cording to some philosophers, is piled
away on the dark side?"

"Ah! In that case I should consider a little before committing myself,"
replied Ardan, "I should like to hear your opinion regarding such a
notion, Barbican. Hey! Do your hear? Have astronomers any valid reasons
for supposing the atmosphere to have fled to the dark side of the Moon?"

"Defer that question till some other time, Ardan," whispered M'Nicholl;
"Barbican is just now thinking out something that interests him far more
deeply than any empty speculation of astronomers. If you are near the
window, look out through it towards the Moon. Can you see anything?"

"I can feel the window with my hand; but for all I can see, I might as
well be over head and ears in a hogshead of ink."

The two friends kept up a desultory conversation, but Barbican did not
hear them. One fact, in particular, troubled him, and he sought in vain
to account for it. Having come so near the Moon--about 30 miles--why had
not the Projectile gone all the way? Had its velocity been very great,
the tendency to fall could certainly be counteracted. But the velocity
being undeniably very moderate, how explain such a decided resistance to
Lunar attraction? Had the Projectile come within the sphere of some
strange unknown influence? Did the neighborhood of some mysterious body
retain it firmly imbedded in ether? That it would never reach the Moon,
was now beyond all doubt; but where was it going? Nearer to her or
further off? Or was it rushing resistlessly into infinity on the wings
of that pitchy night? Who could tell, know, calculate--who could even
guess, amid the horror of this gloomy blackness? Questions, like these,
left Barbican no rest; in vain he tried to grapple with them; he felt
like a child before them, baffled and almost despairing.

In fact, what could be more tantalizing? Just outside their windows,
only a few leagues off, perhaps only a few miles, lay the radiant planet
of the night, but in every respect as far off from the eyes of himself
and his companions as if she was hiding at the other side of Jupiter!
And to their ears she was no nearer. Earthquakes of the old Titanic type
might at that very moment be upheaving her surface with resistless
force, crashing mountain against mountain as fiercely as wave meets wave
around the storm-lashed cliffs of Cape Horn. But not the faintest far
off murmur even of such a mighty tumult could break the dead brooding
silence that su