by Anthology
"That is all very well, my friends," said the president; "but one insoluble question still remains--why did we not hear the detonation of the Columbiad?"
For want of an answer the conversation stopped, and Barbicane, still reflecting, occupied himself with lowering the covering of the second lateral light-port. His operation succeeded, and through the glass the moon filled the interior of the projectile with brilliant light. Nicholl, like an economical man, put out the gas that was thus rendered useless, and the brilliance of which obstructed the observation of planetary space.
The lunar disc then shone with incomparable purity. Her rays, no longer filtered by the vapoury atmosphere of the terrestrial globe, shone clearly through the glass and saturated the interior air of the projectile with silvery reflections. The black curtain of the firmament really doubled the brilliancy of the moon, which in this void of ether unfavourable to diffusion did not eclipse the neighbouring stars. The sky, thus seen, presented quite a different aspect--one that no human eye could imagine.
It will be readily understood with what interest these audacious men contemplated the moon, the supreme goal of their journey. The earth's satellite, in her movement of translation, insensibly neared the zenith, a mathematical point which she was to reach about ninety-six hours later. Her mountains and plains, or any object in relief, were not seen more plainly than from the earth; but her light across the void was developed with incomparable intensity. The disc shone like a platinum mirror. The travellers had already forgotten all about the earth which was flying beneath their feet.
It was Captain Nicholl who first drew attention to the vanished globe.
"Yes!" answered Michel Ardan. "We must not be ungrateful to it. As we are leaving our country let our last looks reach it. I want to see the earth before it disappears completely from our eyes!"
Barbicane, to satisfy the desires of his companion, occupied himself with clearing the window at the bottom of the projectile, the one through which they could observe the earth directly. The movable floor which the force of projection had sent to the bottom was taken to pieces, not without difficulty; its pieces, carefully placed against the sides, might still be of use. Then appeared a circular bay window, half a yard wide, cut in the lower part of the bullet. It was filled with glass five inches thick, strengthened with brass settings. Under it was an aluminium plate, held down by bolts. The screws taken out and the bolts withdrawn, the plate fell back, and visual communication was established between interior and exterior.
Michel Ardan knelt upon the glass. It was dark, and seemed opaque.
"Well," cried he, "but where's the earth?"
"There it is," said Barbicane.
"What!" cried Ardan, "that thin streak, that silvery crescent?"
"Certainly, Michel. In four days' time, when the moon is full, at the very minute we shall reach her, the earth will be new. She will only appear to us under the form of a slender crescent, which will soon disappear, and then she will be buried for some days in impenetrable darkness."
"That the earth!" repeated Michel Ardan, staring at the thin slice of his natal planet.
The explanation given by President Barbicane was correct. The earth, looked at from the projectile, was entering her last quarter. She was in her octant, and her crescent was clearly outlined on the dark background of the sky. Her light, made bluish by the thickness of her atmosphere, was less intense than that of the lunar crescent. This crescent then showed itself under considerable dimensions. It looked like an enormous arch stretched across the firmament. Some points, more vividly lighted, especially in its concave part, announced the presence of high mountains; but they disappeared sometimes under black spots, which are never seen on the surface of the lunar disc. They were rings of clouds placed concentrically round the terrestrial spheroid.
However, by dint of a natural phenomenon, identical with that produced on the moon when she is in her octants, the contour of the terrestrial globe could be traced. Its entire disc appeared slightly visible through an effect of pale light, less appreciable than that of the moon. The reason of this lessened intensity is easy to understand. When this reflection is produced on the moon it is caused by the solar rays which the earth reflects upon her satellite. Here it was caused by the solar rays reflected from the moon upon the earth. Now terrestrial light is thirteen times more intense than lunar light on account of the difference of volume in the two bodies. Hence it follows that in the phenomenon of the pale light the dark part of the earth's disc is less clearly outlined than that of the moon's disc, because the intensity of the phenomenon is in proportion to the lighting power of the two stars. It must be added that the terrestrial crescent seems to form a more elongated curve than that of the disc--a pure effect of irradiation.
Whilst the travellers were trying to pierce the profound darkness of space, a brilliant shower of falling stars shone before their eyes. Hundreds of meteors, inflamed by contact with the atmosphere, streaked the darkness with luminous trails, and lined the cloudy part of the disc with their fire. At that epoch the earth was in her perihelion, and the month of December is so propitious to these shooting stars that astronomers have counted as many as 24,000 an hour. But Michel Ardan, disdaining scientific reasoning, preferred to believe that the earth was saluting with her finest fireworks the departure of her three children.
This was all they saw of the globe lost in the darkness, an inferior star of the solar world, which for the grand planets rises or sets as a simple morning or evening star! Imperceptible point in space, it was now only a fugitive crescent, this globe where they had left all their affections.
