"For my part," said Ardan; "if I had known how to get back, I should have never come at all!"
"Well! of all the answers!" said the Captain, lifting his hands and shaking his head.
"The best under the circumstances;" observed Barbican; "and I shall further observe that such a question as yours at present is both useless and uncalled for. On some future occasion, when we shall consider it advisable to return, the question will be in order, and we shall discuss it with all the attention it deserves. Though the Columbiad is at Stony Hill, the Projectile will still be in the Moon."
"Much we shall gain by that! A bullet without a gun!"
"The gun we can make and the powder too!" replied Barbican confidently. "Metal and sulphur and charcoal and saltpetre are likely enough to be present in sufficient quantities beneath the Moon's surface. Besides, to return is a problem of comparatively easy solution: we should have to overcome the lunar attraction only—a slight matter—the rest of the business would be readily done by gravity."
"Enough said on the subject!" exclaimed Ardan curtly; "how to get back is indefinitely postponed! How to communicate with our friends on the Earth, is another matter, and, as it seems to me, an extremely easy one."
"Let us hear the very easy means by which you propose to communicate with our friends on Earth," asked the Captain, with a sneer, for he was by this time a little out of humor.
"By means of bolides ejected from the lunar volcanoes," replied the Frenchman without an instant's hesitation.
"Well said, friend Ardan," exclaimed Barbican. "I am quite disposed to acknowledge the feasibility of your plan. Laplace has calculated that a force five times greater than that of an ordinary cannon would be sufficient to send a bolide from the Moon to the Earth. Now there is no cannon that can vie in force with even the smallest volcano."
"Hurrah!" cried Ardan, delighted at his success; "just imagine the pleasure of sending our letters postage free! But—oh! what a splendid idea!—Dolts that we were for not thinking of it sooner!"