mach--all were now clear as the noon-day Sun.

"The oxygen!" he cried, and, suddenly stooping down and examining the
tap of the air apparatus, he saw that it had been only half turned off.
Consequently the air was gradually getting more and more impregnated
with this powerful gas, colorless, odorless, tasteless, infinitely
precious, but, unless when strongly diluted with nitrogen, capable of
producing fatal disorders in the human system. Ardan, startled by
M'Nicholl's question about the means of returning from the Moon, had
turned the cock only half off.

The Captain instantly stopped the escape of the oxygen, but not one
moment too soon. It had completely saturated the atmosphere. A few
minutes more and it would have killed the travellers, not like carbonic
acid, by smothering them, but by burning them up, as a strong draught
burns up the coals in a stove.

[Illustration: "THE OXYGEN!" HE CRIED.]

It took nearly an hour for the air to become pure enough to allow the
lungs their natural play. Slowly and by degrees, the travellers
recovered from their intoxication; they had actually to sleep off the
fumes of the oxygen as a drunkard has to sleep off the effects of his
brandy. When Ardan learned that he was responsible for the whole
trouble, do you think the information disconcerted him? Not a bit of it.
On the contrary, he was rather proud of having done something
startling, to break the monotony of the journey; and to put a little
life, as he said, into old Barbican and the grim Captain, so as to get a
little fun out of such grave philosophers.

After laughing heartily at the comical figure cut by his two friends
capering like crazy students at the _Closerie des Lilas_, he went on
moralizing on the incident:

"For my part, I'm not a bit sorry for having partaken of this fuddling
gas. It gives me an idea, dear boys. Would it not be worth some
enterprising fellow's while to establish a sanatorium provided with
oxygen chambers, where people of a debilitated state of health could
enjoy a few hours of intensely active existence! There's money in it, as
you Americans say. Just suppose balls or parties given in halls where
the air would be provided with an extra supply of this enrapturing gas!
Or, theatres where the atmosphere would be maintained in a highly
oxygenated condition. What passion, what fire in the actors! What
enthusiasm in the spectators! And, carrying the idea a little further,
if, instead of an assembly