convinced, was a great triumph for Ardan,
who, as the gracious reader doubtless remembers, had had a famous
dispute with M'Nicholl on that very subject at Tampa.[D] His eyes
brightened and a smile of pleasure played around his lips, but, with a
great effort at self-restraint, he kept perfectly silent and would not
permit himself even to look in the direction of the Captain. As for
M'Nicholl, he was apparently too much absorbed in _Doerfel_ and
_Leibnitz_ to mind anything else.

These mountains rose from plains of moderate extent, bounded by an
indefinite succession of walled hollows and ring ramparts. They are the
only chains met in this region of ridge-brimmed craters and circles;
distinguished by no particular feature, they project a few pointed peaks
here and there, some of which exceed four miles and a half in height.
This altitude, however, foreshortened as it was by the vertical position
of the Projectile, could not be noticed just then, even if correct
observation had been permitted by the dazzling surface.

Once more again before the travellers' eyes the Moon's disc revealed
itself in all the old familiar features so characteristic of lunar
landscapes--no blending of tones, no softening of colors, no graduation
of shadows, every line glaring in white or black by reason of the total
absence of refracted light. And yet the wonderfully peculiar character
of this desolate world imparted to it a weird attraction as strangely
fascinating as ever.

Over this chaotic region the travellers were now sweeping, as if borne
on the wings of a storm; the peaks defiled beneath them; the yawning
chasms revealed their ruin-strewn floors; the fissured cracks untwisted
themselves; the ramparts showed all their sides; the mysterious holes
presented their impenetrable depths; the clustered mountain summits and
rings rapidly decomposed themselves: but in a moment again all had
become more inextricably entangled than ever. Everything appeared to be
the finished handiwork of volcanic agency, in the utmost purity and
highest perfection. None of the mollifying effects of air or water could
here be noticed. No smooth-capped mountains, no gently winding river
channels, no vast prairie-lands of deposited sediment, no traces of
vegetation, no signs of agriculture, no vestiges of a great city.
Nothing but vast beds of glistering lava, now rough like immense piles
of scoriae and clinker, now smooth like crystal mirrors, and reflecting
the Su