"That it is half-past eight," answered Nicholl.
"Very well," answered Michel, "I fail to find the shadow of a reason why we should not breakfast illico."
In fact, the inhabitants of the new star could not live in it without eating, and their stomachs then submitted to the imperious laws of hunger. Michel Ardan, in his quality of Frenchman, declared himself chief cook, an important function that no one disputed with him. The gas gave the necessary degrees of heat for cooking purposes, and the provision-locker furnished the elements of this first banquet.
The breakfast began with three cups of excellent broth, due to the liquefaction in hot water of three precious Liebig tablets, prepared from the choicest morsels of the Pampas ruminants. Some slices of beefsteak succeeded them, compressed by the hydraulic press, as tender and succulent as if they had just come from the butchers of the Paris Café Anglais. Michel, an imaginative man, would have it they were even rosy.
Preserved vegetables, "fresher than the natural ones," as the amiable Michel observed, succeeded the meat, and were followed by some cups of tea and slices of bread and butter, American fashion. This beverage, pronounced excellent, was made from tea of the first quality, of which the Emperor of Russia had put some cases at the disposition of the travellers.
Lastly, as a worthy ending to the meal, Ardan ferreted out a fine bottle of "Nuits" burgundy that "happened" to be in the provision compartment. The three friends drank it to the union of the earth and her satellite.
And as if the generous wine it had distilled upon the hill-sides of Burgundy were not enough, the sun was determined to help in the feast. The projectile at that moment emerged from the cone of shadow cast by the terrestrial globe, and the sun's rays fell directly upon the lower disc of the bullet, on account of the angle which the orbit of the moon makes with that of the earth.
"The sun!" exclaimed Michel Ardan.
"Of course," answered Barbicane; "I expected it."
"But," said Michel, "the cone of shadow thrown by the earth into space extends beyond the moon."