“Four hundred thousand years!” exclaimed Michel.  “Ah!  I breathe again!  I was really frightened.  I imagined from listening to you that we had only fifty thousand years to live!”

Barbicane and Nicholl could not help laughing at their companion’s uneasiness.  Then Nicholl, who wanted to have done with it, reminded them of the second question to be settled.

“Has the moon been inhabited?” he asked.

The answer was unanimously in the affirmative.

During this discussion, fruitful in somewhat hazardous theories, although it resumed the general ideas of science on the subject, the projectile had run rapidly towards the lunar equator, at the same time that it went farther away from the lunar disc.  It had passed the circle of Willem, and the 40th parallel, at a distance of 400 miles.  Then leaving Pitatus to the right, on the 30th degree, it went along the south of the Sea of Clouds, of which it had already approached the north.  Different amphitheatres appeared confusedly under the white light of the full moon—­Bouillaud, Purbach, almost square with a central crater, then Arzachel, whose interior mountain shone with indefinable brilliancy.

At last, as the projectile went farther and farther away, the details faded from the travellers’ eyes, the mountains were confounded in the distance, and all that remained of the marvellous, fantastical, and wonderful satellite of the earth was the imperishable remembrance.

CHAPTER XIX.

A STRUGGLE WITH THE IMPOSSIBLE.

For some time Barbicane and his companions, mute and pensive, looked at this world, which they had only seen from a distance, like Moses saw Canaan, and from which they were going away for ever.  The position of the projectile relatively to the moon was modified, and now its lower end was turned towards the earth.

This change, verified by Barbicane, surprised him greatly.  If the bullet was going to gravitate round the satellite in an elliptical orbit, why was not its heaviest part turned towards it like the moon to the earth?  There again was an obscure point.

By watching the progress of the projectile they could see that it was following away from the moon an analogous curve to that by which it approached her.  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.

“What will become of us after we have reached the neutral point?” asked Michel Ardan.

“That is unknown!” answered Barbicane.

“But we can make suppositions, I suppose?”

“We can make two,” answered Barbicane.  “Either the velocity of the projectile will then be insufficient, and it will remain entirely motionless on that line of double attraction—­”