AT the moment when this phenomenon took place so
rapidly, the projectile was skirting the moon's north pole at
less than twenty-five miles distance. Some seconds had
sufficed to plunge it into the absolute darkness of space.
The transition was so sudden, without shade, without grada-
tion of light, without attenuation of the luminous waves,
that the orb seemed to have been extinguished by a power-
ful blow.

"Melted, disappeared!" Michel Ardan exclaimed, aghast.

Indeed, there was neither reflection nor shadow. Noth-
ing more was to be seen of that disc, formerly so dazzling.
The darkness was complete, and rendered even more so by
the rays from the stars. It was "that blackness" in which
the lunar nights are insteeped, which last three hundred and
fifty-four hours and a half at each point of the disc, a long
night resulting from the equality of the translatory and
rotatory movements of the moon. The projectile, im-
merged in the conical shadow of the satellite, experienced
the action of the solar rays no more than any of its invisible
points.

In the interior, the obscurity was complete. They could
not see each other. Hence the necessity of dispelling the
darkness. However desirous Barbicane might be to hus-
band the gas, the reserve of which was small, he was obliged
to ask from it a fictitious light, an expensive brilliancy.
which the sun then refused.

"Devil take the radiant orb!" exclaimed Michel Ardan,
"which forces us to expend gas, instead of giving us his
rays gratuitously."

"Do not let us accuse the sun," said Nicholl, "it is not
his fault, but that of the moon, which has come and placed
herself like a screen between us and it."

"It is the sun!" continued Michel.

"It is the moon!" retorted Nicholl.

An idle dispute, which Barbicane put an end to by say-
ing:

"My friends, it is neither the fault of the sun nor of
the moon; it is the fault of the projectile, which, instead of
rigidly following its course, has awkwardly missed it. To

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