But the velocity
being undeniably very moderate, how explain such a decided resistance to
Lunar attraction? Had the Projectile come within the sphere of some
strange unknown influence? Did the neighborhood of some mysterious body
retain it firmly imbedded in ether? That it would never reach the Moon,
was now beyond all doubt; but where was it going? Nearer to her or
further off? Or was it rushing resistlessly into infinity on the wings
of that pitchy night? Who could tell, know, calculate--who could even
guess, amid the horror of this gloomy blackness? Questions, like these,
left Barbican no rest; in vain he tried to grapple with them; he felt
like a child before them, baffled and almost despairing.
In fact, what could be more tantalizing? Just outside their windows,
only a few leagues off, perhaps only a few miles, lay the radiant planet
of the night, but in every respect as far off from the eyes of himself
and his companions as if she was hiding at the other side of Jupiter!
And to their ears she was no nearer. Earthquakes of the old Titanic type
might at that very moment be upheaving her surface with resistless
force, crashing mountain against mountain as fiercely as wave meets wave
around the storm-lashed cliffs of Cape Horn.
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