to be the only serious damage of which they
could complain.

This extraordinary illumination lasted altogether only a few seconds;
every one of its details was of a most singular and exciting nature--but
one of its greatest wonders was yet to come. The ether, saturated with
luminous matter, developed an intensity of blazing brightness unequalled
by the lime light, the magnesium light, the electric light, or any other
dazzling source of illumination with which we are acquainted on earth.
It flashed out of these asteroids in all directions, and downwards, of
course, as well as elsewhere. At one particular instant, it was so very
vivid that Ardan, who happened to be looking downwards, cried out, as if
in transport:

"Oh!! The Moon! Visible at last!"

And the three companions, thrilling with indescribable emotion, shot a
hasty glance through the openings of the coruscating field beneath them.
Did they really catch a glimpse of the mysterious invisible disc that
the eye of man had never before lit upon? For a second or so they gazed
with enraptured fascination at all they could see. What did they see,
what could they see at a distance so uncertain that Barbican has never
been able even to guess at it? Not much. Ardan was reminded of the night
he had stood on the battlements of Dover Castle, a few years before,
when the fitful flashes of a thunder storm gave him occasional and very
uncertain glimpses of the French coast at the opposite side of the
strait. Misty strips long and narrow, extending over one portion of the
disc--probably cloud-scuds sustained by a highly rarefied
atmosphere--permitted only a very dreamy idea of lofty mountains
stretching beneath them in shapeless proportions, of smaller reliefs,
circuses, yawning craters, and the other capricious, sponge-like
formations so common on the visible side. Elsewhere the watchers became
aware for an instant of immense spaces, certainly not arid plains, but
seas, real oceans, vast and calm, reflecting from their placid depths
the dazzling fireworks of the weird and wildly flashing meteors.
Farther on, but very darkly as if behind a screen, shadowy continents
revealed themselves, their surfaces flecked with black cloudy masses,
probably great forests, with here and there a--

Nothing more! In less than a second the illumination had come to an end,
involving everything in the Moon's direction once more in pitchy
darkness.

But had the impression made on the traveller