as full, at
midnight on the 5th. We are now at the 11th of December; that makes six
days. Now in six times twenty-four hours, with no darkness, they have
had time to get comfortably settled. It seems to me that I see our brave
countrymen encamped at the bottom of a valley, on the borders of a
Selenite stream, near the projectile, half buried by its fall, amidst
volcanic remains, Captain Nicholl beginning his levelling operations,
President Barbicane putting his travelling notes in order, Michel Ardan
performing the lunar solitudes with his Londres cigar--"

"Oh, it must be so; it is so!" exclaimed the young midshipman,
enthusiastic at the ideal description of his superior.

"I should like to believe it," answered Lieutenant Bronsfield, who was
seldom carried away. "Unfortunately direct news from the lunar world
will always be wanting."

"Excuse me, sir," said the midshipman, "but cannot President Barbicane
write?"

A roar of laughter greeted this answer.

"Not letters," answered the young man quickly. "The post-office has
nothing to do with that."

"Perhaps you mean the telegraph-office?" said one of the officers
ironically.

"Nor that either," answered the midshipman, who would not give in. "But
it is very easy to establish graphic communication with the earth."

"And how, pray?"

"By means of the telescope on Long's Peak. You know that it brings the
moon to within two leagues only of the Rocky Mountains, and that it
allows them to see objects having nine feet of diameter on her surface.
Well, our industrious friends will construct a gigantic alphabet! They
will write words 600 feet long, and sentences a league long, and then
they can send up news!"

The young midshipman, who certainly had some imagination was loudly
applauded. Lieutenant Bronsfield himself was convinced that the idea
could have been carried out. He added that by sending luminous rays,
grouped by means of parabolical mirrors, direct communications could
also be established--in fact, these rays would be as visible on the
surface of Venus or Mars as the planet Neptune is from the earth. He
ended by saying that the brilliant points already observed on the
nearest planets might be signals made to the earth. But he said, that
though by these means they could have news from the lunar world, they
could not send any from the terrestrial world unless the Selenites have
at their disposition instruments with which to make distant
observations.

"T