These incandescent blocks crossed each other, knocked against each other, and were scattered into smaller fragments, of which some struck the projectile.  Its left window was even cracked by the violent shock.  It seemed to be floating in a shower of bullets, of which the least could annihilate it in an instant.

The light which saturated the ether was of incomparable intensity, for these asteroids dispersed it in every direction.  At a certain moment it was so bright that Michel dragged Barbicane and Nicholl to the window, exclaiming—­

“The invisible moon is at last visible!”

And all three, across the illumination, saw for a few seconds that mysterious disc which the eye of man perceived for the first time.

What did they distinguish across that distance which they could not estimate?  Long bands across the disc, veritable clouds formed in a very restricted atmospheric medium, from which emerged not only all the mountains, but every relief of middling importance, amphitheatres, yawning craters, such as exist on the visible face.  Then immense tracts, no longer arid plains, but veritable seas, oceans which reflected in their liquid mirror all the dazzling magic of the fires of space.  Lastly, on the surface of the continents, vast dark masses, such as immense forests would resemble under the rapid illumination of a flash of lightning.

Was it an illusion, an error of the eyes, an optical deception?  Could they give a scientific affirmation to that observation so superficially obtained?  Dared they pronounce upon the question of its habitability after so slight a glimpse of the invisible disc?

By degrees the fulgurations of space gradually died out, its accidental brilliancy lessened, the asteroids fled away by their different trajectories, and went out in the distance.  The ether resumed its habitual darkness; the stars, for one moment eclipsed, shone in the firmament, and the disc, of which scarcely a glimpse had been caught, was lost in the impenetrable night.

CHAPTER XVI.

THE SOUTHERN HEMISPHERE.

The projectile had just escaped a terrible danger, a danger quite unforeseen.  Who would have imagined such a meeting of asteroids?  These wandering bodies might prove serious perils to the travellers.  They were to them like so many rocks in the sea of ether, which, less fortunate than navigators, they could not avoid.  But did these adventurers of space complain?  No, as Nature had given them the splendid spectacle of a cosmic meteor shining by formidable expansion, as this incomparable display of fireworks, which no Ruggieri could imitate, had lighted for a few seconds the invisible nimbus of the moon.  During that rapid peep, continents, seas, and forests had appeared to them.  Then the atmosphere did give there its life-giving particles?  Questions still not solved, eternally asked by American curiosity.