At 6 p.m. the projectile passed the South Pole at less than thirty miles, a distance equal to that already reached at the North Pole. The elliptical curve was, therefore, being rigorously described.
At that moment the travellers re-entered the beneficent sunshine. They saw once more the stars moving slowly from east to west. The radiant orb was saluted with a triple hurrah. With its light came also its heat, which soon pierced the middle walls. The windows resumed their accustomed transparency. Their "layer of ice" melted as if by enchantment. The gas was immediately extinguished by way of economy. The air apparatus alone was to consume its habitual quantity.
"Ah!" said Nicholl, "sunshine is good! How impatiently after their long nights the Selenites must await the reappearance of the orb of day!"
"Yes," answered Michel Ardan, "imbibing, as it were, the brilliant ether, light and heat, all life is in them."
At that moment the bottom of the projectile moved slightly from the lunar surface in order to describe a rather long elliptical orbit. From that point, if the earth had been full, Barbicane and his friends could have seen it again. But, drowned in the sun's irradiation, it remained absolutely invisible. Another spectacle attracted their eyes, presented by the southern region of the moon, brought by the telescopes to within half-a-mile. They left the port-lights no more, and noted all the details of the strange continent.
Mounts Doerfel and Leibnitz formed two separate groups stretching nearly to the South Pole; the former group extends from the Pole to the 84th parallel on the eastern part of the orb; the second, starting from the eastern border, stretches from the 65th degree of latitude to the Pole.
On their capriciously-formed ridge appeared dazzling sheets of light like those signalised by Father Secchi. With more certainty than the illustrious Roman astronomer, Barbicane was enabled to establish their nature.
"It is snow," cried he.
"Snow?" echoed Nicholl.
"Yes, Nicholl, snow, the surface of which is profoundly frozen. Look how it reflects the luminous rays. Cooled lava would not give so intense a reflection. Therefore there is water and air upon the moon, as little as you like, but the fact can no longer be contested."
No, it could not be, and if ever Barbicane saw the earth again his notes would testify to this fact, important in selenographic observations.
These Mounts Doerfel and Leibnitz arose in the midst of plains of moderate extent, bounded by an indefinite succession of amphitheatres and circular ramparts. These two chains are the only ones which are met with in the region of amphitheatres. Relatively they are not very broken, and only throw out here and there some sharp peaks, the highest of which measures 7,603 metres.
The projectile hung high above all this, and the relief disappeared in the intense brilliancy of the disc.
Then reappeared to the eyes of the travellers that original aspect of the lunar landscapes, raw in tone, without gradation of colours, only white and black, for diffused light was wanting. Still the sight of this desolate world was very curious on account of its very strangeness. They were moving above this chaotic region as if carried along by the breath of a tempest, seeing the summits fly under their feet, looking down the cavities, climbing the ramparts, sounding the mysterious holes. But there was no trace of vegetation, no appearance of cities, nothing but stratifications, lava streams, polished like immense mirrors, which reflect the solar rays with unbearable brilliancy. There was no appearance of a living world, everything of a dead one, where the avalanches rolling from the summit of the mountains rushed noiselessly. They had plenty of movement, but noise was wanting still.
Barbicane established the fact, by reiterated observation, that the reliefs on the borders of the disc, although they had been acted upon by different forces to those of the central region, presented a uniform conformation. There was the same circular aggregation, the same accidents of ground. Still it might be supposed that their arrangements were not completely analogous. In the centre the still malleable crust of the moon suffered the double attraction of the moon and the earth acting in inverse ways according to a radius prolonged from one to the other. On the borders of the disc, on the contrary, the lunar attraction has been, thus to say, perpendicular with the terrestrial attraction. It seems, therefore, that the reliefs on the soil produced under these conditions ought to have taken a different form. Yet they had not, therefore the moon had found in herself alone the principle of her formation and constitution. She owed nothing to foreign influences, which justified the remarkable proposition of Arago's, "No action exterior to the moon has contributed to the production of her relief."
However that may be in its actual condition, this world was the image of death without it being possible to say that life had ever animated it.
Michel Ardan, however, thought he recognised a heap of ruins, to which he drew Barbicane's attention. It was situated in about the 80th parallel and 30° longitude. This heap of stones, pretty regularly made, was in the shape of a vast fortress, overlooking one of those long furrows which served as river-beds in ante-historical times. Not far off rose to a height of 5,646 metres the circular mountain called Short, equal to the Asiatic Caucasus. Michel Ardan, with his habitual ardour, maintained "the evidences" of his fortress. Below he perceived the dismantled ramparts of a town; here the arch of a portico, still intact; there two or three columns lying on their side; farther on a succession of archpieces, which must have supported the conduct of an aqueduct; in another part the sunken pillars of a gigantic bridge run into the thickest part of the furrow. He distinguished all that, but with so much imagination in his eyes, through a telescope so fanciful, that his observation cannot be relied upon. And yet who would affirm, who would dare to say, that the amiable fellow had not really seen what his two companions would not see?
The moments were too precious to be sacrificed to an idle discussion. The Selenite city, whether real or pretended, had disappeared in the distance. The projectile began to get farther away from the lunar disc, and the details of the ground began to be lost in a confused jumble. The reliefs, amphitheatres, craters, and plains alone remained, and still showed their boundary-lines distinctly.
At that moment there stretched to the left one of the finest amphitheatres in lunar orography. It was Newton, which Barbicane easily recognised by referring to theMappa Selenographica.
Newton is situated in exactly 77° south lat. and 16° east long. It forms a circular crater, the ramparts of which, 7,264 metres high, seemed to be inaccessible.
