Page 121 of 198 CHAPTER XV. GLIMPSES AT THE INVISIBLE. - All Around The Moon

"Therefore," said Barbican, now taking up the subject, "an experiment analogous to ours, starting from either of these three planets, would have encountered fewer difficulties. But the whole question resolves itself into this. _If_ the Jovians and the rest have been able to quit their planets, they have probably succeeded in discovering the invisible sides of their satellites. But if they have _not_ been able to do so, why, they're not a bit wiser than ourselves--But what's the matter with the Projectile? It's certainly shifting!"

Shifting it certainly was. While the path it described as it swung blindly through the darkness, could not be laid down by any chart for want of a starting point, Barbican and his companions soon became aware of a decided modification of its relative position with regard to the Moon's surface. Instead of its side, as heretofore, it now presented its base to the Moon's disc, and its axis had become rigidly vertical to the lunar horizon. Of this new feature in their journey, Barbican had assured himself by the most undoubted proof towards four o'clock in the morning. What was the cause? Gravity, of course. The heavier portion of the Projectile gravitated towards the Moon's centre exactly as if they were falling towards her surface.

But _were_ they falling? Were they at last, contrary to all expectations, about to reach the goal that they had been so ardently wishing for? No! A sight-point, just discovered by M'Nicholl, very soon convinced Barbican that the Projectile was as far as ever from approaching the Moon, but was moving around it in a curve pretty near concentric.

M'Nicholl's discovery, a luminous gleam flickering on the distant verge of the black disc, at once engrossed the complete attention of our travellers and set them to divining its course. It could not possibly be confounded with a star. Its glare was reddish, like that of a distant furnace on a dark night; it kept steadily increasing in size and brightness, thus showing beyond a doubt how the Projectile was moving--in the direction of the luminous point, and _not_ vertically falling towards the Moon's surface.

"It's a volcano!" cried the Captain, in great excitement; "a volcano in full blast! An outlet of the Moon's internal fires! Therefore she can't be a burnt out cinder!"

"It certainly looks like a volcano," replied Barbican, carefully investigating this new and puzzling phenomenon with his night-glass. "If it is not one, in fact, what can it be?"

"To maintain combustion," commenced Ardan syllogistically and sententiously, "air is necessary. An undoubted case of combustion lies before us. Therefore, this part of the Moon _must_ have an atmosphere!"

"Perhaps so," observed Barbican, "but not necessarily so. The volcano, by decomposing certain substances, gunpowder for instance, may be able to furnish its own oxygen, and thus explode in a vacuum. That blaze, in fact, seems to me to possess the intensity and the blinding glare of objects burning in pure oxygen. Let us therefore be not over hasty in jumping at the conclusion of the existence of a lunar atmosphere."

		"The male is a domestic animal which, if treated with firmness, can be trained to do most things." Jilly Cooper