craters by saying they were due to
pelting showers of meteoric rain. Then again as to her atmosphere--why
should she have lost her atmosphere? Why should it sink into craters?
Atmosphere is gas, great in volume, small in matter; where would there
be room for it? Solidified by the intense cold? Possibly in the night
time. But would not the heat of the long day be great enough to thaw it
back again? The same trouble attends the alleged disappearance of the
water. Swallowed up in the cavernous cracks, it is said. But why are
there cracks? Cooling is not always attended by cracking. Water cools
without cracking; cannon balls cool without cracking. Too much stress
has been laid on the great difference between the _nucleus_ and the
_crust_: it is really impossible to say where one ends and the other
begins. In fact, no theory explains satisfactorily anything regarding
the present state of the Moon's surface. In fact, from the day that
Galileo compared her clustering craters to 'eyes on a peacock's tail' to
the present time, we must acknowledge that we know nothing more than we
can actually see, not one particle more of the Moon's history than our
telescopes reveal to our corporal eyes!"

"In the lucid opinion of the honorable and learned gentleman who spoke
last," said Ardan, "the Chair is compelled to concur. Therefore, as to
the second question before the house for deliberation, _Has the Moon
been ever inhabited?_ the Chair gets out of its difficulty, as a Scotch
jury does when it has not evidence enough either way, by returning a
solemn verdict of _Not Proven!_"

"And with this conclusion," said Barbican, hastily rising, "of a subject
on which, to tell the truth, we are unable as yet to throw any light
worth speaking of, let us be satisfied for the present. Another question
of greater moment to us just now is: where are we? It seems to me that
we are increasing our distance from the Moon very decidedly and very
rapidly."

It was easy to see that he was quite right in this observation. The
Projectile, still following a northerly course and therefore approaching
the lunar equator, was certainly getting farther and farther from the
Moon. Even at 30 deg. S., only ten degrees farther north than the latitude
of _Tycho_, the travellers had considerable difficulty, comparatively,
in observing the details of _Pitatus_, a walled mountain on the south
shores of the _Mare Nubium_. In the "sea" itself, over which they now
floated,