Barbicane made his companions notice that the height of that mountain above the surrounding plain was far from being equal to the depth of its crater. This enormous hole was beyond all measurement, and made a gloomy abyss, the bottom of which the sun's rays could never reach. There, according to Humboldt, utter darkness reigns, which the light of the sun and the earth could not break. The mythologists would have made it with justice hell's mouth.
"Newton," said Barbicane, "is the most perfect type of the circular mountains, of which the earth possesses no specimen. They prove that the formation of the moon by cooling was due to violent causes, for whilst under the influence of interior fire the reliefs were thrown up to considerable heights, the bottom dropped in, and became lower than the lunar level."
"I do not say no," answered Michel Ardan.
A few minutes after having passed Newton the projectile stood directly over the circular mountain of Moret. It also passed rather high above the summits of Blancanus, and about 7.30 p.m. it reached the amphitheatre of Clavius.
This circle, one of the most remarkable on the disc, is situated in south lat. 58° and east long. 15°. Its height is estimated at 7,091 metres. The travellers at a distance of 200 miles, reduced to two by the telescopes, could admire the arrangement of this vast crater.
"The terrestrial volcanoes," said Barbicane, "are only molehills compared to the volcanoes of the moon. Measuring the ancient craters formed by the first eruptions of Vesuvius and Etna, they are found to be scarcely 6,000 metres wide. In France the circle of the Cantal measures five miles; at Ceylon the circle of the island is forty miles, and is considered the largest on the globe. What are these diameters compared to that of Clavius, which we are over in this moment?"
"What is its width?" asked Nicholl.
"About seventy miles," answered Barbicane. "This amphitheatre is certainly the largest on the moon, but many are fifty miles wide!"
"Ah, my friends," exclaimed Michel Ardan, "can you imagine what this peaceful orb of night was once like? when these craters vomited torrents of lava and stones, with clouds of smoke and sheets of flame? What a prodigious spectacle formerly, and now what a falling off! This moon is now only the meagre case of fireworks, of which the rockets, serpents, suns, and wheels, after going off magnificently, only leave torn pieces of cardboard. Who can tell the cause, reason, or justification of such cataclysms?"
Barbicane did not listen to Michel Ardan. He was contemplating those ramparts of Clavius, formed of wide mountains several leagues thick. At the bottom of its immense cavity lay hundreds of small extinct craters, making the soil like a sieve, and overlooked by a peak more than 15,000 feet high.
The plain around had a desolate aspect. Nothing so arid as these reliefs, nothing so sad as these ruins of mountains, if so they may be called, as those heaps of peaks and mountains encumbering the ground! The satellite seemed to have been blown up in this place.
The projectile still went on, and the chaos was still the same. Circles, craters, and mountains succeeded each other incessantly. No more plains or seas—an interminable Switzerland or Norway. Lastly, in the centre of the creviced region at its culminating point, the most splendid mountain of the lunar disc, the dazzling Tycho, to which posterity still gives the name of the illustrious Danish astronomer.
Whilst observing the full moon in a cloudless sky, there is no one who has not remarked this brilliant point on the southern hemisphere. Michel Ardan, to qualify it, employed all the metaphors his imagination could furnish him with. To him Tycho was an ardent focus of light, a centre of irradiation, a crater vomiting flames! It was the axle of a fiery wheel, a sea-star encircling the disc with its silver tentacles, an immense eye darting fire, a nimbo made for Pluto's head! It was a star hurled by the hand of the Creator, and fallen upon the lunar surface!
Tycho forms such a luminous concentration that the inhabitants of the earth can see it without a telescope, although they are at a distance of 100,000 leagues. It will, therefore, be readily imagined what its intensity must have been in the eyes of observers placed at fifty leagues only.
Across this pure ether its brilliancy was so unbearable that Barbicane and his friends were obliged to blacken the object-glasses of their telescopes with gas-smoke in order to support it. Then, mute, hardly emitting a few admirative interjections, they looked and contemplated. All their sentiments, all their impressions were concentrated in their eyes, as life, under violent emotion, is concentrated in the heart.
Tycho belongs to the system of radiating mountains, like Aristarchus and Copernicus. But it testified the most completely of all to the terrible volcanic action to which the formation of the moon is due.
Tycho is situated in south lat. 43° and east long. 12°. Its centre is occupied by a crater more than forty miles wide. It affects a slightly elliptical form, and is inclosed by circular ramparts, which on the east and west overlook the exterior plain from a height of 5,000 metres. It is an aggregation of Mont Blancs, placed round a common centre, and crowned with shining rays.
Photography itself could never represent what this incomparable mountain, with all its projections converging to it and its interior excrescences, is really like. In fact, it is during the full moon that Tycho is seen in all its splendour. Then all shadows disappear, the foreshortenings of perspective disappear, and all proofs come out white—an unfortunate circumstance, for this strange region would have been curious to reproduce with photographic exactitude. It is only an agglomeration of holes, craters, circles, a vertiginous network of crests. It will be understood, therefore, that the bubblings of this central eruption have kept their first forms. Crystallised by cooling, they have stereotyped the aspect which the moon formerly presented under the influence of Plutonic forces.
The distance which separated the travellers from the circular summits of Tycho was not so great that the travellers could not survey its principal details. Even upon the embankment which forms the ramparts of Tycho, the mountains hanging to the interior and exterior slopes rose in stories like gigantic terraces. They appeared to be higher by 300 or 400 feet on the west than on the east. No system of terrestrial castrametation could equal these natural fortifications. A town built at the bottom of this circular cavity would have been utterly inaccessible.
