"Five thousand miles already!" cried Ardan, "why we have only just
started!"

"Let us see about that," quietly observed the Captain, looking at his
chronometer, and calculating with his pencil. "It is now 10 minutes past
eleven; we have therefore been 23 minutes on the road. Supposing our
initial velocity of 10,000 yards or nearly seven miles a second, to have
been kept up, we should by this time be about 9,000 miles from the
Earth; but by allowing for friction and gravity, we can hardly be more
than 5,500 miles. Yes, friend Barbican, Petit does not seem to be very
wrong in his calculations."

But Barbican hardly heard the observation. He had not yet answered the
puzzling question that had already presented itself to them for
solution; and until he had done so he could not attend to anything else.

"That's all very well and good, Captain," he replied in an absorbed
manner, "but we have not yet been able to account for a very strange
phenomenon. Why didn't we hear the report?"

No one replying, the conversation came to a stand-still, and Barbican,
still absorbed in his reflections, began clearing the second light of
its external shutter. In a few minutes the plate dropped, and the Moon
beams, flowing in, filled the interior of the Projectile with her
brilliant light. The Captain immediately put out the gas, from motives
of economy as well as because its glare somewhat interfered with the
observation of the interplanetary regions.

The Lunar disc struck the travellers as glittering with a splendor and
purity of light that they had never witnessed before. The beams, no