on that rendered him uneasy.
What _had_ switched them off? He would have given worlds for an answer,
but his brain sorely puzzled sought one in vain.

In the mean time, the Projectile continued to turn its side rather than
its base towards the Moon; that is, to assume a lateral rather than a
direct movement, and this movement was fully participated in by the
multitude of the objects that had been thrown outside. Barbican could
even convince himself by sighting several points on the lunar surface,
by this time hardly more than fifteen or eighteen thousand miles
distant, that the velocity of the Projectile instead of accelerating was
becoming more and more uniform. This was another proof that there was
no perpendicular fall. However, though the original impulsive force was
still superior to the Moon's attraction, the travellers were evidently
approaching the lunar disc, and there was every reason to hope that they
would at last reach a point where, the lunar attraction at last having
the best of it, a decided fall should be the result.

The three friends, it need hardly be said, continued to make their
observations with redoubled interest, if redoubled interest were
possible. But with all their care they could as yet determine nothing
regarding the topographical details of our radiant satellite. Her
surface still reflected the solar rays too dazzlingly to show the relief
necessary for satisfactory observation.

Our travellers kept steadily on the watch looking out of the side
lights, till eight o'clock in the evening, by which time the Moon had
grown so large in their eyes that she covered up fully half the sky. At
this time the Projectile itself must have looked like a streak of light,
reflecting, as it did, the Sun's brilliancy on the one side and the
Moon's splendor on the other.

Barbican now took a careful observation and calculated that they could
not be much more than 2,000 miles from the object of their journey. The
velocity of the Projectile he calculated to be about 650 feet per second
or 450 miles an hour. They had therefore still plenty of time to reach
the Moon in about four hours. But though the bottom of the Projectile
continued to turn towards the lunar surface in obedience to the law of
centripetal force, the centrifugal force was still evidently strong
enough to change the path which it followed into some kind of curve, the
exact nature of which would be exceedingly difficult to calculate.

The care