For a long time the three friends, not speaking, yet united in heart, watched while the projectile went on with uniformly decreasing velocity. Then irresistible sleep took possession of them. Was it fatigue of body and mind? Doubtless, for after the excitement of the last hours passed upon earth, reaction must inevitably set in.
"Well," said Michel, "as we must sleep, let us go to sleep."
Stretched upon their beds, all three were soon buried in profound slumber.
But they had not been unconscious for more than a quarter of an hour when Barbicane suddenly rose, and, waking his companions, in a loud voice cried--
"I've found it!"
"What have you found?" asked Michel Ardan, jumping out of bed.
"The reason we did not hear the detonation of the Columbiad!"
"Well?" said Nicholl.
"It was because our projectile went quicker than sound."
CHAPTER III.
TAKING POSSESSION.
This curious but certainly correct explanation once given, the three friends fell again into a profound sleep. Where would they have found a calmer or more peaceful place to sleep in? Upon earth, houses in the town or cottages in the country feel every shock upon the surface of the globe. At sea, ships, rocked by the waves, are in perpetual movement. In the air, balloons incessantly oscillate upon the fluid strata of different densities. This projectile alone, travelling in absolute void amidst absolute silence, offered absolute repose to its inhabitants.
The sleep of the three adventurers would have, perhaps, been indefinitely prolonged if an unexpected noise had not awakened them about 7 a.m. on the 2nd of December, eight hours after their departure.
This noise was a very distinct bark.
"The dogs! It is the dogs!" cried Michel Ardan, getting up immediately.
"They are hungry," said Nicholl.
"I should think so," answered Michel; "we have forgotten them."
"Where are they?" asked Barbicane.
One of the animals was found cowering under the divan. Terrified and stunned by the first shock, it had remained in a corner until the moment it had recovered its voice along with the feeling of hunger.
It was Diana, still rather sheepish, that came from the retreat, not without urging. Michel Ardan encouraged her with his most gracious words.
"Come, Diana," he said--"come, my child; your destiny will be
noted in cynegetic annals! Pagans would have made you companion to the god Anubis, and Christians friend to St. Roch! You are worthy of being carved in bronze for the king of hell, like the puppy that Jupiter gave beautiful Europa as the price of a kiss! Your celebrity will efface that of the Montargis and St. Bernard heroes. You are rushing through interplanetary space, and will, perhaps, be the Eve of Selenite dogs! You will justify up there Toussenel's saying, 'In the beginning God created man, and seeing how weak he was, gave him the dog!' Come, Diana, come here!"
Diana, whether flattered or not, came out slowly, uttering plaintive moans.
"Good!" said Barbicane. "I see Eve, but where is Adam?"
"Adam," answered Michel Ardan, "can't be far off. He is here somewhere. He must be called! Satellite! here, Satellite!"
But Satellite did not appear. Diana continued moaning. It was decided, however, that she was not wounded, and an appetising dish was set before her to stop her complaining.
As to Satellite, he seemed lost. They were obliged to search a long time before discovering him in one of the upper compartments of the projectile, where a rather inexplicable rebound had hurled him violently. The poor animal was in a pitiable condition.
"The devil!" said Michel. "Our acclimatisation is in danger!"
The unfortunate dog was carefully lowered. His head had been fractured against the roof, and it seemed difficult for him to survive such a shock. Nevertheless, he was comfortably stretched on a cushion, where he sighed once.
"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."
So saying he offered some water to the wounded animal, who drank it greedily.
These attentions bestowed, the travellers attentively watched the earth and the moon. The earth only appeared like a pale disc terminated by a crescent smaller than that of the previous evening, but its volume compared with that of the moon, which was gradually forming a perfect circle, remained enormous.
"Parbleu!" then said Michel Ardan; "I am really sorry we did not start when the earth was at her full--that is to say, when our globe was in opposition to the sun!"
"Why?" asked Nicholl.
"Because we should have seen our continents and seas under a new aspect--the continents shining under the solar rays, the seas darker, like they figure upon certain maps of the world! I should like to have seen those poles of the earth upon which the eye of man has never yet rested!"
"I daresay," answered Barbicane, "but if the earth had been full the moon would have been new--that is to say, invisible amidst the irradiation of the sun. It is better for us to see the goal we want to reach than the place we started from."
"You are right, Barbicane," answered Captain Nicholl; "and besides, when we have reached the moon we shall have plenty of time during the long lunar nights to consider at leisure the globe that harbours men like us."
"Men like us!" cried Michel Ardan. "But now they are not more like us than the Selenites. We are inhabitants of a new world peopled by us alone--the projectile! I am a man like Barbicane, and Barbicane is a man like Nicholl. Beyond us and outside of us humanity ends, and we are the only population of this microcosm until the moment we become simple Selenites."
"In about eighty-eight hours," replied the captain.
"Which means?" asked Michel Ardan.
"That it is half-past eight," answered Nicholl.
