognized.
At twelve, Captain Blomsberry, assisted by his officers who
superintended the observations, took the reckoning in the
presence of the delegates of the Gun Club. Then there was a
moment of anxiety. Her position decided, the Susquehanna was
found to be some minutes westward of the spot where the
projectile had disappeared beneath the waves.
The ship's course was then changed so as to reach this exact point.
At forty-seven minutes past twelve they reached the buoy; it was
in perfect condition, and must have shifted but little.
"At last!" exclaimed J. T. Maston.
"Shall we begin?" asked Captain Blomsberry.
"Without losing a second."
Every precaution was taken to keep the corvette almost
completely motionless. Before trying to seize the projectile,
Engineer Murchison wanted to find its exact position at the
bottom of the ocean. The submarine apparatus destined for this
expedition was supplied with air. The working of these engines
was not without danger, for at 20,000 feet below the surface of
the water, and under such great pressure, they were exposed to
fracture, the consequences of which would be dreadful.
J. T. Maston, the brothers Blomsberry, and Engineer Murchison,
without heeding these dangers, took their places in the
air-chamber. The commander, posted on his bridge, superintended
the operation, ready to stop or haul in the chains on the
slightest signal. The screw had been shipped, and the whole
power of the machinery collected on the capstan would have
quickly drawn the apparatus on board. The descent began at
twenty-five minutes past one at night, and the chamber,
drawn under by the reservoirs full of water, disappeared
from the surface of the ocean.
The emotion of the officers and sailors on board was now
divided between the prisoners in the projectile and the
prisoners in the submarine apparatus. As to the latter, they
forgot themselves, and, glued to the windows of the scuttles,
attentively watched the liquid mass through which they were passing.
The descent was rapid. At seventeen minutes past two, J. T.
Maston and his companions had reached the bottom of the Pacific;
but they saw nothing but an arid desert, no longer animated by
either fauna or flora. By the light of their lamps, furnished
with powerful reflectors, they could see the dark beds of the
ocean for a considerable extent of view, but the projectile was
nowhere to be seen.
The impatience of these bold divers cannot be described, and
having an electrical communication with the corvette, they made
a signal already agreed upon, and for the space of a mile the
Susquehanna moved their chamber along some yards above the bottom.
Thus they explored the whole submarine plain, deceived at every
turn by optical illusions which almost broke their hearts.
Here a rock, there a projection from the ground, seemed to be
the much-sought-for projectile; but their mistake was soon
discovered, and then they were in despair.
"But where are they? where are they?" cried J. T. Maston. And the
poor man called loudly upon Nicholl, Barbicane, and Michel Ardan,
as if his unfortunate friends could either hear or answer him
through such an impenetrable medium! The search continued under
these conditions until the vitiated air compelled the divers to ascend.
The hauling in began about six in the evening, and was not ended
before midnight.
"To-morrow," said J. T. Maston, as he set foot on the bridge of
the corvette.
"Yes," answered Captain Blomsberry.
"And on another spot?"
"Yes."
J. T. Maston did not doubt of their final success, but his
companions, no longer upheld by the excitement of the first
hours, understood all the difficulty of the enterprise.
What seemed easy at San Francisco, seemed here in the wide
ocean almost impossible. The chances of success diminished in
rapid proportion; and it was from chance alone that the meeting
with the projectile might be expected.
The next day, the 24th, in spite of the fatigue of the previous
day, the operation was renewed. The corvette advanced some
minutes to westward, and the apparatus, provided with air, bore
the same explorers to the depths of the ocean.
The whole day passed in fruitless research; the bed of the sea
was a desert. The 25th brought no other result, nor the 26th.
It was disheartening. They thought of those unfortunates shut
up in the projectile for twenty-six days. Perhaps at that
moment they were experiencing the first approach of suffocation;
that is, if they had escaped the dangers of their fall. The air
was spent, and doubtless with the air all their morale.
"The air, possibly," answered J. T. Maston resolutely, "but
their morale never!"
On the 28th, after two more days of search, all hope was gone.
This projectile was but an atom in the immensity of the ocean.
They must give up all idea of finding it.
