In fact, even his French politeness could not suppress two or three decided yawns, which of course the mathematicians were too absorbed to notice.
In their enthusiasm they tried to make him understand that though the Moon is 13-1/2 times smaller than our Earth, she can show more than 50 thousand craters, which astronomers have already counted and designated by specific names.
"To conclude this portion of our investigation therefore," cried Barbican, clearing his throat, and occupying Aldan's right ear,--"the Moon's surface is a honey combed, perforated, punctured--" "A fistulous, a rugose, salebrous,--" cut in the Captain, close on the left.
-- "And highly cribriform superficies--" cried Barbican.
-- "A sieve, a riddle, a colander--" shouted the Captain.
-- "A skimming dish, a buckwheat cake, a lump of green cheese--" went on Barbican--.
-- In fact, there is no knowing how far they would have proceeded with their designations, comparisons, and scientific expressions, had not Ardan, driven to extremities by Barbican's last profanity, suddenly jumped up, broken away from his companions, and clapped a forcible extinguisher on their eloquence by putting his hands on their lips and keeping them there awhile.

Then striking a grand attitude, he looked towards the Moon and burst out in accents of thrilling indignation: "Pardon, O beautiful Diana of the Ephesians! Pardon, O Phoebe, thou pearl-faced goddess of night beloved of Greece! O Isis, thou sympathetic queen of Nile-washed cities! O Astarte, thou favorite deity of the Syrian hills! O Artemis, thou symbolical daughter of Jupiter and Latona, that is of light and darkness! O brilliant sister of the radiant Apollo! enshrined in the enchanting strains of Virgil and Homer, which I only half learned at college, and therefore unfortunately forget just now! Otherwise what pleasure I should have had in hurling them at the heads of Barbican, M'Nicholl, and every other barbarous iconoclast of the nineteenth century!--" Here he stopped short, for two reasons: first he was out of breath; secondly, he saw that the irrepressible scientists had been too busy making observations of their own to hear a single word of what he had uttered, and were probably totally unconscious that he had spoken at all.

In a few seconds his breath came back in full blast, but the idea of talking when only deaf men were listening was so disconcerting as to leave him actually unable to get off another syllable..