Inaccessible and marvellously extended over this ground of picturesque relief! Nature had not left the bottom of this crater flat and empty. It possessed a special orography, a mountain system which made it a world apart. The travellers clearly distinguished the cones, central hills, remarkable movements of the ground, naturally disposed for the reception of masterpieces of Selenite architecture. There was the place for a temple, here for a forum, there the foundations of a palace, there the plateau of a citadel, the whole overlooked by a central mountain 1,500 feet high—a vast circuit which would have held ancient Rome ten times over.
"Ah!" exclaimed Michel Ardan, made enthusiastic by the sight, "what grand towns could be built in this circle of mountains! A tranquil city, a peaceful refuge, away from all human cares! How all misanthropes could live there, all haters of humanity, all those disgusted with social life!"
"All! It would be too small for them!" replied Barbicane simply.
In the meantime the projectile had passed the neighbourhood of Tycho. Barbicane and his two friends then observed, with the most scrupulous attention, those brilliant radii which the celebrated mountain disperses so curiously on every horizon.
What was this radiating aureole? What geological phenomenon had caused those ardent beams? This question justly occupied Barbicane. Under his eyes, in every direction, ran luminous furrows, with raised banks and concave middle, some ten miles, others more than twenty miles wide. These shining trails ran in certain places at least 300 leagues from Tycho, and seemed to cover, especially towards the east, north-east, and north, half the southern hemisphere. One of these furrows stretched as far as the amphitheatre of Neander, situated on the 40th meridian. Another went rounding off through the Sea of Nectar and broke against the chain of the Pyrenees after a run of 400 leagues; others towards the west covered with a luminous network the Sea of Clouds and the Sea of Humours.
What was the origin of these shining rays running equally over plains and reliefs, however high? They all started from a common centre, the crater of Tycho. They emanated from it.
Herschel attributed their brilliant aspect to ancient streams of lava congealed by the cold, an opinion which has not been generally received. Other astronomers have seen in these inexplicable rays a kind ofmoraines, ranges of erratic blocks thrown out at the epoch of the formation of Tycho.
"And why should it not be so?" asked Nicholl of Barbicane, who rejected these different opinions at the same time that he related them.
"Because the regularity of these luminous lines, and the violence necessary to send them to such a distance, are inexplicable.
"Par bleu!" replied Michel Ardan. "I can easily explain to myself the origin of these rays."
"Indeed," said Barbicane.
"Yes," resumed Michel. "Why should they not be the cracks caused by the shock of a bullet or a stone upon a pane of glass?"
"Good," replied Barbicane, smiling; "and what hand would be powerful enough to hurl the stone that would produce such a shock?"
"A hand is not necessary," answered Michel, who would not give in; "and as to the stone, let us say it is a comet."
"Ah! comets?" exclaimed Barbicane; "those much-abused comets! My worthy Michel, your explanation is not bad, but your comet is not wanted. The shock might have come from the interior of the planet. A violent contraction of the lunar crust whilst cooling was enough to make that gigantic crack."
"Contraction let it be—something like a lunar colic," answered MichelArdan.
"Besides," added Barbicane, "that is also the opinion of an Englishsavant, Nasmyth, and it seems to me to explain the radiation of these mountains sufficiently."
"That Nasmyth was no fool!" answered Michel.
The travellers, who could never weary of such a spectacle, long admired the splendours of Tycho. Their projectile, bathed in that double irradiation of the sun and moon, must have appeared like a globe of fire. They had, therefore, suddenly passed from considerable cold to intense heat. Nature was thus preparing them to become Selenites.
To become Selenites! That idea again brought up the question of the habitability of the moon. After what they had seen, could the travellers solve it? Could they conclude for or against? Michel Ardan asked his two friends to give utterance to their opinion, and asked them outright if they thought that humanity and animality were represented in the lunar world.
"I think we cannot answer," said Barbicane, "but in my opinion the question ought not to be stated in that form. I ask to be allowed to state it differently."
"State it as you like," answered Michel.
"This is it," resumed Barbicane. "The problem is double, and requires a double solution. Is the moon habitable? Has it been inhabited?"
"Right," said Nicholl. "Let us first see if the moon is habitable."
"To tell the truth, I know nothing about it," replied Michel.
"And I answer in the negative," said Barbicane. "In her actual state, with her certainly very slight atmosphere, her seas mostly dried up, her insufficient water, her restricted vegetation, her abrupt alternations of heat and cold, her nights and days 354 hours long, the moon does not appear habitable to me, nor propitious to the development of the animal kingdom, nor sufficient for the needs of existence such as we understand it."
"Agreed," answered Nicholl; "but is not the moon habitable for beings differently organised to us?"
"That question is more difficult to answer," replied Barbicane. "I will try to do it, however, but I ask Nicholl if movement seems to him the necessary result of existence, under no matter what organisation?"
"Without the slightest doubt," answered Nicholl.
"Well, then, my worthy companion, my answer will be that we have seen the lunar continent at a distance of 500 yards, and that nothing appeared to be moving on the surface of the moon. The presence of no matter what form of humanity would be betrayed by appropriations, different constructions, or even ruins. What did we see? Everywhere the geological work of Nature, never the work of man. If, therefore, representatives of the animal kingdom exist upon the moon, they have taken refuge in those bottomless cavities which the eye cannot reach. And I cannot admit that either, for they would have left traces of their passage upon the plains which the atmosphere, however slight, covers. Now these traces are nowhere visible. Therefore the only hypothesis that remains is one of living beings without movement or life."
"You might just as well say living creatures who are not alive."
"Precisely," answered Barbicane, "which for us has no meaning."
"Then now we may formulate our opinion," said Michel.
"Yes," answered Nicholl.
