Our dazzling narrator persuaded his hearers that, after this trip, many others still more wonderful would be undertaken. In fact, it was to be but the first of a long series of superhuman expeditions.
“You see, my friends, when a man has had a taste of that kind of travelling, he can’t get along afterward with any other; so, on our next expedition, instead of going off to one side, we’ll go right ahead, going up, too, all the time.”
“Humph! then you’ll go to the moon!” said one of the crowd, with a stare of amazement.
“To the moon!” exclaimed Joe, “To the moon! pooh! that’s too common. Every body might go to the moon, that way. Besides, there’s no water there, and you have to carry such a lot of it along with you. Then you have to take air along in bottles, so as to breathe.”
“Ay! ay! that’s all right! But can a man get a drop of the real stuff there?” said a sailor who liked his toddy.
“Not a drop!” was Joe’s answer. “No! old fellow, not in the moon. But we’re going to skip round among those little twinklers up there—the stars—and the splendid planets that my old man so often talks about. For instance, we’ll commence with Saturn—”
“That one with the ring?” asked the boatswain.
“Yes! the wedding-ring—only no one knows what’s become of his wife!”
“What? will you go so high up as that?” said one of the ship-boys, gaping with wonder. “Why, your master must be Old Nick himself.”
“Oh! no, he’s too good for that.”