Chapter 16

THE SOUTHERN HEMISPHERE.

Exceedingly narrow and exceedingly fortunate had been the escape of the
Projectile. And from a danger too the most unlikely and the most
unexpected. Who would have ever dreamed of even the possibility of such
an encounter? And was all danger over? The sight of one of these erratic
bolides certainly justified the gravest apprehensions of our travellers
regarding the existence of others. Worse than the sunken reefs of the
Southern Seas or the snags of the Mississippi, how could the Projectile
be expected to avoid them? Drifting along blindly through the boundless
ethereal ocean, _her_ inmates, even if they saw the danger, were totally
powerless to turn her aside. Like a ship without a rudder, like a
runaway horse, like a collapsed balloon, like an iceberg in an Atlantic
storm, like a boat in the Niagara rapids, she moved on sullenly,
recklessly, mechanically, mayhap into the very jaws of the most
frightful danger, the bright intelligences within no more able to modify
her motions even by a finger's breadth than they were able to affect
Mercury's movements around the Sun.

But did our friends complain of the new perils now looming up before
them? They never thought of such a thing. On the contrary, they only
considered themselves (after the lapse of a few minutes to calm their
nerves) extremely lucky in having witnessed this fresh glory of
exuberant nature, this transcendent display of fireworks which not only
cast into absolute insignificance anything of the kind they had ever
seen on Earth, but had actually enabled them by its dazzling
illumination to gaze for a second or two at the Moon's mysterious
invisible disc. This glorious momentary glance, worth a whole lifetime
of ordinary existence, had revealed to mortal ken her continents, her
oceans, her forests. But did it also convince them of the existence of
an atmosphere on her surface whose vivifying molecules would render
_life_ possible? This question they had again to leave unanswered--it
will hardly ever be answered in a way quite satisfactory to human
curiosity. Still, infinite was their satisfaction at having hovered even
for an instant on the very verge of such a great problem's solution.

It was now half-past three in the afternoon. The Projectile still
pursued its curving but otherwise unknown path over the Moon's invisible
face. Had this path been disturbed by that dangerous meteor? There was
every reason to fear so--though, disturbance or no disturbance, the
curve it described should still be one strictly in accordance with the
laws of Mechanical Philosophy. Whether it was a parabola or a hyperbola,
however, or whether it was disturbed or not, made very little difference
as, in any case, the Projectile was