However, the oblong form of the orb was already clearly seen.

It appeared like a gigantic egg, with the small end turned towards the earth.  The moon, liquid and pliable in the first days of her formation, was originally a perfect sphere.  But soon, drawn within the pale of the earth’s gravitation, she became elongated under its influence.  By becoming a satellite she lost her native purity of form; her centre of gravity was in advance of the centre of her figure, and from this fact some savants draw the conclusion that air and water might have taken refuge on the opposite side of the moon, which is never seen from the earth.

This alteration in the primitive forms of the satellite was only visible for a few moments.  The distance between the projectile and the moon diminished visibly; its velocity was considerably less than its initial velocity, but eight or nine times greater than that of our express trains.  The oblique direction of the bullet, from its very obliquity, left Michel Ardan some hope of touching the lunar disc at some point or other.  He could not believe that he should not get to it.  No, he could not believe it, and this he often repeated.  But Barbicane, who was a better judge, always answered him with pitiless logic.

“No, Michel, no.  We can only reach the moon by a fall, and we are not falling.  The centripetal force keeps us under the moon’s influence, but the centrifugal force sends us irresistibly away from it.”

This was said in a tone that deprived Michel Ardan of his last hopes.

The portion of the moon the projectile was approaching was the northern hemisphere.  The selenographic maps make it the lower one, because they are generally drawn up according to the image given by the telescopes, and we know that they reverse the objects.  Such was the Mappa Selenographica of Boeer and Moedler which Barbicane consulted.  This northern hemisphere presented vast plains, relieved by isolated mountains.

At midnight the moon was full.  At that precise moment the travellers ought to have set foot upon her if the unlucky asteroid had not made them deviate from their direction.  The orb was exactly in the condition rigorously determined by the Cambridge Observatory.  She was mathematically at her perigee, and at the zenith of the twenty-eighth parallel.  An observer placed at the bottom of the enormous Columbiad while it is pointed perpendicularly at the horizon would have framed the moon in the mouth of the cannon.  A straight line drawn through the axis of the piece would have passed through the centre of the moon.

It need hardly be stated that during the night between the 5th and 6th of December the travellers did not take a minute’s rest.  Could they have closed their eyes so near to a new world?  No.  All their feelings were concentrated in one thought—­to see!  Representatives of the earth, of humanity past and present, all concentrated in themselves, it was through their eyes that the human race looked at these lunar regions and penetrated the secrets of its satellite!  A strange emotion filled their hearts, and they went silently from one window to another.