At last, impatient of further restraint, he burst out: "Who the deuce cares for her secrets?
To the hangman with her secrets! We started to land in the Moon! That's what's got to be done! That I want or nothing! Confound the darned thing, I say, whatever it was, whether on the Earth or off it, that shoved us off the track!" "On the Earth or off it!" cried Barbican, striking his head suddenly; "now I see it! You're right, Captain! Confound the bolide that we met the first night of our journey!" "Hey ?" cried Ardan.
"What do you mean ?" asked M'Nicholl.
"I mean," replied Barbican, with a voice now perfectly calm, and in a tone of quiet conviction, "that our deviation is due altogether to that wandering meteor." "Why, it did not even graze us!" cried Ardan.
"No matter for that," replied Barbican.

"Its mass, compared to ours, was enormous, and its attraction was undoubtedly sufficiently great to influence our deviation." "Hardly enough to be appreciable," urged M'Nicholl.
"Right again, Captain," observed Barbican.

"But just remember an observation of your own made this very afternoon: an inch, a line, even the tenth part of a hair's breadth wrong at the beginning, in a journey of 240 thousand miles, would be sufficient to make us miss the Moon!".