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

the three friends, not speaking, yet united in heart, watched while the projectile went on with uniformly decreasing velocity. Then irresistible sleep took possession of them. Was it fatigue of body and mind? Doubtless, for after the excitement of the last hours passed upon earth, reaction must inevitably set in.

“Well,” said Michel, “as we must sleep, let us go to sleep.”

Stretched upon their beds, all three were soon buried in profound slumber.

But they had not been unconscious for more than a quarter of an hour when Barbicane suddenly rose, and, waking his companions, in a loud voice cried⁠—

“I’ve found it!”

“What have you found?” asked Michel Ardan, jumping out of bed.

“The reason we did not hear the detonation of the Columbiad!”

“Well?” said Nicholl.

“It was because our projectile went quicker than sound.”

III Taking Possession

This curious but certainly correct explanation once given, the three friends fell again into a profound sleep. Where would they have found a calmer or more peaceful place to sleep in? Upon earth, houses in the town or cottages in the country feel every shock upon the surface of the globe. At sea, ships, rocked by the waves, are in perpetual movement. In the air, balloons incessantly oscillate upon the fluid strata of different densities. This projectile alone, travelling in absolute void amidst absolute silence, offered absolute repose to its inhabitants.

The sleep of the three adventurers would have, perhaps, been indefinitely prolonged if an unexpected noise had not awakened them about 7 a.m. on the 2nd of December, eight hours after their departure.

This noise was a very distinct bark.

“The dogs! It is the dogs!” cried Michel Ardan, getting up immediately.

“They are hungry,” said Nicholl.

“I should think so,” answered Michel; “we have forgotten them.”

“Where are they?” asked Barbicane.

One of the animals was found cowering under the divan. Terrified and stunned by the first shock, it had remained in a corner until the moment it had recovered its voice along with the feeling of hunger.

It was Diana, still rather sheepish, that came from the retreat, not without urging. Michel Ardan encouraged her with his most gracious words.

“Come, Diana,” he said⁠—“come, my child; your destiny will be noted in cynegetic annals! Pagans would have made you companion to the god Anubis, and Christians friend to St. Roch! You are worthy of being carved in bronze for the king of hell, like the puppy that Jupiter gave beautiful Europa as the price of a kiss! Your celebrity will efface that of the Montargis and St. Bernard heroes. You are rushing through interplanetary space, and will, perhaps, be the Eve of Selenite dogs! You will justify up there Toussenel’s saying, ‘In the beginning God created man, and seeing how weak he was, gave him the dog!’ Come, Diana, come here!”

Diana, whether flattered or not, came out slowly, uttering plaintive moans.

“Good!” said Barbicane. “I see Eve, but where is Adam?”

“Adam,” answered Michel Ardan, “can’t be far off. He is here somewhere.
He must be called! Satellite! here, Satellite!”

But Satellite did not appear. Diana continued moaning. It was decided, however, that she was not wounded, and an appetising dish was set before her to stop her complaining.

As to Satellite, he seemed lost. They were obliged to search a long time before discovering him in one of the upper compartments of the projectile, where a rather inexplicable rebound had hurled him violently. The poor animal was in a pitiable condition.

“The devil!” said Michel. “Our acclimatisation is in danger!”

The unfortunate dog was carefully lowered. His head had been fractured against the roof, and it seemed difficult for him to survive such a shock. Nevertheless, he was comfortably stretched on a cushion, where he sighed once.

“We will take care of you,” said Michel; “we are responsible for your existence. I would rather lose an arm than a paw of my poor Satellite.”

So saying he offered some water to the wounded animal, who drank it greedily.

These attentions bestowed, the travellers attentively watched the earth and the moon. The earth only appeared like a pale disc terminated by a crescent smaller than that of the previous evening, but its volume compared with that of the moon, which was gradually forming a perfect circle, remained enormous.

“Parbleu!” then said Michel Ardan; “I am really sorry we did not start when the earth was at her full⁠—that is to say, when our globe was in opposition to the sun!”

“Why?” asked Nicholl.

“Because we should have seen our continents and seas under a new aspect⁠—the continents shining under the solar rays, the seas darker, like they figure upon certain maps of the world! I should like to have seen those poles of the earth upon which the eye of man has never yet rested!”

“I daresay,” answered Barbicane, “but if the earth had been full the moon would have been new⁠—that is to say, invisible amidst the irradiation of the sun. It is better for us to see the goal we want to reach than the place we started from.”

“You are right, Barbicane,” answered Captain Nicholl; “and besides, when we have reached the moon we shall have plenty of time during the long lunar nights to consider at leisure the globe that harbours men like us.”

“Men like us!” cried Michel Ardan. “But now they are not more like us than the Selenites. We are inhabitants of a new world peopled by us alone⁠—the projectile! I am a man like Barbicane, and Barbicane is a man like Nicholl. Beyond us and outside of us humanity ends, and we are the only population of this microcosm until the moment we become simple Selenites.”

“In about eighty-eight hours,” replied the captain.

“Which means?” asked Michel Ardan.

“That it is half-past eight,” answered Nicholl.

“Very well,” answered Michel, “I fail to find the shadow of a reason why we should not breakfast illico.”

In fact, the inhabitants of the new star could not live in it without eating, and their stomachs then submitted to the imperious laws of hunger. Michel Ardan, in his quality of Frenchman, declared himself chief cook,