“I think this,” answered the grave president:  “if ever we recommence this journey, we shall start at the same epoch, and under the same circumstances.  Suppose we had reached our goal, would it not have been better to find the continents in full daylight instead of dark night?  Would not our first installation have been made under better circumstances?  Yes, evidently.  As to the invisible side, we could have visited that in our exploring expeditions on the lunar globe.  So, therefore, the time of the full moon was well chosen.  But we ought to have reached our goal, and in order to have reached it we ought not to have deviated from our road.”

“There is no answer to make to that,” said Michel Ardan.  “Yet we have passed a fine opportunity for seeing the moon!  Who knows whether the inhabitants of the other planets are not more advanced than the savants of the earth on the subject of their satellites?”

The following answer might easily have been given to Michel Ardan’s remark:—­Yes, other satellites, on account of their greater proximity, have made the study of them easier.  The inhabitants of Saturn, Jupiter, and Uranus, if they exist, have been able to establish communication with their moons much more easily.  The four satellites of Jupiter gravitate at a distance of 108,260 leagues, 172,200 leagues, 274,700 leagues, and 480,130 leagues.  But these distances are reckoned from the centre of the planet, and by taking away the radius, which is 17,000 to 18,000 leagues, it will be seen that the first satellite is at a much less distance from the surface of Jupiter than the moon is from the centre of the earth.  Of the eight moons of Saturn, four are near.  Diana is 84,600 leagues off; Thetys, 62,966 leagues; Enceladus, 48,191 leagues; and lastly, Mimas is at an average distance of 34,500 leagues only.  Of the eighteen satellites of Uranus, the first, Ariel, is only 51,520 leagues from the planet.

Therefore, upon the surface of those three stars, an experiment analogous to that of President Barbicane would have presented less difficulties.  If, therefore, their inhabitants have attempted the enterprise, they have, perhaps, acquainted themselves with the constitution of the half of the disc which their satellite hides eternally from their eyes.  But if they have never left their planet, they do not know more about them than the astronomers of the earth.

In the meantime the bullet was describing in the darkness that incalculable trajectory which no landmark allowed them to find out.  Was its direction altered either under the influence of lunar attraction or under the action of some unknown orb?  Barbicane could not tell.  But a change had taken place in the relative position of the vehicle, and Barbicane became aware of it about 4 a.m.

The change consisted in this, that the bottom of the projectile was turned towards the surface of the moon, and kept itself perpendicular with its axis.  The attraction or gravitation had caused this modification.  The heaviest part of the bullet inclined towards the invisible disc exactly as if it had fallen towards it.