"Very well," resumed Michel Ardan; "the Scientific Commission, meeting in the projectile of the Gun Club, after having supported its arguments upon fresh facts lately observed, decides unanimously upon the question of the habitability of the moon—'No, the moon is not inhabited.'"
This decision was taken down by Barbicane in his notebook, where he had already written theprocès-verbalof the sitting of December 6th.
"Now," said Nicholl, "let us attack the second question, depending on the first. I therefore ask the honourable Commission if the moon is not habitable, has it been inhabited?"
"Answer, Citizen Barbicane," said Michel Ardan.
"My friends," answered Barbicane, "I did not undertake this journey to form an opinion upon the ancient habitability of our satellite. I may add that my personal observations only confirm me in this opinion. I believe, I even affirm, that the moon has been inhabited by a human race organised like ours, that it has produced animals anatomically formed like terrestrial animals; but I add that these races, human or animal, have had their day, and are for ever extinct."
"Then," asked Michel, "the moon is an older world than the earth?"
"No," answered Barbicane with conviction, "but a world that has grown old more quickly, whose formation and deformation have been more rapid. Relatively the organising forces of matter have been much more violent in the interior of the moon than in the interior of the celestial globe. The actual state of this disc, broken up, tormented, and swollen, proves this abundantly. In their origin the moon and the earth were only gases. These gases became liquids under different influences, and the solid mass was formed afterwards. But it is certain that our globe was gas or liquid still when the moon, already solidified by cooling, became habitable."
"I believe that," said Nicholl.
"Then," resumed Barbicane, "it was surrounded by atmosphere. The water held in by the gassy element could not evaporate. Under the influence of air, water, light, and heat, solar and central, vegetation took possession of these continents prepared for its reception, and certainly life manifested itself about that epoch, for Nature does not spend itself in inutilities, and a world so marvellously habitable must have been inhabited."
"Still," answered Nicholl, "many phenomena inherent to the movements of our satellite must have prevented the expansion of the vegetable and animal kingdoms. The days and nights 354 hours long, for example."
"At the terrestrial poles," said Michel, "they last six months."
"That is not a valuable argument, as the poles are not inhabited."
"In the actual state of the moon," resumed Barbicane, "the long nights and days create differences of temperature insupportable to the constitution, but it was not so at that epoch of historical times. The atmosphere enveloped the disc with a fluid mantle. Vapour deposited itself in the form of clouds. This natural screen tempered the ardour of the solar lays, and retained the nocturnal radiation. Both light and heat could diffuse themselves in the air. Hence there was equilibrium between the influences which no longer exists now that the atmosphere has almost entirely disappeared. Besides, I shall astonish you—"
"Astonish us?" said Michel Ardan.
"But I believe that at the epoch when the moon was inhabited the nights and days did not last 354 hours!"
"Why so?" asked Nicholl quickly.
"Because it is very probable that then the moon's movement of rotation on her axis was not equal to her movement of revolution, an equality which puts every point of the lunar disc under the action of the solar rays for fifteen days."
"Agreed," answered Nicholl; "but why should not these movements have been equal, since they are so actually?"
"Because that equality has only been determined by terrestrial attraction. Now, how do we know that this attraction was powerful enough to influence the movements of the moon at the epoch the earth was still fluid?"
"True," replied Nicholl; "and who can say that the moon has always been the earth's satellite?"
"And who can say," exclaimed Michel Ardan, "that the moon did not exist before the earth?"
Imagination began to wander in the indefinite field of hypotheses.Barbicane wished to hold them in.
"Those," said he, "are speculations too high, problems really insoluble. Do not let us enter into them. Let us only admit the insufficiency of primordial attraction, and then by the inequality of rotation and revolution days and nights could succeed each other upon the moon as they do upon the earth. Besides, even under those conditions life was possible."
"Then," asked Michel Ardan, "humanity has quite disappeared from the moon?"
"Yes," answered Barbicane, "after having, doubtless, existed for thousands of centuries. Then gradually the atmosphere becoming rarefied, the disc will again be uninhabitable like the terrestrial globe will one day become by cooling."
"By cooling?"
"Certainly," answered Barbicane. "As the interior fires became extinguished the incandescent matter was concentrated and the lunar disc became cool. By degrees the consequences of this phenomenon came about—the disappearance of organic beings and the disappearance of vegetation. Soon the atmosphere became rarefied, and was probably drawn away by terrestrial attraction; the breathable air disappeared, and so did water by evaporation. At that epoch the moon became uninhabitable, and was no longer inhabited. It was a dead world like it is to-day."
"And you say that the like fate is reserved for the earth?"
"Very probably."
"But when?"
"When the cooling of its crust will have made it uninhabitable."
"Has the time it will take our unfortunate globe to melt been calculated?"
"Certainly."
"And you know the reason?"
"Perfectly."
"Then tell us, sulkysavant—you make me boil with impatience."
"Well, my worthy Michel," answered Barbicane tranquilly, "it is well known what diminution of temperature the earth suffers in the lapse of a century. Now, according to certain calculations, that average temperature will be brought down to zero after a period of 400,000 years!"
"Four hundred thousand years!" exclaimed Michel. "Ah! I breathe again! I was really frightened. I imagined from listening to you that we had only fifty thousand years to live!"
Barbicane and Nicholl could not help laughing at their companion's uneasiness. Then Nicholl, who wanted to have done with it, reminded them of the second question to be settled.
"Has the moon been inhabited?" he asked.
The answer was unanimously in the affirmative.
