or an audience, we should oxygenize towns,
cities, a whole country--what activity would be infused into the whole
people! What new life would electrify a stagnant community! Out of an
old used-up nation we could perhaps make a bran-new one, and, for my
part, I know more than one state in old Europe where this oxygen
experiment might be attended with a decided advantage, or where, at all
events, it could do no harm!"

The Frenchman spoke so glibly and gesticulated so earnestly that
M'Nicholl once more gravely examined the stop-cock; but Barbican damped
his enthusiasm by a single observation.

"Friend Michael," said he, "your new and interesting idea we shall
discuss at a more favorable opportunity. At present we want to know
where all these cocks and hens have come from."

"These cocks and hens?"

"Yes."

Ardan threw a glance of comical bewilderment on half a dozen or so of
splendid barn-yard fowls that were now beginning to recover from the
effects of the oxygen. For an instant he could not utter a word; then,
shrugging his shoulders, he muttered in a low voice:

"Catastrophe prematurely exploded!"

"What are you going to do with these chickens?" persisted Barbican.

"Acclimatize them in the Moon, by Jove! what else?" was the ready reply.

"Why conceal them then?"

"A hoax, a poor hoax, dear President, which proves a miserable failure!
I intended to let them loose on the Lunar Continent at the first
favorable opportunity. I often had a good laugh to myself, thinking of
your astonishment and the Captain's at seeing a lot of American poultry
scratching for worms on a Lunar dunghill!"

"Ah! wag, jester, incorrigible _farceur_!" cried Barbican with a smile;
"you want no nitrous oxide to put a bee in your bonnet! He is always as
bad as you and I were for a short time, M'Nicholl, under the laughing
gas! He's never had a sensible moment in his life!"

"I can't say the same of you," replied Ardan; "you had at least one
sensible moment in all your lives, and that was about an hour ago!"

Their incessant chattering did not prevent the friends from at once
repairing the disorder of the interior of the Projectile. Cocks and hens
were put back in their cages. But while doing so, the friends were
astonished to find that the birds, though good sized creatures, and now
pretty fat and plump, hardly felt heavier in their hands than if they
had been so many sparrows. This drew their interested attention to a new
phenomenon