moon a couple of every kind of domestic animal.”
“I dare say; but room would have failed us.”
“Oh!” said Michel, “we might have squeezed a little.”
“The fact is,” replied Nicholl, “that cows, bulls, and horses,
and all ruminants, would have been very useful on the lunar
continent, but unfortunately the car could neither have been
made a stable nor a shed.”
“Well, we might have at least brought a donkey, only a little
donkey; that courageous beast which old Silenus loved to mount.
I love those old donkeys; they are the least favored animals in
creation; they are not only beaten while alive, but even after
they are dead.”
“How do you make that out?” asked Barbicane. “Why,” said
Michel, “they make their skins into drums.”
Barbicane and Nicholl could not help laughing at this ridiculous remark.
But a cry from their merry companion stopped them. The latter was
leaning over the spot where Satellite lay. He rose, saying:
“My good Satellite is no longer ill.”
“Ah!” said Nicholl.
“No,” answered Michel, “he is dead! There,” added he, in a
piteous tone, “that is embarrassing. I much fear, my poor
Diana, that you will leave no progeny in the lunar regions!”
Indeed the unfortunate Satellite had not survived its wound.
It was quite dead. Michel Ardan looked at his friends with a
rueful countenance.
“One question presents itself,” said Barbicane. “We cannot keep
the dead body of this dog with us for the next forty-eight hours.”
“No! certainly not,” replied Nicholl; “but our scuttles are
fixed on hinges; they can be let down. We will open one, and
throw the body out into space.”
The president thought for some moments, and then said:
“Yes, we must do so, but at the same time taking very great precautions.”
“Why?” asked Michel.
“For two reasons which you will understand,” answered Barbicane.
“The first relates to the air shut up in the projectile, and of
which we must lose as little as possible.”
“But we manufacture the air?”
“Only in part. We make only the oxygen, my worthy Michel; and
with regard to that, we must watch that the apparatus does not
furnish the oxygen in too great a quantity; for an excess would
bring us very serious physiological troubles. But if we make
the oxygen, we do not make the azote, that medium which the
lungs do not absorb, and which ought to remain intact; and that
azote will escape rapidly through the open scuttles.”
“Oh! the time for throwing out poor Satellite?” said Michel.
“Agreed; but we must act quickly.”
“And the second reason?” asked Michel.
“The second reason is that we must not let the outer cold, which
is excessive, penetrate the projectile or we shall be frozen to death.”
“But the sun?”
“The sun warms our projectile, which absorbs its rays; but it
does not warm the vacuum in which we are floating at this moment.
Where there is no air, there is no more heat than diffused light;
and the same with darkness; it is cold where the sun’s rays do not
strike direct. This temperature is only the temperature produced
by the radiation of the stars; that is to say, what the
terrestrial globe would undergo if the sun disappeared one day.”
“Which is not to be feared,” replied Nicholl.
“Who knows?” said Michel Ardan. “But, in admitting that the sun
does not go out, might it not happen that the earth might move
away from it?”
“There!” said Barbicane, “there is Michel with his ideas.”
“And,” continued Michel, “do we not know that in 1861 the earth
passed through the tail of a comet? Or let us suppose a comet
whose power of attraction is greater than that of the sun.
The terrestrial orbit will bend toward the wandering star, and
the earth, becoming its satellite, will be drawn such a distance
that the rays of the sun will have no action on its surface.”
“That _might_ happen, indeed,” replied Barbicane, “but the
consequences of such a displacement need not be so formidable as
you suppose.”
“And why not?”
“Because the heat and cold would be equalized on our globe.
It has been calculated that, had our earth been carried along in