Yes, friend Barbican, Petit does not seem to be very
wrong in his calculations."
But Barbican hardly heard the observation. He had not yet answered the
puzzling question that had already presented itself to them for
solution; and until he had done so he could not attend to anything else.
"That's all very well and good, Captain," he replied in an absorbed
manner, "but we have not yet been able to account for a very strange
phenomenon. Why didn't we hear the report?"
No one replying, the conversation came to a stand-still, and Barbican,
still absorbed in his reflections, began clearing the second light of
its external shutter. In a few minutes the plate dropped, and the Moon
beams, flowing in, filled the interior of the Projectile with her
brilliant light. The Captain immediately put out the gas, from motives
of economy as well as because its glare somewhat interfered with the
observation of the interplanetary regions.
The Lunar disc struck the travellers as glittering with a splendor and
purity of light that they had never witnessed before. The beams, no
longer strained through the misty atmosphere of the Earth, streamed
copiously in through the glass and coated the interior walls of the
Projectile with a brilliant silvery plating.
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