The Moon-Voyage, Jules Verne [e book reader pdf txt] 📗

mountains, outlined in full light. Towards the right, on the contrary, was a large black hole like a vast dark and bottomless well bored in the lunar soil.

That hole was the Black Lake, or Pluto, a deep circle from which the earth could be conveniently studied between the last quarter and the new moon, when the shadows are thrown from west to east.

This black colour is rarely met with on the surface of the satellite. It has, as yet, only been seen in the depths of the circle of Endymion, to the east of the Cold Sea, in the northern hemisphere, and at the bottom of the circle of Grimaldi upon the equator towards the eastern border of the orb.

Pluto is a circular mountain, situated in north lat. 51° and east long. 9°. Its circle is fifty miles long and thirty wide. Barbicane regretted not passing perpendicularly over this vast opening. There was an abyss to see, perhaps some mysterious phenomenon to become acquainted with. But the course of the projectile could not be guided. There was nothing to do but submit. A balloon could not be guided, much less a projectile when you are inside.

About 5 a.m. the northern limit of the Sea of Rains was at last passed. Mounts La Condamine and Fontenelle remained, the one on the left, the other on the right. That part of the disc, starting from the 60th degree, became absolutely mountainous. The telescopes brought it to within one league, an inferior distance to that between the summit of Mont Blanc and the sea level. All this region was bristling with peaks and amphitheatres. Mount Philolaus rose about the 70th degree to a height of 3,700 metres, opening an elliptical crater sixteen leagues long and four wide.

Then the disc, seen from that distance, presented an exceedingly strange aspect. The landscapes were very different to earthly ones, and also very inferior.

The moon having no atmosphere, this absence of vaporous covering had consequences already pointed out. There is no twilight on its surface, night following day and day following night, with the suddenness of a lamp extinguished or lighted in profound darkness. There is no transition from cold to heat: the temperature falls in one instant from boiling water heat to the cold of space.

Another consequence of this absence of air is the following:—Absolute darkness reigns where the sun's rays do not penetrate. What is called diffused light upon the earth, the luminous matter that the air holds in suspension, which creates twilights and dawns, which produces shadows, penumbrae, and all the magic of the chiaro-oscuro, does not exist upon the moon. Hence the harshness of contrasts that only admit two colours, black and white. If a Selenite shades his eyes from the solar rays the sky appears absolutely dark, and the stars shine as in the darkest nights.

The impression produced on Barbicane and his two friends by this strange state of things may well be imagined. They did not know how to use their eyes. They could no longer seize the respective distances in perspective. A lunar landscape, which does not soften the phenomenon of the chiaro-oscuro, could not be painted by a landscape-painter of the earth. It would be nothing but blots of ink upon white paper.

This aspect of things did not alter even when the projectile, then at the altitude of the 80th degree, was only separated from the moon by a distance of fifty miles, not even when, at 5 a.m., it passed at less than twenty-five miles from the mountain of Gioja, a distance which the telescopes reduced to half-a-mile. It seemed as if they could have touched the moon. It appeared impossible that before long the projectile should not knock against it, if only at the North Pole, where the brilliant mountains were clearly outlined against the dark background of the sky. Michel Ardan wanted to open one of the port-lights and jump upon the lunar surface. What was a fall of twelve leagues? He thought nothing of that. It would, however, have been a useless attempt, for if the projectile was not going to reach any point on the satellite, Michel would have been hurled along by its movement, and not have reached it either.

At that moment, 6 a.m., the lunar pole appeared. Only half the disc, brilliantly lighted, appeared to the travellers, whilst the other half disappeared in the darkness. The projectile suddenly passed the line of demarcation between intense light and absolute darkness, and was suddenly plunged into the profoundest night.

CHAPTER XIV. A NIGHT OF THREE HUNDRED AND FIFTY-FOUR HOURS AND A HALF.

At the moment this phenomenon took place the projectile was grazing the moon's North Pole, at less that twenty-five miles' distance. A few seconds had, therefore, sufficed to plunge it into the absolute darkness of space. The transition had taken place so rapidly, without gradations of light or attenuation of the luminous undulations, that the orb seemed to have been blown out by a powerful gust.

"The moon has melted, disappeared!" cried Michel Ardan, wonder-stricken.

In fact, no ray of light or shade had appeared on the disc, formerly so brilliant. The obscurity was complete, and rendered deeper still by the shining of the stars. It was the darkness of lunar night, which lasts 354 hours and a half on each point of the disc—a long night, the result of the equality of the movements of translation and rotation of the moon, the one upon herself, the other round the earth. The projectile in the satellite's cone of shadow was no longer under the action of the solar rays.

In the interior darkness was, therefore, complete. The travellers could no longer see one another. Hence came the necessity to lighten this darkness. However desirous Barbicane might be to economise the gas, of which he had so small a reserve, he was obliged to have recourse to it for artificial light—an expensive brilliancy which the sun then refused.

"The devil take the radiant orb!" cried Michel Ardan; "he is going to force us to spend our gas instead of giving us his rays for nothing."