But J. T. Maston would not hear of going away. He would not
abandon the place without at least discovering the tomb of
his friends. But Commander Blomsberry could no longer persist,
and in spite of the exclamations of the worthy secretary, was
obliged to give the order to sail.
On the 29th of December, at nine A.M., the Susquehanna, heading
northeast, resumed her course to the bay of San Francisco.
It was ten in the morning; the corvette was under half-steam, as
it was regretting to leave the spot where the catastrophe had
taken place, when a sailor, perched on the main-top-gallant
crosstrees, watching the sea, cried suddenly:
"A buoy on the lee bow!"
The officers looked in the direction indicated, and by the help
of their glasses saw that the object signalled had the
appearance of one of those buoys which are used to mark the
passages of bays or rivers. But, singularly to say, a flag
floating on the wind surmounted its cone, which emerged five
or six feet out of water. This buoy shone under the rays
of the sun as if it had been made of plates of silver.
Commander Blomsberry, J. T. Maston, and the delegates of the Gun
Club were mounted on the bridge, examining this object straying
at random on the waves.
All looked with feverish anxiety, but in silence. None dared
give expression to the thoughts which came to the minds of all.
The corvette approached to within two cables' lengths of the object.
A shudder ran through the whole crew. That flag was the
American flag!
At this moment a perfect howling was heard; it was the brave J.
T. Maston who had just fallen all in a heap. Forgetting on the
one hand that his right arm had been replaced by an iron hook,
and on the other that a simple gutta-percha cap covered his
brain-box, he had given himself a formidable blow.
They hurried toward him, picked him up, restored him to life.
And what were his first words?
"Ah! trebly brutes! quadruply idiots! quintuply boobies that we are!"
"What is it?" exclaimed everyone around him.
"What is it?"
"Come, speak!"
"It is, simpletons," howled the terrible secretary, "it is that
the projectile only weighs 19,250 pounds!"
"Well?"
"And that it displaces twenty-eight tons, or in other words
56,000 pounds, and that consequently it floats!"
Ah! what stress the worthy man had laid on the verb "float!"
And it was true! All, yes! all these savants had forgotten
this fundamental law, namely, that on account of its specific
lightness, the projectile, after having been drawn by its fall
to the greatest depths of the ocean, must naturally return to
the surface. And now it was floating quietly at the mercy of
the waves.
The boats were put to sea. J. T. Maston and his friends had
rushed into them! Excitement was at its height! Every heart
beat loudly while they advanced to the projectile. What did
it contain? Living or dead?
Living, yes! living, at least unless death had struck
Barbicane and his two friends since they had hoisted the flag.
Profound silence reigned on the boats. All were breathless.
Eyes no longer saw. One of the scuttles of the projectile was open.
Some pieces of glass remained in the frame, showing that it had
been broken. This scuttle was actually five feet above the water.
A boat came alongside, that of J. T. Maston, and J. T. Maston
rushed to the broken window.
At that moment they heard a clear and merry voice, the voice of
Michel Ardan, exclaiming in an accent of triumph:
"White all, Barbicane, white all!"
Barbicane, Michel Ardan, and Nicholl were playing at dominoes!
We may remember the intense sympathy which had accompanied the
travelers on their departure. If at the beginning of the
enterprise they had excited such emotion both in the old and
new world, with what enthusiasm would they be received on
their return! The millions of spectators which had beset
the peninsula of Florida, would they not rush to meet these
sublime adventurers? Those legions of strangers, hurrying from
all parts of the globe toward the American shores, would they
leave the Union without having seen Barbicane, Nicholl, and
Michel Ardan? No! and the ardent passion of the public was
bound to respond worthily to the greatness of the enterprise.
Human creatures who had left the terrestrial sphere, and returned
after this strange voyage into celestial space, could not fail
to be received as the prophet Elias would be if he came back
to earth. To see them first, and then to hear them, such was
the universal longing.
Barbicane, Michel Ardan, Nicholl, and the delegates of the Gun
Club, returning without delay to Baltimore, were received with
indescribable enthusiasm. The notes of President Barbicane's
voyage were ready to be given to the public. The New York
Herald bought the manuscript at a price not yet known, but
which must have been very high. Indeed, during the publication
of "A Journey to the Moon," the sale of this paper amounted to
five millions of copies. Three days after the return of
the travelers to the earth, the slightest detail of their
expedition was known. There remained nothing more but to see
the heroes of this superhuman enterprise.
