No! We are driving through space! Look at the stars
glittering all around! Brighter, but smaller than we have ever seen them
before! We have left the Earth and the Earth's atmosphere far behind
us!"
"Hurrah! Hurrah!" cried M'Nicholl and Ardan, feeling as if electric
shocks were coursing through them, though they could see nothing,
looking down from the side light, but the blackest and profoundest
obscurity.
Barbican soon convinced them that this pitchy blackness proved that they
were not, and could not be, reposing on the surface of the Earth, where
at that moment, everything was illuminated by the bright moonlight; also
that they had passed the different layers of the atmosphere, where the
diffused and refracted rays would be also sure to reveal themselves
through the lights of the Projectile. They were, therefore, certainly
moving. No doubt was longer possible.
"It's a fact!" observed the Captain, now quite convinced. "Then I've
lost!"
"Let me congratulate you!" cried Ardan, shaking his hand.
"Here is your nine thousand dollars, friend Barbican," said the Captain,
taking a roll of greenbacks of high denomination out of his
porte-monnaie.
"You want a receipt, don't you, Captain?" asked Barbican, counting the
money.
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