t the rate of
68,000 miles an hour? Movement under such circumstances is not felt more
than repose. Every object is indifferent to it. When a body is in repose
it remains so until some foreign force puts it in movement. When in
movement it would never stop if some obstacle were not in its road. This
indifference to movement or repose is inertia.

Barbicane and his companions could, therefore, imagine themselves
absolutely motionless, shut up in the interior of the projectile. The
effect would have been the same if they had placed themselves on the
outside. Without the moon, which grew larger above them, and the earth
that grew smaller below, they would have sworn they were suspended in a
complete stagnation.

That morning, the 3rd of December, they were awakened by a joyful but
unexpected noise. It was the crowing of a cock in the interior of their
vehicle.

Michel Ardan was the first to get up; he climbed to the top of the
projectile and closed a partly-open case.

"Be quiet," said he in a whisper. "That animal will spoil my plan!"

In the meantime Nicholl and Barbicane awoke.

"Was that a cock?" said Nicholl.

"No, my friends," answered Michel quickly. "I wished to awake you with
that rural sound."

So saying he gave vent to a cock-a-doodle-do which would have done
honour to the proudest of gallinaceans.

The two Americans could not help laughing.

"A fine accomplishment that," said Nicholl, looking suspiciously at his
companion.

"Yes," answered Michel, "a joke common in my country. It is very Gallic.
We perpetrate it in the best society."

Then turning the conversation--

"Barbicane, do you know what I have been thinking about all night?"

"No," answered the president.

"About our friends at Cambridge. You have already remarked how
admirably ignorant I am of mathematics. I find it, therefore, impossible
to guess how our _savants_ of the observatory could calculate what
initial velocity the projectile ought to be endowed with on leaving the
Columbiad in order to reach the moon."

"You mean," replied Barbicane, "in order to reach that neutral point
where the terrestrial and lunar attractions are equal; for beyond this
point, situated at about 0.9 of the distance, the projectile will fall
upon the moon by virtue of its own weight merely."

"Very well," answered Michel; "but once more; how did they calculate the
initial velocity?"

"Nothing is easier," said Barbicane.

"And could you have made