The expedition of Barbicane and his friends round the moon had
enabled them to correct the many admitted theories regarding the
terrestrial satellite. These savants had observed de visu,
and under particular circumstances. They knew what systems
should be rejected, what retained with regard to the formation
of that orb, its origin, its habitability. Its past, present,
and future had even given up their last secrets. Who could
advance objections against conscientious observers, who at less
than twenty-four miles distance had marked that curious mountain
of Tycho, the strangest system of lunar orography? How answer
those savants whose sight had penetrated the abyss of
Pluto's circle? How contradict those bold ones whom the chances
of their enterprise had borne over that invisible face of the
disc, which no human eye until then had ever seen? It was now
their turn to impose some limit on that selenographic science,
which had reconstructed the lunar world as Cuvier did the
skeleton of a fossil, and say, "The moon was this, a habitable
world, inhabited before the earth. The moon is that, a world
uninhabitable, and now uninhabited."
To celebrate the return of its most illustrious member and his
two companions, the Gun Club decided upon giving a banquet, but
a banquet worthy of the conquerors, worthy of the American
people, and under such conditions that all the inhabitants of
the Union could directly take part in it.
All the head lines of railroads in the States were joined by
flying rails; and on all the platforms, lined with the same
flags, and decorated with the same ornaments, were tables laid
and all served alike. At certain hours, successively
calculated, marked by electric clocks which beat the seconds at
the same time, the population were invited to take their places
at the banquet tables. For four days, from the 5th to the 9th
of January, the trains were stopped as they are on Sundays on
the railways of the United States, and every road was open.
One engine only at full speed, drawing a triumphal carriage, had
the right of traveling for those four days on the railroads of
the United States.
The engine was manned by a driver and a stoker, and bore, by
special favor, the Hon. J. T. Maston, secretary of the Gun Club.
The carriage was reserved for President Barbicane, Colonel
Nicholl, and Michel Ardan. At the whistle of the driver, amid
the hurrahs, and all the admiring vociferations of the American
language, the train left the platform of Baltimore. It traveled
at a speed of one hundred and sixty miles in the hour. But what
was this speed compared with that which had carried the three
heroes from the mouth of the Columbiad?
Thus they sped from one town to the other, finding whole
populations at table on their road, saluting them with the same
acclamations, lavishing the same bravos! They traveled in this
way through the east of the Union, Pennsylvania, Connecticut,
Massachusetts, Vermont, Maine, and New Hampshire; the north and
west by New York, Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin; returning to
the south by Illinois, Missouri, Arkansas, Texas, and Louisiana;
they went to the southeast by Alabama and Florida, going up by
Georgia and the Carolinas, visiting the center by Tennessee,
Kentucky, Virginia, and Indiana, and, after quitting the
Washington station, re-entered Baltimore, where for four days
one would have thought that the United States of America were
seated at one immense banquet, saluting them simultaneously with
the same hurrahs! The apotheosis was worthy of these three
heroes whom fable would have placed in the rank of demigods.
And now will this attempt, unprecedented in the annals of
travels, lead to any practical result? Will direct
communication with the moon ever be established? Will they
ever lay the foundation of a traveling service through the
solar world? Will they go from one planet to another, from
Jupiter to Mercury, and after awhile from one star to another,
from the Polar to Sirius? Will this means of locomotion allow
us to visit those suns which swarm in the firmament?
To such questions no answer can be given. But knowing the bold
ingenuity of the Anglo-Saxon race, no one would be astonished if
the Americans seek to make some use of President Barbicane's attempt.
Thus, some time after the return of the travelers, the public
received with marked favor the announcement of a company,
limited, with a capital of a hundred million of dollars, divided
into a hundred thousand shares of a thousand dollars each, under
the name of the "National Company of Interstellary Communication."
President, Barbicane; vice-president, Captain Nicholl; secretary,
J. T. Maston; director of movements, Michel Ardan.
And as it is part of the American temperament to foresee
everything in business, even failure, the Honorable Harry
Trolloppe, judge commissioner, and Francis Drayton, magistrate,
were nominated beforehand!