All Around the Moon by Jules Verne (beach books TXT) 📗

Before M'Nicholl could reply, Barbican interposed, and his even voice was soon heard pouring balm on the troubled waters.

"Dear friends," he observed, "a little reflection on either side would convince you that our present situation is neither the Moon's fault nor the Sun's fault. If anything is to be blamed for it, it is our Projectile which, instead of rigidly following its allotted course, has awkwardly contrived to deviate from it. However, strict justice must acquit even the Projectile. It only obeyed a great law of nature in shifting its course as soon as it came within the sphere of that inopportune bolide's influence."

"All right!" said Ardan, as usual in the best of humor after Barbican had laid down the law. "I have no doubt it is exactly as you say; and, now that all is settled, suppose we take breakfast. After such a hard night spent in work, a little refreshment would not be out of place!"

Such a proposition being too reasonable even for M'Nicholl to oppose, Ardan turned on the gas, and had everything ready for the meal in a few minutes. But, this time, breakfast was consumed in absolute silence. No toasts were offered, no hurrahs were uttered. A painful uneasiness had seized the hearts of the daring travellers. The darkness into which they were so suddenly plunged, told decidedly on their spirits. They felt almost as if they had been suddenly deprived of their sight. That thick, dismal savage blackness, which Victor Hugo's pen is so fond of occasionally revelling in, surrounded them on all sides and crushed them like an iron shroud.

It was felt worse than ever when, breakfast being over, Ardan carefully turned off the gas, and everything within the Projectile was as dark as without. However, though they could not see each other's faces, they could hear each other's voices, and therefore they soon began to talk. The most natural subject of conversation was this terrible night 354 hours long, which the laws of nature have imposed on the Lunar inhabitants. Barbican undertook to give his friends some explanation regarding the cause of the startling phenomenon, and the consequences resulting from it.

"Yes, startling is the word for it," observed Barbican, replying to a remark of Ardan's; "and still more so when we reflect that not only are both lunar hemispheres deprived, by turns, of sun light for nearly 15 days, but that also the particular hemisphere over which we are at this moment floating is all that long night completely deprived of earth-light. In other words, it is only one side of the Moon's disc that ever receives any light from the Earth. From nearly every portion of one side of the Moon, the Earth is always as completely absent as the Sun is from us at midnight. Suppose an analogous case existed on the Earth; suppose, for instance, that neither in Europe, Asia or North America was the Moon ever visible—that, in fact, it was to be seen only at our antipodes. With what astonishment should we contemplate her for the first time on our arrival in Australia or New Zealand!"

"Every man of us would pack off to Australia to see her!" cried Ardan.

"Yes," said M'Nicholl sententiously; "for a visit to the South Sea a Turk would willingly forego Mecca; and a Bostonian would prefer Sidney even to Paris."

"Well," resumed Barbican, "this interesting marvel is reserved for the Selenite that inhabits the side of the Moon which is always turned away from our globe."

"And which," added the Captain, "we should have had the unspeakable satisfaction of contemplating if we had only arrived at the period when the Sun and the Earth are not at the same side of the Moon—that is, 15 days sooner or later than now."

"For my part, however," continued Barbican, not heeding these interruptions, "I must confess that, notwithstanding the magnificent splendor of the spectacle when viewed for the first time by the Selenite who inhabits the dark side of the Moon, I should prefer to be a resident on the illuminated side. The former, when his long, blazing, roasting, dazzling day is over, has a night 354 hours long, whose darkness, like that, just now surrounding us, is ever unrelieved save by the cold cheerless rays of the stars. But the latter has hardly seen his fiery sun sinking on one horizon when he beholds rising on the opposite one an orb, milder, paler, and colder indeed than the Sun, but fully as large as thirteen of our full Moons, and therefore shedding thirteen times as much light. This would be our Earth. It would pass through all its phases too, exactly like our Satellite. The Selenites would have their New Earth, Full Earth, and Last Quarter. At midnight, grandly illuminated, it would shine with the greatest glory. But that is almost as much as can be said for it. Its futile heat would but poorly compensate for its superior radiance. All the calorie accumulated in the lunar soil during the 354 hours day would have by this time radiated completely into space. An intensity of cold would prevail, in comparison to which a Greenland winter is tropical. The temperature of interstellar space, 250° below zero, would be reached. Our Selenite, heartily tired of the cold pale Earth, would gladly see her sink towards the horizon, waning as she sank, till at last she appeared no more than half full. Then suddenly a faint rim of the solar orb reveals itself on the edge of the opposite sky. Slowly, more than 14 times more slowly than with us, does the Sun lift himself above the lunar horizon. In half an hour, only half his disc is revealed, but that is more than enough to flood the lunar landscape with a dazzling intensity of light, of which we have no counterpart on Earth. No atmosphere refracts it, no hazy screen softens it, no enveloping vapor absorbs it, no obstructing medium colors it. It breaks on the eye, harsh, white, dazzling, blinding, like the electric light seen a few yards off. As the hours wear away, the more blasting becomes the glare; and the higher he rises in the black sky, but slowly, slowly. It takes him seven of our days to reach the meridian. By that time the heat has increased from an arctic temperature to double the boiling water point, from 250° below zero to 500° above it, or the point at which tin melts. Subjected to these extremes, the glassy rocks crack, shiver and crumble away; enormous land slides occur; peaks topple over; and tons of debris, crashing down the mountains, are swallowed up forever in the yawing chasms of the bottomless craters."

