It was rather an early hour for breakfast, two o'clock in the morning, yet the meal was keenly relished.
Ardan served it up in charming style and crowned the dessert with a few bottles of a wine especially selected for the occasion from his own private stock.

It was a _Tokay Imperial_ of 1863, the genuine _Essenz_, from Prince Esterhazy's own wine cellar, and the best brain stimulant and brain clearer in the world, as every connoisseur knows.
It was near four o'clock in the morning when our travellers, now well fortified physically and morally, once more resumed their observations with renewed courage and determination, and with a system of recording really perfect in its arrangements.
Around the Projectile, they could still see floating most of the objects that had been dropped out of the window.

This convinced them that, during their revolution around the Moon, they had not passed through any atmosphere; had anything of the kind been encountered, it would have revealed its presence by its retarding effect on the different objects that now followed close in the wake of the Projectile.

One or two that were missing had been probably struck and carried off by a fragment of the exploded bolide.
Of the Earth nothing as yet could be seen.

She was only one day Old, having been New the previous evening, and two days were still to elapse before her crescent would be sufficiently cleared of the solar rays to be capable of performing her ordinary duty of serving as a time-piece for the Selenites.