what could be easier? Is not the Columbiad still lying
in Floridian soil? Is cotton and nitric acid wanting wherewith to
manufacture the projectile? Will not the moon again pass the zenith of
Florida? In another eighteen years will she not occupy exactly the same
place that she occupies to-day?"

"Yes," repeated Michel--"yes, Maston will come, and with him our friends
Elphinstone, Blomsberry, and all the members of the Gun Club, and they
will be welcome! Later on trains of projectiles will be established
between the earth and the moon! Hurrah for J.T. Maston!"

It is probable that if the Honourable J.T. Maston did not hear the
hurrahs uttered in his honour his ears tingled at least. What was he
doing then? He was no doubt stationed in the Rocky Mountains at Long's
Peak, trying to discover the invisible bullet gravitating in space. If
he was thinking of his dear companions it must be acknowledged that they
were not behindhand with him, and that, under the influence of singular
exaltation, they consecrated their best thoughts to him.

But whence came the animation that grew visibly greater in the
inhabitants of the projectile? Their sobriety could not be questioned.
Must this strange erethismus of the brain be attributed to the
exceptional circumstances of the time, to that proximity of the Queen of
Night from which a few hours only separated them, or to some secret
influence of the moon acting on their nervous system? Their faces became
as red as if exposed to the reverberation of a furnace; their
respiration became more active, and their lungs played like
forge-bellows; their eyes shone with extraordinary flame, and their
voices became formidably loud, their words escaped like a champagne-cork
driven forth by carbonic acid gas; their gestures became disquieting,
they wanted so much room to perform them in. And, strange to say, they
in no wise perceived this excessive tension of the mind.

"Now," said Nicholl in a sharp tone--"now that I do not know whether we
shall come back from the moon, I will know what we are going there for!"

"What we are going there for!" answered Barbicane, stamping as if he
were in a fencing-room; "I don't know."

"You don't know!" cried Michel with a shout that provoked a sonorous
echo in the projectile.

"No, I have not the least idea!" answered Barbicane, shouting in unison
with his interlocutor.

"Well, then, I know," answered Michel.

"Speak, then," said Nicholl, who could no lon