Five or six days! What of that?
_Quand meme_! as Ardan often exclaimed.

Five or six days were centuries to our bold adventurers! At present every second was a year in events, and infinitely too precious to be squandered away in mere preparations for possible contingencies.

The Moon could never be reached, but was it not possible that her surface could be carefully observed?
This they set themselves at once to find out.
The distance now separating them from our Satellite they estimated at about 400 miles.

Therefore relatively to their power of discovering the details of her disc, they were still farther off from the Moon than some of our modern astronomers are to-day, when provided with their powerful telescopes.
We know, for example, that Lord Rosse's great telescope at Parsonstown, possessing a power of magnifying 6000 times, brings the Moon to within 40 miles of us; not to speak of Barbican's great telescope on the summit of Long's Peak, by which the Moon, magnified 48,000 times, was brought within 5 miles of the Earth, where it therefore could reveal with sufficient distinctness every object above 40 feet in diameter.
Therefore our adventurers, though at such a comparatively small distance, could not make out the topographical details of the Moon with any satisfaction by their unaided vision.

The eye indeed could easily enough catch the rugged outline of these vast depressions improperly called "Seas," but it could do very little more.