Michel spoke with as much animation as if the tap were still full on.  But with one sentence Barbicane damped his enthusiasm.

“All that is very well, friend Michel,” he said, “but now perhaps you will tell us where those fowls that joined in our concert came from.”

“Those fowls?”

“Yes.”

In fact, half-a-dozen hens and a superb cock were flying hither and thither.

“Ah, the stupids!” cried Michel.  “It was the oxygen that put them in revolt.”

“But what are you going to do with those fowls?” asked Barbicane.

“Acclimatise them in the moon of course!  For the sake of a joke, my worthy president; simply a joke that has unhappily come to nothing!  I wanted to let them out on the lunar continent without telling you!  How astounded you would have been to see these terrestrial poultry pecking the fields of the moon!”

“Ah, gamin, you eternal boy!” answered Barbicane, “you don’t want oxygen to make you out of your senses!  You are always what we were under the influence of this gas!  You are always insane!”

“Ah! how do we know we were not wiser then?” replied Michel Ardan.

After this philosophical reflection the three friends repaired the disorder in the projectile.  Cock and hens were put back in their cage.  But as they were doing this Barbicane and his two companions distinctly perceived a fresh phenomenon.

Since the moment they had left the earth their own weight, that of the bullet and the objects it contained, had suffered progressive diminution.  Though they could not have any experience of this in the projectile, a moment must come when the effect upon themselves and the tools and instruments they used would be felt.

Of course scales would not have indicated this loss of weight, for the weights used would have lost precisely as much as the object itself; but a spring weighing-machine, the tension of which is independent of attraction, would have given the exact valuation of this diminution.

It is well known that attraction, or weight, is in proportion to the bulk, and in inverse proportion to the square of distances.  Hence this consequence.  If the earth had been alone in space, if the other heavenly bodies were to be suddenly annihilated, the projectile, according to Newton’s law, would have weighed less according to its distance from the earth, but without ever losing its weight entirely, for the terrestrial attraction would always have made itself felt, no matter at what distance.

But in the case with which we are dealing, a moment must come when the projectile would not be at all under the law of gravitation, after allowing for the other celestial bodies, whose effect could not be set down as zero.