by a
despairing shake of his head.

"You don't mean surely that we're going to sit here, like bumps on a
log, doing nothing until it will be too late to attempt anything?"

"Nothing whatever can be done," said Barbican gloomily. "It is vain to
struggle against the impossible."

"Impossible! Where did you get that word? I thought the American
schoolboys had cut it out of their dictionaries!"

"That must have been since my time," said Barbican smiling grimly.

"It still sticks in a few old copies anyhow," drawled M'Nicholl drily,
as he carefully wiped his glasses.

"Well! it has no business _here_!" said Ardan. "What! A pair of live
Yankees and a Frenchman, of the nineteenth century too, recoil before an
old fashioned word that hardly scared our grandfathers!"

"What can we do?"

"Correct the movement that's now running away with us!"

"Correct it?"

"Certainly, correct it! or modify it! or clap brakes on it! or take
some advantage of it that will be in our favor! What matters the exact
term so you comprehend me?"

"Easy talking!"

"As easy doing!"

"Doing what? Doing how?"

"The what, and the how, is your business, not mine! What kind of an
artillery man is he who can't master his bullets? The gunner who cannot
command his own gun should be rammed into it head foremost himself and
blown from its mouth! A nice pair of savants _you_ are! There you sit as
helpless as a couple of babies, after having inveigled me--"

"Inveigled!!" cried Barbican and M'Nicholl starting to their feet in an
instant; "WHAT!!!"

"Come, come!" went on Ardan, not giving his indignant friends time to
utter a syllable; "I don't want any recrimination! I'm not the one to
complain! I'll even let up a little if you consider the expression too
strong! I'll even withdraw it altogether, and assert that the trip
delights me! that the Projectile is a thing after my own heart! that I
was never in better spirits than at the present moment! I don't
complain, I only appeal to your own good sense, and call upon you with
all my voice to do everything possible, so that we may go _somewhere_,
since it appears we can't get to the Moon!"

"But that's exactly what we want to do ourselves, friend Ardan," said
Barbican, endeavoring to give an example of calmness to the impatient
M'Nicholl; "the only trouble is that we have not the means to do it."

"Can't we modify the Projectile's movement?"

"No."

"Nor diminish its velocity?"

"No."

"N