"Very well," answered Michel, "I fail to find the shadow of a reason why we should not breakfast illico."
In fact, the inhabitants of the new star could not live in it without eating, and their stomachs then submitted to the imperious laws of hunger. Michel Ardan, in his quality of Frenchman, declared himself chief cook, an important function that no one disputed with him. The gas gave the necessary degrees of heat for cooking purposes, and the provision-locker furnished the elements of this first banquet.
The breakfast began with three cups of excellent broth, due to the liquefaction in hot water of three precious Liebig tablets, prepared from the choicest morsels of the Pampas ruminants. Some slices of beefsteak succeeded them, compressed by the hydraulic press, as tender and succulent as if they had just come from the butchers of the Paris Café Anglais. Michel, an imaginative man, would have it they were even rosy.
Preserved vegetables, "fresher than the natural ones," as the amiable Michel observed, succeeded the meat, and were followed by some cups of tea and slices of bread and butter, American fashion. This beverage, pronounced excellent, was made from tea of the first quality, of which the Emperor of Russia had put some cases at the disposition of the travellers.
Lastly, as a worthy ending to the meal, Ardan ferreted out a fine bottle of "Nuits" burgundy that "happened" to be in the provision compartment. The three friends drank it to the union of the earth and her satellite.
And as if the generous wine it had distilled upon the hill-sides of Burgundy were not enough, the sun was determined to help in the feast. The projectile at that moment emerged from the cone of shadow cast by the terrestrial globe, and the sun's rays fell directly upon the lower disc of the bullet, on account of the angle which the orbit of the moon makes with that of the earth.
"The sun!" exclaimed Michel Ardan.
"Of course," answered Barbicane; "I expected it."
"But," said Michel, "the cone of shadow thrown by the earth into space extends beyond the moon."
"Much beyond if you do not take the atmospheric refraction into account," said Barbicane. "But when the moon is enveloped in that shadow the centres of the three heavenly bodies--the sun, the earth, and the moon--are in a straight line. Then the nodes coincide with the full moon and there is an eclipse. If, therefore, we had started during an eclipse of the moon all our journey would have been accomplished in the dark, which would have been a pity."
"Why?"
"Because, although we are journeying in the void, our projectile, bathed in the solar rays, will gather their light and heat; therefore there will be economy of gas, a precious economy in every way."
In fact, under these rays, the temperature and brilliancy of which there was no atmosphere to soften, the projectile was lighted and warmed as if it had suddenly passed from winter to summer. The moon above and the sun below inundated it with their rays.
"It is pleasant here now," said Nicholl.
"I believe you!" cried Michel Ardan. "With a little vegetable soil spread over our aluminium planet we could grow green peas in twenty-four hours. I have only one fear, that is that the walls of our bullet will melt."
"You need not alarm yourself, my worthy friend," answered Barbicane. "The projectile supported a much higher temperature while it was travelling through the atmosphere. I should not even wonder if it looked to the eyes of the spectators like a fiery meteor."
"Then J.T. Maston must think we are roasted!"
"What I am astonished at," answered Barbicane, "is that we are not. It was a danger we did not foresee."
"I feared it," answered Nicholl simply.
"And you did not say anything about it, sublime captain!" cried Michel Ardan, shaking his companion's hand.
In the meantime Barbicane was making his arrangements in the projectile as though he was never going to leave it. It will be remembered that the base of the aërial vehicle was fifty-four feet square. It was twelve feet high, and admirably fitted up in the interior. It was not much encumbered by the instruments and travelling utensils, which were all in special places, and it left some liberty of movement to its three inhabitants. The thick glass let into a part of the floor could bear considerable weight with impunity. Barbicane and his companions walked upon it as well as upon a solid floor; but the sun, which struck it directly with its rays, lighting the interior of the projectile from below, produced singular effects of light.
They began by examining the state of the water and provision receptacles. They were not in the least damaged, thanks to the precautions taken to deaden the shock. The provisi
ons were abundant, and sufficient for one year's food. Barbicane took this precaution in case the projectile should arrive upon an absolutely barren part of the moon. There was only enough water and brandy for two months. But according to the latest observations of astronomers, the moon had a dense low and thick atmosphere, at least in its deepest valleys, and there streams and watercourses could not fail. Therefore the adventurous explorers would not suffer from hunger or thirst during the journey, and the first year of their installation upon the lunar continent.
The question of air in the interior of the projectile also offered all security. The Reiset and Regnault apparatus, destined to produce oxygen, was furnished with enough chlorate of potash for two months. It necessarily consumed a large quantity of gas, for it was obliged to keep the productive matter up to 100°. But there was abundance of that also. The apparatus wanted little looking after. It worked automatically. At that high temperature the chlorate of potash changed into chlorine of potassium, and gave out all the oxygen it contained. The eighteen pounds of chlorate of potash gave out the seven pounds of oxygen necessary for the daily consumption of the three travellers.