During this discussion, fruitful in somewhat hazardous theories, although it resumed the general ideas of science on the subject, the projectile had run rapidly towards the lunar equator, at the same time that it went farther away from the lunar disc. It had passed the circle of Willem, and the 40th parallel, at a distance of 400 miles. Then leaving Pitatus to the right, on the 30th degree, it went along the south of the Sea of Clouds, of which it had already approached the north. Different amphitheatres appeared confusedly under the white light of the full moon—Bouillaud, Purbach, almost square with a central crater, then Arzachel, whose interior mountain shone with indefinable brilliancy.
At last, as the projectile went farther and farther away, the details faded from the travellers' eyes, the mountains were confounded in the distance, and all that remained of the marvellous, fantastical, and wonderful satellite of the earth was the imperishable remembrance.
For some time Barbicane and his companions, mute and pensive, looked at this world, which they had only seen from a distance, like Moses saw Canaan, and from which they were going away for ever. The position of the projectile relatively to the moon was modified, and now its lower end was turned towards the earth.
This change, verified by Barbicane, surprised him greatly. If the bullet was going to gravitate round the satellite in an elliptical orbit, why was not its heaviest part turned towards it like the moon to the earth? There again was an obscure point.
By watching the progress of the projectile they could see that it was following away from the moon an analogous curve to that by which it approached her. It was, therefore, describing a very long ellipsis which would probably extend to the point of equal attraction, where the influences of the earth and her satellite are neutralised.
Such was the conclusion which Barbicane correctly drew from the facts observed, a conviction which his two friends shared with him.
Questions immediately began to shower upon him.
"What will become of us after we have reached the neutral point?" askedMichel Ardan.
"That is unknown!" answered Barbicane.
"But we can make suppositions, I suppose?"
"We can make two," answered Barbicane. "Either the velocity of the projectile will then be insufficient, and it will remain entirely motionless on that line of double attraction—"
"I would rather have the other supposition, whatever it is," repliedMichel.
"Or the velocity will be sufficient," resumed Barbicane, "and it will continue its elliptical orbit, and gravitate eternally round the orb of night."
"Not very consoling that revolution," said Michel, "to become the humble servants of a moon whom we are in the habit of considering our servant. And is that the future that awaits us?"
Neither Barbicane nor Nicholl answered.
"Why do you not answer?" asked the impatient Michel.
"There is nothing to answer," said Nicholl.
"Can nothing be done?"
"No," answered Barbicane. "Do you pretend to struggle with the impossible?"
"Why not? Ought a Frenchman and two Americans to recoil at such a word?"
"But what do you want to do?"
"Command the motion that is carrying us along!"
"Command it?"
"Yes," resumed Michel, getting animated, "stop it or modify it; use it for the accomplishment of our plans."
"And how, pray?"
"That is your business! If artillerymen are not masters of their bullets they are no longer artillerymen. If the projectile commands the gunner, the gunner ought to be rammed instead into the cannon! Finesavants, truly! who don't know now what to do after having induced me—"
"Induced!" cried Barbicane and Nicholl. "Induced! What do you mean by that?"
"No recriminations!" said Michel. "I do not complain. The journey pleases me. The bullet suits me. But let us do all that is humanly possible to fall somewhere, if only upon the moon."
"We should only be too glad, my worthy Michel," answered Barbicane, "but we have no means of doing it."
"Can we not modify the motion of the projectile?"
"No."
"Nor diminish its speed?"
"No."
"Not even by lightening it like they lighten an overloaded ship?"
"What can we throw out?" answered Nicholl. "We have no ballast on board. And besides, it seems to me that a lightened projectile would go on more quickly."
"Less quickly," said Michel.
"More quickly," replied Nicholl.
"Neither more nor less quickly," answered Barbicane, wishing to make his two friends agree, "for we are moving in the void where we cannot take specific weight into account."
"Very well," exclaimed Michel Ardan in a determined tone; "there is only one thing to do."
"What is that?" asked Nicholl.
"Have breakfast," imperturbably answered the audacious Frenchman, who always brought that solution to the greatest difficulties.
In fact, though that operation would have no influence on the direction of the projectile, it might be attempted without risk, and even successfully from the point of view of the stomach. Decidedly the amiable Michel had only good ideas.
They breakfasted, therefore, at 2 a.m., but the hour was not of much consequence. Michel served up his habitualmenu, crowned by an amiable bottle out of his secret cellar. If ideas did not come into their heads the Chambertin of 1863 must be despaired of.
The meal over, observations began again.
The objects they had thrown out of the projectile still followed it at the same invariable distance. It was evident that the bullet in its movement of translation round the moon had not passed through any atmosphere, for the specific weight of these objects would have modified their respective distances.
There was nothing to see on the side of the terrestrial globe. The earth was only a day old, having been new at midnight the day before, and two days having to go by before her crescent, disengaged from the solar rays, could serve as a clock to the Selenites, as in her movement of rotation each of her points always passes the same meridian of the moon every twenty-four hours.
The spectacle was a different one on the side of the moon; the orb was shining in all its splendour amidst innumerable constellations, the rays of which could not trouble its purity. Upon the disc the plains again wore the sombre tint which is seen from the earth. The rest of the nimbus was shining, and amidst the general blaze Tycho stood out like a sun.
Barbicane could not manage any way to appreciate the velocity of the projectile, but reasoning demonstrated that this speed must be uniformly diminishing in conformity with the laws of rational mechanics.
In fact, it being admitted that the bullet would describe an orbit round the moon, that orbit must necessarily be elliptical. Science proves that it must be thus. No mobile circulation round any body is an exception to that law. All the orbits described in space are elliptical, those of satellites round their planets, those of planets around their sun, that of the sun round the unknown orb that serves as its central pivot. Why should the projectile of the Gun Club escape that natural arrangement?
