"I'll never answer a question reasonable or unreasonable, unless it is asked in a proper manner!" "None of your French airs here!" exclaimed M'Nicholl, by this time almost completely out of himself between anger and excitement.

"I don't know where I am; I don't know where I'm going; I don't know why I'm going; _you_ know all about it, Ardan, or at least you think you do! Well then, give me a plain answer to a plain question, or by the Thirty-eight States of our glorious Union, I shall know what for!" "Listen, Ardan!" cried Barbican, grappling with the Frenchman, and with some difficulty restraining him from flying at M'Nicholl's throat; "You ought to tell him! It is only your duty! One day you found us both in St.Helena woods, where we had no more idea of going to the Moon than of sailing to the South Pole! There you twisted us both around your finger, and induced us to follow you blindly on the most formidable journey ever undertaken by man! And now you refuse to tell us what it was all for!" "I don't refuse, dear old Barbican! To you, at least, I can't refuse anything!" cried Ardan, seizing his friend's hands and wringing them violently.

Then letting them go and suddenly starting back, "you wish to know," he continued in resounding tones, "why we have followed out the grandest idea that ever set a human brain on fire! Why we have undertaken a journey that for length, danger, and novelty, for fascinating, soul-stirring and delirious sensations, for all that can attract man's burning heart, and satisfy the intensest cravings of his intellect, far surpasses the vividest realities of Dante's passionate dream! Well, I will tell you! It is to annex another World to the New One! It is to take possession of the Moon in the name of the United States of America! It is to add a thirty-ninth State to the glorious Union! It is to colonize the lunar regions, to cultivate them, to people them, to transport to them some of our wonders of art, science, and industry! It is to civilize the Selenites, unless they are more civilized already than we are ourselves! It is to make them all good Republicans, if they are not so already!" "Provided, of course, that there are Selenites in existence!" sneered the Captain, now sourer than ever, and in his unaccountable excitement doubly irritating.
"Who says there are no Selenites ?" cried Ardan fiercely, with fists clenched and brows contracted.
"I do!" cried M'Nicholl stoutly; "I deny the existence of anything of the kind, and I denounce every one that maintains any such whim as a visionary, if not a fool!" Ardan's reply to this taunt was a desperate facer, which, however, Barbican managed to stop while on its way towards the Captain's nose.
M'Nicholl, seeing himself struck at, immediately assumed such a posture of defence as showed him to be no novice at the business.

A battle seemed unavoidable; but even at this trying moment Barbican showed himself equal to the emergency.
"Stop, you crazy fellows! you ninnyhammers! you overgrown babies!" he exclaimed, seizing his companions by the collar, and violently swinging them around with his vast strength until they stood back to back; "what are you going to fight about?
Suppose there are Lunarians in the Moon! Is that a reason why there should be Lunatics in the Projectile! But, Ardan, why do you insist on Lunarians?
Are we so shiftless that we can't do without them when we get to the Moon ?" "I don't insist on them!" cried Ardan, who submitted to Barbican like a child.

"Hang the Lunarians! Certainly, we can do without them! What do I care for them?
Down with them!" "Yes, down with the Lunarians!" cried M'Nicholl as spitefully as if he had even the slightest belief in their existence.
"We shall take possession of the Moon ourselves!" cried Ardan.
"Lunarians or no Lunarians!" "We three shall constitute a Republic!" cried M'Nicholl.
"I shall be the House!" cried Ardan.
"And I the Senate!" answered the Captain.
"And Barbican our first President!" shrieked the Frenchman.
"Our first and last!" roared M'Nicholl.
"No objections to a third term!" yelled Ardan.
"He's welcome to any number of terms he pleases!" vociferated M'Nicholl.
"Hurrah for President Barbican of the Lunatic--I mean of the Lunar Republic!" screamed Ardan.
"Long may he wave, and may his shadow never grow less!" shouted Captain M'Nicholl, his eyes almost out of their sockets.
Then with voices reminding you of sand fiercely blown against the window panes, the _President_ and the _Senate_ chanted the immortal _Yankee Doodle_, whilst the _House_ delivered itself of the _Marseillaise_, in a style which even the wildest Jacobins in Robespierre's day could hardly have surpassed.
But long before either song was ended, all three broke out into a dance, wild, insensate, furious, delirious, paroxysmatical.