nd themselves now in a night
that had plenty of time not only to become black itself, but to steep
everything connected with it in palpable blackness. This was the night
354-1/4 hours long, during which the invisible face of the Moon is
turned away from the Sun. In this black darkness the Projectile now
fully participated. Having plunged into the Moon's shadow, it was as
effectually cut off from the action of the solar rays as was every point
on the invisible lunar surface itself.

The travellers being no longer able to see each other, it was proposed
to light the gas, though such an unexpected demand on a commodity at
once so scarce and so valuable was certainly disquieting. The gas, it
will be remembered, had been intended for heating alone, not
illumination, of which both Sun and Moon had promised a never ending
supply. But here both Sun and Moon, in a single instant vanished from
before their eyes and left them in Stygian darkness.

"It's all the Sun's fault!" cried Ardan, angrily trying to throw the
blame on something, and, like every angry man in such circumstances,
bound to be rather nonsensical.

"Put the saddle on the right horse, Ardan," said M'Nicholl
patronizingly, always delighted at an opportunity of counting a point
off the Frenchman. "You mean it's all the Moon's fault, don't you, in
setting herself like a screen between us and the Sun?"

"No, I don't!" cried Ardan, not at all soothed by his friend's
patronizing tone, and sticking like a man to his first assertion right
or wrong. "I know what I say! It will be all the Sun's fault if we use
up our gas!"

"Nonsense!" said M'Nicholl. "It's the Moon, who by her interposition has
cut off the Sun's light."

"The Sun had no business to allow it to be cut off," said Ardan, still
angry and therefore decidedly loose in his assertions.

Before M'Nicholl could reply, Barbican interposed, and his even voice
was soon heard pouring balm on the troubled waters.

"Dear friends," he observed, "a little reflection on either side would
convince you that our present situation is neither the Moon's fault nor
the Sun's fault. If anything is to be blamed for it, it is our
Projectile which, instead of rigidly following its allotted course, has
awkwardly contrived to deviate from it. However, strict justice must
acquit even the Projectile. It only obeyed a great law of nature in
shifting its course as soon as it came within the sphere of that
inopportune bolide's influe