It is generally admitted that the invisible hemisphere of the moon is, by its constitution, absolutely similar to the visible hemisphere.  One-seventh of it is seen in those movements of libration Barbicane spoke of.  Now upon the surface seen there were only plains and mountains, amphitheatres and craters, like those on the maps.  They could there imagine the same arid and dead nature.  And yet, supposing the atmosphere to have taken refuge upon that face?  Suppose that with the air water had given life to these regenerated continents?  Suppose that vegetation still persists there?  Suppose that animals people these continents and seas?  Suppose that man still lives under those conditions of habitability?  How many questions there were it would have been interesting to solve!  What solutions might have been drawn from the contemplation of that hemisphere!  What delight it would have been to glance at that world which no human eye has seen!

The disappointment of the travellers in the midst of this darkness may be imagined.  All observation of the lunar disc was prevented.  The constellations alone were visible, and it must be acknowledged that no astronomers, neither Faye, Chacornac, nor the Secchi, had ever been in such favourable conditions to observe them.

In fact, nothing could equal the splendour of this starry world, bathed in limpid ether.  Diamonds set in the celestial vault threw out superb flames.  One look could take in the firmament from the Southern Cross to the North Star, those two constellations which will in 12,000 years, on account of the succession of equinoxes, resign their roles of polar stars, the one to Canopus in the southern hemisphere, the other to Wega in the northern.  Imagination lost itself in this sublime infinitude, amidst which the projectile was moving like a new star created by the hand of man.  From natural causes these constellations shone with a soft lustre; they did not twinkle because there was no atmosphere to intervene with its strata unequally dense, and of different degrees of humidity, which causes this scintillation.

The travellers long watched the constellated firmament, upon which the vast screen of the moon made an enormous black hole.  But a painful sensation at length drew them from their contemplation.  This was an intense cold, which soon covered the glasses of the port-lights with a thick coating of ice.  The sun no longer warmed the projectile with his rays, and it gradually lost the heat stored up in its walls.  This heat was by radiation rapidly evaporated into space, and a considerable lowering of the temperature was the result.  The interior humidity was changed into ice by contact with the window-panes, and prevented all observation.

Nicholl, consulting the thermometer, said that it had fallen to 17 deg. (centigrade) below zero (1 deg.  Fahr).  Therefore, notwithstanding every reason for being economical, Barbicane was obliged to seek heat as well as light from gas.  The low temperature of the bullet was no longer bearable.  Its occupants would have been frozen to death.