Yes, friend Barbican, Petit does not seem to be very wrong in his calculations." But Barbican hardly heard the observation.

He had not yet answered the puzzling question that had already presented itself to them for solution; and until he had done so he could not attend to anything else.
"That's all very well and good, Captain," he replied in an absorbed manner, "but we have not yet been able to account for a very strange phenomenon.

Why didn't we hear the report ?" No one replying, the conversation came to a stand-still, and Barbican, still absorbed in his reflections, began clearing the second light of its external shutter.

In a few minutes the plate dropped, and the Moon beams, flowing in, filled the interior of the Projectile with her brilliant light.

The Captain immediately put out the gas, from motives of economy as well as because its glare somewhat interfered with the observation of the interplanetary regions.
The Lunar disc struck the travellers as glittering with a splendor and purity of light that they had never witnessed before.