Now in elliptical orbits attracting bodies always occupy one of the foci of the ellipsis. The satellite is, therefore, nearer the body round which it gravitates at one moment than it is at another. When the earth is nearest the sun she is at her perihelion, and at her aphelion when most distant. The moon is nearest the earth at her perigee, and most distant at her apogee. To employ analogous expressions which enrich the language of astronomers, if the projectile remained a satellite of the moon, it ought to be said that it is in its "aposelene" at its most distant point, and at its "periselene" at its nearest.
In the latter case the projectile ought to attain its maximum of speed, in the latter its minimum. Now it was evidently going towards its "aposelene," and Barbicane was right in thinking its speed would decrease up to that point, and gradually increase when it would again draw near the moon. That speed even would be absolutelynilif the point was coexistent with that of attraction.
Barbicane studied the consequences of these different situations; he was trying what he could make of them when he was suddenly interrupted by a cry from Michel Ardan.
"I'faith!" cried Michel, "what fools we are!"
"I don't say we are not," answered Barbicane; "but why?"
"Because we have some very simple means of slackening the speed that is taking us away from the moon, and we do not use them."
"And what are those means?"
"That of utilising the force of recoil in our rockets."
"Ah, why not?" said Nicholl.
"We have not yet utilised that force, it is true," said Barbicane, "but we shall do so."
"When?" asked Michel.
"When the time comes. Remark, my friends, that in the position now occupied by the projectile, a position still oblique to the lunar disc, our rockets, by altering its direction, might take it farther away instead of nearer to the moon. Now I suppose it is the moon you want to reach?"
"Essentially," answered Michel.
"Wait, then. Through some inexplicable influence the projectile has a tendency to let its lower end fall towards the earth. It is probable that at the point of equal attraction its conical summit will be rigorously directed towards the moon. At that moment it may be hoped that its speed will benil. That will be the time to act, and under the effort of our rockets we can, perhaps, provoke a direct fall upon the surface of the lunar disc."
"Bravo!" said Michel.
"We have not done it yet, and we could not do it as we passed the neutral point, because the projectile was still animated with too much velocity."
"Well reasoned out," said Nicholl.
"We must wait patiently," said Barbicane, "and put every chance on our side; then, after having despaired so long, I again begin to think we shall reach our goal."
This conclusion provoked hurrahs from Michel Ardan. No one of these daring madmen remembered the question they had all answered in the negative—No, the moon is not inhabited! No, the moon is probably not inhabitable! And yet they were going to do all they could to reach it.
One question only now remained to be solved: at what precise moment would the projectile reach that point of equal attraction where the travellers would play their last card?
In order to calculate that moment to within some seconds Barbicane had only to have recourse to his travelling notes, and to take the different altitudes from lunar parallels. Thus the time employed in going over the distance between the neutral point and the South Pole must be equal to the distance which separates the South Pole from the neutral point. The hours representing the time it took were carefully noted down, and the calculation became easy.
Barbicane found that this point would be reached by the projectile at 1 a.m. on the 8th of December. It was then 3 a.m. on the 7th of December. Therefore, if nothing intervened, the projectile would reach the neutral point in twenty-two hours.
The rockets had been put in their places to slacken the fall of the bullet upon the moon, and now the bold fellows were going to use them to provoke an exactly contrary effect. However that may be, they were ready, and there was nothing to do but await the moment for setting fire to them.
"As there is nothing to do," said Nicholl, "I have a proposition to make."
"What is that?" asked Barbicane.
"I propose we go to sleep."
"That is a nice idea!" exclaimed Michel Ardan.
"It is forty hours since we have closed our eyes," said Nicholl. "A few hours' sleep would set us up again."
"Never!" replied Michel.
"Good," said Nicholl; "every man to his humour—mine is to sleep."
And lying down on a divan, Nicholl was soon snoring like a forty-eight pound bullet.
"Nicholl is a sensible man," said Barbicane soon. "I shall imitate him."
A few minutes after he was joining his bass to the captain's baritone.
"Decidedly," said Michel Ardan, when he found himself alone, "these practical people sometimes do have opportune ideas."
And stretching out his long legs, and folding his long arms under his head, Michel went to sleep too.
But this slumber could neither be durable nor peaceful. Too many preoccupations filled the minds of these three men, and a few hours after, at about 7 a.m., they all three awoke at once.
The projectile was still moving away from the moon, inclining its conical summit more and more towards her. This phenomenon was inexplicable at present, but it fortunately aided the designs of Barbicane.
Another seventeen hours and the time for action would have come.
That day seemed long. However bold they might be, the travellers felt much anxiety at the approach of the minute that was to decide everything, either their fall upon the moon or their imprisonment in an immutable orbit. They therefore counted the hours, which went too slowly for them, Barbicane and Nicholl obstinately plunged in calculations, Michel walking up and down the narrow space between the walls contemplating with longing eye the impassible moon.
Sometimes thoughts of the earth passed through their minds. They saw again their friends of the Gun Club, and the dearest of them all, J.T. Maston. At that moment the honourable secretary must have been occupying his post on the Rocky Mountains. If he should perceive the projectile upon the mirror of his gigantic telescope what would he think? After having seen it disappear behind the south pole of the moon, they would see it reappear at the north! It was, therefore, the satellite of a satellite! Had J.T. Maston sent that unexpected announcement into the world? Was this to be thedénouementof the great enterprise?
Meanwhile the day passed without incident. Terrestrial midnight came. The 8th of December was about to commence. Another hour and the point of equal attraction would be reached. What velocity then animated the projectile? They could form no estimate; but no error could vitiate Barbicane's calculations. At 1 a.m. that velocity ought to be and would benil.
