The three adventurous companions, surprised and stupefied in spite of their scientific reasoning, carried into the domain of the marvellous, felt weight go out of their bodies.  When they stretched out their arms they felt no inclination to drop them.  Their heads vacillated on their shoulders.  Their feet no longer kept at the bottom of the projectile.  They were like staggering drunkards.  Imagination has created men deprived of their reflection, others deprived of their shadows!  But here reality, by the neutrality of active forces, made men in whom nothing had any weight, and who weighed nothing themselves.

Suddenly Michel, making a slight spring, left the floor and remained suspended in the air like the good monk in Murillo’s Cuisine des Anges.  His two friends joined him in an instant, and all three, in the centre of the projectile, figured a miraculous ascension.

“Is it believable?  Is it likely?  Is it possible?” cried Michel.  “No.  And yet it exists!  Ah! if Raphael could have seen us like this what an Assumption he could have put upon canvas!”

“The Assumption cannot last,” answered Barbicane.  “If the projectile passes the neutral point, the lunar attraction will draw us to the moon.”

“Then our feet will rest upon the roof of the projectile,’ answered Michel.

“No,” said Barbicane, “because the centre of gravity in the projectile is very low, and it will turn over gradually.”

“Then all our things will be turned upside down for certain!”

“Do not alarm yourself, Michel,” answered Nicholl.  “There is nothing of the kind to be feared.  Not an object will move; the projectile will turn insensibly.”

“In fact,” resumed Barbicane, “when it has cleared the point of equal attraction, its bottom, relatively heavier, will drag it perpendicularly down to the moon.  But in order that such a phenomenon should take place we must pass the neutral line.”

“Passing the neutral line!” cried Michel.  “Then let us do like the sailors who pass the equator—­let us water our passage!”

A slight side movement took Michel to the padded wall.  Thence he took a bottle and glasses, placed them “in space” before his companions, and merrily touching glasses, they saluted the line with a triple hurrah.

This influence of the attractions lasted scarcely an hour.  The travellers saw themselves insensibly lowered towards the bottom, and Barbicane thought he remarked that the conical end of the projectile deviated slightly from the normal direction towards the moon.  By an inverse movement the bottom side approached it.  Lunar attraction was therefore gaining over terrestrial attraction.  The fall towards the moon began, insensibly as yet; it could only be that of a millimetre (0.03937 inch), and a third in the first second.  But the attractive force would gradually increase, the fall would be more accentuated, the projectile, dragged down by its bottom side, would present its cone to the earth, and would fall with increasing velocity until it reached the Selenite surface.  Now nothing could prevent the success of the enterprise, and Nicholl and Michel Ardan shared Barbicane’s joy.