"Bravo!" cried Ardan, clapping his hands softly: "our President is sublime! He reminds me of the overture of Guillaume Tell!"

"Souvenir de Marston!" growled M'Nicholl.

"These phenomena," continued Barbican, heedless of interruption and his voice betraying a slight glow of excitement, "these phenomena going on without interruption from month to month, from year to year, from age to age, from eon to eon, have finally convinced me that—what?" he asked his hearers, interrupting himself suddenly.

—"That the existence at the present time—" answered M'Nicholl.

—"Of either animal or vegetable life—" interrupted Ardan.

—"In the Moon is hardly possible!" cried both in one voice.

"Besides?" asked Barbican: "even if there is any life—?"

—"That to live on the dark side would be much more inconvenient than on the light side!" cried M'Nicholl promptly.

—"That there is no choice between them!" cried Ardan just as ready. "For my part, I should think a residence on Mt. Erebus or in Grinnell Land a terrestrial paradise in comparison to either. The Earth shine might illuminate the light side of the Moon a little during the long night, but for any practical advantage towards heat or life, it would be perfectly useless!"

"But there is another serious difference between the two sides," said Barbican, "in addition to those enumerated. The dark side is actually more troubled with excessive variations of temperature than the light one."

"That assertion of our worthy President," interrupted Ardan, "with all possible respect for his superior knowledge, I am disposed to question."

"It's as clear as day!" said Barbican.

"As clear as mud, you mean, Mr. President;" interrupted Ardan, "the temperature of the light side is excited by two objects at the same time, the Earth and the Sun, whereas—"

—"I beg your pardon, Ardan—" said Barbican.

—"Granted, dear boy—granted with the utmost pleasure!" interrupted the Frenchman.

"I shall probably have to direct my observations altogether to you, Captain," continued Barbican; "friend Michael interrupts me so often that I'm afraid he can hardly understand my remarks."

"I always admired your candor, Barbican," said Ardan; "it's a noble quality, a grand quality!"

"Don't mention it," replied Barbican, turning towards M'Nicholl, still in the dark, and addressing him exclusively; "You see, my dear Captain, the period at which the Moon's invisible side receives at once its light and heat is exactly the period of her conjunction, that is to say, when she is lying between the Earth and the Sun. In comparison therefore with the place which she had occupied at her opposition, or when her visible side was fully illuminated, she is nearer to the Sun by double her distance from the Earth, or nearly 480 thousand miles. Therefore, my dear Captain, you can see how when the invisible side of the Moon is turned towards the Sun, she is nearly half a million of miles nearer to him than she had been before. Therefore, her heat should be so much the greater."

"I see it at a glance," said the Captain.

"Whereas—" continued Barbican.

"One moment!" cried Ardan.

"Another interruption!" exclaimed Barbican; "What is the meaning of it, Sir?"

"I ask my honorable friend the privilege of the floor for one moment," cried Ardan.

"What for?"

"To continue the explanation."

"Why so?"

"To show that I can understand as well as interrupt!"

"You have the floor!" exclaimed Barbican, in a voice no longer showing any traces of ill humor.

"I expected no less from the honorable gentleman's well known courtesy," replied Ardan. Then changing his manner and imitating to the life Barbican's voice, articulation, and gestures, he continued: "Whereas, you see, my dear Captain, the period at which the Moon's visible side receives at once its light and heat, is exactly the period of her opposition, that is to say, when she is lying on one side of the Earth and the Sun at the other. In comparison therefore with the point which she had occupied in conjunction, or when her invisible side was fully illuminated, she is farther from the Sun by double her distance from the Earth, or nearly 480,000 miles. Therefore, my dear Captain, you can readily see how when the Moon's invisible side is turned from the Sun, she is nearly half a million miles further from him than she had been before. Therefore her heat should be so much the less."

"Well done, friend Ardan!" cried Barbican, clapping his hands with pleasure. "Yes, Captain, he understood it as well as either of us the whole time. Intelligence, not indifference, caused him to interrupt. Wonderful fellow!"

"That's the kind of a man I am!" replied Ardan, not without some degree of complacency. Then he added simply: "Barbican, my friend, if I understand your explanations so readily, attribute it all to their astonishing lucidity. If I have any faculity, it is that of being able to scent common sense at the first glimmer. Your sentences are so steeped in it that I catch their full meaning long before you end them—hence my apparent inattention. But we're not yet done with the visible face of the Moon: it seems to me you have not yet enumerated all the advantages in which it surpasses the other side."

"Another of these advantages," continued Barbican, "is that it is from the visible side alone that eclipses of the Sun can be seen. This is self-evident, the interposition of the Earth being possible only between this visible face and the Sun. Furthermore, such eclipses of the Sun would be of a far more imposing character than anything of the kind to be witnessed from our Earth. This is chiefly for two reasons: first, when we, terrestrians, see the Sun eclipsed, we notice that, the discs of the two orbs being of about the same apparent size, one cannot hide the other except for a short time; second, as the two bodies are moving in opposite directions, the total duration of the eclipse, even under the most favorable circumstances, can't last longer than 7 minutes. Whereas to a Selenite who sees the Earth eclipse the Sun, not only does the Earth's disc appear four times larger than the Sun's, but also, as his day is 14 times longer than ours, the two heavenly bodies must remain several hours in contact. Besides, notwithstanding the apparent superiority of the Earth's disc, the refracting power of the atmosphere will never allow the Sun to be eclipsed altogether. Even when completely screened by