“What is that?” asked Barbicane quickly.

“The supposition that for some reason or other the powder did not catch fire, and we have not started.”

“Good heavens! captain,” cried Michel Ardan, “that is a supposition worthy of me!  It is not serious!  Have we not been half stunned by the shock?  Did I not bring you back to life?  Does not the president’s shoulder still bleed from the blow?”

“Agreed, Michel,” replied Nicholl, “but allow me to ask one question.”

“Ask it, captain.”

“Did you hear the detonation, which must certainly have been formidable?”

“No,” answered Ardan, much surprised, “I certainly did not hear it.”

“And you, Barbicane?”

“I did not either.”

“What do you make of that?” asked Nicholl.

“What indeed!” murmured the president; “why did we not hear the detonation?”

The three friends looked at one another rather disconcertedly.  Here was an inexplicable phenomenon.  The projectile had been fired, however, and there must have been a detonation.

“We must know first where we are,” said Barbicane, “so let us open the panel.”

This simple operation was immediately accomplished.  The screws that fastened the bolts on the outer plates of the right-hand skylight yielded to the coach-wrench.  These bolts were driven outside, and obturators wadded with indiarubber corked up the hole that let them through.  The exterior plate immediately fell back upon its hinges like a port-hole, and the lenticular glass that covered the hole appeared.  An identical light-port had been made in the other side of the projectile, another in the dome, and a fourth in the bottom.  The firmament could therefore be observed in four opposite directions—­the firmament through the lateral windows, and the earth or the moon more directly through the upper or lower opening of the bullet.

Barbicane and his companions immediately rushed to the uncovered port-hole.  No ray of light illuminated it.  Profound darkness surrounded the projectile.  This darkness did not prevent Barbicane exclaiming—­

“No, my friends, we have not fallen on the earth again!  No, we are not immersed at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico!  Yes, we are going up through space!  Look at those stars that are shining in the darkness, and the impenetrable darkness that lies between the earth and us!”

“Hurrah! hurrah!” cried Michel Ardan and Nicholl with one voice.

In fact, the thick darkness proved that the projectile had left the earth, for the ground, then brilliantly lighted by the moon, would have appeared before the eyes of the travellers if they had been resting upon it.  This darkness proved also that the projectile had passed beyond the atmosphere, for the diffused light in the air would have been reflected on the metallic sides of the projectile, which reflection was also wanting.  This light would have shone upon the glass of the light-port, and that glass was in darkness.  Doubt was no longer possible.  The travellers had quitted the earth.