"We must not accuse the sun," said Nicholl. "It is not his fault, it is the moon's fault for coming and putting herself like a screen between us and him."

"It's the sun!" said Michel again.

"It's the moon!" retorted Nicholl.

An idle dispute began, which Barbicane put an end to by saying—

"My friends, it is neither the fault of the sun nor the moon. It is the projectile's fault for deviating from its course instead of rigorously following it. Or, to be juster still, it is the fault of that unfortunate asteroid which so deplorably altered our first direction."

"Good!" answered Michel Ardan; "as that business is settled let us have our breakfast. After a night entirely passed in making observations, we want something to set us to rights a little."

This proposition met with no contradiction. Michel prepared the repast in a few minutes. But they ate for the sake of eating. They drank without toasts or hurrahs. The bold travellers, borne away into the darkness of space without their accustomed escort of rays, felt a vague uneasiness invade their hearts. The "farouche" darkness, so dear to the pen of Victor Hugo, surrounded them on all sides.

In the meantime they talked about this interminable night, 354 hours, or nearly 15 days, long, which physical laws have imposed upon the inhabitants of the moon. Barbicane gave his friends some explanation of the causes and consequences of this curious phenomenon.

"Curious it certainly is," said he, "for if each hemisphere of the moon is deprived of solar light for fifteen days, the one over which we are moving at this moment does not even enjoy, during its long night, a sight of the brilliantly-lighted earth. In a word, there is no moon, applying that qualification to our spheroid, except for one side of the disc. Now, if it was the same upon earth—if, for example, Europe never saw the moon, and she was only visible at the antipodes—you can figure to yourselves the astonishment of a European on arriving in Australia."

"They would make the voyage for nothing but to go and see the moon," answered Michel.

"Well," resumed Barbicane, "that astonishment is reserved to the Selenite who inhabits the opposite side of the moon to the earth, a side for ever invisible to our fellow-beings of the terrestrial globe."

"And which we should have seen," added Nicholl, "if we had arrived here at the epoch when the moon is new—that is to say, a fortnight later."

"To make amends," resumed Barbicane, "an inhabitant of the visible face is singularly favoured by Nature to the detriment on the invisible face. The latter, as you see, has dark nights of 354 hours long, without a ray of light to penetrate the obscurity. The other, on the contrary, when the sun, which has lighted him for a fortnight, sets under the horizon, sees on the opposite horizon a splendid orb rise. It is the earth, thirteen times larger than that moon which we know—the earth, which is developed to a diameter of two degrees, and which sheds a light thirteen times greater, which no atmosphere qualifies; the earth, which only disappears when the sun reappears."

"A fine sentence," said Michel Ardan; "rather academical perhaps."

"It follows," resumed Barbicane, nowise put out, "that the visible face of the disc must be very agreeable to inhabit, as it is always lighted by the sun or the moon."

"But," said Nicholl, "this advantage must be quite compensated by the unbearable heat which this light must cause."

"This inconvenience is the same under two faces, for the light reflected by the earth is evidently deprived of heat. However, this invisible face is still more deprived of heat than the visible face. I say that for you, Nicholl; Michel would probably not understand."

"Thank you," said Michel.

"In fact," resumed Barbicane, "when the invisible face receives the solar light and heat the moon is new—that is to say, that she is in conjunction, that she is situated between the sun and the earth. She is then, on account of the situation which she occupies in opposition when she is full, nearer the sun by the double of her distance from the earth. Now this distance may be estimated at the two-hundredth part of that which separates the sun and the earth; or, in round numbers, at two hundred thousand leagues. Therefore this visible face is nearer the sun by two hundred thousand leagues when it receives his rays."

"Quite right," replied Nicholl.

"Whilst—" resumed Barbicane.

"Allow me," said Michel, interrupting his grave companion.

"What do you want?"

"I want to go on with the explanation."

"Why?"

"To prove that I have understood."

"Go on, then," said Barbicane, smiling.

"Whilst," said Michel, imitating the tone and gestures of President Barbicane, "when the visible face of the moon is lighted by the sun the moon is full—that is to say, situated with regard to the earth the opposite to the sun. The distance which separates it from the radiant orb is then increased in round numbers by 200,000 leagues, and the heat which it receives must be rather less."

"Well done!" exclaimed Barbicane. "Do you know, Michel, for an artist you are intelligent."

"Yes," answered Michel carelessly, "we are all intelligent on the
Boulevard des Italiens."

Barbicane shook hands gravely with his amiable companion, and went on enumerating the few advantages reserved to the inhabitants of the visible face.

Amongst others he quoted the observations of the sun's eclipses, which can only be seen from one side of the lunar disc, because the moon must be in opposition before they can take place. These eclipses, caused by the interposition of the earth between the sun and the moon, may last two hours, during which, on account of the rays refracted by its atmosphere, the terrestrial globe can only appear like a black spot upon the sun.

"Then," said Nicholl, "the invisible hemisphere is very ill-treated by
Nature."

"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,