"Shall we get there?" said Nicholl.
"We must act as though we should," answered Barbicane.
"You are faint-hearted fellows," replied Michel Ardan. "We shall get there, and quicker than we want."
This answer recalled Barbicane to his preparations, and he occupied himself with placing the contrivances destined to retard the fall.
It will be remembered that, at the meeting held in Tampa Town, Florida, Captain Nicholl appeared as Barbicane's enemy, and Michel Ardan's adversary. When Captain Nicholl said that the projectile would be broken like glass, Michel answered that he would retard the fall by means of fusees properly arranged.
In fact, powerful fusees, resting upon the bottom, and being fired outside, might, by producing a recoil action, lessen the speed of the bullet. These fusees were to burn in the void it is true, but oxygen would not fail them, for they would furnish that themselves like the lunar volcanoes, the deflagration of which has never been prevented by the want of atmosphere around the moon.
Barbicane had therefore provided himself with fireworks shut up in little cannons of bored steel, which could be screwed on to the bottom of the projectile. Inside these cannons were level with the bottom; outside they went half a foot beyond it. There were twenty of them. An opening in the disc allowed them to light the match with which each was provided. All the effect took place outside. The exploding mixture had been already rammed into each gun. All they had to do, therefore, was to take up the metallic buffers fixed in the base, and to put these cannons in their place, where they fitted exactly.
This fresh work was ended about 3 p.m., and all precaution taken they had now nothing to do but to wait.
In the meantime the projectile visibly drew nearer the moon. It was, therefore, submitted in some proportion to its influence; but its own velocity also inclined it in an oblique line. Perhaps the result of these two influences would be a line that would become a tangent. But it was certain that the projectile was not falling normally upon the surface of the moon, for its base, by reason of its weight, ought to have been turned towards her.
Barbicane's anxiety was increased on seeing that his bullet resisted the influence of gravitation. It was the unknown that was before him—the unknown of the interstellar regions. He, the savant, believed that he had foreseen the only three hypotheses that were possible—the return to the earth, the fall upon the moon, or stagnation upon the neutral line! And here a fourth hypothesis, full of all the terrors of the infinite, cropped up inopportunely. To face it without flinching took a resolute savant like Barbicane, a phlegmatic being like Nicholl, or an audacious adventurer like Michel Ardan.