indow was even cracked by the violent shock.
It seemed to be floating in a shower of bullets, of which the least
could annihilate it in an instant.

The light which saturated the ether was of incomparable intensity, for
these asteroids dispersed it in every direction. At a certain moment it
was so bright that Michel dragged Barbicane and Nicholl to the window,
exclaiming--

"The invisible moon is at last visible!"

And all three, across the illumination, saw for a few seconds that
mysterious disc which the eye of man perceived for the first time.

What did they distinguish across that distance which they could not
estimate? Long bands across the disc, veritable clouds formed in a very
restricted atmospheric medium, from which emerged not only all the
mountains, but every relief of middling importance, amphitheatres,
yawning craters, such as exist on the visible face. Then immense tracts,
no longer arid plains, but veritable seas, oceans which reflected in
their liquid mirror all the dazzling magic of the fires of space.
Lastly, on the surface of the continents, vast dark masses, such as
immense forests would resemble under the rapid illumination of a flash
of lightning.

Was it an illusion, an error of the eyes, an optical deception? Could
they give a scientific affirmation to that observation so superficially
obtained? Dared they pronounce upon the question of its habitability
after so slight a glimpse of the invisible disc?

By degrees the fulgurations of space gradually died out, its accidental
brilliancy lessened, the asteroids fled away by their different
trajectories, and went out in the distance. The ether resumed its
habitual darkness; the stars, for one moment eclipsed, shone in the
firmament, and the disc, of which scarcely a glimpse had been caught,
was lost in the impenetrable night.

CHAPTER XVI.

THE SOUTHERN HEMISPHERE.

The projectile had just escaped a terrible danger, a danger quite
unforeseen. Who would have imagined such a meeting of asteroids? These
wandering bodies might prove serious perils to the travellers. They were
to them like so many rocks in the sea of ether, which, less fortunate
than navigators, they could not avoid. But did these adventurers of
space complain? No, as Nature had given them the splendid spectacle of a
cosmic meteor shining by formidable expansion, as this incomparable
display of fireworks, which no Ruggieri could imitate, had lighted for a
few seconds t