Besides, another phenomenon would mark the stopping point of the projectile on the neutral line. In that spot the two attractions, terrestrial and lunar, would be annihilated. Objects would not weigh anything. This singular fact, which had so curiously surprised Barbicane and his companions before, must again come about under identical circumstances. It was at that precise moment they must act.
The conical summit of the bullet had already sensibly turned towards the lunar disc. The projectile was just right for utilising all the recoil produced by setting fire to the apparatus. Chance was therefore in the travellers' favour. If the velocity of the projectile were to be absolutely annihilated upon the neutral point, a given motion, however slight, towards the moon would determine its fall.
"Five minutes to one," said Nicholl.
"Everything is ready," answered Michel Ardan, directing his match towards the flame of the gas.
"Wait!" said Barbicane, chronometer in hand.
At that moment weight had no effect. The travellers felt its complete disappearance in themselves. They were near the neutral point if they had not reached it.
"One o'clock!" said Barbicane.
Michel Ardan put his match to a contrivance that put all the fuses into instantaneous communication. No detonation was heard outside, where air was wanting, but through the port-lights Barbicane saw the prolonged flame, which was immediately extinguished.
The projectile had a slight shock which was very sensibly felt in the interior.
The three friends looked, listened, without speaking, hardly breathing. The beating of their hearts might have been heard in the absolute silence.
"Are we falling?" asked Michel Ardan at last.
"No," answered Nicholl; "for the bottom of the projectile has not turned towards the lunar disc!"
At that moment Barbicane left his window and turned towards his two companions. He was frightfully pale, his forehead wrinkled, his lips contracted.
"We are falling!" said he.
"Ah!" cried Michel Ardan, "upon the moon?"
"Upon the earth!" answered Barbicane.
"The devil!" cried Michel Ardan; and he added philosophically, "when we entered the bullet we did not think it would be so difficult to get out of it again."
In fact, the frightful fall had begun. The velocity kept by the projectile had sent it beyond the neutral point. The explosion of the fuses had not stopped it. That velocity which had carried the projectile beyond the neutral line as it went was destined to do the same upon its return. The law of physics condemned it, in its elliptical orbit,to pass by every point it had already passed.
It was a terrible fall from a height of 78,000 leagues, and which no springs could deaden. According to the laws of ballistics the projectile would strike the earth with a velocity equal to that which animated it as it left the Columbiad—a velocity of "16,000 metres in the last second!"
And in order to give some figures for comparison it has been calculated that an object thrown from the towers of Notre Dame, the altitude of which is only 200 feet, would reach the pavement with a velocity of 120 leagues an hour. Here the projectile would strike the earth with a velocity of 57,600leagues an hour.
"We are lost men," said Nicholl coldly.
"Well, if we die," answered Barbicane, with a sort of religious enthusiasm, "the result of our journey will be magnificently enlarged! God will tell us His own secret! In the other life the soul will need neither machines nor engines in order to know! It will be identified with eternal wisdom!"
"True," replied Michel Ardan: "the other world may well console us for that trifling orb called the moon!"
Barbicane crossed his arms upon his chest with a movement of sublime resignation.
"God's will be done!" he said.
Well, lieutenant, and what about those soundings?"
"I think the operation is almost over, sir. But who would have expected to find such a depth so near land, at 100 leagues only from the American coast?"
"Yes, Bronsfield, there is a great depression," said Captain Blomsberry."There exists a submarine valley here, hollowed out by Humboldt'scurrent, which runs along the coasts of America to the Straits ofMagellan."
"Those great depths," said the lieutenant, "are not favourable for the laying of telegraph cables. A smooth plateau is the best, like the one the American cable lies on between Valentia and Newfoundland."
"I agree with you, Bronsfield. And, may it please you, lieutenant, where are we now?"
"Sir," answered Bronsfield, "we have at this moment 21,500 feet of line out, and the bullet at the end of the line has not yet touched the bottom, for the sounding-lead would have come up again."
"Brook's apparatus is an ingenious one," said Captain Blomsberry. "It allows us to obtain very correct soundings."
"Touched!" cried at that moment one of the forecastle-men who was superintending the operation.
The captain and lieutenant went on to the forecastle-deck.
"What depth are we in?" asked the captain.
"Twenty-one thousand seven hundred and sixty-two feet," answered the lieutenant, writing it down in his pocket-book.
"Very well, Bronsfield," said the captain, "I will go and mark the result on my chart. Now have the sounding-line brought in—that is a work of several hours. Meanwhile the engineer shall have his fires lighted, and we shall be ready to start as soon as you have done. It is 10 p.m., and with your permission, lieutenant, I shall turn in."
"Certainly, sir, certainly!" answered Lieutenant Bronsfield amiably.
The captain of the Susquehanna, a worthy man if ever there was one, the very humble servant of his officers, went to his cabin, took his brandy-and-water with many expressions of satisfaction to the steward, got into bed, not before complimenting his servant on the way he made beds, and sank into peaceful slumber.
It was then 10 p.m. The eleventh day of the month of December was going to end in a magnificent night.
The Susquehanna, a corvette of 500 horse power, of the United StatesNavy, was taking soundings in the Pacific at about a hundred leaguesfrom the American coast, abreast of that long peninsula on the coast ofNew Mexico.
The wind had gradually fallen. There was not the slightest movement in the air. The colours of the corvette hung from the mast motionless and inert.
The captain, Jonathan Blomsberry, cousin-german to Colonel Blomsberry, one of the Gun Club members who had married a Horschbidden, the captain's aunt and daughter of an honourable Kentucky merchant—Captain Blomsberry could not have wished for better weather to execute the delicate operation of sounding. His corvette had felt nothing of that great tempest which swept away the clouds heaped up on the Rocky Mountains, and allowed the course of the famous projectile to be observed. All was going on well, and he did not forget to thank Heaven with all the fervour of a Presbyterian.
