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Updated: June 17, 2025
Barbicane's and Nicholl's were always serious, Michel Ardan's always fanciful. The projectile, its situation and direction, the incidents that might arise, the precautions necessitated by its fall upon the moon, all this afforded inexhaustible material for conjecture.
The part played by the chivalrous European, his unexpected proposition which solved the difficulty, the simultaneous acceptation of the two rivals, that conquest of the lunar continent to which France and the United States were going to march in concert everything tended to increase Michel Ardan's popularity. It is well known how enthusiastic the Yankees will get about an individual.
"Sir," replied Ardan's antagonist, "there are many and incontrovertible reasons which prove the absence of an atmosphere in the moon. I might say that, a priori, if one ever did exist, it must have been absorbed by the earth; but I prefer to bring forward indisputable facts." "Bring them forward then, sir, as many as you please."
"I do!" cried M'Nicholl stoutly; "I deny the existence of anything of the kind, and I denounce every one that maintains any such whim as a visionary, if not a fool!" Ardan's reply to this taunt was a desperate facer, which, however, Barbican managed to stop while on its way towards the Captain's nose.
"Why not?" quickly answered the secretary of the Gun Club, ready for an argument. But the subject was let drop. In the meantime Michel Ardan's name was already going about Tampa Town. Strangers and natives talked and joked together, not about the European evidently a mythical personage but about J.T. Maston, who had the folly to believe in his existence.
Whereupon the president left the cabin, and told the crowd about Michel Ardan's proposition. His words were received with great demonstrations of joy. That cut short all difficulties. The next day every one could contemplate the European hero at their ease. Still some of the most obstinate spectators would not leave the deck of the Atlanta; they passed the night on board.
His companions, however, without denying that he had good grounds for his assertion on this subject or questioning the general accuracy of his observations, content themselves with saying that the reason why they had failed to discover the wonderful city, was that Ardan's telescope was of a strange and peculiar construction.
"Sir," resumed Michel Ardan's adversary, "the reasons that prove the absence of all atmosphere round the moon are numerous and indisputable. I may say, even, that,
A certain expression in Ardan's angry exclamation had struck the Captain like a shot, and set his temples throbbing violently. "Must fall!" he exclaimed, starting up suddenly. "Let us see about that! It is now seven o'clock in the morning. We must have, therefore, been at least thirty-two hours on the road, and more than half of our passage is already made.
Full of such thoughts and intensely interested in them, Barbican, M'Nicholl and Ardan, patient as astronomers at a transit of Venus, watched steadily at their windows, and allowed nothing worth noticing to escape their searching gaze. Ardan's patience first gave out.
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