From the Earth to the Moon; and, Round the Moon

CHAPTER X

THE OB­SERVERS OF THE MOON

Bar­bi­cane had ev­ident­ly hit up­on the on­ly plau­si­ble rea­son of this de­vi­ation. How­ev­er slight it might have been, it had suf­ficed to mod­ify the course of the pro­jec­tile. It was a fa­tal­ity. The bold at­tempt had mis­car­ried by a for­tu­itous cir­cum­stance; and un­less by some ex­cep­tion­al event, they could now nev­er reach the moon’s disc.

Would they pass near enough to be able to solve cer­tain phys­ical and ge­olog­ical ques­tions un­til then in­sol­uble? This was the ques­tion, and the on­ly one, which oc­cu­pied the minds of these bold trav­el­ers. As to the fate in store for them­selves, they did not even dream of it.

But what would be­come of them amid these in­fi­nite soli­tudes, these who would soon want air? A few more days, and they would fall sti­fled in this wan­der­ing pro­jec­tile. But some days to these in­trepid fel­lows was a cen­tu­ry; and they de­vot­ed all their time to ob­serve that moon which they no longer hoped to reach.

The dis­tance which had then sep­arat­ed the pro­jec­tile from the satel­lite was es­ti­mat­ed at about two hun­dred leagues. Un­der these con­di­tions, as re­gards the vis­ibil­ity of the de­tails of the disc, the trav­el­ers were far­ther from the moon than are the in­hab­itants of earth with their pow­er­ful tele­scopes.

In­deed, we know that the in­stru­ment mount­ed by Lord Rosse at Par­son­stown, which mag­ni­fies 6,500 times, brings the moon to with­in an ap­par­ent dis­tance of six­teen leagues. And more than that, with the pow­er­ful one set up at Long’s Peak, the orb of night, mag­ni­fied 48,000 times, is brought to with­in less than two leagues, and ob­jects hav­ing a di­am­eter of thir­ty feet are seen very dis­tinct­ly. So that, at this dis­tance, the to­po­graph­ical de­tails of the moon, ob­served with­out glass­es, could not be de­ter­mined with pre­ci­sion. The eye caught the vast out­line of those im­mense de­pres­sions in­ap­pro­pri­ate­ly called “seas,” but they could not rec­og­nize their na­ture. The promi­nence of the moun­tains dis­ap­peared un­der the splen­did ir­ra­di­ation pro­duced by the re­flec­tion of the so­lar rays. The eye, daz­zled as if it was lean­ing over a bath of molten sil­ver, turned from it in­vol­un­tar­ily; but the ob­long form of the orb was quite clear. It ap­peared like a gi­gan­tic egg, with the small end turned to­ward the earth. In­deed the moon, liq­uid and pli­able in the first days of its for­ma­tion, was orig­inal­ly a per­fect sphere; but be­ing soon drawn with­in the at­trac­tion of the earth, it be­came elon­gat­ed un­der the in­flu­ence of grav­ita­tion. In be­com­ing a satel­lite, she lost her na­tive pu­ri­ty of form; her cen­ter of grav­ity was in ad­vance of the cen­ter of her fig­ure; and from this fact some sa­vants draw the con­clu­sion that the air and wa­ter had tak­en refuge on the op­po­site sur­face of the moon, which is nev­er seen from the earth. This al­ter­ation in the prim­itive form of the satel­lite was on­ly per­cep­ti­ble for a few mo­ments. The dis­tance of the pro­jec­tile from the moon di­min­ished very rapid­ly un­der its speed, though that was much less than its ini­tial ve­loc­ity– but eight or nine times greater than that which pro­pels our ex­press trains. The oblique course of the pro­jec­tile, from its very obliq­ui­ty, gave Michel Ar­dan some hopes of strik­ing the lu­nar disc at some point or oth­er. He could not think that they would nev­er reach it. No! he could not be­lieve it; and this opin­ion he of­ten re­peat­ed. But Bar­bi­cane, who was a bet­ter judge, al­ways an­swered him with mer­ci­less log­ic.

“No, Michel, no! We can on­ly reach the moon by a fall, and we are not falling. The cen­tripetal force keeps us un­der the moon’s in­flu­ence, but the cen­trifu­gal force draws us ir­re­sistibly away from it.”

This was said in a tone which quenched Michel Ar­dan’s last hope.

The por­tion of the moon which the pro­jec­tile was near­ing was the north­ern hemi­sphere, that which the se­leno­graph­ic maps place be­low; for these maps are gen­er­al­ly drawn af­ter the out­line giv­en by the glass­es, and we know that they re­verse the ob­jects. Such was the _Map­pa Se­leno­graph­ica_ of Boeer and Moedler which Bar­bi­cane con­sult­ed. This north­ern hemi­sphere pre­sent­ed vast plains, dot­ted with iso­lat­ed moun­tains.

At mid­night the moon was full. At that pre­cise mo­ment the trav­el­ers should have alight­ed up­on it, if the mis­chievous me­te­or had not di­vert­ed their course. The orb was ex­act­ly in the con­di­tion de­ter­mined by the Cam­bridge Ob­ser­va­to­ry. It was math­emat­ical­ly at its perigee, and at the zenith of the twen­ty-​eighth par­al­lel. An ob­serv­er placed at the bot­tom of the enor­mous Columbi­ad, point­ed per­pen­dic­ular­ly to the hori­zon, would have framed the moon in the mouth of the gun. A straight line drawn through the ax­is of the piece would have passed through the cen­ter of the orb of night. It is need­less to say, that dur­ing the night of the 5th-6th of De­cem­ber, the trav­el­ers took not an in­stant’s rest. Could they close their eyes when so near this new world? No! All their feel­ings were con­cen­trat­ed in one sin­gle thought:– See! Rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the earth, of hu­man­ity, past and present, all cen­tered in them! It is through their eyes that the hu­man race look at these lu­nar re­gions, and pen­etrate the se­crets of their satel­lite! A strange emo­tion filled their hearts as they went from one win­dow to the oth­er. Their ob­ser­va­tions, re­pro­duced by Bar­bi­cane, were rigid­ly de­ter­mined. To take them, they had glass­es; to cor­rect them, maps.

As re­gards the op­ti­cal in­stru­ments at their dis­pos­al, they had ex­cel­lent ma­rine glass­es spe­cial­ly con­struct­ed for this jour­ney. They pos­sessed mag­ni­fy­ing pow­ers of 100. They would thus have brought the moon to with­in a dis­tance (ap­par­ent) of less than 2,000 leagues from the earth. But then, at a dis­tance which for three hours in the morn­ing did not ex­ceed six­ty-​five miles, and in a medi­um free from all at­mo­spher­ic dis­tur­bances, these in­stru­ments could re­duce the lu­nar sur­face to with­in less than 1,500 yards!