s' eyes been a mere vision
or the result of a reality? an optical delusion or the shadow of a solid
fact? Could an observation so rapid, so fleeting, so superficial, be
really regarded as a genuine scientific affirmation? Could such a feeble
glimmer of the invisible disc justify them in pronouncing a decided
opinion on the inhabitability of the Moon? To such questions as these,
rising spontaneously and simultaneously in the minds of our travellers,
they could not reply at the moment; they could not reply to them long
afterwards; even to this day they can give them no satisfactory answer.
All they could do at the moment, they did. To every sight and sound they
kept their eyes and ears open, and, by observing the most perfect
silence, they sought to render their impressions too vivid to admit of
deception.

There was now, however, nothing to be heard, and very little more to be
seen. The few coruscations that flashed over the sky, gradually became
fewer and dimmer; the asteroids sought paths further and further apart,
and finally disappeared altogether. The ether resumed its original
blackness. The stars, eclipsed for a moment, blazed out again on the
firmament, and the invisible disc, that had flashed into view for an
instant, once more relapsed forever into the impenetrable depths of
night.

CHAPTER XVI.

THE SOUTHERN HEMISPHERE.

Exceedingly narrow and exceedingly fortunate had been the escape of the
Projectile. And from a danger too the most unlikely and the most
unexpected. Who would have ever dreamed of even the possibility of such
an encounter? And was all danger over? The sight of one of these erratic
bolides certainly justified the gravest apprehensions of our travellers
regarding the existence of others. Worse than the sunken reefs of the
Southern Seas or the snags of the Mississippi, how could the Projectile
be expected to avoid them? Drifting along blindly through the boundless
ethereal ocean, _her_ inmates, even if they saw the danger, were totally
powerless to turn her aside. Like a ship without a rudder, like a
runaway horse, like a collapsed balloon, like an iceberg in an Atlantic
storm, like a boat in the Niagara rapids, she moved on sullenly,
recklessly, mechanically, mayhap into the very jaws of the most
frightful danger, the bright intelligences within no more able to modify
her motions even by a finger's breadth than they were able to affect
Mercury's movements around the Sun.

But did