Round the Moon, Jules Verne [e novels to read online .txt] 📗

down over his two companions. Their bodies were thrown one upon the other, Nicholl on the top, Barbicane underneath.

Ardan raised the captain, propped him up against a divan, and rubbed him vigorously. This friction, administered skilfully, reanimated Nicholl, who opened his eyes, instantly recovered his presence of mind, seized Ardan’s hand, and then looking round him⁠—

“And Barbicane?” he asked.

“Each in turn,” answered Michel Ardan tranquilly. “I began with you, Nicholl, because you were on the top. Now I’ll go to Barbicane.”

That said, Ardan and Nicholl raised the president of the Gun Club and put him on a divan. Barbicane seemed to have suffered more than his companions. He was bleeding, but Nicholl was glad to find that the hemorrhage only came from a slight wound in his shoulder. It was a simple scratch, which he carefully closed.

Nevertheless, Barbicane was some time before he came to himself, which frightened his two friends, who did not spare their friction.

“He is breathing, however,” said Nicholl, putting his ear to the breast of the wounded man.

“Yes,” answered Ardan, “he is breathing like a man who is in the habit of doing it daily. Rub, Nicholl, rub with all your might.”

And the two improvised practitioners set to work with such a will and managed so well that Barbicane at last came to his senses. He opened his eyes, sat up, took the hands of his two friends, and his first words were⁠—

“Nicholl, are we going on?”

Nicholl and Ardan looked at one another. They had not yet thought about the projectile. Their first anxiety had been for the travellers, not for the vehicle.

“Well, really, are we going on?” repeated Michel Ardan.

“Or are we tranquilly resting on the soil of Florida?” asked Nicholl.

“Or at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico?” added Michel Ardan.

“Impossible!” cried President Barbicane.

This double hypothesis suggested by his two friends immediately recalled him to life and energy.

They could not yet decide the question. The apparent immovability of the bullet and the want of communication with the exterior prevented them finding it out. Perhaps the projectile was falling through space. Perhaps after rising a short distance it had fallen upon the earth, or even into the Gulf of Mexico, a fall which the narrowness of the Floridian peninsula rendered possible.

The case was grave, the problem interesting. It was necessary to solve it as soon as possible. Barbicane, excited, and by his moral energy triumphing over his physical weakness, stood up and listened. A profound silence reigned outside. But the thick padding was sufficient to shut out all the noises on earth; However, one circumstance struck Barbicane. The temperature in the interior of the projectile was singularly high. The president drew out a thermometer from the envelope that protected it and consulted it. The instrument showed 81° Fahr.

“Yes!” he then exclaimed⁠—“yes, we are moving! This stifling heat oozes through the sides of our projectile. It is produced by friction against the atmosphere. It will soon diminish; because we are already moving in space, and after being almost suffocated we shall endure intense cold.”

“What!” asked Michel Ardan, “do you mean to say that we are already beyond the terrestrial atmosphere?”

“Without the slightest doubt, Michel. Listen to me. It now wants but five minutes to eleven. It is already eight minutes since we started. Now, if our initial velocity has not been diminished by friction, six seconds would be enough for us to pass the sixteen leagues of atmosphere which surround our spheroid.”

“Just so,” answered Nicholl; “but in what proportion do you reckon the diminution of speed by friction?”

“In the proportion of one-third,” answered Barbicane. “This diminution is considerable, but it is so much according to my calculations. If, therefore, we have had an initial velocity of 11,000 metres, when we get past the atmosphere it will be reduced to 7,332 metres. However that may be, we have already cleared that space, and⁠—”

“And then,” said Michel Ardan, “friend Nicholl has lost his two bets⁠—four thousand dollars because the Columbiad has not burst, five thousand dollars because the projectile has risen to a greater height than six miles; therefore, Nicholl, shell out.”

“We must prove it first,” answered the captain, “and pay afterwards. It is quite possible that Barbicane’s calculations are exact, and that I have lost my nine thousand dollars. But another hypothesis has come into my mind, and it may cancel the wager.”

“What is that?” asked Barbicane quickly.

“The supposition that for some reason or other the powder did not catch fire, and we have not started.”

“Good heavens! captain,” cried Michel Ardan, “that is a supposition worthy of me! It is not serious! Have we not been half stunned by the shock? Did I not bring you back to life? Does not the president’s shoulder still bleed from the blow?”

“Agreed, Michel,” replied Nicholl, “but allow me to ask one question.”

“Ask it, captain.”

“Did you hear the detonation, which must certainly have been formidable?”

“No,” answered Ardan, much surprised, “I certainly did not hear it.”

“And you, Barbicane?”

“I did not either.”

“What do you make of that?” asked Nicholl.

“What indeed!” murmured the president; “why did we not hear the detonation?”

The three friends looked at one another rather disconcertedly. Here was an inexplicable phenomenon. The projectile had been fired, however, and there must have been a detonation.

“We must know first where we are,” said Barbicane, “so let us open the panel.”

This simple operation was immediately accomplished. The screws that fastened the bolts on the outer plates of the right-hand skylight yielded to the coach-wrench. These bolts were driven outside, and obturators wadded with India rubber corked up the hole that let them through. The exterior plate immediately fell back upon its hinges like a porthole, and the lenticular glass that covered the hole appeared. An identical light-port had been made in the other side of the projectile, another in the dome, and a fourth in the bottom. The firmament could therefore be observed in four opposite directions⁠—the firmament through the lateral windows, and the earth or the moon more directly through the upper