triumphantly, "It would have enabled us to exchange telegrams with the
Earth!"

"Ho! ho! ho!" roared the Captain, rapidly recovering his good humor;
"decidedly the best joke of the season! Ha! ha! ha! Of course you have
calculated the weight of a wire 240 thousand miles long?"

"No matter about its weight!" cried the Frenchman impetuously; "we
should have laughed at its weight! We could have tripled the charge of
the Columbiad; we could have quadrupled it!--aye, quintupled it, if
necessary!" he added in tones evidently increasing in loudness and
violence.

"Yes, friend Michael," observed Barbican; "but there is a slight and
unfortunately a fatal defect in your project. The Earth, by its
rotation, would have wrapped our wire around herself, like thread around
a spool, and dragged us back almost with the speed of lightning!"

"By the Nine gods of Porsena!" cried Ardan, "something is wrong with my
head to-day! My brain is out of joint, and I am making as nice a mess of
things as my friend Marston was ever capable of! By the bye--talking of
Marston--if we never return to the Earth, what is to prevent him from
following us to the Moon?"

"Nothing!" replied Barbican; "he is a faithful friend and a reliable
comrade. Besides, what is easier? Is not the Columbiad still at Stony
Hill? Cannot gun-cotton be readily manufactured on any occasion? Will
not the Moon again pass through the zenith of Florida? Eighteen years
from now, will she not occupy exactly the same spot that she does
to-day?"