"Certainly."
"And you know the reason?"
"Perfectly."
"Then tell us, sulky savant—you make me boil with impatience."
"Well, my worthy Michel," answered Barbicane tranquilly, "it is well known what diminution of temperature the earth suffers in the lapse of a century. Now, according to certain calculations, that average temperature will be brought down to zero after a period of 400,000 years!"
"Four hundred thousand years!" exclaimed Michel. "Ah! I breathe again! I was really frightened. I imagined from listening to you that we had only fifty thousand years to live!"
Barbicane and Nicholl could not help laughing at their companion's uneasiness. Then Nicholl, who wanted to have done with it, reminded them of the second question to be settled.
"Has the moon been inhabited?" he asked.
The answer was unanimously in the affirmative.
During this discussion, fruitful in somewhat hazardous theories, although it resumed the general ideas of science on the subject, the projectile had run rapidly towards the lunar equator, at the same time that it went farther away from the lunar disc. It had passed the circle of Willem, and the 40th parallel, at a distance of 400 miles. Then leaving Pitatus to the right, on the 30th degree, it went along the south of the Sea of Clouds, of which it had already approached the north. Different amphitheatres appeared confusedly under the white light of the full moon—Bouillaud, Purbach, almost square with a central crater, then Arzachel, whose interior mountain shone with indefinable brilliancy.