"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 s.p.a.ce. 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 s.p.a.ce. 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 appet.i.te. Nothing was so excellent as the soup liquefied by the heat of the gas; nothing better than the preserved meat. Some gla.s.ses 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 succ.u.mbed 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 s.p.a.ce 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 a.s.sumed fanciful att.i.tudes 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 sh.e.l.l, 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 s.p.a.ce, 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.s the zenith of Florida? In eighteen years" time will she not occupy exactly the same place as to-day?"