“A good journey to you!” cried Michel Ardan, uttering a sigh of satisfaction.  “Is not infinitude large enough to allow a poor little bullet to go about without fear?  What was that pretentious globe which nearly knocked against us?”

“I know!” answered Barbicane.

“Of course! you know everything.”

“It is a simple asteroid,” said Barbicane; “but so large that the attraction of the earth has kept it in the state of a satellite.”

“Is it possible!” exclaimed Michel Ardan.  “Then the earth has two moons like Neptune?”

“Yes, my friend, two moons, though she is generally supposed to have but one.  But this second moon is so small and her speed so great that the inhabitants of the earth cannot perceive her.  It was by taking into account certain perturbations that a French astronomer, M. Petit, was able to determine the existence of this second satellite and calculate its elements.  According to his observations, this asteroid accomplishes its revolution round the earth in three hours and twenty minutes only.  That implies prodigious speed.”

“Do all astronomers admit the existence of this satellite?” asked Nicholl.

“No,” answered Barbicane; “but if they had met it like we have they could not doubt any longer.  By-the-bye, this asteroid, which would have much embarrassed us had it knocked against us, allows us to determine our position in space.”

“How?” said Ardan.

“Because its distance is known, and where we met it we were exactly at 8,140 kilometres from the surface of the terrestrial globe.”

“More than 2,000 leagues!” cried Michel Ardan.  “That beats the express trains of the pitiable globe called the earth!”

“I should think it did,” answered Nicholl, consulting his chronometer; “it is eleven o’clock, only thirteen minutes since we left the American continent.”

“Only thirteen minutes?” said Barbicane.

“That is all,” answered Nicholl; “and if our initial velocity were constant we should make nearly 10,000 leagues an hour.”

“That is all very well, my friends,” said the president; “but one insoluble question still remains—­why did we not hear the detonation of the Columbiad?”

For want of an answer the conversation stopped, and Barbicane, still reflecting, occupied himself with lowering the covering of the second lateral light-port.  His operation succeeded, and through the glass the moon filled the interior of the projectile with brilliant light.  Nicholl, like an economical man, put out the gas that was thus rendered useless, and the brilliance of which obstructed the observation of planetary space.

The lunar disc then shone with incomparable purity.  Her rays, no longer filtered by the vapoury atmosphere of the terrestrial globe, shone clearly through the glass and saturated the interior air of the projectile with silvery reflections.  The black curtain of the firmament really doubled the brilliancy of the moon, which in this void of ether unfavourable to diffusion did not eclipse the neighbouring stars.  The sky, thus seen, presented quite a different aspect—­one that no human eye could imagine.