So I said:
“But I thought the lunar volcanoes were all dead ages ago. I hope we haven’t camped in the crater of one that is likely to go off again.”
“My opinion is,” answered the doctor, “that there is still water inside the moon which is gradually freezing. That operation would sometimes crack the surface, and this has probably caused the quaking that we have felt.”
While we were talking the wind began to blow, and soon, although it was long before time for the sun to rise, we suddenly emerged from darkness into bright sunlight. We sprang up instinctively to look about us and try to discover what this could mean, when what was our consternation to find ourselves adrift!
There, in full view of our wondering eyes, was the whole, round earth, hanging in space, and where were we? Then we began to realize gradually that the trembling of the ground was the grating of the moon against the earth as it left its resting place, and the wind was caused by our motion.
The novelty of the situation took away for a time the sense of fear, and I exclaimed:
“Another scientific certainty gone to smash! I thought you said the moon could never get away from the earth. What are we going to do now?”
“Well,” replied the doctor, “this is certainly something I never dreamed of in my philosophy. I didn’t see how the moon could be drawn away from the earth when once actually attached to it, but I suppose the sun and planets all happen to be pulling in one direction just now and are proving too much for the earth’s attraction. But what concerns us more at this time is covered by your question, ‘What are we going to do now?’ And I will answer that I think we will stick to the moon for a while. You can see for yourself that we are held here much more firmly than when we were disporting ourselves in the air yesterday, and the earth is now too far away for us to throw ourselves and our balloon within its attraction.”
I knew by the feeling of increasing weight that what my companion said must be true, but we could not then appreciate the dreadful nature of our condition, so wrapped up were we in the grandeur of the object before our eyes. To those who have never been on the moon in such circumstances it will be impossible to adequately describe our feelings as we gazed upon our late home and knew that we were fast drifting away from it.
There the round globe hung, as I had often pictured it in my imagination—oceans and continents, mountains, lakes, and rivers, all spread out before us—the greatest object lesson ever seen by the eye of man. As we studied it, recognizing feature after feature, lands and waters that we knew by their familiar shape, the doctor broke our reverie with these words, evidently with the endeavor to keep up my spirits: