"More than 2,000 leagues!" cried Michel Ardan. "That beats the express trains of the pitiable globe called the earth!"
"I should think it did," answered Nicholl, consulting his chronometer; "it is eleven o'clock, only thirteen minutes since we left the American continent."
"Only thirteen minutes?" said Barbicane.
"That is all," answered Nicholl; "and if our initial velocity were constant we should make nearly 10,000 leagues an hour."
"That is all very well, my friends," said the president; "but one insoluble question still remains—why did we not hear the detonation of the Columbiad?"
For want of an answer the conversation stopped, and Barbicane, still reflecting, occupied himself with lowering the covering of the second lateral light-port. His operation succeeded, and through the glass the moon filled the interior of the projectile with brilliant light. Nicholl, like an economical man, put out the gas that was thus rendered useless, and the brilliance of which obstructed the observation of planetary space.
The lunar disc then shone with incomparable purity. Her rays, no longer filtered by the vapoury atmosphere of the terrestrial globe, shone clearly through the glass and saturated the interior air of the projectile with silvery reflections. The black curtain of the firmament really doubled the brilliancy of the moon, which in this void of ether unfavourable to diffusion did not eclipse the neighbouring stars. The sky, thus seen, presented quite a different aspect—one that no human eye could imagine.
It will be readily understood with what interest these audacious men contemplated the moon, the supreme goal of their journey. The earth's satellite, in her movement of translation, insensibly neared the zenith, a mathematical point which she was to reach about ninety-six hours later. Her mountains and plains, or any object in relief, were not seen more plainly than from the earth; but her light across the void was developed with incomparable intensity. The disc shone like a platinum mirror. The travellers had already forgotten all about the earth which was flying beneath their feet.
It was Captain Nicholl who first drew attention to the vanished globe.
"Yes!" answered Michel Ardan. "We must not be ungrateful to it. As we are leaving our country let our last looks reach it. I want to see the earth before it disappears completely from our eyes!"