by Jules Verne
CHAPTER VII
A MOMENT OF INTOXICATION
Thus a phenomenon, curious but explicable, was happening underthese strange conditions.
Every object thrown from the projectile would follow the samecourse and never stop until it did. There was a subject forconversation which the whole evening could not exhaust.
Besides, the excitement of the three travelers increased as theydrew near the end of their journey. They expected unforseenincidents, and new phenomena; and nothing would have astonishedthem in the frame of mind they then were in. Their overexcitedimagination went faster than the projectile, whose speed wasevidently diminishing, though insensibly to themselves. But themoon grew larger to their eyes, and they fancied if theystretched 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 theirjourney, if all calculations were true. That very night, attwelve o'clock, in eighteen hours, exactly at the full moon,they would reach its brilliant disc. The next midnight wouldsee that journey ended, the most extraordinary of ancient ormodern times. Thus from the first of the morning, through thescuttles silvered by its rays, they saluted the orb of nightwith 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 whereher meeting with the projectile was to take place.
According to his own observations, Barbicane reckoned that theywould land on her northern hemisphere, where stretch immense plains,and where mountains are rare. A favorable circumstance if, asthey thought, the lunar atmosphere was stored only in its depths.
"Besides," observed Michel Ardan, "a plain is easier todisembark upon than a mountain. A Selenite, deposited in Europeon the summit of Mont Blanc, or in Asia on the top of theHimalayas, would not be quite in the right place."
"And," added Captain Nicholl, "on a flat ground, the projectilewill remain motionless when it has once touched; whereas on adeclivity it would roll like an avalanche, and not beingsquirrels we should not come out safe and sound. So it is allfor the best."
Indeed, the success of the audacious attempt no longerappeared doubtful. But Barbicane was preoccupied with onethought; but not wishing to make his companions uneasy, hekept silence on this subject.
The direction the projectile was taking toward the moon'snorthern hemisphere, showed that her course had beenslightly 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 nordetermine the importance of the deviation, for there were nopoints to go by.
He hoped, however, that it would have no other result than thatof bringing them nearer the upper border of the moon, a regionmore suitable for landing.
Without imparting his uneasiness to his companions, Barbicanecontented himself with constantly observing the moon, in orderto see whether the course of the projectile would not bealtered; for the situation would have been terrible if it failedin its aim, and being carried beyond the disc should be launchedinto interplanetary space. At that moment, the moon, instead ofappearing flat like a disc, showed its convexity. If the sun'srays had struck it obliquely, the shadow thrown would have broughtout 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 theimmense plains. But all relief was as yet leveled inintense brilliancy. They could scarcely distinguish thoselarge spots which give the moon the appearance of a human face.
"Face, indeed!" said Michel Ardan; "but I am sorry for theamiable sister of Apollo. A very pitted face!"
But the travelers, now so near the end, were incessantlyobserving this new world. They imagined themselves walkingthrough its unknown countries, climbing its highest peaks,descending into its lowest depths. Here and there they fanciedthey saw vast seas, scarcely kept together under so rarefied anatmosphere, and water-courses emptying the mountain tributaries.Leaning over the abyss, they hoped to catch some sounds fromthat orb forever mute in the solitude of space. That last dayleft them.
They took down the most trifling details. A vague uneasinesstook possession of them as they neared the end. This uneasinesswould have been doubled had they felt how their speed had decreased.It would have seemed to them quite insufficient to carry them tothe end. It was because the projectile then "weighed" almost nothing.Its weight was ever decreasing, and would be entirely annihilated onthat line where the lunar and terrestrial attractions wouldneutralize each other.
But in spite of his preoccupation, Michel Ardan did not forgetto prepare the morning repast with his accustomed punctuality.They ate with a good appetite. Nothing was so excellent as thesoup liquefied by the heat of the gas; nothing better than thepreserved meat. Some glasses of good French wine crowned therepast, causing Michel Ardan to remark that the lunar vines,warmed by that ardent sun, ought to distill even more generouswines; that is, if they existed. In any case, the far-seeingFrenchman had taken care not to forget in his collection someprecious cuttings of the Medoc and Cote d'Or, upon which hefounded his hopes.
Reiset and Regnaut's apparatus worked with great regularity.Not an atom of carbonic acid resisted the potash; and as tothe oxygen, Captain Nicholl said "it was of the first quality."The little watery vapor enclosed in the projectile mixing withthe air tempered the dryness; and many apartments in London,Paris, or New York, and many theaters, were certainly not insuch a healthy condition.
But that it might act with regularity, the apparatus must bekept in perfect order; so each morning Michel visited the escaperegulators, tried the taps, and regulated the heat of the gas bythe pyrometer. Everything had gone well up to that time, andthe travelers, imitating the worthy Joseph T. Maston, began toacquire a degree of embonpoint which would have rendered themunrecognizable if their imprisonment had been prolonged tosome 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 thedog, and other divers objects which had been thrown from theprojectile, obstinately following them. Diana howledlugubriously on seeing the remains of Satellite, which seemed asmotionless as if they reposed on solid earth.
"Do you know, my friends," said Michel Ardan, "that if one of ushad succumbed to the shock consequent on departure, we shouldhave 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 likea remorse."
"That would have been sad," said Nicholl.
"Ah!" continued Michel, "what I regret is not being able to take awalk 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 divingapparatus and an air-pump, I could have ventured out and assumedfanciful attitudes of feigned monsters on the top of the projectile."
