of considerable consequence in their selenographic studies.
It proved that all heat had not yet disappeared from the bowels
of this globe; and where heat exists, who can affirm that the
vegetable kingdom, nay, even the animal kingdom itself, has not
up to this time resisted all destructive influences? The existence
of this volcano in eruption, unmistakably seen by these earthly
savants, would doubtless give rise to many theories favorable
to the grave question of the habitability of the moon.
Barbicane allowed himself to be carried away by these reflections.
He forgot himself in a deep reverie in which the mysterious
destiny of the lunar world was uppermost. He was seeking to
combine together the facts observed up to that time, when a new
incident recalled him briskly to reality. This incident was more
than a cosmical phenomenon; it was a threatened danger, the
consequence of which might be disastrous in the extreme.
Suddenly, in the midst of the ether, in the profound darkness, an
enormous mass appeared. It was like a moon, but an incandescent
moon whose brilliancy was all the more intolerable as it cut
sharply on the frightful darkness of space. This mass, of a
circular form, threw a light which filled the projectile.
The forms of Barbicane, Nicholl, and Michel Ardan, bathed in
its white sheets, assumed that livid spectral appearance which
physicians produce with the fictitious light of alcohol
impregnated with salt.
“By Jove!” cried Michel Ardan, “we are hideous. What is that
ill-conditioned moon?”
“A meteor,” replied Barbicane.
“A meteor burning in space?”
“Yes.”
This shooting globe suddenly appearing in shadow at a distance
of at most 200 miles, ought, according to Barbicane, to have a
diameter of 2,000 yards. It advanced at a speed of about one
mile and a half per second. It cut the projectile’s path and
must reach it in some minutes. As it approached it grew to
enormous proportions.
Imagine, if possible, the situation of the travelers! It is
impossible to describe it. In spite of their courage, their
_sang-froid_, their carelessness of danger, they were mute,
motionless with stiffened limbs, a prey to frightful terror.
Their projectile, the course of which they could not alter, was
rushing straight on this ignited mass, more intense than the
open mouth of an oven. It seemed as though they were being
precipitated toward an abyss of fire.
Barbicane had seized the hands of his two companions, and all
three looked through their half-open eyelids upon that asteroid
heated to a white heat. If thought was not destroyed within
them, if their brains still worked amid all this awe, they must
have given themselves up for lost.
Two minutes after the sudden appearance of the meteor (to them
two centuries of anguish) the projectile seemed almost about to
strike it, when the globe of fire burst like a bomb, but without
making any noise in that void where sound, which is but the
agitation of the layers of air, could not be generated.
Nicholl uttered a cry, and he and his companions rushed to
the scuttle. What a sight! What pen can describe it?
What palette is rich enough in colors to reproduce so magnificent
a spectacle?
It was like the opening of a crater, like the scattering of an
immense conflagration. Thousands of luminous fragments lit up
and irradiated space with their fires. Every size, every color,
was there intermingled. There were rays of yellow and pale
yellow, red, green, gray– a crown of fireworks of all colors.
Of the enormous and much-dreaded globe there remained nothing
but these fragments carried in all directions, now become
asteroids in their turn, some flaming like a sword, some
surrounded by a whitish cloud, and others leaving behind them
trains of brilliant cosmical dust.
These incandescent blocks crossed and struck each other,
scattering still smaller fragments, some of which struck
the projectile. Its left scuttle was even cracked by a
violent shock. It seemed to be floating amid a hail of
howitzer shells, the smallest of which might destroy
it instantly.
The light which saturated the ether was so wonderfully intense,
that Michel, drawing Barbicane and Nicholl to his window,
exclaimed, “The invisible moon, visible at last!”