It was then 10 p.m.  The eleventh day of the month of December was going to end in a magnificent night.

The Susquehanna, a corvette of 500 horse power, of the United States Navy, was taking soundings in the Pacific at about a hundred leagues from the American coast, abreast of that long peninsula on the coast of New Mexico.

The wind had gradually fallen.  There was not the slightest movement in the air.  The colours of the corvette hung from the mast motionless and inert.

The captain, Jonathan Blomsberry, cousin-german to Colonel Blomsberry, one of the Gun Club members who had married a Horschbidden, the captain’s aunt and daughter of an honourable Kentucky merchant—­Captain Blomsberry could not have wished for better weather to execute the delicate operation of sounding.  His corvette had felt nothing of that great tempest which swept away the clouds heaped up on the Rocky Mountains, and allowed the course of the famous projectile to be observed.  All was going on well, and he did not forget to thank Heaven with all the fervour of a Presbyterian.

The series of soundings executed by the Susquehanna were intended for finding out the most favourable bottoms for the establishment of a submarine cable between the Hawaiian Islands and the American coast.

It was a vast project set on foot by a powerful company.  Its director, the intelligent Cyrus Field, meant even to cover all the islands of Oceania with a vast electric network—­an immense enterprise worthy of American genius.

It was to the corvette Susquehanna that the first operations of sounding had been entrusted.  During the night from the 11th to the 12th of December she was exactly in north lat. 27 deg. 7’ and 41 deg. 37’ long., west from the Washington meridian.

The moon, then in her last quarter, began to show herself above the horizon.

After Captain Blomsberry’s departure, Lieutenant Bronsfield and a few officers were together on the poop.  As the moon appeared their thoughts turned towards that orb which the eyes of a whole hemisphere were then contemplating.  The best marine glasses could not have discovered the projectile wandering round the demi-globe, and yet they were all pointed at the shining disc which millions of eyes were looking at in the same moment.

“They started ten days ago,” then said Lieutenant Bronsfield.  “What can have become of them?”

“They have arrived, sir,” exclaimed a young midshipman, “and they are doing what all travellers do in a new country, they are looking about them.”

“I am certain of it as you say so, my young friend,” answered Lieutenant Bronsfield, smiling.

“Still,” said another officer, “their arrival cannot be doubted.  The projectile must have reached the moon at the moment she was full, at midnight on the 5th.  We are now at the 11th of December; that makes six days.  Now in six times twenty-four hours, with no darkness, they have had time to get comfortably settled.  It seems to me that I see our brave countrymen encamped at the bottom of a valley, on the borders of a Selenite stream, near the projectile, half buried by its fall, amidst volcanic remains, Captain Nicholl beginning his levelling operations, President Barbicane putting his travelling notes in order, Michel Ardan performing the lunar solitudes with his Londres cigar—­”