vehicle in the same way.

CHAPTER VI.

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS.

On the 4th of December, at 5 a.m. by terrestrial reckoning, the
travellers awoke, having been fifty-four hours on their journey. They
had only been five hours and forty minutes more than half the time
assigned for the accomplishment of their journey, but they had come more
than seven-tenths of the distance. This peculiarity was due to their
regularly-decreasing speed.

When they looked at the earth through the port-light at the bottom, it
only looked like a black spot drowned in the sun's rays. No crescent or
pale light was now to be seen. The next day at midnight the earth would
be new at the precise moment when the moon would be full. Above, the
Queen of Night was nearing the line followed by the projectile, so as to
meet it at the hour indicated. All around the dark vault was studded
with brilliant specks which seemed to move slowly; but through the great
distance they were at their relative size did not seem to alter much.
The sun and the stars appeared exactly as they do from the earth. The
moon was considerably enlarged; but the travellers' not very powerful
telescopes did not as yet allow them to make very useful observations on
her surface, or to reconnoitre the topographical or geological details.

The time went by in interminable conversations. The talk was especially
about the moon. Each brought his contingent of particular knowledge.
Barbicane's and Nicholl's were always serious, Michel Ardan's always
fanciful. The projectile, its situation and direction, the incidents
that might arise, the precautions necessitated by its fall upon the
moon, all this afforded inexhaustible material for conjecture.

Whilst breakfasting a question of Michel's relative to the projectile
provoked a rather curious answer from Barbicane, and one worthy of being
recorded.

Michel, supposing the bullet to be suddenly stopped whilst still endowed
with its formidable initial velocity, wished to know what the
consequences would have been.

"But," answered Barbicane, "I don't see how the projectile could have
been stopped."

"But let us suppose it," answered Nicholl.

"It is an impossible supposition," replied the practical president,
"unless the force of impulsion had failed. But in that case its speed
would have gradually decreased, and would not have stopped abruptly."

"Admit that it had struck against some body in space."

"What body?"

"The eno