“Yes,” answered Barbicane, “but not the whole of it.  By a certain movement of liberation, a sort of balancing on its centre, the moon presents more than the half of her disc to the earth.  She is like a pendulum, the centre of gravity of which is towards the terrestrial globe, and which oscillates regularly.  Whence comes that oscillation?  Because her movement of rotation on her axis is animated with uniform velocity, whilst her movement of translation, following an elliptical orb round the earth, is not.  At the perigee the velocity of translation is greater, and the moon shows a certain portion of her western border.  At her apogee the velocity of rotation is greater, and a morsel of her eastern border appears.  It is a strip of about eight degrees, which appears sometimes on the west, sometimes on the east.  The result is, therefore, that of a thousand parts the moon shows five hundred and sixty-nine.”

“No matter,” answered Michel; “if we ever become Selenites, we will inhabit the visible face.  I like light.”

“Unless,” replied Nicholl, “the atmosphere should be condensed on the other side, as certain astronomers pretend.”

“That is a consideration,” answered Michel simply.

In the meantime breakfast was concluded, and the observers resumed their posts.  They tried to see through the dark port-light by putting out all light in the projectile.  But not one luminous atom penetrated the obscurity.

One inexplicable fact preoccupied Barbicane.  How was it that though the projectile had been so near the moon, within a distance of twenty-five miles, it had not fallen upon her?  If its speed had been enormous, he would have understood why it had not fallen.  But with a relatively slight speed the resistance to lunar attraction could not be explained.  Was the projectile under the influence of some strange force?  Did some body maintain it in the ether?  It was henceforth evident that it would not touch any point upon the moon.  Where was it going?  Was it going farther away from or nearer to the disc?  Was it carried along in the gloom across infinitude?  How were they to know, how calculate in the dark?  All these questions made Barbicane anxious, but he could not solve them.

In fact, the invisible orb was there, perhaps, at a distance of some leagues only, but neither his companions nor he could any longer see it.  If any noise was made on its surface they could not hear it.  The air, that vehicle of transmission, was wanting to convey to them the groans of that moon which the Arabian legends make “a man already half-granite, but still palpitating.”

It will be agreed that it was enough to exasperate the most patient observers.  It was precisely the unknown hemisphere that was hidden from their eyes.  That face which a fortnight sooner or a fortnight later had been, or would be, splendidly lighted up by the solar rays, was then lost in absolute darkness.  Where would the projectile be in another fortnight?  Where would the hazards of attraction have taken it?  Who could say?