Chapter 7

A HIGH OLD TIME.

A new phenomenon, therefore, strange but logical, startling but
admitting of easy explanation, was now presented to their view,
affording a fresh subject for lively discussion. Not that they disputed
much about it. They soon agreed on a principle from which they readily
deducted the following general law: _Every object thrown out of the
Projectile should partake of the Projectile's motion: it should
therefore follow the same path, and never cease to move until the
Projectile itself came to a stand-still._

But, in sober truth, they were at anything but a loss of subjects of
warm discussion. As the end of their journey began to approach, their
senses became keener and their sensations vivider. Steeled against
surprise, they looked for the unexpected, the strange, the startling;
and the only thing at which they would have wondered would be to be five
minutes without having something new to wonder at. Their excited
imaginations flew far ahead of the Projectile, whose velocity, by the
way, began to be retarded very decidedly by this time, though, of
course, the travellers had as yet no means to become aware of it. The
Moon's size on the sky was meantime getting larger and larger; her
apparent distance was growing shorter and shorter, until at last they
could almost imagine that by putting their hands out they could nearly
touch her.

Next morning, December 5th, all were up and dressed at a very early
hour. This was to be the last day of their journey, if all calculations
were correct. That very night, at 12 o'clock, within nineteen hours at
furthest, at the very moment of Full Moon, they were to reach her
resplendent surface. At that hour was to be completed the most
extraordinary journey ever undertaken by man in ancient or modern times.
Naturally enough, therefore, they found themselves unable to sleep after
four o'clock in the morning; peering upwards through the windows now
visibly glittering under the rays of the Moon, they spent some very
exciting hours in gazing at her slowly enlarging disc, and shouting at
her with confident and joyful hurrahs.

The majestic Queen of the Stars had now risen so high in the spangled
heavens that she could hardly rise higher. In a few degrees more she
would reach the exact point of space where her junction with the
Projectile was to be effected. According to his own observations,
Barbican calculated that they should strike her in the northern
hemisphere, where her plains, or _seas_ as they are called, are immense,
and her mountains are comparatively rare. This, of course, would be so
much the more favorable, if, as was to be apprehended, the lunar
atmosphere was confined exclusively to the low lands.

"Besides," as