"Well, old Michel," replied Barbicane, "you would not have madea feigned monster long, for in spite of your diver's dress, swollenby the expansion of air within you, you would have burst like ashell, or rather like a balloon which has risen too high. So donot regret it, and do not forget this-- as long as we float inspace, 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 failinghim for an instant. It seemed to the three friends as though,under present conditions, ideas shot up in their brains as leavesshoot at the first warmth of spring. They felt bewildered. In themiddle 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 i
s all very well to go to the moon,but how to get back again?"
His two interlocutors looked surprised. One would have thoughtthat 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 wehave 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 wouldnever 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 itis advisable to return, we will take counsel together. If theColumbiad 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 powdercan be made. Neither metals, saltpeter, nor coal can fail inthe depths of the moon, and we need only go 8,000 leagues inorder to fall upon the terrestrial globe by virtue of the merelaws of weight."
"Enough," said Michel with animation. "Let it be no longer aquestion of returning: we have already entertained it too long.As to communicating with our former earthly colleagues, thatwill not be difficult."
"And how?"
"By means of meteors launched by lunar volcanoes."
"Well thought of, Michel," said Barbicane in a convinced toneof voice. "Laplace has calculated that a force five times greaterthan that of our gun would suffice to send a meteor from themoon to the earth, and there is not one volcano which has not agreater 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 thepost-office administration! But now I think of it----"
"What do you think of?"
"A capital idea. Why did we not fasten a thread to ourprojectile, and we could have exchanged telegrams with the earth?"
"The deuce!" answered Nicholl. "Do you consider the weight ofa 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 ofthe globe, our thread would have wound itself round it like achain on a capstan, and that it would inevitably have brought usto the ground."
"By the thirty-nine stars of the Union!" said Michel, "I havenothing but impracticable ideas to-day; ideas worthy of J.T. Maston. But I have a notion that, if we do not return toearth, J. T. Maston will be able to come to us."
"Yes, he'll come," replied Barbicane; "he is a worthy and acourageous comrade. Besides, what is easier? Is not theColumbiad still buried in the soil of Florida? Is cotton andnitric acid wanted wherewith to manufacture the pyroxyle?Will not the moon pass the zenith of Florida? In eighteenyears' time will she not occupy exactly the same place as to-day?"
"Yes," continued Michel, "yes, Maston will come, and with himour friends Elphinstone, Blomsberry, all the members of the GunClub, and they will be well received. And by and by they willrun 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 thehurrahs uttered in his honor, his ears at least tingled. What washe doing then? Doubtless, posted in the Rocky Mountains, at thestation of Long's Peak, he was trying to find the invisibleprojectile gravitating in space. If he was thinking of his dearcompanions, we must allow that they were not far behind him; andthat, under the influence of a strange excitement, they weredevoting to him their best thoughts.
But whence this excitement, which was evidently growing upon thetenants of the projectile? Their sobriety could not be doubted.This strange irritation of the brain, must it be attributed tothe peculiar circumstances under which they found themselves, totheir proximity to the orb of night, from which only a few hoursseparated them, to some secret influence of the moon acting upontheir nervous system? Their faces were as rosy as if they hadbeen exposed to the roaring flames of an oven; their voicesresounded in loud accents; their words escaped like a champagnecork 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 knowwhether we shall ever return from the moon, I want to know whatwe are going to do there?"
"What we are going to do there?" replied Barbicane, stampingwith his foot as if he was in a fencing saloon; "I do not know."
"You do not know!" exclaimed Michel, with a bellow whichprovoked a sonorous echo in the projectile.
"No, I have not even thought about it," retorted Barbicane, inthe same loud tone.
"Well, I know," replied Michel.
"Speak, then," cried Nicholl, who could no longer contain thegrowling of his voice.
"I shall speak if it suits me," exclaimed Michel, seizing hiscompanions' arms with violence.
"_It must_ suit you," said Barbicane, with an eye on fire and athreatening hand. "It was you who drew us into this frightfuljourney, and we want to know what for."
"Yes," said the captain, "now that I do not know _where_ I amgoing, I want to know _why_ I am going."
"Why?" exclaimed Michel, jumping a yard high, "why? To takepossession of the moon in the name of the United States; to adda fortieth State to the Union; to colonize the lunar regions;to cultivate them, to people them, to transport thither all theprodigies of art, of science, and industry; to civilize theSelenites, unless they are more civilized than we are; and toconstitute them a republic, if they are not already one!"
"And if there are no Selenites?" retorted Nicholl, who, under theinfluence of this unaccountable intoxication, was very contradictory.
"Who said that there were no Selenites?" exclaimed Michel in athreatening tone.
"I do," howled Nicholl.
"Captain," said Michel, "do not repreat that insolence, or Iwill knock your teeth down your throat!"
The two adversaries were going to fall upon each other, and theincoherent discussion threatened to merge into a fight, whenBarbicane 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 willdo without them. We have only to make Selenites. Down withthe 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 tremendousvoice the popular song "Yankee Doodle," while from the congressresounded the masculine tones of the "Marseillaise."
Then they struck up a frantic dance, with maniacal gestures,idiotic stampings, and somersaults like those of the bonelessclowns in the circus. Diana, joining in the dance, and howlingin her turn, jumped to the top of the projectile. An unaccountableflapping 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 someunaccountable influence
above that of intoxication, inflamed bythe air which had set their respiratory apparatus on fire, fellmotionless to the bottom of the projectile.
