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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.
"Nothing can be easier," replied Barbicane. "And you knew how to make that calculation?" asked Michel Ardan. "Perfectly. Nicholl and I would have made it, if the observatory had not saved us the trouble." "Very well, old Barbicane," replied Michel; "they might have cut off my head, beginning at my feet, before they could have made me solve that problem."
The Queen of Night was shining splendidly in space, whilst opposite the orb of day was setting her on fire with his rays. This situation soon became an anxious one. "Shall we get there?" said Nicholl. "We must act as though we should," answered Barbicane. "You are faint-hearted fellows," replied Michel Ardan. "We shall get there, and quicker than we want."
Michel Ardan talked sometimes to Barbicane, who did not answer much, to Nicholl, who did not hear, and to Diana, who did not understand his theories, and lastly to himself, making questions and answers, going and coming, occupying himself with a thousand details, sometimes leaning over the lower port-light, sometimes roosting in the heights of the projectile, singing all the time.
"And then," said Michel Ardan, "friend Nicholl has lost his two bets: four thousand dollars because the Columbiad did not burst; five thousand dollars because the projectile has risen more than six miles. Now, Nicholl, pay up." "Let us prove it first," said the captain, "and we will pay afterward.
How could he invent anything better than a Columbiad 900 feet long? What armour-plate could ever resist a projectile of 30,000 lbs.? Nicholl was at first crushed by this cannon-ball, then he recovered and resolved to crush the proposition by the weight of his best arguments. He therefore violently attacked the labours of the Gun Club.
"All that is most vicious." "And we must remain imprisoned in our vehicle." "Yes, we must." "Ah!" cried Michel in a formidable voice. "What is the matter with you?" asked Nicholl. "I know, I guess what this pretended asteroid is! It is not a broken piece of planet!" "What is it, then?" asked Nicholl. "It is our unfortunate dog! It is Diana's husband!"
Nicholl hastened to stop the escape of oxygen with which the atmosphere was saturated, which would have been the death of the travelers, not by suffocation, but by combustion. An hour later, the air less charged with it restored the lungs to their normal condition.
"It is very nearly," continued Nicholl, "the course described by a bomb launched from a mortar." "Perfect! And the hyperbola?" "The hyperbola, Michel, is a curve of the second order, produced by the intersection of a conic surface and a plane parallel to its axis, and constitutes two branches separated one from the other, both tending indefinitely in the two directions."
The Frenchman and the two Americans had by this time entered the enclosure reserved in the center of the multitude. They were accompanied by the members of the Gun Club, and by deputations sent from all the European Observatories. Barbicane, cool and collected, was giving his final directions. Nicholl, with compressed lips, his arms crossed behind his back, walked with a firm and measured step.
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