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The distance which separates it from the radiant orb is then increased in round numbers by 200,000 leagues, and the heat which it receives must be rather less." "Well done!" exclaimed Barbicane. "Do you know, Michel, for an artist you are intelligent." "Yes," answered Michel carelessly, "we are all intelligent on the Boulevard des Italiens."
You are thinking of something you do not communicate. Do you say to yourself that this prison may be our coffin? Our coffin let it be; I would not change it for Mahomet's, which only hangs in space, and does not move!" Whilst Michel Ardan was talking thus, Barbicane and Nicholl were making their last preparations.
The two adversaries were about to rush upon one another, and this incoherent discussion was threatening to degenerate into a battle, when Barbicane interfered. "Stop, unhappy men," said he, putting his two companions back to back, "if there are no Selenites, we will do without them!" "Yes!" exclaimed Michel, who did not care more about them than that. "We have nothing to do with the Selenites!
The disc appeared through the telescopes at a distance of two and a half leagues. If an aëronaut were taken up that distance from the earth, what would he distinguish upon its surface? No one can tell, as the highest ascensions have not exceeded 8,000 metres. The following, however, is an exact description of what Barbicane and his companions saw from that height:
"Then remember this, Captain Nicholl, what I like in your definition of the hyperbola I was going to say of the hyperhumbug is that it is still less easy to understand than the word you pretend to define." Nicholl and Barbicane paid no attention to Michel Ardan's jokes. They had launched into a scientific discussion. They were eager about what curve the projectile would take.
"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.
As they were breakfasting, a question of Michel's, relating to the projectile, provoked rather a curious answer from Barbicane, which is worth repeating. Michel, supposing it to be roughly stopped, while still under its formidable initial speed, wished to know what the consequences of the stoppage would have been. "But," said Barbicane, "I do not see how it could have been stopped."
Was it going farther from, or nearing, the disc? Was it being borne in that profound darkness through the infinity of space? How could they learn, how calculate, in the midst of this night? All these questions made Barbicane uneasy, but he could not solve them. Certainly, the invisible orb was there, perhaps only some few miles off; but neither he nor his companions could see it.
"Nevertheless," continued Barbicane, "after mature deliberation, it seems to me that the question of the projectile ought to precede that of the cannon, and that the dimensions of the latter ought to depend upon the dimensions of the former." J.T. Maston here interrupted the president, and was heard with the attention which his magnificent past career deserved.
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.
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