Chapter 14

A NIGHT OF FIFTEEN DAYS.

The Projectile being not quite 30 miles from the Moon's north pole when
the startling phenomenon, recorded in our last chapter, took place, a
few seconds were quite sufficient to launch it at once from the
brightest day into the unknown realms of night. The transition was so
abrupt, so unexpected, without the slightest shading off, from dazzling
effulgence to Cimmerian gloom, that the Moon seemed to have been
suddenly extinguished like a lamp when the gas is turned off.

"Where's the Moon?" cried Ardan in amazement.

"It appears as if she had been wiped out of creation!" cried M'Nicholl.

Barbican said nothing, but observed carefully. Not a particle, however,
could he see of the disc that had glittered so resplendently before his
eyes a few moments ago. Not a shadow, not a gleam, not the slightest
vestige could he trace of its existence. The darkness being profound,
the dazzling splendor of the stars only gave a deeper blackness to the
pitchy sky. No wonder. The travellers found themselves now in a night
that had plenty of time not only to become black itself, but to steep
everything connected with it in palpable blackness. This was the night
354-1/4 hours long, during which the invisible face of the Moon is
turned away from the Sun. In this black darkness the Projectile now
fully participated. Having plunged into the Moon's shadow, it was as
effectually cut off from the action of the solar rays as was every point
on the invisible lunar surface itself.

The travellers being no longer able to see each other, it was proposed
to light the gas, though such an unexpected demand on a commodity at
once so scarce and so valuable was certainly disquieting. The gas, it
will be remembered, had been intended for heating alone, not
illumination, of which both Sun and Moon had promised a never ending
supply. But here both Sun and Moon, in a single instant vanished from
before their eyes and left them in Stygian darkness.

"It's all the Sun's fault!" cried Ardan, angrily trying to throw the
blame on something, and, like every angry man in such circumstances,
bound to be rather nonsensical.

"Put the saddle on the right horse, Ardan," said M'Nicholl
patronizingly, always delighted at an opportunity of counting a point
off the Frenchman. "You mean it's all the Moon's fault, don't you, in
setting herself like a screen between us and the Sun?"

"No, I don't!" cried Ardan, not at all soothed by his friend's
patronizing tone, and sticking like a man to his first assertion right
or wrong. "I know what I say! It will be all the Sun's fault if we use
up our gas!"

"Nonsense!" said