Chapter 17 - Page 2

bright Sun, they seemed to be half asleep while
steeping their limbs in his vitalizing beams.

Barbican was the first to dissolve the reverie by jumping up. His sharp
eye had noticed that the base of the Projectile, instead of keeping
rigidly perpendicular to the lunar surface, turned away a little, so as
to render the elliptical orbit somewhat elongated. This he made his
companions immediately observe, and also called their attention to the
fact that from this point they could easily have seen the Earth had it
been Full, but that now, drowned in the Sun's beams, it was quite
invisible. A more attractive spectacle, however, soon engaged their
undivided attention--that of the Moon's southern regions, now brought
within about the third of a mile by their telescopes. Immediately
resuming their posts by the windows, they carefully noted every feature
presented by the fantastic panorama that stretched itself out in endless
lengths beneath their wondering eyes.

[Illustration: THEY SEEMED HALF ASLEEP.]

Mount _Leibnitz_ and Mount _Doerfel_ form two separate groups developed
in the regions of the extreme south. The first extends westwardly from
the pole to the 84th parallel; the second, on the southeastern border,
starting from the pole, reaches the neighborhood of the 65th. In the
entangled valleys of their clustered peaks, appeared the dazzling sheets
of white, noted by Father Secchi, but their peculiar nature Barbican
could now examine with a greater prospect of certainty than the
illustrious Roman astronomer had ever enjoyed.

"They're beds of snow," he said at last in a decided tone.

"Snow!" exclaimed M'Nicholl.

"Yes, snow, or rather glaciers heavily coated with glittering ice. See
how vividly they reflect the Sun's rays. Consolidated beds of lava could
never shine with such dazzling uniformity. Therefore there must be both
water and air on the Moon's surface. Not much--perhaps very little if
you insist on it--but the fact that there is some can now no longer be
questioned."

This assertion of Barbican's, made so positively by a man who never
decided unless when thoroughly convinced, was a great triumph for Ardan,
who, as the gracious reader doubtless remembers, had had a famous
dispute with M'Nicholl on that very subject at Tampa.[D] His eyes
brightened and a smile of pleasure played around his lips, but, with a
great effort at self-restraint, he kept perfectly silent and would not
permit himself even to look in the direction of the Captain. As for
M'Nicholl, he was apparently too much absorbed in _Doerfel_ and
_Leibnitz_ to mind anything else.

These mountains rose from plains of moderate extent, bounded by an
indefinite succession of