hts were solidly
pinned, readily yielded to the pressure of a powerful wrench. The bolts
were then driven outwards, and the holes which had contained them were
immediately filled with solid plugs of India rubber. The bolts once
driven out, the external plates dropped by their own weight, turning on
a hinge, like portholes, and the strong plate-glass forming the light
immediately showed itself. A second light exactly similar, could be
cleared away on the opposite side of the Projectile; a third, on the
summit of the dome, and a fourth, in the centre of the bottom. The
travellers could thus take observations in four different directions,
having an opportunity of gazing at the firmament through the side
lights, and at the Earth and the Moon through the lower and the upper
lights of the Projectile.

Ardan and the Captain had commenced examining the floor, previous to
operating on the bottom light. But Barbican was the first to get through
his work at one of the side lights, and M'Nicholl and Ardan soon heard
him shouting:

"No, my friends!" he exclaimed, in tones of decided emotion; "we have
_not_ fallen back to Earth; nor are we lying in the bottom of the Gulf
of Mexico. No! We are driving through space! Look at the stars
glittering all around! Brighter, but smaller than we have ever seen them
before! We have left the Earth and the Earth's atmosphere far behind
us!"

"Hurrah! Hurrah!" cried M'Nicholl and Ardan, feeling as if electric
shocks were coursing through them, though they could see nothing,
looking down from the side light, but the blackest and profoundest
obscurity.

Barbican soon convinced them that this pitchy blackness proved that they
were not, and could not be, reposing on the surface of the Earth, where
at that moment, everything was illuminated by the bright moonlight; also
that they had passed the different layers of the atmosphere, where the
diffused and refracted rays would be also sure to reveal themselves
through the lights of the Projectile. They were, therefore, certainly
moving. No doubt was longer possible.

"It's a fact!" observed the Captain, now quite convinced. "Then I've
lost!"

"Let me congratulate you!" cried Ardan, shaking his hand.

"Here is your nine thousand dollars, friend Barbican," said the Captain,
taking a roll of greenbacks of high denomination out of his
porte-monnaie.

"You want a receipt, don't you, Captain?" asked Barbican, counting the
money.

"Yes, I should pref