The series of soundings executed by the Susquehanna were intended for finding out the most favourable bottoms for the establishment of a submarine cable between the Hawaiian Islands and the American coast.
It was a vast project set on foot by a powerful company. Its director,the intelligent Cyrus Field, meant even to cover all the islands ofOceania with a vast electric network—an immense enterprise worthy ofAmerican genius.
It was to the corvette Susquehanna that the first operations of sounding had been entrusted. During the night from the 11th to the 12th of December she was exactly in north lat. 27° 7' and 41° 37' long., west from the Washington meridian.
The moon, then in her last quarter, began to show herself above the horizon.
After Captain Blomsberry's departure, Lieutenant Bronsfield and a few officers were together on the poop. As the moon appeared their thoughts turned towards that orb which the eyes of a whole hemisphere were then contemplating. The best marine glasses could not have discovered the projectile wandering round the demi-globe, and yet they were all pointed at the shining disc which millions of eyes were looking at in the same moment.
"They started ten days ago," then said Lieutenant Bronsfield. "What can have become of them?"
"They have arrived, sir," exclaimed a young midshipman, "and they are doing what all travellers do in a new country, they are looking about them."
"I am certain of it as you say so, my young friend," answered LieutenantBronsfield, smiling.
"Still," said another officer, "their arrival cannot be doubted. The projectile must have reached the moon at the moment she was full, at midnight on the 5th. We are now at the 11th of December; that makes six days. Now in six times twenty-four hours, with no darkness, they have had time to get comfortably settled. It seems to me that I see our brave countrymen encamped at the bottom of a valley, on the borders of a Selenite stream, near the projectile, half buried by its fall, amidst volcanic remains, Captain Nicholl beginning his levelling operations, President Barbicane putting his travelling notes in order, Michel Ardan performing the lunar solitudes with his Londrès cigar—"
"Oh, it must be so; it is so!" exclaimed the young midshipman, enthusiastic at the ideal description of his superior.
"I should like to believe it," answered Lieutenant Bronsfield, who was seldom carried away. "Unfortunately direct news from the lunar world will always be wanting."
"Excuse me, sir," said the midshipman, "but cannot President Barbicane write?"
A roar of laughter greeted this answer.
"Not letters," answered the young man quickly. "The post-office has nothing to do with that."
"Perhaps you mean the telegraph-office?" said one of the officers ironically.
"Nor that either," answered the midshipman, who would not give in. "But it is very easy to establish graphic communication with the earth."
"And how, pray?"
"By means of the telescope on Long's Peak. You know that it brings the moon to within two leagues only of the Rocky Mountains, and that it allows them to see objects having nine feet of diameter on her surface. Well, our industrious friends will construct a gigantic alphabet! They will write words 600 feet long, and sentences a league long, and then they can send up news!"
The young midshipman, who certainly had some imagination was loudly applauded. Lieutenant Bronsfield himself was convinced that the idea could have been carried out. He added that by sending luminous rays, grouped by means of parabolical mirrors, direct communications could also be established—in fact, these rays would be as visible on the surface of Venus or Mars as the planet Neptune is from the earth. He ended by saying that the brilliant points already observed on the nearest planets might be signals made to the earth. But he said, that though by these means they could have news from the lunar world, they could not send any from the terrestrial world unless the Selenites have at their disposition instruments with which to make distant observations.
"That is evident," answered one of the officers, "but what has become of the travellers? What have they done? What have they seen? That is what interests us. Besides, if the experiment has succeeded, which I do not doubt, it will be done again. The Columbiad is still walled up in the soil of Florida. It is, therefore, now only a question of powder and shot, and every time the moon passes the zenith we can send it a cargo of visitors."
"It is evident," answered Lieutenant Bronsfield, "that J.T. Maston will go and join his friends one of these days."
"If he will have me," exclaimed the midshipman, "I am ready to go with him."
"Oh, there will be plenty of amateurs, and if they are allowed to go, half the inhabitants of the earth will soon have emigrated to the moon!"
This conversation between the officers of the Susquehanna was kept up till about 1 a.m. It would be impossible to transcribe the overwhelming systems and theories which were emitted by these audacious minds. Since Barbicane's attempt it seemed that nothing was impossible to Americans. They had already formed the project of sending, not another commission ofsavants, but a whole colony, and a whole army of infantry, artillery, and cavalry to conquer the lunar world.
At 1 a.m. the sounding-line was not all hauled in. Ten thousand feet remained out, which would take several more hours to bring in. According to the commander's orders the fires had been lighted, and the pressure was going up already. The Susquehanna might have started at once.
At that very moment—it was 1.17 a.m.—Lieutenant Bronsfield was about to leave his watch to turn in when his attention was attracted by a distant and quite unexpected hissing sound.
His comrades and he at first thought that the hissing came from an escape of steam, but upon lifting up his head he found that it was high up in the air.
They had not time to question each other before the hissing became of frightful intensity, and suddenly to their dazzled eyes appeared an enormous bolis, inflamed by the rapidity of its course, by its friction against the atmospheric strata.
This ignited mass grew huger as it came nearer, and fell with the noise of thunder upon the bowsprit of the corvette, which it smashed off close to the stem, and vanished in the waves.
A few feet nearer and the Susquehanna would have gone down with all on board.
At that moment Captain Blomsberry appeared half-clothed, and rushing in the forecastle, where his officers had preceded him—
"With your permission, gentlemen, what has happened?" he asked.
And the midshipman, making himself the mouthpiece of them all, cried out—
"Commander, it is 'they' come back again."